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#it’s just so soft and romantic and heartbreaking and melancholic

ravenna-reid · 4 months

Text

Whiskey, Sultry Tunes & Vigilantes

JASON TODD x JAZZ CLUB SINGER READER

Jason just needs to go to the most famous Jazz club in Gotham to gather intel then quickly leave, but a certain singer makes him stay longer than he anticipated... No warnings <3

I actually rlly like this one so pls lmk if you do too!

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A magnetic violet blanketed the room from the lights that constantly streamed inside of the club, setting a soft, sensual mood. Guests sat before the stage, a few residing along the quiet bar. Subtle discussions and the clinks of scotch and wine glasses simmered in the air, along with the melancholic yet powerful tune that came from the band and their instruments. The sombre cello, the soulful piano, the triumphant trumpet.

And the famous Jazz singer of the club.

The Blue Room’s jewel.

Sparkling diamonds hung from your ears and adorned your neck. Glistening eyeshadow, slick eyeliner and plump lips. A black silk dress hugged at your body and draped down to the floor, gloves the same colour running up above your elbows complimenting your dress. The wig you wore looked unbelievably real, the cherry red catching glints of the deep purple from the stage lights above as you sung the sultry tune. Men from across the city always came to watch you sing. Voice sweet like honey, smooth like whiskey, strong like thunder. All eyes were trained on you, and people either wanted to be you, or be with you. There was no inbetween.

Jason had merely heard the gossip about the Blue Room. About its perfect blues music and its reputation for the best served scotch and wine.

He’d also heard about the alluring singer that sang there almost every night.

But not being a fan of crowds or anywhere where parties were often thrown, he never went. Until tonight.

“And you’re sure Black Mask and Penguin are conspiring together in the private booths at this club?”

Dick had asked Jason earlier that week as they both went over their limited evidence on the case in the Batcave.

“No, that’s why I’m going to go investigate.” Jason answered without looking up from the papers sprawled out in front of him.

“It’d be a shame if it were true,” Dick sighed, “I love that place.”

“Of course you do.” Jason shook his head.

“Can I come?”

“No.”

Leaving the bustling alleyway behind as he entered the club, the atmosphere around him immediately shifted. The rhythm and blues that so often enveloped the club filled his senses instantly. The smell of alcohol and cigarettes, the LED lights that set the mood for the performance, the sound of the band…

And her.

One gloved hand holding her microphone, the other gently stretching out to the crowd as she lulled them with her song. Her voice, her words, her eyes…

A softness painted her expression, mixed with subtle confidence and a magnifying aura. Elegance. Strength. Heartbreak.

So much emotion in just one song. So much emotion lacing her angelic voice.

Jason was irrevocably drawn to you.

The sudden sound of bellowing laughter from a table in front of him drew Jason back into reality. And he was soon reminded that he was there for work, not for entertainment.

Blood rushing and heart racing – which was actually ridiculous – Jason ignored you and turned down the side of the bar to the more secluded part of the club. Round, mahogany tables that were much larger than the ones before the stage were occupied by couples. The music became more drowned out at that end of the club, more suitable for those who were wanting a romantic date night. Further down though, along the wall and past the bar sat the four private booths. Two were open; a lit bulb in the centre and purple velvet couches on display. But the other two had their curtains drawn.

As Jason crept towards one of the closed booths, his ears fought to listen to your voice. His legs fought to drag him back to the stage. His eyes fought to steal glances of you. Coming to a halt at the first booth, he ripped the curtain back. Two lovers, one on the other's lap, immediately look up at Jason, mortification frozen on their faces.

“Sorry, wrong booth.” He quickly said before hastily drawing the curtain closed. His cheeks became a rose red as he moved to the next booth.

Green eyes, so horrifically mesmerised, found their way back to you again as he searched for your figure through the crowd, his eyes following your voice. It was coming to the end of the song, and just as you were hitting the high note, a silence fell over the room as people listened. Giving a subtle shake of his head, he pulled himself back together.

“Come on, Jason.”

Jason was just about to draw the curtain to the second booth open when –

Ears straining to re-hear what he thought he heard, Jason let go of the curtain and looked to his side. Muffled yells could be heard. Past the bar and bathrooms down a dimly lit corridor. A man in an ivory tuxedo, obviously custom made, gripped at the collar of a man in black before him. The man he was grabbing looked fearful as he desperately tried to talk his way out of the situation. But the man in the tuxedo was past practical discussions. He wanted something. And he didn’t want to have to wait any longer. Cheeks a violent red and the hair he had left a dishevelled mess, he finally let go of the man.

Thunderous applause caught Jason completely off guard as his focus shifted back to you.

You gave a small, polite bow to the audience, and when you looked back up out into the crowd, your smile instantly gleamed brighter than the lights and jewels that surrounded you. You took the air from Jason’s lungs.

The band members behind you nodded their heads in appreciation to the crowd. Whistles filled the air alongside the applause. Someone threw a daisy onto the stage. Jason scoffed.

Daisies aren’t nearly pretty enough for her.

Looking back down the corridor to see what the men were doing now, his heart sank when he found they were gone.

“Shit.”

Ignoring his desire to look back at you one last time, worried you were finished for the night, Jason began down the corridor. Once he reached the end, there were two doors. One that he was sure led to the back of the building where the dumpsters and connecting alleyways sat. Another, however, looked like a small office. Thankfully, the door was slightly open. Jason peered through it to find the one who was just abused by the man in the tuxedo sitting at the desk, head in his hands. Stacks of paper were his only company, alongside framed pictures, certificates and awards for his business, posters of famous singers, and a shimmering gold plaque.

A plaque that read his name.

Jason took a mental note, but his eyes wandered as he wondered where the man in the ivory tuxedo went.

The man in black was sudden in his movement, sending a spike of anxiety through Jason’s chest. He quickly stood from his desk and went through another door in his office; a door that led to the dressing rooms. As Jason listened, he assumed the man was talking to and preparing the other singers that would soon take your place for the remainder of the night. Taking his chance, Jason quickly crept into his office and grabbed a few notes, envelopes, and folders from his desk. Slipping them into his jacket, he was gone in a blink of an eye as the man made his way back into the room.

But performers were beginning to fill the back area, and Jason had to quickly leave. Walking back down where he came, he opened the back door and stepped outside.

The warm breeze instantly brushed through his raven black hair and against his skin. The dark, Gotham night sky stared down at him from above. Distant sounds of traffic filled the air. It was in no way better than the atmosphere inside of that club, but it was familiar. Comforting.

Securing the documents he had obtained in the inner pockets of his jacket, Jason was ready to leave until something caught his eye.

Silky gloved hands ran up and down your arms. Soft cherry red curls swayed against the skin of your back in the wind.

Jason couldn’t believe it. It was you. It was actually you.

Your eyes were trained on the night sky above, searching for the stars that hid behind the clouds, and although Jason couldn't see your face, he could imagine the serene expression that was painted across it.

What were you doing out here?

It didn’t matter. What mattered was that he got to see you one last time before he left. And suddenly all thoughts and questions centering around the man in black and the man in the ivory tuxedo vanished like mist.

He soon realised you hadn’t heard him come outside. He continued standing nimbly behind you. Fiddling with his fingers and feet rooted in the ground like trees. Heart beating faster than a hiccup.

Say something. Say something. Say something. Say something.

“You shouldn’t be out here alone you know.”

Voice so soft, so gentle. You looked over your shoulder up at Jason, your eyes catching the light from the street lamp beside him.

Jason’s breath hitched.

Shit.

Part Two Soon

135 notes · View notes

anjuschiffer · 10 months

Note

for hanahaki week (since you mentioned requests) may i request daminette as a pairing? they just give me very strong “i would rather suffer through this than admit my feelings” vibes

Ask and you shall receive...hope you enjoy this fic :D

Also, I had a more "morbid" ending but scrapped it :p

Pair of Fools, Don't You Know Loving Someone Can Kill You?

Tags: @toodaloo-kangaroo @vixen-uchiha @elijahcrevan

-AO3-

“Love? Where did this come from?” Ladybug laughed as she looked out towards the city of Paris, Robin once again noticing the weary look in the older hero’s eyes.

True, their patrols lately have been going long into the night, but Damian had seen that look before, or rather, he’s never seen that look ever leave her eyes since the day he met her.

In the short three months in which they have been together, that was the only look in her eyes that Damian had ever seen in them. Even when she would grin from ear to ear or wake up from a nap an hour before patrol started…that look haunted her eyes.

In the three months Damian was paired with Ladybug to help with her mission to take down Hawkmoth, she always looked tired and distant despite her sunshine persona she held whenever she was around him, talking to his father or the Justice League and even fellow older teens.

But it wasn’t the look you would see on someone after a long day of patrol or after winning a long standing battle against a villain…

It was a look he had seen once before…

In his father…

And even his mother…

A melancholic look of reminiscence…or yearning… “Why the sudden interest in love talk?” She gave him a grin, a grin Grayson would give him whenever he would tease him. And even if they were the same type of grin, hers made his gut flip a bit. “Got a girl you like? Is it that girl who wanted you to join their detective club at school? I know there may be a two year gap between our generations, but I think I can still give you some solid advice if you need any.”

Damian scoffed.

“That’s the same thing Gr-Nightwing told me.” He turned his head to see the city quietly bustle beneath them. “But that’s besides the point. There’s no one. Love is just a distraction and a weakness. I’ll never allow myself to fall in love if it means endangering the mission and making me incapable of doing my job properly.” He said, knowing he was just saying that to keep himself in line.

He doubted she would ever agree with him.

“Got that right.” Or maybe not.

“Are you saying that from experience?” When he turned to look at her, he didn’t expect her to look at him with sorrow in her eyes.

“I guess you’re right…Evil never rests, so our jobs require all of our attention, no distractions allowed.” Damian continued to look at Ladybug, watching how the night slowly breezed by her, her short low ponytail swaying ever so slightly with the wind. “You’d think I would’ve known that from the amount of heartbreaks I’ve been through,” Ladybug gave out a soft chuckle, “but what can I say?” He felt his heart stop when her eyes softened ever so slightly. Her eyes seemed to have recovered a bit of a glow to them as she looked at him. “I’ve always been a hopeless romantic after all.”

Oh…is that…is that the reason behind that look? Because of love? Is that what she wanted so badly?

“You’ve been in love before?” Robin asked, causing Ladybug to whole heartily laugh louder, Robin feeling heat crawl to the tips of his ears.

“Who hasn’t been, Robin? Pretty sure everyone has fallen in love once or twice in their lives…I sure have.” But shortly after she said that, her smile fell, Robin noticing the spark in her eyes fade away. “Haven’t you?”

“No.” Robin confessed too quickly for his liking. “Although, my brother says it’s like a blanket, like an extra layer of warmth that envelopes you…Did it feel like that to you as well?” He dared to ask, hoping it would bring back that spark into her eyes. It suited her better than the yearning in her eyes.

He watched as Ladybug opened her mouth agape to speak, only to shut it and take a deep breath. She looked back to the cityscape.

“It depends on the person, really.

My second love felt like a bag of butterflies swarming my insides whenever I saw him. When I tried to speak to him, it felt like I could not breathe, my heart beated so loudly in my ears that I couldn’t even concentrate on my thoughts and fumbled on my words like an idiot.” She smiled, an actual smile. “And yet, he felt just like how your brother described love to be.

Warm.

Gentle.

And when we dated…it was blissful…” Her smile faded. “Or at least the first few times it was.”

“Was?”

“We broke up after a few weeks. We couldn’t stay with each other due to some difference in our ‘principles’…even if he claimed to still have loved me despite my opinions on his views.”

“That’s absurd!” Damian yelled, causing Ladybug to jump and turn to him. “What kind of imbecile does that?”

“What are-”

“If you truly wanted something, someone, wouldn’t you do anything to try and obtain it? To keep it? Fight for it? Or at least come to a compromise to stay together?” Damian raged, realizing that was unbecoming of him. “At least…that’s what I gather from the talks I would have with those in relationships…”

He watched her blink a few times before giving him a small smile.

“If only that were always the case, but…love doesn’t work that way.” Ladybug placed a hand on his shoulder. “In love…sometimes…sometimes, even if the two individuals love each other…it doesn’t always work out.”

“So they just give up on the relationship? On each other?” Ladybug shook her head.

“Even if the two of you do understand where you come from, even if you try to talk it out, if neither party points out the elephant in the room, if there is no sense of trust in the relationship, someone is bound to get hurt…sometimes both.” A gloss covered her eyes. “They may be your rock when things get hectic in your life, your lullaby after a hard day at school…but they should never feel as if they’re the only ones trying to keep an effort of making the relationship work while you try to balance your two lives…especially when they didn’t have a way to protect themselves from your nemesis any more.” Damian’s eyes widened when he connected the dots.

“You dated one of your partners?”

“Yea. Although, he didn’t know my identity until after the break up. Although, to be honest, I think he was onto me when we were dating.”

“Onto you?”

“He pieced it himself, actually.” Ladybug said with a smile. “He figured I was hiding something after analyzing the amount of times I would flake on a date, and be late to otherwise easy-to-walk-to places. When he confronted me about it, I simply told him I couldn’t tell him what it was.

That one question…that one doubt led to us breaking up.”

“But then how did he figure out your identity?”

“Funny enough, during an akuma attack. He never told me how, but he knew. And because he knew, he endangered himself and became a target…almost got captured for knowing my identity… and that’s when I realized…I wasn’t meant to fall in love…

If I want to save Paris…I can’t afford to be in a relationship…not until we’re done dealing with Hawkmoth, that is. And even then, dating while being a hero doesn’t seem possible for me…not even now.” Ladybug admitted, looking back at the city.

The two stood there in silence, Damian feeling more awkward by the second, deciding to speak in hopes of filling the void.

“You mentioned a second and third love…whatever happened to your fir-“

“He, on the other hand, was a complete jerk!” Ladybug immediately spat out, causing Robin to jump. “Just thinking about what he- ugh!” Ladybug huffed. “You know what he did?” She didn’t wait for Robin to respond. “So I invited over to the neighborhood pool, because I kinda had a crush on the guy, you know? And we were in what would be considered in the US as middle school, so there weren’t many places we could spend time in. Anyways…

We’re having fun swimming, splashing about, the regular games you play at the pool, right? That’s when we decided to dive from the highest diving board they had, which for the record was pretty high for middle school me. While it was roughly 5 meters in height, which is kind of around 16 feet - besides the point!

We’re on the top and mind you everything was going well, Kim was being very nice to me, being a gentleman. Just as we’re about to dive, he stops me and kneels.

And of course, I’m panicking because not only is he kneeling, he’s got a small box in his hand and has the shyest face on as he stretched it out towards me.

He starts talking about how much fun he had today, how happy he was spending time with me…he asked me to be his girlfriend. And before I could answer him, he opened up the gift.”

Damian watched an unshed tears pooled into her eyes, a dry laugh escaping her. “You know what was inside that box?

Fucking spiders. A dozen tiny spiders crawled from out of the box and jumped onto my arms and body and because I was frantically trying to get them off of me,” Ladybug laughed again, a tear slipped down her face. “I slipped off the diving board, water filling my lungs the moment I hit the water.

A lifeguard had to help me out because of how frantic I was the minute I submerged, my arms flailing about as I clawed at the surface and gulped water into my lungs.

The funny part of it all? I wasn’t mad about falling off the diving board. I was angered at the fact that Kim did it because Chloe told him to do it because it would be “a funny prank,” even though he knew I've been deathly terrified of spiders since we were toddlers.

He was suppose to be my friend, he knew about the things I hate and yet…yet he took-”

“So he’s the reason you declined the pool invite those months ago,” Robin snarled, recalling her great deference to attending a pool party held by Garfield. “If it weren’t for him-” Robin didn’t expect to get tackled by Ladybug, freezing upon feeling her arms wrapped around him.

Despite the girl being older, she just barely passed his shoulders.

“Thank you.” He heard her softly whisper. “Out of all the people who I’ve told this to, you’re the only one who has gotten angry for me…” He attempted to hug her back, but instead awkwardly just placed a hand on her back. “Everyone else told me I should’ve seen it coming since it was Kim…so… thank you.”

All Robin could do was hum in response, fearing his voice would crack if he were to tell her that he would make sure he would not allow that to happen to her as long as he was by her side.

“-reason why she didn’t go to go was all because of that damned-”

“So you like her?” Dick asked with a Ceshaire grin, Damian whipping his head to look at his brother as if he’d grown a second head.

A week had passed since his conversation with Ladybug, Damian catching Dick up on the important news of the week while they hung out in Damian’s room.

“Didn’t think you’d be into older girls. Don’t blame you. They certainly-”

“I tolerate her!” Damian corrected, feeling the tips of his ears burn. “And she’s only two years older than me!”

“You said it, not me.”

“And apparently you can’t listen because if you had been paying attention, you would have known she doesn’t have time to fraternize. Not with Hawkmoth being her main concern.” Damian went silent, Dick only then realizing he might have pushed it a bit too much.

“Actually, I was listening. For example, you mentioned an art gallery and how you were applied to have some of your arts displayed. Any luck on that?”

Hours passed until Dick had to leave to go back to Bludhaven to cover for a colleague at the precinct, leaving Damian all on his own and with his thoughts.

So you like her?

The question kept replaying in his head, Damian struggling to find an answer.

While it was true that he did indeed tolerate her, it was different from his other forms of toleration.

He didn’t mind her random spurts of humming when they would take a break during patrol, the way she would take over a mission when she would notice that something is off with him.

He liked the way she would confidently take over briefings when the adults would take too long squabbling over deciding which members would take on the mission, the way she would take the time to train anyone who wanted to improve their skills…

He…he…he liked

Suddenly, he couldn’t breathe.

Quickly sprinting off of his bed, he ran to the bathroom.

Damian grabbed the sides of the sink with dear life as his head jerked forward, feeling his lungs push out all of the air within them. The air hacked itself out of him, Damian feeling the dryness in the back of his throat as something tried to come out.

The lump in his throat remained there for what seemed to be minutes, Damian panicking with each second that passed.

He could see his vision blur as he felt tears trickle out of his eyes as he stood over the sink, waiting for something, anything to come out of his mouth because this…this wasn’t normal.

He hated every second that passed by that he spent feeling like this.

Finally, after what seemed like an hour, something came out.

A single pink petal landed at the base of the sink, a single speck of blood adorned it.

Finally feeling the constraintment in chest lighten up, Damian looked at himself in the mirror, saliva running down his mouth. His eyes were puffy and red tears pooled at the corners of his eyes.

Gently picking the bloodied petal to distract himself from his appearance, Damian inspected it.

How did this come out of him? When did he ever consume a flower? Was this even possible?

And why now?

The last thing he could think of was realizing what Richard had said clicked something in his mind regarding Lady-

Ladybug.

Damian stared at the petal.

No.

No way.

Throwing the petal into the trash, Damian thought it to be best to ignore this.

To forget the dots he had just then connected about himself.

To try and forget that it ever happened.

Even when the episode happened again two weeks later when an old partner appeared under a new disguise to help them take down Hawkmoth.

When more petals poured out of his mouth a week later when she confessed she had a slight crush on a League member but wouldn’t tell him who.

When breathlessness started to happen more quickly, when her concern over him caused the pain to grow more in his chest.

When the internet couldn’t help him out while trying to ignore the flirting she was doing in front of him with his older brother once he joined their patrol.

He couldn’t ignore it any longer when the episodes started to become more frequent as they got closer to identifying Hawkmoth.

He finally had to address it when after taking down Hawkmoth, the pain in his chest became unbearable to the point that he collapsed as soon as they got back to their base.

He stared at the white ceiling above him, wondering why this had to happen to him of all people.

Why did he fall in love with her?

And why…

Why couldn’t she have fallen in love with him…

Why his brother?

Perhaps…he could ask her when he wakes up…or maybe after the surgery…but for now, he wanted to sleep and forget about the ache in his chest.

Jon sighed, still trying to take in the sight of his best friend of five years.

Never did he ever think he would see Damian in a hospital bed. Hell, he never thought Damian would ever be in a hospital.

Needles were taped to his arms, leading towards the IV bags hanging near his bed. The sound of the ventilator filled the room, unnerving Jon as he stared at the tubes covering Damian’s face while he drifted to sleep once again. “Why didn’t you say anything? Of when it first started?” Jon ran his hands through his hair, trying his best to keep his tears in.

Why did he have to go through this alone? Didn’t he trust him? Weren’t they friends? “Are you going to let this kill you? What about Marinette? Don’t you plan on telling her how you feel, you idiot?”

The sound of metal clanging filled the room, Jon quickly picking up his head to see Marinette walk into the room, her wide eyes staring at him.

“Marinette…what are you-“

“Damian…Damian-“

“How much did you hear?” Jon asked.

“I- just the last-“ Tears ran down her face, Marinette attempting to wipe them off as more continued to run.

When she heard Robin had been rushed to the hospital after the fight with Hawkmoth, she could only think that he must’ve gotten badly wounded from the fight that couldn’t be treated back in the base.

Her plans to ask if he was free the next week were completely cast aside, Marinette knowing she would have to apologize to Nightwing for wasting his time and helping her arrange the damned hangout after finally confessing to him that she had feelings for the younger Bat…

Then again, she could always ask another day.

After all, Robin’s well being came first.

When she rushed to the Tower, she asked if she could see him, where he was, but she was denied. But that didn't stop her from trying every day for a week, only to be told no each and every time.

It wasn’t until another few days that she was finally asked to leave, benched from every mission until she calmed down.

It wasn’t until another week later when Nightwing stopped by her balcony to tell her the news.

That Robin was suffering from some unknown disease that he had been dealing with for the past half year.

A disease that no one could place a name onto, that no one knew of. Or at least no one but her and Master Fu. When Nightwing heard this, he started to cry, using her shoulder to ground himself.

Perhaps she had the solution to help Robin, his little brother… so with his permission, Marinette was able to find out where Robin was this entire time…where Damian was this entire time…

Seeing him on the brink of death was not something she thought she would ever see…ever…

Nor how she would come to find out was his identity under the mask…

“He didn’t want you to know.” Jon softly stated as he watched Marinette crouched to pick up the metal flask she dropped earlier. “Never did. He’s scheduled for a surgery later this week to-“

“They know what he has?” Marinette asked with hope brimming her words.

“They don’t know what exactly it is he has, but from what Dick told me, it seems like something in his lungs-”

“Flower petals.” She interjected, tripping Jon. “His lungs are filled with flower petals, aren’t they?”

“How do you know-”

“Because it happened to me.” Marinette said, placing the flask on a nearby table. “Or rather, I have it as well.” Jon jumped off his chair and grabbed her shoulders.

“What do you mean you have it too? When did- how-”

“I’m not sure when I got it, but when the first flower petal came out of me, I ran to my mentor and told him about it. He told me he would look into it. A month passed when he finally found an answer. It doesn’t have a name but it has been documented a rare amount of times.

A disease that causes flower petals to grow inside one's lungs and when left untreated, fills them to the point of suffocation and eventually…death. Til this day, no one is sure of the actual cause of the disease.”

“You said ‘if left untreated.’ So it’s curable? Are you cured?” Marinette shook her head.

“Thankfully, the disease has to do a bit with magic so there was a method developed to help reduce the effects of it, so my mentor has been able to suppress a few of the side effects with tea.” Marinette looked at the flask she brought in. “When Dick told me about what was going on, I begged my mentor to make a batch for Damian, thinking it might help, but to be completely honest…I don’t-”

The cardiogram in the room started to go off, the machine beeping rapidly with each passing second.

Marinette could only stand and listen as Jon ran outside, screaming for help, watching as someone pushed past her and towards Damian while someone else had grabbed her and tried to pull her outside. But the minute they grabbed her, she refused to move from her palace in the room, standing her ground.

She watched as they tried to bring him back to life, but when the sharp ringing that emitted from the cardiogram filled the room…she knew it was too late…

He wasn’t going to come back…

She wasn’t going to be able to tell him that she-

Marinette felt as something quickly rose to her throat, Marinette lurching forward as she hurled out a handful of small narrow and curved purple flower petals, horror filling her up when she saw blood glittering them as her mind was able to remember where she had seen that petal before.

Without a second thought, she screamed.

She had been walking through Wayne Botanical Garden, trying to clear her head after another failed attempt to visit Robin. She knew he was Gotham, but the answer was where. What hospital could he even be in?

Deciding to sit down and just sketch to further clear her mind, her eyes drifted to a small patch of purple flowers, Marinette getting up to further inspect the tiny flowers. As if waiting for her, Marinette noticed the sign next to it.

Hyacinthus orientalis, or the common hyacinth, is a fragrant flowering plant that blooms early to mid-spring. Hyacinths produce showy flowers in shades of blue, purple, white, pink, and red. However, despite their vibrant colors, they are mostly associated with youth, beauty, and short lives cut tragically short. Especially purple hyacinths.

Purple hyacinths can symbolize multiple things, including sorrow and a desire for forgiveness. They are mostly given to let someone know you recognize you messed up or are looking for forgiveness.”

A few days passed by, Bruce standing before Damian’s grave, wondering where it went all wrong…why Damian?

Why was he taken away from him?

Why didn’t he notice something was wrong with his son until it was too late?

Bruce jumped when a hand touched his shoulder, making him turn to see who it was.

“Dick.”

“You have to stop blaming yourself Bruce. No one could’ve known what he was going through. He did an excellent job of hiding it from everyone…even me…”

“But I should’ve noticed. I’m his father.” Bruce argued. “And,” he felt his heart churn, “and yet I failed him. I failed you, my children, yet again.”

Dick opened his mouth to speak, but chose to shut it when he couldn’t think of anything to try and console his father. Seconds passed by as neither of them dared to speak, only for the notification of a phone cut through the tension.

It took a moment for Dick to realize that it was his phone that pinged.

“Oh, it’s Luka. It seems like Marinette’s surgery went well…should we go and see how she’s doing?”

Bruce didn’t know what to do nor what to think when he heard Marinette’s laughter ring beyond the door that stood between the two, his grip tightening on the doorknob.

How dare she laugh.

She was there minutes before Damian died.

She had a remedy to help with the side effects of a disease he didn’t know of but she did.

Why didn’t she help Damian?

Why?

Why couldn’t that be Damian?

Why couldn’t he be the one on the other side of the door?

Why was she the one to survive the illness that plagued the two of them?

“Mr. Wayne, are you okay?” Luka spoke up, causing Bruce to loosen his death grip on the doorknob.

“Luka.” Bruce wondered what expression he had on to make the usually aloof teen to be on his guard. “Dick told me that Marinette’s surgery…went well.”

“Or at least, that’s what we thought when we first talked to her after she woke up from surgery.”

“What do you mean by that?” Luka turned the doorknob, signaling Bruce to follow him.

“You’ll see what I mean when you see her.”

Upon Bruce entering the room, he could feel the atmosphere shift, noticing her parents acknowledge him with a curt nod while Marinette herself just stared at him with large eyes.

“M.Wayne, wh-what are you doing here?” She let out a gasp, Bruce seeing the blood drain from her face. “Oh, is…is this about the commission pieces you ordered from me months ago?” Marinette hung her head. “I know I’m behind and I know the suit just needs a bit more of embroidery, but I promise-”

“Marinette. This isn’t…this isn’t about my commission. I came to- is that the last thing you remember about me?” Bruce asked, wondering why his gut was starting to turn.

“Umm…yes?” Marinette guessed. “I also remember about a few fittings with you and your fiance, a few other meetings regarding a few alterations to the suit…but…but that’s all that I can recollect at the moment…”

Bruce walked closer to the hospital bed, noticing a scar peaking past the collar line of the hospital gown she was wearing.

“Marinette…do you remember…do you remember the other person who would accompany me to these fittings besides Selina?” Bruce couldn’t help but notice Sabine let out a quiet sob, turning her head away in shame into Tom’s shoulder.

Even Tom looked away from Bruce, causing alarms to go off in his head.

“Well…there was Richard…”

“Don’t…don’t you remember Damian?”

“Damian?” Marinette tilted her head, her mind in deep thought before looking straight at Bruce. “Who’s Damian?”

#maribat #daminette #hanahaki au

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charmingbrute · 1 year

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To put it mildly, it's an awkward situation. She isn't ashamed of her previous affairs or relationships, but things have been… strange between her and Meteor. The line between friendship and something 'more than that' has begun to blur, and she must admit that something new has stirred within her. It's as if she instilled a strange fever inside of her and hasn't been able to cool down or find a proper way to cure it. She has attempted to put some space between them, but the disease worsens as she distances herself from him. She just misses him so much; it's a feeling she both fears and cherishes.

She agreed to meet one of her "special friends" way before her relationship with Meteor took this strange turn. They've known each other for a long time, and while they don't have romantic feelings for each other, they've been quite intimate on numerous occasions. For a long time, she has debated whether or not she should meet him but she eventually decides to show up at their usual meeting spot. As their lips begin to meet several times and her their hands fumble with their clothes, the witch realizes she cannot continue with this masquerade. Meteor's smile appears with each kiss, and with each caress, she recalls the feel of his rough yet soft hands… He's all around her, like the air that enters and exits her lungs. He's the moon's pale reflection, whispering that what she's doing is wrong. He's the faint scent of flowers that transports her back to her true home.

She pushes her companion away and excuses herself before hurrying out of the room. She can't stay here; it's simply not possible. However, as she walks down the corridor, she notices him. He's like a nocturnal sun ; the only light she can see. Her entire system revolves around this burning star. He must have known what had just occurred; he is not an idiot. It doesn't matter why or what he's here for. Now is not the time for inquiries. "Hyperion, wait ----," she thinks as she reaches for his hand without hesitation. When was the last time she addressed him in that manner? Back in the First, when he needed a new name —- a name that was once only his and the shadows'. One name she has secretly begun to adore, with only the moon and stars to witness her devotion. "Don't go." She was able to grab his hand and cling to it as if her life depended on it. The witch is afraid that it is too late; that she has squandered her one and only chance to earn his love —- a love that transcends time and space.

It's melancholic, how he noticed that Y'shtola had been distancing herself from him of late. He could long for their close bond for all the good it would do him, but there's naught he could to prevent it from fading away. He had done his utmost efforts to reconcile and amend their bond if it was ever broken, and yet the gap between them only grew further with time. What's this sadness which filled him? It's not as though they're in a relationship.

There's no commitment to mourn or speak of, and yet... As he walked the halls of the Baldesion Annex, the voice which he had thoroughly been dying to hear was nearby. He made his approach, careful in his every step. If he knew what awaited him, he obviously ignored it.

What a mistake.

He stood there, frozen in shock as he stumbled upon a scene he never expected to see. Through the partially opened door of one of the usually vacant rooms, he saw her entwined in the arms of another person, someone he never thought he had to be worried of, and their bodies intimately close and their lips locked in heated kisses. As they used to be, he thought. A sharp pain lanced through his chest as he had come to realize that he wasn't anyone special in her life. A mixture of anger and heartbreak washed over him as he remained there, watching the unfurling of his worst nightmare. And what of his world? It spun out of control as he grappled with the knowledge that their supposed relationship was not what it appeared to be. The ground had been ripped out from under him, leaving him feeling lost and alone. That's right. He's always been that, huh? Alone. How foolish of him to think it was something more. Ah, he had been caught. He stood at the threshold of the entrance where she just appeared from, his hand gripping at his stomach lightly. He wanted naught more than to leave, to escape the pain and misplaced betrayal he felt. It's not infidelity. She's never been his. Will never be his. This, he knew... but why?

Why did it hurt so much?

The Warrior of Light's heart was torn, protesting against his own conflicting emotions. Must he stay or be gone from good? It trapped him... being caught between the undeniable love he felt for her and the hurt she had caused him. The weight of the moment became palpable as their eyes met, his own shame for deluding himself catching up.

To keep his emotions in check has always been an easy task. However, in the face of this pain? It's taking a huge toll on his well-being. Despute the hurt and sadness that's beginning to drown him, he's determined to remain composed and not let his tears fall. No, it must not be shed. His face turned tense when he spoke, still hoping he could just run away and escape from it all. There's naught he could do. After all, his feet was rooted to the spot by a mix of hurt, anger and... love. So much love, he couldn't breathe. This frustrating situation continued to weigh heavily upon him and he's visibly fighting to keep his emotions under control.

He forced a smile, if only to comfort her. To convey that he'd be alright. It's nothing he wouldn't survive from. "What will that accomplish?" Leave. Leave now. Leave now before it gets any worse. Before he's told the worst of it. Before what remained of himself is further shattered. "I've... I've always known my place by your side. You've naught to explain to me if that's what you're thinking." And likewise, he had naught to tell her in kind. If he's to meet other people, find happiness from their companionship... if he could even dare himself to, then...

"You and I... we're just..." Friends. He couldn't bear to speak to the truth. He wanted to keep lying, to keep that illusion to himself. There's no way around it. He must go and never look back. Never yearn for more. Never want her or anything. "...I have somewhere else to be. I'll see you later, Y'shtola."

#sorcerhul #mom said it's my turn to hurt u #verse : endwalker.#inbox.

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littleroaes · 3 months

Text

To any lovers left alive ( 恋人たち ‘The Lovers’ ), l.jy

inspired by weathering with you ( 2019 )

a failed love goddess saves herself by fleeing to earth and an ordinary hopeless romantic boy ( with his self claimed younger brother ), together they start a fail-proof service that can make the love of your life fall for you too. as he teaches her human relationships, they eventually come to adore each other too. though, as the universe's not in their favor, only left is to hope.

PAIRING lee juyeon x fem!reader, high schooler!eric

GENRE FLUFF, pretty angsty, slight fantasy, little smut ( MDI 18+ ), greek mythology!au ( eros & psyche ), hanahaki disease!au ( no one dies <;3 ), teaching love!au, forbidden rules aren’t in their favor love , little crime!au, amnesia!au, they run a love service, it rains a lot, human!juyeon, eros!reader, strangers to friends to ( nearly ) lovers, mutual pining ( but juyeon does it harder ), cute flirty needy juyeon, hopeless romantic and lovesick!juyeon, y/n likes to tease juyeon, adopted little brother!eric, high schooler!eric, makoto shinkai type of love like your name ( 2015 ), weathering with you ( 2019 )

WARNINGS call reader angel once, say fuck about 5 times, knife used as a metaphor of anger ( once ), juyeon finds and fires a gun, petty crime, ANGST — > bittersweet ending, fictional disease ( not conventionally used! ), amnesia, descriptions of coughing and breathlessness, mentions of violence ( physical ), SMUT — > kissing, making out, oral ( f receiving ), palming, dry humping, soft begging, p in v, unprotected ( don’t try at home ), juyeon’s touched starved af, both are kind of switch, very fluffy smut

WORD COUNT 33.6 k

PLAYLIST

a/n : this is one of my favorite pieces ive written so I hope you like it! don’t try to translate the japanese on the banner😭, it’s literally just bs to make the banner look like the movie posters😭 I don’t usually write smut, but I thought it added to the story. but don’t worry! it’s very soft and not hardcore at all ( very fluffy ). it’s a bit angstier than my other works, not by much, it’s predominantly fluff. it’s very melancholic!

like and reblog are highly encouraged!

"A RECENT SPIKE IN NEW USERS FOR DATING APPS HAS CAUSED DEVELOPERS TO BE ASTOUNDED.

At the same time, hashtags like love is dead are trending number one on social media platforms like Twitter. Young people all over the internet are sharing their recent heartbreak, leaving us to question the mega romance struggle of the youth generation.”

When the glass door to the inner room falls close behind her, the voice from the TV in the left upper corner becomes merely a vague presence in the night. It ceases between the synthetic material of her raincoat in the harsh weather as she stands on the deck, a meter from the center. A wind from far away collides with the fragment of her face beneath the hood. How the rain, cold, impacts her skin before they descend down the curvature.

But between the loose strands in nonexistent patterns before her eyes, shines the city in total divine. Each lightsource, limited in a single square, stacked on top of the other, reflects in the water as they approach port.

The boat collides with the stone lining surrounding the city port. It echoes over the raging sea and Y/n forces her hands deeper down the fabric of her pockets. While the people in neon green vests let the metal reach over to land, the dock, she for a single second stood alone on, is slowly filling over with people from indoors.

The vague heat across the passengers clothes as they pass her by. She stands still to let them cross the arch above water without reflection. Y/n walks out the metal bridge with the last five passengers. When her body reaches fast land, she hears resonant voices from the workers behind, together with the metal being thrown up against the dock.

At the very edge of the city, she looks up towards the highest lights, where the towering buildings fade into the rain clouds. To then look down, where the crowd of passengers enters between litten up corners. The backpack on her shoulders feels immensely light as she looks at the nearest street where signs emit neon blue and starlight yellow.

But as the celestial behind the clouded sphere continues to move when she stands underneath it, Y/n forces the straps higher and walks between the entrance of neon delight.

The storm from the first day she laid her eyes on the city, still lingers over the high buildings. Though, the heavy rain that plummets against the architectural dimensions, can’t reach her in between all these walls. In a hostel room, cramped between six–five enclosures, until the very outer edge of the building meets weather, she sits cramped up against the computer desk.

Teared tour guides of the metropolitan city, stacked on top of each other, and the white screen in complete view of her vision, showcases link after link of potential jobs. Every blue sentence turns purple as she passes down the page. But each leads to a paragraph with a solid brick wall. From the first word down to the next five, Y/n doesn’t have to read more to realize she isn’t qualified.

At last, at the tail end of the first page, she finds an application for a job at a hostess bar. Three clicks among the main streets on google maps, she finds the neon sign in an alley. Half of its radiance, covered by alternate indorses. The street view won’t let her in to see the entrance, compressed between shadows.

Y/n falls back into the chair. The rectangular screen ventures from sight field as her mind receives the blue illuminated walls and brown wood of the desk. One can barely see the floor in this precarious space, therefore, she leans further back, embraces her legs and watches the ceiling. The walls impend on her figure, but somehow she feels guarded. Between all layers, she stays hidden from the eyes of the storm or silhouettes remote from street lights.

The complete silence of this space, bane in a second, being her stomach. A kind of sound that only comes by hunger, and a sort that pains at the very inside of the body. Y/n looks down from the walls, lets one arm off her legs and gently wraps it around her stomach.

Her eyes wander the table. Between the small titles of books, keyboard and paper scribbles, lies three bills in vertical order. A single shadow beneath the gaping parts where paper bends, causes of the light from the screen. Y/n stares at it as if it will change. But the only thing in motion is the light from the computer, when she hasn’t moved the cursor and the white fades to a darker shade.

Her shift will be tomorrow night, and the money beside the computer will be needed for the morning, in the badly lit register, where a man sits behind a scratched plastic veil. The same sound from before lingers between the room and Y/n gently stands up. The chair creaks as she pushes it under the table and turns against the artificial light, to get the plastic raincoat, dripping of water from the weather thundering outside.

“I apologize, I’m-”

“Out! You’re fired!”

The last words leaving her mouth echoes over the blue-red litten street. As his face is only a centimeters from the back door, she takes the handle and forces it close. The sharp edge of the black metal tears the space in between them. His eyelids fall shut, chin down towards his chest as his right foot trips over the elevation in asphalt. In the limited back door space, where he stands secluded from rain, are two plastic bins. His feet touch the ground where water has endured along concrete and created a static puddle. The opposite loses grip and his shoulder lands on the brown bin, at the edge of the cubicle.

How in an instant, the fall of rain against concrete existed only auditorily, but to now soak his white shirt. The brown bin, together with his own silhouette, falls down the asphalt, creating waves in the thin build up of water. All its insides are dispersed across the alley, beside his knee, to the cigarette ashtray down the other wall.

He lets hands coat himself in midnight rain as he forces to stand. Assemble the pieces in neon light as he desperately wonders where to take himself next. Wherever his thoughts seem to take him, his mind always runs back to his brother.

When the bin stands upright, at the place it first belonged, he sees a brown paper bag below it. Sealed in tape across the opening. To reach down and see dark spots form, where his fingers touch the paper. His eyes curiously brightened by the red neon sign above. The paper bag, tightly shut, seamlessly goes into his pocket. Even as he comes out the back alley of restaurants and out the high end street where people without faces covered in raincoats brush against him, he thinks about the slight weight change in his right pocket.

At the glass door into a fast food chain where a doorstep separates the water and white clear floor, he steps in. When it locks to the frame, the weather becomes simply a vague background shatter against the windows. Instead, static rhythms come from the TV in the higher corner.

He finally takes a seat. Black tray decorated in a thin piece of paper with his order placed on top. The grease of the burger seeps through the wrapping. As he sits on the extended piece of table up against the window, he sees fragments of a color spectrum in the dark as people pass him by. He takes off his marine blue raincoat, water courses through the folds and down the hem, before it assembles and falls to the floor. To let it continue pour beneath the chair as he places it on the back rest. He sits down again, sees his reflection in the window. Though supposed to be a transparent barrier to another scene, in the dark, even windows become mirrors. He sees a vague outline of his metal plate on his uniform. “Juyeon”, outlined in two languages fully black. Before opening his meal, he unclips the brooch and lays it beside the tray.

While half way through his burger, the paper bag in the right pocket off his raincoat crosses his mind. Still with the burger in one of his hands, the other reaches to the end of his raincoat, where the hem line dances upon the floor. It whispers of paper and he has it only a centimeter or two below the table. Juyeon’s chin leans forward and the strands of his fringe fall with it.

He turns it upside down and inspect the crinkled sides. Finally lets his food down the tray to use both hands to gently loosen the tape from the fibers. The fold at the very top of the brown bag opens and Juyeon cautiously reaches his finger in between.

He can’t completely ascertain why he took it. Maybe because there’s no firm reasoning to argue, since it was only pure curiosity. One doesn’t throw a sealed package in the bin, he thinks.

Strands of his fringe seem to fall faster when his eyes reach for the black complexion hiding beneath the paper. The skin of his fingers feels cold hard material, and when his hand returns, revealing half of the object in matt black, his eyes go from curious to wide of racing heart.

He only sees the object for a second, but nonetheless, Juyeon brings it to his stomach and leans over the table. The bag is in full shadow beneath his body and eyes coated in a thin layer of horrid adrenaline, watching the surrounding tables. When the weighting pressure against his chest has started to loosen and the avid line of light in his eyes has run out, Juyeon leans up a little. Let the radiance from the spotlight ceiling find its way in and make sense of the object again.

As he sat and wished it was a dream, beneath him, in his own lap, lies a gun. Sharp lines of its corners contrast violently against the color palette of the restaurant. Juyeon takes his hand down towards it, feels the weight. Sounds of dark pitch when tapping his nail against it. There is no frame in his mind whether the object in his lap is a real gun. Closest being a toy gun from the local kids shop in younger days. It could not be real, he thinks, as it turns to the other hand.

Either way, when Juyeon once again looks up, the scenery is as serene as the first time. At the highest corner above the toilets is a screen. TV that, instead of music distracts from the overbearing silence of a strange place, plays the news. The woman in the suit talks about the spike in dating apps. With the first mention of romance, Juyeon looks away. Cage the voice, to simply return to background noise, without a purpose of being understood.

For the last time his eyes recoil to the gun. Juyeon takes up the paper bag again, folding it gently around the gun before reaching to his jean pocket. If it’s real, he needs to keep it hidden and preferably leave it inside another dark alley along the city streets. And if it is just simply plastic, it bears no consequences.

Where paint starts to fade, cloth seen behind the window and electric cables rather than leaves. Y/n stands on her toes to inspect the details of glass into private lives. An apartment complex compressed between five others, stairs where the rain varies in flow, down each step to the closest drain and three windows in lack of light.

In contrast to the constant pedestrian crossings further away, places like these may hold people with forgetful minds about their doors, or just the framework itself that is supposed to protect them, won’t.

At the third floor of the complex in gray shade, is a dark window with broken lining placed a meter from the stairway. Y/n has gone into the alleyways where lush plants of the forever rain covers any spots where street lamps would shine between the high buildings. It's cramped, shoulders brush between edges of green plantation and feet nearly trip over pots. There are metal fences in blue pigment that creak every time she opens or closes them. But at last, she stands at the end of the stairs, beside a plant, suffocated in water.

To reach out the window with red hands as an effect of cold, onto the ice metal lining. It hurts in those fingers but nonetheless, Y/n continues to pull on loose pieces and hit the frame. As another wind rises, a star dies and one room in the neighborhood darkens. The square design loosens from the complex and creaks amidst the rain shatter.

It’s simple to take one step onto the sill and force one’s body up the elevation, to then fall to the opposite floor. Though, as Y/n then stands up to observe the secret world of someone else’s, she feels just a little guilty as eyes return to the floor. How her shoes holding rain frees it, and causes thin puddles to collect beneath. Y/n turn her head, two beds beside her, and way in, a kitchen. She walks up to the counter where a few plates are stacked and the window above the sink opens for light over the otherwise shadowed details.

Immediately, there’s a neatly organized box of ramen packages close to the sink. Placed in color order, Y/n’s hand, just a little hesitant to actually reach out and ruin it. Three red’s that she gently puts in her raincoat, because it was most of that color. Now her eyes adverts from the counter up to the shelves. Hidden furthest where the sharp lines and walls cut off any highlights, she sees a plastic bag. Y/n stands on her toes to force her hand in, it echoes of plastic throughout the apartment. When reading the label, it’s melon bread.

A sudden sound goes through the walls, a click from the hallway behind her. Y/n looks over her shoulder to see a streak of yellow light, painting the floor before it disappears when the door closes once again. Fabrics and keys, chaotic in that part of the complexion and Y/n stares at the wall before the new presence. All thoughts that race through her mind, become none when they all collide into each other. A fragment of an idea does make itself out of the blur. But there is no use in hiding beneath the sink or running towards the window, because when her eyes drift for an escape, the person reveals himself and stares eye to eye with her.

As if body, absent like two curtains drifting apart, her soul left before him. She hasn’t realized the anonymity in the real world until the eyes of someone else, truly authenticate her existence. How much of humanity is just to fill up old space and pass each other in it.

As neither of them say anything, a second silhouette appears from the hall.

“What’s wrong-” He, a distance in height from the former and in navy school uniform with a backpack, halts his words when closing in on the taller, and then follows the line of stare to her figure. The taller’s eyes turn sharp in casted light from outside. He takes a step back to the one in school uniform, so his body hides from her sight, aside from the glimpse of hair and eyes above the shoulder.

“Who are you?”

Y/n lift her hands up to head length, the plastic of red vibrant packages crinkles with it, “I’m not here to hurt anyone.” She purses her lips in, tears her eyes away from theirs as she watches the city framed in the window. To let her hands down again, Y/n stacks the three red packages on top of each other and the bread neatly beside.

“I’ll leave.” Her shoes stain the floor and cold air forge divides them as she passes down the hallway. The one protected by a taller shoulder, watches her take the door handle and turns when he feels the presence of the one before him alter.

“You didn’t take anything else?” The taller one asks while looking at her. The line of his shoulders aren’t as tense, the shine in his eyes from the awake city at night, reflects like a single star rather than the red light at the tops of soaring buildings. Y/n holds her hand still on the metal, shakes her head. Soon after, he frees his back from the shorter, continuing up the counter. Eyes of the one in uniform follows him and lingers in the direction plastic can be heard. Then, in a slightly faster haste than daily walk, he comes up to her with the three ramen and bread.

Her eyes remain in wonder over his two hands with mere distance to her own. And as another second passes, she sees a fruit bar of sorts on top of the ramen. Y/n takes her eyes off the food in an uncertain manner, towards the window. The student who still glances in her direction, stays at that line of floor.

The plastic sounds again as he motions it towards her. His fringe follows that action, “You needed the food.” He says gently and this time, fully extends his arms to let the vibrant material fold gently against her stomach.

Y/n finally lets her hands around it, rain on her coat, now spreading across the synthetic. The shoes on her, find themselves in an awkward position and vision wanders between two points. Therefore, the boy gently nods and purses his lips in.

Her hand finally weighs down on the handle and a light, much stronger than the moon, opens from that point. It casts itself over him and the one further into the apartment. She for the first time realizes the complexity in human features as the highlights contrast with its shadows.

“Thank you…I’m sorry.” Y/n says quietly before closing the door.

There’s an empty seat to his right at the back of the bus. Sunshine behind the cloud layers has passed, and during evening, the rain remains, and shatters against the windows with an ever changing view. Juyeon watches each droplet race across the glass before it implodes against the edge. The sequence as if taken out of a memory, he stares for a bit longer.

A monotone voice lingers along the bus as it comes to a stop. The rain enhances when the doors separate. A woman in the middle of the bus walks out and at the front steps a boy in. By only a faint glimpse of his profile, even in between the masses of crowds, Juyeon would make out the features and smile as he does now. Eric waves goodbye to two girls standing beneath the door before turning his head, locking eyes with Juyeon at the very back.

Eric takes the right seat next to the older. Let the backpack off his shoulders and lie it in his lap. Juyeon observes each action and synthetic fold of the material til the door closes and the cityscape moves forward. The younger one suddenly looks up at Juyeon who still smiles, so much that his eyes start to crease.

“Player.” Juyeon pats his shoulder against Eric’s. Meanwhile the one in sudden accusation takes up the umbrella, where it has compiled a small puddle. It spills rain on their pants as he waves it towards Juyeon, and he lets out a laugh and covers his face behind his hands. Before Eric has gotten the entire backseat rain covered, Juyeon takes his wrists and forces it down.

“I’m not.” Eric switches to a more comfortable position, “You’re just hopeless.”

Juyeon scoffs, “I’m not.”

Eric does the same, leaning his body over Juyeon’s, and hand, reaching for his pocket. Eric is back in his own seat before Juyeon’s expression converts. While Juyeon furrows his eyebrows and asks him what he’s doing, Eric has his lockscreen on perfect display, HD in all dimensions, perfectly framed in the rectangular screen. The younger one turns the phone up against his nose.

Juyeon would scold him, but his lips fall shut as the smile from dreams enters his sight once again. The picture is from a day in which the weather was warmer and the sun stood in complete limelight, cloud curtains out of view. A month has gone by, but somehow it feels as if glimpsing into a past life as he makes eye contact with the captured past.

Juyeon takes the phone back, holds it in two hands. Eric sits quietly to observe Juyeon, and quickly sighs when the older doesn’t turn off the screen. Juyeon looks up, visible pout on his lips and fallen eyes, he consciously holds the phone while Eric falls back in his seat.

“You still have her as your lockscreen?”

He doesn’t answer.

Eric sighs again, “Hopeless.” He widens his eyes, “Hopeless!”

Juyeon too leans back, letting the younger’s words drown him like the downpour. The screen close to his face again. Somehow, the longer he stares at it, he feels as if she will stand there again before him, like the spring they first met. But each night he longingly waits, but rain season never ends.

At the last stop, where there’s only vague lights and dark roads. They walk under their own umbrellas. The shatter over the bus seems to haunt them wherever they go. From where cars and buses flashes beside each scenery, building walls close in on them. Each meter reaches beyond the next alley, how it feels as if the edge of the umbrella will make marks in the walls.

It is quiet between them, Juyeon looks at Eric and observes the delicate details over his face. He smiles where the umbrella covers it. Some days, on the same street, Eric’s voice can echo past the last wall and reach further out to the sides where the signs extend. And other days, his imaginative world stays where it was born. Juyeon guesses it must have been a tiring day.

An abrupt sound from a left alley draws a crack in the ambiance evening. Eyes of the two turn towards that vague litten path. Their sneakers cease to form circular patterns in puddles as their vision tries to reach in between the signs. At last, they finally see the figure of a girl moving backwards, away from someone on the other side as her hands extend against the wall. A shout echoes again and a man comes from the opposite side, charges against her and she pulls herself even higher up the wall.

The two of them stand like nature in mid winter, frozen and left to watch the world. Eric’s eyes become wider when the man pulls off her raincoat hood, tauntingly gestures his hand to her face and takes a grip on her hair. The frown on Juyeon’s face reads. Though, none of them steps another foot into the alley.

“Juy-” Eric whispers but his voice disappears when Juyeon walks forward. Each step on the stones becomes slower as he falls in line with the center.

There’s a second presence underneath nightlife entrance. He catches sight of Juyeon first, shine of fine metal as he sharpens his eyes. Juyeon’s dispute in cautious surveillance as the man and girl shift towards him. As they lock eyes, Juyeon recognizes her features. It’s of manmade light, though, familiar as ever.

“What do you want?” The one with turned back asks.

Juyeon deliberately closes his hands around the umbrella, “Please, let go of her.”

The man scoffs, “It’s none of your business, Boy.”

“I’m telling you to take a step away from her.”

“As I said,” The man takes his hands off the wall, reiterating those words as he comes closer.

“It’s none of your business!”

The man forces his heavy arms on Juyeon’s shoulders. Lean his weight onto his palm until Juyeon falls backwards. His left foot comes behind the other, and his hand nearly loses the umbrella. Before he comes upon the asphalt, a hand on his collar obliges the rain to violently graze his face.

At the same time, the girl walks off the wall. Contempt she takes her hand out to grip the man’s blazer. Though, before her fingers touch the black fabric, the second man comes behind her. The weight of his arm comes over her shoulders, coercing her knees to fall.

Juyeon, through the cruel grip in high angle, sees her struggle. He verges on violence, taking the loose end of his blazer and pulls him closer. But when the man loses balance, both his hands come over his shoulder. Weighed down on opposite sides, causing Juyeon to groan. Over him, he constraints Juyeon, forcing ground to pierce his back.

How the cold rain seeps through the clothing, soaks his skin until red and itches. As he tries to force his legs up, the man pushes his weight onto him harder, hands against his throat. Barely breathing, it’s enough to convert rain to stars, being buried six feet under. Each tear from the sky falls in his eyes and Juyeon irregularly closes them so as to make eye contact with the one above.

“What will you do about it, Boy?” He taunts.

Shirt scratches against the ground once more, a raindrop falls onto a middle point of his eyes. Juyeon trails his right hand onto the asphalt. Each sharp edge of the black stone seizes his skin and draws white patterns. He reaches for his pocket, desperately lifts on his body to make room for just a centimeter as water leaks into his clothing. Before his thighs weighs down his own, Juyeon gets the gun out. Takes his opposite from the ground, has the two of them on the trigger. With fully extended arms, he directs it towards his face, the hole as a third eye beneath him.

He scoffs from above, “Like you will kill me either way?”

Raincoats folding against each other to the left, as the other man holds Y/n down. His strong complexion covers Eric down the alley and Juyeon secures his eyes on the man. Pressure sores from the grinding teeth as his point finger shakes over the extinguisher. The rain falls down the matt material of the gun and down his skin. He curses the damn gun for being plastic as the man’s aggravation fuels constraint. A last taunt leaves his lips, rage when sunken to hell, crosses his chest as if by a knife, Juyeon pulls the trigger.

Juyeon closes his eyes the moment the trigger transcend the boundary, and an ear piercing sound shocks between the high walls. Loss of vision, it feels as if the entire platform adheres to that wave. Once he opens his eyes, the shockwave has consumed all provoke. To trail the dust, it ascended and broke a street lamp, devastating the lucent.

He distances himself, wide eyed, etched in terror, Juyeon lies still, seeing his pretense have grown ugly from the sudden shatter as the man takes two steps back. Juyeon finally sits up, rests his hand against the asphalt while still in condemnation. He tears it in a second to turn left. The girl holds the same posture as the two others, he realizes there’s no hands on her shoulders. Juyeon forces himself up, grabs her arm and collides shoulders with the man. He sees Eric standing at the same position as he left him and breathes til it hurts.

“Run!” Juyeon shouts.

He sees those windows he walks by everyday, and Eric accelerates his feet to fall in line with Juyeon. The younger takes him by the upper arm jacket and forces him to stop.

“Where the fuck you get the gun?” Eric spits.

Juyeon tears his arm away and looks at the streetlights in row. No stranger is present under the yellow light, so Juyeon looks back towards Eric and forces the gun lower in his pocket.

“I found it in a paper bag, I didn’t know it was real.” He sighs, “I’ll get rid of it tomorrow, okay?”

Eric doesn’t argue further, instead takes a step back from the circle of light surrounding them. Eric stands with his back against him, head advancing in parallel to the ground as his wet shoes touch the dead grass in between the wall and asphalt.

“Why did you do that?”

Juyeon turns around, a thin layer of startle lies over the pupil and his chest still falls heavily from lack of air. He blinks a few times as the girl’s shoulders fall with her chin. Only a finite part of her features is visible in streetlight and the two boys wait for her in silence as she turns in her place and watches the obscure details of the wall.

“I needed that job.” She says finally and looks up. The rain at her scalp runs down each strand until it forms a droplet at the edge. Until it lands on the skin beneath her eye.

Juyeon watches her cold written figure in fabricated light with mouth slightly agape, as if wanting to say something but no words are to use. The older feels a sudden push against his upper arm. To slip one dimension out of trance, he looks down where the wall becomes background and Eric waits impatiently. Eric’s left side leans continually towards her direction in haste, as his eyes widens. Juyeon stares at the action for a second, until returning, with the same expression as before but with a burden from the shorter.

“I’m sorry…” Juyeon starts. She too face him, chin still a centimeter down and pupils drained of rain, or maybe worry.

“...I thought you were in danger.” He focuses on the point where the worn down wall meets the asphalt and green complexion grows amidst. How his cold hand runs up to his neck where even his hair hasn’t been saved from downpour. There’s a sort of diversion in the way he looks down, seeming to stare at a point far away. As if it were a clear night sky with four constellations, he speaks again.

“I shouldn't have assumed, I’m sorry.”

Eric gives no part in sound, but still, nods his head gently. The girl at the other side of the faint circle, illuminated by the lamp, presses a faint smile.

“You’re forgiven.”

Juyeon looks up fully and as if another star convulsed, their expression shifts and her features are now in full view. How the moon in her veil has finally revealed the hidden side and the girl smiles fully. She shakes her head to make room for the skin concealed in strands. A filter in blue green light, enchanted by city night, conceal the space they stand in and she feels two leaves opening up its sides to reveal itself.

“I’m Y/n.” she takes out her hand, cold as the other two’s.

“I’m Juyeon.” He shakes her hand, “This is Eric.” And motions it to the younger.

“Hello.” Eric says with a pressed smile.

Y/n tilts her head, a visible change in angle as she looks at Juyeon then Eric.

“Are you brothers or?”

“Yes.” Eric says. Juyeon laughs awkwardly.

“Not biologically, Eric’s my adopted brother and my mother passed away recently.”

“Oh, sorry for your mother.”

Juyeon shakes his head gently, “She had been sick for sometime, we take care of each other well, right Eric?” He touches his shoulder with his elbow which causes Eric to look up.

“Mm!” He nods.

Eric is eventually the one to ask Y/n to come in with them as the rain starts once again. Her raincoat is as wet as theirs and during the interval of their conversation, even puddles form beneath their coats. Y/n is the last one left in the bathroom. She stands with her hair above the tub, draining remaining water from her hair. Juyeon edges on the doorframe to the bathroom, looks at her with vast eyes before walking to his bed. He lends her a muted green set of clothing that he can’t remember from where.

“You’re not from here, are you?”

Y/n shakes her head in the bedroom.

“I took the boat here.”

“Where do you come from?” Juyeon asks, seated at the edge of the bed. His hands gathered at the front of his lap. Y/n looks down her own, takes the hem between two fingers before speaking.

Her tone is gentle, birds sing in the arch of her, “I don’t think you’ll believe me.”

"Why?" You can tell us.” He tilts his head.

She wonder over the ceiling. Underneath this roof, it feels as if none can hurt her, “I’m not human.”

Juyeon’s quiet, smiles cautiously to mirror her, “I-”

His first thought is to reach out his hand and tell her she’s obviously wrong, but, there’s a certain rudeness in telling a mere stranger they have an incorrect idea about themselves.

Y/n laughs, “Do you believe in gods, Juyeon and Eric?” She looks at the two beds.

“No.” Eric answers immediately.

“Then, I have to break it to you.” She looks at Eric, “I am the love Goddess.”

“Yeah, and I’m a Unicorn.” Eric laughs.

“Eric?!” Juyeon panics, in which Y/n laughs again.

“Don’t worry about it, you don’t have to believe it.”

Surrounded in conversations for a bit longer as her coat drips of rain still. The two of them come in on work, when Juyeon asks her. Y/n scratches her head as she tells him it was her only chance at a job. That nearly everything is gone after the city journey. Juyeon bites his lip and shifts weight in the bed as that hidden guilt echoes within.

“Can’t you start a service?” His sudden voice lingers over the hard floor. Y/n has her head in his direction, with eyes casted by the little lamp beside the mattress. Juyeon takes his hand on the edge of the bed and Eric watches from the opposite side how he settles onto his knees, further than a meter distance, but close enough for her to feel the wooden floor trail his motions in the contrasting sereness of Earth

“I mean,” Juyeon takes one hand on the floor and leans onto it.

“Say, you promise to people to put in their name and someone they like, that they’ll fall in love, in exchange you get money?”

To deflect from the thin bridge created between them, Y/n returns to the hemline. Where the washed out fabric turns sparse, and because of the warm light from, the outline of her legs filters through the fabrication. The spot beside him becomes desolate as he takes his hand back to his own warmth, to rest with the other in the curve of his lap.

“Maybe…” She answers without looking.

Juyeon shifts his legs, he falls into a criss-cross position, “I mean, magic is profitable, people seem to like it.” He looks behind himself to point at Eric on the other bed, but stutters as his silhouette has fallen between the blue patterns, only his feet visible at the edge.

“I-I see high school students with magic stones all the time.”

Y/n smiles again. To bring her legs up from the floor and embrace them with her arms as she leans into the gap created by colliding knees.

“It is one of the first rules as a god to not interfere with human life for personal gain.” She pauses, “I probably shouldn’t.”

It turns silent once again, or, silence aside from the snoring coming from the bed in the corner. Then of course, a city is never fully asleep. He scratches his nape and diverts his vision to the dishwasher in the kitchen, “I’m sorry, I just feel really bad for the job thing.” His back falls towards the floor gently, but despite delicate, he hits it. As it lingers amid the inner four walls and trails to her end, she smiles and laughs.

“It’s okay,” Y/n nods, “I’ll think about it.”

“Is it true?” One of the girls, in high ponytail, wrapped in red silk band asks.

Y/n nods, pushes the pink box one step closer over the table. She takes up the black marker, holds it out to them. With an encouraging motion of her hand and the calm line of her lips. Before the girl at the center touches hands with Cupid, Eric comes forward.

“You can get a free trial.”

The peaceful features on her face, reminiscent of a spring morning, disappears like it has run one season back. Her head shifts towards him in a second, eyes wide and begs him as to why he just uttered those words. Eric sees them, but looks away, just as calmly as he said that sentence.

“Try for free and if it works, tell the others around the school.” He holds out his hand, “Deal?”

The girl in center alternates intent with the two beside her. The gaze bridging between them must have sent some obsolete signals, Y/n think, cause after, she who has the pen reaches out her hand. Y/n, desperate, tells herself not to tremble when the girl takes a pink note. How the synthetic tip scratches against the dry paper surface, and after a few seconds, the girl lets the note fall into the liminal space seeping light into the box.

Y/n watches in silence as they disappear out the door and follow their back silhouette as far as the windows down the hall let her. Y/n looks at him once again. Eric lifts his eyebrows as her eyes are intensely edged and while her left cheek seems to pout out a bit further than the right.

“It’s business.” He says, “After you actually make them fall in love, the whole school will come rushing in here.”

Y/n tilts her head back. Impatience bound through her veins when she feels as if the sun hasn’t risen another centimeter. Her arms across her chest as she thinks about dirty hostels and forbidden rules.

Eric sighs and one of the backpack straps falls down his shoulder, “Trust me, rumors spread fast in here.”

She nods, accepting the fact that the human beside her knows more than she does.

Only one more student came by that morning. They had allegedly built curiosity when a pink flier at the bottom of the stairs, written in bold letters with about four thousand hearts, crinkled when they opened the main entrance. Y/n was rather skeptical of the poster Eric gifted her. The A4 was the cleanest shade of white she had ever laid her eyes on, either way, when he asked why, she didn’t want to admit it was the rough edges of his lettering. Also, that her own wasn’t worth a duck feather pen in fine ink either.

Eric said he needed to go to his next class. Y/n had taken a seat down one of the chairs beside a desk. She shifted her head where the sun struck his face, the warm filter over his complexion, reminded her of gold. He told her to lay low, even go to the cafe two buildings away if teachers control the flier pointing at room 233 .

When she watched his silhouette fade from yellow tones and into shadows of the cold litten building. His back draped in navy fabric disappears behind the same wall as all four other people. As only the ventilation lingers between the dust and even the clock over the door stands frozen in time at 14:17, Y/n sighs and turns her head to the window. Staring worriedly at a point beyond the sky only she can see.

How the end of each shoe shatters against the floor as students pass by the windows of each classroom down the corridor. As the teacher neither sits on her own desk or stands before the chalkboard, all fabrics, bags and voices come in clusters, lined up against each corner and wall.

A voice from the right side of the classroom, beside the window, draws his vision to them. At that corner of the room stands a group of four other boys. Eric waves before walking between the desks down the spot underneath the sunlight.

“You’re late.” One indicates.

“I’m always.” Eric laughs and lets the backpack fall off his shoulder.

“But I saw you on the way here, you were with some girl?” The other in the group starts making noises and hitting his shoulder. Eric instead rolls his eyes.

“She needed help, she’s my brother’s age either way.”

The book in his bag comes up in height with Eric’s head, before he swings it against the one beside him. It lands on his chest and the other boys laugh loudly. Though, fades in a second when inpatient footsteps run down the hall and crash though the classroom frame. The entirety of the classroom has turned their heads to the one at the center of the chalkboard. It’s the football captain of the team. His hair stands shiverled, the one collar of his blazer is folded inside. At the same time, while all eyes are on him, he scans the panorama and stops when he sees the group furthest down to the left.

His eyes light up in a way only described in fairytales. The curve of his lips and the breath of relief that go through them as he runs up to the group. The people surrounding that desk make room for him as he comes closer. On one of the chairs sits the girl who put her name in the pink box. Eric can only see the boy’s back but clearly each and every change in her facial features. It feels as if she hasn’t closed her eyes since he came before the desk. They sparkle reflection of his own and he finally speaks.

“I walked past a flower shop yesterday, and I saw this, it reminded me of you so I ran and bought it.” He takes up a silk wrapped bouquet that takes up the entirety of his backpack. A gasp goes through the room, and the girl too, lacks air in her lungs as she hesitantly takes the flowers. She opens her mouth, but nothing comes out.

“I love you, Lynn.”

Whispers of excitement fill the four walls and dares to break through the window. Faintly beside him, Eric makes out that the four behind him start whispering too and laughs.He thinks of the paper down the stairwell and Y/n on the floor above. How he has maybe found God, placed in his mundane daily life.

In the tear of afternoon Eric lets his bag levitate over the floor as he waits for the teacher to set the ending breath of her sentence. And the moment she does, Eric takes full step across the sharp edges of each desk and nearly falls over one. Out in the hallway, Eric runs, his figure covers the orange shade seeping through each window as he comes up the stairs, making the poster almost lose touch with frail plastic tape.

At the second floor, he searches each frame that lets him glimpse through the transparency and into the room behind walls. And at the very end, where he left her before the class, her back stands against the bygone rectangle in sun bleached composition. Y/n turns from the school scenery and looks back at him. It could be the novel perspective he has gained that makes him biased, but he wonders if she knew his presence up the stairs before even this dimension let her hear it.

Her features are peacefully drawn against her skin, not a single rule of tension as she questions his presence with vast eyes.

“How did you do it?” Eric walks up closer to her. Y/n smiles and leans further against the window to watch the vague silhouettes and their shadow drawn across the concrete.

“I told you, I’m not human.” She looks at him.

As voices from the entangled hallways underneath their feet reach their ears, Eric wonders if a change in perception will happen, if he lets the minute visor move one step further. Even Y/n’s expression alters. The younger one leans in a bit closer, his pupils seem to search for a fragment of something else, to make sense of her place in home he thought he knew. Y/n herself tense and with immense eyes, takes up her hands.

Like a child taking its first step to explore the vast Earth, Eric reaches his finger out to touch her nose, then her cheek. Later the eyelid, force to close and open it which eventually makes Y/n take a step back and blink about three times in span of one. Y/n laughs slightly as Eric still observes her essence without blinking.

A sharp sound, contrasting to the muted creaks of desks and old walls veiled in delicate old linen. Behind her back, an arrow that balances between the points of two fingers. She looks towards his face, not a single filter thrown over a feature of his astonished expression. Sun reflects onto it as it weighs in her hand, and she closes the space in between them as the arrow comes underneath his chin.

“So you believe me now?” Y/n asks, still smiling.

How his eyes, comparable with the sun as they delights in curiosity. His fingers reach for the arrow, but hesitantly closes in on his chest before he looks up towards her again. Y/n nods gently and takes her hand closer and his fingers finally feel the thin line of the arrow. He takes it gently in two hands. Doesn’t quite force his fingers around it, as if a touch, merely a frequent stronger would tear it.

“Yeah!” He breathes out, “Yeah, I do!”

Y/n opens her mouth to speak once again, but a knock against the frame from the opposite side takes their attention away. Where the sunshine cast itself the clearest, stands another girl and a friend slightly behind. The girl’s hand on the lining, she looks behind her shoulder before back at Y/n.

“I saw your poster, I heard you can make people fall in love.” The girl takes her shoulder bag to her font and reaches for the pocket. Between folding of materials and crinkles of keys, the girl extends her arm with a bill.

“We want to try.”

As the limited day hours come on its last ones in winter, Eric and Y/n look at each other. The younger enthusiastically nods when her eyebrows fall into a state of trouble. Hesitantly, Y/n nods towards him and takes the place behind the desk and slides two pink notes across the surface.

“Of course!”

Winter reeks off the flooring and spreads up her skin. She holds her legs tighter against her body as each bill and silver coin touches the cold floor. With the last gray metal circle in place, she extends her back and scans the paper in thousand folds. Y/n bites her lip with her face down towards her lap, and her back still as a first impression when someone comes through the door.

Thin plastic bindings whisper in the hall. Juyeon takes off his shoes at the door frame, chin directed against Y/n’s back underneath the counter. His fingers don’t find the laces and he takes his eyes off for a second. Eric lies in bed, with his phone and Juyeon sighs quietly before letting the plastic bag up on the square table.

“Eric, you need to do your homework.” Juyeon tilts his head to get even a vague coloration.

“I’ll do it soon.” Eric answers.

To fold down the white synthetic filter, Juyeon looks down at Y/n again.

“Is something wrong?” He asks.

Y/n looks up with vast eyes that fall in usual size once again. She presses a smile between her lips and trails the line between the wood.

“I’m a little worried.” She says, though she quickly breathes again as his hands come off the bag.

“It’s not a lot though, the hostel is just getting more expensive. The money isn’t quite enough yet.” Y/n turns back to the three bills and two coins.

“You can stay here.” Eric’s voice comes from the other end. The two of them look at him, now fully extended over the covers. The sheets drape over his shoulders and legs while the blue light from the screen illuminates his face. She returns in direction and sees Juyeon looking at her with the identical vast eyes as her own. Y/n looks away, she realizes Eric’s complexion isn’t as daunting.

“Can’t she?”

“It’s okay I don’t-” Y/n answers, but Juyeon intervenes.

“No, you can stay.”

Y/n turns to him fully without words, stares at him as he looks away and scratches his neck. It’s still quiet when he remembers the plastic bag left on the table and starts to empty it.

“Are you sure?” Y/n hesitates. At first thought, she doesn’t want to intrude on the line she already feels like bordering. Contrary, she thinks going around the streets would be ruthless. Juyeon nods and she looks over towards Eric.

“You too?”

“Of course, Juyeon’s starting to get on my nerves either way.” He sighs and falls back onto the pillow. The tone itself was nearly bounding on a desire to become three in the house rather than specifically having her settle in.

“Hey?” Juyeon’s hands tangle themselves in the thin synthetic while he tries to get them out. His head leans dramatically to one side while Eric has let the pillows impose around him again.

“I understand that.” Y/n crosses her legs and leans back on her arms, “Don’t worry, Eric, I’ll keep you entertained.”

Juyeon holds a sort of offended expression as she laughs and Eric comes up the fabrics again.

“You’re a high schooler, you just hangout with friends either way.” Juyeon sulks.

“Doesn’t matter, Y/n’s cooler than you.”

“How?” He walks over to Eric’s bed, letting his arms hang low as he stands above the younger and his fringe fall upon.

“She’s literally a god, and you don’t even have a girlfriend.” He moves his hand.

Eric sees from beneath his figure how it forms a gap between Juyeon’s lip, but quickly disappears. As the older has learnt there is no pride left in fighting with the teenager, Juyeon shifts in direction and with the help of his socks, slide defeated against the floor, back to the plastic bag.

All three of them folded out two lonesome blankets scattered in the apartment. It lay on the carpet in the center of the two bed’s. Y/n sat down on the blankets to touch the pillow, but Juyeon insisted on her sleeping in his bed. It took some persuasion, but he smiles so sincerely and talks tenderly that no God could replicate. She accepted and sat on the bed edge. Eric gave her a worn down pajama set from years ago.

Juyeon’s eyes follow her figure, walking away as he stands with his hands awkwardly to the sides.

“The shirt is buttoned wrong.” Her vision from the bedroom, back to the kitchen. He stands still, takes one hand to his neck, scratches it gently before letting it fall down to his own shirt. His fingers draw outlines of details of her own and she looks down to see the overlap in fabric, each button forcing the other side higher.

“Oh.” Y/n frees the first button from the fabric, but it stays in between her fingertips as there is no place to secure it. Juyeon takes a cautious step forward. Where his feet land it makes no creaks and the fall off a button is the loudest thing in the room.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” Y/n instantly comes to the floor and takes up the missing piece from Eric’s shirt. She looks up to him apologetically with the plastic piece hidden in her palm as she reaches her arm towards him.

“It’s okay.” He takes the button, then walks over to the kitchen counter. Y/n watches how he opens one of the pantries and takes out a transparent pouch with orange highlights.

“I’ll help you.” He smiles, identical as the sunset shine in winter. It casts cold over skin where there’s no button to cohere fabric. Y/n nods and they walk to his bed, sit by the edge. Y/n’s closest to the pillow end and watches how he opens the zipper to take up a thin needle and a roll of white thread. Juyeon sees her attentive eyes on his hands between the motions. The white thread comes through the metal end and he cuts it off with scissors. Juyeon holds his hands in between them, hesitantly reaching for the open fabric. He locks eyes with her again.

“Is it okay that I?” With no more than a timid hand motion, he asks. But Y/n understands. She smiles and straightens her posture, separating the front and hair with her hands. Juyeon smiles awkwardly with his lips pressed against each other and the opposite ends curl upwards. He takes the folded edge of the fabric delicately between two fingers and leans closer to her chest. When the sharp end filters the backside, his hand brushes against her skin. Juyeon holds his eyes on that spot on the shirt, but really, her warm breath drapes his head in summer mist.

After the button falls in a vertical line with the others, Juyeon lies the needle down. He looks at the two sides of the shirt, shriveled and folded in different heights. Y/n herself, once again looks down her front and follows the line, how the fabric separates from the other side. Halfway through, she buttons again, but Juyeon sees instantly how she’s one level too high.

“I…” His body still in the same place, to attentively listen to the folds in the sheets as to remind himself not to come closer. Juyeon takes his hands onto the end fabric. He coerces together to seal the shadows casted by moonlight onto her skin, their hands brush against each other. The distance between them is incredibly insignificant, in a way that lets her scent intertwine with his own and he hides his face by looking at the hemline.

His head right underneath her chin, his hair smells delicate, of morning in blooming spring. The top of his head reflects the moon and his faint breath damp on her skin.

“And it’s done-”

A sound in greater volume than anything else in the apartment erupts from the other side. Y/n stands up as Eric comes out from the bathroom, his silhouette darker from the warm light coming behind him. Juyeon’s hand diverts back to his own sides. His head slightly tilted up to continue to watch her face and make out the expression above.

Eric walks through the frame, it creaks slightly as he falls down the covers. Y/n looks again where Juyeon observes her with eyes, reminiscent of the cityscape playing outside. It shines across and paints the brown pupil in a cold color. She smiles slightly and takes another step.

“Thank you.” She says gently.

When shoes scratch against the hallmat and two voices he has recorded in a secluded part of his brain intertwines, Juyeon leans forward on toes to let a glimpse of their figures reach from the thin wall. He takes a step before the dividing part of the rooms and stares in silence over the rain consumed. Their hair lies slick against their heads and the thin surface of a droplet holds itself like tears underneath their eyes. Soon gathers a darker blemish by the hemline.

Juyeon immediately runs up to them and feels the water spread from the floor up to his socks. To let his hands immerse in cold rain across the coat arms as he forces them to the bathroom. Though, Y/n insists to wait until Eric’s done as the four walls impend onto them as they stand all three before the bathtub with the sink piercing against their backs.

Eric sees his reflection in the bathroom mirror, starts violently shake his hair to let off the residing water running down his head. The two others shouts, arms covering their faces to ensure any warmth left on their skins in the bathroom. Y/n let her vision through the passage created by the coat arms when Eric’s laugh parallel between the high ceiling. She feels his arms collide onto her own as he points at Juyeon. The water divided into pairs runs down his forehead, to after his lips. Fringe has fallen flat onto his eyes as the water weighs heavy and all collects at the neck of his shirt as a dark stain. Y/n too, starts to smile before falling into laughter together with Eric. Juyeon stands as if anchored to the bathroom mat pressing his lips in.

As some minutes in the room pass, they stand three in row with the last person out the hall. Y/n on the floor at the borderline where the bathroom goes to hall, she sits crisscrossed while Eric stands on knees behind her. The coarse fabric of the towel onto her head as Eric treats it like laundry. And at the top of the three stories stands Juyeon, still drenched, more than the others maybe, drying off the excess in Eric’s hair.

All has dried and the used towels together with the raincoats decorate the bathtub wall. Eric walks to the kitchen as Juyeon tells him there’s soup and Y/n even out the flooded ends of the clothing. Turn around to face the mirror and walk out the door, she stands with her feet in touch with Juyeon’s and the separation between their faces, so trivial that one might condense in another's arm.

At once, when her essence affects his own, he takes a step back and lifts his arms. There is no distance left and in an instant the cold sink hits his back and Juyeon lets out an ache. Y/n laughs silently and Juyeon turns from the floor up to her face that reeks of lucent perfection.

“You look like a wet cat.” She laughs gently before reaching down the tub wall. Beside her calf rests an additional towel which she takes and casts over Juyeon’s head.

Like the fringe of his, it ends just above his eyes and the pupils, infinite golden, look through the opening onto her. Juyeon slightly bends his head down and takes his shoulder closer to his own essence. He tries to hold his eyes open, onto her face that is so close for the first time in his life, but as she follows the wet trails, he closes his eyelids and convulses when she touches his skin down the neck. His head falls back and he whines slightly in which Y/n laughs.

“Stop being sensitive, Juyeon.” She teases and her arms come above his shoulder and around his head to reach the hair furthest down. Her upper body closes in on his and where the cold water has fallen and fabrics cling onto his skin, he feels warmth.

“Sorry…” Juyeon says weakly. The spotlights in the ceiling highlight the fragments of rose red around his cheeks. Her existence is so close to his own that he thinks they might merge. Somehow, he curiously opens his eyes to see her still damp hair, reminiscent of early spring. But has to close his eyes over and over.

Three days outside the window have been in constant motion and the three of them are still in that apartment. Though, for each day Y/n has walked with Eric to school, more students turn attention in the early morning as she walks up the stairs to the second floor. As the pink notes come down to the table surface faster and faster, she has this sensation in her stomach. It grows during silence and when Eric’s at class. It turns into vague whispers and overpowers the ventilation in the right upper corner. It has her out the window and searching for the sun, but at the same time, there’s something so fascinating in watching how the students hold onto their friends as they disappear down the stairs.

How lovely it is to come in so close contact with love, she thinks. Each sight has her desperately wishing for another and when she hits the arrows bow in two hearts, she runs to the other side to stand at the window front and watch how the world stops for only a second as they make eye contact for the first time.

Though, as Eric told her. Whispers between the hallways and notes passed between seats. A single motion that sets the butterfly wings in action, spreads winds around the school and she thinks there is only a lone push before someone other than a student comes up the stairs and sees her.

Y/n sits on the carpet in their apartment during friday afternoon. The warm lamp spreads its familiar light. She counts her bills and coins, and surely has started to build a small tower that goes beyond two centimeters over the flooring. Her palms lean to each side and impend above the paper and silver. She coerces it all to a pile where the bended edges are in opposite directions. As all the flat slides lie together in her hand and she takes the paper bag, she feels a weight on her own shoulder. A warmth only created by another existence in this season.

Y/n takes her sight up, onto the only enhanced in the lingering exhaustion of another turn around the world’s axis. At first impression of the scene beside her, she can only see his legs, like delicate lace in the orange light, but as chin touches his silk hair and the scent touches her face. Y/n sees the facial features from upon, the bridge of his nose in between the hair strands.

Juyeon suddenly perk up. To meet eyes from different directions and see the faint shine in the inner corner from opposite perspectives. Y/n doesn’t speak, but her eyes search his own deeply and when nothing in them seems to gift her question, they follow the shadowed lines down his face to his lips.

“I feel cold, Y/n.” The weight of his head becomes heavier.

“I’m not that warm either.” She says gently, still with her hands on the pile.

Whispers of the apartment and breathing from the alive city, details around them become louder. He finally sighs.

“I don’t know what to do…” His voice mirrors the weak body across her side. Juyeon’s eyes follow the dim corners where lamps can’t reach. Behind the table, against the paper thin wall to divide the bedroom, there is no outline of floor patterns or discolorations. The world sort of fades into that corner. Like the rest of the universe on a certain crossing, falls out of our sight.

Onto his empty chest where he thought nothing could ever reach again, a light pressure of palms to fingers, graze by the shirt before the whole palm encapsulates his sole heart. Juyeon slowly lets his eyes off the horizon at the end of the room and leans his head where her shoulder and neck ends. He watches how she scours his chest from above and feels her hand blur into the chest.

“Heartbreak.” She hums softly and lets her hand cease over his heart.

Juyeon still looks up, “You can feel it?”

Y/n nods and turns to his eyes. The paper between her left hand, she lets them down onto the floor and pushes the rest of them to the side. Her free hand takes his head delicately and his weight off her shoulder. Juyeon complies with her tenderness until his head settle between her lap. His heart, moon touched, and slowly her fingers come in between his hair and in gentle motions brushes.

To carefully not let his entire body weight on her physical bindings. Though, with that thought he still closes his eyes and feels the hemline of her midnight shirt brush against his cheek. The lids over his eyes open once again and he, in a careful state of trance, watches the slight knit between her eyebrows. His eyes, immense and illuminated, picks apart the features and tilts his head slightly, making the shirt come up her thigh.

“Is something wrong?” He asks suddenly. Y/n locks eyes with him. Strands fall like rosen vines beside his head.

Y/n turns back to his chest and stares in wonder over that spot underneath her hand.

“It’s still very painful…it’s recent?”

Juyeon lets the night echo along for a moment longer. Her hand in touch with the temperate fabric of his shirt, reaching for the deepest part of his own existence. It stays to be the most audible thing in the room. But somehow, there’s imminent, much greater weight bound between the ceiling and floor. He takes his eyes off her hand and falls back into the crater which her legs create.

“It was a month ago.” He speaks in a same volume as the detailed city spreading from all directions and encompasses them.

“She broke up with me, we had a lot of arguments. But we finally stood outside this apartment, and she told me that I don’t make her happy anymore.” Juyeon breathes in, “That there's no love left to give, its run dried.” His head falls to its side and her calf brushes against his cheek.

How even the pictures from June, where the stone plates hidden in shadow wished to feel like winter as they ran past the piercing sunlight between the green leaves, aches his heart. All the Earth layers pass through him until he ends up at the very last.

“Your heart hurts a lot, Juyeon.” She watches with knitted eyebrows, the invincible piercing feeling beneath her hand, spreads across her palm. She turns her eyes to him. The tension binding her features disappears slowly, cause; of his delicate expression, painted in care. Another passage of silence.

She whispers and tilts her head, “But you’ll be fine.”

“I will?” He says with a low voice and immense eyes.

Y/n closes her eyelids and opens them up again to take apart the faint layer of shine before the pupil. To lean in closer as to see the reflection grow clearer in the curvature.

“I can’t see why?” She tilts her head again before falling back into place, “But in the near future, your heart will heal.”

He’s quiet for a second, “Are you sure?”

Y/n nods and suddenly smiles. How the cold sensation of his sick heart falls into fragments when her fingers run through his strands.

“I’m the love Goddess afterall.”

The past days, the sun has done a heavy weather rotation around Earth in a perfect instant. Though, somewhere between night and day, the three of them realize it's time to evolve their business. Each dust accumulated over years in waiting has permanently varnished her clothes. The constant sequence of students that runs up the stairwell makes whispers in the hallways, rumors about the ‘woman in the abandoned classroom’ makes it out on student social media.

Any moment, a post on one of the internet cafes will rise to the top, Eric told her one evening. Y/n uncomfortably took the sheets higher up her shoulders then, but he told her one could fear the inevitable curiosity towards her, or profit off it. His idea was to force the service out of the dusty school and that all three stand on a meeting point beside the city river. Eric sat beside her in the bed and threw off the covers to stand up. She watched how he took the loose pieces of his nightshirt and elongated them like what she assumed was wings.

“And we’ll have costumes like real sellers do.” He said.

“Will that really work?” She asked him with a skeptical expression, in which Eric jumped back into the bed.

“Promise, back in first year of high school, we needed to sell cookies. My friend had a cookie monster costume on for two weeks straight while we told people to buy outside the mall.”

Y/n’s quiet.

“We sold the most of any in our class.”

That night, Y/n didn’t really tell Eric that as long as the moon shines on Earth, there will be a constant light upon her, trailing her steps along the asphalt. That she has during this time, become a traitor of the heaven’s and time.

But because that night passed too, the three of them stand in the metropolitan mall. A city where everyone lives or wishes to. In the vertical path down to the opposite end of the white structure, they are. Glass windows with electric doors down every path and five floors that hound above them. Despite an seemingly endless amount of space, the marble floor is nearly invincible when shoes run like tidal waves above it.

Y/n stands in trance with her head up to watch the banners come down on them from the highest floor. The golden light doesn’t cast itself like sunset as the artificial studio light leaves no corner hidden. But by a certain tilt of one's head, the heart of the light bulb, a shimmer closer to a star during night, reaches the pupil.

“I know a good store.” Eric says and takes one step forward, “It’s not expensive there either-”

Though Juyeon forces him to reverse as he reaches out his hand. Juyeon turns to see Y/n beside him, gaping at the high ceiling and he gently intertwines his other hand with hers.

“You have your phone on, Eric?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“My ringtone gives me panic attacks, should we go or not?”

“I-”

“We don’t have all day!” Eric takes the lead by stepping into the crowd. Juyeon comes quickly after and naturally forces Y/n to stop staring at mall decorations. Two different entrances later and a desire to desperately rip off every last layer of clothing, the three of them stand in the store cluster which Eric pointed at. The youngest insists deeply on a store with massive red signs across the windows, indicating an illegally low price, meanwhile Juyeon argues back that it’s smarter to get actual costumes from the party-hell-store next door.

Democracy isn’t on Eric’s side since Y/n stands with wide eyes, still with Juyeon’s hand in hers. Clearly she didn’t have much of an opinion as her answer when Eric tried to get her on his side was what the hell is a costume supposed to be? As Eric’s store windows had white tees and colored jeans, Juyeon pointed at a mannequin in hot dog costume.

“They just have stupid stuff there.” Eric complains as they walk into the party store.

“You don’t have to choose the hot dog costume.” Juyeon answers.

They reiterate the plan and pass the paper plates and party hats down the clothing aisle. Immediately, Juyeon walks to the corner and Y/n watches as Eric stops before her.

“I want to be a devil.” Eric takes up the rectangular plastic bag. Y/n leans over and sees the model in an awkwardly cut suit, pants with way too tight seams that ends above the ankles, and, the cherry on top, a dejecting pair of plastic vibrant red devil horns.

“No one goes to the devil for love advice.” Y/n complains and continues down the aisle. At the furthest end of the costume section, Juyeon stands between the plastic bags. He holds two different ones, the right one he lifts up so that the spotlight in the ceiling shines atrociously on it.

For every step she expects to see the awareness in his face as he looks to her side. But instead, he stands with a slight pout while still holding the plastic bag in front of his face. Y/n smiles as she’s a little less than a meter away. To lean on her toes to reach over, catch a glimpse of the front model.

“Is this how I’m supposed to look?” Y/n tilts her head as she looks at the woman on the front wrapping of the fabrics. Synthetic wings falling off the back with an even cheaper shine over the arrow and bow. The little white dress is dull, though short as the hem ends mid thigh.

“No, you’re prettier." His answer comes close at the end of her own sentence. His eyes aren’t on hers when he says it, he too looks at the model picture of the packaging. Y/n turns to look at him when his face is still in usual saturation and pout visible.

“Really?” Y/n tilts her head and can’t help but break into a smile. Juyeon looks up and views intertwine. That rose blush stains his skin once again and he scratches the back of his hair profusely. He takes a step back, laying his hands on her shoulders from behind. To turn her head to still watch him, he disappears from her sight and instead, feels a warm weight on her back. The waves of his voice perceive that spot beneath her hair when he speaks.

“Go and try it on.” His voice is in faint volume as he starts pushing her shoulders gently.

Y/n laughs, “Okay.”

At the left direction he prod her, reside three high rectangles in row. Y/n opens the one closest to her and walks in. After she forces the curtain to divide, she hears Juyeon’s voice outside, ensued by a familiar whine. Y/n smiles for herself when the metal rings at the edge hit against the railing as Juyeon tries to force Eric in.

At last, the velvet closes, and soon, the adjacent walls uncover. Juyeon stands a meter away, watches how Y/n lifts the fabric over her head and the hem takes some of her hair with it. Her feet stay serene, looking down her front while her fingers compress the chemical fibers.

“I think it’s too big.” She looks up at him. Arms fall to its sides together with the flat line dress. Juyeon’s lips form to speak, but precisely, it intersects with Eric who extracts the curtain and walks out. The shirt reaches down his wrists and radiates an agonizing white shade, the pants, in same shade, drape over his legs. Lastly, the tiny wings and plastic bow in his hand. The halo in his hair sits tilted, folded at the center, beaming in the store light over his displeasure.

Juyeon and Y/n are silent at the closing seconds of his entrance. But the visor alternate another minute and the two burst out laughing at the same time. Their silhouettes bend to the floor and cover their laughter with right hands. And if the knit between Eric’s eyebrows couldn’t get tighter, even his lips press harder.

“But you look really cute, Eric.” Y/n coos and walks to him. The side of her palm perceives the veil over his shoulder. He looks down towards her, causes the halo to shake and Y/n laughs again.

“I’m serious!” She takes the other hand, where she too has a bow, on his opposite shoulder. Eric lets the thin line on his lips loosen a little as Y/n assures him. Though he hears a giggle a meter away, shift to see Juyeon’s phone in their direction.

“Hey!” The younger runs over to Juyeon who lifts the phone to the ceiling. The little plastic halo above his head flutters as he stands on tip toes while reaching for the screen.

“No, it’s so good!” Juyeon still laughs and takes the phone behind his back. Eric is left with that same complexion of oddenment on his features as the two laughs.

“I think it looks good.” Juyeon says after. He points at the ill fitting dress on Y/n but acknowledges Eric got the right size. He says they should go to Eric’s store and get a better white dress.

“Aren’t you gonna dress up?” Eric throws at Juyeon.

“You should too.” Y/n complains and points at him with the bow, “We look like idiots, you need to look like one too.”

Juyeon glance the room and takes a step back, “But I didn't find any in my size.” He affirms with high arms.

“Bullshit, just be an ancient myth man.” Eric, deadpans.

“There’s no myth man costume.” Juyeon says confused.

“Then we make one.”

“Isn’t this one lovely?”

Juyeon looks up and sees Y/n between two racks of aisles. In her hands, a white baby blue dress that she puts against her front as if wearing it. The lace excess attached to the skirt and half length sleeves imitate her own twirls.

The coloration with his hands falls to the sides as she looks up towards him. Her eyes fixated on him after her question. Juyeon opens his mouth, but takes a breath and his free hands come up the back of his neck. Scratching lightly as he looks towards another aisle with transparent bags. Groups of young girls run past them and he shakes his head, therefore, the fringe comes before his eyes, making his pupils hide in between shadows of his strands.

“It’s really pretty.” He says shyly and smiles, takes a step closer and forces his chin up a bit higher, “You’re really pretty in it.”

Y/n takes her palm towards the stomach of the dress and looks down, “You’re honest?” She laughs.

The hand quickly falls off his skin and top the side of his thigh. The pink coloration saturated into his cheeks are still in full view, but his lips turn pressed and downward. Just as his eyes grow wider and he eagerly nods his head. The strands of his hair follow those precisions and he continues to speak while it falls further.

“You are.” He repeats in a clear tone which makes her laugh again.

“Okay, then, I believe you.”

Once the afternoon stood on its last hours, all three had found their costumes. Y/n in a white dress that accumulates at the writs where it tights into a ribbon before the remaining fabric folds out like a flower. It sat under the paper poster for the early spring collection. Juyeon got a shirt in a similar edition. The details on both sort of seamlessly intertwine. When taking a quick look in the passing window stores, the two seem to share sensibility. And then of course, Eric as a baby cupid.

Juyeon’s hair was in need of a change since the shirt alone couldn’t disclose the intentions behind. He suggested a lovely braid to form around his head, though, neither of the three knew how to braid. Because of that, they sat forty five additional minutes at the mall beside different baby strollers. Juyeon had searched up a braid tutorial, held it before his face, Beside him sat Y/n on her knees and constantly switched from looking at his hair and screen. The result was of partial essence from the original, and with a yellow bouquet they bought before walking, Juyeon looks rather like a flower boy at a wedding than fantastical character.

At the center of a meeting platform before the river, they stand in line. The yellow flowers together with the synthetic wings on their backs are taken by the wind. Youth in close knitted groups and couples walking hand in hand pass by the metal railing and the bridge connecting to the opposite side. All three have a box of their own and with a breath or two, they separate from the mit and walk over the frozen concrete paving in late afternoon.

As the unknown always has people afraid, not many notes land in the bottom of their boxes. But as the sun comes down the sky and closes in on the rooftops, people their age become intrigued by the enchantment and put their name together with a bill. As such, pictures of plastic wings spread around corners of the internet with rumors about the magic.

As the person before her walks to the left, Y/n waves gently as their figure becomes another someone in the crowd. With no close frame in sight, the sun that edges on the horizon, spreads its pink coloration above her vision. Her hand holds the box as a wind comes from the right direction of the city and intertwines itself into her hair. The white fabric of the sheer skirt touches against her skin and the plastic wings lean towards the bridge. And as if the wind became gifted, to affect the significance, a clear pathway towards the edge of the river opens up.

How both the start and end of a bridge captures in a total frame. The dividing sides of the city in opposite parts of her rectangular vision. Y/n takes a breath and lets the setting sun in final clear sky complete the hues on her face.

When her eyes arrange the disposition and total focus settles onto a silhouette. Y/n’s grip around the box falters and the incoming wind might take the rest of her essence with it this time. The cheap chiffon fabrics wrapped around his body shines of white, just as his close orbit. Though the pigment, only parts of his features stand in highlight as the rest in shadow from the rosy hue above.

Y/n moves her head suddenly, forcing the loose strands before her eyes to fall towards the side profile. Slowly she takes a step down the clear path, follows the lines in between frozen cracks to where he leans over the railing. Juyeon has his eyes set on a vague point on the horizon. When she, too, stands beside him, she follows the imaginative line of his pupil and fails to make out the disoriented city lines.

Y/n turns to him, “I haven’t asked you yet.”

Juyeon turns to her with vast eyes.

“If you want to write a name.” She holds the pink cardboard box out for him. Her hand shortens distance, but there is still a void to be completed. He stands silent. Let each passing conversation fill that space up until it becomes vague from another direction. The motions in the river, it comes up against the stone they stand on before changing tide. Juyeon looks at Y/n and smiles like he always does as he shakes his head gently.

She tilts her head. Curiously wander to the pupil of his eye and search for entrance into his mind, but there’s nothing to open. With his aching heart underneath his throat, Y/n expected a certain answer from him, an answer most humans would give. She smiles as wonder entrances her mind when thinking about his own.

“Okay.” Y/n answers in her usual tone. Take the box back to her own side and like Juyeon, let a part of her weight lean against the metal railing.

A couple walks them by, hand in hand towards the other bridge in far sight. Juyeon follows them until the color of their shirts fades in between the others. His eyes fall back on Y/n’s frame. Her profile towards the reflection in the water and he contemplates in silence before asking.

“What happens to all the names people write down?”

Y/n faces him as the question spreads into all directions over the river surface, and when it maybe reaches the opposite end, Y/n stops to tilt her head.

“They fall in love…or what do you mean?” She knits her eyebrows.

Juyeon shakes his head and smiles. Watch the scenery behind him where the buildings soar above the open platform and lovers walk hand in hand. Eric sits on a bench, further away, with a stranger probably his own age by the parallel complexion.

“Do they just fall in love forever or…” to attentively consider details of expressions and body language, his own skin brushes against the cold railing.

“No, they don’t” Y/n shakes her head.

“Most will probably fall out of love in a week or so…” The curves of her lips have become amicable, he remarks, when Y/n looks at him.

“Maybe one or two couples go on for some months.”

Juyeon tilts his head, arm over the railing and the weight of his body advances onto it. The flicker between the colors of his eyes reaches for another one, just like it. But at the edge of finding it, she turns her chin down where waves return from the stone, and another wind pulls fabrication before their sight.

“Why?” He asks curiously.

Y/n purses her lips in. Her essence stands on physical space but the fragments of thoughts, collecting her being, solely wanders somewhere else.

“I don’t know why.” The tone is disheartening, “I wish I knew too.”

“You don’t?” he says surprised, “You’re the love God.”

“Yeah,” She smiles, “but I’m not good at being one.”

“Is that’s why you’re here?” He asks gently after silence.

Y/n’s quiet and completely still for a moment before nodding without giving him a glance.

“People are getting heartbroken all the time and aren’t finding love, and I can’t figure out why.” She pauses, “Mother’s angry at me.” Y/n lets her chin fall onto the railing and she leans over the cold metal and watches the sun go behind the horizon.

“I don’t want to live like that, especially since I can’t even do the only thing I was created for.”

Another silent passage in time, she speaks again.

“And your breakup last month was probably also because of me.” She looks at him with a smile but eyes of starshine, on the edge of its own death, “I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“It is.”

“There’s eight billion people, that’s a lot to put on one person.”

She looks at him, still leaning on the railing.

“I mean, one being.” He corrects.

Y/n smiles again in which he too does.

“You know, for humans you’re never perfect at first try.” He looks out over the river, “For all the professionals, more than talent, they train over and over again.” She looks at him and he stutters while scratching his neck.

“What I’m trying to say is,” He squints, “Practice makes perfect, you’ve never experienced human life until now, of course it’s confusing.” He pauses and takes a step closer. The view of him comes higher up.

“If you want, I can help you.” Another wind passes, while the same rose color against the sky transmits over to his cheeks.

“Teach you what human love is like,” When she still isn’t speaking he takes a irregular breath, “I’ve had two girlfriends before, a lot of dates, I’m very experienced so you don’t have to-”

“Okay, I want you to teach me.” Y/n laughs. He closes his mouth once he realizes the diffuse pace of wording. Though, smiles as her clothes strive free with the next breeze. Juyeon’s relieved as Y/n has visibly fallen interested in a shape at the other end. Only in need of his voice to affirm the color, not his red stained warm cheeks.

To a change of a digit by the “Sunday '' written on the phone. Y/n opens her eyes to see morning filtrate through the curtains. Her hands come behind her posture to force herself off the layers of cloth. At Eric’s bed at the other end of the same corner, he lies spread out in total absence. His face is buried within the pillow and his right leg has fallen off the bed and touches the floor.

Without any sort of considerable intentions, Y/n looks down beside the bed. The thin mattress is still out with an imprint among the creases of the sheet. Despite being devoid of any life, a trail of essence aviates above it. The disarray of plates stacking comes from the open kitchen. Y/n looks towards the window and sees Juyeon roaming through the shelves.

She herself lets the covers come off her body and accumulate beneath the pillows. With each one of her steps, a creak course through the flooring. With the ceasing distance in intervention, Juyeon feels the faint change on the spot he stands on when her presence comes closer. He looks away from the shelf and sees Y/n, her right hand is up before her eye and he smiles like he always does to her.

“Good morning, Y/n.”

“Good morning,” She answers in a quiet tone.

“Did you sleep well, Angel?” He asks while he lets his head fall down to the counter as he groups in spoons and chopsticks. Y/n blinks a few times and stares at his side profile as he opens the cabinet beneath.

“Angel?” She tilts her head and Juyeon looks back at her.

“Yeah, Angel?”“I always used Love, but I think you fit Angel better.”

“Oh, okay.” She tilts her head still and squints her eyes at his frame. He seems to detail that there’s something still left to be said, so he looks back at her again.

“Am I supposed to call you something too or?”

She asks him with genuine perplexity and he remembers again, that she’s not human. He smiles. How magical, he thinks, that someone that bears on enchantment and bliss to change his state of life in seconds, stands before him. Juyeon has never really believed in gods, even now he isn’t particularly drawn to religion, but Y/n in her otherworldly enchantment but relatable demeanor seems to come beyond any sort of devotion.

“Only if you want. It’s called pet names, it's common between couples.”

Her eyes widen, “People see each other as pets? Like those dogs they’re out walking?” Y/n gestures with her hand onto the floor. The new information is rather unsettling, how much of the human love she didn’t understand, she thinks.

Juyeon laughs and comes closer to her, “No.” He takes his hands onto her shoulders while her eyes are still appalled.

“Or some couple out there probably. "But not most.”

“Why pet names?”

He thinks, “I don’t know, it’s cute? Pets are cute, so you’re cute.”

“Okay.” Y/n seem to only half accept his explanation.

“Can I still just call you Juyeon?” She asks.

“You can,” He pouts, “Though, no one has ever given me a pet name.”

She smiles, “No one?”

“I always ask them to give me one, but they don’t.” He sulks.

“I like your name, it’s pretty. I think it fits you.”

The picture before her, as she’s still in his hands. The sprout from which his hair blossoms, faces her, but in the ending sequence of her sentence, his face comes up in height with hers. The sulk, seized by the floor. He smiles again in which she tilts her head.

“You’re really simple, Juyeon.” She laughs and takes a step back. By the nature of the motion, his hands fall off her shoulders. Juyeon stands in vertical posture once again and concentrates on the ends of his lips, so as to not pout again.

“I’m not.” He says quietly. Before he turns his head back to the counter, though, Y/n catches the remote sulk formed underneath his nose.

Sometimes through the hits against the counter surface and pans, they hear Eric turn sideways and wrap his body in another round of fabrics. She looks from the cutting board to the beds and Juyeon notices. He tells her that there is no use in low volume, that the entire building could start shaking and his consciousness would not move an inch closer to its physical state.

As he stands beside her and goes between the stove and cutting board to show her how to cut the vegetables. The broth in the pot simmers, damp heat comes up in his face and spreads onto the metal spoon as he brings it down. Juyeon tastes the broth first before taking it down a second time. He holds his free hand underneath the spoon and turns to Y/n’s. Her hair has fallen before that side of her face. Only when those strands come to the back of her ear, she looks away from the white plastic and towards Juyeon.

Being conditioned to fall back, Y/n leans away from his close hands. Sees a single steam grow like rosen stems during spring, Juyeon comes closer to the spoon and blows on it. Y/n’s eyes are small when they intertwine with his own.

“Try it.” He says in his sweet voice.

“Can’t I just…” The free hand on her other side hesitantly reaches for the spoon.

“I’ll feed you.”

Her face turns to the left as if to gesture him a no, but when he looks at her with those pearl glance eyes. Y/n sighs and leans forward. His hand comes under her chin and he helps her by tilting the spoon a little. Y/n’s own hand comes up to Juyeon’s who holds it before she returns to her own place.

“It’s good.”

Eric left the cramped apartment soon after eating. The sun’s out the entirety of the weekend and his friends had sent messages all night to meet on Sunday. Y/n went to bed again after eating, lying on the outer side and with the sheets at the very end of the bed. She stares up at the ceiling, watches hidden shadows in patterns. Though, steps on the floor cross onto the carpet and soon after, she feels the weight on the mattress shift. Y/n turns to look at the change, and when her cheek falls into the pillow, Juyeon’s eyes are there to meet.

Y/n sits up and takes one of her legs off the height, but Juyeon takes her arm.

“Where are you going?”

“I thought you wanted to lie here?”

“No, I wanted to be here because you were.”

“Why?”

“It’s comfortable.” He smiles, “Couples do it all the time.”

“Are you serious, or are you just using that as an excuse because I let you teach me about human romance?” She squints his eyes at him, in which Juyeon forces his head from the mattress and reaches his hand out for her upper arm. He shakes his head while laughing quietly, reiterating that he speaks truth. Y/n can’t keep the stale expression when he smiles so deeply and the pillow pushes his hair closer to his face. Eventually she lets his arm pull her down fully again.

“Do people just lie like this?” Her hands rests over her stomach where the ruffles of the shirt accumulate. A tilt of her head in a direction closer to his existence, but nowhere in full sight does she get a glimpse of even a hair strand, just the ceiling in sunlight from the curtains.

“Sometimes.” Juyeon answers. He turns his head fully and so does Y/n. Their chin rests on the light blue stripes, folded where the weight are.

“Sometimes it’s very comforting doing nothing with the one you love.”

“Why?”

Juyeon takes his hands in between the pillow and his chin, “Love needs no words.” His voice is gentle, passing her ears like the faint brush of the new washed sheets against her upper calf. A vague nod comes from her side as they still look at each other.

Juyeon suddenly breathes a little stronger, “But other times we do this.”

Y/n doesn’t get to high her eyebrows or part her lips. The hands underneath his chin forces his weight off the pillow and Y/n feels him lean towards her side. He sits up fully and in the same duration from her eyelid closing and opening, Juyeon has taken his hands down her arms and neck, fervently tickling her.

The expression of confusion painted by her features turns to a desperate smile as she tries to escape his attack. To kick her leg onto the sheets beneath her and shout Juyeon’s name as his laugh becomes louder for every centimeter the fabric falls down the bed. To not let her escape, Juyeon unconsciously sets his knee on the other side of her body. Her figure stays in between his own frame as she falls deeper down the pillow.

“Juyeon, stop, I’m serious!” Y/n laughs in panic.

Eventually his hands come to rest beside her upper arms and the laughter turns to heavy breathing. Juyeon faces from above, still smiling, as Y/n lies with the side of her face against the pillow. That until she stares at him, while fully hidden between his own complexion. Each of her breaths comes to him like the green leaves during spring. Just as the incident, the rose color of flowers in small sprouts bloom on the side of his face. Y/n looks down from his eyes, just one centimeter in distance to see the saturation. She smiles again.

“You’re always so red, Juyeon.”

Juyeon takes his head further against his chest to hide it, but there is no use. She laughs lightly as his hair falls before his eyes and he is forced to shake his head when he comes back up. They look in silence at each other's features. Mere sunlight comes in between the thin curtains and cats itself over the shadows. Dust from the sheets cease between the space and Juyeon leans in a bit closer. The shine in her pupil comes all the higher in her coloration as his lips are above hers.

“I’m sorry.” He speaks gently.

Y/n laughs again and shakes her head. Seconds cruelly pass them where they lay enchanted in white-blue sheets. The sounds of folding fabric beside her ears, without visual frame she imagines a butterfly at the breaking of dusk, to spread its wings before full sun. But truly, it’s purely, without decorations, Juyeon’s hands beside her body that flutter at the closing distance between them.

He who always leaves a space in between, Juyeon lets his head fall closer to hers. The pace is incredibly cruel, but so sympathetical, as he stops where they can see each other’s flaws and their breath dampens the other's lips. Time stands so pianfully still when he waits for Y/n to say or do anything. He looks into her eyes, searches for something, but she tries to use the parted distance between her lips but nothing comes out.

There’s a sort of apprehension somewhere between all of her physical essence. But it dies with every second. In the dilemma playing faintly before her eyes, in the background she sees Juyeon’s eyes come further away from hers. The sensation of guilt and fear were on the verge of death, and fall flat line in an instant. As to desperately not make him disappear, Y/n takes her hands up from her sides. Juyeon gasps quietly when gently holding his face.

And at last, when she takes him back to her, Juyeon lets his weight on his hands shift to his right knee as their lips collide. Y/n falls a centimeter further into the stripes of the pillow case. It creases at the edges. The pattern changes in structure when Juyeon brings his knee up a bit further. In a boundless room devoid of sounds, the kiss lingers between the four walls.

As Juyeon gently takes his tongue out for hers, Y/n trace the lines of his features up to his hair. Their mouths are just a little open when she intertwines her hand through his strands. The tips of his fingers scratch against the surface. Through the slight space in between their lips, Juyeon whines. It trails through her clothing and hearten her hand to force the strands tighter around her skin to hear him again.

And as they encourage the other to fall in closer, the room that had been detached from space and time comes back. The door echoes through the apartment and folds of clothing come after. Before any footsteps close into the kitchen, Y/n’s hands fall back to the mattress and Juyeon throws himself off his arms and lands on his previous place. When Eric comes into the kitchen and lets his eyes span over the details he sees everyday, he stops at their bed. Arms completely down their sides and face up against the ceiling. Eric knits his eyebrows.

“Are you trying to teach Y/n magic tricks?” Eric asks.

Juyeon lifts his head from the pillow to look at him.

“Don’t even try, she’s literally immortal.” Eric goes to the sink and takes a cup.

“I didn’t even-” Juyeon defends.

“I’m not immortal?” Y/n cuts Juyeon off by lifting up her head in the same manner to look at Eric. He’s already on his second glass of water.

“You know what I mean, mythical creature and the unfunniest person alive.” Eric smiles.

“I think I’m funny.” Juyeon defends and turns his head to look at Y/n.

“I’m funny?”

Y/n laughs a little as he looks at her with vast eyes, “When you try not to; yes.”

He pouts and turns the other way, in which Y/n laughs fully. To turn her own silhouette and let her free hand reach out for his shoulder.

Y/n takes her legs off the mattress. It creaks when she stands fully on the carpet and it faintly lingers when she walks out the kitchen and further down the hallway. Juyeon, who lies beside her, compels to feet and without any obligatory commands, starts walking after. Y/n looks behind her once to see him trail the invincible steps along her. She takes the bathroom handle and looks at him again. He stands close to the opposite wall, right eye wearied. And the scene, in static vision for another passage, until Y/n tilts her head and asks him;

“Are you coming with me in or?”

Even with a question fully spoken in between the takes, Juyeon looks at her with the expression he always has. But like February into March in reversion, his eyes widen and he takes a step back. Juyeon says something Y/n can’t decide if it were comprehensible words. When in no trance, he disappears from the hall, out the kitchen and back onto the bed. She knits her eyebrows while staring at the serene flooring before she closes the bathroom door.

Eric sits in his bed with his phone, but tears his eyes off the screen when Juyeon comes back after only a minute. The older pays no intention of looking to the side and Eric sees him shaking his head before falling onto the mattress. The short video clip on his phone rewinds again as he smiles for himself.

“I never knew you would be such an attention seeker when your girlfriend left.” Eric looks towards Juyeon. He has his arms crossed over his chest while in his own corner of the world.

“I’m not.” Juyeon protests.

Eric snorts which makes Juyeon look at him, “Yeah, and I’m Jacob Elordi.”

The younger scrolls to the next short clip before talking again, “Come on, you can’t even be two meters away from her. I see how your arm twitches of starvation from her just being in the bathroom.”

Juyeon takes his hands from his chest, letting them spread out before the background, “They’re not at all.”

He takes the phone in his other hand, rises so that the sheets fall off his upper body. Eric lifts the pillow higher before he falls down to feathers again and watches the blue light radiate off his screen.

“Either way, I support your future marriage with Y/n, I could even be the flower boy.”

“We’re-I-” He stutters and looks at Eric who snickers at the screen, “I just think she’s nice.”

Eric refrains from throwing more comments across the room. Instead continues to mindlessly consume the massive subtitles on screen. Soon after when the bathroom door opens, the audio from Eric’s phone has rewinded across twenty times and Juyeon walks up to his edge. Eric lies with eyes closed and lips slightly apart while his hand with the device hangs off the bed. Juyeon pushes the turn off button and it becomes quiet in the apartment.

As Y/n walks across the kitchen area, Juyeon straightens his posture. A sudden burn comes between his throat as he looks down. The fingers of his right hand touch the spot that grows with itch. The sensation makes him want to further reach his hand through the skin and scratch what bothers. He coughs when Y/n comes to the line crossing the kitchen and bedroom.

“You’re okay, Juyeon?”

Juyeon turns from the corner where Eric lies and sees Y/n with her head tilted. He coughs again before facing her fully.

“Yeah, I must catched a cold or something.” He reassures.

That afternoon, evening boundary, pink encloses orange in softly curved patterns. How the sunset at the very peak of its livelihood, soon will bleach from the celestial and leave nothing but those stars holding hands in constellations to remind us that it was there. And as it shines over the edge of the river, hangs lowly over the open square, Y/n walks over to Eric sitting alone on one of the seats at the center of the open space. A passing wind intertwines like ribbons through their hair, braid them in irregular patterns before letting go. Eric feels the essence of another identity under the collapsing sun enter his field.

He looks beside his left shoulder and sees Y/n smiling, though, it might just be the sunset, but there’s a whimsical bearing to her expression in plastic wings.

“I realized you haven’t written a name.” He turns focus from her eyes down to the pink box as she holds it close to him.

“You don’t have anyone you like?” She asks.

Eric’s quiet for a second, but ultimately shakes his head. Her silhouette stands in contrast to the setting sun. Each shine streak runs into the river and reflects like a horizontal mirror. The outline of her shoulders divides the flicker, causing him to squint. Y/n herself let the box fall onto her thighs. When another wind comes, a short lived reflection on his hair passes by. Cupid tilts her head and observes his features. A visible lack of emotion and eyes on a dead tree. Another group of people walk down the river and Y/n smiles again.

“Seems like it.” She says.

Eric suddenly asks, “Can you write down someone else’s name? Two people you want to be together?”

She looks at the box then back at him, “Usually no, but I’ve already interfered in enough lives.” Y/n takes up the pen and pink paper, “Try.”

Eric takes the pastel note and presses the synthetic end on his palm. When he gifts it to her, he sees her smile grow wider as she reads it. Eric’s lips too, like a wildflower during the incoming flourish season, grow as she laughs a little. On the piece of paper stands two names, Y/n and Lee Juyeon. She let it descend down the thin opening of the box. While still looking down at the space created by cardboard, she speaks.

“That won’t work, though.” Y/n speaks gently.

Eric tilts his head suddenly, keeping his hands at the edge of the bench.

“Why?”

“I’m not human, right?” She still smiles, but Eric’s has withered.

“I don’t understand, gods and humans can’t be together?”

Y/n shakes her head, “No” She shifts in her place, “It’s just, the rules don't work as they normally do, it might end up bad.”

“Like what?”

“Just bad, not fun…it’s not important.” Y/n takes her hand before her face, standing up and locks eyes.

“Juyeon will be fine.”

For days closest to present, that itch at the very bottom of his throat has become stronger. Each night he touches the spot where it hurts the most, and his fingers trails higher for every night. The other day Juyeon surrendered and went to the pharmacy. He took coughing medicine, but at last he stands before the hand sink, throwing lilac flower petals. The first time, he stood perplexed and backed away until his calf hit the tub.

At the same time, he thinks about what Eric said to him, that day of the kiss. While the hours pass them by he always finds himself having music on or cleaning dishes, searching for job applications. Cause, when neither of them are with him, and there is little to no sound to surround him, those scenes play before him.

It was night and he turned to the other side of the floor. He searched coughing flower petals. In immediate blue links, informative paragraphs describe the cases of physical effects of a yearning heart. The pictures showed strangers with flowers in shades scattered over white sinks. His heart picked up pace before he shut off his phone and forced his eyes closed. He has the love goddess beside him to lead him, but it only aches to think that he stands alone at the edge of the bridge, longing for the other end when it doesn’t reciprocate. At midnight, he’s forced to accept his heart's admiration for Y/n. He refuses to let the knife remove the love out of his body, instead, begs in moonlight for fate to spare them.

There’s a gentle touch over his head. It reverses before it comes back. A sharp point between his hair strands and further down where his neck starts. As his eyes are still closed and mind in a different dimension, he doesn’t register how he slowly starts to lean towards the touch every time it disappears. Eventually, the moonlight cast at the other wall becomes apparent and he sees Eric’s silhouette beneath it. It shines of city lights in the furthest window above the kitchen.

Behind him, he hears soft creases of fabric lines. It comes from the material in his own bed, but his arms are at the front side. There’s a faint opening between his eyelids and he feels the touch linger down his cheek until it trails to his chin. It tickles when it gently outlines his nose. Once Juyeon opens his eyes fully, he tries to look up. On that side of him, a startled motion comes between the soft folds and the warmth on his face stills.

All shadows leisurely adjust and he makes out the room. But in that space, left of his mattress and frame of carpet sits Y/n. He recognizes her features in turned axis shimmer and traces her upper arm down to her hand on his face. She still caresses his cheek when they look at each other. When Juyeon takes his hands to either side and forces himself up, the fabric sounds violent as a shadow covers the cast on the wall. He watches how she quickly makes her way out the kitchen.

He can’t describe why, when his mind is half asleep and his body cold of the thin fabrics. Though, he does fully take off from the mattress and follows her. He sees her figure disappear through the bathroom door and when she stands to see her reflection in the mirror, Juyeon leans his hand on the edge of the door. Y/n looks at him when he walks in. There’s a meter in between them, and she tries to keep the same distance as he closes the door gently and walks forward.

At some point, her back hits the cold wall and Juyeon, with some space still separating them, reaches for her left hand off her side. Y/n’s quiet when he brings it to the blossom of his head. He leans down so that she subtly makes out the shadows beneath his fringe. Juyeon gently ushers her hand to mirror those motions from a minute ago. Where the whole cityscape stands in silence, the clearest thing spoken through the barrier is the sigh of relief Juyeon does when her hand reaches his neck.

He lets his knee rest where the divide forms between her own. How his soft breaths affect her own person. Cause eventually Juyeon separates his hand from hers as she on her own starts to touch his hair. For each caress along the silk, her palm continues deeper onto his neck. At last, her fingers reach where the collar of his shirt starts. To be touched even faintly in a place unaffected for so long, he whines. His head that faces the floor lands underneath her chin. The cheap shampoo reaches her nose and his breath dampens the spot above her collar.

The ends of his hair scratches against her skin and, by consequence, her other hand comes to the center where his shoulder and neck meet.

With the door closed, there’s no light source from any of the quiet corners. But for each breath they both take, he becomes all clearer. His face is buried underneath her while his body leans as close. The contrast of the painfully cold wall and the heat spreading from his essence. It’s so deeply attractive in her eyes, how he folds when she reaches her fingers a step further down his shirt. The quiet whimpers get muted in her neck. She desperately wants to hear it again, the hand from his shoulder and outlines his neck up to his chin where she lets her thumb caress the skin before coming back down to the shoulder.

“Y/n, fuck.” He moans cruelly onto her skin. It creates some free room between her hand and his shoulder when he falls down to his knees. The warmth that has accumulated above her chest, turns instant cold when there is no barrier before the grading temperature.

Her eyes naturally follow his own which are locked on the edge of her sleeping wear. Where the muted pattern convulse into each other and a harsh line before her own skin. Juyeon timidly takes his fingers onto that edge. All warmth in his body rushes to the inner parts, there is nothing but cold on his fingertips when they for a moment touch beneath her stomach. Juyeon looks up, the color in his eyes comes through the fringe and his hand flexes when holding onto her sleeping wear.

“I want to-can I?” He stutters profusely while looking into her eyes. It’s not enough light for the pigment on his upper face to reflect back into Y/n’s own vision. He looks away and faces the wall of the bathtub.

Y/n’s own chest has started to pick up pace while a limited gap between her lips forms to afford it. The lid on her eyes closes and opens profusely as he refuses to state the expression on his face. The inpatient motions with the urge to not look at her, she desperately wants him to say it when her mind runs to try to comprehend it.

“Sorry, Juyeon, I really don’t understand.”

Her hand still in laces with his own essence starts to gently advance across the back of his head again. He sighs when she reaches a sensitive spot down his neck and brings his head back. It affects her mind deeply so that her own physical state falls on the wall behind her and shifts her right leg.

“Please, I want to make you feel good.” He holds his head high to maintain the contact. The fabric of her shorts comes tighter around her waist when he pulls it again.

“I want to lick your…” He whispers to her, in a volume equal to the sounds coming from her hands in his hair. Y/n nearly reaches down to mute his words, but the desire to shift her leg again blinds those thoughts and she nods.

“I want you too, Juyeon.”

Her words seem to have freed the chain off him and gently lets the two layers of fabric touch her thighs down to her calves. Juyeon takes his own hand up her waist and the other around her left leg. To carefully, as if made out of velvet he forces her up onto his shoulder. Y/n tears her eyes away from him and falls head against the cold hard wall when goes in between her thighs. The soft changes in direction from his tongue and the careful advances as he watches her reactions from below.

The hand on his hair becomes tighter when the sensation goes inside her two walls for even a second. There’s constant shame as she lets him completely mend the soar spots with a part of his existence. She can’t tell if Juyeon feels it too, but to never let her eyes be open for more than a second, because when her head falls onto the wall and her eyes stare up the ceiling. An invisible but cruel rain falls onto her from above, a circle of faces from her youth watches how one of their own crumbles before a human.

“Juyeon.”

She strokes his head once again and Juyeon closes his own eyes. Y/n has been forcing her lips shut of fear to hear her own sounds echo in between the walls. But at last, when he grips onto her calf a bit stronger and the end of his hair brushes up against her thighs, a cry of pure bliss comes between her lips while her hips move forward. Juyeon continues with his lips to let the sensation gently fade.

Y/n breathes heavily while still leaning onto the wall. Juyeon comes up from the floor and lies one hand on her shoulder. With eyes closed, reminiscent of weekend morning when her own self is far from the body, lovely gathered in his worn down sheets. How Juyeon solely comes closer to make the pixels of her features clearer and discover the secret appearance, one who is only this close can make out.

Y/n finally opens her eyes and there is barely a distance between them. Juyeon has let go of the space and has his entire front against her own. There’s a firmer impression in contrast to the rest of his body. It pushes onto her lower stomach in timid motions. Her arms embrace herself as she smiles and laughs suddenly.

Juyeon lets out an embarrassed laugh and forces his head under her chin again. A faint ‘no’ escapes, barely audible, which causes her own eyes to look over the line in which his hair grows. And she forces him from her chest just a little. His sight is still in lock with the floor and Y/n laughs again.

“I’ll do it now.”

As she takes his hand, directs to the bathtub and pushes him gently down the cold material. Whatever’s left of the world becomes merely a singular. When the last lights of the cityscape passes through the visual horizon at the end of the universe, Y/n lets herself on top of him fully and takes her hands onto his face while staring in deep adoration with no sense of responsibility.

Truly she feels her heart pick up a pace she never thought was possible when creating friction onto them both with easy advances of her hips, and the back of his head falls against the edge. With no other light visible, a single star burns off in the upper left corner when he opens his right eye to look at her.

Juyeon feels the fabric enclose him painfully underneath her and he moans desperately. To force himself up from the edge, he holds his hands on the sides of the tub and comes precisely under her own lips. Y/n continues to fall back in motion while Juyeon tilts his head up to take her lips. Tension tears off like two desperate sides of a rubber band and Juyeon takes his hands on her hips. To take his knee up higher to force her chest closer to his own.

Behind the door, there's nowhere to go, he wishes for them to continue being in this place, this emotion.

Juyeon trails hands up to her waist. To get on his knees and gently make her come in contact with the white tub. Her hair spreads out the sides of the curvature and his mouth comes agape when he watches her eyes, in what he hopes is at least brief adoration.

Once again he puts his hips into her own. Timidly pushes against her through all the layers of fabric and breathes out. Y/n lifts her own leg up to make room for the climbing friction between them. Juyeon sighs and lets his head fall down, in which Y/n takes her hands through his hair and moans.

She can see his expression, and he looks as divine as he sounds. She soothes the side of his head and tilts her head before whispering.

“Juyeon?”

He moans again and pushes his hips harder into hers.

“My name sounds lovely when you say it.” He pauses to breathe again, “Please say my name again?”

Y/n swallows and the pupil of her eye comes in between him, the friction soon the wall behind them. So quietly but still enough so he can hear how she calls his name again.

“Juyeon…”

A pleasure hits him through his spine and he moans again while holding onto nothing with his other arm. The constant humping makes her not glide down the bathtub and when he carelessly starts pushing his hips against her, at a pace faster than before. Y/n takes her hand from her side and forces it into the small space between them. He throws his head back when the layers of fabric come tightly against him. In nearly instant, Juyeon fucks his hips into the cloth in her palm.

Y/n doesn’t take her eyes off as she’s determined to see him fall down and rests on her chest.

“Y/n…”

She answers in melody.

“I need to see you come, all undone for me.”

As the shorts and underwear lie serene on the carpet beside them, her head falls to the edge. Her hand comes to his face and he takes the hem of his pants off as he misses her. Though it aches with impatience, Juyeon’s eyes shimmer in hands, cupped by Y/n. Every motion he does in pleasure, as if handcrafted. It sores from watching him wither above. Y/n nods again, whispers to please see him wilt in cause of her.

He fills her completely when they come as close as possible. The first thrusts are painfully slow as he edges on relief but desperately wants to feel her warmth. Y/n urges him to fasten the pace as she falls down the wall. He holds his eyes on Y/n like she will save him as he thrusts harder.

“Please, Y/n, you look so beautiful.” His legs twitch, “I need to see you…”

His words falter as she cries out for a second time. He slows down in pace, staying amidst the warmth as the high washes over her. On precise edge, Y/n takes her hand onto the material and forces herself off him. Though the pleasure still affects her, she reaches her hand out where it hurts the most. She strokes him just merely. Juyeon’s eyes are closed and he cries from pleasure and wet stains her skin. The sight of him desperately saying her name and convulse in pure bliss might live on for an eternity. He continues with slow motions in her hand, moving the stains up the rest of her hand before the wave falters.

Juyeon gently descends his head beside hers. The right arm out of the pushing under his weight and he lies it underneath her head. The two of them close their eyes while listening to their breath echo throughout the bathroom.

Though, as the world comes back into place and Y/n opens her eyes to see the ceiling, she thinks about the windows outside. It goes chills through her essence when she looks at a the ventilator. Juyeon’s breathe are soft on the side of her face and she still console his hair. She desperately wants to lie beside him for as long as time lets them. Turn her face to see his blissful features look back at her own.

But for every second, reality moves closer. How her escape from above might put him once again in pain. The scene from when Eric put their names on his note comes back to her in a form of a distant but cold wave.

Fate doesn’t have them, she thinks before sitting up. The change in atmosphere comes suddenly to Juyeon who lifts his upper body when she climbs out the tub, takes on her cloth and goes to the door.

“Where are you going?” She obscene herself before turning. He sits like she left him and the withered shine in his eyes that yearns for her burns the side of her heart. Y/n puts her other hand on the handle and looks down without a clear expression.

“I’m really tired.” Her voice is low, putting a further distance.

“Oh, okay.” Juyeon looks down.

Of course he’s so perfect, she thinks and opens the door wider. To set her feet out before she returns and see his sunken posture, watching the patterns at the bottom of the tub. Y/n bites her lips.

“Don’t sleep in the bathtub tonight.” She says and Juyeon looks up, giving her a smile reminiscent of the one he always gives her.

“Don’t worry about me.”

Y/n nods and takes a step out again and shuts the door, not fully closed.

“Thank you.” She says, before at last leaving.

When the divide amid the handle and frame becomes non-existent and each step of her bare feet recites from the floor back to her, she sees the rising moon in the corner of the window, fade from view as dark clouds pass by. There’s no liquid moonlight cast on the kitchen counter, and the metal in the sink emits no starfall reflection.

She takes the hand that holds the only visual significance of the scene in the bathroom, and her other hand on the tap. The white stains run off her hand and weave together with the water. She watches the colors of morning gloom after rain, before it all eventually disappears down the drain. Y/n closes the tap, when her hand is left on the metal and she watches the lone drops of water that's left. It feels as if a part of her essence might have gone down with it, leaving her left at the edge of the world.

Y/n hasn’t stayed in one place since she came down from Olympus for more than a few days. The date of the calendar has passed three days longer than planned, but why does she find this city so astonishingly more beautiful than any other place? She closes her eyes and maybe the ache in her heart will flow down the metal pipes like how she saw. But at last, her hand falls off the tap.

Maybe hope will win, she thinks. The only thing left to believe in, the only thing that will save the three of them. If she goes to sleep in this state of heart, she hopes for their good life that Juyeon sits in the bathtub yearning for the woman he did a few days ago. She hopes no stems grow through his skin and to, as the love goddess and not Y/n, not see him fall to the floor as the power she rules consumes him from within.

“You’re awake?”

To turn to the opening between two walls and see the table in the middle of it. The sun is already up. Juyeon takes his hand from his back to above his eyes, in the cause of blinding gray light.

“Yeah, I-” Juyeon sits up and starts walking out the kitchen. Eric and Y/n sit on either side and he stands beside them and looks down the plates.

“You cooked?" Did you burn anything?” He asks Eric in which he shakes his head and points at Y/n while his mouth is full.

“No, Y/n did.”

As she sits on the opposite end from where he’s looking, Juyeon shifts his vision. The golden brown of the bread leaves trails of grease on the tips of her fingers and when she too looks up at him, scenes from last night pass through his peripheral vision like they tell you at the edge of death. Juyeon looks away before any visual traces will be sighted on his face. And as he scratches his neck, Y/n comes up from the chair and goes to the counter. When he feels the faint touch of her free hand on his back, Juyeon looks over his shoulder and sees the plate in her hand.

“I did one for you too.” Her hand leans the plate out for him and Juyeon hesitantly takes it, “I tried to remember what you have on it, hopefully I got it right.” Y/n smiles and gets down to her seat once again.

The vast eyes of his observes her eating before turning down to look at his own plate. How each of the green and red vegetable layers follows the same patterns as he usually does.

Though, in truth, as he takes a bit of the sandwich, a sort of warmth trails down the sore spot. In one way he just thinks the sleepiness is coming off, but in between all the superficial, in the hidden part of his heart, he wants to fall to his knees and shout that Y/n hasn’t abandoned him. That there is hope left for them.

“Eric?” Juyeon has hands on his knees. Eyes turn away from the speckles of color running across the concrete. And when they land on the younger sitting beside him, Eric has his towel in his hands, throws it above his shoulder.

Eric hums and looks at Juyeon.

He plays football in a building further away when school’s over. Sometimes memories return from that unchanged landscape. The sun wore bleachers and the synthetic grass field that spares its color no matter season. At some point, Juyeon didn’t need to follow him and wait on the bleachers.

Juyeon came here as the clock reached noon. He took one stop earlier off the bus and walked to the entrance of the building in light blue paint. And Eric sat like he always has done, on the same place four rows above the grass.

“What’s a good gift to a girl?.” He asks finally. The inner corner of Eric’s eyebrows closes in together as he doesn’t say anything. Simply stares at the one, a row under before his lips curl at its sides and Juyeon throws his face in his palms.

“Ohhhhh!”

Eric’s shoulder veiled in damp shirt material comes closer to his own before the younger takes the towel. He turns it in the air so that cold wind comes down on Juyeon. The one with a towel over his head starts swinging it closer and Juyeon doesn’t get to protest before the damp fabric runs across his face.

“When did you become like this?!” Eric’s eyes, immense as his back falls into a curve to reach down where Juyeon hides.

“Why am I proud?" Eric asks himself as he puts an arm around the older and lets his head high to once again see the bleachers in the lower end become steeper and the artificially green grass spread from one end to the other.

“You didn’t answer.” Juyeon scratches the back of his hair, still with his own features a little nearer empty space down the bleachers.

“What should I give her…a girl?” Juyeon corrects himself. At the end line where the side of the field ends and two planes of the bleachers start, he sees Eric’s feet come into frame and turns towards that direction. The shoelaces have blemishes of black hues and the neon color itself has run with rain water down the drains. Four depressing shades of fabrics in the same motion of how he kicks his feet back and forth, reminiscent of the end leaves of a dying plant.

“I know it’s Y/n so we can start from there.” Eric answers and leans forward, “So what should you give Y/n?”

Juyeon sighs again and lets his face in between his hands while falling forward.

“I don’t know, that’s why I came here.”

Eric continues to look down on his shoelaces, “I mean, you know her well, you can’t figure out at least one thing?”

Juyeon shakes his head.

“No wonder she broke up with you.” He says to himself and the older takes his face up from his hands and stares at him with deadpan.

“Okay, too soon.” Eric takes up his hands above his head.

“I don’t know, chocolate, that’s classic. A movie ticket to a romance movie? She’s the god of love – or new clothing, she doesn’t have much clothes.” Eric starts to look up at the high ceiling but jumps one step away on the bleachers as Juyeon stands up and gasps.

“I know, I– thank you, see you!”

Eric holds his arm closer to his own body, all while Juyeon jumps down the four rows and disappears along the white edge of the green field. The heavy metal door at the side of the building echoes throughout the empty walls.

His eyes linger on the cold metal doors. There’s butterflies in his stomach, and not for himself, but for his brother. The slight change in atmosphere in their limited apartment, and the expressions of Juyeon’s face seemed to have cleared with the sky. Truly, Eric thinks, Y/n being a goddess or not, she cast a spell on their life and made him look at the sunset in an angle never perceived before. If she could stay with them, with Juyeon, a little longer, he might actually believe he gets to see flowers bloom in spring.

Though, ever since he wrote their names on the note and she told him it’s not possible. He looks at his brother, when he melts to his knees and reaches out to touch her. The severe words she uttered that evening. In her otherworldly complexion, there’s a shadow she desperately tried to hide from him that day. Eric knows more than anyone, even more than Juyeon himself, that their love is inevitable. But a part of him hopes still, that the thing she fears so deeply, is merely a projection, and that if he doesn’t tell Juyeon, the three of them might get what is closest to “forever”.

As Y/n came to them in the last weeks of December, she noticed the decorations of warm light scattered across every avenue. Eric told her on the bus once that they celebrate the passage of a new turn around the sun. That whole ride until the final glass cubicle, she told questions in which Eric eagerly answered. Juyeon and Eric, promised Y/n to take her to the center city when the sky’s shimmer.

They’ve walked all three down the street alleys. There’s a light from every restaurant and in the few open balconies and windows, music blasts through the street. She’d never seen so many shoes on the same platform. How it causes ripples in puddles, forces the mall entrance doors to stand open eternally and the constant, city conversations integrate.

None of them took much down to the festival, Juyeon told her to dress up but there’s not much in her limited closet that would pass as festive attire. While she herself went with the shirt she always wears, it itched in Juyeon’s fingers to give her paper blue bag beside the bed. When down the street she pointed towards it, asked him why he’s carrying a bag. Juyeon took the excuse of wanting an extra scarf and umbrellas with him if it starts raining.

To chase warmth while running through the open streets. And when the entrance door to the mall directs like curtains, people have gathered for the final scene of the night., Juyeon touches them both lightly.

“I’ll get us something to eat, we haven’t eaten since lunch.” Juyeon points at a nearby van down one of the streets. It reeks of steam from the window while the person in front fervently switches conversations with the new person next in line. The two nod and Juyeon looks at Y/n while turning half away.

“Look after Eric, okay!?”

In the midst of all the burning colors, Y/n takes her eyes off the sky to see the reflection of each spark in people’s eyes. As passionate red fills the sky and scatters a wither of faint glow, Y/n think truly, that she has never felt as alive as now. The upper quarter of the crowd starts to move, she looks in that direction where a concise distance opens up between two jackets.

That divide of the mass has loosened and the wall of the closest building works as a background to the people passing by that glimpse. Another firework goes off, echoes over the crowded platform. Eric looks up when her hand on his own becomes tighter and the direction of her head is not the sky but the front wall of the mall. He too leans forward to see between the arms of the ones before them, but as he opens his mouth to ask her what’s wrong, Y/n takes an even stronger grasp around his hand. Her own skin forces white spots to appear onto Eric’s and he nearly falls in a man’s chest as she turns.

“What?!-” Eric shouts as people pull their shoulders closer to their warmth when they run past them. Y/n doesn’t look back, but exchanges attention from the barely patterns of the platforms and Eric’s hand secured in her own.

“Run Eric!” Y/n tries to overpower the next color that fires off above them.

To escape the borderline of tight bound space and now free view over the imminent skyscrapers and alleys from the center. Y/n’s chest falls desperately, an impending sensation that hurts at the mit of her heart and seeps through the back. As each breath might cut her throat inside and a dye of red stronger than the one above, she takes another step and starts running.

“What are we running from?!” Eric asks again, but Y/n doesn’t answer. The younger sometimes, when he looks at her face, sees a glimpse of her features when her hair comes behind the side profile. Vast eyes that none of the massive street lights can catch the attention of, and once or twice closes her eyes like it hurts. The strange fright running after them has him desperately coil his fingers with hers, run towards wherever she takes him. As the city flashes them by like a sped up film, they pass a familiar face without even noticing. He calls their names but only Eric looks back.

“Y/n! It’s Juyeon!” Eric shouts and looks at her.

“I need to go Eric, I need to go!” She breathlessly answers him. The signs start to fade, only streetlight patterns with distance lines the alley, the rest hidden. Fireworks from the curved celestial become all fainter and she can clearly hear his voice now.

“Y/n! Y/n stop!” Her name bears through the street. There’s a few restaurants with closed doors and warm lighting down the high walls. The people inside might see the silhouettes disappearing in an instant before the outer window.

Juyeon shouts again and runs. The paper bag hits his thigh. Cause of petals in his throat, each shout becomes weaker and soon no air seems to pass them. The lungs inside his chest reach for air but like a cement divide, it seems impossible. Juyeon coughs as he still runs, and hears Eric shouting her name too. At the end of the road where three others meet, Juyeon gets his hands on her shoulder and forces her back towards him. They stop in an instant, and his other hand comes to her shoulder.

“Y/n!” All three breathe heavily as they stand in a crossing. When the sky burns of color, it might even melt.

“What happened?” He takes another breath and Y/n takes a step back, but Juyeon forces her feet to return to that place. Her head looks the other direction so her side profile comes into full view, but his hands go to carry her face.

“Y/n?”

“I need to go.” She swallows. Eric takes a step from the two of them, watches how tears edges off her eyes.

“I need to go, Juyeon.” Her own hand comes to his upper arms as she tries to push him away, but his own only comes closer, embracing her shoulder and back. The white fabric folds against his arms. To never let his sight of hers.

“Why? Why do you need to go?” He asks gently.

“It’s my mother, I saw my mother.” Y/n breathe and try to look behind Juyeon’s back before returning, “I’ve stayed for too long, I shouldn't have used my powers.”

Finally all the water that has accumulated under her eyelashes overflows and a single drop runs down the curve of her cheek. As the tears itself saturate the space beneath her eyes and drown the lashes, all thoughts that would continue to pile up on her mind, reach the high ceiling. Where the last piece of stress bends at the top and eventually the whole tower falls. Tension releases in a second and Y/n feel her body become heavy.

“I need to go.” She says again in a voice barely above a whisper. To face the rain covered asphalt, the strands of her hair fall before her face. Juyeon holds his arms still in that place they are in. But eventually, he let them fall to her upper arms. When her body is fully in his embrace, Juyeon pulls her closer so her head lands on his shoulder and body against his own.

“I’ll help you get away.” Juyeon says gently. Though the fragments scratching his throat tightens at the sentence, he takes another breath through the flourished broken part. Let the sharp edges of vines pierce the insides.

“And Eric will too.” He adds, looks towards the younger. Y/n shifts, then, a meter away stands Eric in a tense position, though, it slowly loosens as she looks at him. The yellow sign behind him, shines from his head like a halo and he gives her that boyish smile like he always does. At that, she gifts one back.

“But you have to sleep.” She looks back at Juyeon, “We’ll help you out of here in the morning, but you can’t leave tonight.”

She’s quiet.

“I promise, your mom won’t find you.” He says sincerely as he looks at her in the eyes. Y/n can’t say anything, instead nods.

Y/n didn’t sleep. Even when she lied in bed with vision parallel to the turned off lamps above, Juyeon with great delicacy took the spot beside her. She refused to visually trace his face, still when his arm came under her neck and voice fluttered against her ears as he drew her closer. Forced light to divide from her eyes, maybe nothingness would mend the sore. Though, for every change on the minute digit and next firework. Naivety only pushes it bitterly, to grow in the hidden parts of her essence.

Even at 5 in the morning, when their side of Earth still longs the sun, Juyeon’s hand is placed over her like before. Though, feather-like when he sleeps. His other arm is placed across her chest and at the end of his hand, he holds her upper arm. She turns from the ceiling, down to the side where his face is closest. Only in intimate moments have he been this near, but for the first time she can admire his natural red blemishes and the patterns on lips without Juyeon withdrawing.

Time may stop for merely a second when she sees him like this, but there's trouble deep within her heart. It consumes butterflies left in her stomach and she reaches out closer to him, kisses him at the ending scene. It’s gentle and fast, contrasting to the cruelly slow ones they shared before. Y/n loosens his arm and climbs out the bed. When she packs all the belongings that can count on two hands, she sits on the floor and looks over towards Eric. The view is incredibly familiar as his arms depend on the bed edge and feet free from the fabrics.

Y/n smiles before the pocket in the bag closes and she walks towards that side of the room. Her head is on its tilt when she tries to look at his face from the right angle. His mouth is slightly agape when he breathes and carefully Y/n takes her hand to brush his fringe. The covers are halfway over his stomach and Y/n bring it over his chest. As the edge of the stripes ends before his neck, Y/n takes a step back. To look at the room in its grandest form, she feels like bursting into tears.

At last, she walks out the kitchen floor like an ending scene and comes out the hallway, just like the credit scene. When she reaches down for her shoes, a piercing knock on the door comes through the walls. Y/n stumbles backwards and catches her weight with her arm. She stands completely still while looking up the impending door. Another knock echoes throughout the apartment and this time, Y/n straightens up from the floor and takes the handle. Let the backpack fall to the side.

When the door opens and the bright light from the stairs burns the dim apartment, her eyes squint. Though, a tall figure in dark clothes creates a shadow. She follows the lines of his clothing and sees his face. An older man with barely no hair, same with his smile.

“Is this Lee Juyeon’s apartment?” He asks in a monotone voice.

Y/n’s quiet for a second before nodding, “Yeah, he lives here.”

“Is he here?”

Y/n falls quiet again. To stare at his face without words, she looks down and sees the mark on the uniform chest. The reflexes on the navy shade and all the layers underneath. Y/n swallows before looking up again.

“No he’s not.” Y/n says without doubt. The man looks behind her, into the kitchen area for a second.

“Where is he then?”

She answers quickly as adrenaline starts rising, “He visited a friend last night after the fireworks, a friend from school.”

“Do you know where this friend lives?” He asks and Y/n bites her lip.

“Not completely, he took the bus.”

“Do you remember the number?”

“Maybe eight.” She lies.

The man takes up his phone and types something quick. She still holds the door when he puts it back down in his pocket.

“Are you aware of the investigation regarding Lee Juyeon?”

Y/n furrows her eyebrows.

“No.”

“He may be in possession of illegal firearms and has used them.” He pauses, “We are also in search of Eric Sohn?””Social services have been called to take him in since he's a minor with a guardian under crime investigation.”

Y/n stands with her mouth agape. In desperate need to answer him as he looks at her, but words refuse to come out.

“I understand it’s confusing,” he takes up a notepad and a pen, “But we’re gonna have to ask for your name since you seem to be close with Lee Juyeon and Eric Sohn.”

Y/n does write her name, incredibly unstable for the age she appears. She looks up at him when she has just written her name, he doesn’t say anything but reads between the glances that a second name in after space should be there too. Y/n quickly adds a surname and gives the note and pen back to the officer.

“Thank you.” He says, “Is Eric Sohn with Lee juyeon?”

“Yeah.” Y/n nods, “They took the bus together last night.”

After a few more questions, the officer does finally leave her at the door. She doesn’t close it until his silhouette disappears fully down the stairs. When it finally does and she has stood there long enough for the automatic lights in the ceiling to shut, she does pull the handle close and lean her forehead towards the frame. Y/n closes the lids against the bottom as if it’ll erase the world from her. But when she opens them, the world is still cruelly real and she turns to the kitchen.

Y/n shakes Eric first, let the covers she adjusted fall down his stomach once again. He lets out a confused sound with eyes still closed. Y/n continues to bother him while speaking.

“Eric, you need to wake up.”

Eventually she walks over to Juyeon, grabs arm and shakes his upper body. She repeats his name in usual volume and slowly his eyes come open and his head turns to her.

“Y/n?”

“The police were here.” She shakes him still, “You’re under criminal investigation, Juyeon. They’ll take Eric…you’re a criminal, Juyeon.”

Y/n herself seem to have not fully comprehended the words the officer spoke outside. And as she voices what he told her, it dawns on her chest and her breath becomes heavy. She looks at him weakly when he sits up. The tiredness that lingers after slumber has disappeared and he looks at her with vast eyes and she repeats it to him.

“Social services will take Eric, you’re under investigation for illegal firearm use.”

Juyeon stares at her for a second before taking the phone off the desk. She takes a step back once the blue light illuminates his face. He clicks into the news sights and at first article at the very start of the site, a video recording from the alley when he fired off the gun. He hits the lamp above them and it ends shortly after the man stands up. He reads the title of the article, “Young man wanted after shooting”.

She sees the video rewind on his phone as his face turns to Eric on the other side who shifts position. Despite the weight coming down on them in one moment, none of them even stands up or walks out. From today's news, their tomorrow plays out in front of their visions. Like a gloomy movie Juyeon watches how they take Eric, ship him off to somewhere, long outside this city while he himself is stuck in between the same four walls for months on end.

Y/n herself knows she must take herself out of the city. Sky’s been watching, nothing’s here will save her. But she can’t take her feet to the hallway, bend her arms down to her bag and leave them behind.

“I’m so sorry, Juyeon.” She doesn’t know why she apologizes. After all, it’s not her in a layered uniform who will come between the closed door at dawn and separate the two. But the way his eyes lingers on Eric’s silhouette while the grip on the phone tightens.

Juyeon suddenly looks up towards Y/n, he stands up and takes her shoulder, “Don’t apologize, Y/n.”

He walks away to the kitchen, opens the shelves and takes out red packages. Snacks in vibrant colors and then down to the refrigerator where he grabs the plastic bottle of juice. She stays in one place, unable to relocate her essence when the world progresses at a fast pace. Juyeon places the food on the table before he goes to the hallway to take out a backpack. Y/n takes her first step closer to follow his silhouette where she once stood to leave.

“What are you doing?” She asks when he comes back to the table and lies the cheap plastic in the backpack.

“We’ll have to move too.”

She’s quiet for a second, stands with hands against her sides when he goes to the shelfs.

“Where?” She looks at him.

“I don’t know, probably where you’re going.”

His answer causes a wind to force the side edge of the mirror to reflect back onto herself. Her double vision becomes unclear when the thing she focuses on is rather a gloom layer at the far end of the world. Probably Y/n will disappear in the masses of people down the main road complexions before even that fades as she comes all the further from the center metropolitan. When buildings start to lose color and texts graze the sides of parks, she’ll take the bus and let the vehicle take her as far as it can. Where she’ll stand in the vast world when the sun falls down the horizon once again, is like always, a mystery.

“I’m not leaving Eric.” Juyeon comes back to the table before turning to her.

“And not you either.”

Before the sun breaks up on the horizon, they were out of the apartment. The sky’s collapsing above them as it rains, reminiscent of melancholy in hearts. Y/n walks beside Juyeon in between high end stores and dares to look up the gray coloration in thick layers. It all reminds her of the first day she saw this city for the first time.

They come to a meeting point where the city's buses pass in rush hour. The weather has worsened, wind from the shoreline comes through the building divides and forces the rain to stand on diagonal. They force their heads down and in need of perception, they peek through the strands. With all the other lights and reflections, they see neon green stripes of guards around the platform. The central station has just a few white stripes on the asphalt before them.

To let one of the glass structures hold the rain above, Eric and Y/n take their hoods off and let the water that has accumulated run down their backs. Y/n looks to the left to see a woman in the inner corner of the booth. She shifts her feet as it reeks and scatters of cigarettes.

“You didn’t have another jacket?” Eric looks at Juyeon who hesitantly takes his hand up the edge of his hood.

“It’s the only one that is waterproof.”

Eric sighs, “If they come up to us, it’s your fault.” He points at the officers the other booth away.

“I’m sure those two, specifically, don't look for us.” Juyeon emphasis.

Y/n lean over to hold her finger before her lips. They look at her with immense eyes and eyebrows knitted together. In response, she tilts her head in constant pattern, back towards the woman behind, she’s on her own phone, but both Juyeon and Eric get the hint. Eric turns to the open rectangle staring out into the rain that has started to take on forms of snow.

As another bus pass them and it’s only seven minutes until theirs come, the officers has come out the booth and started patrolling this line. Their uniforms in neon details shines clearly through the snow. And as they come closer, each of them become stale in their soaked clothing, feeling each water drop plummet against the ground.

“Just be natural.” Juyeon says in low volume while hitting them gently with his elbow.

The two officers come before the transparency. The three of them hold their heads in other directions, only daring a look in between time through side eyeing. The two have stopped talking, topics seem to have run dry and they come closer to the death of afternoon. The officer closest to them passes his eyes over the glass. Juyeon holds his breath tightly and looks up at the screen in orange outlines showing another minute. At last, none of them cease dividing puddles as they continue down the platform.

The three of them fall with their backs onto the glass. Y/n turns to see the silhouette linger. But as she prepares to look away, Y/n tears her eyes off immediately, as they glimpse through the thick rain and stained glass. When a half minute has gone by, she dares to seek that side again, the two officers are static on that spot.

Y/n budge Juyeon with her elbow, but he only faces the back side of her head. He follows where he thinks her sight lines and sees the two officers turn to look at their booth. The two of them look away and Juyeon brings Eric closer to his side.

Eventually the two officers walked back to them, letting the glass divide two sides. The woman beside them looks towards the opening to see the police seek inside, but she quickly turns back to her screen.

“Waiting for the bus?” The one to the right asks.

“Yeah.” Juyeon nods.

“Did it work paying for tickets? We’ve been getting complaints all day that the machine is struggling.”

“Yeah, we used the app.” He answers quickly.

There’s silence.

The police breathe in, “We’ve gotten a report of suspicion against you three.”“There’s a case of a young man potentially on the run, he has a younger brother of sorts and a female friend.” He pauses, “It’s a serious errand, I would want to ask for your names.”

Eric looks up at Juyeon, then down into the ground, Y/n herself side eyes him too.

“Kim Joonwoo.” Juyeon says after a passage of silence.

They look down at Eric.

“Max Sohn.”

Y/n too lies.

The two officers look skeptical at the three of them. Then their eyes lock with each other and one of them tilts their head further out the rain before disappearing.

“We want you guys to wait for a minute, we’ll just have to check in.”

The other stands in the rain with their back against them. His hand comes out the pocket as he holds a phone to his ear.

Juyeon bites his lip. The one standing against the booth frame has taken out his phone and stares at the screen. Juyeon looks towards Y/n and budges her arm with his own. Y/n dares to look at him and they lock eyes. He doesn’t say anything, but points his head towards teh space where the last officer stood. She knits her eyebrows at first, leans harder against the glass pane when he eagerly opens his eyes and points with his head in that direction. Finally he looks over the two officers and sees none of them at concentration, he takes his lips closer to her hair.

“When I take your hand, we’ll run, okay?” Juyeon falls back. The little space created heats of whispers in cold rain. Y/n nods as Juyeon turns to Eric and whispers the same words.

Her heart races behind the synthetic fibers of the coat. Out in the rain, the officer guides his hand away and let the phone come before his face. At that moment, before he hangs up on the caller, a cold grip on her own soaked fingers runs through her. She already had her heel on the glass divide and push from it in a second. Eric accidentally falls against the other police when he runs out their back silhouettes dim out the rain, directed towards the street up the city.

One officer shouts at them which takes the attention of the other and in a span of less than seven seconds all five are aiming at that street. Juyeon holds their hand desperately in his own as the asphalt end seem to decline in streetlights, in compassion to the escape.

“I’m hungry.” Eric sits on the edge of the bed. How the perfect surface of the silk white sheets forms lines in which he sits. There’s only one bed, or two thinner, long sides against each other. Y/n lets her bag onto the floor two meters after the hotel door. There is no scent in the room, if she concentrates and lifts her chin higher, maybe there’s a hint of chlorine.

“We all ate before going.” Juyeon throws himself onto the other side.

“Yeah, but I’m still growing.” Eric complains and falls in parallel to Juyeon.

“You don’t.” Juyeon smiles while looking at the ceiling before his head falls to the side in which the both of them share. Eric too lets his eyes wither from the spotlight shine and turn to the subject in which he falls onto.

“Ha, really funny.” Eric deadpans, takes the pillow that’s half a meter from his head. When he holds the pillow in the air, gravity takes it down to the mattress in which Eric aims towards Juyeon. The older one takes his own elbow as a protective hold before his eyes. Sounds of laughter erupt from that side of the room as Eric goes onto knees to hit Juyeon fervently.

Y/n stands in parallel to the mirror before the bathroom. For the first time she smiles in what feels like years. The sheet edges loosens from the mattress when Juyeon only vaguely tries to protect his body from the hits. Even then, his elbow comes back down to its side. Only closes his eyelids when the pillow comes close and the smile, only Eric gifts to see, never falters.

A surreal wind goes through the walls, fills the hotel room. It struck her again, in her heart. Human time slows down and despite having a window right before her, that world disappears at the edge of the observable horizon. As the pillow in Eric’s hand falter and comes to lie in his lap, Y/n goes to Juyeon’s bag, opens the zipper and takes out a plastic packaging of a white cream bread. To come up to the bed herself and cross her legs at the end of Juyeon’s feet and diagonally towards Eric, she gives him the bread.

“Oh, thank you, Y/n.” Eric takes it and opens the sealed edge.

“You’re seriously giving him?” Juyeon takes only his head up from the mattress which forces his voice to come out strained.

“Yeah?” Y/n smiles and looks at him.

“He should only get a reward if he has done something good.” Juyeon falls back.

“He has.” She insists.

“Like what?”

“Shut you up.”

Eric laughs and hits the surface of the bed with his free hand. Y/n too smiles at her own comment and the two of them bring their hands to a high five. While the laughs lingers in between the divide of the bed Juyeon shifts onto his stomach and falls flat with his head against the fabric.

When they arrived with the bus at the outer corner of the city, it was already dark. They ran until street signs were rare and seeked for their conservation behind a karaoke bar down the crowded street. At the backside of the building with all bins of alcohol cans and empty plastic bags, they sat between the black synthetics. It rained still, they balanced on their feet even when they had sat there for 20 minutes. At last, Juyeon spoke for the first time since the shout to run behind the corner. After, they took the bus on a lonely waiting platform with no screen on the bus times, just a worn down time table underneath the name.

No one else beside them and a man, two seats before, sat on the bus. And even the man walked off two stops before them as they sat on those demishined seats for as long as the ride let them. When the last stop got called through the speakers, they walked off back into the rain and the sun had fallen. Only those usual lights on row down the street were there to guide. At last when their feet were sore from escaping and minds had become numb from all the oversaturation they came to a hotel in gloom.

They couldn’t tell if it was because of the dark or the hotel building simply hadn’t been renovated since it first came to fruition on this street. Either way, three of the eight letters before the entrance didn’t work.

After barely an hour after closing the door to their small room in which Juyeon used his extra money for, they took on other clothes and went to lie in bed. Eric’s closest to the window, Y/n in the divide where the two beds leave a limited gap and Juyeon thereafter. She feels slightly stale when in between the two of them, but it loosens off quickly when Eric starts talking about stories from when he was younger and what he and his friends did the month ago. The two older listens as his words become incomprehensible in sleep.

Suddenly it's just the two of them again. Y/n’s quiet when Juyeon starts coughing a little, he takes his arm up to his mouth and she turns their shared side to see him caress the underside of his throat. When they were running from the officers and jumped behind the back alley, Juyeon too reached deeply for air and desperately seemed to mute his coughs while waiting. She blinks a few times while still staring at him, before speaking.

“You’re okay, Juyeon?” Only a mere part of all the worries and guilt in her heart.

“Yeah.” He coughs once more before guiding his arm underneath his head, “Just a little sick I think.” He smiles and scratches his hair, “The rain was really cold.”

His voice only reaches the span of the closest two pillows when he takes his hands underneath his chin and turns to the side, “I think I need a hug.”

Y/n squints her eyes and looks at his smile before whispering, “Really? "Right now?”

Juyeon’s request when in a strange bed while his face circulates rounds on the internet, it feels rather inappropriate in her book. Though, she laughs as the fringe falls diagonally over his vast eyes. There’s a point in pearl essence when he looks at her in which she has no choice but to reach for his face. The same echoing words in the back of her mind as the night they spent together in each other's arms comes back. It taunts her to divide space in between them. But even when not only this Earth, but the universe, chases them, she still finds her soul melting of tenderness when he looks at her.

“You are a bit cold.” She smiles and caresses his head.

Juyeon hums and closes his eyes, shifts his head on the pillow before bringing himself closer. His head comes underneath her chin as her arms closer around him and his breath comes against her chest.

For every touch of her hand against his essence, and each time her warmth pulsates out of her veins and spreads across his own, he can feel the ways in his throat become choked. Ribbons with sharp edges tightens around his heart. He closes his eyes painfully, forces his head closer to her chest, as if to merge with her, the pain will cease. All the world’s seems to desperately stand in his way, he thinks in this rain drowned night. He can’t look forward to the morning. When any road can take him there, he closes his eyes and wishes to remember this moment, her arms, her presence, even in death. The green plantations in between the frozen cracks might grow from this weather, and so do the lilac petals in his heart.

There’s a sharp edge of yellow light. It cuts through the dark room in a single divide and traces up the floor to her face where it climbs up the wall. Y/n opens her eyes just so that a liminal shade of the outer world can be conceived. The light comes from the open bathroom door diagonally from her. As hands spread across the pillow behind her to let the weight off the mattress, Y/n hears violent dry coughing coming from the gap.

She looks to the left where the side of the window stands, Eric still sleeps. Juyeon’s pillow has creases left of him and the sheet is folded from where he left. Another severe cough occurs from that room and Y/n folds the fabric once more as the warmth accumulated underneath, lowers in degrees while free. Gently while rubbing her eyes with her left hand, Y/n takes the other on the frame while adjusting her eyes to the light.

“Juyeon?”

He depends on the sink with his hands. Upper body leaned forward over the crater while his back replicates the harsh sounds coming from his throat. Y/n tilts her head to see his face, but neither standard vision or mirror angle contravene her fear. The cough brutally tears on the insides of his throat, it too causes delusive discomfort in her own body.

His back straightens suddenly and Juyeon turns his head over. She stays in continued silence as he looks at her with eyes of liquid layers and redness underneath. He takes his arm up to his mouth to cough again before he takes a step closer and directs his body to come in between the bounded space of frame and body.

“I’m okay.” He says hastily without making eye contact.

Y/n follows the sight of his back silhouette returning into the hotel room. She lets go of the door frame, takes a single step to the sink. A dead garden with only traces left, deep lilac petals. It decorates the sink by erratic trails from the mit where water comes down. The air in her own chest twined amidst two ways. In contrast to the exhausted motions from the bathroom, she forces the door up even wider until it hits the other wall. Juyeon with arms against the mirror at the bed end, and she rushes towards him.

“Juyeon!” With her hands on his shoulders, she pulls him closer to turn him in a direction to let his front face hers. But he stubbornly leans heavier against the mirror and only his left shoulder comes two centimeters closer before returning back.

“Juyeon!” Her voice is loud in a room compressed beside ten others at the end of the city. She refuses to close her eyes when he coughs again and eventually, they plummet to the ground when he can’t bear the flowers rotting his body. Juyeon's face hides before the carpet.

Y/n sinks to her knees, takes one hand under his chin and the other at the back of his head. To force his face up from the floor and see lilac vibrancy in gloom consume his features. A single petal falls from the end of his lips down to her thigh. Now when it traces her essence, she feels so cruel for being optimistic.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” The hand on his hair comes to his cheek where she touches the red coloration with her thumb. Let the gentle pressure create white patterns before it returns to that color.

“I- '' Juyeon coughs again and Y/n takes her other arm on his shoulder when he comes down to her lap. His hair scattered across her legs and the ceiling above him withers in view.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Y/n repeats in which he looks remorsefully up at her from her embrace.

“I’m sorry, Y/n.”

Tears threaten at the borderline under her eyes. Y/n shakes her head and reaches for the backpack behind her. This entire life, she wished to still be holy, but she realizes she might never be, when one grip the arrow. She holds it in her right hand, above his fragile heart. Juyeon’s eyes widen as the sharp knife aims at his vulnerable. He takes her wrist from below and speaks through the petals.

“What are you doing?” He coughs.

“I need to save you, Juyeon!” Y/n holds against him with her own strength.

Her voice becomes softer, “It won’t hurt, Juyeon, I would never hurt you.” The single tear comes off her eye and falls onto his cheek. He pity her so deeply. But he wishes to be destroyed, eradicated by fate, if only he follows her for an eternity.

“I-I don’t want to.” His voice is sore when he speaks and she shakes her head.

“You’re gonna die, Juyeon.” She weighs down the arrow even harder, “I can’t let you die.”

Shift of fabrics comes from the bed above them. Juyeon closes his eyes. Even in no visual presence he feels her raging strength extraordinarily work against him. A single glimpse into the future and his heart aches, maybe even more than the tearing in his throat. He doesn’t know where the second arrow will land after she strikes him, but he might as well be buried six feet under if it’s because of her.

“I love you, Y/n.” He breathes heavily while his eyes lie underneath their lids. Y/n takes his shoulder with her other hand, shakes him fervently,

“Juyeon!”

“I just want to hear you…” He whispers and Y/n forces her eyes close when the tears run down her skin. The grip on the arrow becomes weak from both directions as she leans her face on his chest. Y/n shakes her head because fate betrayed her, gruesome and vengefully again.

There’s faintly rain shatter. The dark gray clouds can be seen from this angle but one can only insinuate the existence of a cityscape at the end of the frame. Each of the droplets running down against the glass becomes further precise. He traces the outline of one of them, like his youth, following its tail to the very end where it shatters into pieces.

“He’s awake!”

A voice that echoes in the strange room, it shares the same stardust as his. He turns from the window and the yellow shine from spotlight sources blinds him. Juyeon squints his eyes as his head comes flat against the hard pillow and a silhouette covers the light in the ceiling.

“Juyeon?” His voice is delicate, softer than in his memories. He knits his eyebrows and answers the one above him.

“Yeah?”

It’s only a word, pronounced sore and lost, but either way, it creates a smile on the boy above. As if too fragile to touch, he reaches his hand down to his shoulder and shakes him gently.

“It’s Eric!” He smiles still.

Juyeon still squints his eyes, “Yeah, I know.”

“Juyeon?”

The door from the other end of the room opens. There’s a wall before, in which two hands hold it while someone peaks through. A doctor comes before her, stands a meter behind Eric while the girl who spoke his name closes in.

Another second passes before he speaks her name. His hand comes down to his chest and he rises from the bed just a little. The girl walks from the spot at the very end of his feet to the opposite side of Eric. She holds both her hands before her front and leans down to him. He feels cold off her body as if been in the rain he just chased. She holds his shoulders while her head rests beside his. Juyeon closes his eyes and embraces her too.

“I was so worried.” She speaks quietly, so that each breath reaches his ear.

“I’m okay, don’t worry anymore.” He answers whilst hugging her tighter.

On the day Juyeon woke up at the hospital, she had ran to the bus platform in harsh rain after she got the hurried call from Eric that he was in sleep. Y/n only gave him a few hours to accept how she had altered fate, stand beside them in the yellow room whilst the past became forgotten. Juyeon, after waking up, went to the police station, he was on probation for a month, because of illegal firearm use but they did acknowledge self defense and past of no criminal records. Eric lived with Juyeon’s girlfriend at that time.

When visiting him while on probation nearly everyday after school, Eric told him the weeks leading up to the blackout. All while his brother returned to true state, Eric felt inexpressibly alone after walking home. How he lives in the ruins where no one goes.

Since that day, at the hotel where he nearly saw Juyeon die, Eric apologizes a lot for not being present. He wants to tell them that he lives in dreams, and put himself there because her name will never be forgotten. Instead he’s forced to tell the people that there was no Y/n, no love service, no magic, just an accident as Juyeon had gotten a gun curiously, used it to defend himself when a stranger was attacked in an alley. The rest of the story after new years stays, but without Y/n. He doesn’t know how she did it, but even the name of the friend the police got that morning after new years is not hers, but a friend of Juyeon’s.

Now when it’s the end of spring and the edge of summer, he lives with Juyeon again. They meet up with his girlfriend often after Juyeon’s work. In two days, he’ll pass the school entrance for the last time, and think back, on a summer day in the near future. But as he lies in bed at night, he can’t help mourn the loss of that endless winter. Y/n told him that those moments will wither, not feel as intensely as they once did. But he’s still there.

Eric comes home the next day after being out with his friends after school. Juyeon should be home, he thinks, as he’s nowhere to be seen when in the hallway. To see the sofa in the living room but sounds of struggle comes from a half open door opposite the balcony. There’s no sounds from Eric when walks with only his socks into his bedroom. Eric tilts head to see Juyeon’s back in his closet.

“Why are you in my room?” Eric asks and Juyeon looks up from the floor.

“Your closet door is a bit loose.” He pushes the black slide, “It’s soon done.” Juyeon smiles.

Eric nods but doesn’t take away his vision from that corner as a black box sits beside Juyeon. The lid’s off the edge by a centimeter. Eric comes in and lays the bag at the frame before weighing down on the bed edge. Juyeon has laid down the working material and looks at the black box. Eric straightens his posture when he takes it in his hands.

“I’m just curious, I didn’t mean to be nosy, but why do you have this dress?” Juyeon takes off the lid and angles the rectangular frame to showcase its inside. The dress in light blue color, detailed with white lace, is delicately folded so that the square neckline lies in center of the box. Eric bites his lip, hands on his thighs and touches them up and down the cotton fabric. There’s silence for a moment and Juyeon observes the younger’s expression when no words come out.

“Eric?” He let the box down to his lap.

“It’s yours.” He says and finally looks at him.

Juyeon tilts his head.

“Mine?”

Eric nods, “You bought it as a gift, you were supposed to give it to her on New Years.”

Juyeon asks if he means his girlfriend and Eric shakes his head, looks down again. The fingers of his right hand start scratching against the left. A thin layer of skin loosens from the nail binding. He bites his lip again and thinks of all the lone mind echoes.

Eric hasn’t seen Y/n since the day at the hospital. When Juyeon and his girlfriend started talking down in the room, Eric silently escaped and walked around the different floors with stairs in between. There was a door on the highest floor to an outside platform. Eric stood there, feeling a great sense of compassion for the Earth-like-tears. When it felt like everything might have been a dream, Y/n called his name.

To come into her embrace and affirm she’s real. Though, Y/n told him before leaving that her existence is now not a valid part of Juyeon’s world. That there’s just the two. That she promises he’ll not be left at the threshold of two worlds, that this moment in each other's arms isn’t the last. But winter will soon end, and he must accept how the flowers will forget about snow once it is replaced.

Eric breathes, “It’s Y/n.” He finally admits, still looking down.

Juyeon knit his eyebrows, “Y/n?”

Eric nods and a faint smile comes on his lips, “The one you saved, with the gun was Y/n. She lived with us at the end of December and you told me you loved her. You wanted to ask her out at New Years but you never got the time, because then the police searched for you.”

Juyeon listens quietly, opens his mouth but none come to flourish. Instead he shakes his head.

“I wasn’t told that.” He says hurt.

“She told me not to tell you.”

“But the police, the doctors…” He names the people who have affirmed fiction.

Eric starts swinging his feet and smiles again, “It sounds stupid, but Y/n’s not a human.”

Juyeon raises one eyebrow.

“She’s a goddess, you fell in love with the love goddess, and she, in you.”

Juyeon didn’t believe Eric. The younger stubbornly chased after him when Juyeon simply told him, “That’s ridiculous”. To run around every corner of the apartment, even into Juyeon’s room where Eric lied down beside him and reiterated. When Juyeon still persisted, Eric sighed and went up from the bed and out of Juyeon’s room. Went to his own, before coming back with his phone.

“Look, here she is.”

Juyeon turns to Eric’s screen and sees a selfie, presumably he himself has taken of Eric, himself and a girl at the very end. Juyeon’s own phone falls to his stomach and he leans closer to see the picture.

“When’s this?” He asks.

“This winter, in our old apartment.”

Eric scrolls to the next photo which is taken at the store, when they tried out angel outfits. The photo is clearly centered on Eric in his small wings, but Y/n can be seen to the right laughing in her own costume.

“This one’s good.” Eric laughs and scrolls to the next photo in which Y/n holds the pink box on the platform with Juyeon beside her. He throws an awkward peace sign up with half his hair in his face.

“I don’t remember this.” Juyeon tilts with a half smile and takes the phone from Eric’s hand. The younger one comes down fully on the shared pillow as they go through the pictures from that winter.

“She’s the one you wanted to give the dress to.” Eric says eventually.

“Have you met her since?” Juyeon asks at the last picture of them at new year’s.

Eric shakes his head, “No,” He sighs, “She told me that her mother had found her and that she was only allowed a quick visit to meet me.”

Juyeon nods. As if looking at another life when reversing the pictures. But her face, always in the captured stills from the past, insists a dime of all his sensibilities to tell him he cares. Even as the day passes, her face lives like cathedral windows before him.

The moon, lifeless, in shine hanging above the sleeping Earth. It’s been dark for a couple of hours. The sun stays above the city line a second longer for each day that passes.

When no one’s there to verify one's existence, the glass door to the balcony opens. No heavy wind passes through the city streets during this weather, but nonetheless she closes the door back to its frame before taking silent steps against the floor. The shoe material at the tip of her toes makes a pitched sound. Those steps come closer to the left door of two at one wall.

To bring her hand out to the handle without any weight. She lets the shine melt into her own essence before gently forcing it down. Between that space is his room, she stands there for a second to finally see it in all three dimensions. At last, when her eyes trail down the wall details and reach him beneath the soft fabrics. His mere existence is extremely poetic.

He reminds her of the present fragile complexity. How human he makes her feel, she thinks. She brings her hand up to her chest, above the spot of her clothing where underneath all the layers, one can sense the quick pulses. Eventually, she takes a step over the borderline, his features in pale moonlight become all clearer. When he’s so close to her, she hesitantly takes out her hand.

His delicate skin is underneath her fingertips, slowly she pulls them back to her own side. Instead, sits down on the left space beside his hip. The bed sheets crinkles when her weight changes the patterns of the creases. She tilts her head. As if there’s a field drawing them towards each other, she leans over his chest and her face comes as close as it can.

At this mere distance, each of his breath lingers. She had been dying to hear his voice and see his face, but truly her heart aches in bliss when his scent touches her face. It forces her to open closed off memories, may be sun bleached and dust, but it warms her human heart, as a part of him she had forgotten, returns to her. Her hand comes to the side of his pillow as she leans forward. He shifts his head and the beautiful hair scatters in new patterns. That peaceful sensation lasts, until the motions of his head spreads to his eyes and they slowly open.

She immediately backs away, the hand returns to her lap and the sudden motion causes an effect on the rest of the bed. There’s a new emotion in her heart as he forces himself off the mattress and rubs his eye. She is still there, at the edge of his bed, when he looks at her with tired eyes. She wishes for him to fall right back onto the pillow, but he doesn’t, instead he continues to stare at her while the exhaustion from sleep disappears.

She finally stands up from the bed. He looks up at her and trails after when she rushes out of the room. Juyeon is left with his hands on the mattress, blinking a few times, agape his lips.

The person on the bed was a visit from a past life. He nearly wonders if the pictures on Eric’s phone he's been thinking about, might have started haunting him. But there’s a pattern left on the spot where she sat, a real world consequence of her existence.

Juyeon takes the sheets off his body and walks up to the door. The silhouette stands at the outer edge. The glass is against the other wall and her lower body is covered by patterns of metal as she stands with her back against the free fall. A night wind from the moon comes through the open door and touches his warm body. It filtrates the thin fabric of his sleepwear and he takes another step forward. As her right feet disappear beneath the balcony floor, Juyeon speaks.

“Wait!”

The moonlight shines behind her when she turns her eyes from beneath.

He opens mouth and walks closer, “You’re Y/n, right?”

Juyeon takes his right leg higher to pass the doorstep elevation before the cold hard floor of the balcony. She’s leaning with both her hands on the railing which causes her to come in greater height than Juyeon. With still a meter between them, Juyeon looks up to her and asks again.

“You’re Y/n?”

The scene is rather overwhelming for her. Only in imagination has she continued seeing those moon made eyes and voice that causes spring to reach the very isolated, cold corners of her heart. None of the human vocabularies she has learned feels acceptable to answer him with, none withstand the level of adoration her heart feels. So at last, to open up to conversation with him one more time, Y/n nods her head.

As she blinks, the nods become faster, “Yeah, it’s me.”

For the first time, after a season, she sees him smile again, “Hi, Y/n.”

She breathes out and smiles too, “Hi, Juyeon.” Though, she tilts her head and observes the highlights caused from the moon on his face.

“How do you know my name?”

A wind passes them, “Eric told me.” He breathes, “He told me you were a goddess, that you saved my life that day when the police came.”

Y/n looks down for a second, still smiling, “Eric couldn’t keep it in, right?”

“He’s pretty indiscreet. Though I guess you already know that?”

Y/n nods.

There’s a passage of silence while a car drives down the street below them. Juyeon hasn’t taken his eyes off her for even a second, trying to place where in his heart she occupied space and if, when they stand together again, the doors will open again for her.

“Where were you?” He asks which makes Y/n look at him again, “All of spring?”

“With my mother.” She nods slowly, “I’m receiving my punishment…” Y/n looks down before smiling. Yet, she looks as if forced to improvise, he thinks“...I’m allowed to visit Earth more often though, I have an apartment here now.” She pauses, “So I’m at least free from that place.”

Juyeon tilts his head, “Punishment?”

“I escaped Olympus, I interfered a lot with human relationships…” She nods with ocean-heavy-eyes, “My mother was pretty angry.”

Juyeon listens attentively when Y/n trails her eyes away and picks at her fingers.

“You don’t remember, but I did fall in love with you back then. Changed your fate from the disease which I shouldn't have.” She looks down, the smile has slowly vanished with the wind, “So I am forever destined to love you unrequited.” She says as if turning home.

The last sentence falling from her lips, causes a permanent block in whatever way was left in his heart. Like winter comes back in a second, deep frost structures his cathedral heart.

“Unrequited?” He repeats.

Y/n nods, “I will never be able to love anyone else. And you, will never love me.”

Juyeon blinks, “Don’t you have powers?”

Y/n smiles again, laughs a little as she takes an arrow from behind her back. For the first time since he saw her eyes, something else falls in center. The sharp edge shines off the left side from the silver light. He realizes as he looks at it, that it is the same edge that must have struck him.

“I’ll die if I use it and the same on you.” Y/n takes the sharp end against his arm. Juyeon brings it closer to his chest as the edge makes a white mark on his skin before it springs back in color. Y/n lowers her head and the arrow disappears behind her back, as mysteriously as it came.

Juyeon looks at his arm. There’s nothing equivalent in words to describe the slow paced swan song that runs through his veins. But somehow he sees the dejection at the tips of her lips and it shares like grief in his heart. He doesn’t know why, but at last he speaks those words that die to come out in the silence.

“I’m sorry.”

Y/n tilts her head, laughs softly before speaking, “Why are you apologizing?”

“I don’t know.” Juyeon scratches the back of his head, “I wish I didn’t have to leave you to love alone.”

Y/n shakes her head, “Even if you didn’t forget me and everything else, my love would have outlived you by a hundred years.” She pauses and looks at him, like described out of a mythology, “Our love was never destined to be forever.”

Despite standing before each other once again, there’s an undeniable distance. Y/n ‘s heart that desperately longs for Juyeon’s, but there is no lost place. There’s no use in trying. The universe has created an eternal absence, pulling them miles apart even when they’re here, at the same time in the same place. How tragically, he thinks.

“But…I wasn’t punished?” Juyeon knits his eyebrows.

“I mean, kind of.” Y/n says gently, “Though, not in the way I am.”

“But I don’t understand, what was my punishment?”

“Guilt.”

Juyeon tilts his head, “Guilt?”

She smiles weakly, “Cause you’re a good person, Juyeon.” And it slowly fades, “Only good people die with guilt.”

He looks down onto the cold floor of the balcony. There’s tragedy in marrow, cruelly hurts when she thinks of the eternity waiting for her. How the adoration for him will simply not mature. How her heart will search for him, far and wide, even when he’s no longer here.

Y/n swallows, “Anyways,” She shakes her head to let a strand fall beside her face. Her voice tears Juyeon’s eyes up from the floor, “You told me before I saved you…” She pauses to let another wind pass them by.

“...that you loved me. But I never said it back.”

Y/n looks down from the railing, locks eyes again. She reaches deep within, to find maybe even a fragment of him that will remember those words.

“So I want to tell you that I love you too, Juyeon. Not because I’m punished to, but because you loved in a way no one else has done.” She breathes out, “I didn’t quite understand love back then, I couldn’t understand humans,” She smiles weakly, “even when I wanted to save you and you said no, I couldn’t grip my head around why you didn’t want to be saved.” He looks at the goddess with vast eyes when the moonlight is at its brightest behind her.

“But now, when I’m forever punished loving you, I still think that I wouldn’t want it any other way.” She says, “I want to love sincerely even when you don’t love me.”

The lips of his mouth form a faint gape. The reflection of the moon in the left center pupil fades and returns like it's pulsing. He waits for a spark, a falling star or even a firework, but the night stands as still as it always does. Though, with the sincere words she gives him, he wishes there’s a part in his heart that receives it, that can fully comprehend the words she so gently tells him.

Another car passes by and Y/n looks down the detailed street in lights. Her hand comes up before making a sound on the metal railing.

“Well, I think that was all.” The smile she gives him comes as if perfectly out of the photo on Eric’s phone, “Thank you, Juyeon. I’ll protect you and Eric from the bad things, you've been through enough.” She once again takes a foot down the balcony.

“Wait-”

Y/n looks up as he pushes the glass door open again and disappears into the room. Still halfway down, Y/n tries to perceive his shadow behind the frame. Only struggles of doors and paper can be heard from her distance, but at last, Juyeon comes out again. He holds a black paper box with his two hands.

“I don’t remember, but Eric told me I wanted to give this to you on New Year’s, but I never got the chance to.”

Y/n comes up again, reaches her hands out but hesitantly takes them back a centimeter. Juyeon smiles delicately and pushes the box closer to her. To open the lid, he sees her expression fade into brilliance. As if sunrise has come above the horizon, he tilts his head and smiles too. The distance destined between them refuses to let him fully comprehend the gift, but truthfully when she lifts it up, a pure bliss rushes through him.

“You brought it?” Y/n holds the top part of the dress as those burnt memories return.

“Apparently,” He smiles.

As she pulls the fabric a bit higher, a piece of paper reveals itself underneath. Y/n takes her other hand and folds open the letter.

Happy New Year’s, Y/n!

You looked really pretty in that dress so I wanted to give it to you. If I ask you out now, I hope you will wear it.

Love, Juyeon

She reads it over and over until it means visually nothing and ocean edges on her eyes. The choir of lovers that sing in her lone marrow, how each word tears at her strings deeply, “Thank you, Juyeon, thank you.” They shine as she looks back up.

She puts the letter into the box again and closes the lid.

“I’ll treasure it forever, I promise. “

He smiles because she now knows it wasn’t always unrequited. That the mourn and loss wasn’t all for nothing. Though, still in melancholy cause he can’t help her like she saved him. Amidst everything in silence, Juyeon’s eyes widen.

“Oh, I nearly forgot. Eric’s graduation is tomorrow,""do you want to come?”

“Are you sure?” Y/n hesitates.

“Of course.” He smiles, “I think he missed you.”

At those words, she finally nods, embraces the box a bit closer, “Then, I’ll come!”

“Great, meet me on this street at ten tomorrow morning, okay?”

Y/n nods and takes a step down.

“I think you should use the stairs.” Juyeon leans over the railing.

“Oh, right.”

“Eric!”

He turns when his name, pronounced deja vu inducing extreme, trails the high ceiling. The friends in circle stops talking and almost instantly, he recognizes her silhouette, that can overthrow the world, in the crowd.

“Y/n!” The paper in his hands withers off when he meets her halfway there. She closes her eyes when he’s under her arms again. The black suit he has on scratches against her arms. Y/n tells him he’s the most handsome she has ever seen him. She ruffles his head when they let go. Eric would have sulked but couldn't when he had missed her so deeply.

Juyeon came up too and soon after his girlfriend walked through the entrance. Y/n, though, struck her heart that night after Juyeon, didn’t have a chance to see her. As she stood real before her, she smiled fondly and introduced herself. Her tender heart, molten because of the lovers. Though as the two turn to walk down the entrance, and their traces leave Eric Y/n, her cursed soul starts to mourn.

She thinks; if I told you my world stopped when I saw you. You wouldn’t have believed me. You should have known by then that the heaven’s lies in my palms and when you said my name, angels heard it echo.

They say nothing truly disappears, that it just changes. Then, she hopes that if she shouts his name into the black void, it’ll come back to him as an echo. That if she believes in love, help people over the street, pet cats and water her plants, that all that love will reach him someday, in some form.

She hopes, if she lives on, worshiped in history, that if her name gets spoken in the far future, his will too. When we believe there’s nothing left to be made holy, she sincerely begs to tell this tale, to any lovers, that’s left alive.

a/n : that self conscious part of me thinks no one will make it down here, but if you did, thank you!

tagging : @from-izzy

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existentialmagazine · 1 year

Text

Review: Jeremee Bautista’s second indie-folk single ‘Haunt Me Too’ thrives within a deep melancholic bed of woes and lingering love

Emerging indie bedroom-pop and indie-folk artist Jeremee Bautista finds himself taking inspiration from the well-loved works of Phoebe Bridgers, Harrison Whitford and Bon Iver, whilst every one of his tracks spouts blatant creativity and uniqueness alike no other but familiarly warm. Writing about conversations he wishes he could have but fears, Jeremee’s music is intimate and personal, invoking emotion whether you wish to feel or not. Now releasing his second ever single ‘Haunt Me Too’, Jeremee continues these themes of stirring writing and a sombre sound that you can’t help but ache along with and want to hear more.

Nestled between an intro and closing audio of running water, people talking and birds whistling, there’s an immediate grounding to the soundscape of ‘Haunt Me Too’ that makes it feel all the more applicable to your own life, relating experiences and sounds to that of your own losses and from the get-go, tuning you into its tender reality. Then as it has your heart between its hands, Jeremee’s resonant electric guitar plucks are left to reverberate through the vast scene, echoing into the distance with a captivating weight as their isolation parallels with the lyricism’s stark solitude. Later additions of a soft drum kick and bright piano add haunting hums to the delicate sound, encouraging you sway along to the sound that almost errs on a romantic slow dance that’s been muted down to something more pain-stricken. None of this would hit as hard without Jermee’s vocals atop it all however, scaling through a beautiful range as some lines quiver with emotion and connect on an incredibly personal manner, deeply portraying the track’s message with a heaviness that pleads to be felt and heard by someone. Resting at nearing four minutes in length, ‘Haunt Me Too’ manages to dig itself beneath your skin and makes a home within your bones in the short time it gets with you, channeling authenticity and emotion in the purest of forms.

As Jeremee writes from the heart capturing stories and words left unsaid in his thoughtful lyricism, ‘Haunt Me Too’ is no exception to such blatant rawness, this time finding himself reminiscent on a love lost. Carrying the premise of being haunted by the presence of someone you wish you were still with, or perhaps someone no longer alive if you wish to infer so deeply, ‘Haunt Me Too’ is a song candid and heavy in its delivery of heartbreak but not without an edge of romanticism tinged in every line that still bleeds with love. Right from the start bearing lyricism you can’t help but find yourself hurting along to, Jeremee softly reveals ‘Breathing through a tight chest, but I’m leaving some space for yours’ , capturing an inability to move on as he continues to live inside the hopeful bubble of his love returning once more, as well as a physical pain left inside without their missing piece to fill it. However as ‘Haunt Me Too’ progresses it feels that Jeremee’s journey does too, later revealing ‘It hurts me to say, but I try to forget about you’ that whilst moving forward leaves such a melancholic dullness in the heart to hear, almost as though the love carried throughout is one you can’t help but wish to bloom rather than wither away. Intending to make the listener feel like they’re slow dancing with a memory, ‘Haunt Me Too’ resonates with just as much pain and loss as it does a sense of endearment, speaking so tenderly and beautifully on the end of a relationship without any lingering animosity. Even touching upon some darker themes, lines like ‘Darling you scared me to death, you said you didn’t want to live anymore, then laughed like that pain’s gonna leave but at night you’re just screaming alone’ are hard to hear and yet so powerful in Jeremee’s delivery, with ‘Haunt Me Too’ sure to resonate most deeply in its poetic yet personal storytelling. There’s not a moment of ‘Haunt Me Too’ that doesn’t feel a little weighty and all-too-real, and yet Jeremee’s way with words is something you can’t tear yourself away from, marking his place as a songwriter you won’t be forgetting anytime soon.

Check out ‘Haunt Me Too’ for yourself here to explore the heart-wrenching lyrical journey and swaying beauty of Jeremee’s sound!

Written by: Tatiana Whybrow

Photo Credits: Jenny Zhao @j.ennyz

// This coverage was created via Musosoup, #SustainableCurator.

#music #singlereview #jeremeebautista

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danny-chase · 3 years

Photo

Breaking a Promise - Read on AO3

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Titans (Comics), Nightwing (Comics), The New Titans (Comics) Rating: Mature Warnings: Major Character Death Relationships: Dick Grayson/Koriand'r, Dick Grayson/Joseph Wilson Characters: Dick Grayson, Koriand'r (DCU), Joseph Wilson Additional Tags: tw for self harm, Dick Grayson Needs a Hug, Angst, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Canon Divergence, emotional breakdown, Broken Bones, description of injury, star crossed lovers, Flowers, Canonical Character Death, it's Joey guys, I'm Sorry, Swearing, lot of f bombs, POV Dick Grayson, Dick grayson centric, Dick Grayson is bi, Dick Grayson is Bad at Feelings, Dick Grayson is Discowing, Dick Grayson Needs Therapy, Dick Grayson Whump, Angst with a Hopeful Ending, a little bit of fluff near the top, Gardening, when your gf is poly and ships you with someone else, Heartbreak, Heartache, no beta we die like -sobs- Joey, Hurt/Comfort, and then hurt/no comfort to follow it up Series: Part 5 of Bad Things Happen Bingo Summary:

The one where Dick Grayson has his heartbroken twice.

Full story under cut

Two years ago:

“Dick, what about this one?” Kor’i smiled sweetly, positively glowing in the sun. She gestured to a little potted plant sitting in the shade of the bottom rack. Her hair fluttered in the wind, seeming to sweep up his heart as well. Crouching, he gently bumped her shoulder, and she nudged him back. Perfect.

“Why don’t we look over there?” Dick asked, pointing over to another shelf.

“But I like this one.” She pouted, puffing out her bottom lip slightly. He glanced at the little sprout she picked out, his mind happily buzzing as he identified it without looking at the tag – botany lessons with Alfred had paid off.

“Lamprocapnos spectabilis.” He began. Kor’i nuzzled her head on his shoulder, reaching out a hand to stroke the leaves. He grabbed the little tag sticking out of the pot. “This one is of the Valentine variety.”

“Mmm.” She rested her hand back on Dick’s thigh, warmth spreading from the spot. “Tell me more.” He swallowed and complied.

“They’re a perennial – they come back annually. They like full or partial shade, and are native to Siberia, Japan, northern China, and Korea.”

“How big will it get?” She asked, rising to her feet, carrying the plant with her.

“About yay high.” He spread his hands two feet. “But Kor’i, uh, I can’t just give that to Joey it’s-”

“Commonly known as the bleeding heart?” She smiled mischievously. “I don’t see why not, your heart bleeds all the time.” She innocently widened her eyes, batting her eyelashes. “Or is it because it symbolizes love? Do you not love him?” Doubt was as clear in her voice as it was in her face.

“I-” He stammered; he would never cheat. “I love you.” Heat rose to his face. “Only you.”

Kor’i was perfect, she was so loving, always building him up, never tearing him down. Always healing, nurturing, growing seeds of her own – not just in him, she seemed to bring out the best in everyone she met. People basked in her beauty, and he simply basked in the knowledge of her presence. In being loved so fully, so openly and honest. Dick didn’t know if he could ever love anyone more.

“Oh.” Kor’i looked thoughtfully at the clear cerulean sky. “I wouldn’t mind if you… loved someone else too.” He frowned.

“I’m sorry if I made you feel like I did, but Kor’i, you’re the only one for me.” He stood, lightly pecking her on the cheek. She grinned, grabbing his hand, dragging him towards the checkout line.

“I like this one, forget silly earth symbolisms, Joey would love it.”

Dick sighed, following along anyways – she was right, of course, she always was – Joey would love the flowers, they were pals after all, he wouldn’t read too much into it.

One year ago:

A cool breeze snaked its way over the hillside, finding its way around the rock at his back and through his hair – leaving him disheveled in its wake. A chill rain up his spine, goosebumps swiftly decorating his arms. He could feel his hair slowly rise up, standing in a desperate bid to retain heat.

Dick wasn’t sure how long he’d sat there, knees tucked to his chest, head resting on his crossed arms. Too long likely. He should be back to the tower soon – he didn’t want anyone to worry, but after the mess on Tamaran, it was best for him to be alone right now.

He was just… so tired. He’d already destroyed half his punching bags trying to fight the emotion out – which had worked to some extent, leaving his hands throbbing and arms burning. He sprinted as far as he could go before his legs gave out. It had dulled the anger and pain, leaving him worn out and exhausted. The dull ache in his chest returned just as soon as it had left.

He couldn’t bring himself to look at the night sky – he’d come out here for comfort – to watch the waves lap against the rocks from far above and gaze up at the stars. But the stars could never shine brighter than Kor’i, only serving to remind him of what he’d lost when he’d ventured too close to the sun.

It wasn’t fair – Kor’i hadn’t loved Karras though they were together – legally bound, and he was here, light years spanning the distance between those bound by their souls.

He never believed in love in first sight. Not until he’d met her.

He’d always believed in love, though, from the time he was a child – his parents were living proof. It was foolish – his parents had died hadn’t they? Believing in their love until the bitter end, loving their lives, each other, him. It was love that kept them on the trapeze all those years, and that love had killed them.

He sighed, maybe Bruce was right – love wasn’t something compatible with their lifestyle. He never shared himself so fully with others or lost himself so fully either. Always playing cat and mouse with his lovers, never committing, communing with another soul the way he had with Kor’i.

He licked his chapped lips, tasting salt in the air. Light footsteps padded towards him. He curled further in on himself, not in the mood to talk. A rough woolen blanket dropped over his shoulders.

It smelled like crisp green apples, mixed with a hint of cinnamon.

Adeline Wilson had great tastes in laundry detergent – something she’d handed down to her son.

Joey crouched next to him, wrapping an arm around him, offering warmth and comfort. Dick hesitated, mind screaming to recoil, run away – be alone and repress, but heart yearning for the warmth and comfort he always seemed to find in Joey. That same warmth reminded him of Kor’i.

The desire for comfort won out, loosening up, he leaned against Joey’s shoulder. Joey’s chin nestled into the base of his neck; soft puffs of warm, wet air sent tingles down his spine. He raised his head a little dislodging Joey, feeling weirdly uncomfortable – but not displeased – just – he’d think about that later, now wasn’t the time.

Joey quickly backed off, removing his arm. Dick gave him a side glance and for a moment, lost himself in kind emerald eyes. <em>He isn’t Kor’i</em>. Why was that so hard to remember?

It took him a minute to process Joey signs. ‘Your hands.’ He followed his gaze down to his numb fingers. Upon seeing them he was hit by the realization they hurt like hell. He probably should have remembered to wear gloves, or at least wrap them, before taking his frustration out on punching bags.

His right hand had swollen, both had bruises blossoming, his skin rubbed raw, blood freely dripping from busted knuckles.

“Fuck.” He’d be out of the game for at least a month, if he was right about his right pinky – that was a boxer’s fracture. Tendrils of pain crawled out from the spot, his hands throbbing in time to his pulse. Dumb. Dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb. He couldn’t afford to make mistakes like that – the Titan’s needed him!

Joey squeezed his upper arm, ‘let’s go’, he suggested, rising to his feet. Dick bit his lip, internally cursing himself for being such a dumbass. He shakily rose to his feet, immediately hit by a wave of exhaustion. Which in hindsight – he probably shouldn’t have sprinted until he dropped either.

Joey wrapped an arm around his waist, bending slightly to stand under his shoulder and steadying him as the blanket slipped over his shoulders. They left it were it lay – more pressing matters to attend to, but Dick shivered in the cool night without it. He took a few wobbling steps forward – and dumb – his knees gave out.

He never came close to the ground, instead, finding himself lifted into a princess carry. Joey smiled apologetically, with a little shrug. Dick sighed; this was embarrassing. He was eighteen – he should know better – Bruce had taught him better!

“It’s fine, thanks.” He ignored how rough his voice sounded, instead concentrating on the throbbing from his hands, using the pain to block out the ache in his chest. He focused his gaze forward, not thinking about how close he was to Joey, how Kor’i used to carry him this way, how Joey smelled like honeysuckle and lilac, how this was everything he missed – and he just prayed he wasn’t falling in love again – he couldn’t be, no – he just... he was projecting. He just missed Kor’i.

He ignored Donna’s concerned eyebrow raise as they passed her on the way back to the tower. Gar’s whistle as they crossed the living room. The way Joey was so delicate when placing him in the passenger seat of the helicopter, so careful to avoid eye contact, so mindful of his pride.

In the brighter lighting he noticed stark red against Joey’s golden curls. A flower from a bleeding heart had made its way into Joey’s hair. There were gardening gloves in his back pocket

His heart sped up as they took off, he felt weirdly lighter than before – though perhaps he was just dizzy from pain. Joey stared at him, his eyes darker than before, brow set determinedly, but looking pained and a bit melancholic.

“What’s wrong?” Dick asked, feeling guilty for ruining whatever gardening project Joey had evidently come from. A lot was wrong, he was wrong, was asking a stupid question.

The tips of Joey’s lips curled into a frown. ‘Do not do that again’ he pointed at Dick’s broken hands.

Dick shrugged, it was a dumb move, he couldn’t guarantee he’d never break his hand again. He shifted his gaze back through the window. Joey tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Promise.’ Well, if it would keep Joey happy, he wouldn’t make the same mistake twice.

“I promise.” He wouldn’t break his hand as long as he never broke his heart.

Now.

He was a lot of things, but he wasn’t stupid, and he didn’t lack self-awareness. He knew how to bottle his feelings into a jar, create a vacuum seal, and tuck them away on a shelf. The thing was, he also knew eventually he had to deal with the things he compartmentalized.

It had been a month since Joey died. He’d been putting it off. But today…

The bleeding heart had wilted.

The jar fell to the floor and shattered, his heart disintegrating into a million shards with it.

A watering can joined the broken glass on the floor, before he knew what was happening, he was running from Joey’s garden, not knowing where he was going, not sure of his surroundings. His vision narrowed, relying on muscle memory and reflex to avoid crashing.

Crashing was a good way to describe this.

He was right there. Looked Joey in the eyes. Watched him become twisted and never even noticed that his beloved friend was going through things no one should ever go through, slowly destroyed from within, suffocating from a painfully sluggish death before Slade made the final move.

“FUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCCK!” Birds flapped away as he screamed at the sky, at the world for letting this happen. Joey never knew – he never told him – was too scared that this would – that he would –

WHY DID THINGS HURT SO MUCH HE SWORE NOT TO LOVE ANYONE LIKE HER AGAIN-

*CRACK*

He broke a tree, feeling bone snap against splintered bark.

He froze, staring at his right pinky, and laughed.

So much for promises.

Laughs turned to sobs, knees buckling as he fell to the forest floor – sitting on his heels before flopping to his back. Staring up at the baby blue sky, cumulus clouds drifted by without a care in the world, laughing at him, mocking him from the high heavens.

Tears flowed freely, nature as the only witness.

His heart wasn’t supposed to break like this, he’d locked it away long ago, he wasn’t supposed to care about people like this anymore, that wasn’t in the fucking plan. He’d restrained himself, time and time again, turned down offers, avoided hanging out – he did everything he was supposed to do to not fall in love again.

And absolutely none of it mattered.

Love had mattered – fuck love for being like this – fuck Bruce for making him believe he could live like him – fuck the world – fuck Joey – fuck Kor’i – fuck everything. Fuck whoever he was supposed to be, his training, his painstaking control of his emotions.

He pounded the ground with his good hand, promises could be broken, but he wouldn’t break – not today – he didn’t have time. He could be dead today, next week, fuck – half the Titans were dead, Jason was dead, he couldn’t waste time like this - his life was going to be short.

His life was going to fucking short and he needed to pull himself together – he had family to get back to. He had people he loved – if his heart was going to break anyways – he was so FUCKING stupid.

Drowning in regret, he slammed the ground again, hard enough for the shockwaves to jar his broken hand. Feeling pain was better than feeling this – because fuck – fuck – he loved Joey. He loved Joey and Kor’i and they were both gone and nothing was okay anymore. Joey never even knew. Never even knew – and it was all his fault – and he never knew how much he mattered – never knew how when he smiled it everything around him dulled in comparison or how when they talked it was like he had known him his all life.

He never knew.

And would never know.

He focused on taking painful breaths sobbing himself silly, laughing till he couldn’t breathe, and crying until he couldn’t feel. Time passed in a vacuum, hysteria waxing and waning until he ran out of tears to cry.

He rolled over, pressing himself up, wiping his face on his shirt, ignoring the familiar pain creeping up his arm.

He made a new promise because well, fuck the last one didn’t work out so he might as well start over. Giant pines towered over him standing tall as silent witnesses. He swore on the living along with the dead, any that would listen really – he didn’t care - he couldn’t keep living like this.

“Whoever I love will know.” He whispered the words as a sacred oath, finding an odd sense of solace. He paused, letting the words hang in the air as if imbuing them with some sort of power.

Stumbling forward, he made his way back home.

#bad things happen bingo #titans #batfam #ntt #dick grayson #joey wilson #koriand'r #dickkory #dickjoey #tw heartbreak #nightwing #discowing era lol #my writing

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crimsonandcloverwrites · 3 years

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bhah ch8 reread as fast as i can before ch11 arrives help

aww Dani nervous for Jamie’s big race is so cute

i love Dani’s whole photography thing n her wanting to document their lives it’s so sweet

i’m suddenly stuck on the whole blue as a theme thing n now I’m noticing it everywhere/remembering their tent was blue and now their school colours are blue and Dani’s car is blue and I think Jamie’s house is blue. and of course THE SCRUNCHIE

god I love track star Jamie

flip these two are cute together

‘a favour for good luck’ god idk why this gets me so much I think like... Dani giving her this little piece of herself is so wholesome but weirdly loaded i just love it

the carson eddie banter is so funny sdkdhfgj

Dani is such a lil ball of emotions I’m obsessed w her feeling a million things while she watches Jamie

she’s a winner baby!!

also love that this is her setting the record that was mentioned in the prev chapter we love lil details being followed through

Jamie going straight for Dani when she won god that’s so cute

aw Jamie gets a kiss (and a whole gay crisis lol) for her win how sweet

oh no the beginnings of Dani and Eddie

pls this is so soft Carson and Judy so proud of Jamie

I just ate so many carbs I am finally properly fueled for this reading sprint (solidarity w Jamie)

aw Nan quietly proud of her

fkjdfh Dani and Jamie playing footsies at the table

god Nan n Jamie are such a force together truly terrifying to be stuck in the middle of I’m sure. Also fuuuck cld u imagine grown up Jamie and Nan interacting and Jamie in particular being a bit more chilled out and them getting along a lot better but finding their way back to silly little bickering arguments that are really just them knowing they can do that w each other and still be ok at the end of the day bc they love each other ouch it hurts to think about :(

lmao Jamie losing her mind at the sight of Dani in a towel lol I can just imagine her having the same reaction when they’re together too

oooh is the watch from Jamie’s great uncle (? Nan’s brother that she was named for right?) that’s so cool

ugh I want Dani to get her travel adventures so bad

god everytime Dani touches Jamie or says something really sweet or just gives her a look Jamie is suffering so bad

THE MIXTAPE (LITTLE BLUE DUDE SCREAMING AT THE SKY.MEME)

oh god they’re really just gonna curl up in Jamie’s bed and listen to this declaration of love mixtape while Jamie plays with Dani’s hair hold on a minute wait a second

oh no the eddie of it all

aw he brought her flowers (like I am not here for their relationship overall but he does do some sweet things sometimes and he does clearly care abt her)

ugh of course Jamie helped pick them out tho this whole situation is so complicated

god I’m so sad for both of them that their relationship ended up like this. Dani loses that friendship she cherishes so much when it becomes something else she never wanted and Eddie is in love w a girl who will never love him back that way. it really is heartbreaking

oh god the house party time for chaos

Jamie my beloved. sdkjfhsdkjfh and Roger trying to put the moves on her pls this will never stop being funny to me

ugh Dani already feeling so trapped in this life I hate it I hate it

Jamie fiddling w the coin necklace while she watches Dani n Eddie together feels like... she knows she’s losing Dani on some level ouch my heart

is this when Jamie was telling Ed of for letting Dani get drunk wdjkfhdj always the protector aw

she’s still wearing Dani’s scrunchie oh my god. u may have her hand ed but u will never have her hair ties

Dani’s dress MORE BLUE

this is such an interesting event w them like they’re best friends and they’re together so much but they avoid each other for half the party it’s so like... indicative I guess of things changing between them hmmmm

cursed spin the bottle. poor Dani

the zippo lighter. i love seeing things from the box in these chapters. like a gay scavenger hunt

the inadvertent cigarette kiss oh my god. also a little bit like... Jamie just leaning into the pain huh??? I get to put my lips where her lips were but it’s around this thing that has the potential to kill me. god the implications

a little fireside cuddling w ur soulmate ur never gonna kiss how romantic

the sandalwood. I fuckin love that she held onto this scent after Dani told her she smells nice one time. gays really do be like that huh

god this really is the softest moment

christ that almost kiss is so intense how did they just carry on as normal after that I would have died

lol “did i interrupt something?” bro........

dsfkjhdkj Jamie GROWLING at him hahhahahahhaha

oof Dani just wants more of her. I love there was the mention of her carefully constructed walls crumbling and now she’s just like... in this little bubble of almost with her n trying so hard to hold onto that in any way she can

and now she’s back w eddie ouch I hate watching the things she wants slipping out of her grasp

lmao Eddie not putting his arm around Dani when Jamie is there. she really put the fear of god in him I love this angry little lesbian so much

poor Carson being dragged to sports games like “no I’m gay I can’t”

lmao the pair of them trying to be sneaky smoking around the corner (and also having more Moments god the tension of it all)

oooh this Orpheus and Eurydice ref spicy (also fuck this was the beginning of her actually losing Jamie huh god the storytelling... *chef’s kiss*)

oh no Nan :(

god Karen is so awful how could u just break the news to your kid like that

it’s only pain hours from here on out huh

poor Jamie god my heart breaks

something about Dani saying she’s sorry and Jamie just saying she has to go put Mikey to bed fucking breaks me. the fact she’s just lost everything, her home and the stability she was missing from her childhood that she got to have for such a short time, and she can probably barely even process it but all she knows is she has to take care of Mikey. fuck

god her destroying her bike because she’s just so devestated but anger and destruction is easier to feel than being sad.... ouch

“You don’t - you don’t have to feel anything right now. I’ll feel it for you. For the both of us” how dare u make me cry like this

god Jamie giving the scrunchie back feels like such a fucking sad little acknowledgement of her deciding she has to do everything on her own noooo

Dani trying to confront her mom god this is all so much for them to be dealing with I am so sad

tiny mikey saying “want nana” so much pain

Jamie just clinging to Dani when they’re sitting in the pew bc it’s the only way she can ask for help right now ow

“Don’t fight me” my fcking heart this chapter is so sad I need a drink

Jamie is far too young to be self-medicating her way through this god this hurts to read.

this chapter has such a melancholic loss of innocence vibe like going from the teenage parties and boys and track meets and only really having to worry about themselves to this massive amount of responsibility on their shoulders when nan dies (like as much as Jamie tries to push her away Dani takes on a huge burden in trying to help her too) it’s so fucking saaaad

Jamie just breaking and finally crying all this out in Dani’s arms holyyyy shit that will never not break my heart

god Jamie just. determined to raise Mikey on her own cause god knows what the alternative is :(

oof the thread of Jamie determined to fix things. baby sometimes u just cant.

Dani trying so hard to hold things together in the ways that she can :*(

god this ending I am in pain. i know it’s ultimately for the best like Jamie and Mikey absolutely could not carry on like that but.... bro... bro..... ouch

ok gonna go cry in the shower for a bit n then i’ll be back for ch9

#bhah #this really was the highest of highs and the lowest of lows #trying to speed read that might have been a mistake

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brooklyins · 3 years

Photo

BIOGRAPHY

brooklyn was born… painfully average. the (far) youngest sibling out of five, her brother became a well known rugby player, her sister a fashion designer, the twins a surgeon and a pilot and she… well, she was lucky to get cs throughout school. she was her parents’ baby girl, they were getting older and after everything they’d watched their other children succeed with, they had high hopes for her. though never vocalized, it was obvious she was letting them down.

outside of her family, her social life was never thriving either. she was an awkward child, her interests were a little too quirky to be ‘in’, and she wasn’t good at approaching people. she’d even force other people to order for her in restaurants if she could. storm was her first real friend, and she looked at him like he hung the moon. eventually zeki and andi came along, and the four of them became the famous four. brooklyn was thrilled to have people she could count on in her life. she’d felt so alone before them, while storm seemed to grow apart from her as he got older she still clung to their friendship, afraid to lose one of the only people she’d ever truly had.

then came david. and, oh, god, david. he was everything she’d ever wanted and then some. while she loved her friends, when they were together there was always the haunting feeling in the back of her mind that if one of them were to be edged out, it would be her.

but david made her feel special. david made her feel like she was something more than average, like she was beautiful and important. she fell hard and she fell fast. he was the first man she ever dated and would likely be her last. she’d planned to marry him one day. when she found out she was pregnant, she was so excited she could hardly contain herself. she didn’t tell anyone at first. she bought several more tests just to make sure. she wasn’t ready to be a mother but in her head, it was perfect. they were going to stay together forever. she was blind to what everyone else could see in david, she didn’t think anything was wrong, she thought he would be happy and they’d live a long, blissful life together… but her dreams were cut short the very day she planned to tell him about their child.

in an instant she had lost everything. she lost all of her friends. she lost david. she lost any hope she had. she lost herself. after the fire, brooklyn locked herself away in her home. she was devastated. mourning. alone. (tw: miscarriage themes) all of the stress led to a painful, horrifying pregnancy. there were times she was convinced she would lose her child. one morning she woke in a pool of blood and she thought that was it, he was gone, the only thing she had left of david. she ended up on bed rest for months, just crying her eyes out and wondering what she did to deserve this, wondering if the next day she would have to bury her unborn baby as well.

fortunately, mathis pulled through. he was her miracle. the moment that she heard him cry her world flipped upside down. she had a purpose, a reason. she held him in the hospital bed and she sobbed, struck with misery and pain and gratefulness. she knew that she was an even bigger disappointment to her parents now, an unmarried mother, but she didn’t care. from there on out her entire life revolved around mathis. perhaps she was a fool to think she could ever have a happy ending but at least she finally, finally found her reason for all of the suffering, each heartbreak, every decision she’d ever made that led her to this moment in her life. her son.

BASIC INFORMATION

FULL NAME: brooklyn camilla ruiz PRONUNCIATION: brooke-lynn uh-lie-z-uh roo-ez MEANING: one who lives near a brook, servant for the temple, son of ruy REASONING: her parents liked the name NICKNAMES: brook, brookie, b PREFERRED NAMES: brooklyn BIRTH DATE: august 18th, 1989 AGE: 31 24 ZODIAC: leo GENDER: female PRONOUNS: she/her ROMANTIC ORIENTATION: biromantic SEXUAL ORIENTATION: bisexual ETHNICITY: spanish, catalan, asturian-leonese, galician

BACKGROUND

BIRTH PLACE: uk HOMETOWN: darkwood EDUCATION LEVEL: high school FATHER: isabella ruiz MOTHER: lorenzo ruiz SIBLINGS: seth ruiz, jade ruiz, lorenzo ruiz ii, michael ruiz CHILDREN: mathis walker PREVIOUS RELATIONSHIPS: david walker

OCCUPATION & INCOME

PRIMARY SOURCE OF INCOME: her job, grocery store clerk SECONDARY SOURCE OF INCOME: the money her parents send TERTIARY SOURCES OF INCOME: n/a CONTENT WITH THEIR JOB OR LACK THERE OF?: no PAST JOBS: n/a SPENDING HABITS: rent, bills, mathis MOST VALUABLE POSSESSION: the pictures she has of david

SKILLS & ABILITIES

PHYSICAL STRENGTH: 6/10 OFFENSE: 6/10 DEFENSE: 6/10 SPEED: 5/10 INTELLIGENCE: 5/10 ACCURACY: 6/10 AGILITY: 5/10 STAMINA: 5/10 TEAMWORK: 6/10 TALENTS: n/a SHORTCOMINGS: delusional LANGUAGES SPOKEN: english, spanish DRIVE?: yes JUMP-STAR A CAR?: yes CHANGE A FLAT TIRE?: yes RIDE A BICYCLE?: yes SWIM?: yes PLAY AN INSTRUMENT?: no PLAY CHESS?: no BRAID HAIR?: yes TIE A TIE?: no PICK A LOCK?: possibly

PHYSICAL APPEARANCE & CHARACTERISTICS

FACECLAIM: priscilla quintana EYE COLOR: green HAIR COLOR: dark brown HAIR TYPE/STYLE: wavy GLASSES/CONTACTS?: reading glasses DOMINANT HAND: right HEIGHT: 5'5 WEIGHT: 115-140 lbs BUILD: slender EXERCISE HABITS: n/a TATTOOS: n/a PEIRCINGS: ear lobes MARKS/SCARS: n/a NOTABLE FEATURES: her always perfect eyebrows USUAL EXPRESSION: resting bitch face CLOTHING STYLE: casual JEWELRY: only earrings ALLERGIES: n/a DIET: if she remembers to eat, it’s whatever is in the cabinet PHYSICAL AILMENTS: n/a

PSYCHOLOGY

ENNEAGRAM TYPE: isfp MORAL ALIGNMENT: chaotic neutral TEMPERAMENT: melancholic ELEMENT: water MENTAL CONDITIONS/DISORDERS: undiagnosed SOCIALBILITY: poor EMOTIONAL STABILITY: god awful OBSESSIONS: david COMPULSIONS: n/a PHOBIAS: does ‘trusting people’ count? ADDICTIONS: david DRUG USE: n/a ALCOHOL USE: rarely PRONE TO VIOLENCE?: uhh sometimes

MANNERISMS

SPEECH STYLE: sometimes chill, sometimes frantic ACCENT: english QUIRKS: wrinkling her nose when she’s truly happy HOBBIES: n/a HABITS: checking on her son constantly NERVOUS TICKS: n/a DRIVES/MOTIVATIONS: mathis FEARS: losing mathis POSITIVE TRAITS: honest, loyal, motherly NEGATIVE TRAITS: cold, neurotic, impulsive SENSE OF HUMOR: witty/sarcastic DO THEY CURSE OFTEN?: ye

FAVORITES

ACTIVITY: crying sleeping playing with her son ANIMAL: hummingbirds BEVERAGE: pepsi BOOK: you’re mum: a little book for mothers (and the people who love them) by liz climo CELEBRITY: n/a COLOR: red DESIGNER: n/a FOOD: mexican cuisine FLOWER: hot lips GEM: rubies HOLIDAY: mother’s day MODE OF TRANSPORTATION: cars MOVIE: coco MUSICAL ARTIST: she used to be a swiftie, doesn’t listen to music much anymore QUOTE/SAYING: “what we have once enjoyed we can never lose, all that we love deeply becomes a part of us” SCENERY: the night sky SCENT: baby powder SPORT: n/a SPORTS TEAM: n/a TELEVISION SHOW: friends WEATHER: soft rainy days VACATION DESTINATION: paris

ATTITUDES

GREATEST DREAM: to see her son succeed in life GREATEST FEAR: losing her son MOST AT EASE WHEN: mathis is asleep next to her or with his head in his lap, she’s running her fingers through his curls, there’s the sound of gentle rain on the rooftop LEAST AT EASE WHEN: mathis is at daycare and she’s away from him WORST POSSIBLE THING THAT COULD HAPPEN: mathis dying, being taken from her BIGGEST ACHIEVEMENT: becoming a single mother BIGGEST REGRET: not saving david’s life MOST EMBARRASSING MOMENT: too many to count tbh BIGGEST SECRET: that she was there during zeki’s garage fire TOP PRIORITIES: mathis

#about.#stats.#biography.

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juleswolverton-hyde · 4 years

Text

Lady Byron (Mark Tuan x Reader)

Genre: Smut, Angst, PwP, Hybrid AU

Pairing: Stepbrother!/Bunny Hybrid!Mark Tuan x stepsister!Reader

Warnings: Step-sibling incest, sub!/bottom!Mark, implied alcohol abuse/alcoholism, Mark in lingerie, voyeurism, unprotected consensual missionary sex (ALWAYS DO IT SAFELY, lads and lasses!), dirty talk, mild swearing/cussing, heartbreak, emotional manipulation.

Summary: Lord Byron once said: ‘’The great art of life is sensation, to feel that we exist, even in pain’’.

And tonight, a girl chasing after the life of the great poet lives by this quote.

Indulging in pleasure.

Yet aware of the consequences.

Nobody can fly to the sun without burning.

Masterlist

Marriages create new families, some of which might turn out to become a mix of cultures that could have clashed at first. However, it can also be an inter-species marriage, a beautiful ceremony that has been lawfully legalized a few years ago so that a human is allowed to wed a hybrid. In the situation pertaining to the latter, it has created an odd yet balanced family consisting of a mother with her daughter who have found themselves and a home in the company of two dark-haired bunnies.

One of which opens the door before keys can be retrieved from the inner pocket of the backpack functioning on Fridays as both a school and work bag. Feverish chocolate locks stand wondering in the illuminated hallway, fluffy ivory ears standing erect in curiosity and causing a sense of grave worry immediately. ‘’Mark? What are you doing out of bed?’’

A palm measures the temperature of the burning forehead, measuring the severeness of the sickness which has begotten the lad and has not died down since it began a week ago. ‘’You’re still burning up.’’

‘’I- I heard you walking towards the door.’’ Which means the window must have been open, likely left so by one of either parents before heading out for dinner together. The plan was originally to take the older stepbrother along as well, but that changed once the illness continuously evoked heavy tossing and spending nights at the bunny’s bedside to make sure some rest is had at least a little bit. If schedule allows it, that same location is settled into to study, read or watch series or dramas together.

However, while those are the most joyous moments, they are also the most painful.

For love is cruel and comes when it wants.

Making the heart eat the apple it should never had.

Fortunately, the knowledge of ever having done so remains covered beneath the theatrics of daily life, feigning ignorance and endeavouring to find contentment in a brother-sister relationship.

While remaining stuck in hollowness.

‘’I have the keys.’’ The remark distracts all thoughts from the spark of glowing joy which treks throughout as fast as lightning, reshuffling focus to the dewy skin leaning into the touch with closed eyes.

‘’I know, but- I- well, ah, uhm.’’ The sentence remains unfinished, a curt happy hum serving as a definite end to the sentence. Withal, thus the arms of cold Logic are tugged on too to, for once and at last, let go of its harsh reasonings with itself.

But it cannot.

It never can nor should.

Ever.

‘’C’mon, let’s go inside before your condition gets worse.’’ Hands come to rest on the lad’s shoulders to coax them into retreating into the house, carefully pushing against them to establish movement. ‘’And let’s close your window upstairs.’’

‘’Ah... yeah.’’ Sheepishly, stumbling steps head backwards, the padding of bare feet on the tiles solely fueling the concern for a worsening of health.

Nevertheless, Mark still seems not to care enough to directly return to his bedroom. Instead, big calloused palms mimic smaller guiding digits and help them out of their coat. ‘’Thanks.’’

‘’Ho- How was work?’’ There apparently continues to be no incentive to go upstairs, striking up conversation while picking the weighty backpack up from beside the front door to place it next to the staircase. Warm long fingers wrap around those which reached out with the initiative to prevent the sick boy from heavy lifting and have found themselves wanting. Thus, feet head to the stone-grey sofa instead of the brother’s bedroom. All the while, an adorable fluffy tail twitches in happiness.

In spite of allowing the brief pause before heading back to bed, the cream blanket always draped over the back of the couch is instead wrapped around a shivering yet extremely heated chest clad in the shade of winter snow. ‘’Same as usual. Busy as hell.’’

‘’You look tired.’’ An obviously worried tone arises in the bunny’s husky voice, the intonation known to precede the fussing which has become a characteristic of the cruel dynamics between step-siblings. Although, Mark cannot help it when the Byronic tendencies are plain to see either in or out of parental sight.

Noticed it in the first glass.

And every river of warm amber to follow.

‘’I’m alright.’’ A fabricated smile endeavours to distract from the conflicted emotions evoked by the statement for how sane, how ‘alright’ is a mind which is in love with a family member? How fairly morally acceptable is it to cherish a boy not related to oneself by blood?

Yes, indeed, how alright am I?

‘’Did you eat?’’ Big palms plant themselves onto the cushions of the sofa, their kindness melting the hardness of the stone fabric as they lean forward with long ears lowered in careful listening. Brows, likely unintentionally, furrow in close examination, anticipating the answer which wants to be heard while looking out for the opposite.

Hearing what does not want to be heard in a dismissive tone. ‘’I’m not hungry.’’

‘’We have leftover noodles. Mom made too much.’’

Hearing Mark mention essentially the parent of a conflicted girl as if she was the rabbit boy’s as well, as if there is shared blood, serves to emphasize the futility of every heartwarming emotion conjured by the obvious concern. It almost brings tears to the eyes, experiencing a broken love once more in the limbo the persona is stuck in. However, enough talent for theatrics has developed over time to be able to fake normalcy and keep an nonchalant tone to speak with while patting wavy locks. ‘’Nah, I’ll just have a cup of tea and call it a night. You, on the other hand, should get back to bed before you get sicker.’’

‘’I will once I’m sure you’ve eaten.’’ Lean howbeit muscled arms cross in defiance as roseate lips pout. The overall display might be called ‘childish’, although it is also adorable to see the bright conviction of being listened to in sparkling eyes.

Another reason to drink.

Stop this. Stop making me fall in love with you.

‘’I’m seriously not hungry. Besides, I won’t die from not eating dinner once.’’

‘’But it- it would ma- ah, eh,’’ the hand running through hair while getting up distracts attention enough from the discussion to let the denial pass, albeit for an unfortunate second for it is stubbornly kept up, ‘’make me feel better.’’

‘’And it would make me feel better if you’re in bed, sleeping the fever off.’’ The beige blanket has fallen from the shoulders, so it is picked up and rearranged under the pleading gaze of the lovely young man.

That was supposed to be the end of the conversation, but a heated calloused palm wrapping around the wrist clearly has more to say. Or, rather, it needs more assurance that bad habits are not given into. ‘’Will it really be tea?’’

‘’What do you mean?’’ Faking ignorance, the head tilts to the side in wonder even though it is plain in the concerned tone what is actually insinuated.

Long white fluffy ears lower in sadness, lying almost flat against the scalp, as a gentle tug asks for a return to the sofa if not willing to sit on a familiar lap. It is a kindness, of course, but every time a seat has been taken on Mark’s thighs it led to a hug from either the front or behind. Shielding, guarding, repressing the wonderful descent into self-ruin. ‘’You’ve been drinking again lately.’’

‘’Only a little bit.’’

‘’You know I- I don’t like it when you drink. Why?’’ The attempt at escaping the grip does not pass under the radar, loosened immediately which leads to an odd disappointment that there is no struggle.It is a misplaced Romantic vision, a lover refusing to let their mistress go, yet it evidently feels as if it should have applied. ‘’Why do you do it? Why drink instead of eating something after work?’’

Could have applied.

But this is the reality.

And it is cruelly cold.

Indifferent.

Family-oriented.

‘’It helps me sleep.’’ Dismissing the disgruntled worry with a heavy heart, the back is turned on the wonderful brother.

It makes me forget how much I love you.

To maintain the role, the shoulders are forced to keep low as steps lead to the kitchen.

To the liquor cabinet.

Salvation from everything.

And him.

Always him.

‘’Your work tires you out more than enough.’’ Stubborn bare toes pad the cherrywood floor, trailing a hopeless mind growing gradually more exhausted with the situation. And when they speak, it is with a desperation begging to be acknowledged. ‘’Remember how many times I’ve carried you upstairs?’’

‘’I recall a few times, yes.’’

Just give up! Don’t fuss over me because I don’t deserve it.

‘’Let me guess, you don’t recall the nights you had a glass or two.’’ Hands ball into fists upon looking over the shoulder with a tired disinterested glance, wishing dearly the stepbrother would simply give up and do as being told. ‘’Or more.’’

‘’No. You’re right,’’ in the open doorway leading to the kitchen, attention is fully turned to the hybrid stepbrother never failing to trod along carefully set invisible boundaries, ‘’I don’t.’’

Because those were the nights I loved you too much.

Chocolate eyes soften upon hearing the melancholic undertone of the response, the fierceness that set them ablaze dimming in the search for a possible reason for the negative demeanour. Fists unravel, loose palms barely containing their restlessness awkwardly plucking at the soft fabric of ashen sweatpants. ‘’You’re running away from something.’’

‘’I’m not.’’

‘’You are. Tell me.’’ A step forward is met by one further into the kitchen, fueling the incomprehension towards a limit that is so clear for one mind. It takes everything within to not combust and apologize for the gesture. To run into secure arms, idiotically confessing what has been going on and hoping for a good outcome. ‘’I’m here for you, you know that.’’

I know, and you would always if you reciprocated my feelings. But you never will.

‘’Mark, go to bed.’’

‘’No.’’

Just go.

‘’Mark.’’

‘’Promise me it will be tea.’’ The silence without answer lasts too long for messy fluffy espresso strands, resorting to harsh shouting without actually meaning to. ‘’Promise me!’’

‘’Go to bed!’’ Now even one’s own voice has elevated to yelling, unable to hide the morally ungrounded irritation any more. There needs to be distance for that is what keeps the ties binding us together healthy and maintains the peace under the roof.

Shocked at the sharp animalistic sneer, the tall slender bunny flinches yet tries to protest. However, without success since lips part and solely a simple though heart-wrenching word comes out. ‘’Y/N…’’

Tears scorch the lashes turning away from the forbidden lover, endeavouring with hardly steady speech to definitely put an end to the conversation before it really goes south. ‘’We’re done talking.’’

‘’Tuck me in.’’ The commanding suggestion of a laughable type of intimacy does nothing to restore the damage of the argument.

In fact, terrible Logic loathes the request and is not shy in making its distaste known. ‘’You’re a grown man so you don’t need me to do so. And now that I think about it, you never did. Then again, you have always been childish.’’

Because it, too, loves the white rabbit whose heart is being shattered to pieces. It is unfair, but the shared suffering keeps us on familiar grounds, relates us in the proper way.

The ice queen holds morals high.

At the cost of fading warmth.

Mark’s voice becomes sorrowfully soft, adorable nose sniffing to maintain a sliver of composure and hide the hurt that is actually mutual. Yet, only the distance between us knows this truth. ‘’What- What are you trying to say?’’

‘’Grow up and leave me alone.’’

I hate us. I hate our story, that I’m forced to treat you this way. I’m sorry.

Despite being fiercely rejected, the sweetheart still tries to establish contact. To still care even though it is not appreciated. ‘’You’re crying.’’

‘Go!’

Back turned on the handsome stepbrother, ears are filled by the noise of quietly crying bare feet removing themselves up the stairs of an empty house. In the meanwhile, the stomach ties itself into a nauseating knot and self-deprecating thoughts naturally come forth from the silence.

The brief sudden sliver of appetite is lost in the salty brooks running over the cheeks of gritted teeth no longer yelling.

The fridge is opened for a second only to be closed without having retrieved anything from it.

There is no roiling boiling water to be turned into tea.

Merely the sweet intoxication of strong liquor.

It is a night where he is loved too much.

And the bottle is the vain escape.

There is something oddly wonderful about finding oneself in the state of being tipsy. Thoughts are enhanced in regards to creativity, daring to dream of what inhibitions suppress and creating perfect food for thought in slumber. It is at times like these when there is full understanding for the philosophy of writing drunk and why it is quite popular among authors. After all, the senses pick up more than they would normally, tuned in to reality on a level that sober Reason forbids.

And thus soft panting coming from the doorway can be heard despite the fabric of the onyx work shirt pulling a temporary impenetrable veil over the room. Nevertheless, when it is lifted and tossed aside on the leather chair in the corner, the curiosity about the source of the lovely desperate sounds is satisfied upon turning around.

Feverish chocolate eyes swiftly avert the steady focus on locks tilting in perverse wonder, the hands causing the spark of interest coming to a sudden halt as long fluffy ivory ears lower in apology. Pearly teeth nibble on the bottom lip, fingers fumbling after abandoning distracting throbbing wanting covered by gorgeous white lace. ‘’Ehm, Y/N, the- there is something I’ve- I’ve been meaning to say for a long time.’’

There should have been loathing towards the cute stammer of rosy cheeks yet the heart cannot bring itself to carry any trace of genuine negativity in its intoxicated state. Then again, it also cannot when not being under the influence of strong alcohol. Thus, sockless feet bridge the distance with calm speech sincerely fascinated with the implication of what wants to be said. ‘’Which is?’’

‘’I- I, ha, heh, ehm, I l- like you.’’ The stuttering goes paired by an adorable twitch of the white fluffy tail revealed by pulled down stone grey sweatpants. Languidly, lashes shift their attention from the floor to a troubled once again on the road to ruin. ‘’A lot. But I, um, now that I’m, well, I want t- to ask something else too... if I- I can.’’

And starting at the beginning of the end, the whiskey drunkenness erases all inhibitions and thus gives room to sensual selfishness unwilling to wait anymore. Fingers caress a ruby cheek, which effectively drives the young man further towards the edge judging by the slight movements behind ivory lace. The game is certainly tempting temptation but is also thoroughly enjoyed as the short breaths of awkward digits clearly want to continue the race to oblivious bliss, likely not minding, enjoying even to be watched while doing so. ‘’Why so shy?’’

‘’Y- You’re my stepsister, but I- I want to…’’ What wants to be said dies away as calloused hands rest themselves on the hips and foreheads rest against each other, older roseate lips suggestively brushing over ones about to give in yet persevering a little longer.

Fingertips glide to and fro over the brother’s jaw, adding fuel to the flame that leaves Mark a buzzing and barely comprehensible mess. ‘’Finish your sentence, bunny boy.’’

Tell me. At least for now, tell me you love me too. That you want this. Us.

‘’Maybe it- it’s because I’m in heat, that I- I’m so blatant but- but I want to have, hm, nice, heh.’’ In clear appreciation of the gesture, an adorable nose nuzzles the palm while sniffing the skin. Whatever scent the bunny finds in it proves effective in driving sanity further towards madness, mouth quietly whimpering pleads of desperation as long fluffy ears lie flat against the skull. ‘’Sex. I want to have sex with you.’’

While the wantonness is lovely to observe, fueling the heat between thighs aided by amber intoxication, attention wanders down to where intricately decorated snowy lace is soaked. The stain leaves little to imagination, showing all that has been hidden thus far beneath pants, towels and sweatpants. ‘’Well, would you look at that.’’

Hypnotized irises follow to where focus has shifted to, hesitant in asking assurance as the worst outcome is expected. ‘’Is... is it weird?’’

‘’No,’’ a headshake denotes the unnecessary worry about disgust, assuring quite the opposite, ‘’not at all. It’s cute.’’

At the compliment, long fluffy ears perk up as raven orbs glisten with pride, drunk on the praise that hangs in the air yet has to be spoken. ‘’Am I pretty?’’

‘’Yes, you are. But you are regardless, especially without clothes. That’s when you’re at your loveliest.’’ Breaths noticeably shorten and come at a greater difficulty as lips ghost over the side of the neck, pecking at and nibbling on the heated yet shivering skin. ‘’A big pretty rabbit.’’

‘’Your white bun bun.’’ A quicksilver smile flashes by when the effect of the intimacy is endeavoured to be estimated by the degree of unfiltered wanting in the youth’s expression. Rosy cheeks, chiselled chest rising and falling swiftly, a breeding frenzy brewing in the dark of misleading innocent eyes. ‘’Yours.’’

‘’Close the door.’’ Teasingly, the ghost of a kiss is presented and adorably eagerly followed, Mark whining when it dawns it is just a mirage. ‘’And take your clothes off.’’

As fast as the wind, the bunny boy closes the door and wriggles out of the messy outfit. Afterwards, digits waving lazily, beckoning to come to bed, are rapidly enveloped and followed. Feeling the rough texture of their skin, created by weightlifting at the local gym that is visited together twice in the week - schedule allowing to go together although Mark can be found there almost daily - is grounding enough to temporarily oppress the romanticism of being tipsy.

This is a one-time happening.

A one-shot.

A full story with a before and after.

An end.

This moment is in medias res for there is nothing after tonight, emotions doomed to echo yet never to hear the other voice they love and cherish answer in the same manner. Even if they do, the sound will change and be mentally moulded to a shape that can be ignored.

Inaudible.

And still, albeit faintly, there.

Although the vagueness will be a mirage because the heart listens.

Always listening for the white rabbit.

Waiting for the day it snows in July.

The day we can be together.

Bare toes languidly sway towards the bed, pulling the stepbrother along when free-falling onto the mattress. Defined arms on either side gripping the sheets as shoulders block out the light, high-pitched moans spill forth as friction is sought against the thigh to calm the throbbing desirous craving. ‘’Can we, mhm, please sk- skip foreplay? I- I promise to be good.’’

A hand cheekily wanders over the back to grab the behind, coaxing out a cute squeak of surprise. ‘’But I need to be wet, baby. Otherwise, I don’t think I can handle such a big boy.’’

‘’Please,’’ a finger rapidly busies itself in the lingering narrowness between bodies, starting to chip away at the ability to form a coherent inebriated thought about starry eyes looking down in sensual urgency, ‘’please. I’m about to combust.’’

Nails dig into the soft skin of the slim boy’s behind, effectively triggering a loss of grip on reality and a wonderful chorus of panted moans accompanied by hot tears that are to hide in the side of the throat. A gorgeous display which is much to the pleasure of a dreamer reaching too closely for the impossible. ‘’Are you, now?’’

Suddenly, the forming of close circles between the thighs halts to be replaced by a filling sensation. Apparently, fluffy ears are still coherent enough to force hips into motion to chase an overstimulated second high after getting lost in earnest. ‘’I- I’m sorry. I- ah! I cou- couldn’t he- help it.

‘’I keep- keep jerking off to you. A- At school, at home, at work. Fuck!’’ Sandstone strands are thrown back in unadulterated voluminous satisfaction, having found the way to pure sensual euphoria for both lovers. Lashes shut tightly and brows furrowed in concentration to remain able to speak with a fleeting voice, the beautiful lad rests himself on the raised left shoulder. ‘’I- I can’t stop. Ca- can’t stop c- cumming.’’

Fluttering hands now also under the influence of the continuous sharp swift advances slide over the heated skin of the back and draw the stepbrother into a tight embrace, one hand holding on to smooth dishevelled locks while the other digs its nails into the shoulder. Regardless of nobody being home, the vulgar secrets want to be kept safe by muffling them and prevent them from being spoken by neck kisses. Nevertheless, some manage to escape the lover’s attempts at silencing oneself and his corrupted mistress. ‘’Y- Your pussy is so, mhm, so creamy. F- Feels good.’’

‘’Make it sloppy, baby.’’ To make up for the painful markings on the shoulder and back, having accidentally drawn a bit of crimson, the thumb caresses the cheek of eyes lost in sheer perverted wonder.

A brief nod is all that can be mustered, the tongue lost in the intoxication of the erotic like the primal nature that has surfaced. Henceforth, no word is spoken in the tail-twisting collision of galaxies, the meeting of panting lips craving fulfilment and the need to be the reason for it.

But everything has a price.

Tiredness.

Of waiting.

Always waiting.

Waiting to be claimed.

To be wanted.

And once again the toll of unrequited love is paid despite the slowing of hips spilling confessions in a voluminous affectionate waterfall when the voice has been recovered. ‘’I love you! I am in love with you! I’m yours!’’

A ruin belongs to no one.

Invisible wax wings are melting.

Fading in the illusion of being speechless.

Yet maintaining false hope if only for a few moments longer.

‘’I’m yours! I want you.’’ Tears of happiness and pleasure streak a wonderfully sweet face believing a lie. ‘’I fucking want you.’’

Holding on to the lie, the possibility of being had.

Of rightfully belonging in the embrace after arms give way when simultaneously stumbling into shared ivory oblivion. Of being able to stay there, chastely talking among the pillows while Mark contently nuzzles the side of the marked neck.

Because the naive comment following the notice of grave concern about discovery has to be correct. There has to be a way that it cannot come true, that we are safe. ‘’They don’t have to know.’’

But, of course, there is no other way nor will there ever be. After all, sins can only be hidden for so long.

‘’Mark, this has to be a one-time happening.’’

At once, the lad rises with reinvigorated strength to add power to a futile argument by showing determined passion. ‘’It doesn’t have to be. I am in love with you and-’’

‘’I love you too, but think about it.’’ Cupping the cheek, logical Reason endeavours to gently destroy the fantasy even the drunken mind was temporarily lost in. ‘’We’re step-siblings, our parents are getting married soon. There’s nothing for us. Nothing but family ties.’’

‘’There is more! As I said, they don’t have to know we’re together as long as we don’t say anything. Let me fuss over you, take care of you.’’ The hush following the chaste kiss that was meant to convince retorts the hopeful expression on the lover’s innocent face, eyes frantically searching for the absent lie in irises knowing better. ‘’Prevent you from self-destruction.’’

‘’I am broken, never been whole. My mind is in fragments, blasted to bits. Unrepairable because the one person who could have been able to fix it shall only destroy it further.’’ The exhaled breath betrays the crumbling of the fanciful attitude denying the truth yet now seeing it once more. Facing it with self-loathing. ‘’You love a ruin.’’

‘’I love a beautiful mind, a woman who continues to amaze and awe me on a daily basis. You’re not a ruin, Y/N, and if you are, I’ll build you up again.’’ Riled up by being dismissed, the ivory dot of fluff of a tail twitches excitedly in clear refusal to give up. ‘’I’ll help you renovate yourself and you can teach me in the progress, show me what you were before and aspire to be.’’

The quick peck is left in unresponsiveness for hope should no longer be falsely given.

We need to wake up from the dream.

‘’And I’ll still love you. I love you, every ego, every fibre of your being. I love you.’’

‘’I don’t want you to build me up, transform me into what I once was. Would you even succeed?’’ Melancholically, a headshake denotes the ridiculous ambition. ‘’No, I don’t think so. The past is the past, meant to be forgotten.’’

‘’It’s not! The past holds memories, moments to remember.’’ Long ears lower against the scalp as shoulders start to shudder, speech turning into begging while bursting out in tears. ‘’I want to remember this.’’

Don’t. You’ll only recall the pain.

‘’It doesn’t for me. Not anymore.’’

The attempt to get up is met by resistance, pushed down into the pillows at once. Nevertheless, when fingers wrap around the wrist to forcefully albeit harmlessly pin the back to the mattress, they fail in their intentions. Because, when looking up with a similar wanting albeit different in it asking to be set free, it is allowed to slip from the sheets.

‘’Where are you going?’’ Like a defeated soldier in a heavy war, Mark props himself up on an elbow while monitoring every movement from the fool barely daring to establish eye contact as a last act of politeness before leaving.

‘’I am a ruin, meant to be forgotten. And you, my dear, you are my sweet destruction.’’

The chamber door closes.

Leaving behind yet another ego.

Icarus loved the sun.

And foolishly tried to fly to her to confess never-ending Love.

He ended up falling when coming too close.

Falling.

Fell.

To meet Love’s end.

‘’I’ll remember this. Forevermore.’’

And the lasting torment of Death.

#GOT7 #GOT7 smut #GOT7 x Reader #Hybrid AU #Mark #Mark Tuan #GOT7 Hybrid AU

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acatbyanyothername9 · 3 years

Text

Creator tag game

I was double tagged by two wonderful friends and writers, so thank you @tessiete and @tree-scapes for tagging me! I apologise for the time it took me to answer

Rules: It’s time to love yourselves! Choose your 5 (ish) favorite works you created in the past year (fics, art, edits, etc.) and link them below to reflect on the amazing things you brought into the world in 2020. Tag as many writers/artists/etc. as you want (fan or original) so we can spread the love and link each other to awesome works!

This is going to be hard! I have written 36 fics including 31 drabbles for october so choosing will not be easy T.T

Let’s start with those drabbles.

Silence lay steadily, Spirits of the past, (Rating T, both Gen and focused on Obi Wan Kenobi) may be two of my favourite drabbles i have ever written in the series. The first prompt was graveyard and it inspired me so much! It was also my first time digging into the psyche of Ben Kenobi during those years on Tatooine. I loved exploring Obi Wan loneliness but also his identity as a “ghost’ because how much this identity fits Obi Wan if we think about it one moment.

Not only on Tatooine where he is the ghost of a culture that has been eradicated from the galaxy, but also during his whole life? Star Wars material always had a knack to make Obi Wan stories about somebody other than him (Jedi Apprentice? It’s much more about Qui Gon’s journey than Oi Wan, same in Master and Apprentice, or even in the movies where he is at the heart of a story that is not HIS). There is something truly heartbreaking about that. Tatooine is also the perfect place to dig into more philosophical considerations away from the sound and fury of the galaxy.

No one will be aware of how many kisses there has been. (Rating : Gen, QuiObi) I had not planned to write this modern AU. Modern AU are not my favourite but this one wouldn’t leave my mind and was sparked by reminisecence of my classics studies. I loved greek and latin and this fic may have the fic I had the most fun writing ever. It basically wrote itself and exploring the dynamic between fussy latin teacher Obi and laidback Ancient Greek teacher Qui was a delight. It’s as if these langages were made for both characters.

As much as I love fake dating, i have a thing for established relationship where the spark of the begining is now a steady flame that warms the characters every day, kept alight by mutual admiration, care, friendship, respect and love. Is this too idealistic? Maybe. But let me dream.

The choice to write from the students POV and take the readers for a ride along with their shenanigans is something i will never regret.

Kin to Sorrow (Rating T, QuiObi) is my Mortis fix-it fic. Also written for the QuiObi backwards bigbang of 2020 this is a very personal fic for some reason. It is very melancholic and bittersweet. @tessiete introduced me to Edna St Vincent Millay’s poetry and i can’t thank her enough. Her poetry is woven through the entire fic like an haunting refrain. Like those whispers that you can only hear when you take a step back from just being in the day-to-day.

I will say this again, nothing makes my hackles rise faster than writers who try to make Obi Wan story about someone else, especially Anakin. Obi Wan had to watch every thing he held dear being torn in the most violent way from his side : his jedi family, Qui Gon, Anakin, Padme, Satine, everything. And yet when the writers bring back Qui Gon for three minutes it’s only about Anakin again? Sorry but no. This won’t do.

This fic was born from the visceral need of having Obi Wan be acknowledged for who he is, to be SEEN. He may be no chosen one but in my eyes that makes him all the more precious. How many of us can claim to be chosen? A very precious few if at all, does that mean that our stories don’t deserve to be told? I am getting philosphical again, but ancient languages, poetry and philosophy are my love and jam.

Hold me like you mean it (Rating T, QuiObi) is a gift fic for the most lovely @kyber-erso. She wanted hugs and I delivered. I love this fic. It was an incredible opportunity to study Qui Gon and Obi Wan’s relationship evolution through vignettes of time. I love hugs, and I think they are very underrated (they are even more precious these days when you can’t kiss or hold hand or whatever other traditional way affection is shown). It is because I’m ace? Maybe. But hugs and cuddles have always been in my opinion one of the supreme show of love and affection be it romantic and platonic.

Writing this fic, I was surprised to see how many different types of hugs there was! And most of them have a name! A hug can say so many different things and can be done in so many different way, but the feeling of warmth and love is something that all hugs convey one way or another. This is what i tried to convey through the fic : the way Qui Gon and Obi Wan love for each other expressed itself throughout their relationship as it grew and changed.

Like a Spell over you (Rating Gen, QuiObi) Can sexy time be Gen rated? This is the crucial question that gave birth to this fic. I am no smut lover and will skip it most of the time. But I also love to write Obi Wan and Qui Gon just being completly bessoted and in awe of the other. As always this is way more soft than spicy but i love it.

Tagging but no pressure at all @punkass-jedi, @acciopudding, @kyber-erso, @lieutenantmittens, @antheiasilva

#fandom lives #tag game #creator tag game

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shreddedparchment · 5 years

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Of Two Minds Pt.04

You’re Not Lacking

05/17/2019

Pairing: Bucky x Reader x Steve Word Count: 7,462

Masterpost Warnings: Smut, unprotected sex, language, fluff, jealousy

A/N: This chapter is a lot of dialogue. It became longer than I thought it would and I am trying to make this as little fantasy-like as possible. As much as I love the fluff that I’ve read when reading poly fics, I’ve always been curious to see a deeper exploration of how the characters get there. I hope this is interesting. And if not, I’m sorry. As always, if you happen to reblog, thanks so much for helping me spread my work! xoxo

Feeling you in his arms, waking up to your cheek pressed against his chest is a feeling unlike Steve has ever felt.

Until this moment, slowly stirring beside you, Steve had not known how deep his desire for you ran. He loves you.

More than loves. He lives for you. It's silly. Living for a dame…no. You’re not a dame. You’re a girl. The girl.

So close to being his girl that Steve can taste it. The taste is sweet, honey toffee and cherries.

Unfortunately, the taste comes with a lick of bitter flavoring. You’re not his girl. In fact, you’re already Bucky's girl. Steve knows he's an asshole for doing this now when he'd had years to say something.

Years to do something about the way he's felt about you, but it wasn’t until you and Bucky were finally together that Steve knew he’d truly messed up. He’d taken you for granted. He’d assumed you’d always be there, at his side. He’d never thought that someone would come along to take you from him.

Yet, if it had to be someone…

Bucky is more worthy of you than most. In fact, Steve knows how good you’ve been for him. You brought him back to life.

Bucky goes outside and shops with you. Goes to the movies with you. Out to eat dinner. To buy groceries. He takes you to parks and all his other favorite spots in the city. And here on the compound, he's smiling more. He's laughing and joking with the team.

He's made himself at home. Something that Steve has been trying to get him to do for ages and it’s that plus the clear feelings you’d had for him that he pushed Bucky to make his move. In order for Bucky to be happy again, really happy, he needed you.

You did that for Bucky. So, Steve knows that he shouldn’t have done it. He shouldn’t have said it. He should have kept his mouth shut no matter how much you asked and gave him those sad confused little eyes, the small pout of your precious lips.

No matter how painful it had been to see the heartbreak in your eyes when you assumed that you’d done something to deserve his cold shoulder, he should have held out.

He couldn't. You're you. How can he deny you anything?

If he concentrates hard enough on the small bit of time in that hotel room when he got to have you, he can ignore the guilt about betraying Bucky and instead he can linger on the soft breath of your moans.

It had all been so rushed. It had all been so frantic that he can remember his lips on yours, harsh and needy. Teeth clashing, tongues wild, fingers curved into claws. Years’ worth of want had clamored up to the surface and exploded all at once.

You deserve better than animalistic passion. You deserve the softness that he feels when he watches you smile and that strange yearning when you sit next to him and your hand is so close all he’d have to do is slide his own over and your fingers would be touching. That need to make you laugh or smile. To give and not receive. He wants you to be happy.

Why did he have to go and complicate everything?

He squeezes you, his hands roving over the soft curves of your sides as he shifts onto his right to pull you closer.

You hum as your own arms wind more securely around him. Your hands reach up along his back. Curling with subtle wonder along the jut of his shoulder blades.

Steve leans down, eyes still closed as he buries his nose into your hair. He inhales, savoring the sweet aroma and you nuzzle up against his lips.

You'd showered last night in his bathroom so you smell like his soap but there are the hints of you, daisies bathed in sunlight. Crisp but alluring jasmine and soft soothing lavender. You’re a bouquet of scents all distinctly you and Steve knows them well—now he knows them intimately.

You slide your right leg between his two and pull yourself closer.

It all feels too good to be true. He doesn’t know what's better, the idea of making love to you or just staying like this forever.

What if Bucky says no? What if can't accept sharing you? If Steve is honest, he’d rather not share you either. Not because he wants to deny Bucky of you, but he can understand the strength of that love. The selfishness to keep it for himself.

He can’t blame Bucky. He won't blame Bucky. If he can’t let you love Steve too and you decide to leave…can Steve let you?

Steve's arms constrict more tightly, and he buries his face into your hair more forcefully. You groan lightly. He's holding you too tight but the thought of losing you forever…

His brow furrows and the pain that cuts him is harsh and razor sharp. It leaves shadows of seething wounds behind, gushing.

You groan again and it wakes Steve a little more. He loosens his arms, presses a kiss to your head, then opens his eyes.

His heart freezes, nerves on edge as he meets steel ice with his own storm blues.

Bucky stands with his hands clenched into fists, metal and flesh, creaking and groaning from effort. With his jaw clenched, he and Steve simply stare at each other.

Steve isn’t sure what to do. Should he let you go? He doesn’t want to.

The look on Bucky's face is unreadable. Stoic in it's frowning concentration.

Steve watches as his eyes wander over the bed and then the two of you. The bed still made. The two of you, still clothed.

His frown is replaced by pained confusion as he processes the sight before him.

When he meets Steve's eyes again, he tilts his head slightly, his long damp hair shifting. He's dressed, wearing dark cargo pants and a navy long sleeve, sleeves pushed up to the elbow.

Steve can almost see the question he's asking. What am I looking at?

Whatever Bucky had expected you and Steve to do here last night. It wasn't this.

Their eyes meet again, and Steve begs Bucky for forgiveness because as much as he hates to see that hurt expression on his best friend’s face, he also can’t seem to let you go. In fact, his arms tighten, and you groan.

“Steve…” You complain and Steve loosens his hold but pulls you in closer so that your face is buried in the crook of his neck.

“Sorry,” He whispers, but you’re already asleep again, deep sleep. You’re so tired after the mission. You hadn’t been sleeping well.

You’d tossed and turned all night, even in Steve’s arms. He knows why.

As you doze deeper into slumber, your lips mutter once more, the same thing they’ve been saying all night.

“Bucky…?” You whisper. It’s so slurred that it’s almost indiscernible but Steve hears it and his hands rush to comfort you, stroking your back with one hand while the other caresses the back of your head.

Bucky’s eyes widen at first then narrow as he takes a step closer but stops as he searches Steve’s eyes. He’ll only find apology. Remorse. Affection. Steve loves Bucky. He’s family.

“Why-?” Bucky begins but you stir. You whimper, searching for the source of the sound so Bucky stops talking and watches you react to it instead.

Steve sees him notice the way your hands curl into fists on Steve’s shirt. The pucker between your eyes. The sad turn of your lips.

When it looks like Bucky can’t take it anymore, he jerks his head towards the door then leaves the room.

It takes Steve a minute to extricate himself from you. You’re so strong when you want to be and getting your arms off him without waking you takes skill. Luckily, Steve has practice in it. Just because it hadn’t been strictly romantic before doesn’t mean that you and he didn’t spend nights together. Mainly on mission but there had been a night or two of falling asleep watching movies.

He’s careful about shutting the door, giving you a long look as he shuts the door. You’re on your back, mouth open as you breathe heavily, almost snoring with exhaustion. Steve can’t help but smile. He’ll make sure to tease you about that later.

Bucky’s already waiting in the living room, standing on the opposite side of the coffee table and Steve wonders if perhaps he’s keeping it between them on purpose. Does he still want to punch him? Steve wouldn’t blame him.

With his arms crossed across his chest, bulging biceps shifting threateningly underneath the navy shirt, Bucky eyes Steve warily. Reading him as if he were trying to see what Steve is hiding though for the first time since Bucky came to live on the compound, Steve isn’t hiding anything.

“What did-?” Bucky begins but he stops himself and he looks down at the coffee table, melancholic shimmer of uncertainty making his steel blue eyes waver. “No. Don’t tell me.”

Steve knows what he’s curious about. “We didn’t do anything, Buck. She came in and she told me that you’re not sure you can do this. Then we fell asleep.”

“Oh.” Bucky sighs, almost with relief.

“She’s been calling your name all night.” Steve admits, feeling a sting of jealousy in his chest. “She hasn’t been sleeping well. Tossing and turning. What you just saw is the deepest she’s slept in days and it's probably because she knows you’re at least close by.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better? That my girlfriend can’t sleep in your arms because she’s worried I can’t share her?” Bucky’s words are biting but true. Still, they make Steve frown.

“I didn’t say that. I just—she’s not happy about this either, Buck. She’s trying to wrap her head around this. Us. This whole situation. It’s not her fault.” Steve argues.

“I didn’t say it was her fault.” Bucky’s voice is ice.

Steve knows that if you could hear them now, you’d be upset. This is exactly what you’re trying to avoid.

“I know it’s my fault.” Steve assures him, taking a step closer but the table is there so this is as far as he can go.

“If you’d just kept your mouth shut-” Bucky looks down at the table, glaring agony and fury cutting Steve deep.

“But I did keep my mouth shut…for years. Even after you moved in here, I kept quiet about how I felt at first because I didn’t want to risk losing her—she was the only thing that grounded me here in this time where nothing was the same and I'd lost everyone. Then I met Sam but by then she’d already started dating so, I stayed quiet. Then you came and she was finally single, but I saw it, the moment you two locked eyes. And you deserved to be happy, Buck.

“How could I do that to you? To her? So, I kept quiet. I pushed her on you. I urged you to make your move and it killed me every time I did. When you came back from the Cayman Islands and I had to watch you finally be with her it was like all my dreams and worst nightmares had come true all at once. My best buddy got his girl…but she was my girl.

“But she wasn’t because I never told her how I felt. And after you two got together, I never could. As much as I wanted to be happy for both of you, I couldn’t help it when the pain became unbearable. So, I did the only thing I could do. I pushed her away. She noticed. She came at me in the hotel and she looked so broken up about it. She wanted to know so desperately why I was acting the way I’ve been acting and I—I know that I should have lied but I didn’t.”

Steve shakes his head but keeps his eyes trained on Bucky’s. He’s going to look his best bud in the eye and tell him all of this honestly. He’s not going to hide.

“I have no excuses to give you, Bucky. I shouldn’t have told her, but I’ve loved her for so long now that I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t in love with her. She’s a part of me. And now that she’s—losing her would kill me, Buck.”

“Do you think that’s going to make me choose to do this? Because you can’t be without her? I don’t need her.” Bucky lies and Steve can see that it’s a lie. “You want her? Take her. I don’t want her.”

This makes Steve angrier than anything that Bucky’s said so far. Angrier than he is at himself. Even though Steve can see that Bucky doesn’t mean it, that he’s just reacting angrily to everything that’s happening, he loves you. Steve knows he does.

“You don’t mean that.” Steve says knowledgeably. “I can see it in your eyes, Buck.”

“The fuck I don’t mean it. Take her.” Bucky says easily, shrugging, arms still shut defensively over his chest. “She’s nothing to me.”

A small gasp turns them both towards the hallway. Steve has never seen that look in your eyes before. He’s never seen you look so vulnerable. So small or so broken. Your lower lip quivers, tearing chunks of flesh from Steve’s heart.

You bite down, shoving the soft flesh between your teeth to keep it from quaking.

“Y/N…” Bucky gasps, regret already saturating his deep tone.

Somehow, tragically, you smile at him despite the tears streaming down your cheeks. “Sorry, I-” Your voice hitches and you shut both eyes to catch your breath.

Both Steve and Bucky seem frozen until you finally speak. “I don’t want you to fight.”

“Y/N, we-” Steve begins, trying to explain that the things being said need to be said if only to air all these emotions out. Bucky’s lashing out. You see that, right? You can’t actually believe what he’s saying.

“It’s okay.” You turn that heartbreaking smile on him. “I-I don’t want t-to be in the way. I’ll just…”

You don’t finish and instead turn to head back down the hallway towards your room. Steve is about to follow but Bucky’s zooming past him before he can take a step.

As you disappear into your bedroom, the door shut behind you, Bucky catches up and tries the handle.

“Y/N? Open the door. I..I didn’t mean what I said, baby doll. You know I love you. Please? Please, let me explain.” He begs, his voice altered with strife.

Steve can only watch, his own regrets flooding forward as he watches the results of his actions. If he’d kept his mouth shut and hadn’t told you that he loves you, then you wouldn’t be crying in your room and Bucky wouldn’t be knocking on your door with his forehead pressed against the wood.

Steve moves as quietly as he can back towards his bedroom, passing yours with Bucky still pleading.

“Y/N? Come on, baby, please open the door. Let me in. I didn’t mean any of it, I promise.” With his best friend’s voice aching, Steve shuts his door to wallow in the consequences of his mistakes.

Bucky knocks as softly as he can.

After what you just heard, he wants to be as gentle as he can with you. He knows that you’re at a disadvantage here. Normally, if you’re upset with him, you’d have kicked his ass by now.

You’ve never been one of those fragile girls that breaks at every obstacle. You’ve overcome everything thrown at you. You’ve risen above the challenges that you’ve come to face but this—this is different.

You’re torn. He knows it’s not easy. He knows that this isn’t fun and games for you either but he’s angry at you and he’s angry at Steve.

After watching you in Steve’s arms all nestled in, sound asleep, Bucky had been sure that he couldn’t do this. He can’t share you. There’s no way. Then you heard him speak and you reacted instantaneously. You uttered his name, even though you were in Steve’s arms, and you searched for him.

He saw Steve tighten his grip to keep you close. He knows that if he’d kept talking that you would have gotten out of that bed and probably come to him. And just like that, Bucky’s uncertain again.

Then Steve told him that you’ve been saying his name all night long. How can he possibly tell you no? He’ll lose you. He’ll hurt you.

He did hurt you. He hadn’t meant it. He’d just been lashing out. He wanted to see if Steve would cave but instead of caving, he doubled down. He called Bucky on his bluff. It’s irritating to see the same love that Bucky feels reflected on his friend’s face for you.

You’re his.

“Baby, please…” Bucky sighs, resting his forehead against the door. He strokes the wood, shuts his eyes, and wishes it was your face. He can hear you sniffling on the other side. “Y/N? Let me explain, please? And if you want me to go, I’ll go. You’re everything to me. I love you.”

The click of the lock sends Bucky’s heart hopping. He stands up straight and quickly twists the knob. He goes in and you’re there, stepping back away from the door with wide eyes, tears still flooding your cheeks.

He shoves the door closed behind him and without hesitation, Bucky rushes towards you, closing the space between you in two large steps. He wraps his arms around you, low on your back. He pulls you tight against his chest and lifts you so that your face is even with his own.

His brow furrowed, he searches your face and sees all of the new insecurities that he’s just created in you. He can see the uncertain shift of your eyes as you look for the truth in his. The tentative way that your hands roll over his shoulders so that you can hold onto him breaks his heart.

I’m an idiot. Bucky chastises himself for the lies he spoke in anger.

“I love you. You hear me?” Bucky demands and the quiver of your lip sends his heart into the pits. “Nothing can change that. Not you loving Steve. Not you kissing him or hugging him. Nothing.”

“But you said-?”

“I was lying. I was angry. He just…he makes me so mad sometimes. He always has. This time it’s more intense. I just wanted to see if he’d cave and he didn’t. The punk clearly loves you though probably not nearly as much as I do.” Bucky likes the light that returns to your eyes.

“Bucky…” You say with light scorn.

“I didn’t mean a word, Y/N. You…I need you. I want you. You’re my everything.” Bucky hopes that it's getting through. How could he be such a moron and say those things. Anger or not, he'll never do that again.

Not only did it hurt you but he does see that uncertainty in your eyes. What if he drives you straight into Steve's arms again? What if you believe him that he doesn’t love you and you just give yourself to Steve?

No. Fuck that.

He mashes his lips against yours, searching your pretty mouth for acceptance. He swirls his tongue along that quivering bottom lip and your surprise quickly changes to relief. Your mouth opens against his and he groans into you, delving deep to kiss you hard.

His need softens after a few moments and when he feels your hands wander up into his hair, he knows he can relax a little.

He pulls back, staring down at your lips then dips back down to give you three pecks.

He loves the way you return them and go chasing the last one for more. With big blooming questions in your eyes, you meet his gaze.

He knows what you’re about to ask and his heart drops because he still doesn’t have an answer for you.

You seem to get that because your fingers fiddle with his hair as you lick your lips.

“You don’t know if you can do it yet, do you?” You ask.

“No.” Bucky sighs. “It's only been a few hours and seeing you in his bed…”

“You saw me sleeping with him?” You ask, and Bucky's surprised by the worry in your face.

“Yeah." But there’s a bright light to that dark moment. “You said my name.”

Despite his clear bragging, you nod. “Of course. Bucky, when you’re not with me I don’t feel right.”

Bucky lowers you slowly and once you're on your feet again, he traces the curves of your sides as your own hands slide down along the shape of his chest.

“I can see that.” Bucky nods, reaching up with his right hand to trace the dark circles of your eyes. You really aren't sleeping well. “But I still need more time.”

You’re crying again, instantly, as you tear your eyes away from his and Bucky is sure that you’re disappointed because he can’t just tell you yes but then you speak.

“I’m so sorry I’m doing this to us, Bucky. I'm…shit.” You sob.

Bucky can’t deny that this is difficult. This is the hardest thing he's had to do in a while. To contemplate sharing the person he loves most in the world—but that's not true is it?

Bucky places one hand on your cheek while he coaxes your chin up with the other. There’s one other person he loves this much. Like family. It's not the same type of love but it's strong and enduring.

When he's got your eyes on him, he smiles. “I don’t blame you for loving Steve, sugar. There was once a time that I tried hard to find him a girl that would love him the way you do. He found her without my help eventually.”

“Peggy.” You realize and Bucky can see the shift of jealousy and insecurity in your eyes. A few moments ago it had been for himself, now it's for Steve.

“She's long gone, Y/N.” Bucky assures you and you frown.

It feels strange to comfort you for Steve. Assuring you that you have nothing to worry about there. However, he does it because Bucky wants you to be happy. He hates that look of self-doubt in your eyes.

You’re perfect. How can you question it. He sees the way Steve looks at you. You’re perfection to him too.

“I know.” You nod. “I just…I also know that I can’t compare. What they had was special.”

Bucky sighs and turns his hand to stroke your cheek with his knuckles.

“You really can’t let him go?” He asks, knowing the answer you’ll give him.

Your eyes water again and Bucky kicks himself for asking.

“Hey, it's okay.” He thumbs your tears away and shakes his head. “Forget I asked. It's alright.”

“Is it?” You demand, voice strained and emotional.

You don’t relent in your stare and he knows you’ll see through him if he tries to lie.

“No.” He admits. “But it will be?”

You sob and shove your face into his chest, burying it against the soft of his shirt while your hands fist it on his back.

He probably shouldn’t be smug but he's glad you’re here, clinging to him instead of Steve.

“I’m sorry you overheard me. I really didn’t mean a single word of it.” Bucky swears, promising from the bottom of his heart.

“I wouldn’t blame you.” You sigh, turning your head to rest your cheek against him instead. “I missed you so much, Bucky.”

He shuts his eyes, loving the way you squeeze him when you say his name.

God, he's missed you. All of you. That reminds him…

He pushes you back a little and you look up to meet his eyes but he's already closing the distance.

He meets your lips with an open mouthed kiss. Wet and wanting as he slides his tongue between them. You welcome him eagerly, pushing yourself up onto your toes and wrap your arms around his neck.

Bucky's body hums as you curve your torso against his own, clearly wanting more contact.

He stirs in his pants, the soft mewl that breaks through the kiss setting his hips on fire.

He slides his metal hand up into your shirt and your skin pimples at the sensation. You pull back, gasping lightly into his open mouth as his touch does things to you. Bucky loves it when you give him those breathy moans.

It's like it’s too good to make sound but your mouth sits open, crying out with pleasure.

“Bucky…” You whimper and it's all he needs. He lifts you, roughly, hooking his hands behind your knees as you grab hold and he carries you to your bed.

He drops you more gently than he picked you up but only just. You bounce and he slides his hands down between your breasts. He palms one then the other.

With one hand he reaches down, shoving your knees apart with lazy flicks of his wrist and you obey. You want him, it seems, as much as he wants you.

He settles himself between you and thrills at the high pitched moan you gasp when he settles his clothed cock along your core.

“I love you.” He promises, bringing his hand up to caress the right side of your face slowly. Loving.

You tilt your head to the side, bite your lip, and Bucky knows that you’re looking for doubt in his eyes. You’re trying to see if he means his words and he does.

“I love you, Bucky. Forever.” You whisper and Bucky can see that you mean it.

He stares at you, eyes relentless and intense as he slides his metal hand along your shirt. He lifts it, up and over until you’re free of it.

He leans down to kiss your exposed collarbone, suckling the flesh when a voice interrupts.

“Mr. Stark would like to know if you plan on joining the team, Sergeant Barnes.” F.R.I.D.A.Y.’s accent still you both and Bucky draws a hiss through his teeth until it turns into a swear.

“Fuck! I forgot. That's why I went into Steve's room. Yeah, F.R.I.D.A.Y. we'll be right there.” Bucky sighs, and begins to pull away but his heart leaps as you wrap your legs around his waist, crossing at the ankles to hold him still.

“No.” You pout, strong legs trapping him.

He knows better than to argue. “F.R.I.D.A.Y. let Steve know about the meeting and tell Stark we're gonna be a little late.”

“We'll be quick.” You promise him and Bucky could care less. He'd stay in this room with you, making love to you until you both died of exhaustion if that's what you wanted.

He pushes himself off of you a bit, just enough to make room for your hands, frantically pulling at his belt. The sharp metal clink fills the room and you’re gasping in anticipation.

Bucky leans down and slips his tongue back into your open mouth as you unzip his pants and finally free him.

His cock erect, you stroke him, slow at first but then faster as Bucky ruts up into your hand.

He pauses, the sudden swell of desire floods into him and his limbs are suddenly fire. Frantic for you. He pulls back, shoving his pants down more and quickly yanks your pajama shorts down to your knees then uses his foot to push them all the way off.

They hang on your foot as he hikes up your leg and in one thrust buries himself slick and throbbing within you.

You nearly scream, moaning so loud that Bucky feels a little guilty and presses his hand over your mouth.

Did Steve hear?

The guilt lasts only a second because you’re writhing beneath him and fuck that, you’re his girl!

He gives you what you want, harsh thrusts, long and deep. It burns through him like molten metal, shaping him and changing him. Every time he's with you and you’re quivering beneath him, something in him changes.

He's tied to you more securely. How can he share this? How can he let anyone else taste this goodness.

“Oh, Bucky, fuck…mmphh.” He silences you with his mouth, falling down on you to bury you beneath him against the bed.

You’re so loud. Despite his declarations of not caring, his mind shoots to Steve and Bucky hopes he's gone down to the meeting already.

The lurid sound of his pounding flesh on flesh, wet noises so dirty it makes Bucky grunt. He picks up the pace, slamming himself into you, against you as hard as he can without breaking you.

“Like that baby doll?” He asks, breaking his kiss because thankfully you’ve fallen back into your soundless gasping. There’s a very quiet whimper if he leans in close enough and the sound of it makes his cock harden, flexing within you. You squirm, toes curling as he wraps his metal arm underneath you to grab your ass and pull you up towards him too.

“Yeah…” You gasp, high and breathy. “Faster, Bucky…”

Bucky stops his thrusting but only to crawl up closer, shoving your legs wider with the spread of his own thighs.

You groan, complaining at the stop but then he starts at twice the speed.

You bite your lip, wrap one arm around his shoulders and slip the other into his waistband to push his pants down further. Bucky's hips stutter as you give his bum a squeeze but he recovers quickly.

Whatever you might say, Bucky knows you’ll want to hear about whatever they’ve learned about your mark down in the Cayman so he slips his hand between your heaving bodies and finds your nub.

You gasp and he flicks it then slowly begins to press down on it, rubbing it in scintillating circles with every thrust.

His breathing shallow, Bucky can feel his hips begin to slow as the band in his belly stretches tight. Without warning, it cuts loose and with one final thrust Bucky grunts as his release fills you, heat and flutters overtake you. He can feel you constrict around him, searching, yearning for release.

He gives himself only a second to relish his orgasm before he's thrusting into you again, his fingers working harder.

It takes only another minute for your nails to dig into the soft flesh of his bottom. You cry out, scream his name, “Bucky!” and Bucky feels himself tense up again.

He floods you once more, filling you to the brim, then falls atop of you ragged breath and thumping heart, your hands still pressing his groin against your own to keep him buried and perfectly nestled within you.

He loves the way you feel beneath him. Your body still shaking. If he wanted you again, he could have you. You’re so pliant, bathed in your effervescent afterglow. You’re excited and happy. He wishes you’d stay like this. His. Perfect and content.

Right now, as he pulls back to look into your eyes, he sees only himself. Your desire is for him only. Is he selfish for wanting to keep it for himself?

Only a few minutes pass and as much as he'd love to simply lay here with you, he knows you. He leans down to cherish your kiss-swollen lips then gets up, kissing your clothed breasts then your stomach before he pulls out of you and rushes to your bathroom.

He comes back with a towel and his pants already done up. You’re good for him. Routine, this time afterwards that you two share.

You lay back, still as he cleans you and he smiles because by the haze in your eyes he can tell that you’re still lost in your lust.

“Wow…we were gone too long.” You sigh.

Bucky chuckles, he agrees that your mission with Steve had indeed been too long. He’d missed your body and your voice. The comfort of your presence.

“That was fast.” You observe.

Bucky knows what you’re thinking. You and he have never had a quickie before but today called for it. He reaches down to finish pulling your shorts off, somehow still hanging from your ankle. He tosses it into the corner by your hamper and watches you peel off your shirt to toss away too.

He keeps watching you as you curl this way and that, arms raised above your head as you enjoy the feel of your soft sheets against your bare naked skin. You’re a Goddess, nude and raw and his.

He doesn’t want to share you yet. With anyone. Not even the rest of the team. You’re so right here in your bed filled with ecstasy and peace.

He lays beside you, his hands finding your sides and stomach. He kisses your skin, savoring the slightly salty taste on your neck from the thin sheen of sweat that has dried up from your romp. Your hands slide gently into his hair. You giggle, and his heart expands. That giggle will be the death of him.

“Your hair is a mess.” You chortle and he slides up further to get closer to your face.

“Yours isn’t so hot either, toots.” Bucky teases, tracing the outside of your jaw. He takes you in, your beauty. You’re astonishing. Clearly not only to him, since Steve wants you. Has wanted you for a long time it seems.

Your body shakes beside him as you giggle, and he nearly jumps you again. Instead however, his brow furrows as he stares at you, unanswered questions tumbling to the forefront.

“What?” You ask, realizing almost instantly that something isn’t right.

While you wait for him to find his voice, he shuts his eyes as you straighten his hair, smoothing it from top to bottom. You even lean in and take a small sniff of it, a quiet purr of pleasure slipping through your lips.

“Is it that I’m not enough?” He opens his eyes and finds you frozen, a look of subdued horror on your face. “I-Maybe I’m wrong, but you seem pretty happy, with me, Y/N.”

“Buck, I am happy with you. So happy.”

“Then why?” Bucky gasps, swallowing hard to shove the lump in his throat as far down as it will go. “Didn’t…You seem so happy right now. Just you and me.”

You sit up and Bucky keeps his hands around your waist, massaging the soft muscle because he can’t stand the idea you being unhappy with him.

“Oh, Bucky.” You grip his hair, yanking on it with intent and then caress the sides, smoothing his hair back so that you can gaze lovingly into his face. “What I’m asking you—This has nothing to do with anything that you might be lacking. You are so sweet. You’re considerate and gentle and rough when I need you to be and you’re everything you should be Bucky. You’re not missing anything. You give me everything that I could possibly need or want.”

Bucky shuts his eyes for a moment because he knows you’re telling the truth. He can see it. He only opens his eyes again because you’re suddenly kissing him. Pressing loving pecks against his lips then up along his chin, cheeks, and finally his eyes where you hold those kisses for two seconds each.

When you pull back, Bucky can’t help the smile that stretches his lips. Despite the smile, he sees worry curving your frowning lips.

“The only way I can explain this is that if it were reversed and I had already been with Steve when you came to live with us, I’d be in exactly the same situation that I’m in now. It might have taken longer because you were such a stubborn ass when you got here.” You pull his ear, hard. He knows you’re still frustrated with him because it took so long for him to give in to the way he’s been feeling for you.

“Sorry.” He whispers but you shake your head at him, before pleasantly tracing the shell of his ear.

“I don’t know what it is about you and Steve, Bucky but you’re both just—Steve is my best friend. He’s been with me through the toughest parts of my life. I’ve told you this.” Bucky knows you have.

“Right.”

“But it’s always been more for me. For both of us apparently, but I didn’t know and now that I do…I want to explore that. I want to love him, freely. And I feel like such a jerk telling you this. I know this is unfair. I know it’s impossible.”

“Well, what does he give you? Is it something that I can’t give you?” He’s surprised by the genuine curiosity in his own tone and you look surprised too. He’s been feeling bitter about all this which is why he lashed out but now that he has you here, naked, at his mercy, affection and commitment pouring from your every pore he wants to try and understand.

“No. Bucky, it’s not about what you can’t give me or that he’s something you aren’t. It’s just that…it’s Steve.” He can see the irritation you’re feeling and his heart stutters. Is he making you hate him?

“I’m sorry. I just—I want to understand. I’ll stop asking.” He sighs.

“No!” You cry, desperately. You tuck his hair back behind his ears as you shift to rest on your knees as you turn to face him. “No. Baby, no. Please don’t shut down. I’m not frustrated with you. I’m frustrated with myself. I didn’t want this to happen. I wasn’t looking for a reason to make you question your worth like this because you mean everything to me. You’re my man.”

Bucky likes the way you shrug, the small grin on your lips.

“You’re the filling in my Pop Tart, if Thor will ever leave us any. The sheath to my knife.” You amend.

“I like the second one better.” He says lazily, reaching out to wrap his arm around your waist. He likes the easy smile you’re wearing now, despite the anxiety in your eyes.

“Steve doesn’t give me anything that you don’t Bucky. But he is different. Things are different with him but not better or worse. He’s just Steve. And I don’t think I can live without either of you. You’re the very breath in my lungs and Steve is the blood in my veins. I’ll die without one of you.” Bucky thinks you’re being slightly dramatic, but he gets what you’re trying to tell him.

“You love him. Right?” You ask, the way your voice rises makes Bucky’s heart ache. Off course he still loves Steve, however much he may not like him at the moment. Steve is his only family.

“Not so much right now.” Bucky grumbles playfully. He doesn’t want you to stop smiling. “I think I get what you’re saying.”

“I didn’t think feeling like this about two different people was possible. The fact that it’s you and Steve kinda feels like karma.” You sigh heavily, shoulders slumped.

“Karma for what?” Bucky asks, intrigued.

You meet his eyes and he sees the hesitation. Even now after several months together, you’re still resistant to letting him in all the way. He can’t blame you. He gave you plenty of reasons not to let him in before. He was rough with you. Cold. He’d pushed you away. Although, if he’s honest, he kinda misses you jumping out from around corners to try and scare him.

“You don’t have to tell me.” He assures you, but he can’t hide the disappointment.

“I killed someone.” The way you rush to say it, your delicious tongue almost tripping over the words, tells him that this is what you’ve been struggling to tell him for a while. “I mean, I’ve killed lots of people on the job, but this was different. I-I could have done something other than kill him, but I didn’t. I gave in to my anger. My hatred.”

“Who-?”

“My dad? Well, stepdad. He hurt my sister. So bad she died, and I was really angry, so I slit his throat.” He sees the fear in your face. Do you really think that something as primal as revenge is going to change the way he feels about you? Have you forgotten who he’d been? The things he did? It’s a miracle that Tony lets him live here much less take part with the team.

“It sounds to me like the asshole deserved it.” Bucky assures you but you’re already shaking your head.

“Steve said the same thing, but I’ve never felt good about it. I was happy for a little while that he was gone. That my sister could rest easy with her life avenged, but I started to have nightmares. Steve helped me with that. And I helped him with his.” You scoot closer so that you’re practically straddling him, his knee pressed against your volcanic core.

If he weren’t so emotionally distracted, he might give in to its call. Instead he wraps his arms around you and holds you against his chest.

“We grew together. Steve doesn’t give me anything that you don’t, but our connection is different. It’s special. Just like yours and mine is. Loving him doesn’t make me love you less. I’m not going to leave you for him, Bucky but I do want to be with him. And I’ve said this so much already, but I know that it isn’t fair to ask you to be okay with that.”

“But you’re going to leave me anyway if I say no?” He asks, his voice low and pained but his arms around you to show you how much he cares.

“I-I don’t know how else to-to deal with all this other than leaving. I can’t be with you when you know that I want to be with Steve, hurting you like that on a daily basis while also hurting Steve by shoving us in his face? And I can’t leave you for him. I don’t know if you think maybe that’s an option or that it might be easy, but it wouldn’t be. I can’t picture my life without you in it like this.” He feels you settle down on his leg more, wrapping your arms around his shoulders. “And if I can’t be with either of you…how can I linger? It would kill all of us I think, if I stayed.”

Bucky’s torn. He can see the logic of what you’re asking, but with your body so perfectly nestled on his lap, he’s having a hard time seeing past the possessiveness of his relationship with you. You’re his girl. That’s his hot spot between your legs. Those pecks you gave him earlier are his pecks. You’ve finally told him about your family—maybe not in depth but enough to open that door. Those are his layers to discover.

He realizes that Steve has already discovered those layers. You’ve already given different parts of yourself to both him and Steve. All you need is Bucky’s approval and you’ll give them all of you? Both of them?

He also can’t deny the happiness that you would give Steve. He hates to admit it, but he sees the way Steve loves you. Now that his eyes are open to it, he’ll be able to always see it. After losing Peggy, how can Bucky deny Steve this bliss?

He has so much to think about.

Bucky is torn.

“I need more time.” He admits and you nod. “But I love you, Y/N. I’m sorry I said what I said. I was being stupid.”

“Again?” You tease, and Bucky reaches down to pinch your bottom.

You give him a small yelp and squirm. The sound makes him smile and you respond in kind by dipping down to kiss his lips.

With no other options, Bucky lets his mind refocus on the now. He gives your bare hips one last caress before he slaps your bottom twice.

“We gotta get down to that meeting. You’ll wanna hear what's being said. I think they found some leads on those drugs.” He tells you and your eyes light up.

Like he knew you’d respond to the news, you’re moving for your dresser quickly. You’re eager to get to the bottom of whatever those drugs are and where they’re being sourced from. Bucky watches you pull on a new pair of underwear, a pair of jeans and a simple white tee.

While you quickly strip your sheets and throw them aside, Bucky makes for the door then turns to wait with his hand extended.

His heart aches with pure stupid love as you scamper towards him and smile up at him as your hand falls into his.

“Let's go.” You urge him and he leads you out with his own grin in place, the knowledge that you’ll be smelling like him until you shower giving him such wicked and slightly petty delight.

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isolophilicmoonchild · 5 years

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~Resuscitation~

You’re seated at the same table at the cozy corner of the same café you first met her senior year-6 years ago. Resting your head on the cold window pane, you look out the one-way glass at all the people carrying on with their lives unbothered by the triumphs and failures of those walking beside them. You wonder how many of them changed or saved lives that day. You marvel at how humans are convinced that the universe revolves around their existence resulting in no time to look into the lives of others, and wonder if any of them know that your very life will change in a week's time. Your eyes land on a random couple across the street walking hand in hand; love evident in their eyes by the way they looked at each other. The look of sheer fondness shone a fire that glowed brighter than yours ever did. Your mind unconsciously wandered into a period of time when your fire burnt with the same ferocity. You remember how at the very beginning of her arrival into your life as friends, she used to look away embarrassed and flustered when you caught her staring. Even after you officially asked her out and labeled your relationship, she never did anything beyond stealing she glances from afar. But as time progressed, she locked eyes with you more often, pulled you into heated kisses out of nowhere, getting bolder and more open with the idea of not being afraid of what people thought of your same-sex relationship and switching roles, leaving you a blushing and stuttering mess. Although she didn’t talk a lot about how much you meant to her, her unwavering gaze spoke volumes. She stared at you almost always when you were looking away or busying yourself with something else. Little did you know how she could spend hours looking at you squinting at your phone screen or scrunch your eyebrows in concentration while working on something. Sometimes you caught her staring and sometimes you didn’t. When you did, you looked at her questioningly at which she’d tell you with a lopsided smile about how she’s not embarrassed at appreciating true beauty and is not in the business of denying true things. You were amused every time she said things like that chucking a pillow at her and laughing it off. But internally you thanked every higher power out there for ending up with someone like her who always provided you with reassurances when your insecurities blinded you. You remember how she dragged you across the bedroom you shared one day to stand in front of a full-length mirror. Snaking her arms around your waist and placing her chin in the crook of your neck, she asked you to describe what you saw in the mirror. Your mind raced with the thoughts of every single thing wrong with you. She hushed you midway knowing that a question like that would send your mind into overdrive. Dragging er nimble fingers along your arms not taking her eyes off yours, she tells you that you couldn’t be more wrong about the things the voices in your head repeated over and over again like a broken stereo. She tells you that the only thing she sees is perfection at its finest. You smile at the mental image of her flashing her classic toothy smile at you after gently twirling you around. Facing you, she leaves a trail of kisses along your neck, leading up to your lips to show her adoration for you repeating how much she loves you. The soft background music muted almost completely by the distant chatter of the café pulls you back to the present timeline. A small laugh escapes your lips bringing about conflicting emotions; one part being the warm and fuzzy feeling of being lucky enough to have a precious memory like that registered in the recesses of your brain and the other being the unbearable pain of how you would never experience that kind of joy again. You didn’t realize that you were crying until the tears rolled down your cheek and stained the glass of the window. Quickly wiping away the evidence of your vulnerability with the back of your sleeve, your eyes scan the room for anyone who might’ve witnessed your moment of weakness; especially her. You heaved a sigh of relief when you don’t see her once red-streaked pixie hair and signature black boots squeaking with every step; the same look she wore as she walked into that very café, bells chiming signaling her arrival for as long as you could remember. Taking a sip of your neglected cup of coffee, you compose yourself, fixing your makeup to hide the cracks of emotion and reattach the seams of the tearing façade you’ve been wearing for quite a while now. You think of how as time wore, the brightly burning fire you once had was now reduced to dying embers losing its glow with each passing day. You look at the ticking of the needles of your wristwatch and sigh. You’re about to leave after being stood up for over 40 minutes when the familiar scent of vanilla hits your nostrils before you even looked up. She was dressed in washed-out ripped jeans and an oversized sweatshirt. Her hair bunched up into a bun on the top of her head had clumps of loose hair peeking out. She traded her black boots for a pair of red sneakers which she claimed suited her better now that she cashed in her leather jacket and t-shirts advertising your favorite bands for a more classier look. You see her lips move with words incoherent to you as you drink in her all-black hair with only the tips showing evidence of the once red ombre. You still remember picking out the pixie style and the wine red color from the catalog, the day she decided to get a haircut on a whim. Almost a year after that day, you found yourself sitting across her at that very table, the fading almost crimson curls resting just below her ears when she told you with pursed lips that she just didn't feel the same about you anymore. With the evidence of all romantic feelings drained from her eyes replaced with a kind of platonic love, she told you that she loved you but not in the way you wanted her to. Teardrops dripped down her chin as she told you that she still needed you as her best friend; her eyes swimming in a mixture of pleading desperation and fear of losing you completely. Swallowing the lump formed in your throat, you hugged her providing assurances that no matter what your label was, you’ll always be by her side loving her the same. A year went by as both of you regressed back to the friendship label from the very beginning; all the while not loving her an inch less. A few months later, she told you about the man she thought was the on. Though your heart cracked every time she told you about their encounters, you couldn’t help but feel content seeing her light up every time her phone chimed with a text from him or the silly twirling of her hair between her fingers when they talked. You were happy for her. You really were. But you couldn’t help but have conflicting emotions when you thought of what could’ve been. Snapping back to reality, you realize that you missed a detail in your observation as she walked in. Her slender fingers which your hands used to home almost always were intertwined with another set of fingers which were evidently not yours. His fingers. Your gaze trailed up the sleeves of his hoodie to see the smiling face of the love of her life staring back at you. She apologizes for being late claiming that they had last-minute preparations to take care of. You smiled back at her brushing it off; all the anger from being stood up dissipating at the sight of her. You can hear your heart shattering as the glimmering sunlight reflected light from the thin band of diamonds wrapped around her ring finger reminding you that in a weeks time she’d go from the status of fiancé to wife with you by her side as the maid of honor. Little did your naïve younger self know that you wouldn’t be the one making that transition. You smile at the both of them tucking back tears watching your first love look at him the way she used to look at you. Her eyes glittering with love and adoration for the person she’d spend the rest of her life with which wasn’t and would never be you. But you thought to yourself that it was okay. You felt unimaginable pain every day but you knew deep within that it’d fade with time. Until you found your “one”, you would feel the pain but that was only human. You were determined to walk out of the café that day leaving behind the part of you that loved her. She would forever be your first love; but not your last. Before that day you were too lost in the land of heartbreak to notice anybody else. You were too busy dwelling in your heartache to notice a certain brunette sitting on the other side of the café looking at you all the while. You were always too busy recounting your past memories to notice how every time you sat on that very table, the mysterious brunette sat on hers every day admiring every feature of yours wondering what could’ve broken you so much that you wore the same melancholic look every single day and wandered in the nooks and crannies of your mind amidst faraway memories. She got her answer seeing you reduce to mush standing before a man and woman she had never seen before. There was something different about your eyes though; something which gave her hope. She could see the pained expression you wore every day but this time paired with a sense of farewell to said memories. She felt a smile grace her lips as she thought to herself that she didn’t have to wait anymore; that you were finally moving on and that she could slowly but surely ease the pain you felt and show you how to love again. As you were getting ready to leave, saying your goodbye to your first.....past love, the brunette stood up and paid for her coffee, put on her coat and without the hesitation she felt about approaching you for the past few months, walked up to you with a beaming smile taking a big leap to change both of your lives for the better.

#writing #writeblr #writers on tumblr #excerpt from a book i'll never write #wlw #love #pride #fluff #angst #fluff ending #drabble

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lilyxareum-blog · 5 years

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( bae joohyun (irene), cisfemale, she / her ) — Welcome back, HAN AREUM. I’m surprised you’re still ( a ) Costume Specialist ! Congrats ! You’re TWENTY-EIGHT years old ? Our agents usually don’t last that long ! :O I see you’ve been given a BORDER COLLIE. Funny how it seems they work harder than you ! Can’t wait for another lovely day of you being KIND. Though, if we’re being honest, we really know you’re more ANXIOUS. Welp, have a good at work, Agent LILY. I really don’t care ! I’m a robot, I have no feelings.

Hello, hello everyone!! Its Lina, your, classic, anxious and panicky mun of Areum that’s always active on discord and never got her pages done (*sobs* I’m sorry, Areum–) I don’t have a plots page nor a bio page for now (Which I SWEAR I’M WORKING ON), as well as a plots page, but I do have her profile up! Here’s some plot ideas, as well as information about Areum that you’d need to know!!

History:

Areum was born Han Areum on 29th March 1991

Born to Seo Youngjin and Han Kang Hwan. She was born a few days early, and surprised her parents by being a girl, so they didn’t have a name ready for her.

A nurse named her–because the newborn was such a pretty baby, and so, lacking sorely in ideas for a great name that would fit their kid, they named her Areum (creative i know lmao–sorry my brain LACKED that creativity)

Han Kang Hwan was a Korean diplomat, and Seo Youngjin was a retired agent from Hwarang. The two had a classic love life that started after a shoulder throw, and Areum was the catalyst that caused her parents to get married.

She has a younger brother who’s 1 year younger than her and they were very close.

On the year she was 16, the family was tracked down and killed in the dead of night– the assassin was an old enemy of her mother’s employed by on of the disgruntled rivals of her father, whom disagreed with Han Kang Hwan upon certain political reforms.

Areum’s brother had grabbed her and shoved her under the bed to protect her, and so she watched the man that killed her family stab her younger brother to death.

Areum was then stabbed severely in the stomach and shoved out of the second storey and onto the lawn below. She ended up almost bleeding out, suffered a severe concussion from where the man had knocked her head into the wall, followed by a broken right arm and a broken left leg. The house was then burned down and she was left to die on the lawn of the mansion.

Because of the incident, Areum has a bumpy scar on her stomach from where the scarred tissue from the stab remains.

Had to go through physical therapy for a year to regain her muscle strength, another year was spent working on her stamina and muscles to make her up to par with the recruitment test.

She was too old for adoption, and so Areum chose to follow the Hwarang agents that had rescued her and applied for Hwarang as a recruit.

Entered as a recruit aged 18, Spent 4 years as a recruit, graduated aged 22 as a field agent, worked as a field agent for 2 years before specialising in the costumes department and working there from then on.

Areum is highly talented in art and music, and has been drawing since she was 5.

Areum debuted as an artist (painting) when she was 11, selling her art pieces under the pseudonym Raye Licht. She thought of making her handle “A Ray of Light” at first, but found it far too much of a mouthful to say easily

Areum still sells paintings under that pseudonym, and hence is rich enough to purchase a mansion + live comfortably and luxuriously for the rest of her life. But she wanted to continue her work in Hwarang.

Can play the piano, violin, flute, and is also great at singing

Technically if she was born in the Joseon era, she’d be a perfect wife + perfect daughter to marry off from a noble family

Areum’s ideal type is someone who’s not afraid to express himself, and is a little aggressive in confessing his feelings, because she’s more passive as well.

Areum has a minimalist tattoo on the middle of her lower back of a lily, which she got right after being given her agent name.

Areum also usually uses money out of her own budget to pay for pple’s expenses, or the expenses inflicted by the costume production, just give her the right reason and she’d fund you (because she’s hella nice)

personality:

Areum is sweet, generous and kind, apart from being lovely.

Was class president and popular in her school back when she had a normal family.

A little naive, and airheaded, gentle, and a soft talker.

When with friends she’s slightly childish, more naive and exuberant

Usually the mood bringer, hypes people up as well as brightens up the room

But alone Areum is silent and melancholic, reflective and understanding.

A lot of people don’t she the dual side of her, because she only shows her bright and happy side to others, because she feels that its her responsibility to liven up the atmosphere since they’re doing such emotionally heavy and taxing work.

Thinks everyone, even grouches are adorable and that each have their own worth.

Is socially anxious and a bit of an overthinker

Highly romantic, swoons easily, easily manipulated esp if she trusts someone

Serial watcher of netflix, and cries as hard as possible when it comes to heartbreaking stories

Areum also doesn’t think that she’s pretty–in her mind, she believes that she’s just average,or less than average.

Areum is also physically affectionate with others, hugs are kind of her thing– she aims to make people feel welcome, so that they wouldn’t find it necessary to be interested to know more about herself.

Career History:

Because her mother was a retired Hwarang agent, she had an agreement with her old comrades that if anything happened to her and her husband, the children would be taken in, so Areum was taken in by Hwarang agents, but had to train herself up to the standards to a recruitment agent to pass.

Had to train really hard for the entire year that she recuperated and just barely made the cut for the team of recruits.

Entered recruitment at aged 18, her physicals were low, but Areum made up to the mark with her intelligence.

Areum holds an IQ of 143, is more of an observant person–and a practiced user of being able to put on a happy go lucky facade so that no one has a clue to what she really feels inside.

No one really knows about Areum’s background or heritage, except that she’s rich, she paints, and that she’s hella good at costume disguise.

Graduated from recruitment at 22, and became a field agent, but unfortunately Areum was GREAT at disguising others, but not great at disguising herself. (Areum: hat, no lense glasses, fluffy sweaters, slippers)

After 2 years of field agent work, and more than one trip ups in disguises because Areum got recognised, Areum decided she was more cut out for costume specialisation rather than field work.

Areum became costume specialist at age 24, and has been working in that spot for 4 years.

Plot Ideas!!

[For her other costume specialist] You cannot believe the naivety of Areum thinking that she’s fine with disguising herself with just fluffy sweaters and a no lense glasses to not be recognised.

All physical, not emotional – Areum has needs just like everyone else, and you’re one of the special people who has seen the more solemn, contemplative side of her, which she doesn’t usually use outside of the bedroom or her own room [fwb connection ; 0/3 filled]

Classic Annoyance – You’re one of the colder friends of Areum. You can’t fathom why she’s so physically affectionate with people, but you’d comfortably say that you two are close with each other. [ friends ; 0/3 filled]

Walk my Dog – Areum has a habit of offering help to others even though she sucks at it, and with her small stature, its hilarious to see a 158cm tall tiny person trying to drag more than two large dogs away from their wayward tracks. You’re one of those individuals that take advantage of that and always ends up walking your dogs with her, because its just adorable watching Areum frazzle up over a bunch of too big dogs that she can’t control

You remind me of him – Areum’s connection and relationship with her younger brother has always been more than extraordinary, even in his death she feels somewhat connected to him. You are the one that reminds Areum of her deceased brother, and Areum does everything she can to protect you from what she perceives to be harm, even if sometimes its rather over the top.

Why Are You Doing This To Me? – Being the overly romantic and sweet, naive person that Areum is, its no doubt to say that she’s been used and manipulated by people before. You’re the person that she has a crush on, and knowing that she has a crush on you, you’re intent on using her for your own needs. Its purely unemotional for you, but entirely emotional for Areum, and she just doesn’t know that you’re using her just yet. [ crush, fwb, angst angst heavy angst in the future]

Again? – One of Areum’s responsibilities is to patch up the costumes that have either been destroyed or ruined in the field work, and you’re one of the more reckless field agents/ recruits that always seem to mangle up your clothes to the point of nearly beyond repair. Its perplexing for Areum, and she’s up to the challenge to make a new piece that you can’t possibly rip, but you always seem to outdo yourself in ripping yourself a new piece of clothing.

Exes, Crushes on Areum/ Romance – this can be plotted however you like it! Areum is pretty open and free when it comes to having either slept together with another agent, or dated another agent before, she’s mostly clueless when it comes to someone crushing on her, or perhaps the idea of something between them that blurs the lines of friendship but they never acted upon it etc. Feel free to hit me up!

#hwarangintro #||☽**OOC: the woman in the moon

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writingsofadream · 6 years

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Masterpiece | Part I

Pairing : Yoongi x Reader

Story : He’s looking for heartbreak and inspiration, and you’re just looking for a new laptop.

Set during the writing and recording period of Love Yourself: Tear. Will involve angst, fluff, and smut. Multiple chapters to follow! 2.3k words in this one :)

♬ ♬ ♬ ♬ ♬ ♬ ♬ ♬ ♬ ♬ ♬ ♬ ♬ ♬ ♬ ♬ ♬ ♬

His hands were a flurry over the keys as he played each note, the individual chords striking through the otherwise silent air. The large dance studio was completely empty, apart from a man dressed in black playing the lonely piano in the corner. Moonlight shone in through the window, illuminating the floor around him and the Big Hit logo plastered to the wall. Another late night. Another song.

Each key is like another piece of the puzzle to Yoongi. And each fits incorrectly. They bounce back at him disobediently, to the point where frustration builds and he slams down the top. The bang echoes monotonously.

Yoongi brings his hands to his face, elbows resting on the cool, hard wood of the instrument. It agonises him to no avail, yet he returns every night. Working on songs for their new album was hard, yea, but even harder when he had no fucking inspiration. Breathing in deeply, he runs his hands through his jet-black dyed hair. He needs a drink. Time to head home.

Pushing open the door to his room, he enters it silently as a mouse. The other members had no doubt been asleep for hours now, and Namjoon’s soft snoring resonates through their shared wall. He finds it soothing, having the same effect as familiar and calming white noise. Plunking down onto the freshly made bed, he sinks into the mattress a little as he sits perched on the edge. With a small grunt he pulls the Puma sneakers from his feet, followed by his socks. Keeping his sweats on, he pulls his shirt over his head as the night is somewhat warm, thanks to Taehyung’s incessant overuse of the heating system. That boy could live in the Sahara Desert and still complain that it was “a bit chilly, hyung”. Yoongi runs his hands through his hair again, swallowing dryly before reaching for the small cupboard compartment of the bedside table. Ah, rum. Exactly what he needed.

Plodding into the kitchen, he pulls Jungkook’s coke from the fridge. He pours himself a glass, slowly and steadily. The drink looks all too appealing, half rum and half stolen soft drink. Replacing the bottle, the makes his way back to his room to avoid being caught red-handed. Jungkook didn’t take lightly to his snacks and drinks being stolen, Hoseok knew that all too well. What would he be without his friends, he though to himself as he swigged the drink. They were his family, his every moment. Everything he did, said, encountered. It all came back to something about them, and he was grateful for it. They’d made him a better person. But somehow, it wasn’t enough. Not enough to write a love song about anyway.

Love Yourself. Their new album was the Tear part, that much they had decided. But Yoongi was yet to write his part. He’d only ever broken hearts in his life, and a few bones; though not his either. The fights he’d had he’d won, romantically they were emotionally and through words. In Daegu there’d been a few physical ones. Some kid that doubted his basketball skills then tried to fight him when he’d kicked the kid’s ass. He snorted back a laugh at the memory. He’d gotten in big trouble for that one, but he’d been young and hadn’t cared. Who would’ve? All the kids on his block got into fist fights, his mum should’ve just been proud he’d won.

Suppressing a yawn, Yoongi set the glass onto his bedside table, mentally bookmarking a reminder to get rid of the evidence in the morning. No matter how many fights he’d won, he didn’t have a chance against Jungkook anymore. That kid? A muscle pig.

Rolling over into bed, he pulled the covers up over him. Tomorrow he’d write the song, he was sure of it. He’d just ask someone else, get some more ideas flowing about heartbreak and shit. Maybe he could call an ex, he thought for a second, then decided firmly against it.

___

You pulled the last of the coffee from the machine, seeing there definitely wasn’t enough left to keep you going. Housemates weren’t all they were cracked up to be, that was for sure. Rolling your eyes, you called out to the culprit at hand.

“Sar? Why the fuck didn’t you refill the coffee after you used it all?”

On que, your so-called ‘friend’ comes rushing out of her room, hurriedly doing up the buttons to her coffee shop uniform.

“Shit, Y/N, my bad! I know we had that agreement, but I totallyyyyy forget! Whoopsie!” At this, she chucks you a half-assed smile before dropping it just as quickly as it had appeared. Turning back, he grabs her Gucci bag from the couch. If only she could make rent in time, you thought saltily to yourself.

“I’ve gotta blast, Y/N. Have a good one, babes.” She throws a little wave your way before disappearing out the door in a rush of overpriced perfume and ugly green. The door bangs shut after her, and you almost let out a sigh of relief. Dealing with her at work on shared shifts was hellish, so you’d swapped it with someone else in a desperate attempt for some time away from her. And, judging by the clock on the kitchen wall, you had approximately eight hours before she made her way back into your life.

Hopping off the barstool, your footsteps tapped on the cold tiled floor as you made your way into your one place of true solitude - your bedroom. Warm and inviting, your bed called you back to it but you resisted the urge. It simply wouldn’t be right to waste the day sleeping, especially with the big paper you had coming up. Seoul National University was a lot harder then you’d thought it would be, yet you were still infinitely grateful to be attending. It was one of the most prestigious universities in the country, and your parents had cried when you’d announced the news. Hell, you’d cried a fair bit too. Both out of happiness and sadness, you supposed. Melancholic, that was the feeling. Being so far from your family hurt, but it was your dream and you couldn’t exactly turn it down.

Pulling out your laptop, you flicked the screen up waiting to be met by the glowing Apple logo. Nothing. Pressing the power button, you waited a little longer. Nothing. Impatient, you pressed it harder and repeatedly. Definitely nothing. Your six year old, hand me down MacBook had finally bit the dust. Fuck. How the hell were you going to pay for a new one?

Slamming it shut, you tried not to burst out into various expletives for the sake of your neighbours and probably your own sanity. A brush against your leg brings your attention down to the carpet, and you’re happy for the distraction as you feel the tears prick at your eyes.

“Hey, Lil Meow Meow.”

Your unfortunately-named cat pricks his ears up at the noise of his name, giving you a small meow and another brush to your leg that unmistakably screamed “pat me, human.” Complying, you scratch the black and white cat in the spot just below his chin but before his chest, his absolute favourite spot. He starts purring, and you smile at the little animal that somehow makes every day just a little easier to cope with.

“Time to go spend all my savings, Lil Meow Meow.” You mumble at the cat, who offers nothing more than a few more insistent purrs.

Yoongi walked into the store, dressed in black from head to toe once again. With the hood of his Kendrick Lamar ‘DAMN’ hoodie pulled up and the black facemask covering his features, he hadn’t been recognised once. Which was fucking good, because he didn’t have any security with him either. The small electronics store was his favourite to go to, mainly because he knew the owner and could order stuff in discreetly and efficiently. A lot of the time you couldn’t trust the bigger brands or outlets; a bad experience had taught him that. He’d been completely ripped off, all because the people knew he had money. Well, his friend knew and didn’t give a shit. Which was why he came here instead.

The small shop was tucked away down one of Seoul’s alleyways, and apart from the flickering sign that motioned it was ‘open’, people mainly walked straight by it without even noticing. Bad for his friend’s business, but good for Yoongi.

“Sugaaaaa!” The blonde man behind the counter lit up at the sight of him, rising from his laid-back position on the small chair nestled beside the till.

“Whatcha here for, my man?” The man raises an eyebrow at the question, waiting for Yoongi’s reply.

“Hey, Chaen. Just a MacBook, thanks. Mine’s full and honestly, I can’t be fucked to clear it.”

His friend laughs at the answer, throwing his head back and shaking it simultaneously.

“I can’t believe you, Yoongs. What I’d do with that kind of money, man…” Chaen shakes his head in amusement now, heading out the back to fetch his friend the last of the MacBooks he has in stock.

The rain is heavier than you thought, and you find yourself desperately pulling your raincoat tight around you.

“Shit!” You exclaim, as the hood flicks back in the wind and your hair is exposed to the wetness for a second. Jerking it back up, you finally reach the alleyway that your phone is displaying through a water droplet-covered screen. Naver had recommended it to you, apparently a pretty good place to find new and refurbished MacBooks. Glancing to your left, you see a small purple neon sign. It flashes the promising word ‘OPEN’ at you, and you make for the door in a hurry to get out of the city’s rain. Pushing the door open, the small bell rings as you do. A man in black is standing at the counter, ominously hiding his hair and body in the dark hoodie. His black jeans are tight on his legs, leading to slightly damp black Puma sneakers. Taking off your raincoat, you turned away from the stranger to hang it on the coat stand by the door. Shaking your head a little, your slightly damp hair fell against your face in what you could only imagine was highly unflattering. When you turned back, the stranger was facing you.

His black facemask was overly uninviting, as was his general demeanour. He stood in a cold, strong way, like an immovable rock. His eyes were glistening in the dull light of the shop, and you felt a shiver run down you that had absolutely nothing to do with the weather.

“Do you..work here?” Your question incites a chuckle from the stranger, who pulls down his facemask to speak to you. He’s handsome. Really handsome. Then he replies to you, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips.

“Nah, but the guy who does is about to come back.” He nods his head to the door labeled ‘back room’, and you realise that must be where this dingy, small shop’s owner must be.

“Oh…thanks.” You swallow, unsure of what to say. He breaks the small silence quickly, motioning with a hand to the spot at the counter by his side. Scurrying up, you stand awkwardly next to him. He smells good, and his hand is resting on the wood of the desk inches away from you. You can’t help but notice his long, slender fingers, veiny and attractive. And on one of those long fingers is a ring, sitting on the index. It’s silver and relatively plain, but you can tell straight away it’s expensive. It has the shine to it that only expensive jewellery has, with not a single scratch or bronzing to be seen. If he was rich, why was he shopping in here?

You’re jerked from your thoughts and the growing silence by the sound of a swinging door, accompanied by who you can only assume is the owner. He’s blonde and a little chubby, though his face seems friendly and immediately puts you at ease.

“Here you go, Min. Last one I’ve got, and only 65,000 won.” The stranger next to you smiles, and opens his mouth to speak. You beat him to it.

‘What? No, I need it!” You exclaim, bringing your hands down on the box with an audible thump. Both men turn to look at you, surprise clear on their faces.

“I’m sorry?” The stranger’s question is cool and emotionless, and he cocks an eyebrow with his question. The store owner just stands there staring at you, his furrowed brow confused.

Shit. Now you need to rationalise that.

“My laptop’s broken. I have a paper, Seoul university, I can’t fail and it’s hard and I don’t have a lot of money so I can’t buy one brand new and the taxi ride here was expensive enough and that ring looks like it cost a pretty penny and you see, I NEED that laptop!” Out of breath, you stare the stranger down with your eyes, only to see amusement in his. He chuckles, then pushes it your way.

“What’s your name?” His question catches you off guard, having expected an argument to follow your outburst.

“What?” Realising your surprised answer-question sounds rude, you hurriedly correct yourself. “Y/N. I’m Y/N.” He bites his lip a little, and something deep in your stomach flickers for a second.

“Tell you what, Y/N, you can have the laptop. In fact, I’ll buy it for you.” His hand pushes it even further towards you, and you look at it questioningly.

“Wait…what?”

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