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kafus · 3 months

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i said i wanted to talk about my SV trainer a little bit and i have decided to write a post about this now while waiting for dinner because i am bored lol

i do not have art of her atm so you'll have to take these images for now. i also have no idea what the fuck to name her i somehow haven't been able to decide so we're just gonna call her Kafu even though that is not her name that's just the name i use for online play LMAO. oh and he uses he And she pronouns so if u see me alternating that's why. anyway. this is going to be long i'm putting it under the cut. no pressure to read it i'm just rambling

basically when i started playing violet i had avoided spoilers/leaks and stuff and i had no idea what was going to happen except for what was in trailers, and i knew about the robotic paradox mons so my robot obsessed ass decided okay. you know what. kafu is also a robot and somehow comes from the same place these paradox mons r coming from. i went thru the game with this in mind, this is why kafu wears sunglasses to cover her really inhuman colorful robot eyes, it makes them less jarring and doesn't instantly give her away to strangers. him being a robot is actually a secret (he appears very human/realistic) that the cast of SV finds out about as trust builds throughout the journey. for what it's worth this is also why his sunglasses are off in the credits pic for the main story, he took them off while in area zero where literally no one was around and it didn't matter lol

this is all well and good and gave me an extra point of attachment to sv's cast during the main story but the dlc makes this really interesting in particular because of the crystal pool scene. not only is the time machine and the story of SV a paradox but kafu herself is a paradox. the way i'm handling this is subject to change but my current idea is the following:

there is a prior timeline before any of sv's plot, where turo got the idea for the time machine of his own accord. heath and paradox mon sightings still exist regardless and so does terapagos, who is not pulling the paradox mons literally from the future of sv's world but the future in another dimension (it has both time and space abilities). in this timeline, turo finds terapagos himself and actually owns it and is able to weaponize its powers to make a much MUCH more potent machine than what we see in violet, because instead of drawing on terapagos' inadvertent abilities that it doesn't have much control over, he is controlling its abilities directly. essentially this future realm with the robot paradoxes and the paldea we know are mashed together and this creates an ecological apocalypse. terapagos, in emotional desperation, thru its desire to fix what has happened, calls upon kafu who is one of the few remaining sentient androids from the robot mon world (he has an intrinsic connection with terapagos because reasons i'm still developing) to save everyone. and kafu does, and smth similar to the crystal pool scene happens in which she is the one to give turo the idea for the time machine, instead of terapagos being the cause. this prevents the sort of ecological apocalypse that happened before, since the machine is much less powerful, and now the timeline is in a cyclical paradox where he is the one who gives turo the idea for the machine and is always there at the end to be the one giving him the idea, essentially patching up the apocalypse timeline and making sure it never happens.

SV, then, is a representation of what the timeline looks like AFTER kafu has prevented the apocalypse. she's not really in a time loop? she is in her own continuum and actually unaware of the apocalypse timeline, completely amnesiac, until the ID plotline (by the way the literal indigo disk is a remnant of the original apocalypse timeline when turo had direct access to terapagos lol) in which capturing terapagos again allows it to share this information with her. and even then it's not like she's reliving the same plot over and over, it's more like she is in every timeline at once to always save it but my oc is just the one in this one timeline.

to be clear i've never worked this in depth with time shenanigans before so there may be holes or other things i need to work out here but that's the GENERAL idea. ANYWAY here's a list of kafu's relationships with everyone that i made on discord the other day :)

my trainer's relationship with everyone (i'm saying "my trainer" here because i was talking on discord and i'm too lazy to fix it):

nemona: really close friends, nemona was the first person to find out about his robot shit and accepted him with an almost concerning lack of distrust or complaint. my trainer is just as into the rivalry as nemona is and because my trainer has protag energy and cares a lot about being strong, they spar a lot. i think they're qpps in spirit even though they wouldn't call it that

arven: he's definitely more attached to my trainer than my trainer is to him but they are still good friends. i think my trainer has some trauma with turo and she has a hard time dealing with seeing him when with arven, and arven has a lot of heavy shit going on with that that can be hard to handle. but when they get along they really do get along

penny: my trainer and penny are not emotionally close in particular but penny and nemona are dating and so my trainer sees her a lot and they get on just fine LMAO. i think penny has interest in general tech stuff, not just on the software end, and so my trainer might awkwardly go to her if having a bodily function issue or question and penny's always willing to figure that out for the sake of her gf's bestie

carmine: while distrusting at first, carmine and my trainer ended up forming a really good friendship by the end of teal mask. it's a little complicated since my trainer feels terrible for hurting kieran the way that she did, and carmine was a part of that, and for a while my trainer's very bitter about it but they're able to make up and proceed

kieran: BOYFRIEND!! my trainer empathized with kieran's situation from the start. they have some sort of intrinsic connection because kieran's story might not be so disconnected from my trainer's after all… the ending of indigo disk brings them very close together because kieran sees my trainer's shit firsthand and you know. everything that happens in general

also for what it's worth i made a new team for both DLCs and of course i had my initial tam of 6 from the base game so kafu canonically owns 18 pokemon throughout the journey, these guys:

main story: meowscarada/clodsire/rotom heat (shiny)/dragonite/slowbro/tinkaton teal mask: mightyena/ribombee/ninetales/kommo-o/quagsire/yanmega (shiny) indigo disk: flygon/galvantula/meowstic/scrafty/cinccino/metagross <- all shiny

his favorites are meowscarada, yanmega, and flygon though :)

anyways yeah gaming i need to elaborate on my made up kieran lore and draw weird angst art of my oc who i still need to give a proper name and him LOL

#kiki was here #kiki.txt #sv oc universe #i'll rename that tag later #long post

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robininthelabyrinth · 2 years

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Ok but now I want the Lao Nie fucks an android space AU.

sequel to this one

No one believed him about the sexbot/android/possible-visitation-by-a-black-hole-generated-eldritch-being thing, which Lao Nie supposed was fair.

He had been on solo travel for ten months, which was about enough time for him to smuggle some stowaway with no ID onto his ship in violation of travel ordinances, fuck her, get her pregnant, have her bear the child to term, have something bad happen to her, and have no choice but to bury her in the deep, a space funeral somewhere where no one would ever find the body, all before returning back to Butchersport (which, yeah, he knew everyone called it the Unclean Realm now, but it was his family’s home, damnit, so he’d call it whatever he wanted) with a baby in tow.

This entire ridiculous sequence of events was apparently seen as the more likely option, even though everyone acknowledged that Lao Nie wasn’t the sort of person to do that. There were a lot of people who thought the relativity storm thing had just given him very specific amnesia so he didn’t remember the exculpatory details, and also that he was very lucky to have gone straight home to Butchersport in Qinghe system because otherwise he would have been arrested for murder.

Not that the charge would’ve stuck, of course.

Lao Nie was the leader of one of the great fleets, his Qinghe Nie family one of the five families that more or less ruled the entire cultivation world with a fist of cubic boron nitride, and out of those five, they were the ones with the reputation for being especially wild. Qinghe Nie fought evil no matter where it was and fought everyone else when no evil was available, that was how the story went; they terrified the living daylights out of those calculator-heart bastards in Lanling Jin manufacturing corps, offended the sensibilities of the monk-like Gusu Lan codex compilers, disturbed the free flow of the Yunmeng Jiang mercantile fleet, who liked to pretend they weren’t the descendants of star pirates, and the less that could be said about their relationship – his relationship, specifically – with the power-grasping energy-core bureaucrats of Qishan Wen, the better.

In short, he could probably cop a dozen far more justifiable murder charges without breaking a sweat, and maybe had, which was probably why no one believed him when he insisted that this time he really hadn’t done anything crooked.

(His sister maybe believed him, but only, she said, because she couldn’t see him thinking that admitting to sleeping with an antique Mark neg-37 sexbot was the less embarrassing explanation compared to a little spot of possible kidnapping, murder, and corpse disposal. She was right, too.)

Anyway, origins aside, little Nie Mingjue, as Lao Nie had decided to call him, passed all his DNA tests with flying colors – as he would later pass all his tests, though they didn’t know that then – and Lao Nie’s family, it turned out, didn’t actually care where he’d managed to get a kid that shared his bloodline, they were just happy he’d finally done it.

Wen Ruohan was pissed about it when he heard, of course, but if he wanted a say in Lao Nie’s procreation habits, he maybe shouldn’t have been such a petty little bitch about the whole break-up thing that had led to the gag gift in the first place. Of course, as was just typical for the bastard, his fuck yous pretty quickly turned into fuck mes and Lao Nie got some pretty A+++ sex out of the whole business, which was satisfying in many senses, not least of all as a reassurance that he could still get it up with a regular normal (well, relatively) human pillow princess even after having had a transcendental experience involving real hinges.

(“I wanted you not to get back together with that asshole,” Lao Nie’s sister moaned. “It was supposed to be a ‘celebrate your freedom and don’t look back’ sort of gift!”

“We’re not back together,” Lao Nie told her, and he even mostly believed it. “It’s no strings attached this time. Really!”)

Still, things were working out pretty well, all things considered. Nie Mingjue had stopped glowing about a week before they’d gotten back to port and generally hadn’t picked it up again, seemingly adjusting to being a human, and it was kind of nice having a kid – it made Lao Nie feel a real connection to something other than his sect and his ‘saber, which was pretty nifty. Plus, Nie Mingjue was like a lucky charm when it came to mechanicals, whether ‘saber or ship or something else; when he was around, nothing ever seemed to break.

(“…you’re right, and I kind of hate that.”

“See, lil sis, I told you it was worth bringing him along!”

“Yeah, but I thought you meant lucky charm as in ‘the crew shows off because there’s a baby to impress’ lucky, not ‘we somehow managed to limp the final three leagues home after a bad night-hunt despite our engine having been literally disconnected from the rest of the ship in what we’re all choosing to call a fit of inexplicable space weird’ lucky, okay? Also, and this is probably just me being incredibly hype on adrenaline, but I would’ve sworn I saw your baby, like, crackling with energy or something.”

“Not glowing?”

“…no. No glow, just crackle.”

“Yeah, that’s fine. Crackle’s fine. S’long as he doesn’t pick up the glow thing again, that was weird.”

“…whatever you say, big bro.”)

And, yeah, sure, maybe Lao Nie did poke around a bit and try out a few more sexbots before deciding that actually, no, he had too much dignity for that (and also that the vast majority of commercially available models were completely inferior and lacking even in hinges, which – what’s even the point?), but that was fine. He had a couple of lovers on call, he had his beloved Jiwei and the thrill of the hunt through the long dark night of space, he had the all-important heir that his family had always been on his case about, and he was happy.

He was definitely, absolutely, one hundred and ten percent not going to get up in anymore weirdo business, least of all involving androids. No sirree, not him!

“Uh-huh,” his sister said dryly when he told her his resolution. “Right. Just as long as you know that I’m going to roast the living daylights out of you if you show back up at home port with some sort of spacefox-possessed android next time you go out on solo cruise.”

“Please,” Lao Nie said, rolling his eyes at her. “Everyone knows huli jing don’t exist, and even if they did, there’s no reason to think they can survive leaving Terra to enter the black. At least make your threats plausible, why don’t you..?”

In his later defense, the probably-not-actually-named-that Hu Jiuwei was a cyborg, not an android. It was different! (Great tail, though.)

#mdzs #sect leader nie #nie mingjue #wen ruohan #my fic #my fics #alt headcanons #why yes I am kind of inclined to just make this a full fic #not sure I'm ready to commit

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looney-mooney-studio · 9 months

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I love your Sam & Max Miraculous AU, I hope to see more in the future. Can you add Flint Paper in it? If so, what would you do with him? He's an ally/friend of Sam & Max.

I imagine that, for the most part, Flint Paper in this au is basically the same as he is in the original Sam and Max media, with the caveat of him being a college kid like the majority of the rest of the cast. He’s either their roommate or their neighbor, but either way they probably share a communal kitchen. He’s COOL. He’s in college, but not like, INVESTED in it, and he’s been doing a lot of like, vigilante stuff on the side despite not having any powers. His family probably comes from money, so it’s not like he has to worry about scholarships like Sam does or employment like Max does, and he tends to blow off his classes a lot to go fight monsters with his bare hands. This results in a sort of mutual idolization between Flint Paper and Sam&Max, in a pattern that almost mimics the Love Square?

Image ID and rest of words under the cut:

Image ID: Flint Paper from Sam and Max as a college kid. He has a mullet and is wearing flannel and ripped pants. Comic book style captions read: Flint Paper (Sam & Max Miraculous AU), shaved eyebrow or cool scar?, shaved sides with dyed streaks (changes colors every once in a while), Mullet, wears Miraculous as queer signifier earring, buttoned-down flannel shirt (cover them up, slut!), sleeves rolled up to show off forearms, got pride bracelets for free at various raves; wears them cuz they look cool, changes it out for a different one every day, torn dress pants (he tore them himself in various scuffles), fancy leather jazz shoes, and *is he gay or European voice* is he gay or a Butch Lesbian? /end id

He’s probably a film student, if only because he reminds me of some film students I knew back in college? He’s got the dramatics for it, and I assume he could use knowledge of practical effects and stunt man techniques for vigilante purposes. Who knows, maybe he even films his encounters and turns in the resulting footage for homework, Peter Parker style.

Eventually, he does get to use the Miraculous, but it’s very mid-late-game, and even then he doesn’t really have a single one that’s HIS (at least, not at first). Sam and Max might trust Flint Paper, but the Commissioner thinks he’s just a violent wild card, so he doesn’t get a permanent one like the rest of the cast. But Sam and Max both like him enough that they’re both thinking of him whenever they need a helping hand, so he ends up using a lot of different powers. He usually ends up with a sort of, like, Tom of Finland/DCAU Superhero aesthetic to his outfits whenever he gets a miraculous, and he’s gonna try fighting the monsters wether he has powers or not, soooo.

(If this was a show that sold toys like Miraculous does, Flint Paper would be the mold that the company reuses for EVERYTHING, and his designs in the show would reflect that. All his superhero designs are pretty much unimaginative reskins of each other, which is both cost effective and ENTIRELY in-character.) (He eventually - EVENTUALLY - ends up with the Ox Miraculous as his default, just cuz that’s the one he’s best at using.) (I’ll draw a buncha his superhero outfits later don’t worry lol)

Oh yeah and he’s also Not Straight. Like. You will see him unironically hitting up the gay bar, and leaving for an evening of no-strings-attached fun with a twink on one arm and a drop-dead Gorgeous drag queen on the other. He’s not gonna SAY he isn’t straight - he’s in college! He’s having fun, he’s experimenting! He’s also the kinda guy who assumes that’s what college is FOR. He’s probably aromantic tbh. He flunked his Art History midterm

#sam and max #flint paper #miraculous ladybug #miraculous au #artists on tumblr #long post #fanart #college au #looney mooney rants #looney mooney art #mooneyart

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jordemme-draws · 8 months

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Ok so I saw @flower-seller wanted to hear more about Wander and that really made the desire to be normal about shit and the desire to Infodump about my blorbos go to war with each other so here's this: infodumping but with illustrations. Under a cut bc longgg. The pictures make it longer but just text feels wrong.

(Wander's actual name is Haruko btw, Wander was his codename and also kind of an apt nickname)

Haru learned Alphian Celestican written language from a very young age due to constantly playing in the ruins of Alph unsupervised. The unown were his friends and he spent hours exploring and generally entertaining himself during his time at Violet City Group Home.

This lasted until age 7 when he was adopted, which he was very excited about. What child doesn't want a loving family? His friends were very sad to see him go, but they knew this was important for him.

But not everyone who adopts a kid does it for good reasons. Standing out for being different puts a target on you for different reasons, and some people refuse to believe that children are autonomous little people with their own desires. Haru's first memories were at Celebi's shrine and between that and the Ruins of Alph he very quickly developed an interest in Johto's myths and legends.

Mori, Ayumu was a strict man in his late thirties, and he saw Haruko as more of a pet project than a son. Someone to mold to his own designs, and he had little patience for frivolities like folktales and myths. He collected shiny Pokemon as well as even rarer color mutations (albinism, melanism, piebald), but his crown jewel was a shiny liepard named Kronos.

The 'proper boys haircut' that was forced on Wander was the first of plenty of situations that gave him a serious aversion to touch.

But abuse has a habit of being revealed sooner or later and after three years Haru was returned to the VCGH. He was a lot more withdrawn for a while, and then a series of altercations began.

Bullying has always been a thing children do but it ramped up for Haru when he was adopted and then later returned, and a switch flipped in his brain, leading to a serious aggressive streak. These occurrences only grew more often as he got older and reached the age range that's generally considered hardest to get adopted in. The caretakers at VCGH decided the best course of action would be to transfer him to the Group Home in Olivine City at age 13, three years after he was returned.

He stayed at OCGH for almost two years, but the month before his 15th birthday he ran, which he'd been preparing to do for months. His goal was to get to goldenrod, and figure the rest out then.

Ironically despite having no trainer ID or anything, he does catch a venonat at the national park on the way.

Blueberry is his precious baby, a Tinted Lens + Modest nature venonat that grew attached to him after he fed it. He technically didn't have a PokeBall for her for like two weeks, but it's Johto and people walk with their pokemon out all the time.

Goldenrod is a big city that's easy to get lost in, and even when you stand out like Wander does, nobody is going to bat an eye at another 'trainer' hanging around the underground. Money is hard to come by especially when you aren't a legal trainer, and being functionally homeless for several months made Team Rocket's offer of food, a place to stay, and payment pretty enticing.

His first impression of Lyric was someone aggressively friendly, and pushy. But they very quickly became ride or die together, and they consider each other the sibling they never had. Lyric was honestly the first person Wander honestly gave a damn about, since he felt a pretty strong disconnect with other people.

During the raid on Rocket Headquarters, Wander and Lyric got the younger kids roped into team rocket shit out, but had the misfortune of getting caught on a stairwell by Petrel, and lance caught up to them.

Lance, a person that canonically ordered his Dragonite to use hyperbeam on a human being. Petrel sent out his pokemon, Lance's Dragonite used hyperbeam, and it batted aside the pokemon and kept going.

Wander shoved Lyric out of the line of fire, and it connected and went past his shoulder.

Wander is a person that understands that while pokemon are dangerous, it's their trainers that make things deadly. There's a reason his policy is "if you have a problem with a person, solve it with your own damn hands."

He was slapped with a gag order in return for a lighter sentence and was dragged off to Sinnoh, which set things in motion all the way to his being dragged to Hisui.

#pokemon legends oc #mpsmp #wander went down but he got up swinging and broke Lance's nose before he was detained #this exact personal code is the only thing that has protected Kamado and later Beni and Volo from Wander's pokemon #if Giratina had actually killed Wander #Volo would not have much time to regret it before Wanders team tears him apart #violence cw #abuse cw

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c0rpseductor · 2 months

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cannot even articulate how pissed i am about this thing i remembered

when i was really little my dads mom got me and my two younger cousins matching Easter presents. they were cute little junk plushies, like, these little easter ducks in different colors, and i got really attached to mine and named him mr. ducky. i lost him one day and was really upset about it.

EXCEPT!!! fucking. UGH. i really don’t like making a huge habit of talking about this but im going to Blow Up and it’s my blog. id been switching a lot recently with a part that’s a little kid and remembers more about my/our childhood, so i remembered or found out or whatever what actually happened to the toy and im like. livid.

my parents openly complained in front of me that my grandma shouldn’t have gotten me more toys because i already have too many stuffed animals basically the minute she was out of earshot. they used to be real fucking anal about the amount of stuffed animals i was allowed to have, and make me go through them all every so often to donate because they didn’t like them taking up space (i had a lot but never enough to cause any kind of problem, it was purely fucking punitive bc they knew it would make me sob for ages). so they hated my duck already. and then he went missing and they didn’t try to help me very much and were just kind of like Oh well! Maybe he’ll turn up haha! <- FUCKING UNBOTHERED.

and some time after initially losing my duck i got taken to goodwill and saw a suspiciously identical duck in the plushie section my parents wouldn’t let me have. im like. Dead sure they took and got rid of it bc they thought it was just junk and i didn’t need more toys, and pretended they hadn’t, bc they had a petty fucking grudge against a toy my grandmother got me. FOR EASTER. fucking whooooo does that to their kid.

of course i’m so incandescently pissed i want to confront my mom about it but of fucking course nothing would come of it bc it’s insane. but it’s not really About the toy anyway. it’s like. how much do you have to resent your child to take their treasured belongings in secret? how little regard do you have to have for your kid to do that kind of horseshit? it baffles me. sometimes they could genuinely do such nice and thoughtful stuff but then other times they would do shit like this. and of course they were also horribly abusive but im just so fixated on this bc it’s new and like. i don’t get how you can even pretend to like your kid so convincingly when you have this level of simultaneous disdain for the fact that he’s a child who draws breath at all. god forbid our son have toys. Jesus Christ

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rusteddreamsstories · 2 years

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Hunter

[IMAGE ID: A painting on paper of a robotic elk. It has silver-colored casings over gaps with green light and wires. Weeds hang from its antlers. / END IMAGE ID] In the same universe as Valley. An encounter in the deep woods. Hunter The shadows of trees filtered through the fine blue mesh of the tent-fabric. Ryn squinted back the too-bright light of the leaf-dapples as they danced, beckoning her to awaken along with the noise of songbirds. Cute little things, but far too annoying first thing in the morning. The smell of bacon and wood-smoke told her that her father was up. A familiar ache and pinch told her that she needed to find a bush. Ryn peeled herself out of her sleeping-bag to do just that. She was thirsty, as well, and sought a bottle of purified water after the most pressing matter of the morning was addressed. The creek that she and her father were camped beside ran and babbled, but it just wouldn’t do to drink directly from it. Who knew what kinds of parasites were in there? “Morin’ kiddo,” her father greeted as she sat down on a stump near the campfire. He was hunched over the edge, his hand in a quilted mitt, holding the handle of a cast-iron skillet. Bacon popped and sizzled on its black, greasy surface – a gift from their neighbors. They’d bothered to raise a hog this year. “Mornin’, Dad,” Ryn replied as she handed him a pair of eggs from the cooler. It was stocked with snow gathered from one of the shadier parts of the forest and was a bit dirty with rocks and pine needles, but it did its job. Before breakfast was even done, Ryn knew her duty. She began setting up the smoking-box that would, hopefully, be laden with trout by that afternoon. She looked up at the satchel that they’d hoisted up into the branches of a tree yesterday as an anti-bear measure. There weren’t supposed to be a lot of bear around here, but one could never be too safe. The camp was lined in crushed chili peppers based on an old camping-myth to serve as a bear-ward. Ryn listened to her father on these matters, for they were a matter of survival for the family. At age sixteen, she supposedly had a lot of years of surviving to do. The eggs from their yard-hens started to get solid. “Solid whites, runny yolks,” Ryn reminded her father as he set a slice of bread by the embers at the fire’s edge on a toasting-fork. It’s not like she wouldn’t eat them a bit runny or overcooked, but she definitely had an optimal condition for her eggs. A sound echoed through the forest, setting the hairs on the back of her neck upright. It started deep and low and ended in a high-pitched whistle. Both the girl and her father raised their heads. “Elk!” Ryn cried. “They sound like they might be off in the meadow. We can try to take a look after breakfa – Ryn, wait!” Ryn got up and took off running toward the pure, wild sound. She was glad that she’d remembered to pull her boots on. Crunching over pine-needles and little sticks and rocks would have been murder on bare or merely stocking-feet and she knew that she wouldn’t have hesitated to bolt up even if she hadn’t been properly shod. She heard her father lumber up behind her and she stopped, trying to keep hidden among the trees and underbrush. She could feel the wind on her cheek telling her that they were downwind. In the morning fog and tall grass, great beasts lumbered. None of them bore the magnificent racks of summer days, but one young bull was sporting the velvet-coated beginnings of what would become antlers. It was most unusual that he was there at all, since the rest of the animals appeared to be cows – without the scars of shed antlers, nor the buds of new ones, and by size and subtleties in their body-shapes. Maybe the young bull was a son still attached to his mother? One that had yet to run off to a bachelor-herd? Ryn steadied her breath and stared in awe. It was a sizeable herd, full of big ears flicking and big eyes scanning the horizon. Stories were told to her of how these and many other animals were less fearful of humans than they had been in the past, but she knew that a single sound or scent could set them all running. Beyond the meadow and the deep green of trees on the other side of it the Ridge could be seen. Skyscrapers shined in the distance, touched by the many-colored sunrise above the mist. James had told his daughter the reasons why the people of their town never ventured too near the Ridge. Ryn was curious about it, anyway. “Is that the mountain-kingdom?” she asked, taking her eyes off the elk for a moment. “Yes,” he answered. “We need to stay on this side of things. We’re still well in the Valley. We ought to be fine.” “I’ve never seen it from this angle before,” Ryn said breathlessly. “It’s pretty.” “Yeah, it is, but it is not for us. We are closer in kind to the elk than we are to the people living there.” Ryn was smiling as she gently smoothed a bit of hair out of her eyes and over her ear. “You should have brought your elk-call and we should have brought the bows” “Nah. Not the right time for it. We’re here for fish, not for meat. Too much of a bother to field-dress when we don’t have a way to haul it back and we aren’t set up at home right now to deal with it, either. There are reasons why we do everything by season. Gotta prep. Let’s get the trout-run done first. Red meat comes later. Though…seeing them all gather…so easy, so close… it’s tempting.” “And us without our bows.” Ryn left with her father back to their camp feeling privileged. Elk and other cervids tended to be out at dawn and dusk. If she and her father were lucky, they’d get to watch them again this evening. As it was, there was breakfast to be eaten, lines to be set and hooks to be baited. It was early spring and the colder-weather fish were running. According to the stories she’d grown up on, seasons were just starting to settle back into a regular rhythm again, after having been altered unintentionally by everyone’s ancestors. There were still effects – “winter-months” that were too warm followed by inexplicable cold that swept in from the poles, sometimes into the spring when the weather was supposed to be warming up. What survived of nature was adjusting. What was left of humanity, as well. Ryn took one look back toward the Ridge. The city beyond the Ridge was where Immortals lived. As the tales went, they used to be human, but there was a great divide in the species. It had started centuries ago – no one knew when anymore, at least in the Valleys. The records had been lost. Better records were likely kept in the “mountain-kingdoms,” as they were sometimes called – the big cities. The people there found many ways to extend their life-spans. There were many medical procedures that the people relegated to the outside could scarcely imagine. Ultimately, it was said; “Their minds ride on light.” Eventually, even the best-kept organic bodies failed. When that started to happen or even long before, a Citizen of any of the high-cities could transfer their minds into non-physical forms. Supposedly, they did this often for games, commerce and a variety of other reasons even when they were conventionally alive, shunting back and forth between types of existence. Immortals often piloted robots with their new minds, coming out into the swaths of nature and areas of erstwhile human civilization that was reclaimed by such to explore. And to hunt. In just the last couple of decades, mechanical beasts had been appearing in the foothills and in the Valleys, driven by liberated Immortal minds. They would hunt down mortals as a kind of game. It was said that they’d started hunting animals at first, but quickly turned to stalking humans. It was not like they were the same species anymore. In other words, it was very dangerous for people like Ryn and James to even approach the Ridge. They lived in a world where they were as much prey as the animals that they hunted. After breakfast, Ryn found herself cutting bait with a pocketknife. Earthworms were easy enough to hunt up if one knew where to dig. She hated stuffing them onto the hooks. It was not only a slimy endeavor, but she always feared that they felt it. She’d dissected worms in science class and knew that they had the simplest of brains. She told herself that they ran on impulse and probably didn’t feel much or anything at, but she still worried that they felt it. They wouldn’t have the brain-power to contemplate their plight like a human would, but the sheer idea of having a sharp hook speared through one’s guts had Ryn cutting the worms’ ends off as well as the simple half-division just to make sure that the squirming bodies that she was using for bait were divorced from their brains. Her preferred bait, anyway, as long as it lasted, was bits of firm cheese. The hooks had to be pulled up and checked every now and again because of its tendency to melt off in water, but fish really seemed to go for it. Ryn found it puzzling, since cheese didn’t occur in nature, being a carefully-fermented manmade food. She figured that it must be the smell of it that attracted fish and, perhaps, the crude fats and proteins. She sent several lines into the creek, strung on poles set into the earth and mud. She then proceeded to prepare her fly-rod for the kind of active-fishing that she actually enjoyed. The name of the game on this trip was volume. The more fish they could catch, by any means, the better. She and her father were preparing stores. If they were lucky, their stock would last through the summer, the fall and the winter, along with other foods. Ryn’s town had factories that could scavenge and recycle and generally produce things like monofilament fishing-line and weatherproof tents, but most of the food-production was up to individual families. Funny that. Her parents and her history classes characterized their existence as a “scavenger-world,” but some parts of culture before had survived. That’s how it had ever-been throughout history. Even after social-upheavals and the so-called “dark ages,” small, strange things always remained to bleed into the future. The “mountain-kingdom” high-cities might have been inscrutable, but human towns and cities and their associated flotsam still existed. Ryn’s family just happened to live in a rural-setting, and one juxtaposed against the local Ridge, one of the Valleys more heavily affected by the human-divide. The morning came with good fishing. Ryn asked her father to help her in braining trout with the tip of a knife to make sure that she was doing it correctly. Her family had always sought to end the lives of their catches as mercifully and quickly as possible. Many people scaled fish and filleted them as they were flopping, unmindful of what the animal might be experiencing in its own inner world. That wasn’t something that either Ryn or her father could stand. As she sat on a rock and rested, wiping fish-slime and blood off her hands on a towel, Ryn let herself relax. Her father addressed her. “Did I ever tell you the story behind that time I came back from an elk-hunt empty-handed?” Ryn looked over at him, wrinkling her nose. Wow, they both stank! They’d have to take a dip in the creek later, after all of their hard work. “We were lucky that year. We’d scrounged up enough nuts and the Pattersons shared some of their beef. Mom’s garden had gone well, but she was still worried. That’s what I remember. It had been several years ago and, by fortune, a year that they wouldn’t starve over the winter when James had had a bad run of luck hunting. “I would have been more ruthless if I didn’t know we’d be in decent shape,” he confessed. This earned a “Huh?” from Ryn. “When I was out,” James began, scratching his chin, “I came upon a cow-elk. She was big and beautiful, healthy, a lot of meat. It was kind of a-ways off from your Uncle Billy and Shannon was working on the truck.” “Mm, hmm?” “Had a clear shot on her – just perfect. Right when I was getting her in sight and drawing back, I saw something bounding behind her in the tall grass. She had a calf – a small one.” “None of us hunt in calving-season.” “I know. She’d apparently bred late. The calf was little and I knew that it wouldn’t make it on its own if I took the mother. I lowered my bow and moved on. I hoped to find another adult elk or come upon a herd of whitetails, but I had no such luck.” “You did good, Dad.” “Only because we had good stores. If we were in dire need, I would have killed them both.” The father and daughter continued to fish and prepare their catches. Gutted fish and filets were hung up in the smoking-box, trying to get it reasonably dried and cured – as much as they could in a matter of hours. Some of the catch was simply packed in salt. The two rested through the afternoon, letting the fish smoke and keeping watch for dangerous wildlife like bears and boars. They had a dinner of fresh fish broiled on the skillet, seasoned simply. After securing their food – the last parcel of prepared fish for the trip, they decided to walk back through the woods to the meadow. “I wonder if we’re too late,” Ryn said. “The herd may have moved onto some other area.” “No, look!” James pointed to the treeline opposite of them. Shapes stepped out into the blue evening. Ryn and her father could barely make them out in the gloom. Ryn smiled as she watched a few cow-elk mill about. “What?” James asked suddenly. Ryn squinted her eyes. “Moonlight, maybe?” There was a glow in the center of the field. It was bright green. Ryn was trying to figure out if it was moonlight on the grass or something else entirely. A pair of long, proud antlers rose from the bright patch. A long nose and a long neck dripping with fur and moss emerged from the lit fog. Green light was laced through the figure and shined off of metallic casings. The armored bull-elk raised its head and bellowed. The air was filled with the eerie whistle. “Is that one of…them?” Ryn gasped. James held her shoulder and tugged. “Kathryn, run.” The girl stayed still. “Won’t that draw its attention?” “Trust me, it already knows that we are here.” The steel elk turned his head. A green concentric lens of an eye flashed and the creature started running their way. “I love you, Ryn. Don’t look back.” Ryn’s father shoved her. She took off in a dead run. She heard him shift in the needle-litter behind her. She looked ahead, nearly running into trees, trying to dodge them and keep up the pace. She looked back and saw the ominous green glow lighting the rocks and pine needles from behind the dips and hills of the forest. Ryn lost sight of her father, who had veered off to try to divide their pursuer’s attention. She got winded and stopped for a moment to catch her breath. The sound of an elk’s bellow laced with a tinny undertone sent the hairs on her skin upward. She whipped her head around, trying to find both the artificial animal and her father. The glow disappeared. She was left in the darkness. Moment’s later, Ryn heard her father’s voice. He was screaming. “Dad!” she yelled as she ran toward the horrific sound. She thundered over hills and rocks, almost slipping on mud, leaf-litter and pine needles. “Dad! Dad!” More screams. Tearing and squelching noises. Gasping. Another scream. After that, there was silence for several minutes, after which she heard a bark and a call. Oh, it was long and low, chilling her through her soul again! Green light appeared through the trees. Ryn took off running in the opposite direction. She could not draw in her breath quickly enough. She could feel the thud of her heart and hear her own blood rushing. Fear sped her on. She saw a large form threading through the trees. She took one look back and launched herself onto one of the sturdier pines. She clambered, scraping her hands on the bark. Her fingers and her clothes became smeared with sticky, odiferous pitch. She hugged tight to the trunk, finding partial purchase on a large branch and looked down. The mechanical elk came into clear view. Light from its wires and artificial muscles illuminated the segments of its steel chassis and the dark color splashed upon sections of it. Ryn saw red upon his hooves. She panted, heart sinking. “Dad?” she choked out. A bit of deep crimson stained the foremost points of the creature’s smooth, sharp-pointed metal antlers. Plant-matter hung off some of the other points. A coating of artificial fur dripped from its neck. There were stains there, too. Ryn was speechless, watching the Immortal-inhabited false-animal’s pacing. She’d always lived in a world of life and death intertwined, but she and her father were not even meat to these beings. A small amount of her fear gave way to rage. Before she could process it, she fell out of the tree. Pain lanced through her arms as she braced herself and fell hard and through her side it failed to save her. She looked up, feeling the blood drain from her face. The elk stood before her with its bloody legs. Ryn picked herself up to perch upon her knees, shivering. The robotic elk simply gazed at her. Its optics dilated and spun before returning to a default-setting. Its ears swiveled and it stomped one foot. Ryn was transfixed. She couldn’t run. She was too exhausted and was stunned from her fall. She knew that if she tried, she wouldn’t get far. “I…I’m ready,” she stuttered. The elk dipped its head in a nod. “You killed my father!” she choked out. She put her hands out before her in surrender. “You won the hunt. I’m not running anymore!” The elk turned and began walking away. “Why don’t you finish it?!” Ryn screamed at its retreating form. It paid her no need. After several minutes, she was left alone with the night. She never knew why the Immortal chose to spare her.

#original work #short story #science fiction #transhumanism #wildlife #elk #animal robots #robots #robot elk #horror #nature and artifice series

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fraener · 1 year

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2/8/23

i might be able to get rid of my uterus. i think i need to think about it more but i cant imagine how much stronger and healthier id be without it. my anemia wouldnt be so dangerous, id have so much less pain, i wouldnt be bedridden for like half of every month anymore. for the first time someone’s being attentive and im not used to it at all. the possibility seems completely unreal in the same way that moving to another country seems completely unreal or. well. i cant think of another good analogy. i think most things might be like learning to drive, and learning to drive might be a bit like learning to whistle or swim or ride a bike; itll be hard but not impossible, and things happen whether i believe in them or whether anyone else believes in me. i feel like the ptsd maybe has literally given me brain damage, i feel like my life is so incredibly small and all of the smallness of it is totally fabricated. i cant hold onto the fact that anything can happen for more than a few seconds unless the anything that can happen is something horrible. what if it was something good? what if it was something that seems impossibly good? i think im scared to have a real attachment to my life because so far its been painful and i keep getting bad news about my life expectancy and future. i dont want to get early onset dementia, i dont want it to be possible for me to get pregnant. i dont want to live through a world war. i dont want to have to work a normal job. i want to live a meaningful and colorful and bright life. i want to be loved for what and who i am. hans told me he loves me just now. i think it didnt stir my heart too much because im still scared, but also because i already knew. i feel really secure in this relationship on a base level but i know i need to work through my surfaced insecurities and anxieties about being myself and voicing my needs and everything. im still learning and working through things. i feel like im awash in a huge grief and relief right now. my life is getting better and i dont know how to process that through anything except crying and being scared. im working on it. i need to let myself uncurl my fists and romanticize things again. i want to enjoy things and see the magic in life again. ive been fighting against it so hard. i wonder if the ocd is keeping me so hard on the straight and narrow because im so scared to experience joy and have it taken away again. if i dont enjoy anything then its a lot less scary when everything gets taken away. what goes down must come up, what comes up must go down. i think if i can integrate myself into that rhythm again ill be ok. so far ive experienced a lot of death and change this year, so i know i can do it and undertake change joyfully.

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geopsych · 2 years

Note

Do you have any tips or suggestions for learning plant identification? It’s a skill I would love to improve but don’t have much experience with yet!

Hi. This is hard for me to answer. My parents both knew plants and the names of all the plants around us was part of the education they gave my brothers and me from the very start. I was surprised when I started school and at some point I discovered that the other kids didn't know the names of most of the plants. So I had an unfair advantage. Learning that early, I internalized all the criteria without thinking about it: not only the shape of the leaf but the thickness, texture, and subtle shades of color and how they grow on the stem; not only the general shape and color of the flower but a look at the stamens and the way the flower attaches to the stem. I started to get a sense of what might be related to what. Then I was the only one of the kids who became fascinated and once I could read I would borrow my parents' plant identification books and go out for slow walks identifying anything that caught my eye. When I moved out I got my own book and it became a passionate hobby. So maybe I'm not the best person to tell someone else how to learn it. I was a giant nerd born to two giant nerds. That's not a method available to everyone. Haha. Luckily now there are apps, sort of Shazam for plants, that can identify most plants for you. Other than that I would say keep a plant id app on your phone, maybe a wildflower book in your bathroom or by your bedside to look at sometimes. I grew up with the Peterson Guides (I sat and read them like novels, staring at plants I wished I could find and memorizing everything about them) which go by color, but there are other guides which help you key plants down more botanically. If they're giving wildflower or plant walks near you, go on those. You'll not only learn what grows near you but you'll meet at least one plant person. That's key. And just keep looking at and noticing plants wherever you go. They become like friends. Start by learning the ones that interest you most. As you go on some will draw you in more than others. 💚🌿. P.S.: I also should add that learning flowering plants doesn’t help when you go to learn ferns and mosses and (gods forbid) lichens and fungus. You have to start all over again. It works on different principles entirely. It’s *so* frustrating! Anyway, good luck!

#plants #plant identification #long post

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luna-jaden-shadow · 2 years

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Mistletoe

Plot - Random One Shot I did for @sandrawrites13

Fluff

Warning - Shameless self-promo mention of OC

Pairing - May Parker X Fem!Reader

-><-

Just like every year in New York, it starts to snow as the Christmas season draws closer. With the month of December setting in and Time Square getting decorated and all of your friends starting to set up and decorate for the festive season. New York when it snows is a beautiful sight, especially from the warm comfort of your home. You’d spent hours decorating your own home with lights and anything else that fit the season.

“What do you think?” You turned your head, smiling brightly at your current helper. In turn, your dog just stares for a moment before barking and running off. “Rude.” You comment, turning back to the tree you’d decorated that’s sitting in your living room. “I think I’ll need help with ornaments.” You mumble to yourself, looking at the box on the floor. While you would be fully down with calling up your best friend (shameless self-promo) she’s currently busy spending the weekend with her fiancé, so she’s out of the question.

Then the idea came when you caught a glimpse of the TV broadcasting a video of Spider-Man saving a woman and her child. With a smile, you pulled out your phone and dialed up the number.

The woman picked up right away “Hello?” Came May’s voice, her being one of the only other people in New York who you were friends with. You knew her nephew through “work” and since your meeting you’d grown attached to the woman, one might say you’d fallen in love but that’s beside the point.

“Hey, May it’s me, Y/n!” You said happily, even though she had to have read the caller ID before picking up.

“Hey! What’s up? Don’t tell me he got into trouble again.” She groans at the thought of having to pick up Peter. The last time she had to do that was because he’s run out of web fluid and crash-landed in a lake, poor kid was shaking when he arrived at your place.

“No, no everything’s fine. I don’t know what he’s up to but I was calling cause I wanted to know if you wanted to come over and maybe help me decorate my tree? I could make some hot chocolate and we could have a girl's night of watching movies or whatever. We don’t have to if you don’t want to. You probably don’t want to so-”

“Y/n.”

“Yeah?”

“I’ll be right over.”

The smile on your face grew wider as you two said goodbye and hung up. “May’s coming over! Oh my God May’s coming over.” You suddenly come to the realization of what had just happened.

By the time she came over, you had cleaned and tidied up the place even though the two of you would surely make a mess while emptying the box in front of the tree. “I love what you’ve done with the place.” She places her jacket over the back of one of the chairs in the living room area before following you where your tree sits by the window.

“Thanks, it was a pain with someone judging me the whole time.” You shoot a look to your dog who just stares from where they’re laying on the couch, practically falling asleep right then and there.

“Awww they’re just the cutest.” She smiles, petting their head. “They’re just a little interior decorator is all.”

“Uh-huh, sure May, whatever you say.” You smirk, motioning for her to step away from your dog and closer to you. “I thought you were here for me, not my dog.”

“Well, I can be here for both.”

You laugh, shaking your head as the two of you start going through the box and hanging up different ornaments. The whole time the two of you are joking around and talking about life and anything else that either of you can bring up. “Do you want hot chocolate maybe? A little break from all this pine smell?” You offer as you hang up another colorful ornament.

“Yeah, that sounds great.” She straightens up, leaning back to crack her back. You look away, not wanting to have your face go red from seeing her so much as stretch that has you wanting to do things that would make Tony Stark blush. Smiling anyway, you lead her towards the kitchen, totally oblivious to the overly cliché trap that you had set up for any future Christmas parties that you’d no doubt be forced to throw. You go to pass through the doorway when a hand on your arm stops you.

“What’s up?” You turn to her confused only to see her point up. Following her gaze, you look up to see the mistletoe that you’d hung up in the doorway. “Oh, that’s what’s up. We really don’t have to, I put it up so I wouldn’t forget it for when we have a Christmas party or anything. It’s kinda stupid anyway so-” You’re cut off by May who has you now fully turned to her and has her lips pressed against yours.

“I’m not one to ignore an opportunity.” She smiles, hands trailing up to wrap around your neck. “Especially this one.”

#marvel #marvel drabble #marvel fanfic #aunt may #may parker #may parker x reader #x reader #marvel x reader #may parker fluff

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phantomrose96 · 4 years

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I don’t know if we’re still in the age of Y/N L/N search-and-replace self-insert fanfics but can I just say there’s MASSIVE untapped potential for a Y/N L/N Death Note fanfiction if you just

if you just

hang on. This. Like this:

...

Light clicked his bedroom door shut, and leaned against it, and slid gently down. His attention was wrapped so wholly in the unmarked envelope in his hand. He slit it open, and unsheathed the documents like he was pulling money from a wallet. He was, in a sense. These documents had cost him. The private eye he hired had not been cheap.

But it HAD been worth it, Light knew with relief washing through his veins as he thumbed through the contents: birth certificate, social security card, medical records, vaccination history, school records, IDs with photos – mother’s name, father’s name, date of birth, eye color, hair color, blood type.

Light held in his hands EVERYTHING there was to know about the girl. And he basked in it, drinking it in, a name finally to attach to the woman who haunted him.

First name: Y/N. Last name: L/N.

Light cracked a grin, rib cage rippling with manic chuckles that bubbled to his lips and erupted, cackles, delighted trills. The sense of victory flooded him. That girl who knew he was Kira, that girl who had worked so hard to hide her identity, that girl who plagued him, followed him, haunted him every day, who he could never touch.

Finally, Light could kill her.

He rose, and walked nearly numb to his desk, and pulled out the scrap of Death Note he kept in the false bottom of the top drawer. He reveled in it as he wrote: Y/N L/N, dies alone at 11:48pm of a brain aneurysm.

The damnation felt so sweet.

…

She was waiting for him, early as the sun which crested behind her, all soft smiles and sweet squinted eyes. She was waiting for him as she did every single day. She stood there, as always - a thing of nightmares.

The blood left Light’s face once he opened the front door to her, feet and hands tingling cold, stomach in knots.

He’d been worried when he awoke to no news about his dead university classmate. And the confirmation of his every fear settled as a knot in his gut. Y/N L/N was alive, in front of him, just as she was every other day, smiling.

“You seem surprised, Light. Like you’ve seen a ghost?” Her wry smile was a mockery. Light loathed her more than anything.

“Y/N … L/N…” he muttered, through gritted teeth. “…Good morning.”

“Oh! You discovered my name. Good job good job, that was faster than I expected.”

“Why—”

“Aren’t I dead?” she titled her head and swayed a bit in place. “That’s how Kira kills people, yeah? Full name? And you’ve got mine. So why aren’t I dead?”

Kira. Light’s eye twitched. She did that. At every chance, dropping with such nonchalance that she knew. If he argued back, she would ignore him. If he defended himself, it would get him nowhere.

Ignore, deflect, probe, find a weak point.

“Is it a fake name? Is Y/N L/N a fake name?” It would be hard to believe; it would be beyond elaborate. Every ounce of documentation would need to have been faked, or else perfectly stolen, with a complete erasure of who the girl really was. Not a single piece of contradictory evidence. Enough to completely fool Japan’s most esteemed private eye. It was almost unfathomable.

“No, it’s not a fake name. That’s my name. My real name. You’re right.” She spun on her heel and walked forward, into the sun, toward campus, sunlight streaking through the wisps in her hair. “But you can’t kill me with it, Kira.”

Light refused to answer. He refused to concede. He refused to show his hand, and yet, maybe he already had… Maybe he’d already lost.

He’d try again tonight. He’d try again as many times as it took to eliminate her, this unfathomable girl, who appeared in his uni classroom claiming to be an old elementary school classmate of his, who followed him every day and spoke in hints that suggested she knew, and yet never revealed how, or why, or what she wanted from him.

He’d try again. He’d kill her this time.

“It won’t work, trying again, that is. If you want to kill me, you’ll have to use your own hands.” She glanced over her shoulder at him. “But that’s messy, and suspicious, and too easy to solve, right? So you need the Death Note to do away with me. But it won’t work.”

Death Note, dammit, she really DID know.

“Hey Light, what’s my name?”

“Y/N, L/N,” he ground out, almost robotically.

“Say it again.”

“Y/N, L/N.”

“And what name did you write in the Death Note?”

Light hesitated. Did he stand any chance of keeping his hand concealed?

He locked eyes with her, and he knew the answer was no. She knew. He knew.

“Y/N L/N.”

“Doesn’t sound quite right, does it?” she asked. And with her words, Light felt some unsettled something thud in his chest. A disquiet. An unrest. A thinly veiled wrongness.

“My name, that name, Y/N L/N, how do you spell it?” she asked.

“Y…” Light paused. Y? No… That was almost certainly not right.

“First letter, second letter, third letter. Come on. I believe in you.”

A headache was building behind Light’s eyes.

“Y…. S-slash…. N…” No. That wasn’t a name. That wasn’t anyone’s name. And it wasn’t her name. Her name, her name was—

“You can’t spell it, Light. You can’t. And no one can. No one except an extremely, intractably lucky person could even guess what my name might be, at the time that all of this plays out.”

“What does that mean?”

“What do I look like, Light? The Death Note needs a mental image! What do I look like?”

And Light looked. He looked directly at her, piercing, probing, roving, studying, drinking her in. She looked exactly as he remembered, with H/C hair and E/C eyes and….

What color hair?

What color eyes?

What name?

“I’m not anyone, Light,” she offered with the same, sweetly saccharine smile that Light could not describe beyond those words. “Or I’m everyone, I guess. I’m every Y/N L/N who reads this, any one of them. And when the dust settles, and the story stabilizes, and those markers are replaced for real, it will be too late. Because that will not be the name you wrote in your Death Note. You’ll always have written Y, and slash, and N, and L, and slash, and N, and that will never be right. I’ll be someone else by the time it matters, every time.”

Light blinked through the stars in his vision. Looking at her hurt, his vision wobbling in and out of focus on the nothing, and the everything she was. The hair color, and the eye color, and the first name, and the last name, that were every potential quantum combination, and still none of them.

He shut his eyes.

“What do you want from me?” he asked. “Why are you following me? Why do you know who I am. What do you want?”

“Nothing. I want nothing. I don’t have a defined will. It’s not like I’m a person.” She stepped forward again, hands clenched to the bag behind her back. A normal school bag, a normal school uniform, trotting in step eastward toward the college campus. “I’m an insert. And that means I’m whoever they want me to be, every time. It’s not any deeper than that.”

#Death Note #dn #dn fanfiction #i havent watched Death Note in like 10 years but thatS NOT THE POINT

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jenohi · 3 years

Text

Let Me Love You

"Smoke and Mirrors keep us waiting on a miracle."

“My cousin Y/N is transferring here to SMU. My parents asked me to stay with her and take care of her, so she and I decided to share an apartment. I know we planned to stay here for all 4 years of college but my parents were adamant.” Taeil said to his friends apologetically.

Yuta got up from the table and scoffed. He would never openly admit it to anybody but in the past year he had gotten really attached to his friends, the members of their new secret society, NCT. After their first semester, they had agreed to rent a house together on the edge of campus that they would all stay in for the next seven semesters of university. “How old is she? 12? She’s a university student, why does she need to be babysat by you?”

The other members eyed Yuta wearily, he definitely had the shortest temper out of all of them. After a long pause, Taeyong decided on a resolution. “That’s okay Taeil, we understand. Just remember we’ll always have a room open for you. You’re still a member of NCT. Every Sunday at 8 we’ll still meet here if that works for everybody?”

Taeyong looked around the table and was satisfied when everybody nodded, the last person he saw was Yuta. Yuta wasn’t happy about this, but he knew it wasn’t really his place to tell his friend not to move out. So eventually, he nodded his head in agreement as well and Taeyong smiled. He didn’t see it but Taeil smiled and breathed a sigh of relief as well.

‘In all 21 years of my life, I have never met someone as infuriating as Nakamoto Yuta.’ You thought as you tossed the left over trash from your cousin and his teammate, friend? You weren't exactly sure what their relationship was. When the Moon cousins had initially agreed to share an apartment together in the city just outside their university, the last thing You expected was to have to deal with a constant stream of rowdy boys constantly going in and out of their apartment.

After piling all the leftover dishes into the sink, You turned on the faucet and began to start washing the dishes. You only looked up and smiled when Taeil spoke to you, about to leave their place “Hey Y/N, thanks for making us dinner. It was really yummy!”

Yuta didn’t say anything. He could sense that You always had some kind of edge against him. It bothered him a little bit, but not enough for him to do anything about it. Whenever he came to hang out with Taeil at his place, you usually stayed out of the way so although your presence may have been uncomfortable. It had never outright inconvenienced him.

Once the two had left, You made your way to the balcony of their apartment. You shrieked when you breathed in the remnants of the cigarette smoke in the air. You looked down to see two cigarette butts in the ashtray that had not been properly snuffed out. You picked them up and tossed them on the ground and stomped on them to snuff them out.

You didn’t have an issue with smoking, you even smoked a cigarette or two in the times you were most stressed out but there were few things you hated more than the smell of cigarettes. After snuffing out the butts, you stormed back into the apartment and picked up your phone to call Taeil.

“Hey, I thought I told you to make sure you take care of the cigarettes and the smell when you’re done smoking them!” You yelled into the phone as soon as your cousin answered. “Look, I don’t have an issue with it, but I don’t want to accidentally burn down our entire apartment complex and you know I hate the smell when you smoke too much.”

You stopped your rant when you realized your cousin hadn’t said anything. Taeil was sweet and usually he would have said something to apologize by now. You looked down at your phone, his name was on the caller ID. You brought the phone back up to your ear “Taeil?”

“Not Taeil. This is Yuta.”

“Yuta? Where’s Taeil? Why are you answering his phone? Can you put him on the line?”

There was a pause, You could hear vague mutterings from the phone before Yuta’s voice was back on the line. “Taeil’s busy right now.”

You heard a groan that sounded like someone got hit and then a bunch of voices that followed in an ‘ooh’. Then you heard a voice that sounded suspiciously like your cousin scream. “Is that Taeil? Is he okay?”

“I’ll let him know you called. I gotta go now. Bye.” Yuta said quickly, trying to end the conversation.

“Wait!” You shrieked before he could hang up. “What’s going on? Where are you guys?”

You narrowed your eyes as you heard Yuta scoff into the phone “your cousin Taeil is a grown-ass man. You don’t have to worry about him alright?”

“But-”

“Are you busy tonight?”

“What?”

“There’s a party tonight at my house. Come, starts at 11:30 PM.”

“No, I don’t want to go to a party. It’s a Tuesday! Is Taeil okay? That sounded like him earlier.”

“If you want to check on your beloved cousin, come to my party. He’ll be there. Loosen up a little bit, it’ll be fun.”

“Um, I’ll think about it.”

“Great.” Yuta said, hanging up before You could say anything else. You stared at your phone, what in the world had just happened? You looked at the clock to see that it was 10:30. You had an hour to decide if you would actually go to the party or not. Who else was going to be there?

You didn’t know very many people since you had just transferred to SMU, so maybe it was a good idea to go to this party and socialize a little bit. You could take the opportunity to potentially make some friends.

Just as You was about to finish touching up your make-up, your phone pinged. You picked it up to see that it was an address from an unknown number. You tapped on the address to see where it was, as you were doing so, you saw a notification of another message. ‘This is Yuta btw.’

The house was on the very edge of campus and close enough that you could just walk there. You were surprised to see that there were already crowds of people both inside and outside the house. There were colorful lights flashing from outside the house.

‘How the heck am I actually supposed to meet anybody like this?’ You asked herself. You took a deep breath and made her way up the stairs and into the packed house. You threaded through the crowd of people dawdling in the foyer, pushing her way to find some space. Eventually, you made her way into the kitchen and breathed a sigh of relief once you had some space to herself.

There was a whole bunch of opened bottles of alcohol and stacks of cups laid out on the island in the middle of the kitchen. You moved closer to the island and started reading the labels of the bottles. In Germany you didn’t go to very many parties, if you wanted to drink you would just go to the bar and order a beer. But you didn’t see any kind of drink you recognized here.

“Do you need help?” a melodic voice asked her. You turned around to see a fairy like girl approach her. You didn’t say anything as the girl grabbed the cup from her hand.

“Do you like Coca Cola?” the girl asked. You nodded and you grabbed a large glass bottle and started pouring the liquid into the plastic cup and then you grabbed the large bottle of Coca Cola resting on the island and poured it into the cup before handing the cup back to You.

“I’m Selena by the way.” Now that You could see her up close, she really did look like a fairy. You didn’t comment on the fact that her hair seemed kinda messy or that her lipstick was obviously smeared.

“Nice to meet you Selena, I’m You.”

Just as Selena was about to respond, a pair of arms wrapped around her waist effectively cutting off the conversation. You were shocked to see that it was Taeil who had his arms wrapped around Selena, he was currently whispering something into her ear that made her giggle.

When Taeil looked up, his eyebrows jumped up to see You standing there. “Hey Y/N, I didn’t know you were coming.”

“Uh yeah, it was kind of last minute. Yuta invited me actually.”

At this, Taeil’s eyebrows rose even higher. He knew that the two had always been at odds with each other. “Yuta?”

As if he were summoned by the devil himself, Yuta appeared in the kitchen. He strode over to the other side of the kitchen island and started digging through the bottles. Cursing when he couldn’t find whatever bottle he was looking for. He paused when he spotted the drink in You’s hand.

“What are you drinking?” he asked. His eyes looked up, one side of his lips pulling up into a smirk when he recognized You. “So the prissy princess finally decided to show her face to the lowly commoners.”

“I’m not a prissy princess.” You said. You looked down at your cup and then over at Selena, you had no idea what drink the girl had made for you.

“Sorry Yuta. I used the last of the rum to make her a rum and coke.” Selena said, a smirk painted on her face. You tried not to appear too nosy when you looked over at Selena to see her leaning into Taeil. Did Taeil have a girlfriend that You didn’t know about?

It was obvious that Yuta was dissatisfied. He stared you down and when you finally turned your attention to him, he looked down at the drink. “Are you going to drink that?”

You looked down at the cup again, startled, then looked back up at Yuta. “Uh, yeah but you can have some if you’d like.”

You handed him your red solo cup over the kitchen island. Yuta plucked it from your hand and took a slug of it before dropping it back into your hand. “It's good. Try it.”

He drank a lot, half of the cup was empty. You lifted the cup to your face and took a sip, you tried not to make a face as you tasted the bitter rum. This is what people drank at parties?

“What do you think?”

“It’s alright.” You said. It tasted horrible and you didn’t want it anymore. But you didn’t want to offend Selena.

“Liar.” Yuta said, he scoffed as he grabbed the cup from your hands and drank the rest of it.

“I’m not lying!” You said, looking over to make sure you didn’t offend Selena. You were shocked to see that Selena and your cousin had disappeared. “Okay, maybe I lied a little bit.”

Yuta tossed his head back and laughed. “Loosen up. You look so uncomfortable. This is a party, go have fun.”

“I’ve never been to a party before. Everyone is already so...drunk.” You said.

Suddenly everything made sense to Yuta, why the darn girl was always so uptight and prissy all the time. He made his way around the kitchen island and stood in front of You before placing one arm on each side of you and leaning down “they didn’t have parties back wherever you came from?”

What was he doing? You thought. You leaned back as far as you could, the expression on Yuta’s face was smug and you weren't sure what he was going to do. Out of all of Taeil’s friends, you heard that Yuta was the wildest and most spontaneous. “In Germany we just go to bars and drink beer. I’ve never gone to an event so...wild.”

“You think this is wild?” Yuta asked. “Have you checked out the basement yet?”

You shook your head. Yuta grinned, almost maniacally and grabbed one of your wrists and tugged you behind him, pulling you through crowds of people. Unlike how you had to push your way between groups of people earlier, the crowds seemed to part for Yuta and wherever he went eyes followed him.

Instead of pulling you downstairs like you expected, he pulled you up a set of stairs and pulled you into an empty room. You took a few deep breaths to calm yourself down. Both You and Yuta could tell that you had been tense and uncomfortable since you had stepped into the house.

“Pick your poison.” Yuta said, pulling open a fridge he had set aside in the corner of his room. “These are all my drinks. This is the good stuff that we don’t share at parties.”

“Wow, you’re letting me have exclusive access?” You said, in an almost mocking tone. Yuta raised an eyebrow.

You bent down to look to see what was in the fridge. You smiled in delight when you saw your favorite brand of beer. You grabbed a bottle and held it against the edge of the fridge and smacked the top with your hand to take off the cap. Yuta didn’t say anything but he was impressed, this was the first time he had seen You behave this way.

Yuta couldn’t say anything when You tossed your head back to take a sip of beer. You made it look like a beer commercial. After a couple more delicate sips, Yuta grabbed one of your arms and pulled you close so that you stood in between his legs and your ear was right up against his mouth.

“Chug it.” he said. You looked at him with your eyebrows raised. Yuta raised his eyebrows in return.

You shouldn’t chug it. That would be unclassy. You thought. But why did you kind of want to? You looked Yuta in the eyes and narrowed your eyes, what was he playing at? The corner of Yuta’s lips pulled up into his trademark smirk as he opened the fridge and pulled out a bottle of the same beer and used his teeth to pop the top off.

Yuta pulled the bottle you drank from out of his hand and replaced it with the one you just opened. He put your already opened one on the desk and grabbed another one before biting on the cap again and spitting out the cap. He clinked the two newly opened bottles together, and lifted his bottle up to his lips.

“I’ll do it with you.” Yuta said.

With the bottle at his lips, Yuta gave you the most taunting expression. He was challenging you, and You never refused a challenge. You brought your bottle to your lips and started pouring the beer back down your throat.

Yuta was both mildly surprised and mildly amused to see how quickly You had finished your beer. In fact, you had finished your bottle before he had finished his. As soon as you finished your first bottle, he picked up the bottle you drank from earlier that was sitting on his desk and handed it to your.

You gave him a look before placing down the bottle you had finished and taking the one you had drank from earlier and tossing it back down your throat as well.

Two beers wasn’t enough to get you blackout drunk. But it was certainly enough for you to start feeling a buzz.

Yuta waited for you to finish your second beer and once you did he took the bottle from you and grinned at you. You grinned back like a loon and with a satisfied grin Yuta grabbed your wrist again and pulled you behind him.

This time, he did pull you down to the basement. And it was wild. It was dark and the lights were colorful. There were people everywhere and this time people did not part for Yuta. People were dancing, or wobbling goofily. The sight was amusing.

You didn’t even notice that you had let go of Yuta’s hand. You found yourself swaying along to the loud beats of the song. You didn’t know who was around you or exactly where you were but you were having fun. Honestly, it was kind of gross as it was super hot and there were at least 5 people pressed up against you but never had you let herself experience this kind of situation.

Yuta cursed when he noticed that You were no longer with him. You would be fine on your own right? He needed to find Taeyong and take care of some things really quick.

You spotted Taeil near a makeshift bar and grinned, you pushed through the people and made your way over to him grinning. He grinned back and waved at you. When you were close enough, he approached you “are you having fun?”

You nodded, dancing along to the beat. “I didn’t think I would but I’m actually enjoying this. I could use a drink though, it’s kind of hot down here.”

Taeil nodded and brought out another red solo cup. “The only thing we have down here is jungle juice. It’s pretty much just cheap wine with juice, but it does the job.”

You took a sip and was delighted to find that it tasted pretty much just like juice and you drank the rest of the cup and before handing it back to Taeil for him to refill. The surprise was evident on his face “I didn’t know you liked these kinds of events. I should have invited you earlier.”

“No it’s okay. I’ve never really been to an event like this before and I don’t think I’d like it. But today I am loosening up.” You declared. You grabbed the cup and wandered off into the crowd of people.

The alcohol was starting to hit you and the people around you were starting to blur. You suddenly felt nauseous when you felt someone grab you by the wrist and jerk you around. When you looked up you saw that it was Yuta.

“Yuta!”

“What’s that in your hand? Where did you get that?” he asked. He tried to grab the cup from you but you kept moving it away from him. “Don’t you know you’re not supposed to accept drinks from strangers? Are you stupid?”

You shoved him away, shocked into sobriety by his words. You moved to walk away from him. You thought maybe you had read Yuta wrong and maybe he wasn’t so infuriating but actually he was infuriating and a jerk.

Undeterred, Yuta followed you and grabbed your again. This time he did manage to grab the cup from your hands and he tossed it in a trash can that was sitting in the corner of the basement.

“Hey! What are you doing?” You shrieked.

“What are you doing? Where did you get that drink? It could be roofied.” he yelled.

“What is your problem? I got that from Taeil. You know? My cousin?” You yelled back. This time Yuta had no words. You rolled your eyes and scoffed, you placed both hands on his chest and leaned close to speak in his ear.

“Get lost.”

You used both hands to push him back into the crowd and stepped away from him. You found the staircase that led you back to the main floor and made your way up. This isn't fun anymore. The party was over. Taeil was fine.

“What’s your problem?” Yuta yelled from behind you. You whirled around him and stomped back to him and stood so that you were standing right in front of him nose to nose.

“No. What’s your problem? You invited me to this party. You gave me a drink too! Why are you overreacting over Taeil giving me a drink?”

He followed you out of the NCT house. “Aw, did I make the prissy princess upset? I’m so sorry. Whatever will I do?”

“What’s wrong with you?” You screamed once you were both far enough from the NCT house. You were incredibly irritated, tired, and frustrated.

“What do you have against me? Ever since you’ve arrived at SMU all you’ve done is be such a bitch. To me. And specifically me. Trust me, I’ve noticed.”

You paused. You didn’t realize that Yuta had noticed. You looked away and tried to think of what to say. You couldn’t come up with the right thing to say so you just settled with “sorry.”

“Sorry? You think I’m gonna let you get off with a sorry?” Yuta scoffed. He walked up to you this time, and looked down at you.

“What do you want then?” You asked, not backing down.

“You.” Yuta said, and for a moment it was dead silent. Then Yuta threw his head back and cackled. “That’s what you thought I was gonna say right?”

He didn’t even notice that you had turned around and stormed off back towards the direction of your apartment. He followed you back to your apartment, but he didn’t bother to chase after you. He strolled casually back towards your apartment jingling your keys in his pocket.

As soon as you reached your apartment and reached into your pocket for your keys you cursed when you realized they weren’t on you. You patted your other pockets and fished out your phone hoping that Taeil was still awake. You dialed his number.

“Looking for these?” You heard Yuta say from behind you as he jingled your keys in front of your face.

Just as you reached up to snatch them from him, he moved to hold them behind his back.

“Give those back to me. I want to go home and sleep. This night sucks.”

“No.”

You whined. “Why?”

“Tell me what I did wrong.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong. I’m sorry for being a bitch can I have my keys back?”

Yuta looked unimpressed.

“Fine. I’ll tell you why I’ve been rude to you, but can we do it inside? You’ll probably think it’s really stupid once you hear.”

“Okay. Move.”

You moved away from the door, and watched as he unlocked the door and pushed it open. You stepped inside when he gestured for you to go in. He stepped in after you and shut the door behind you both as you both took off your shoes and stepped into the apartment. Once the two of you were situated on opposite ends of the couch facing each other you spoke.

“The first few times you visited our apartment I got the impression that you were upset with me. That you didn’t want me around. So naturally, I decided to act back. Plus, whenever you come here you and Taeil leave this place a mess. The other guys either clean up after themselves or it’s not so bad and Taeil cleans it up himself.”

Yuta didn’t say anything for a few moments. “The truth is, I didn’t want you here. At first.”

“Great.” you said, turning away from him and getting up from the couch. “Get out.”

“Wait.” Yuta said, grabbing your hand before you could leave. “At first. At first, I didn’t want you here. The truth is your cousin is awesome, before you came we and a few other guys lived together and they’re the closest friends I’ve ever had. We were, we are a brotherhood. And I was concerned about what you coming here and Taeil moving out would do to the dynamic of our friendship.”

“So what?” You asked, turning around to look at him. “What changed?”

Yuta didn’t answer and you were getting annoyed. So you tried to tug your hand out of his. But he didn’t let go. Instead when you tried pulling your hand out of his a second time, he pulled you forward, so hard you fell into his lap.

“I realized I was being really dumb. I realized that Taeil’s cousin is really cool and I started to get jealous that she treated all the other brothers better than me. Then...I started to develop feelings for Taeil’s hot prissy cousin from Germany.”

You didn’t say anything as you were straddled on Yuta’s lap. His forehead was pressed against yours and you could feel his eyes looking at yours, trying to make eye contact you. But you were unsure of how to feel, you kept your eyes looking downward. How had things shifted so suddenly? What was this feeling?

Before Yuta could second guess himself he leaned forward and pressed his lips against yours. He stayed like that, holding his breath and hoping you wouldn’t push him away. When you lifted an arm around his shoulders and moved your lips against him he breathed a sigh of relief and wrapped his arms around your torso and pulled you in so that your bodies were melded together.

When you ran out of breath you pulled your lips from his and leaned back to catch your breath. Yuta moved one arm from your waist up so that his hand held the side of your head. You leaned your head into it and he leaned forward and began to kiss down from behind your ear to your collarbones.

“I-, we should stop.” you were confused and you were tired. How had things escalated so quickly?

Yuta stopped and lifted his head up. He moved his arm back down so that both arms tightly gripped your waist, holding you against him. You moved your hands to his biceps and tried to push yourself out of his grip. “Let me go.”

“Don’t you think that we should talk about it?”

“No. I want to sleep.” You said, still looking away from him and avoiding his gaze.

He lifted you up wordlessly, you gave up on trying to fight out of his grip and wrapped your legs around his waist and your arms around his shoulders. You tucked your face into his neck.

“Don’t fall asleep.” Yuta said as he fell back on your bed, still carrying you. “The way we are, we still have a million miles ahead of us.”

“I don’t want to talk about it. Please, Yuta. I need to sleep and I need to think.”

You were saying one thing, but your face was still tucked into Yuta’s neck and your limbs were still wrapped around Yuta’s body.

“Can I stay?” Yuta asked quietly. The truth was, he was nervous and worried that he had come on too strong, that he had played his cards wrong. But he breathed a sigh of relief when he heard you say.

“Yeah.”

The last thing you heard as Yuta lifted both of you up and under the covers was “don’t you give up. Let me love you.”

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asiminthering · 3 years

Photo

[ID - A sketch of an AU scene from the Mandalorian. Jedi Master Plo Koon is on the left kneeling down in front of Grogu in the center, who is walking towards him. On the right is Din Djarin, left arm slightly reaching out towards Grogu. The background is a vaguely sketchy inside of a space cruiser.]

Sketch & Snippet because I heard the cast were told the Jedi coming to save them on the cruiser was going to be Plo Koon and I was like “but that would have been amazing”

The slamming of the dark troopers against the door echoed, and Din readied himself to die. Maybe, maybe if the opening was small enough, they’d be able to take them one by one, and they’d manage.

Maybe.

He had the thought that he should kill Gideon before he died, in that case. Maybe Fett would come back before any other Imps did, and he could take Grogu. Din trusted him that far, at least.

Suddenly, a ship dropped out of hyperspace, some kind of pre-Empire starfighter. What could it do though? Those ships could seat two, maximum.

“One starfighter? Great, we’re saved.” Cara said sarcastically.

Still, it landed in the hanger and a hooded figure jumped out gracefully, igniting a lasersword as they went.

“A Jedi?” Kryze wondered.

They all watched as the Jedi tore through the dark troopers, destroying most of them with a single stroke. They were briefly distracted when Gideon made his move, but after Cara knocked him out their attention returned to their apparent rescuer.

When they approached the door, Din made a decision. This was a Jedi, he had been quested to find a Jedi, and all the dark troopers had been taken care of so it was safe enough to open the doors.

The Jedi stepped through and deactivated their blue lazersword – Din guessed they came in different colors, since Tano’s had been white – before reaching up to lower their hood.

They were a Kel Dor, Din realized, the mask on their face was because they couldn’t breathe in the oxygen-rich atmospheres that most ships and habitable planets had.

Grogu made a startled noise that Din thought sounded... maybe excited? And toddled toward the Jedi.

The Kel Dor knelt down as he approached. “It’s been a long time, young one,” their voice was calm and deep. Reassuring, Din thought. It reminded him of his covert’s Armorer, in some way, and he felt himself relaxing instinctively.

Grogu reached them and clutched at the Kel Dor’s long robe. They made a humming sound, like Tano had when she spoke with Grogu using their powers.

They picked Grogu up and approached, and Din tensed again. Would this one also tell him Grogu was too attached to be trained? He wasn’t sure whether he’d be relieved or disappointed for Grogu’s sake. Grogu being taken had showed him what his true feelings were, that he saw Grogu as a son and didn’t want him to leave.

“Young Grogu tells me you’ve been taking care of him,” they said. “Thank you. It’s such a relief to find that at least one youngling from the creche survived.”

Grogu made a sad noise and his ears drooped.

Din took a too-loud breath that he knew his external comms probably picked up. “You’ll take him? Tano said he was too attached.”

“Of course. He has seen much darkness, but time will help. He is attached to you, but he wants to go and learn with me too. That speaks well of his ability to love without clinging too tightly,” they said.

Din swallowed and felt his eyes prick. “Will I... will I ever see him again?”

The Kel Dor paused and looked down at Grogu again for a long moment. “Having family is a difficult line to tread as a Jedi but... time will teach him to let go of many things in his long life. I think... it would be good for his continued healing, to have his father visit.”

Din breathed in sharply at the word ‘father,’ and swallowed again. He reached up and released the seal on his helmet, pulling it off and setting it on the floor.

Grogu made a noise of happiness and reached out to him, and the Kel Dor held him out for Din to hold easily. Din looked down at Grogu with his bare eyes for the first time, took in his small green face and liquid brown eyes. “Do you want to be Grogu Djarin, then?” he asked.

“Patoo!” Grogu said.

The Kel Dor chuckled. “He was waiting for you to ask.”

Din chuckled wetly and touched his forehead to Grogu’s small one for a long moment and then stood up.

He reluctantly held Grogu out to the Kel Dor to hold again.

“May I call you Djarin?” they asked, bowing, and Din couldn't help but nod. “I am Jedi Master Plo Koon. Here,” they said, adjusting Grogu so they could reach their belt, retrieving a comm. “My comm code. I’m afraid I don’t want to say our location with so many ears, but I’d be happy to have someone retrieve you in a few days and take you there.”

Din reached out to take it without taking his eyes off Grogu, nodding.

Plo Koon gave a slight bow again before turning to leave. Din watched them go, and he was sad but his heart felt light. Grogu would be safe with this Jedi, and they’d get to meet again, maybe in just a few days, even. This wasn’t the end.

#the manadalorian #din djarin #grogu #plo koon #sketch #fanart #ficlet #sksn

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jeonqqin · 4 years

Text

man up. [m] | pt.4

h. jisung x reader | netflix rom-com au

— ❝Even with classes, annoying brothers, and an unrequited crush, you still figured your first year of college was going pretty well. Until you managed to get your first boyfriend, and suddenly your brother and his stupidly attractive best friend were attached to your hip for the whole damn ride.

or alternatively;

Why did Jisung care about you so much, and had his eyes always been that pretty?❞

WORD COUNT: 5.4k

CONTAINS: brothers best friend au, teen rom-com au, sorta crack fic, love triangle au, college au

WARNING: future smut, language, reader being followed at night, not much, Chan’s sexy ass arms?

A/N: the big day!! also there’s a little scene for binnie’s birthday (even though it was yesterday)

▸ request

CHAPTERS: 01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05 | 06 | 07 | 08 | 09 +

blog masterlist | ⟲ fic song

�� jeonqqin 2020

—UNEDITED

Your mind was running circles around you, everything a blur.

Talking on the phone with Chan lifted your mood exponentially, but there was still something that ticked in the back of your head. With the way your conversation with Chan ended, you weren’t sure if you should’ve been jumping for joy or hiding away under your covers in hopes that no one would ever find you again.

“So, I was wondering,” His voice drawled over the phone.

You held back the urge to shiver in order to hear exactly what he had to say. Granted the wind had stopped, but the night air was slipping through the thin fabric of your clothes and making up for its absence.

“Yeah?”

You heard Chan chuckle—surprisingly enough it sounded nervous.

“Would you ever date a guy like me?”

And just with one question, you almost fell forward off of the swing.

“What are you saying?” You uttered, eyes staring out at the bright red slide in front of you that had been dulled by the darkness.

Chan cleared his throat, “Do you want to go on a date with me, Y/n?”

You had said yes too quickly, not just in the sense that it was embarrassing, but also because after you hung up, it really occurred to you that you would be going on a date with Bang Chan.

A date.

Had you even been on a date before?

You wrapped your arms around your body as you contemplated the whole situation. It was dark outside despite the street lights, and even then, they were too dim to really be doing their job. But you hardly noticed, too immersed in your own head to worry about the dark or the possibility of meat-heads roaming around looking for their next meal.

Your skin prickled, your subconscious attempting to warn you about the shadow that lurked only a few feet away.

The date. It should be easy; smile, talk to him without vomiting, and be sure not to make a complete fool of yourself in front of the single most attractive man you had ever seen. Piece of cake.

You mentally cursed Minho for possibly scaring you for the rest of your young life. Could you hold it over him if his years of desensitizing you turned you into a lonely cat-lady?

No—he’d already taken that title, and you weren’t sure if the universe was ready to support two financial tragedies within the same family.

The sound of footsteps fell to deaf ears, the lights of the dorms were able to be seen from your place on the street, and there wasn’t a shred of dread in your naive body. Not even when the sound of sneakers padding against tar got closer—too close for comfort had you been paying any attention. Maybe you were too tired, or your head was too preoccupied to focus on the approaching body behind you.

Not until there was a hand wrapping around your mouth and another pinning your arms to your sides. In your shock, you could feel the flex of your aggressor’s biceps—he was strong, and it had your heart stopping in your chest.

You wiggled the best you could in his grip, but the man’s hold was too constricting, and you suddenly wanted to cry. How stupid could you have been to let something like this happen?

Your heart pounded in your chest as you plead against the calloused hand, your legs shaking like jelly. He leaned closer, his lips brushing your ear—mint, the one thing you could focus on was that his breath didn’t reek of alcohol like you would’ve assumed.

“Wow…” He released a breath with a small chuckle, and your brows furrowed.

The voice was familiar—

“You really are stupid. Do you realize that you would’ve been so dead if I wanted to like—take advantage of you and dump your body in a river, or something?”

You squirmed out of the stupid stupid strong arms of your stupid stupid ex-friend, you eyes set in a harsh glare as you brought your fists down on his firm chest.

“You fucking pig!” You screeched with rage, fists clenched even when he grabbed your wrists in between fits of laughter. You actually wanted to stab a knife into his eye. “I can’t believe you did that! I thought I was going to die, asshole!”

Changbin snickered with a mocking coo, “I know. Poor baby...”

“You’re a sadistic bastard.”

“Just think—” he released your hands, only to block the oncoming smack that you sent. “You won’t make this mistake again, stupid-head.”

You huffed, wrapping your arms around your body again and continuing forward, your pulse more intense than it had been before. “What if I had gone into cardiac arrest or something? You would’ve been fucked in more ways than one. Do you know what they do to rapists in prison?”

“Y/n,” Changbin chuckled under his breath, meeting your stride easily. “I didn’t rape you, in case you didn’t notice.”

“But if I died, that’s what it would’ve looked like! And suddenly you’re in concrete hell.”

Changbin shook his head. “God—just be more careful next time you decide to walk alone in the middle of the night. Call one of us or something.”

Guilt nawed at your skin, and you sent him a sulky pout. He was right. If something really had happened, you would’ve been fucked. Unless the guy was thinner than a twig and had a shit center of gravity, your chances of getting out of that kind of danger was unlikely. Damn Changbin and his infuriatingly true points.

You let out a groan as the boy beside you casually slung his arm around your shoulders.

“Fine. You’re right. Happy?”

Changbin’s head turned to you and he released another coo, his forehead pressing against yours and successfully annoying the shit out of you. How everyone else dealt with him was a true mystery.

He was supposed to be older than you?

The pitch of his voice raised, “Of course I am.”

You wrenched out of his grip, swatting away his reaching hand and stepping out of his range.

Perhaps there would be a murder tonight.

“Stop being a creep and act like a normal person for once, Bin.”

Without even looking back, you could feel the pout on his lips. But he only let out a quick whine before following after you, his hands stuffed into his jeans.

You had hardly noticed before, but he was dressed strangely—he was in a torn to shit grey t-shirt, multiple splotches of something black plastered across his torso just above the ragged seam of where the shirt ended, holes scattered everywhere exposing glimpses of his firm chest. The jeans weren’t any better, almost completely colored black by the same substance on his shirt, baring rips at the knees and not the ones you get solely for fashion.

“By the way…” You drawled, twisting around to rake your eyes over him one last time. “What were you even doing before this?”

Changbin glanced at his attire and shrugged, the smallest glow of red covering his ears. “I’ve been working on cars for some extra money.”

Your eyebrow raised. “At night?”

“It’s the only time I have free between producing new songs and school.”

Nodding you faced back towards the dark street in front of you.

Changbin had never sparked you as a manual labor kind of guy, let alone someone who could fix cars and get paid for doing it. But after taking a moment to think about it, it made sense. He fit the scene, so to say, and it somehow added to the edgy look he already had going on for him.

You didn’t know as much about your friends as you probably should’ve.

“So you guys actually got the recording room done? Are you and Chan using it now?” You asked nonchalantly, a terrible attempt to slide Chan into the conversation. Changbin must’ve known a few things about Chan that could help you quench your nerves for the upcoming date.

Changbin sent you a sideways look, letting you know that you weren’t as slick as you thought you were.

“Ah, Chan…” He hummed, the two of you finally getting close enough to the university to discern the different buildings. “What’s up with you two?” He asked hesitantly, a hint of a frown on his brow.

“Well—I mean, I like him a lot.” You fumbled for the right words, though you knew that Changbin wasn’t one to rush you. As annoying as he could be, he was a good listener. “And he just asked me out—”

“He did?”

Well, you thought he was a good listeners

“Yeah,” you shrugged. “Earlier he asked if I wanted to go out on a date or something—”

“Or something?”

You shoved him to the side, though his heavy body barely moved an inch.

“Would you stop interrupting me? I’m serious.” You huffed, frustrated.

“I am too.”

You froze—huh?

Your eyes searched his for a moment, his words not as comforting as you wanted them to be, instead his questioning only made your stomach twist in more knots than they had been in before. You really didn’t know anything about Chan, and talking to someone who did only made you hesitant about continuing with this first date of yours.

Sure, you weren’t one to believe rumors about people you barely knew—but it was the fact that you barely knew Chan that made you so nervous.

“Well I’m a little surprised that Chan asked you out.”

You frowned. “Why?”

“Uh…” Changbin paused, searching for his next words carefully with a contemplative hum. “It’s nothing bad. I mean, Chan’s one of the best people I know.”

“But…?”

He stopped to wait for you to run your student ID along the sensor, listening to the automatic click of the door and using it as a stall for time. He was trying to find the right way to word what he wanted to say. He didn’t want to blindside you, nor did he want to sabotage his friend by telling you something that might steer you away.

He waited for you to take a step inside the dorms before continuing with a hushed voice.

“Chan is… very selfless let’s say. He doesn’t really take the time to date per se. He’s work oriented. Not to say he hasn’t had girlfriends before, but they never really—”

“Became anything?”

That was what you had been contemplating. If the date went wrong, could you talk to Chan afterwards? Would he still be that person you could call if you wanted to step away from the world? You couldn’t find yourself feeling upset if that happened to be the outcome.

But with the small look of suspicion that Changbin sent, his brow curling upwards, you quickly backpedaled.

“He mentioned something about it while we were on the phone.” You rushed to save yourself.

Taking your answer without question, he stopped. You were both standing outside of your room, the quiet hallway encasing the both of you and chilling you to the bone more than the night air had. Changbin bit his tongue.

“Chan is an amazing friend. But I’ve never really seen him as a boyfriend before.” He sighed, scratching his cheek. “And as much of a little shit you are… I care about you enough to want you to be happy.”

“Is this you warning me?”

“No.” His mouth formed a thin line, he really had no idea how to word anything. It was beginning to frustrate him. “Just be aware that he isn’t the most observant guy when it comes to himself, so be patient with the guy.”

Okay, that helped you none whatsoever.

You sighed, pushing your dorm door open and nodding finally for Changbin.

“Well, thank you, Bin. For walking me and all that…”

Your gratitude was pitiful, but Changbin smiled wide nonetheless, glad that he could help you out despite his advice being absolutely terrible.

“Anytime, Y/n.” He ruffled your hair before you could stop him. “But next time, call me before you decide to be stupid and walk alone agian, okay?”

You smiled.

“Yeah. I promise, Bin. Thanks—seriously.”

As you closed the door, you missed the way Changbin’s lip quirked, his ears once again shining a red in the dim lighting of the hallway. He chuckled, shaking his head.

He wished both Chan and Jisung luck—you really were a handful.

“So this is a date?”

You had absolutely no idea what to say, your nervous gaze on the road in front of you as Chan glanced over at you from his place behind the wheel of his beloved Subaru Crosstrek—he had gone on a cute spiel about how he managed to scrounge up enough money from producing his tracks to afford the down payment on the car. It was cute only because he giggled every time he mentioned some miniscule detail that wasn’t necessary for the development of the story.

He always apologized when he got off track, but those were your favorite parts.

And you still had no idea what to say.

“Yeah, Y/n. A date. Have you ever been on one of those before?” He joked, taking another turn into yet another neighborhood.

He had to have gone down at least four streets already—

“Does a slow dance at a mediocre prom count?”

“A what?”

You snorted, feeling the telltale heat of your cheeks reddening. You were such a loser, the best you could do was tell him about your failed relationships?

“I mean, Jung Wooyoung was pretty hot, so I guess it could count. Granted, Minho stepped in before he could kiss me at the end of the song.”

“You’re kidding.” He looked close to ripping his cheeks with how wide his smile was stretching.

His eyes flickered to you and a shiver ran down your spine at the way he took one hand off the wheel and leaned against the center console. You were either terrified of him crashing or really turned on by the way his biceps bulged at the movement.

You cleared your throat, “Minho was always really adamant about keeping me away from all the funny business.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Unfortunately not. My brother sucks.”

Chan burst out laughing. “That’s why he pulled that, ‘what are your intentions with my baby sister’ act?”

“He didn’t.”

“He did. But he backed off so quickly, I was convinced that it was a joke.”

You nearly choked, your eyes widening as you suddenly threw yourself around to look at him, unable to feel surprised at the way he was already looking at you with a charming smile.

“He did what?”

“Yeah,” Chan shrugged, shifting back to look at the road. “I asked him why it mattered and he just kind of backed off.”

That was right—Minho was scared of Chan.

You would never forget that fun fact for as long as you lived, and it was all thanks to Bang Chan. It really had you rethinking the whole reason why you were nervous in the first place. Chan was the only person in your life that had managed to get rid of stress rather than add to it, and you were obviously worried over nothing. Chan was amazing.

And you were crazy.

You laughed, catching Chan’s attention, his eyes flickering between your eyes and lips without you noticing. How you had managed to have him whipped within a matter of days was a complete mystery to him. But there he was, staring at your lips and risking his damn life while doing so. Chan was hopeful, he wanted things to go well this time, and he was going to do everything he could to make sure of that.

“Where are you taking me, you maniac?” You giggled in exasperation as he took yet another turn into a neighborhood, house stacked upon house.

Sure, it was nice to drive around with him, but you were beginning to get antsy. Even more so as Chan continued to look over at you and smirk, his smile as infuriating as it was attractive.

“We’re almost there, hold on.”

“That doesn’t tell me where—”

Turning down a dead-end, Chan lifted his hand to your mouth with an emphasized “shhh”.

Maybe he was a maniac and he was planning on killing you as soon as you reached the end of the street. You definitely wouldn’t be able to find your way back to the main road if he tried, so it was definitely a possibility.

“Don’t worry about it.” He hushed.

With a small scoff, you puckered your lips in a pout and they briefly brushed against the palm of his hand. With the action, your eyes widened as his head snapped your direction. Immediately, your lips pulled into a tight line, your stomach tying up in knots as he dropped his hand and let it fall to your thigh, causing your whole body to go ridged. What was wrong with you?

Chan chuckled, patting your thigh in an attempt to dissolve your tenseness, but it only proved to make your clothes feel much tighter than they had been before. You were physically going to melt into the seat with how hot you were getting, and you sure as hell hoped you weren’t sweating as much as you thought you were.

But the feeling of his hand wasn’t unpleasant—it was warm, but not so much that it was uncomfortable, which was surprising considering how your skin was close to melting off the bone. It simply rested there, occasionally he drummed a nonexistent beat against it with his first two fingers, though you suspected that he hadn’t even noticed that he had been doing that.

Without you realizing, he pulled the car into park, his eyes amused as he watched you stare at his hand for a little longer.

Something else—you definitely were.

“We’re here.” Chan said, lifting his hand away from your thigh to pull the key from the ignition.

You weren’t upset that he had moved his hand, but you couldn’t deny that disappointment had started to bubble up.

Looking out your window, you noticed that you were, in fact, at the end of the dead-end road. But instead of a dense thicket of trees or a mountain of concrete blocking it off, there sat a decrepit and grey building. The maroon of the bricks had been worn and chipped, and the large barn looking doors were rusted and close to falling off their hinges. You can tell that it had once been beautiful with the large stone bird watching over on a centered pedestal.

Chan opened his door to get out and you followed, despite how strange it might’ve been that he took you to an abandoned building in the middle of nowhere.

“What is this?” You asked, almost shell shocked at the sheer size of the building as you both stepped closer.

“It’s an old fire station.”

Old didn’t do the place justice—every new fire station you had seen was pristine and white, large open door garages lining the first floor. The one in front of you was nothing like the ones in town.

“I used to live in this neighborhood before I moved to Sydney. I was very young and don’t really remember much about it, but I do remember this place.” He smiled, looking up at the two storied building. “When I came back I never expected it to be still standing after fifteen years. I thought the two would’ve torn it down and built a convenience store there or something, but nope, it’s still here.”

It was nice to see his face light up while talking about something he cared about. It was endearing.

He then grabbed your hand with a small wink and dragged you forward, though you didn’t put up much of a fight at all. Every part of you screamed about how nice his hand felt around yours, how his palms weren’t too calloused to be rough but enough to want them all over the rest of your body. His pale skin pretty with the contrast of his raised veins. Veiny hands were nice… You really were just reverting back to your horny high school self, weren’t you?

You cleared your throat.

“But why did you bring me here?” You questioned, looking warily at the back of his head.

You weren’t scared, but you were almost certain that a building that was decades old wasn’t a normal date site.

“Why not?” Chan shrugged, hoping to god that you couldn’t see just how terrified he was.

“Maybe because I was expecting to go watch a movie or go to a restaurant?”

He glanced back with a raised brow. “Do you want to do those things?”

“I’d rather chew off my foot,” you admitted, catching him off guard for a moment. “But I’m trying to make you feel like the weird one here.”

Weird one indeed. He had spent the entire night before without sleep, not coming up with a new track, but thinking of where exactly to bring you. He contemplated how to explain to you the reason why he was so exhausted and jittery was because he didn’t want you to leave the date thinking that he was some average guy. Chan didn’t want you to think he was boring. So he could be weird if it meant you wanted to see him again.

You shared a smile, both of your nerves fading away with each passing second. Of course, Chan had nothing to worry about.

He proceeded to pull you through the old rickety door of the station, completely ignoring the way the visible slivers of his chest flexed when he tugged the door open with one good yank. Now that you were actually thinking about it, his outfit was one of the best you’d seen him in; a simple black muscle tee topped with a heavy denim jacket, and his jeans whitewashed and ripped.

It was simple but effective considering you couldn’t keep your eyes off the strips of flesh that peaked behind his jacket. If only the autumn breeze had taken a day off.

The further the two of you got into the building, the more excited Chan looked. His eyes lit up and there was suddenly a bounce in his step. Not to mention the way his grip on your hand tightened to the point where he was nearly cutting off the circulation. But it was nice nonetheless. You didn’t have the heart to be upset with him.

Your eyes flew around to all the different old contraptions that must’ve been shiny in their prime. With torn hoses all over the place, and precariously placed pipes, you had no idea whether to be amazed that they hadn’t succumbed to the elements or terrified that if you took one wrong step you would fall and get impaled.

Looking over at Chan, you giggled as he began to unravel a wound up hose, momentarily releasing your hand to act like a complete child.

“So what was your plan when we got here? Get me in a secluded place so you could tie me up and kill me?” You teased, offering him a smile.

Chan wanted to do two of those three things—that was for sure.

“What? You don’t want to explore this magnificent building with me?” He asked despite himself.

“So you didn’t plan some elaborate picnic with candles and fancy homemade French food?”

Chan paused for a moment, lips fighting a smile. You had built up quite the impression on him from the very moment you two met. The hours of preparation was for naught, and Chan could care less.

He hummed, “Well if you mean a blanket on the floor and take-out, then yeah. No candles though. I have a bad feeling that if we were to light any fire within ten miles of this place it would turn to dust. Which would be pretty ironic considering it is a fire station—”

“Are you rambling?”

Chan froze, mouth open to deny your question, but found that it wasn’t completely false and shut it.

“...it’s probably cold too.” He added lastly.

You smiled.

“Sounds good to me.”

You then proceeded to struggle your way up a flight of unstable spiral stairs with Chan close behind—so close that his arms were almost completely around you. He assured you that it was only so he wouldn’t be at fault if you fell. But it felt nice whenever his chest brushed lightly against your back, so you let his lame excuse slide.

The food was, in fact, cold. But it was still good since you really couldn’t go wrong with traditional Korean food.

And so the rest of the evening played out, the two of you sharing pleasantries and learning about one another, with many cracked jokes about your brother and his friends, only strategically avoiding Jisung all together.

Chan went on about his story, how he had two younger siblings back in Australia and a set of loving parents that believed in each and every one of his dreams as he grew up, and supported his pursuit of becoming a producer. You bit your tongue, keeping your questions of “do you miss them?” and “do you still see them?” to yourself. Still, Chan seemed happy enough, you thought. Considering you would be miserable if you had to spend your time with someone who complained and sulked the whole time. You were glad he could talk about his family without falling into a pit of missing them.

That date was pretty perfect, despite its oddities.

Who knew someone could be a by-the-book romantic and an original dork at the same time?

Your own thoughts had you chuckling into your water, almost making you cough, but thankfully Chan hadn’t noticed, his attention too zeroed in on all the food in front of him.

“Oh shit—I forgot all about that thing!” He suddenly exclaimed, his eyes locked on a rusty fireman’s pole that ran up into a hole in the floor. Chan hadn’t even finished his (second) bowl of food when he jumped up and ran up to the death trap. The thing didn’t even have any padding at the bottom to protect someone from breaking their legs, and he was excited about that?

Suddenly, you let out a laugh—it was the kind that comes out unexpectedly and makes a loud, unattractive noise and it surprised you both. Your hand clamped down over your mouth on impulse before your shocked expression broke, a swarm of giggles leaving your covered lips and forcing a pink tinge over your cheeks. Chan could only stare at you in awe, trying to think of everything else that could beat your laugh in the most beautiful sound he had ever heard, but he came up blank.

“Come down the pole with me.”

His words had you freezing mid-laugh, eyes wide.

“What? No way am I doing that. What if I get pole burn?”

“Here,” Chan threw his jacket over your shoulders, surprising you with the flood of warmth cascading around you. “Now you can’t get pole burn.”

You pushed your arms through the arms of the jacket, silently relishing in the warm weight.

“Ah, look at you Romeo. I see that you’re trying to make up for all the years I missed going on dates. How romantic.”

“I try.”

With a wink, he was grabbing onto the pole all of a sudden and wrapping his legs around it. You barely had time to stare at the image of his thick biceps curling around the pole before he was descending down it with a laugh of his own. You leaned forward to watch him hit the floor, his knees bending to absorb the impact. He smiled up at you, the sight blinding.

“Your turn!”

“Did I ever mention that I’m kind of allergic to bad ideas?”

Chan snickered, leaning his hands on the pole and shaking it to show you just how “sturdy” the thing was. The wiggle and creak didn’t set you at ease, that was for sure.

“Oh, come on, Y/n. You just watched me do it!” Was his genius response.

The night was beginning to just become you counting how many times Chan said or did something that made you think he was a child.

“Okay, I just don’t understand why you want me to go down this damn pole! Is it some right of passage or something? Do you only go out with the girls who have the balls to do something this stupid?”

“Slide down here and find out.”

He got you there. You really did want to find out.

So you bit the inside of your cheek and wrapped your shaky hands around the rust crusted pole. How Chan managed to do so so easily without sleeves was baffling and a little sexy for whatever stupid reason. You had a thick layer of denim protecting you, and you still felt like you were going to be filleted open.

“Don’t think about it,” he encouraged with a soft voice. “Just jump. I’ve got you.”

And at the words of a poet, you squeezed your eyes shut and held your breath, taking a step off the wooden floor and letting gravity pull you down. You could hear the rust tug and catch on the fabric of Chan’s jacket, but only for a second, because it only lasted a second before you felt hands grab your sides and pillow your impact. A surge of adrenaline had you breathing heavy as Chan cheered lightly in your ear.

“There. You did it.” He poked your forehead with a chuckle, getting you to open your blown eyes. “You have successfully completed the initiation.”

Your heart felt heavy and beat hard against your ribs as he straightened you out, hands finding purchase in his jacket. Subtly he was admiring how you looked in his clothes, but he would never admit that sappy fact to anyone.

You smiled; admittedly shakily. “Ah, yes. Validation. My favorite.”

Chan admired how you could keep releasing quips despite your fear. You weren’t one to be deterred, that was for sure.

“You have an unlimited supply of sarcasm in you, huh?”

“I don’t know. It hasn’t run out yet.”

He smiled and you smiled, it was a good moment—the best of the day. A moment where you were glad you listened to him and literally took the leap. Ready to take another one, your eyes dropped to his lips and his dropped to yours.

And he finally leaned forward, pressing his lips to yours.

You weren’t completely caught off guard, but you definitely were. His hand that wasn’t preoccupied with fiddling with your fingers found your face, palm cupping your jaw and urging your head to tilt to meet his kiss better. It was gentle, as you had expected from Chan, and you were thankful for that.

His lips were softer than you expected and you prayed that the hand that held your cheek wouldn't be able to feel the way your face was burning. The way he intertwined your fingers was more intimate than the kiss itself and you couldn’t help but feel yourself getting light-headed. You lost yourself to the way your shared breaths echoed around the large room every time your lips separated only to reconnect again immediately.

Your first kiss—well, your first real kiss. Surely that one you had shared with Kang Chanhee back in your first year of high school didn’t count. You had only gotten away with it since Minho was home sick that day, anyway.

It was much warmer than your last kiss, that was for sure. His jacket kept you shielded from the cold air and his body secreted a natural heat that had you pressing closer, which in turn sent him a signal to push forward as well.

Suddenly, his teeth bit down on the sensitive flesh of your lip, pulling a taut gasp from your throat.

The noise had Chan withholding a groan, pushing him to break the passionate exchange, his hazy eyes meeting your wide ones.

“What’s wrong?” You asked, voice small and unsure.

He could see the way your lips shined with not only your spit but his own. In some sick and twisted way, he was pleased to see the redness that the kiss brought to your puckered lips. It was satisfying. It was a sort of claim, and he was proud to hold it.

"Nothing. Just admiring my work." He grinned.

You hardly had time to register his words when the hand wrapped around yours was used to yank you forward, Chan’s mouth finding yours once again in a quick peck, leaving you just about a hundred degrees warmer than you originally felt.

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