#I’ll try to find the link to article I found them from later | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

yukikurosu123 · 1 year

Text

The Concrete-Encased High School Girl Murder Case (Junko Furuta Case)

I wanted to share this infamous and horrific case that never left my mind ever since I heard of it. The main reason why is because of how there are so many spread misinformations and misconceptions on this case, but also to add some details about the case who are quite important however were always not mentioned on the internet, particularly on English-speaking websites. The other reason is to spread awareness on violent crimes against women and how much juvenile delinquency is a big problem yet often left not punished.

Today is the case of Junko Furuta, she was murdered on the 4th of January 1989, after having been kept captive and tortured for 40 days.

I’ll try to make this as accurate as possible because as much as popular this case is, most of the informations about the motive of the killers seem to be incorrect, so instead of basing the source of my informations from English-speaking websites, I’ll take it mostly with Japanese websites about the case through accurate translation with DeepL.

Trigger Warning: This case contains explicit description and grotesque mentions of torture, rape, captivity, false imprisonment, immorality, injustice and cold-blooded murder.

Background:

Junko Furuta (古田順子) was born in Misato, in the Prefecture of Saitama on January the 18th of 1971. She had an older brother and a younger brother. As a teenage girl, she was studying in Yashio-Minami High School. (Photo down below)

She was a bright, loving and popular girl with many friends at school due to her kind personality. A good student with high grades and infrequent absences. She didn’t smoke, drink, nor do drugs unlike many of her peers. Junko also reportedly had dreams of becoming an idol singer.

She had a boyfriend going by the pseudonym of Kawamura, a 23 year old construction worker who accepted an interview to a magazine about the murder and shared his feelings of helplessness after the case.

Here’s something you might find a bit weird, Junko had just turned 17 while he was 23, as I prescribed earlier, an adult, but perhaps it wasn’t seen as socially immoral for a minor in Japan in the 80’s for a minor to date an adult six years older than them. The two met on Christmas 1987 through a mutual friend. They started dating the day before Valentine’s Day in 1988. In Japan, it is a custom for a woman or girl to give chocolate to the man/boy they like (though there is also chocolate given to coworkers called ‘obligation chocolate’), so Junko made Kawamura homemade chocolates (according to some sources, she loved to bake sweets). He gifted her an 18K gold necklace in return.

In the summer of that exact same year, Junko, Kawamura, and their friends went to the beach (Junko apparently loved going to the beach), where they took a famous photo about her together (link to photo) which I think was later cropped because you can only see her on it.

“A child with big and bright eyes” was Kawamura’s first impression of her according to an article.

On 23 November, Kawamura’s birthday (but for some reasons was instead misinterpreted as Junko’s birthday on some English-speaking websites), Junko knitted him a black sweater and the two went bowling. They had also plans on going skiing in the winter which devastatingly would never happen due to the unfortunate tragedy which would occur only two days later. When Kawamura found out about the incident in March 1989, he was understandably angry and devastated.

Link to Japanese article about him

After graduating from the high school four months later in March, she was supposed to start working for an electronics retailer company from April 1989.

On the 25th of November 1988 at around 8:30PM, she was cycling home after her part-time job at an plastic molding factory, it was Friday, the day people would be paid at work, she was looking forward to watching the last episode of her favourite TV drama, Tonbo which is named Dragonfly in English.

Now, about the perpetrators background:

Offender ‘A’ (Hiroshi Miyano), the leader of the four, was born in April 1970 as the first son of his parents. With both parents working and gaining income, the family was going well financially but dysfunctional due to conflict between the parents. Miyano started showing his aggressive nature since his primary school years by stealing, bullying and vandalism. He would often break into schools, beat teachers, vandalize properties, even one time broke one of his parents ribs for buying him the wrong food. As he became violent within the family, his father even went as far as to go to his school for advice. In his middle school years he passed the three years without causing much trouble; he became good at jūdō, devoted himself to it and left good records. He moved on to a high school which was famous for being good at jūdō. The practice was hard and he was bullied by his seniors. As a result, half a year later he left the jūdō club and another half a year later dropped out of school. He started to work to become a tiler, but around that time joined a motorcycle gang. Having committed several criminal offense such as causing bodily injury, unauthorized entry to buildings and theft, he was placed under probation. Having left the motorcycle gang, for a year or so he appeared settled. He worked hard as a tiler, pleasing his boss. He started living with his girlfriend who was according to some sources offender D (Yasushi Watanabe)‘s elder sister. Wanting to marry her, he started to save money. In May 1988 he obtained a driving license and was presented by his father with a brand new car in July. Since around August, however, he became dissatisfied of his low wages and stopped turning up for work. Getting to know a yakuza member through his former classmate, he started selling fake brand goods, working as a Tekiya, looking after a yakuza office etc. He also started inhaling paint thinner. His girlfriend however soon broke up with him because of his delinquent behaviour.

Offender B (Jō Ogura to later Jō Kamisaku) was born in May 1971. His parents were separated and divorced when he was a kid. He lived with his mother and sister the majority of time, spending only two months with his father when he was ten. Good at sports, he did not show any sign of being a troublemaker, until he suffered a complex fracture in his right foot while skiing in January 1986. Unable to carry on with sports, he became lazy with studies and was expelled from his high school in November 1987. Working as an apprentice of an electrician, he enrolled at night school, but soon lost interest and was absent from the classes. From about May 1988 he idled the time away. In July 1988 he drove a motorcycle without a license and was placed on probation.

Offender C (Shinji Minato) was born in December 1972. Both his parents worked at the same surgery; his father as a pharmacist and his mother as a nurse. He had an elder brother who was born in January 1972. While at the primary school, he started causing trouble with threatening behaviour and shoplifting. Moving on to the middle high school, his verbal and physical violence intensified. He also rebelled against his father. After graduating from the middle high school in March 1988 and starting his high school years in April, his behaviour worsened. He would not attend school, would not come home at night, mixed with bad company, was violent at home, and left his school in September. Since summer that year, Minato and his elder brother’s rooms became a hangout for a gang of hoodlums as his busy parents were often not at home. Faced with their own son’s violence, Minato‘s parents were ‘helpless’, described by reports. Minato was also placed under probation after driving a motorcycle without a license.

Offender D (Yasushi Watanabe) was born in December 1971. His parents separated when he was four, and divorced two years later. His father was killed in a traffic accident soon after. Watanabe was raised by his mother and elder sister. Although he had enrolled at a night school in April 1986, he stopped attending classes only a week later, and left school in September. In October 1986 he was placed under probation for domestic violence. In June 1987 and in March 1988, he was on file for minor criminal offences. He tried a few jobs but did not last long with any of them probably due to his incompetence and violent demeanour.

All four of them used to go to the same middle high school with A as the oldest, followed by Ogura and Watanabe in the grade below, and Minato another grade down. Minato‘s house had two rooms upstairs which were occupied by Minato and his elder brother. With both parents working and therefore often not at home, those two rooms became the hangout for a gang of youths since summer 1988, about which Minato‘s parents were at the end of their tether. Ogura was in the same grade as Minato’s brother, and started to hang out at Minato‘s that summer. In October 1988, Minato‘s older brother’s motorcycle was stolen and Miyano started to come to Minato‘s while helping his older brother search for his motorcycle. From then on, a small gang of teenage delinquents formed. Miyano was feared by the others, and under his leadership the gang behaved like yakuza. Ogura was second in command, and dominated the others in Miyano‘s absence. By the way, they often used the name yakuza as leverage to get away with violent crimes, but were not actually yakuza’s (although they had acquaintances who were low-ranking yakuza’s) and had no power, no name, no authority in the underground world. They were called yankees (juvenile delinquents), commonly found in Japan.

Kidnapping and Abduction:

In the evening of the 25th of November 1988, Hiroshi Miyano and Shinji Minato were wandering about on separate mopeds in Misato, the Prefecture of Saitama, with the purpose of snatching bags from or raping young women. Spotting Junko cycling home at around 8:30PM, Miyano told Minato to “kick that woman”. Minato did so and left the scene immediately. Junko fell to the side. They mentioned on a Japanese site that ‘she looked so scared’. Miyano then approached her saying, “That one’s crazy; I’ve been threatened by him with a knife a short time ago. You may still be in danger. Let me walk you home”.

Place where Junko was knocked off her bicycle and abducted: 35°47'46.5"N 139°51'50.1"E

Gaining Junko’s trust, Miyano lured her into a nearby warehouse where he dropped his ‘good guy’ pretence and raped her, saying: “I’m his accomplice and we are both yakuza. If you obey me, I will spare your life. Let me have sex with you; if you scream you’re dead.” He then took her to a hotel by taxi where he raped her again. From the hotel Miyano rang Minato‘s home, their usual hangout, and told Ogura that he succeeded in raping the girl, actively bragging about it too. Ogura asked him to keep her in captivity so he and numerous other men could come to rape her. At around 0:30AM on the 26th of November, Miyano with Junko, Ogura, Minato and Watanabe met up in a park. After a talk between Miyano and Ogura, they decided to abduct and imprison her. They told her that they knew where she lived from her student notebook (which every student was expected to carry with them while in uniform) and that they would get yakuza members to kill all of her family if she tried to escape. She was taken to C‘s house in the Ayase district of Adachi, Tokyo, where she was easily overpowered and repeatedly gang-raped. Location of the home Unlike what some websites claim, she didn’t know her abductors beforehand, they had no grudge against her and there was nothing particular that made them do this. They were all school dropouts, serial gang rapists and juvenile delinquents. She was simply at the wrong place at the wrong time, literally just riding back home after finishing her part-time job.

Captivity and Torture:

On the 27th of November, Junko’s worried parents asked the police to search for her. However, the gang forced Junko to call her home three times between the end of November and the middle of December. She was made to tell her parents that she had run away from home, was safe with friends, and she wanted the police search to be stopped.

From then on, the four kept gang-raping her continuously, they also invited and sold her off to low-ranking members of the Yakuza called chimpira and many of their other friends, encouraging them to also take turns raping her. More than a hundred men are believed to have raped her over the course of her captivity. There were instances where she would be raped by 12 different men in a single day. The men who raped her also reportedly enjoyed urinating on her.

One time, Koichi Ihara, one of the men who was invited in the house to rape Junko and who was allegedly pressured by gang members into raping her, told his brother about the incident after he left the Minato household. His brother subsequently told their parents, who then contacted police. Two police officers were dispatched to the Minato household, however they were informed that there was no girl inside the house. The police officers declined an invitation to look around the house, believing the invitation was sufficient proof that there was no girl in the Minato house, they were supposed to visit the house regardless of what the residents told them, but they didn't follow the procedure. Both officers faced considerable backlash from the Japanese community. If they had come inside the house and at least checked some clues, Junko probably would have survived and would still be alive now. The two officers were allegedly fired for failing to follow the procedure.

In early December, while the gang was asleep, Junko called the police, but was stopped by Miyano before she was able to say anything. The police called back right away, but Miyano said it was a mistake. Angered by her act, they started to becoming more and more torturous with her over time. She was repeatedly punched, kicked, struck by heavy objects, foreign objects inserted into her private parts such as broken bottles, an iron bar, scissors, roasting needles, grilled chicken skewers, a hot lit light bulb rubbed inside of her vagina until it exploded inside, had her skin burned with cigarettes and lighter fluids. They burned her eyelids with hot wax and cigarette lighters. They had fireworks forced up her anus and set them off multiple times, causing severe damages inside of her orifice. They had her left nipple ripped off with pliers and sewing needles pierced through her breasts. They also stopped feeding her. Due to both external and internal injuries and malnutrition, she could hardly walk and had to crawl downstairs to the bathroom, which took her about one whole hour. When she could no longer crawl to the bathroom, she was made to urinate into a cup and was forced to drink her own urine. They forced her to consume absurdly large amounts of alcohol and milk to the point of throwing up, as well as forcing her to smoke multiple cigarettes at once. Because of the unbearable violence and pain, Junko repeatedly begged them to kill her to end the suffering. Ignoring her pleas, they continued to torture her for days. They had heavy dumbbells dropped on her stomach while she was lying on the ground with her hands and feet tied, causing her to lose control of her bowel control. They made her stand up and beat her legs with bamboo sticks, golf clubs and many other diverse objects. They kept her hanging from the ceiling and used her body as a human punching bag, because of the intense attacks her nose was so swelled up with blood she could only breathe from her mouth. Putting her in a freezer for several hours which only infected her worsening injuries. They smashed her hands and fingernails with weights, making her unable to grip anything.

The brutality of the attacks changed Junko’s appearance completely. Her badly beaten face was so swollen that her cheeks were as high as her nose. Her burned and infected skin produced body fluid with a bad smell. The gang no longer had sexual interest in her. To ‘fulfill their sexual desires’, at around 2:30AM on the 27th of December 1988, the four abducted a 19-year-old woman on her way home. They pushed her into A‘s car, threatened her with a knife, took her into a motel room and gang-raped her. Even before abducting Junko, Miyano, Ogura and Minato had committed a similar gang-rape on the 8th of November.

When January 1989 arrived, the gang talked about what to do with Junko’s body. “Kill and bury her?” “Let’s mince her body after killing.” “We can burn her in an oil drum.” “Fill the drum with concrete and throw it into the sea. The police would never find it.”

Murder and Death:

In the early hours of the 4th of January 1989, after losing a lot of money playing mahjong, heavily frustrated Miyano visited Watanabe‘s house. Ogura and Minato were also present. After playing computer games for a while, Miyano decided to vent his anger by going to Minato’s home to beat Junko where she laid, almost dead. The attack started at around 8AM. Junko was punched for multiple consecutive hours nonstop, violently kicked, had her face covered in hot wax with two short candles placed on her eyelids. She hardly responded. They made her stand and struck her face with swinging kicks. Defenceless Junko fell onto a stereo state and collapsed. She started a fit of convulsions.

The gang knew Junko might die, but did not stop. She bled from her nose and mouth, and bloody pus emerged from her burns. Blood spattered all over the room. Reluctant to get blood on his fists, Watanabe covered his hands with plastic bags and taped them around the wrists before punching Junko in the stomach and shoulders twenty or thirty times. Miyano, Ogura and Minato imitated Watanabe and covered their hands in bags. They took turns to punch and kick Junko in the face, stomach and thighs. They also struck Junko in the thighs many times with a heavy iron ball which was part of Minato‘s kick boxing exercise machine. Watanabe dropped the iron ball onto her stomach several times. Miyano repeatedly poured lighter fuel on her thighs, stomach, hands, feet and set it alight. Junko initially gestured as if trying to put it off, but gradually became unresponsive.

The gang taped around Junko’s ankles so that she could not escape and went out to a sauna. It is believed that she died in Minato‘s room some time during the last torture or the hours that followed.

The next day when Miyano, Ogura and Minato were at a florist run by yakuza, Minato‘s elder brother rang to tell that Junko appeared to be dead. Afraid of the murder being detected, the three gang members decided to get rid of Junko’s dead body. They wrapped her body in two blankets, pushed it into a large travel bag and taped around it. During her captivity, Furuta had mentioned to her captors several times that she regretted not being able to watch the finale episode of the show she liked, Tonbo (Dragonfly). So Miyano found the videotape of the episode and placed it in the travel bag. As he later explained, it was not because he pitied Furuta, but because he did not want her to return as a ghost and haunt him. From his former employer, Miyano borrowed a cement mixer and a truck and took them to his home. They fetched an oil drum which was used as a litter bin in the neighbourhood. They placed the travel bag which contained Junko’s body in the drum, threw in some concrete blocks, and filled up the drum with fresh concrete. The drum was taped into a large black litter bag. At around 8PM the drum was loaded onto the truck. They initially planned on dropping it into the sea, but on the way they passed an empty space near a development site and abandoned it here.

The development site where they encased Junko’s body in concrete

Investigation and Arrestation:

On the 23rd of January 1989, Miyano and Ogura were arrested for the gang-rape of the 19-year-old woman in December. On the 29th of March, two police officers from the Ayase district (where Minato’s house was) came to interrogate them. Women’s underwear had been found at their addresses and the police suspected that they might have committed theft as well.

There had been murder of a mother and her 7-year-old son in Ayase district on the 16th of November the previous year, nine days before Junko’s abduction. As the case had not been solved (and remains unsolved even today), during the interrogation one officer lightly uttered a trick question to Miyano, thinking that he was a possible suspect, because of his serial offenses around the area. “You mustn’t kill someone, you know”. However Miyano thought that the officer was talking about Junko Furuta, thinking that Ogura in a separate room had already confessed. “I am sorry that we killed”, he told probably thinking that going along with it would make him have a lesser sentence. The officers were astounded as it wasn’t what they were talking about in the first place and they were surprised as Junko’s disappearance was initially deemed as a teenager runaway. They went to the empty space accordingly to the confession, where they found a drum with a strange smell. The 305kg drum was lifted onto a truck by a crane and taken to the police the following day.

Junko’s body was found in the drum, badly decomposed and disfigured as she had been dead for almost three months. Edema all over her body. Malnutrition. Facial features unrecognizable due to severe disfigurement. It had to be identified by fingerprints. On the 1st of April Minato was arrested for another rape case and was rearrested for the murder of Junko Furuta. The arrest of Watanabe and two other accomplices (Tetsuo Nakamura and Koichi Ihara) followed after the two’s sperm DNA was found inside of her.

The location where her body was found has been developed since and is now a Wakasu park.

Autopsy:

Using the fingerprints, it was revealed that the body belonged to Junko Furuta. The autopsy found so much disturbing evidence of abuse. It was revealed that Junko Furuta was pregnant at the time of her death because of the repeated rapes. Her brain shrank and reduced in size due to the dire circumstances of Junko’s final days.

DNA found on and inside Junko’s body led the police to several other accomplices, including Tetsuo Nakamura and Koichi Ihara, as mentioned earlier, and also other semen sources that could not be identified due to two reasons: it having been too long and it being too much to identify which person it belonged to.

The autopsy found cigarettes, broken glasses, vitamin bottles, fireworks and many other deadly objects inside her vagina.

Funeral:

Junko Furuta’s funeral was held on the 2nd of April 1989. Had she not been murdered, the following day – Monday the 3rd of April – would have been her start at her job at the electronics retailer.

One of Junko’s friends’ memorial address:

‘Jun-chan, welcome back. I have never imagined that we would see you again in this way. You must have been in so much pain… so much suffering… The happi we all made for the school festival looked really good on you. We will never forget you. I have heard that the headmaster has presented you with a graduation certificate. So we graduated together – all of us. Jun-chan, there is no more pain, no more suffering. Please rest in peace.’

Junko’s future boss presented her parents with the uniform she was to wear at work. It was placed inside her coffin. At the graduation, Junko’s school principal presented her with a school diploma like all the other students in commemoration, which was given to her parents.

Prosecutions:

Despite the shockingly brutal nature of the crime, the identities of the four perpetrators were protected due to all of them being minors at the time of the crime. Some media however published their names. On the 12th of July 1991, after overturning the original terms, Tokyo High Court sentenced them as follows.

A (Hiroshi Miyano to later on Hiroshi Yokoyama) : 17 years imprisonment which was later increased to 20 years imprisonment, because the judge was angered by the audacity of the culprit, who was trying to appeal to his already way too lenient sentence even after the severity of the crime he committed. (In my opinion, even the death penalty isn’t enough for these demons, they deserve the worst torture possible)

A‘s mother sent money (50 million yen≒USD425k) to Junko’s parents after selling their family home after they filed a civil lawsuit against them due to the unbelievable injustice of the crime. A was released in summer 2009.

B (Jō Ogura to later Jō Kamisaku) : Indefinite 5 to 10 year term imprisonment.

In court it was revealed that Ogura‘s father started saving money for compensation to Junko’s parents, despite Junko’s parents’ refusal to accept it. Sources of information in more recent years states that Ogura‘s father’s savings, originally meant for Junko’s parents, had been consumed by Ogura for frivolous luxuries. Ogura was released in August 1999.

C (Nobuharu Minato to later on Shinji Minato) : Indefinite 5 – 9 year term imprisonment.

D (Yasushi Watanabe) : Indefinite 5 – 7 year term in juvenile detention center.

Perpetrators Whereabouts:

In January 2013, A was re-arrested for fraud, but remained silent during interrogation. Due to insufficient evidence he was released without charge.

Here is a text which talks about information of his whereabouts after his release.

Yellow text in the bottom right corner: “His favorite saying was “I stuck it in her mouth so far that she threw up".

White text on the bottom: “When I heard the rumor, I couldn't believe it. So I asked him over a drink. The stuff about you being one of the perpetrators of the concrete-encased high school girl murder case (Murder of Junko Furuta) is a lie, right? His facial expression suddenly stopped and turned pale. This happened in August of this year. The next day, I stopped receiving any contact from [Miyano], even though I had been spending almost every day with him.”

The photographer, mister M, said this with suspicion. M presented a photo where there was a shirtless man sitting on a bench throwing a peace sign.

“That man (Miyano) called himself “K". We met around 3 years ago. I joined a gym in Western Tokyo where I was commuting. He felt like a big brother to me, and invited me to hang out with him. This picture (panel 3 with the three guys in suits with Miyano (K)’s face blacked out and the two guys around him with pixelated faces) was taken at a barbecue we had earlier this summer. It was a time when I really didn't know about the murder incident…”

The end of 1988 marked the murder of Junko Furuta. The murder case, which is described as the “deeds of savages hiding under their masks,” is well known more than 20 years later. However, after having been released from prison in 2009, what became of [Miyano] was largely unknown.

“I could have never envisioned myself being so close to such a brutal criminal. But in retrospect, realizing he was one of the main perpetrators [of Furuta's murder] isn't that surprising. He was always talking about Judo (martial arts) or sex, and would brag about how when having sex with women how he “stuck it in her mouth so far that she threw up". He also talked about how much he liked choking women during sex. He is also 43 years old, and that is certainly his face right there. Friends of mine who have also met K would send me photos of [Miyano] and say that this is unquestionably the same person.”

The photo [of Miyano] released at the time of the murder incident [in 1989] certainly bears a striking resemblance to the photo [of K] taken in August earlier in the summer. His well-featured nose, the so-called “gyoza ears" so prevalent in Judo practitioners, and his symmetrical hairline. “A hairline is like a fingerprint in that it is unique to each individual.” Like a plastic surgeon, even if 30 years have passed, such a coincidence is further deepened.

M continues talking.

“And that's not all. [Miyano] was said to have been arrested for fraud in January, and around the same time [Miyano] was arrested, K suddenly disappeared for 2 weeks. Because it was around New Years, I thought we should all go out drinking together, so I tried calling [K] but I couldn't get a hold of him. Later, when I asked [K] about where he had been, he claimed that he got in trouble with a rental car and so he was brought to the Akasaka Police Station, but looking back in retrospect there's no way that could've been true. The reason why is because K told me directly that he knew a lot of people engaging in a group wire fraud scandal.”

There is even more evidence that [Miyano] is K.

In the spring of this year, a reporter from a certain weekly publication called the gym that M was a member of asking for information about [Miyano]. This became a topic of gossip among the other gym members. In fact, the reporter actually came to the gym to cover something.

“But at that time I wasn't really paying attention. The person who told me that K was actually [Miyano] was a guy who served 12 years in Chiba Prison. This guy told me that he had met K in Chiba Prison and was like his underling. [Miyano] got 20 years in Chiba Prison too, right? That guy let loose a secret while drinking and said “brother, the media is still chasing you for the [Murder of Junko Furuta]. Must be rough, huh?””

When M last met K, K was driving around in a BMW, he had a Hermès wallet, a gold Daytona luxury wristwatch, and overall seemed to be doing well. He is engaging in [fraudulent] multi-level marketing, and there are plenty of LINE messages from him nagging at his friends to engage in fraudulent activities.

It cannot be said that he was made to pay for his crimes after serving only 20 years in prison. To kill that girl in such a sorrowful and gloomy manner, and not even apologize or explain his actions to [Junko's] bereaved family. This magazine intends to pursue more information [relating to Miyano].

Reading this, we can notice that he is trying to make others not see his identity as the culprit of the Junko Furuta murder. There’s also another article I’ve found about him after his release:

Text Translation:

“It wasn't just in the gym. He (Miyano) would have both his juniors and his friends call him “K" in private, and would even have his name recorded as K in matches (Judo/Kickboxing). He even wrote his name as simply “K" on his resumé, which I got to see.”

This is what our informant, who was treated and cherished like a younger brother by Miyano, had to say. During the summer, [our informant] happened to overhear that K was actually [Miyano]; when [our informant] questioned [Miyano], [Miyano's] face turned pale and abruptly cut all contact with [our informant].

So what has K been up to since then?

First, his whereabouts. No matter how nice and friendly [our informant] has tried acting towards K [after discovering his identity], K has refused to so much as let him enter his house.

“[Miyano] will dodge the question by saying that his house is too cluttered, and he won't even come to hang out with me when I suggest we can meet somewhere other than his house. However, I do know where he lives. He was living in a small town by the riverbank of the Tama River. At least, that's were he was living until August. That address is the one that was written on his resumé, and he would pick up the phone whenever I called the number associated with that address.”

This “small town by the riverbank of the Tama River” is not a very well-known place, and is just a residential area you'd find in any suburb with a few shopping districts around the train station. When we went to the exact address, we found it to be a still new apartment building. [Miyano's] apartment nameplate wasn't anywhere to be found, but there's no mistaking that he's here. However, when ringing [Miyano's] doorbell or banging on his door, no one came out.

There is still one clue we have to ascertain [Miyano's] whereabouts: Ikebukuro. It is said that [Miyano] frequently comes to Ikebukuro to go drinking.

“K often said that many of his juniors are there. When [Miyano] was arrested by the police in January, those involved in Ikebukuro were paying money.”

[Miyano] was arrested in January for wire fraud. We got to see the exact location in Ikebukuro where K and the Ikebukuro group were meeting. However, when we questioned the Ikebukuro group [about Miyano], they all refused to tell us anything.

“Well, I don't know. Because I don't know what kind of relationship it is, I won't say anything,” said one of the former scam group members.

[Miyano] has disappeared yet again. This time we got to see what deep, dark connections he has.

In both of these articles, we see that Miyano tries his best to hide what he has done from others, which makes this even more infuriating than it already is.

Offender B (Jō Ogura to later Jō Kamisaku) is said to have learned some IT (Information Technology) skills while in prison and worked at some kind of firm after his release from prison, but got fired because the people around him knew of his involvement in Furuta's murder and serious criminal past. He later joined a gang, where he was reported to have said the following:

“When I was a boy, I went to jail for 10 years. I had put a girl in confinement, and one day when I came back to the house from when I went out to play, the girl was dead. So I lit a cigarette and put it next to her nose, and the smoke didn't move at all. That's how I knew she was dead,” Ogura bragged while laughing.

A year after this quote (2004), Ogura would go onto kidnap and beat one of the gang members he bragged about this to in what is known in Japanese as the 三郷市逮捕監禁致傷事件. At 2:00 in the morning on May 19th, 2004, Ogura severely beat one of the members of his gang on the street named Takatoshi Isono and threatened him with a bat. He then kidnapped the man and drove him 40 minutes away from Adachi to Misato where he said the following while beating the man for four consecutive hours: “You're the one who took my woman. I'll kill you. I have killed before.” It is mentioned that the man Ogura assaulted was involved with his girlfriend.

It's almost as if he perceives his past murder as a badge of honor. So he clearly hasn't learned anything or shown any sign of remorse, not like it would change anything.

Some sources of information report that B‘s mother vandalized Junko’s grave “because she ruined her son’s life”.

Offender C (Nobuharu Minato to later on Shinji Minato) for the most part, went off the radar following Furuta's murder. He married a Romanian woman in 2006 although they soon had a divorce in which the wife took custody of their kid. However, on August 19th, 2018, Minato repeatedly beat a man on the shoulders with a baton and stabbed the man's neck with a knife. After getting arrested for this, he had the following to say about his former sentence for Furuta's murder case:

“Prison is nothing but hardships, and is not an environment where I can confront my past crimes. Even after being released from prison, society is just too difficult, so of course I couldn't face my past crimes.”

Here's another quote from Minato from the same source:

“In various articles [written about me], they say that I am beyond rehabilitation. These people have never met or spoken with me, so they have no idea how I've been living my life, so why do they arbitrarily write these things [about me]? Idiots.”

Offender D is the main culprit with the least information I could find about his whereabouts, probably because he was the only one who didn’t re-offend after his release and kept off the radar. He seems to be living with his mother after release. According to the Japanese Wikipedia page, which states the following:

[Watanabe] was released from detention in 1996 and became a hikikomori. In January of 2001, Eisuke Inoue, a reporter from the Mainichi Shinbun, contacted Watanabe's mother and began interviewing them in the spring. On April 8th, 2001, the contents of the interviews were published in an article. The article was met the both sympathy for Watanabe as well as harsh criticism, with people arguing that the material was “too sympathetic to the perpetrator” or “rubbing the feelings of the victim's bereaved family the wrong way”. In turn, Inoue said that “the pain the victim's family was going through was beyond his imagination. I looked through the court records and reports on the case as much as I could, but somehow disregarded how brutal the case was, and am still bewildered by it even after finishing the interviews. Having read my readers' criticisms, I better understand the difficulty of compensating for one's crimes.” Has also not worked since release.

Media & Public Reaction:

This case is arguably one of, if not the most popular true crime case that has happened in Japan, with so many articles and media coverage made about it. At least three books have been written about the crime. Two low-budget exploitative snuff films, have been made about the incident. The first one, Joshikōsei konkurīto-zume satsujin-jiken (The Concrete-Encased High School Murder Case) was directed by Katsuya Matsumura in 1995. The second one which followed was Shonen no Hanzai (Juvenile Crime) directed by Gunji Kawasaki in 1997. The case was also the inspiration for the film Konkurito (Concrete) in 2004, where Furuta's name was changed into Misaki. Two mangas have been based upon the case, the first one is Shin Gendai Ryoukiden: Modern Stories of the Bizarre, made by Uziga Waita (an infamous eroguro mangaka), published in 2000, the second one is the mainstream manga 17-sai by Seiji Fuji published in 2004–2005. The volume 3 of the manga Reversible Man, written by D. Natakani, is allegedly greatly inspired by this case. Songs have also been made, based or inspired upon this case such as 44 Days by Mr.Kitty, Junko Furuta by Danilla and Taino PV by The Gazette (although this one hasn’t been confirmed but many speculate it is due to the similarities). The track list of Swerslvt’s album Don’t Be Afraid Of Dying is an acrostic of “Junko Furuta”, as a tribute to her.

Due to this event, Japanese people especially at the time were concerned about a ‘US-influenced epidemic of violent crime’ which they called the “American Disease”.

Also, the case brought national attention to the adjudication and rehabilitation of juvenile offenders, especially in the context of youth tried as adults, and created a media sensation.

Note & My Point of View (about this case)

Honestly these four demons deserve worse than a simple death. They deserve a slow, painful one. For this case, I absolutely support capital punishment. These demons don’t deserve any human rights whatsoever. That also counts for these hundred boys and men who participated in the rapes. I don’t know what should I be more disgusted of, what these four abominable demon seeds did or the fact that so many guys participated in this, and they all were enjoying it?? I think the worst thing in this case is the bystander apathy, the fact that more than 100 people knew what was happening, did nothing about it and were enjoying participating in her suffering. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth should be applied in this case. All of those pieces of trash should have been executed the first day they were convicted.

#truecrime #junkofuruta #junko furuta #horror #crime

20 notes · View notes

childabusesurvivor · 1 year

Text

Another Tool in Abuse Prevention - Community

New Post has been published on https://www.childabusesurvivor.net/reviews/2023/05/04/another-tool-in-abuse-prevention-community/

Another Tool in Abuse Prevention - Community

I stumbled upon an article yesterday that I quickly read but then found myself thinking about again later. I wanted to share it with you because the topic hints at a much larger issue when it comes to child abuse prevention, and maybe even the situation with youth mental health. Here’s the link:

Be The Community Families Need to Succeed

The message is simple. The article talks about how, in Kentucky, everyone who suspects child abuse or neglect has a duty to report it. Beyond that, though, Valerie Frost reminds us that even if there is no finding of abuse, our duty to the families in our community isn’t finished. There are still so many things we could be doing to help families be successful and help children live in a safe, supportive environment.

The suggestions for helping parents are good, but I want to talk a bit more about this idea when it comes to children. I’m going to try and do that without sounding like an old man, so I’ll resist the urge to talk about how things were “back in my day”. What we do know, however, is that children who are abused often have nowhere to turn. We encourage kids to tell without thinking about who they can tell. A kid being abused at home is not going to tell their parents. Kids being abused elsewhere whose single parent is working two jobs and struggling just to keep their family fed and sheltered aren’t going to tell their parents. So, who can they tell?

This is where the community comes in. Kids with strong connections to safe adults are less likely to be targeted and more likely to tell if they are. LGBTQ kids are less likely to struggle with suicidal ideation when they have adults who accept them as they are. Kids dealing with anxiety and depression have better outcomes when they have safe adults to talk through their emotions with, who can support them through difficult times. I’ve talked endlessly about the need for strong relationships with parents as the best preventive medicine we have for keeping children safe and supported. I’ve also talked, on my other site, about the importance of work-life balance and inclusivity when it comes to the workplace for parents. That’s what being the community that families need to succeed includes.

This is where my brain started to go when thinking about the role that the community plays in abuse prevention and youth mental health. It then proceeds to think about the lack of community that I’ve read about often as well. The lack of close friendships among adults. The political divisions that are sowed daily in the media and the state legislatures around the country. The lack of infrastructure for childcare, healthcare, and public education, and the things that prevent parents from accessing better jobs like public transit and remote work. We could also talk about the number of children growing up without parents due to our fascination with incarceration as opposed to providing addiction and mental health treatment.

If you look around at what is happening in the US right now, we’ve become a nation run by people who believe that we have no obligation to each other. Science says that is a path to destruction. That we do, in fact, need each other. We need our families, friends, and communities to step up and work together. We need children to have safe, close relationships with adults. Sadly we are creating a society where there are no safe adults for kids and then blaming everything else for their poor mental health situation. I’m not saying social media or the news has no impact on kids, but we used to live in a society where kids could be more resilient because there was a community that supported them.

Who supports them now?

#Abuse, #Addiction, #Anxiety, #Connection, #Depression, #Education, #Family, #Friendship, #LGBTQ, #MentalHealth, #SocialMedia, #Support, #Youth

#Abuse #Addiction #Anxiety #Connection #Depression #Education #Family #Friendship #LGBTQ #Mental Health #Social Media #Support #Youth

4 notes · View notes

talenlee · 2 months

Text

Story Pile: Bee & Puppycat Comics

Up front, I guess I should say that after finishing the article, I found Bee And Puppycat an incredibly disappointing set of comics because I made the fool mistake of beliving they were ever going to be something they never told me they would be. I saw the cover art showing happy people in an energetic state and the idea of a temp magical girl resulting in perhaps something like an adventure or a quest or a hijink and never considered how many pages would instead be about comparing poo and chocolate. Still, there’s an interesting history to what these comics are and I’m sure you might like them if you try them and you know you’re only getting the packing peanuts between a story rather than any kind of story in and of itself.

This was a little bit of a journey.

Bee & Puppycat is a thing that has been in my nebulous area of space, one of those aspirational pieces of media I may have mentioned because I thought it looked good but never said anything about what was in it because y’know, there… wasn’t… anything in it… as far as I remembered. There was a trailer, and then a promise that it would show up later, and then eventually, I saw Bee and Puppycat comics in a Humble Bundle.

The ‘dead series with hanging plot threads got comic book followup’ is a media trajectory that I’m familiar with. I mean it happened to Charmed so when I saw the comics in a bundle, I bought it, and figured at some point I would get around to reading it.

I bought these comics in 2015.

I read them today.

If you’re not familiar with Bee And Puppycat the premise is that there’s this girl named Bee, and one day, she gets a new pet, called Puppycat. Puppycat is something that may be a puppy, or may be a cat, but is also definitely linked to a temp magical girl agency. And uh, that’s that. That’s all there is, really, in the pitch. A girl gets a job as a temporary magical girl travelling across space doing random things.

It isn’t like it’s a bad series but it’s also, looking at it, kind of a hard series to describe from its pitch. That’s basically it, it’s a sort of low-stakes cute thing about being a loser with a temp job but the temp job is with your cat and you got to other planets. There’s a giant robot.

If it was British, I’d say it was twee. As it is, it’s American, so it’s a twee substitute.

This year I have set myself a goal of trying to read at least one piece of fiction, or try to read one piece of fiction, each month. With things like a job and a youtube channel and a phd, reading fiction has fallen by the wayside for me in a big way. I was able to watch more anime by making a space in my life for that, and reading feels like the next thing to recover my time on. Last year I read a bunch of books – but ‘a bunch’ means like, ‘six to ten.’ And of course, when I have to read books for my PhD – because, yeah, that’s a thing you do, you read a lot and it’s not fun reading and when you’re doing it you employ different kinds of ways of thinking than you do when you’re reading fun fiction – it makes reading other ways harder and less interesting. A book has to really catch my attention to get there.

(I did read all of Gideon the Ninth in a week, for example.)

This also means I’ve been trying to look at the books I accrued thinking ‘I’ll read it later’ and checking them out, hence finding this dusty ebook in a 2015 Humble Bundle purchase. 2015, that’s almost nine years ago that I bought the comics of a series that – as it turns out, ran from 2013 to 2016. I bought comics for a show where I’d only seen the trailer because I assumed the show had failed and the comics were the way the fans got something and reading the comics, I’d get at least something of the Bee and Puppycat experience. It was a purchase for novelty’s sake, an aspirational want.

There are a bunch of TV shows from around that period that you may kinda remember but not remember their resolutions. The big one is Adventure Time, but that was a TV show, and it has a lot of the sinew that makes up Bee And Puppycat‘s similar-feeling production. Not ‘calarts style’ like shitheads will invoke, but similar joke timing and structure, similar relationship to short-form media, and a similar lack of need to provide conventional setups and payoffs. Not the same genre, but similar movement. The things I mean though are shows like Bravest Warriors, which is a show that was being made On Youtube For Youtube, a phenomenon I guess you’d now consider for shows like Hazbin Hotel and its related spinoffs of designs that make me imagine ‘what if Tim Burton was into anime and I didn’t suck?’

Those shows, as I understand the narrative, existed because of the same reason a lot of cool things that require a huge budget existed on the internet: Someone thought they could monetise something on the internet much more cheaply than they ever could and as a result, over-invested in a space that then couldn’t sustain them. There’s a reason why you may remember ‘Pewdiepie was being paid by Disney.’ Cartoon Hangover was a result of someone paying enough money for it to exist and then it stumbling from place to place with the infrastructure for its own existence but not ways to make enough money to continue to exist.

This is the story of the internet, by the way. You are surrounded by weird detritus that grew very big in the name of making a profit in some nebulous way and failed to make a profit. Very few things that succeed on the internet make the money they assume they’re going to make, and that’s why they all crumple and fail when the thing that keeps them going is money. Weird web novels and long form roleplay spaces are going to survive because nobody ever imagined they could make money, but tumblr itself has been passed from place to place as a desperate hot potato losing money every time because it’s just something enormously successful at engaging its users and not good at doing things that result in making meaningful money.

Anyway, Bee and Puppycat.

What was I expecting?

What was I hoping for?

I don’t know what Bee and Puppycat is. I just have the books. I bought the books because I thought the premise was cool and figured I’d get around to reading them. Today, I did.

And y’know what?

They’re cute. They’re fine. They are essentially a webcomic of characters durdling around in a world where they have money anxiety. Webcomics, if you’re not aware, are a sort of online comic book where you could have mediocre art or bad jokes but if your vibes were good and the right kinds of conveniences lined up you’d have a fanbase that you could use to support the very modest project and over long enough timelines you’d become Ctrl-Alt-Delete or its sinoff The Penny Arcade.

Bee and Puppycat is a fine little comic but it’s not about anything. I read a volume and five more issues of it and the result is a few laughs about a story standing in one spot about how it sucks to be 22, in a temp job, having to clean your house, and also a magical girl with a teleporting puppycat. It’s really ambitious stuff really, the idea that hey, what if your life featured objectively cool things but we really wanted to dwell on how everything in your life was still quite bad and you couldn’t enjoy anything. It has space travel and magical powers and in the end it all comes down to someone dissatisfied with her job staring at a snack at the grocery store and going ‘ACK’. It’s relatable, but only because it suggests that even in a world that can imagine time travelling magical cat aliens, the idea of being freed from capitalism is beyond us all.

It is Cathcaesque.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

#Media #Story Pile

1 note · View note

almsspring2023 · 1 year

Text

Coming to a Close

Click here for my final thoughts on this ALMS course!

Now that I’ve done the work for my ALMS course it’s time to reflect on what I’ve gained along the way. In the beginning, planning all this out and thinking about the plan made me realize that I do tend to challenge my English skills on the regular, and I could put that to use for the course. I mostly interact with media in English; especially reading more complex news articles from various subjects is something I enjoy, and basically all TV series and movies I watch are in English. What I’m trying to say here is that this ALMS-aligned way of thinking has definitely helped me to find a positive and encouraging spin on my English language media consumption. ALMS helped me realize I might actually hone my skills and gain something by interacting with the language in a way that feels natural to me, and that’s pretty cool.

I did a lot of work over this course to meet my quota, and the best part was definitely the support groups. Social interaction brings so much to the learning process, in very concrete ways such as direct feedback but also in more subtle ways like picking things up from others’ work. I also got some really good tips from the group teachers that I’ll remember for later. One was that when writing a text in English, even if it feels more difficult it’s a lot less work to just start writing in English rather than first writing something in Finnish and then translating it. The languages are built differently and translation requires a lot of extra work in switching words around and thinking of sentence structures and words more natural to the other language. Another thing is that English has a lot more words overall than Finnish does. A lot of the words are shorter and phrases formed of several shorter words instead of the compound words Finnish tends to go for. There’s often more than one way to say something and more nuance to what would work best in a particular situation. I think this is something seen in practice when doing crossword puzzles in English – there’s so incredibly many three letter words!

I did a lot of the things I originally planned to do and added on some more along the way. I said I wanted to read a lot of news articles and that’s what I sure did! I also did a lot of vocabulary exercises with some translation, weekly challenges and playing different word games. I talked English a lot in the support group meetings, which really helped to improve the flow of my speech. I’ve written a lot as well, for group works but mostly for my ALMS blog! I’ve had a lot of hearing practice as well in watching and listening to miscellaneous English-language media.

Most academia work was contained in the translation group, as I besides translating I read a lot of the papers that were linked there. I did say I wanted to read an article, and I did – I actually read two very recently. But both of those were for another course, so I don’t know if they count for ALMS hours and I didn’t count them in, even if I did read them thoroughly and making sure I understand it all (with this ALMS course in mind). There’s also some stuff that I was hoping I would do but didn't manage to fit in my schedule.

I think I’ve also found some weaker areas of expertise in my English. I feel like talking a lot in the support groups has made me hone in on some of my problems, such as that I sort of mumble my words sometimes. The best way I can describe it is that I kind of scramble my speech when talking so that it comes out a little unintelligible; I say stuff but can't exactly keep my pronunciation up with my talking speed due to lack of practice. I just kind of don't have enough confidence in my speaking to say things fast clearly enough. This is something I'm trying to work on, and the support groups have definitely helped. Now that I’m done with the groups though I should maybe find something to keep it up. Speaking is a skill that’s only improved by active usage, no question of that. This is of course true for other aspects of English as well, but I think speaking is the one that I get least practice with. I don’t communicate much with foreigners and if I do, it’s mostly over text.

It’s been a road of setting different challenges but I hope I’ve also gained a lot! I enjoyed this course and the fact that it’s so easily shaped into something that benefits each student individually. ALMS has allowed me to find the way to learn English that fits me the best and hopefully gain more understanding on how to develop my language skills going forward. Thank you very much to every teacher, all of you that I interacted with were super helpful, kind, and competent!

0 notes

secretswiftymarvelfan · 2 years

Text

The Demigod From Asgard - Steve Rogers x Reader (Part 16)

Summary: Back on Earth it’s your final chance to stop Makekith

Word Count: 2.7k

Warnings: Angst! Canon Typical Violence! No Steve! (He’s back in the next part tho)

Dividers by @firefly-graphics

Series Masterlist / Masterlist

Chapter 16: Converge on Greenwich

A sandstorm picked up as the three of you made your way through the wasteland trying to find shelter. Eventually you find cover in a small cavern.

“He’s gonna unleash it” Jane says as she sits down.

“Not just on Asgard or on a star. Malekith is going to destroy everything” jane continues.

“How” you question.

“Jane, how?” Thor presses when she doesn’t answer.

“I saw him on earth. Why would he go to earth?” She says looking up at the two of you.

“The convergence” Thor sighs.

“Oh god” you mutter when you realise how and what Malekith was going to do.

You mind instantly went to all your friends on earth. Especially Steve. All of them blissfully unaware of what was to come.

“None of this would have happened if I hadn’t found the Aether” Jane sighs shaking her head.

“Then Malekith would’ve only possessed it that much sooner” Thor says moving closer to Jane.

“I only found it because I was looking for you” Jane tells him.

“Jane” Thor sighs caressing her cheek soothingly.

“Now we’re trapped here” she says shaking her head.

You were then all interrupted by the sound of Jane’s ringtone. You look over at her shocked and confused.

“Your phone” you say as she quickly pulls it out answering the call.

As she does so you pull out your own phone finding that it too had signal. You could see text flooding in from all your friends. Steve checking in on you, concerned that he hadn’t heard from you.

“Richard? Where are you?” Jane says quickly getting up.

“Oh my god this is amazing” she says holding up her phone.

“How are we getting service here” you ask showing her your phone as well.

“Wait whatever you do, do not hang up the phone!” Jane says into the phone walking away again.

“Who’s Richard?” Thor whispers to you.

“I think she went on a date with him” you say trying to recall what Darcy had told you.

As you look around you spot a can on the floor. Specifically, the one Jane had dropped in the abandoned building.

“Jane look” you say pointing it out.

She bends down picking up the car keys Ian had dropped stuffing them in her pocket.

“Thor this way” you say grabbing his hand and pulling him further into the cavern after Jane.

“Where are we going, why are there so many shoes?” He asks glancing around.

“I’ll explain later” you say as you watch Jane step through the portal.

“Jane!” Thor says in surprise.

“She’s fine now come on” you say pulling him through the portal with you.

The two of you appear back at the abandoned building. Jane already heading over to the car. It’s windows had been smashed and the sides had been spray painted but asides from that it was fine.

Thor and you get inside the car, Thor in the passenger seat, you in the back.

“So who’s Richard?” Thor asks as Jane starts up the car.

“Really?” She asks.

As she drove you scrolled through your messages replying to some. You texted Steve to tell him you were fine and that you’d explain everything later. He responded almost immediately despite the time difference.

Msg from Steve: glad you’re okay, I don’t know if you’ve seen this

He then sent a link to a news article. As you opened it your jaw fell to the floor.

“Oh my god” you mutter to yourself.

“What?” Thor questions looking over his shoulder at you.

“I think I know why Selvig wasn’t answering your calls” you say leaning forward holding your phone out.

They both looked at it seeing the picture of Erik running around Stonehenge completely naked completely shocked

“Is he?” Thor questions.

“Yep, he’s been a bit off since New York” Jane explains.

Eventually you get back to Jane’s house, finding both Darcy, Ian and Erik already there. Jane walks straight in while you and Thor hang back slightly. You watch him hand his hammer on a hook going to stop him.

“That’s not what that’s for” you mutter but he doesn’t listen and just walks past you.

“Jane! How wonderful” Erik says getting up from his seat a moving to hug her.

“You’ve been to Asgard” he comments looking down at her outfit.

“Where are your pants?” Jane asks pointing out that Erik was just in a shirt and briefs.

“He says it helps him think” Ian explains.

“Okay well I’m going to need everything you got on this, all the work you’ve been doing on gravimetric anomalies, everything” Jane tells Erik.

“Okay” Erik agrees.

“Are you well Erik?” Thor asks a hint of amusement in his voice.

Erik chuckles before looking back at the two of you worriedly “your brother’s not coming is he?” He asks.

You drop your head, biting your lip, screwing your eyes closed to try and stop the onslaught on emotions.

“Loki is dead” Thor explains clearing his throat.

“Oh thank god” Erik sighs in relief making you and Thor look over at him in disbelief.

“I... I meant, I’m so sorry” Erik says correcting himself.

“Thank you” you say quietly as Erik walks over to the two of you.

Erik then gives you both large hugs, you had to try and not grimace slightly considering the lack of pants.

A short while later Jane walked back in, now dressed in her normal clothes. Everyone gathers round her computer as she looks over the data.

“Malekith is going to fire the Aether at a spot where all the nine worlds are connecting” Jane explains.

“Amplifying the weapons impact” Erik sighs “for each additional world the power will increase exponentially, the effect would be universal”

“But the alignment is only temporary, he’ll need to be in the exact place at the right time” you say crossing your arms over your chest.

“Well how do we know where that is?” Darcy asks.

“We follow the directions” Erik says standing up and walking away.

“This has happened before, thousands of years ago” Erik explains grabbing a map, knocking everything off a table and spreading it out.

“And the ancients were there to see it, all the great constructions, the Mayans, the Chinese, the Egyptians. They made use of the gravitational effects of the convergence and they left us a map” he says as he starts drawing on the map.

He circles a few areas before beginning to connect the dots. The lines all meet in one area. Looking over the map Erik points to Greenwich.

“Greenwich?” Ian questions.

“The walls between worlds will be almost non-existent, physics is going to go ballistic. Increases and decreases in gravity, spatial extrusions. The very fabric of reality is going to be torn apart” Jane says shaking her head.

Thor recalls his hammer from the hook on which he left it, nodding down to you to check you were ready to go.

“I better go get my pants” Erik says before walking off.

The 6 of you quickly make your way to Greenwich. Darcy and Ian going to set up the equipment. Jane and Erik heading up to the tower. You and Thor lying in wait for Malekith.

Eventually he arrives, the ship crashing into a courtyard until it stuck out like a Thorn.

“Ready sister?” Thor questions.

“Always” you say looking at the ship in disgust.

The two of you take of heading straight for Malekith. Landing just in front of him, Thor with enough force the crack the path.

“You needn’t have come so far Asgardians” Malekith says as you and Thor start walking over.

“Death would’ve come to you soon enough” he continues as he advances towards us.

“Not by your hand” Thor growls.

“Your universe was never meant to be, your world and your family will be extinguished!” Malekith yells, blasting the two of you with the Aether.

Thor holds up his hammer, while you form a shield of ice to protect yourself. The both of you however still end up being thrown backwards. You only just got to your feet when Malekith blasted you again pushing you even further back.

“You know with all that power, I’d thought you’d hit harder” Thor goads.

“Don’t encourage him” you grumble, side-eyeing him.

Malekith prepares another strike but before he can release it Thor throws his hammer hitting him square in the chest sending him backwards. You take advantage while his army were distracted sending a large blast of flames towards them.

“You take Malekith, I’ve got these guys” you tell Thor.

He nods in agreement swinging his hammer before taking off after Malekith. You look back at the advancing elves, smirking to yourself. They looked confident as the approached, you crack your neck.

One benefit of not being part of the legend, was that they didn’t know how dangerous you truly were. Especially now that you were avenging both your mother’s and brother’s death.

Yelling you throw your hands down making roots shoot out of the ground. The impale some of the elves before slamming them down into the other.

You start shooting the rest with ice picks and fire balls. As you spot Darcy and Ian run past you focus your attacks on forcing the elves near the equipment they had put in place. The plan starts to work as Jane makes the elves randomly disappeared and reappear like the bottles in the abandoned building.

You work to take out as many elves as you could while keeping as many people safe as you could. Suddenly Malekith appears beside you but Thor was nowhere to be seen.

“Oi!” You shout getting his attention.

As he turns you blast a fireball in his direction, he swats it away but you continue to fire more. You managed to push him back a bit but in truth you were only making him angry. He growls sending a large blast your way. Sending you flying straight through a nearby window and into a stone column inside.

You hit the floor with a large thud. Groaning at the force of the impact. Your body ached all over to the point it almost felt numb. You slowly get up to your feet, stumbling slightly as you grab onto the side to keep yourself upright.

As you make your way outside you see Malekith sending the Aether up towards the convergence. You see Thor run up to meet you, both of you looking up at the destruction being caused.

“Thor!” Jane shouts as she and Erik run over to join you.

“We’re too late” she sighs.

“The convergence is at its peak” Erik says as he looks up at the sky.

“Can those things stop him?” Thor asks nodding to the equipment in Erik’s arms.

“Not from here” Erik sighs

“We can’t get close enough” Jane says.

“I can” Thor says grabbing the equipment from Erik.

“Thor wait” you say realising what he was going to do.

“It’s the only way, I’ll back I promise” he says before running off towards Malekith.

The three of you watch anxiously as Jane activates the equipment. On the final one the Aether and it’s destruction stops. The world suddenly falling quiet.

As you run back towards the ship you spot Thor lying on his front not moving. Suddenly the ship begins to groan and crack, slowly beginning to fall. You run over to him trying to lift him up. When you fail you cover your body with your own. You wait for the impact but it never comes.

“Everybody okay?” You hear Erik says.

Looking up you see Jane holding the monitor looking over at you and Thor in relief. She shoves it at Erik before running over to join you beside Thor.

As she cups his cheek his eyes slowly open a small groan escaping his lips. You help him sit up before shoving him slightly.

“Don’t scare me like that” you scold making him chuckle.

“I’m sorry sister” he says wrapping his arms around you hugging you.

“Are you okay?” Jane asks as you help him to his feet.

“I believe so, especially now Malekith is no more” he sighs glancing around.

“What do we do now?” She asks.

“Now we have to face our father, I just hope he goes easy on us” you sigh looking up at Thor.

“You’re going back to Asgard?” Jane asks clearly upset.

“Yes but I shall return again I promise” Thor says cupping her cheek.

“If father doesn’t kill him that is” you mutter, Thor jabbing you in the gut slightly.

“We’ll be back, don’t worry” you say with a reassuring smile.

Jane nods before quickly jumping up to kiss Thor “good luck” she says.

Thor grins back at her before looking down at you “ready?” He asks.

“Always” you smirk before the two of you travel back to Asgard.

Back in the fully repaired throne room. You and Thor knelt before your father listening to his lecture.

“You once said there would never be a wiser king than me, you were wrong” Odin says “the alignment has brought all the realms together, every one of them saw you offer your life to save them”

“What can Asgard offer its new king in return?” Odin finishes making you look up at him in surprise before glancing over at Thor.

“My life” Thor says simply before standing up.

You stand up beside him as he continues to speak “father I cannot be king of Asgard. I will protect Asgard and all the realms with my last and every breath but I cannot do so from that chair” Thor says nodding up to the throne.

“Loki for all his grave imbalance understood rule as I knew I never will, the brutality, the sacrifice it changes you. I’d rather be a good man than a great king” Thor explains, you remain silent, bowing your head at the mention of Loki.

“Is this my son I hear or the woman he loves?” Odin questions.

“When you speak do I not hear mothers voice?” Thor responses making Odin raise a brow slightly as he huffs gently.

“This is not for Jane father, she does not know what I came here to say. Now forbid me to see her or say she can rule by my side. It changes nothing” Thor continues.

“One son who wanted the throne too much, another who will not take it. What about you daughter?” Odin asks looking over at you.

“I think we can disqualify me on the count of being half human” you point out making your father chuckle “it is not my desire to rule”

“Is this my legacy?” Odin asks looking at the two of you.

“Loki died with honour, Y/N defends earth with it too, I shall try to do the same is that not legacy enough?” Thor asks glancing over at you, before offering his hammer to father.

After a moment of silence Odin speaks “it belongs to you, if you are worthy of it” he says.

“I shall try to be” Thor nods.

“I cannot give you my blessing nor can I wish you good fortune” Odin tells Thor.

“I know” Thor says before the two of you begin to turn away.

“If I were proud of the adults my children have become, even that I could not say, it would speak only from my heart... go my children” Odin says.

You smile back at you father, knowing that despite how complicated it sounded his words were only complimentary.

“Thank you father” you both say, you bow your head before you turn to leave.

You and Thor make your way back across the rainbow bridge towards the Bifrost.

“are you retuning to New York?” He asks.

“Yes, I’m sure I have some miss calls I need to return” you sigh pausing and looking back as Asgard.

“Now that the Bifrost is repaired, You may visit whenever you like sister” Thor reminds you.

“I know, I just- I’ll miss them still” you say you’re voice cracking slightly.

Thor nods his head putting a hand on your shoulder squeezing it gently.

“Go home and rest sister” he tells you with a small smile.

“Of course, now don’t be a stranger, you don’t have an excuse not to visit anymore” you tell him as you continue to walk.

“Ready?” Heimdall asks you.

You nod your head turning back to Thor who smiled back at you “I’ll see you soon sister” he smiles.

“You too brother” before you step back and allow Heimdall to transport you back to New York.

LIKE FOLLOW AND REBLOG!

Series Masterlist / Masterlist

I don’t have a tag list so follow @secretswiftymarvelfanlibrary and turn on post notifications for updates!

#NiamhWrites #the demigod from asgard series #Steve Rogers #steve rogers x reader #steve rogers x y/n #steve rogers x you #captainamerica #captain america x reader #captain america x y/n #captain america x you

62 notes · View notes

waitimcomingtoo · 3 years

Text

In Case You Don’t Live Forever

~chapter two rewritten~

Pairing: Peter Parker x Venom!Reader

Synopsis: you are Peters greatest love and Spider-Man’s greatest enemy

Masterlist and Series Masterlist

Moving and finding an apartment can be an incredibly long and stressful process. Unless you’re you, and life likes to throw a lot of curve balls at you for the utter hell of it.

Your dad dropped dead three weeks after you told Andy you were moving to New York. Coincidentally, right in the middle of you trying to find a place to live. He drank himself to death. Figures. You doubted you’d ever had a conversation with him that he was sober enough to remember. His untimely demise was unfortunate for him, because he died or whatever, but very fortunate for you. As his only child, you got his apartment in Queens and all his smelly hoodies.

You said your goodbyes to Andy and Dani after a night out in the streets of San Francisco. You had originally moved there after high school to start your show, The L/n Report. San Francisco was known for its crimes against the homeless population and you wanted to start with a story on that. You ended up interviewing Andy at the police station while investigating a missing person, and dated him for two years. Now, you were spending your last few hours in San Francisco with the very boy you once loved and the very girl he now did.

“Are you all packed?” Dani asked you, snapping you out of your thoughts.

“Pretty much. I gotta put my toothbrush and hairbrush in my suitcase in the morning. Other than that, I’m good to go.” You answered her. She smiled fondly at you as she linked her arm through yours.

“Hey, I’m really gonna miss you. More than that guy over there.” You whispered, nodding towards Andy, who had his head buried in his phone. Dani laughed and nodded in agreement as you continued to walk.

“I’m going to miss you too. You’re my best friend here.” She sighed sadly.

“I’m glad we’re friends. Most women in our position would hate each other.” You thought out loud.

“Uh uh. You’re thinking of women in films. It’s 2021, baby. Women support women. You and I are two talented, smart, beautiful women who would never be caught fighting over some boy. Especially not one who can’t take his eyes off his phone for two seconds.” Dani said loudly and smacked Andy’s arm. You laughed at the domestic moment but couldn’t help feeling a pain in your heart knowing he used to be that way with you.

“What, sorry?” Andy looked up. You and Dani looked at him before looking at each other and laughing.

“What’s funny?” He asked, growing annoyed.

“We’re laughing at you babe. Put your phone away. It’s Y/N’s last night here.” Dani scolded playfully. Andy sighed and reluctantly put his phone in his pocket.

“Right, sorry. And it’s not her last night here. She’s coming back. You are coming back, right?” He asked you. You nodded, though you weren’t entirely sure.

“Of course I’ll be back.” You shrugged. “I just want to experience something new for a while. I’ve done a million pieces on homelessness and poverty. I want to see what fresh stories New York has to offer.”

“You’re quoting the Daily Bugle, aren’t you?” Dani teased you.

“That is verbatim what they said to me.” You admitted with a laugh. “But hey, it worked. As of tomorrow, I’m the Daily Bugle’s newest investigative reporter.”

“Who are you reporting on anyway?” Andy showed a rare interest in your work.

“Some guy named Cletus Kasady.” You answered. “He’s some hot shot serial killer down in Queens. No one knows how he’s hiding his victims bodies. Apparently none have ever been close to being found.”

“And they want you to write the story on him?” Andy raised an eyebrow, always with the condescending tone.

“Well they heard about the whole Carlton Drake situation and decided I hadn’t been through enough trauma in my career.” You replied, earning a laugh from Dani but not Andy. You and Andy had already broken up by the time Carlton Drake contracted a symbiote and tried to kill you and Venom. You stopped him before he could hurt anyone and wrote a career defining article on his lethal human experiments. You managed to leave out all information regarding symbiotes from the article, so your secret was still safe. You were a fairly well known reporter since the incident and your next job was waiting for you in New York.

In the morning, You and Venom got on a plane and made your way to New York. Being on a plane with Venom turned out to be the equivalent to traveling with a toddler. You tried to sleep, but every two seconds you had to stop Venom from getting into trouble. She kept trying to open the window, even after you explained to her that everyone on the plane would die horrible death if the window were to open.

“Stop that.” You whispered when you noticed a black tendril creeping towards the window. The lady in the seat next to you shot me a look of confusion. You gave her a fake smile and turned back to the window, doing your best to conceal the small black tendril that was coming out of your body and fidgeting with the airplane window.

“We want it open.” Venom replied telepathically.

“Do you also want us to blow out of the plane and into space?” You said through my teeth.

“We didn’t anticipate that but it’d be appreciated.” Venom answered, making you groan. The rest of the plane ride followed in similar fashion.

Seven hours later, you arrived at the apartment building. You had never been to your dads apartment, you didn’t even know he had one. You wondered what happened to your childhood home as you looked around the place. The apartment wasn’t too small but not too big either. The rent was practically nothing compared to how expensive San Francisco was, and The Daily Bugle offered to cover your expenses until the story was done. You figured after some redecorating and moving in, it would make a fine new home.

The first seven days in the apartment went by smoothly. You unpacked, with little to no help from Venom, and set up the furniture. On the eight day, you sat on the couch, aimlessly flipping through channels in the TV when you had a thought.

“Oh shit.” You said out loud.

“What?” Venom, who was curly nestled around your neck like a neck pillow, asked.

“I forgot mail exists.” You frowned. “We better go check the mailbox before it overflows.”

You and Venom grudgingly walked to the mailboxes and back again. No one was around, so she manifested herself and rested on your shoulder as I looked through the mail.

“Oops. I grabbed someone else’s mail too.” You clicked your tongue when you read a strangers name off the envelope. “I gotta find them.”

“Let’s go.” Venom said and pulled you towards the front door.

“Sorry, babe. This is a me thing, not a we thing. You know I love you but I don’t want to scare our neighbors. Not yet anyway.” You reasoned. Venom grumbled and went back inside your body.

You checked the address of the envelope and discovered that it belonged to the apartment directly across from you.

You knocked on the door and patiently waited for someone to open it as you mindlessly cracked your knuckles. Just as you were about to walk away, the door opened.

“Hi, are you May Parker?” You asked right away. You looked up from the envelope and your face instantly flushed. The person staring back at you definitely wasn’t May Parker. It was a boy around your age, maybe a little younger. He had soft brown eyes and wavy brown hair. It was gelled back loosely and you could see the outline of soft curls. To your surprise, he was just as flushed as you were. You stared at each other for a moment, no one wanting to be the first to blink.

“Yea. I’m May Parker.” The boy said finally. He shut his eyes in embarrassment and shook his head.

“I mean, no I’m not. But that’s my Aunt. May is my Aunt but I’m not May. That’s my Aunt May. I’m her nephew…obviously. Aunt May is my Aunt May. I…what?” He stumbled over his words and somehow turned even redder. His blush reached all the way down his neck, to his blue jumper that read “Midtown Tech” in yellow letters. You recognized the name of one of the most prestigious high schools in New York, already impressed with your new neighbor.

“Well hello, not May Parker. I’m also not May Parker. But I seemed to forget that when I grabbed your mail this morning. Sorry about that.” You said sheepishly as you handed his mail to him. The boy rubbed the back of his neck as he looked at it and attempted to redeem himself.

“It’s not problem. She and I always forget to check the mail so you actually helped us, um, whoever you are.” He smiled weakly. His voice was cute. He had that Queens accent that the people of San Francisco lacked, for obvious reasons.

“Oh, right.” You laughed in embarrassment. “I’m Y/N L/N. I just moved here from San Francisco. I live across the hall.”

You pointed to the door behind you as if he didn’t know what “across the hall” meant. You didn’t know what was wrong with you. You were never this awkward.

His eyes lit up a bit once you told him where you lived.

“Really? I thought that smelly guy lived there.” The boy said and you stifled a laugh.

“That smelly guy was my father. He died a little while ago so I live there now.” You told him, malign the boys eyes widen. They were so brown. Like little pools of honey. Or little pools of the Hudson River. You had seen a million pairs of brown eyes before, but none like his. They were quite distracting to be honest.

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry! I had. I had no idea-“ he began to frantically apologize but you cut him off.

“Don’t worry about it. We never got along. And you’re right, that man stank.” You chuckled. It was the first thing you said that felt like your old self. You hadn’t really talked to anyone since moving to New York, with the exception of Venom and the occasional phone call from Andy or Dani. You liked talking to this boy, though you still had no idea who he was.

“Oh thank God. I thought I screwed this up before it even went anywhere.” He immediately turned red when he heard his own words. You saw the regret in his eyes and decided to throw him a bone.

“Well it certainly can’t go anywhere until you tell me your name.” You flirted. Again, he relaxed. You felt a surge of confidence knowing he wanted this to go well.

“Parker. I’m Parker Peter. I mean, Peter Parker.” He fumbled over his words again, making you smile fondly.

“We like him. He’s cute.” Venom said telepathically. You looked down at my shoes and blushed, knowing you liked him too.

“And he looks delicious.” She added, ruining the moment.

“It’s nice to meet you Peter Parker.” You gave him your best smile. “I’m glad there’s someone my age around here. Everyone I’ve met so far is either an old bitty or a creepy uncle type.” You regretted it as soon as it left your mouth. You didn’t know what his sense of humor was like and he might not find you the slightest but funny. Andy always told you you were bad at telling jokes, and you feared he might be right.

Lucky for you, Peter burst out laughing.

“Ah. I’ve seen you’ve met Henry.” Peter pointed a finger down the hall. “Yeah, I’d stay away from him. He asked me if he could have pictures of my feet once. He said he’d “pay me handsomely” for it too.”

“Damn. So he beat me to asking you.” You pretended to be upset, which made Peter laugh again. The sound of his laugh made your heart pick up speed. You weren’t used to feeling like this. Boys rarely impressed you, Andy was just lucky you liked a man in uniform.

“Yeah. You better stay away from him.” Peter advised.

“It might be hard.” You clicked your tongue. “Our mailboxes are pretty close. I’ll make a mental note to never check my mail while wearing flip flops, though.”

Peter smiled at your joke. He had the kind of smile that you would make the person laugh just to see it again. It was brilliant.

“Well my mailbox should be directly above yours. So don’t worry, I’ll protect you.” He grinned, and you grinned back.

“My hero.” You gushed as you put your hands over your heart. The tips of his ears went pink, like he was shocked that you said that.

“I’m no hero.” He sounded almost panicked, like you touched a nerve or something.

“We’re hungry. We need to eat.” Venom interrupted abruptly, causing you to jump. Since Peter couldn’t hear her, he looked at you strangely, not knowing the cause of your sudden jolt.

“Sorry, I uh, I thought I saw a spider.” You lied.

“If there was a spider, we’d eat it. We need food. Now.” Venom demanded.

Peter looked up at his doorframe for the imaginary spider.

“Yeah, New York is full of them.” Peter said skeptically. “Not that full, though. And some spiders are nice. One might even call them friendly.”

“Right.” You laughed at his strange wording, unaware that you were both keeping a secret.

“Would…” Peter began but trailed off, seemingly mulling something over in his head. “Would you like to eat dinner with my Aunt and I? I remember when we first moved in, it took us a while to get into the swing of things and make dinner every night. If you like, you could join us. And, you know, we could get to know each other.” He offered. It all came out in one breath. You could tell he was nervous and that only drew you in more.

“I’d love to Peter.” You said, and he smiled in relief.

“Great.” He gave an awkward thumbs up. “We usually eat around six so maybe come around then? She’ll be so happy to meet you. She loves cooking and she always tries to get me to learn but I once burnt cereal and I still don’t know how.” Peter began to ramble. He cut himself off and shook his head again. “Sorry. I’m rambling.”

Then, you did something stupid. You put your hand on his arm like the dumb bitch you were. You barely knew this guy. Who the hell were you to touch him? He must’ve been thinking the same thing, since he instantly froze under your touch and stared at your hand on his arm.

“Don’t apologize. I can’t cook either. Unless you count making tater tots as cooking. Then I’m Gordon Ramsey.” You assured him, feeling him relax under your touch.

“You’re just gonna mention tater tots without warning us first? Our mouth is watering. Can we eat Peter?” Venom asked, making your eyes widen.

If it was socially acceptable to scream at your symbiote in public, you would’ve yelled “NO, WE CANNOT EAT PETER” from the top of your lungs. But since you didn’t want to scare Peter and the rest of the neighbors away, you merely smiled and made another mental note to smack the shit out of Venom later.

“I love that man. “Where is the lamb sauce?” Peter mimicked in a bad British accent. He had no right being as charming as he was.

“No no no.” You shook your head. “His best line is “I’ll get you more pumpkin and I’ll ram it right up your ass. Would you like it whole or diced?”. He’s said some pretty wild things but that one makes me cry.”

Peters laugh rang through the halls. To be the cause of that laugh was a feeling like no other. You stood there for a while, just looking at each other. His eyes grazed down your body, but not in a crude way. You berated yourself for not dressing better when going to meet the neighbors, clad in nothing but a grey hoodie and some leggings. Peter looked cute, but you had a feeling he always did. His jumper was pretty baggy and you could see a collared shirt poking out the top. He was dressed almost professionally and you found it incredibly endearing.

You wanted to know more about him. You wanted to know his secrets and his hobbies and what makes him itch. You wanted to see if he dresses this way on weekends too or what his summer clothes looked like. Your gawking was interrupted by Peters phone ringing. He broke out of his trance and answered it quickly.

“Hi, Mr. S. No I’m not busy. I mean, I’m super busy but I can totally make time for you. Yea, Happy talked to me. Okay. Okay. Where? Okay. See you in a bit.” Peter hung up and looked at you apologetically.

“That was my job. I have to run but I’ll be back in time for our dinner. I live at…you know where I live. I’ll see you then. Don’t be late.” Peter called as he ran down the hallway, towards the elevator.

“I won’t. See you later.” You called back.

You went back to your apartment and like a kid, broke out into a happy dance.

“Venom!! Did you see how cute he was?” You gushed. “And how funny he is? I have to get ready for tonight.”

Venom manifested and swirled around my arm.

“Someone has a crush.” Venom smirked. Well, as much of a smirk as she could muster with that huge mouth of hers.

“I don’t have a crush. I just think he’s cute okay?” You replied coyly. “Cute. And funny and sweet and charming and amazing. But that’s it.”

“We can feel your heart beat.” Venom reminded you. “It was going ten miles an hour. What would Andy say?”

You had been rummaging through your closet and stopped in your tracks. With Peters new inhabitance in your mind, you had forgotten all about Andy. You moved to New York to avoid his wedding and his moving on, and you might’ve succeeded.

“I don’t care what he’d say.” You decided. “He’s not my boyfriend.”

“But we want him to be.” Venom insisted. “We want him back, remember?”

“I don’t know what I want.” You answered honestly. “I just want to get ready for tonight.”

“Why are you getting ready now? You have 5 hours until you have to be there and it’s right across the hall.” Venom teased.

“Only 5 hours?” You sighed. “We better get moving.”

#peter parker x reader #peter parker x y/n #peter parker x you #peter parker fanfiction #peter parker imagine #peter parker x venom!reader #venom!reader #tom holland x reader #tom holland x you #tom holland fluff #tom holland fanfiction #iron man

748 notes · View notes

nickyhemmick · 3 years

Note

A Very Stressed American Jew here again,

Hi! Thank you for taking the time to respond to my ask and yes, I’m someone who loves hearing as many perspectives as possible so I’d love some sources from you. I also very much appreciate the fact you are being very careful to only reblog posts that are anti Israel, not antisemetic (which is frankly a breath of fresh air, the internet has been a bit exhaustingly full of both antisemitic & Islamaphobic content these past feel days as I bet you’ve seen)

I’ve also been to Israel on a Birthright trip. We met people who ( both Palestinian and Israeli) on various sides of the conflict and learned a ton about it, from both perspectives which I was lucky to have the opportunity to do. We even went a little into the Gaza Strip to talk to these people running a pro Palestine peace movement and it was so important to me hearing those stories.

I never said they were on equal footing militarily, they definitely are not, Israel definitely has that advantage. But you are incorrect about Israel always being the aggressor since 1948,they’ve defended themselves about as often as they’ve attacked. Isreal is a small country comparatively to the ones surrounding it, so it makes sense it defends itself heavily in case of an attack.

I 100% agree that there are too many people who are compliant with the mistreatment of many Palestinians! I’m not anti #freepalestine at all! I get why that is a thing. But I also stand with Israel( but that does not mean I condone every action they take. ) Overall I think the situation is extremely complicated and some sort of compromise should be reached.

It’s just been very frustrating to see so many people reblog things on a situation just bashing Israel because so many others are doing it. Especially when then don’t know what they are talking about or using big buzz words that they don’t know what they mean, or spreading misinformation. It’s been on both sides and has been very very draining. I just want peace and some sort of solution. It makes me extremely happy you know what you are talking about and can debate politely yet happily about it. The internet has been so ‘ either agree with me 100% or you a bad person’ about this so it’s refreshing to see you are not like that.

I’ve done a lot of research into it from as many perspectives as I can get my hands on.

Some extremest Israelis are hurting Palestinians

Some extremest Palestinians are hurting Israelis

Both sides are throwing rockets at each other and it’s terrifying.

Both sides claim the other side is brainwashed

There is so much biased propaganda out there on both ends it’s hard to know what is truly happening.

I know people living in Israel who have sent me videos they’ve taken of rockets flying over there heads and I’m so scared for them. I’m so scared for all the innocent people caught in the crossfire on both sides.

Thank you for a more nuanced response and I’d love some of your sources,

A Very Stressed American Jew

Hi anon,

I wasn’t going to respond to this until after my math final tomorrow but I’ve spent the past two days thinking of your ask and the things I wish to articulate in my answer.

I am going to start here: how can you say you support Israel but say you are also pro-free Palestine (as in, you said you are not anti free Palestine). In my opinion, these two ideas cannot coexist. Simply because, the entire establishment of Israel has been on violent, racist, colonial grounds.

(Super long post under here guys)

You said you don’t support all Israel’s actions, and definitely, just because you support something doesn’t mean you can’t criticize it. However, in my opinion, if you do not support Israel’s actions against Palestinians there’s not much left to support? I admit this is a very biased view as I am Palestinian, but many things that people support about Israel have existed before its creation: as in, these are things and qualities that have existed in Judaism and are not due to “Israeli culture.” There is no Israeli culture. There’s Jewish culture--100%. But there is no Israeli culture, because Israel does not only steal Palestinian land, but Palestinian culture, too. Such as claiming Levant food is Israeli; hummus, ful, falafel, shawarma. I mentioned food from this article I know is culturally and traditionally of the Levant, and has been for centuries, it is not something that has come to culinary creation in the past 73 years.

I do not think this is a complicated issue. I said that in the previous ask and I’ll say that again. Saying it is a complicated issue is trivializing the deaths of innocent Palestinians, the violent dispossession our ancestors endured, and the apartheid they live under. I hope if anything comes from this discussion it is you removing the “it’s a complicated issue” phrase from your vernacular.

This is not complicated. A journalist reporting the death of martyrs only to discover that of them include two of his brothers is not complicated. The asymmetry of Israel vs Palestinian armed forces is not complicated, nor is the asymmetry in Israeli vs Palestinian suffering (which I will get to later). It is not complicated. Destroying the graves of martyred Palestinians (or just in general, the graves of the dead) is not complicated. Little children being pulled from the rubble, children being forced to comfort one another as they are covered in the ashes of their decimated homes, attacking unarmed citizens in peaceful demonstrations (you can find videos before this attack where they were playing with kites and balloons), destroying an international media office and refusing to allow journalists to retrieve the work they are spending every waking hour documenting but claiming it was because it was a hide out for a “Hamas base,” fathers who are trying to cheer their frightened children up only to end up dead the next day, while many Israeli have the privilege and the option to go to hotel-like bomb shelters is not complicated.

This brings me to my next point: the suffering of Palestinians cannot be compared to the inconvenience of Israeli’s. On one side, you have children who are happy to have saved their fish in the face of their homes and lives being decimated behind them to Israeli’s in Tel Aviv having to cut their beach day short to get to bomb shelters. You have mothers and fathers ready to set their lives down for their children to save them from bombs to Israeli’s enjoying their brunch only after making sure there are bomb shelters there. You have Palestinian children being murdered to blocking out the sound of sirens in the safety of your bomb shelters. (The first picture of the Palestinian child is not from footage of the recent problems). You have the baby lone survivor of a whole family recovered from rubble. His whole family, gone, before he ever had the chance to realize that he even exists, while Israeli’s decide to flee out of the country,(Translate the caption from Twitter, it checks out), or have to leave the shower due to sirens. Who is really suffering?

I won’t sit here and pretend like the thought of rockets flying over my head, no matter which side I am on, is not terrifying. It is. It’s scary to just think about. But Israeli’s have protection beyond Palestinian’s, they have sirens to warn them (Israel does not always warn Palestinian building members that it is about to be bombed), they have the Iron Dome, they have simply the threat of nuclear power (which I am not saying Israel would use, but the simple fact they have it would make me feel a lot better if I were an Israeli citizen) and they have bomb shelters. What do Palestinians have? Hamas? That smuggles its weapons through the ocean? That only ever reacts to the action Israel instigates? And yet Gazans are branded terrorists and that it is their fault that they “elected” a terrorist organization that only was ever created due to no protection from any armed country? (There are so many links I want to add in this paragraph but it is simply impossible for me to add everything I want, a lot of what I’m referring to can either be found through a Google search, or you can stalk my Twitter account, all that I am posting now is about Palestine, and will include sources of things I cannot add in just this one post.)

Look, I see myself in the genocide happening in Palestine right now. I see myself in this ten year-old girl. In this three year old girl. I see me and my family in videos of cars being attacked in Ramallah and Sheikh Jarrah (I cannot find the Ramallah video, should be somewhere on my Twitter), I see my father in the countless videos of fathers crying out for their children, of kissing the corpse of their loved ones (again, translate the Tweet, the man holding the body is saying “just one kiss”). I see my grandfather in videos like this (old footage). I see my younger brother, I see my grandmother, my mother, my aunts and uncles and cousins. I see myself and my life and my family were my father not lucky enough to get a scholarship to the UK and out of Palestine, were my maternal grandfather not been lucky enough to make it to a refugee camp and build a life in Jordan. I have an unbelievable amount of privilege to be born into the life I was born in to, in terms of I do not have the threat of bombs and violent dispossession around me, and I do not even live in the US. I have privilege and sheer luck that my parents were able to go to the US so that me and my brothers can be born, because now I have both the protection of the most powerful country in the world while at the same time being part of a people to have suffered so generously the past seventy-three years.

On the other hand, you saying that Israel has “defended themselves about as often as they’ve attacked. Israel is a small country comparatively to the ones surrounding it, so it makes sense it defends itself heavily in case of an attack,” I offer you this question: why are they using military grade guns and stun grenades in mosques to “defend” themselves from rocks? And before you mention that Hamas hit Tel Aviv, I remind you that Hamas did that due to the violence in the Al-Aqsa mosque square and the attempted ethnic cleansing in Sheikh Jarrah. The violence didn’t begin with us; the violence was brought out of Palestinians in resistance to the generations of oppression we have endured and the attack on Palestinian Muslims during the holiest night of Ramadan. Hamas has since asked for a ceasefire multiple times and Israel is refusing. New reports say there is a possibility of a ceasefire in the coming days, but Israel could have decided this a long time ago and spared many lives. (Remember, no matter what resistance we make, Israel is the one in power).

Israel has been the aggressor since 1948. Just read up about the Nakba! 700k Palestinian families were dispossessed violently. The only reason Israel was established at all was because it simply declared it was now a country and the US and many other countries recognized it as such. (Of course, there are many other historical details here, like the British Mandate of Palestine, the Balfour Declaration, the Oslo Accords and many others. I am aware of them but these are for a different post all together). My paternal grandfather was a little younger than me when Israel as a state was created. The hostility that followed was due to this independent declaration being listened to over Palestinian voices.

Here is a very, very simplified analogy, one that can also answer some people’s questions as to why Palestinians (not Arabs, we are Palestinian before we are Arab) did not like what happened in 1948 and why they refused a two-state solution (that Israel was never going to go through with anyway). (I am also aware other Arab nations got involved, and that is perhaps what you mean when you said they had to defend themselves, but my response to that would still be we didn't start it, that we only responded to it).

Let’s say you are a farmer. You have many fields of trees, ones you have taken shelter under from the sun since you were a child, or hid behind when you wanted to avoid your parents when you misbehaved. You have seen your trees grow from a seed, to a sprout, to a flower, to a large, beautiful tree with fruits the size of a fist. You pluck the fruits from one tree, and make a jam from it. I don’t know how to make jam but I know it takes a lot of energy. So, you make this jam and from it, produce a lovely, mouth-watering pie. Once it has cooled from the oven, you take it with you outside your balcony just so that you can admire the years, months, weeks and hours this one pie has taken to be created. Suddenly, a stranger walks past and yells to you, “That pie looks delicious, I want it!” And you, shocked at their boldness but ready to share, say, “I will give you a bite.” But the stranger says, “No! I do not want a bite or a slice or whatever you want to offer me, I want the pie!” And they grab it from you. You and the stranger start screaming at one another about who the pie is for, who is allowed to decide what happens to it, and who you can share it with. Then, another stranger comes by and says, “Why all the problems? Let’s cut the pie in half and the both of you can share it!” But why should you, who has spent years cultivating the fruit and grain inside this pie, share it? Why should you give up half of the 100% that you already owned? Of what you already had? So you disagree, and now a crowd has formed around you. “What’s the problem?” someone in the crowd calls. “They don’t want to share their pie!” another voice says. Then you become branded a selfish, mean bastard. Again, this is a super simplified analogy, so don’t take it too seriously, but I am trying to show you why Israel is the aggressor.

In addition, I do not know too much about the Birthright program, just that American Jewish people are sent to Israel, all expenses paid. I tried my best to find the Twitter thread but I read it so long ago, about an American Jewish person who went on their trip and they talked about the propaganda that they were exposed to on that trip. I can’t say for sure that it is true, because I haven’t been on it and never will, but that is the first thing I thought of when you mentioned your Birthright trip. Either way, I think it is still great you went and saw the country. However, I must ask you this: are the people you met ones you, yourself, sought out, or ones you were organized to meet?

Now, I haven’t been to Gaza, so I don’t know what you really saw or didn’t, but did you speak to Palestinians who lost their homes to airstrikes? Did you speak to siblings, parents or children of loved ones who had been lost beneath the rubble of buildings and towers? Outside of Gaza, did you speak to Palestinians that live in poor quarters? Ones who have been victims of an IDF soldier shooting them, or who have family members who have died from such attacks? Did they take you guys to Ramallah, to Nablus, to Beit-Imreen, to Jenin, to small villages in the West Bank, far away from Jerusalem and Tel Aviv? Did you speak to people there? Ask them their stories? Because if you did I have a very hard time believing you still think Israel is “defending” itself.

I’ve been to Jerusalem, many times, even Tel Aviv and Jaffa and Haifa. All the times I visited Dome of the Rock there were IDF soldiers with huge guns strapped to their person, standing menacingly outside the courtyard. For what? Genuinely, genuinely for what? It is nothing but an intimidation tactic. The same way we are not allowed in through the airport. If you could see the struggle some Palestinians actually go through just to get into Palestine, through the land border, you would be disgusted. I love Palestine, it is my ancestry land, it is my culture and tradition. But I always hated going to visit because I knew the way to getting there would be hell.

My father worked in Tel Aviv through the first Intifada. My maternal grandfather was forced out of his home in the Nakba and was forced to leave behind his belongings and the orange trees that have been in his family for generations. Hell, the town they lived in was destroyed! It doesn’t exist anymore except in the memories of my aunts and uncles, who never even saw it, but just heard of it from their father!

I’m not saying there aren’t Palestinians who are racist and anti-Semitic (though, tbh, I will direct you here for that) and who support Hamas in killing Israeli’s, but talking about how there are many “extremist” Palestinians who are hurting Israeli’s and in the next line say there are extremist Israeli’s who are hurting Palestinians is not correct. There are extremist Israeli’s killing, lynching, stealing the houses of Palestinians, and there are Palestinians who are fed up and fighting back. (I am not talking about Hamas vs the IDF here, I am talking about the citizens). I have not seen one reported death of an Israeli due to Palestinian violence (if you have, from a trusted source, send it to me), but I have seen countless of the other way around. I have seen images of charred little bodies, of a baby being dug out of the rubble, of a child’s body that had been so mutilated that you can literally see the insides of their body coming out. (I don’t know if it’s on my Twitter, I didn’t want to save that shit). If this was my country I would be absolutely ashamed of myself and my people and what they are doing in the name of my protection. So you have to forgive me, and forgive other Palestinians, who don’t give a fuck about Israeli’s having anxiety over rockets flying over their heads when we see these images. Where is the protection of our kids? Why does no one seem to mention them except when mentioning the poor, innocent ones in Israel? At least more than the majority of them have their parents to comfort and rock them. At least many of them will probably be saved of ever having to be beneath the rubble of a destroyed building, or digging in it, to hope to find the parts of their parents or siblings just so that they can bury them. Just the links from the start of my answer is enough to support what I am saying.

I have soooo much more I can say, like how Israel uses religion to distort the image of what’s going on (tbh, just check my Twitter for that: language is EVERYTHING), but you didn’t mention religion in any of this and so I won’t either. The only reason I decided to respond to you in such length was because you have been one of the few respectful anons in my inbox in the past few years of me being on here talking about Israel, so I appreciate that from you.

As promised, some more sources: decolonizepalestine is a good place to start if you haven’t used it already, it has reading materials, myth busting, and more. Here is a map list of destroyed localities from pre-1948 until 2017, run by two anti-Zionist Israelis. Here and here are the articles I promised of a former IDF soldier-turned Palestinian activist, I read these two last year in June and remember coming out much more informed than before I read them. I suggest looking into the writer and his organization, which, if I remember correctly, collects accounts from previous IDF soldiers. I would suggest not to follow Israel and the IDF accounts on any platform, or any Israel times newspaper, simply because they will not tell you the truth. In fairness, you do not have to follow any Palestinian Authority accounts (which I am not even sure there are), but to follow on-ground Palestinians like Mohammed El-Kurd, who has been speaking out since he was 12 (he is now 22) and he is part of the families in Sheikh Jarrah. I have noticed that this and this account have been translating Arabic headlines and tweets for non-Arabic speakers, I have just started following this person but their bio says they are a Palestinian Jewish person so I am interested in their view of things. You can also follow Israeli’s on-ground and see their perspective on things, but I would also advise to compare the Palestinian and Israeli side of things from the people, and critically analyze the language used in each case. Also, this article references Jewish scholars opposed to the occupation (I have not looked into them myself but I plan to after my exams), and Norman Finklestein is another great Jewish scholar to look into if you haven’t. Twitter is better than Instagram and Facebook, so I would stick to getting live-info from there, Twitter does not censor Palestinian content as much as Insta and Facebook so you’re more likely to see things there.

I will end this by saying I personally do not see any other option for peace than to give Palestinians our land back. Whether we may be Muslim, Jewish or Christian, it has always been and will always be our land. I only hope to see it free in my lifetime.

Free Palestine.

#palestine #israel #west bank #tala gets asks #anon #whew this ask took me like 2-3 hours to respond to #pls read it even if ure not the anon #lots of good links and info #palestine tag #anon there are more reading lists in my #to read #and palestine tag tags #check my likes on twitter too if u decide btw not just what i retweet #like also: imagine palestinians around palestine and the world who are simply waiting to hear if their relatives are dead or alive or #have been striked from a rocket. like i can see my father worried abt his friend in gaza rn like any day #now he can just never hear back from him and have to guess hes dead somewhere beneath the rubble #and israelis are anxious at the rocket sounds? good for them but again that shows the asymmetry in #palestinian vs israeli suffering #and by ‘good for them’ i mean good that thats what theyre worried abt compared to palestinians #my aunt is in sheikh jarrah #my cousin lives right by the al aqsa square #again theres so much more i couldve mentioned and talked abt but theres just so much #theres so many LAYERS i wld say but not that its complicated #and definitely theres more i need to learn and read and watch dont get me wrong! i am not a fountain of knowledge by all means!!!!

172 notes · View notes

tundrainafrica · 3 years

Text

Title: Lovebug (14/14)

Summary:

“It might be a bug.”

“A bug?”

“Sometimes the developers of this application make mistakes. This is our first time meeting I’m sure so…Isn’t it a bit weird that we just met for the first time and it rings like this? And for two strangers to coincidentally ring each other’s alarms?“

Levi is the developer of the Love Alarm App and Hange is married to Zeke.

Link to cross-postings: AO3

Other Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

Notes: I know I usually post on Wednesdays but I'll be on the road on Wednesday and if I don't get this out soon, I'll probably end up dropping it next week or smthg so here it is. Two days early. I hope you enjoy :D

Is this all that there is to life? A glaring question that came unexpectedly, in between reading through codes for his nth freelance project the past few years.

In response, Levi closed his eyes, sat back and reflected. A part of him may have been asking that question for a while and slowly, Levi started to understand why he was asked that in the first place.

A few minutes ago, he had been strangely happy to see his code compiling at the first try. And just a few hours ago, he had been enthusiastic at running a debugger through a code and finding a few typos to fix.

Happiness. That was happiness right?

That part of him continued to nag. It soured that 'happiness,' leaving a burning dissatisfaction inside him. You’ve experienced better moments, happier moments.

Then Levi got fed up. He reached into the back of his mind, he remembered, then something stopped him from reminiscing for a while longer.

Something strange. Something buried.

He hadn’t allowed himself to feel much since he first moved into that new city. He had allowed the novelty and the business to carry him through his first months. But the novelty of a new beginning never lasted long.

Too shaken to even bother applying for a new job, Levi opted to work freelance. Consequently, his only companions were the four walls of his studio apartment and the occasional voices from next door.

There was only so much which could stimulate interest. His mind continued to search for them and naturally, time continued to move along with it. Routine and episodes of ennui seemed to last infinities in the moment. But in retrospect, it felt like they all happened too fast.

He had made sense of time in milestones, milestones worth ten times the refreshing feeling of running a debugger through code or the fleeting euphoria of compiling codes at the first try.

Is that all that there is to life? Eventually, he made sense of that strange voice. There was reason to that question.

That day was another milestone. If it wasn't for his nagging mind, he could have missed it.

It was a blustery autumn day in late October, the weather similar to the last view he had of his home five years ago. Shifting his gaze from the window of his present apartment, he took a quick look at the calendar and it was like a dam had ended up spilling open inside him.

The five year mark was a bittersweet milestone, five years since he left home. The fifth year rang more loudly than every year before that. Maybe because five was such a perfect number, or perhaps because he had been keeping something in for a while.

He felt a release. Then a reprieve from the monotony, a reprieve from the five years avoiding his old life. Levi found himself opening his browser tab, typing the words ‘love alarm’ on the search box and deleting it a second later.

An aimless and useless sequence of movements. He didn’t need a quick google search to know how it was doing.

The love alarm had become a household name even all the way in his side of the world. With his very human need to go out, whether it be for groceries, shopping or just some fresh air, Levi couldn’t completely ignore it. With the right decisions, Levi could choose not to give so much as a side glance at the people walking, heads bent down, staring at the number of hearts on their application.

When he went out though, even with his music at full blast, he would hear the familiar alarm as he walked through crowds.

At first, it had left a pang in his chest, a brief bout of nausea, perhaps disgust or embarrassment at his old life.

It had been five years since he first arrived though and it turned out, time did heal.

Levi looked through the wikipedia page of the love alarm and he found, it hurt more like a raw scar than a stab in his chest or a crushing weight. The nausea, the pang in his chest that plagued him years before were weak if almost nonexistent.

Curiosity took over.

Would would have felt like an ache in the chest years ago, felt more like a mosquito bite. Levi was just slightly annoyed. It did nothing to stop him though from registering again and looking through the application interface.

Nothing much had changed. There were some slight changes to the skin of the registration page, a change in the name of the company at the bottom. Levi purposely touched the activate button rapidly and found he had crashed the application.

That was one bug that he never got to fix. He turned his phone to the side, noting the way the screen glitched as it adjusted to the landscape orientation of the phone. Another bug Levi never got to fix.

Then he wondered who the developer on the other end had been to have never even caught it.

Biometrics registered, Levi activated the alarm to find no hearts. He couldn’t help but entertain that slight disappointment. Of course no hearts would have appeared though. He hadn’t even interacted with his neighbors.

It would have been creepy it rang. Letting out a sardonic laugh just loud enough for himself, he leaned back on the chair and stared at the ceiling, forcing his thoughts back to whatever coding freelance project he’d been dealing with a few minutes ago.

Work came in freelance projects. They were enough for rent, for savings and some capacity to eat out occasionally.

A simple yet comfortable life. But is that all that there is to life? That voice continued to tear into his work related thoughts. Levi gave in to the nagging thought again. He started scrolling through wikipedia articles detailing use, detailing acquisition history, he found another key word under related articles, more interesting than ‘love alarm.’

Mood Alarm.

It sent a strange shiver through the back of his neck. Levi rolled his shoulders, relieving the tension that came with the last few eons of reflection. He let out a whistle, opened the new article and scrolled down towards references.

There were lists of articles.

Partner of Zeke Jaeger and freshly minted PhD graduate Doctor Hange Zoe release Mood Alarm.

Doctor Hange Zoe. Something inside him was fighting for control. He couldn’t bring himself to click the link. At the same time though, there was this curiosity inside him that he couldn’t seem to get to the bottom of.

Under the link to the article was the official website.

At the front page, there was a boring and overly professional introduction Levi didn’t bother to read

Below them, everything else had been interesting enough to give more than a second long glance.

The list of functionalities. The color codes. Then newly launched dashboard functionalities, almost a carbon copy of the plan Levi had sent years back.

“Fucking hell, you actually did it,” Levi muttered. He couldn’t help but just allow the smile that tugged at his lips some control. Excitement had him searching for the application on the play store, downloading it and methodically going through the same registration process as the love alarm.

It didn’t look much like the mood alarm Levi had worked on years ago. He saw hints of it though and worked from there to admire it.

The front end had been cleaned up. The font chosen fit the silver-to-white gradient of the application. When Levi clicked ‘activate,’ the screen loaded.

The colors mixed against one another for a second, an aesthetic choice of animation that Levi couldn’t help but be amused with.

Red. Yellow. Blue. Purple. Green. Orange.

The colors continued to mix. Then some disappeared as if they had lost themselves in some colorful war.

Then it was only blue and yellow. The two colors danced against one another for a few seconds longer before they disappeared too. More specifically, they bundled against one another.

Green. It took him at least five seconds to get that reading.

He didn’t have to look at the guide on the website to know what it meant.

Sad happy? Or happy sad? Whatever that feeling was, Levi felt no need to introspect, or maybe he had been too lazy to.

It had been a while since he had even let himself feel something. The green on his screen, the feeling that accompanied it, seemed more like an old friend he hadn’t talked to a while.

If he had any ability at introspection, maybe it had already rusted. Still, he let those emotions inside him, that yellow and that blue do their work.

They had him turning off the mood alarm, then turning off the love alarm. Something inside him still hesitated to delete the applications. Then it had him considering the space on his phone for just a second.

He downloaded another app that night. A familiar app with a flame, then another one with a bee. Only months into his new life in a new city with a new job, Levi was already bored— and if he had to admit it—terribly, terribly lonely.

And maybe the best way to cure it was to spend the whole night swiping.

***

Finding a companion wasn’t as easy as desperation and a few second long rush of confidence made it out to be.

Perhaps, online dating was a rash idea, an uncharacteristic move.

Didn't he reject Petra years ago? How could he date anyone else? Petra… How is she… With nothing much to do but wait for his date, he found himself texting Petra as he waited in the cafe.

He sent a few thank you messages at her well wishes. They exchanged brief updates and Petra’s own updates dragged on for longer.

Her life was more eventful than his.

Petra had started dating Oluo. She had found someone who loved her, just as much as she loved him. Keeping a correspondence with her only highlighted points for reflection for Levi. The more he reflected, the more questions came up. The more he reflected, the more complicated the questions became.

He was lonely but could he be picky? At the same time, did he even have the heart to put anyone through the shitty experience of a half hearted courtship?

Hange’s words echoed in his head, not in any specific string, a few parts in words, a few parts in phrases.

Considering the circumstances… Love is a choice.

When he let her words echo through him, he managed to grip a presence long gone. A presence and a relationship, he clarified, that had never been his in the first place.

He never did completely brush away the guilt that accompanied every passing thought of Hange. There was this strange acceptance though that appended it, and it had him a little more discerning, a little more prudent.

If he couldn’t have her, he could always just keep her close in his own personal way.

“Have you heard of the love alarm?”

How long had she been there? How long had she been talking?

Right, Levi was on a date. She had said words before that question and Levi could have sworn they had exchanged greetings even before that.

“In passing,” Levi said. He manifested some reality from the words, as if a firm response was enough to forget decades worth of overtime and testing.

“It’s this application we can use to test compatibility… So at least we know if this could work.”

Levi listened with some fake intent as she explained how the love alarm worked. He made sure to nod at points where her tone had gone a little higher or louder.

“What do you think?” There was some finality to her voice, an expectant look on her face.

Levi hummed in thought.. “I don’t believe in using an app to check compatibility. What about when we consider circumstances? Get to know each other… Then decide if it could work?”

She looked at her phone for a second, then back at Levi, her brows furrowed in confusion.

Levi shook his head. “Sorry, I just don’t believe in things like the love alarm, it seems just like horoscopes or Myer Briggs to me. Compatibility, relationships, they’re just gonna be choices we make anyway.” He found himself guiltily looking away as he said those last points.

The pout that played at his date’s lips was evidence enough, there probably wouldn’t be a second date. “It’s not like our love alarm’s would have rung anyway,” she said.

It had been a while since Levi dated though and he started to realize, maybe his filter and his social skills had rusted just a bit.

***

Love is a choice.

It looked like he might have been the only one to believe that. He had managed to piss off countless other dates with his own ‘love is a choice’ schtick.

And he had been dating semi regularly for the past year already. Yet, nothing was coming up fruitful.

How the hell did Hange even manage to get married? Or maybe Hange had just been the exception. He then concluded, Hange just had too many other loveable qualities which could make anyone want to snap her up early on.

The more he entertained the thought of Hange, the heavier his own chest became. Then he stopped entertaining her then the cycle would start again, a very vicious cycle.

It just so happened that sometimes the thought of ‘Hange’ manifested as some domineering thought. ‘Love is a choice’ and the strange sensation that came with his whole body protesting, rebelling in their own little way worked hand in hand.

He was confused and consequently desperate enough to open the mood alarm for some inkling of comprehension. He would focus on the way the colors switched among one another, disappearing, always revealing a yellow and a light blue dancing between one another then always ending with a light blue.

Sometimes he was blue. Sometimes he was green.

Ane he continued to check. After all, he mood alarm had become a beautiful and constant companion. He had deleted the love alarm but kept the mood alarm close.

“What do you think of the love alarm?”

How many people are gonna ask about that fucking application?

Zeke had just been a little too good at marketing. It was the nth time someone had broken the ice of a first date with that fucking question and Levi regretted not making a drinking game out of it. Maybe he would have been able to drink enough to forget that cursed product.

“Are you okay?” his new date asked.

He had spent the past few minutes too silent, not thinking. “Nifa…” That was her name right? He cleared his throat. “I’m fine.”

She looked as nervous as he did, or even more nervous. That part was comforting at least. In a way, her demeanor seemed a little more pleasant, more genuinely curious than wary. “I asked just a second ago, have you ever used that love alarm?” she said in response.

Levi followed the same script. "In passing."

“Would you like to try it out? Just to make sure we’re on the same page, relationship wise.”

“I’d rather we relied on circumstances and compatibility to make the choice for us. Get to know each other maybe…” When it came to suggestions, Levi had revised his script just a bit. Too many people got offended by his invalidating horoscopes and Myer Briggs type for some weird reason. “Like get to know each other, like…” Levi trailed off for a second, allowing himself a pregnant pause. ”... Elizabeth and Darcy?”

Nifa had cocked her head to the side curiously, thought for a long second and smiled just a bit wider. “You read Pride and Prejudice?”

Levi nodded subtly. “A while back,.”

She paused for a second, seeming deep in thought. “Well… Now that I think about it, you might be right,” Nifa said. “This compatibility thing… Your idea of love. I think it makes sense.”

“Really? You think so?”

“Yeah, why?” Nifa asked.

Levi dropped his shoulders in relief, the weight of at least a hundred failed dates fell off his shoulders. “I’ve been dating for years and I feel like you’re the only one who actually said that.”

Nifa didn’t reply immediately and the longer Levi sat there, the more clearly he saw her face. Surprise morphed into something that seemed more like pity. Then, the chronic pang in his chest came back.

A first love did that to people maybe? A painful first love lost had that special power to maybe just twist his own philosophies, to make him almost disgusted at his own creations and the way it had challenged his own convictions.

Are you scared? Levi thought to himself. He couldn’t be too sure how he was handling himself in front of Nifa. He looked down at his hands, opening and closing them a few times and if he looked closely, he could almost feel those uncomfortable twinges in his wrist that came from years of coding.

“I’m willing to put the time into it if you are.” Nifa’s voice was more gentle and it flowed as if she had sensed the stiffness in his voice.

Levi didn’t respond immediately and suddenly their little corner of the crowded cafe was eerily silent. There was a melancholy that had blanketed their little corner despite the Saturday afternoon crowd.

Nifa seemed like she was trying to break away from it with some light conversation. “Hey, have you heard of the mood alarm?”

“The mood alarm?” Levi let that half smile creep up his lips, just high enough to be more invisible than obvious. Three words from a stranger and his emotions were reduced to a mess.

He once again felt that twinge again at his rests and that sleepless night, and her. He was remembering her in his office through sleepy exhausted eyes, with a cocktail dress and a sandwich bag in one hand.

There was also something amusing and painfully ironic about hearing his own brainchild, from someone so casually, as if it had turned into some household name while he wasn’t looking.

The conversation was getting painful, painfully interesting and the masochist in Levi was gripping him and pulling him back to reality. “Like the love alarm…” Levi added.

“Well, they’re products from the Jaeger corporation… You know the Jaeger family right?” Nifa added.

Levi could only be thankful he hadn’t been sipping at his tea then. He probably could have choked. How could he ever forget Zeke Jaeger?

He might have gotten a lot better at hiding his own disgust or Nifa could have been too deep in thought. She continued to talk. “They bought Love Alarm a few years back.”

“I know the Jaeger family,” Levi said.

“So you know about their eldest son, the heir of the Jaeger corporation… And his partner?”

Levi took a sip of tea, not bothering to respond.

Nifa may have taken that as a ‘no.’“His partner was working towards a PhD in psychology and apparently that was her final project. The codes for the mood alarm are very similar to the love alarm apparently."

“Oh?” Levi asked, feigning interest.

Soon, it turned into something genuine. Nifa was offering new information. “She got the PhD a few years ago and soon after that, the application was launched. And now they’re launching a solution for hospitals.”

“What kind of solution?” Levi asked.

“Wait, have you ever used the mood alarm? Or do you know how it works?” Nifa asked. “Anyway, I realized I ended up digressing here… The point I was trying to make is, the one who developed the mood alarm was able to prove that whatever measurements they use for the love alarm, are related to emotions. And what if, understanding how we feel when we work towards a relationship is a better determinant of whether the relationship could work?”

Levi nodded quickly, an attempt to be polite. At that point though, he wasn’t too interested in the point she had been trying to make “I’m familiar with the application and how it works. But you mentioned something about a solution for hospitals…” He didn’t think it was worth lying. He didn’t need a long winded explanation of the alarm he made. He needed an explanation of what Hange had been making."

Nifa didn’t seem to get the message. “So, the application will determine your emotions for you--- I have one right now and we could use it over time to articulate how we feel.” She pulled out her phone and dropped it on the table. “I think analyzing our own emotions would do a better job than relying on how the love alarm processes the emotions.”

There was something surreal about seeing a user explain it to him, as if they knew it more than him.

For a while, he couldn’t help but just entertain the possibility that in her own way, Nifa may have known more. With someone explaining and demonstrating, he was more easily able to make sense of the changes that had been implemented since Hange acquired it.

The app icon was reminiscent of the love alarm, two rings around it but instead of a heart in between, there was an icon, an elegant cross between a flower and a color wheel.

Red. Blue. Yellow. In between the primary colors were purple, green and orange.

Nifa activated it and held the phone between her fingertips. Just like the night when Levi had first played with it, the colored blobs swam amongst one another again, each blob would disappear one by one, leaving the remaining colors.

Yellow and Orange. “Looks like I’m happy,” Nifa commented. “So apparently the new dashboard allows us to connect this reading on the phone to a PC and get a more detailed explanation, numbers, heart rate, all the like.”

“You seem to know a lot about the app,” Levi mused.

Nifa cocked her head to one side. “Well, I’m into psychology too. I work as a psychologist in one of the hospitals. Our hospital is one of the first ones to buy software licenses so I’ve done my research.” She hummed, looking straight at him for a second as if studying him. “Now that I think about it, your job wasn’t on your profile. What do you do for a living?”

Levi’s response was automatic. “IT work.” He was suddenly self conscious about even mentioning the word ‘developer.’

“Ooooh... So you’d probably figure out how this app works much faster than I would.” Nifa sighed. “And you could probably help reassure me about this."

“Reassure you about what?”

“I’m honestly pretty nervous about rolling out this software.”

“Why?”

“Well, it’s relatively new, a few bugs would come up here and there.”

“All softwares are going to face new bugs with every update. It’s never ending,” Levi said nonchalantly.

“Spoken like a true IT guy,” Nifa joked. She took a sip of her shake and stared down at his tea and up at him again. “Say, since you’re in IT, you think you can hook us up with someone?”

“Hook you up with someone?” Levi asked. His mind was going places more suited for a tinder date than a conversation on career. He raised one eyebrow in question. He couldn’t be too sure of what she meant just yet.

It looked like she had started to understand that double entendre. Nifa blushed then let out a cough. “No, no. Our company is looking to build a small support team.”

“An IT support team?” Levi asked.

“Well, people who could focus on learning the product, dealing with whatever bugs, testing them, compiling them and sending them over to the Mood Alarm team. You think you’d know anyone tech savvy? Maybe familiar with how biotechnology works?

“I could try to look around…” Levi said.

“Great!” Nifa chimed

By some magic, the conversation shifted elsewhere. Nifa had a way with conversation, keeping some sort of a flow, talking about her own job and getting him to talk about his freelance projects.

Levi’s thoughts on the hospital solution though were an ubiquitous part of his mind space.That was the whole point of the investment right? Back then, Zeke and Hange had plans on selling it to hospitals.

And there was a free trial. That night, Levi had been curious enough to click the ‘book a free trial button’ and to even fill out the first few lines.

Organization name? He didn't have one.

Purpose? To catch up with his own brain child maybe.

He ended up staring at the blank screen for a while, wondering where the hell he would get an organization and a valid purpose.

He wanted to check it out, he really did. And he was a little salty that they required a background check before they even allowed trials for a project he created.

Curiosity became desperation. With desperation, came creativity, audacity. He took his phone with the intention of just asking Nifa a few questions, only to see there was an unread message from her.

Thanks for today! I had a lot of fun. Hopefully, we can plan something soon. I might be busy with work this week but maybe the week after?

Levi stared at her message and composed a quick reply, pleasantries forgotten.

You mentioned something about IT support openings in the hospital...

***

The hiring manager introduced himself as Moblit but he didn't say much else. Instead, he spent the next few minutes looking through Levi's resume, his brow wrinkled.

"Is there something wrong with my resume?" Levi asked, breaking the silence. He had kept it minimalistic, only sticking to odd jobs the past five years.

Moblit shook his head. "Nothing, it just doesn't look like you have support role experience."

"Do I need experience in a support role? I think I'm familiar enough with how apps work to stand in as one," Levi said. Should he mention that he had done the support work before?

"So you've compiled tickets, sent them over to developers?"

I'm the developer who deals with those bullshit tickets. He thought to himself. On the outside though, he nodded and leaned a bit more forward on the table. It wasn’t too difficult to show interest. He was genuinely interested, having given in to that curiosity-turned-desperation.

"Well, if you're interested in taking the job then…” Moblit said. “Let's see how much you know about the mood alarm app." He opened a folder. "It's a relatively new solution, so I don't expect you to know much but if you've heard of the love alarm?"

"I have."

"Well they're from the same corporation…"

Information on their history flew into one ear and out the other. "Do you have any more questions for me?" Levi asked. He could have interrupted Moblit there but he didn’t want to hear about a history he actually experienced first hand.

Moblit cleared his throat. "Well, if you could tell me how you think the mood alarm works? Then I’ll give you a list of common bugs and can you tell me how you will go about raising them to developers?

***

Six years hadn’t done much to make him forget. He had been working with the love alarm for almost a decade after all.

And the mood alarm? He had a strange connection to it, he couldn’t explain.

The code wasn’t open source. Of course it wouldn’t. That was an enterprise application and they wouldn’t want any hacker just randomly getting it. Yet, why did he feel so offended at not having access?

“Hey Levi, how would you handle this?”

“Handle what?” Levi didn’t look up from his monitor immediately. The voice and the question have all were all too familiar and it wasn’t urgent anyway.

“Levi, take a look…” Farlan seemed more frustrated than a second ago.

Levi looked at Farlan’s screen. Another display issue. He was all too familiar with the bugs and it looked like the love alarm and the mood alarm were coming up with the same issues. “Click the activate button three times really fast, right click the desktop, select inspect and take a screenshot. We send it over to the developers on the mood alarm team,” Levi said. That had become routine after a while, yet somehow, his two colleagues Farlan and Isabel were still asking questions.

Maybe because he was the only one who understood what the hell the developers needed to see to actually get to the bottom of the problem.

“Make sure to check it in both light mode and dark mode,” Levi said. “And also, there’s a known bug for the phone app, check if turning on the alarm affects your ability to receive notifications from other apps.” Those words had sent a wave of nostalgia through him. That was one of the bugs he had gotten around to fixing with the love alarm.

“Hey...”Isabel’s voice sounded from next to him. Levi turned around, almost jumping when he saw she had been close enough to look over his shoulder. “What are you researching?”

It wouldn't look good if he slacked off at work in front of colleagues a good few years his junior. Levi closed the tab. “Just my own research on mood alarm.” And when he looked at his codes a little longer, then back at Isabel who seemed almost confused, Levi realized it had looked more like extra work than anything else.

He spent the whole morning on ‘extra work, watching the API calls, making notes to himself to check the codes he had sent Hange years back just to see how much had changed.

“You finished all your tasks today and you still wanna do research on the mood alarm?” Farlan asked, a look of utter amazement on his face.

“What can I say? This app is pretty interesting.” it wasn’t a lie. Watching the growth of his own child from afar, was a fun thing to do.

“It honestly feels like you’ve done this type of work before."

“I did something similar,” Levi said.

“What kind of place did you work in before?” Isabel asked excitedly, her tasks also forgotten.

“I don’t wanna talk about it,” Levi answered, his tone unchanged.

“Something like the love alarm?”

Levi nodded. “Maybe that’s the reason I can figure things out pretty fast,” he said. The best plan of action was to digress.

“So that means we could make you handle the harder cases?” Farlan snickered.

“I’d rather you learn how to deal with others on your own,” Levi said. “I’ve worked with these apps for a long time. The bugs never end.”

***

“Moblit’s saying you’re doing a pretty good job picking out the bugs,” Nifa spoke above the bustle of the lunch time crowd.

“Are we?” Levi asked. He kept his words brief, not wanting to waste too much energy speaking over the others in the hospital cafeteria.

“Well, he was talking about you mostly,” Nifa said. “Most big issues get resolved with each release. And Moblit was saying that our support team just gives really good feedback.”

“The developers do the work. All we do is find the bugs.” Levi started to pick more meticulously at his salad

Nifa shook her head. “I think the support team deserves credit too. It’s difficult figuring out whether issues are user issues or there’s really a bug. Isabel also told me you find ways to reproduce it quickly.”

“Do I?” His responses were getting less and less creative. There just wasn’t much to say and the compliments were making him more and more uncomfortable by the second.

Moblit was a life saver. He had broken out of the crowd, running to Nifa, an urgent but excited expression on his face. “Nifa, you’ve got to hear this.”

Levi used that brief distraction to shovel more salad into his mouth.

Moblit had spoken just beneath the sounds of other conversations and Levi couldn’t make out what he had said. He did make out the urgency in Nifa’s face and the excitement. Whatever Moblit had said was contagious.

“When are they coming?” Nifa asked, her voice much louder than Moblit’s.

Levi stood up, gathering his plate, his utensils and his unfinished salad. “If I’m not supposed to be in this conversation…”

Moblit shook his head. “Levi, no, please stay. I’d rather you hear this since this is related to your line of work too.”

“Why?” Levi raised one eyebrow.

“Zeke Jaeger and his partner Doctor Hange Zoe, they’re planning to visit,” Moblit said.

Levi couldn’t even tell what expression he had on then.

Maybe Moblit had interpreted shock as confusion. “Zeke Jaeger is the owner of the love alarm. Hange Zoe’s the creator of the mood alarm… In case you didn't know.”

***

“Hey, I wanna see her… Is this how she looks like?” Isabel’s voice was a whisper, a very loud whisper. “She looks smart.”

Farlan’s voice wasn’t any softer. “Well, that’s what you’d expect from the mastermind behind the mood alarm right? I heard Zeke Jaeger bought her the love alarm so she could look through the code and make the mood alarm for herself.”

“Where did you hear that?” Isabel asked.

“Watch the interviews.”

The click and clack of the keyboard. Then there was the sound of voices coming from the loud speaker from Farlan’s computer.

Then Hange’s very familiar voice.

Levi didn’t want to listen. “You know, if you spend too much time looking through this. You’re not gonna get anything done.” He forced his voice into something louder than what he was comfortable with. “Don’t you two have other tasks to do?”

“Aren’t you excited to meet them?” Isabel rolled her chair next to Levi.

No way in hell am I meeting them. “I’m planning on taking a leave,” he said.

“Wait, why?” Isabel seeming heartbroken, as if Levi taking a leave was the most terrible thing in the world.

“Well, as employees we’re entitled to leaves right?” Levi asked emotionlessly, willing himself not to at all be affected by Isabel’s puppy dog face.

Farlan sighed. “You’re the best one at this type of work among the three of us. You know, this is a good opportunity for you to get noticed.”

“I don’t wanna get noticed,” Levi said, as he focused back again on the screen, refreshing their ticketing software a little bit faster that time. It really was an uneventful afternoon. He couldn’t blame Farlan and Isabel for doing nothing.

“It’s a big money, a chance at a big career move,” Farlan said, raising his voice as if that could have done anything to convince Levi.

Levi looked up from the monitor and back to Farlan. “Do you really want me out of here?”

Farlan shrugged. “I dunno, you just seem too overqualified for this kind of job.”

Levi sighed. “Believe me, I’m happy to be here.” He continued to click refresh, just in case anything could have halted that already seemingly awkward conversation. The reason why he didn’t want to run into Zeke or Hange… Was it written all over his face?

Just in case Farlan and Isabel were mind readers, Levi kept quiet, kept his eyes glued on the screen and he prayed the day would get busier somehow.

It did. But it got busy so close to the end of the day and overtime seemed inevitable.

“We’re not receiving any readings.”

The same exact fucking line, from ten different customers from different hospital branches around the country. “You’re fucking kidding me,” Levi muttered.

He opened all the test devices, only to find, none of them were receiving readings from the mood alarm either. He was sure though, he was annoyed, very very annoyed. Maybe even angry. “Try testing,” he ordered.

Farlan and Isabel were more emotional than he was. If it didn’t work for them, it probably wasn’t working at all.

They had full trust on him. Isabel and Farlan nodded and they went through the devices quickly. All test devices exhausted and there was nothing much to do. Levi was convinced it was an issue that could only be investigated on the backend. “We’re done for the day.”

“We have to send a report right?”

Levi started to pack his bag. “Send a report saying we’re not getting any readings,” he said with a shrug. “It’s probably a backend issue or an issue with their API.”

“You sure we can’t do anything from our side?” Farlan pressed.

Levi shook his head. “None.” He logged out, slung his backpack over his shoulder and exited the office.

He sensed their disappointment in him. In his months working there, Levi had never left the office without doing a thorough investigation and writing a detailed report.

That might be the first time in months, they would give something completely unhelpful for the developers. That wasn’t Levi’s intention though. There were just some things that were better off investigated on his own personal PC.

For the first time in a while, Levi didn’t go straight for the shower when he arrived back home. He booted up his own PC. When he checked his cloud account, he found the private repository with all the codes from the love alarm and the mood alarm was still there.

It hadn’t been touched in years though.

He scrolled through the code, allowing that wave of nostalgic to wash over him gently. Having been the only one who worked on the base, Levi was very very familiar with it. Memories came quickly with the nostalgia. There was a point where the server was down and he remembered the hundreds of support tickets about the temporarily malfunctioning love alarm.

No readings were coming through. Levi did a quick calculation of the time zones of his own city and of the mood alarm headquarters. Then he looked through the code again.

Convinced that it was a fair theory, Levi opened his pseudo email, entered the support email for the mood alarm and left just one sentence on the email body.

I’m convinced one of your devs left a debugger on one of these codes on the backend.

A few years ago, he had been guilty of leaving a debugger running overnight, fucking up the whole command system of the love alarm.

He copied and pasted a part of the code and the sent the email off. For all he knew, the mood alarm could have branched off far from the love alarm, rendering his theory completely stupid. Still, it was a theory worth entertaining.

The issues from work forgotten, Levi started to open his other emails, finding one from Petra on the third page, dated months ago.

Just a reminder that he hadn’t opened that email in months. “A wedding invite?”

Petra Ral and Oluo Bozado invite you to celebrate their wedding…

He didn’t need the rest of it to convince himself to go. He only needed to look at the date under, conveniently a week after Hange and Zeke were scheduled to visit the hospital where he worked.

He sent off two emails that night.

One to Petra, a very very late RSVP.

Then one to management, a request for a two week leave. For personal reasons.

A wedding always made a good personal reason. That was probably only half his actual personal reason though.

***

“I didn’t even expect you to come.” Petra seemed happy.

It could have been the make up or her natural blush. She was a glowing bride, glowing bright enough that Levi was starting to feel lonely.

“It’s been a while,” Levi said. “And you two are looking good.”

“How’s life abroad?” Petra asked.

“It’s fine,” Levi said.

“You adjusted well?” Petra asked again.

“Yeah, I guess I did.” Levi took a sip of his wine.

“You managed to get a software engineering job there?” That time it was Oluo who asked.

“Something similar,” Levi said. He started to shake his glass a bit, feigning deep consideration. Maybe that would explain his inability to respond. In truth, he was in no mood to make conversation but when the bride and the groom had gone out of their way to sit next to him on the bench outside their party, and they had gone through all the trouble of asking, it was only polite that he kept his side of the conversation.

Somewhere along the exchanges, Petra brought up a question. And whether it had been appropriate or not, Levi couldn’t tell but he thought it worth an answer at least.

“Have you met anyone?” Petra asked.

“What?” Levi responded.

“I dunno… I guess someone who makes you feel good? Someone who manages to ring your love alarm?” Petra gave him a knowing look.

Levi only had to shift his gaze from Petra to the seemingly blank face of Oluo to know, Petra had at least kept that part to herself. To the others, his alarm ringing with Hange could have been just a bug.

Levi shook his head. “I haven’t touched the love alarm in years,” he admitted.

Petra seemed more understanding. “We haven’t touched it in years either.”

Levi raised his eyebrows. “Really?”

Petra stared ahead, looking deep in thought. She turned to Oluo. “Well, I guess a part of us wanted to build this organically, get to know each other first. And maybe that’s the best way to find people. I think the love alarm just causes unnecessary chaos sometimes.”

Levi only had to look back at his past five years to see it. To be honest, he could actually put the blame on the love alarm for completely uprooting his life. He couldn't say he totally agreed though. He didn’t regret the time with Hange either.

But he wasn’t going to deny her credit where credit was due. “You make sense.”

It wasn’t as simple as that though. Somehow, Hange’s own words had torn into the silence. Just for him. The love alarm causes chaos but sometimes it can tie loose ends.

And for him, it had been both. It had caused chaos but somehow, meeting Hange, having gotten to know her, having gotten to talk to her had tied some loose ends inside him.

What kind of loose ends? He couldn’t be too sure.

“Even when you don’t use the love alarm now, have you met other people?” Petra was still very interested in his love life.

Oluo should have been silently uncomfortable about that. Levi couldn’t tell with a quick glance.

“I’ve met a few people though… There’s someone named Nifa,” Levi said,

“Next time you come here, you’ll take her for a visit? Make sure to introduce us to her?” Petra asked.

“Or maybe next time, it will be us visiting,” Oluo added.

The brief conversation ended soon after, with a few exchanged greetings and a promise to bring Nifa. In case something ever happened between him and NIfa.

By the end of the night, he had made a promise to himself not to use that love alarm to find his next love.

Petra was right, the love alarm could cause unnecessary chaos. Besides, love is a choice right?

***

Levi came back from his very relaxing two week leave to two words that made his stomach turn.

Doctor Zoe. That was what Farlan and Isabel called her.

“Doctor Zoe…” Levi repeated. The words tasted unfamiliar. Suddenly, the road trip, the beach trip and just the quiet meetings in the cafe all seemed like just a fevered dream.

“And she stopped to talk to all of us!” Isabel sang, her eyes filled with wonder. “You should have stayed. I swear, I feel like you would have gotten along. She never stops talking. You two could have talked about the mood alarm for hours.”

“She sounds tiring to be with,” Levi said, an attempt at a halfhearted reply.

Farlan grinned, an alarmingly knowing expression on his face. “Don’t lie, you would have enjoyed at least listening. You’re way more enthusiastic about the mood alarm than we are.”

“I’m just being a good employee.” Levi shook his head, as if that was enough to erase the regret that shoved itself into his throat and down to his chest.

“She really made sure to talk to everyone,” Isabel said. “And she stayed for a few days longer. Maybe the plans changed since she went alone.”

“Wait, she came alone?” Levi said. Don’t regret. Don’t you dare regret leaving.

Farlan nodded in response. “Moblit explained this to us before they came.” He turned to Isabel as if expecting some explanation from her.

“I can’t be too sure either, I’ve only heard a bit about it. And rich people like the Jaegers, they like to keep their personal lives a secret right?” Isabel answered.

Farlan shrugged. “Anyway, from what Moblit told me, they intended to visit all the major customers including our hospital chain. They’ve been planning this tour for months, maybe even years but Doctor Zoe ended up going alone.”

“Did you ever find out why?” Levi kept his voice soft, anything louder and he might just look more invested. He turned back to the unopened tickets on his screen. From his peripherals, he could see Farlan and Isabel exchanging glances.

It was Farlan who spoke up. “I have a theory.”

“Tell me,” Levi said.

“They fought.”

“Okay, couples fight.” Levi continued to click at the tickets, opening them one by one, just to feel productive.

“Yeah, but it must have been a big fight right?” Isabel added. “I did some research on Doctor Zoe after we met her and apparently, they were having problems even years ago. Apparently, there are rumors that her husband bought the love alarm to save their marriage.”

“Where the hell did you get that info?” Farlan sounded incredulous.

Isabel chuckled mischievously. “The dark, dark internet.”

“That can’t be true.” Farlan shook his head in disbelief.

“I can’t really prove it anymore. A lot of the threads online that actually discuss this get taken down by the admin. But I swear, now that I think about it, it does make sense. I read some articles, no one expected Zeke Jaeger to buy the love alarm… Some said he did it to save the love alarm after a major bug showed up that could have prevented PR….Apparently, there was a certain point a few years ago, where there were photos of Doctor Zoe with another man. I tried looking for the photos but I can’t find them anymore.”

“You really got invested in her love life huh?”

Isabel groaned. “I couldn’t help it. She seemed so nice and she talked to us a lot even when we were just support, she took the time to teach us and she’s just so humble…”

“But what if she really did cheat on her husband?” Farlan challenged. “I mean, the rumors have to have been there for a reason right?”

“Do you think she looks like the type to cheat?” Isabel asked. “That very honest and open face?”

Farlan coughed in surprise. “She doesn’t for sure---but rumors don’t come out of nowhere right?”

“You two, go back to work,” Levi said. While the two had been working, he had been assigning tickets to them, an ingenious way to compose himself.

“Wait not yet, what do you think Levi? You might have better intuition than we do.”

“Intuition?” Levi repeated, one eyebrow raised.

“Does she really look like the type to cheat?” Farlan asked.

Levi continued to stare at the screen, not willing to risk showing them whatever expression played at his face then. “I didn’t meet her. You two did so you’re better qualified to answer that question. Tell me, does she look like the type to cheat?”

Farlan paused for a second, then narrowed his eyes at Levi. “I think I have a question which you might be more qualified to answer,” Farlan said. “You’re pretty good at finding bugs. Have you ever done research on the love alarm bug? What do you think the bug was… The one which made Zeke Jaeger buy the app?”

“I don’t think there was a bug,” Levi said.

“What do you mean?” Farlan pressed.

“Get back to work you two.” Levi kept his voice firm, loud and authoritative. Something he would have rather not done, if it hadn’t been for the weight which came with what should have been a light piece of gossip, and his whittling ability to keep a stoic demeanor.

The deep dark internet. Levi watched his two companions. Their eyes were once again fixed on the screen, Farlan’s fingers were flying over the keyboard, Isabel was playing with some test device.

Deep enough at work for Levi to take his own quick break. He opened an incognito tab and put his headphones on.

One video or one article, and he’d get back to work. He found an interview, the opening questions had been the same familiar ones Farlan had been playing on speaker months ago.

He played the first few questions at twice the speed. He knew the answers already.

What inspired you to make the mood alarm?

“Love alarm… Codes… Yadayadayada…” Levi muttered just a loud enough for himself. Hange had been careful not to mention anything about a developer. He could see the way she had shifted gazes for just a second, seeming uncomfortable.

He couldn’t blame her. Isabel had said so herself, in the deep dark internet, maybe there were rumors of an affair.

And some journalists were aware.

Personal Life? Around the point that someone asked about her personal life, Levi slowed the clip down. They had timed it, to the exact point where Hange had tensed up and looked away for just a second.

“Can you tell us about your relationship with Zeke Jaeger? How has it been?”

“How did you feel when you realized he bought you the love alarm? Is it true he bought it to win you back?”

Hange was admirably professional about it. “We’re digressing now,” she said with a light hearted tone, a laugh which seemed more rehearsed than actually Hange’s.

Is it true you had an affair with another man? It wasn’t loud enough for Hange to have heard it, just a sound among others. When Levi had been looking for that question and it rang more loudly for him. He rewinded the video a few times just to make sure.

What the hell… No we didn’t… We. Didn’t. Have. An. Affair.

“Levi, are you okay?” Isabel asked

“What?”

“You were talking to yourself just now.”

Levi quickly closed the tab as Isabel looked over his shoulder. “Nothing, just looking at tickets,” he said. He went back to their ticketing application, opened a few more tickets and decided to table the research until later that evening.

***

The deep, dark internet.

With his own personal wifi and his own VPN, Levi had more wriggle room to dig deeper.

There was a mention of a fight, a marriage on the rocks, and the rumors only grew from there. The more Levi found, the more courage he mustered. It turned out, the process of scrolling through threads, joining chat groups had been nothing but liberating.

Liberating but infuriating.

The internet was an aggregate of bad takes and the occasional good one. From bad takes came horrible half baked rumors.

I swear, if they end up divorcing…

Jaeger should have dumped her fucking ass from the start.

Slut…

Whore…

Hange Zoe. Fucking gold digger.

There were rumors that she had manipulated Zeke for the money. Rumors that she had only married him to complete her PhD.

Levi quickly went through those.

Some of the people were nice though and Levi read those comments a little more slowly.

The mood alarm was Zoe’s deal.

The money Jaeger put into was a donation.

If they’re not happy, let them divorce.

And there were videos, particularly zoomed videos in events of Zeke and Hange in conventions and conferences, the latest one only a few months ago. Before Hange had visited the hospital.

In the most recent one, they were talking, just at the corner behind the stage, still visible from the camera. Levi rewinded the video again and again just to confirm their identity.

The Hange on the screen seemed indignant. Zeke had pulled her in by the waist, she pulled away. In response, Zeke had once again gone for her hands, pulling her towards him.

Just like back in the school gym.

It was different, that time in the gym Hange had been accepted yet determined at the same time. The Hange on the video, or the least, the one he could make out from the flailing of her hands, the stamping of her food on the ground, the moment she had pulled away then turned away was telling.

Hange wasn’t accepting anything anymore.

Levi scrolled through the comments.

If Hange Zoe divorces Zeke Jaeger… If she keeps possession of the mood alarm... she’s a gold digger.

She needed Jaeger funds to complete PhD… It’s Zeke Jaeger’s PhD not hers lmao XD

It was around the fifth most liked comment when Levi closed the tab, not bothering to bookmark the site. That was enough internet toxicity for the day.

***

“You’re transferring me?” Levi had ended up preempting the discussion.

Nifa and Moblit looked at each other, then back at him. Then Nifa nodded.

Moblit shook his head, creating some confusion. “No, we wanted your opinion on this first. The city we’ll be transferring you to isn’t very… convenient.”

“But you will be paid more,” Nifa said.

Since no one actually wants to live there. A fact no one actually admitted during those types of meetings but Levi had been in corporate long enough to know.

“And it’s just for a few years,” Moblit said, his tone, a tone of reassurance more than actual confidence. “Our hospital got special permission to do testing and research and we’ll need one support guy there. This is an important project for our hospital so...”

Levi had done a quick google search of the city under the table, a name he never heard of, and just the picture of a very sleepy town with not many buildings with even two floors was indicative. There was a reason why Moblit and Nifa seemed uncertain about a transfer.

There wasn’t much he did anyway in that city. How could moving away be any different?

“What’s this research about?” Levi asked.

Moblit responded to that more clearly and more confidently. “We’re planning to do further research, create programs for kids who grew up in difficult households to help them process emotions better. We’re starting with a few kids, on a small research facility up north… And having someone on call would be helpful.”

It didn’t take much to convince Levi after that. “There isn’t much for me to miss here anyway.” Really, he would have taken that transfer even without the pay raise.

***

There was peace and quiet which came with living in the middle of nowhere. Peace and quiet had a way of making Levi unbearably bored yet at the same time more perceptive as to why the hell no one wanted to live there in the first place.

Winters were cruel, with snow piling up meters high. Even in the summers, the sky was overcast and in all four seasons, the air still found a way to be suffocatingly dry.

Someone mentioned something about lake effects and something about rain shadows, and Levi couldn’t really tell which one was it. He wasn’t a scientist after all.

He was human though, a very simple minded human with no science degree. So he let the weather affect his moods, maybe even affect his long term philosophies in life. His current environment was too different from the bustling city he grew up in, or the other urban jungle he had lived the past five years of his life, he deemed his new home, the epitome of the middle of nowhere.

It was completely unfamiliar and by some psychological consequence to Levi, it was too far flung from his old life for Levi to even entertain anything about his old life, beyond work. So it became easier to take a more pragmatic approach at reminiscing.

A few months into his transfer, he had even started reading articles on Zeke and Hange again.

Billionaire Zeke Jaeger finalizes divorce would Mood Alarm founder Hange Zoe.

Then the comments section:

That was fast.

I knew it, Zoe’s a gold digger.

There was the string of names, whore, sluts, cheaters and gold diggers that never made too much sense as sentences. So Levi quickly closed the tab.

You actually did it. He thought to himself. And when he thought a little longer about it, he realized he did feel happy for her.

Happy? Sad? Disappointed? Out of curiosity, he opened his own mood alarm and clicked activate. It glowed with a bright green.

He could have been happier.

Levi decided to blame the sky for his fickle mood. That grey view that stretched far unimpeded by any of the surrounding low rising buildings, only ending by the mountains that seemed hundreds of miles away.

The surrounding mountains and the large lake followed him to work. An overly scenic landscape that reminded him, the train back to the capital only came once a day, the train that passed through the next major city only passed three times a day.

And fucking hell, train tickets were expensive.

By some modern day definition, Levi really was trapped in the middle of nowhere.

The weather only made him more cynical, yet angrier at the tasteless comments under the news article on Zeke and Hange’s divorce. As he neared the research center, he ended up tabling that reflection with one sentence, something comforting yet oddly depressing.

Hange wouldn’t look for me. Then he brushed it away violently soon after. The audacity of even considering the prospect that he was important enough for her to want to search for him. Why would Hange care where he is?

The fact that Hange was followed by the press while he was trapped in the middle of nowhere was indicative enough. They were from two completely different worlds.

***

It may have taken months more, but what Levi clocked to a ‘bout of wanderlust’ eventually settled. He found, keeping himself busy with the right work had done wonders to placate the turmoil inside him.

Keeping busy somehow made it easier to sit up and get ready for work. It meant managing to desensitize his own moods to the weather around him.

Most importantly, it meant seeing some connection with the world, some sliver of motivation to go the extra mile with the people who worked with.

“Early as always, Ackerman.” Same greeting everyday.

“Morning to you too, Onyankopon,” Levi responded as he entered the irsmall office.

Onyankopon was a companion duringearly in the mornings, lunch times, late afternoons and sometimes, even the dinners when he would invite Levi out for a drink in the only bar for miles around.

Still, it made life remotely eventful when the only changing things had been the weather and his work.

And his work was very eventful.

“Uncle Levi! Did you find any bugs yesterday?” Just like every other morning, the two kids would burst through the door. Or more specifically, the brunette was always the one bursting through the door, the blonde just followed.

“Gaby, you might be bothering them,” Falco said. He said that at least three times a week.

Levi had never been the type anyway to tell them he didn’t mind their morning visits. It always meant something to look forward to.

“Nothing so far,” Levi said. He looked towards Onyakopon, the one in charge of reporting issues. “Hopefully.”

Onyankopon raised his hands in defense. “Don’t get mad at me, get mad at the devs who created the mood alarm in the first place."

Levi was constantly mad at the devs anyway, if he considered that constant state of self loathing. Working on the mood alarm as support had only made Levi realize how many shortcuts he had taken into making that damn application years ago.

“There’s nothing today,” Levi said as he looked at the two kids. “But I could give you a quick lesson,” he added. He couldn’t say no to the crestfallen faces of the two kids.

He dragged one seat next to him and guided Gaby to one of them and Falco to his own seat. “When I want to look for errors in the code, I look here first.” It was a terribly boring lesson, a useless one. Support 101. At the least, the kids seemed satisfied. “If I right click here, and then inspect, I can see what this website is made out of.”

Gaby let out a breath, a mix between a ‘wow’ and an ‘oh.’ “I can’t read it.”

“It’s another language,” Levi explained. “Computers don’t understand our language. So we have to learn another language to be able to talk to them. And when we’re able to tell them what we want, they’ll do things for us, things we can’t do ourselves.”

Gaby had asked more questions after that. Falco had asked his own too, albeit hesitantly.

The difference between the network and console tabs, the meanings of the strange brackets, what happens if they just aimlessly click…

That morning session ended with less than half the questions answered, and a promise to teach them more the next morning. Like every other day before, at eight in the morning, Onyankopon brought them to the activity room and Levi was left alone in the office.

There weren’t many people in the research center, only five employees in total. After all, there were only ten to twenty kids who came and went every day, a very manageable number for five people. He and Onyankopon shared an office and with Onyankopon busy a good chunk of the day, Levi was left alone.

With his own efficient working methods and his outstanding ability to quickly pick out the bugs, Levi was usually free for a cumulated five hours a day.

When he first started working there, his five hour long breaks consisted of reading novels or whatever stupid article came up on his timeline. He could have taken longer breaks yet chose to spend them as short sporadic bouts of inactivity

By spreading out periods of inactivity, Levi managed to somehow pacify the guilt at ‘doing nothing’ while being paid for the eight hours a day. There were times, it was strong, remnants maybe of his stint with the love alarm, barely taking leaves, willingly putting him through the pain of overtime.

Some days, they were particularly strong, sometimes incomprehensible that Levi suspected they could have been related to the burning curiosity, the burning attachment to his own application that never abated.

A burning attachment, a natural need to be productive eventually resulted in sporadic bouts of unproductivity spent just testing the mood alarm all for a brief look into his own emotions.

Even when he wasn’t feeling anything in particular, the application continued to glow colors, just flitting between greens and blues. They could have been yellows or oranges maybe, when Onyankopon or Gabi or Falco visited. He had never been the type to wear his heart on his sleeve though and thus, had never opened it with them around.

That day wasn’t any different. Alone in the office, he opened it again, held it in his hands and watched the colored blobs swim amongst each other, mix amongst one another, then disappear.

Blue or Green? That day it was blue. Why blue and why not green? He could never ask. ‘How’ was always an easier question to answer. He only had to connect his phone to the PC then boot up the dashboard.

His next break, he decided to try a visualization exercise, like every other time before.

Memories never seemed to do the trick. He’d take a risk and dive deep, into his memories with Hange, his anger at the situation, the loss of a life before. Yet it all came out greens and blues. The alarm rang, an almost deafening sound in the silent room and for a split second, it had Levi attentive and a little paranoid. Levi knew though, with the thick concrete walls around him, it was a sound just for him.

He connected his phone to the dashboard and booted the PC again.

There were numbers. He switched to a bar graph view, noting how there were terms, hormones and chemicals he could only barely make sense of. But the blue and the green bars higher than usual yet still very low were signs in themselves.

That morning was a normal morning. And every morning since he built that habit had been a normal morning.

The only thing which ended up different about that day was when footsteps sounded just outside the door. If Levi had been listening closely, he would have been able to point out, those weren't a rhythm of footsteps he was particularly privy too.

But normal mornings tended to desensitize people. Footsteps weren’t particularly interesting either.

In a town with only a few hundred people, it would most likely be someone who already lived there. He continued to work. He disconnected his phone from the dashboard and played with the mood alarm in his own phone again.

The door clicked open behind him, slowly enough for the creak to sound, then fast enough for the slam to come right after yet gently.

Onyankopon always opened the door a little wider, always slamming the door behind him and in between, there was always a greeting. If Levi had been more aware of his surroundings, maybe the lack of all that could have peaked his interest.

In the grand scheme of things though, the door slamming wasn’t anything particularly interesting. Levi continued to sit and stare at his phone.

“Levi Ackerman.”

A voice in an empty room though, was always an interesting thing. By some natural inclination towards voices, any presence in a room that was always his by mid morning, Levi was listening.

Making sense of the voice was a surprisingly slow process. The mood alarm reacted first.

The alarm sounded.

A wave climbed from his chest up until his neck, there was a bristle at the back of his neck, a tickle at his ears, then something pricked at his eyes. He looked down at the alarm before he could completely understand. The colors continued to swim then mix.

They always disappeared and finalized the reading in five seconds.

A second or two passed, and the colors still didn’t look at all in a hurry to disappear.

You’re going crazy Levi. He took a deep breath. He was dreaming. Because what the fuck. Of course she wouldn’t be here. She had an international company to run.

“Levi…” The voice sang. “That’s you right?”

Don’t look back.

“Or maybe there are just a lot of developers named Levi in this world… “ The footsteps were only getting closer. “Developers who are just really good at using the mood alarm.” Then the voice was right next to him.

When she had settled on that seat right at his peripherals, he couldn’t exactly chalk it up to a fevered dream. The mood alarm in his hands continued to ring. He could have sworn at least five seconds had passed. Yet the colors never disappeared, countless colors still swimming around on the interface as the mood alarm continued to read his emotions.

Levi had never been a master of articulation. The war of colors, the chaos on the phone were the best visual representation. He struggled to find the right words, but she continued to stare from his peripherals, her face many things at once.

Apologetic? Expectant?

“It is you,” she said, triumph and relief apparent in her tone.

That only pissed Levi off more. Another emotion added to his boiling pot. Eventually Levi thought it necessary to respond. With too little time, too little mindspace to even attempt to articulate, Levi kept himself to three words, the only three which could have meant everything at once.

“What the fuck.”

In response, she let out a soft laugh. “Are you crying?”

Crying? Now that Levi did think about it, there had been a crack in her voice too. Levi looked up to see her, smiling. Her eyes were smiling too. Then he followed the tear streak that barely grazed the side of her lip.

There was enough time, enough silence for Levi to gather himself. To stare at the reading on the application that couldn’t seem to decide what emotion Levi was feeling.

With enough self discipline, enough concentration, Levi managed to speak. “Hange, if you ask people why they’re crying, you’re just gonna make it worse.”

***

There was only one tea shop in the town, a tea shop which naturally, Levi had chosen as his favorite hang out spot.

Over the months, he had grown familiar with it and in turn, it had grown to become an intimate friend. An intimate friend he had never expected to ever introduce to Hange.

Onyankopon and Moblit had joined them for tea though, and suddenly, Hange didn’t feel like Hange. It could have been the way she shifted to an ‘all business’ demeanor or maybe a part of him was still trying to rationalize what he had deemed to be a very irrational thought.

Maybe he had imagined visiting the cafe with Hange a few times. The realist inside him though, had always believed it to be impossible. At that moment, the dreamer inside him was still taking its victory lap.

“You should have told us you’d be coming. We could have set up something better than late afternoon tea,” Onyankopon said. Either way, he seemed very happy to see them.

Moblit took a sip from his cup then revealed an apologetic smile underneath as he put the cup down. “Apologies for visiting all of a sudden. Doctor Zoe is a very impulsive person.”

Hange nodded. “I hope you don’t mind. As soon as I heard about this, I hopped on the next plane just to get here as soon as possible,” she said “I’m hoping to start something like this in the hospitals back home.”

Moblit put his cup down. “Right, I never got to properly introduce you to Levi.” He turned to Onyankopon then to Levi. “But I’m sure you’ve had a fair share of introductions… You did barge into his office this morning.” He had an apologetic look on his face.

“Hey, Doctor Zoe just wanted to see how we were using the software,” Onyankopon said in Hange’s defense. “I’m more than honored to see that the founder of the mood alarm is taking the time to even wander around our facility.”

Moblit cleared his throat. “Anyway, Levi, this is Doctor Hange Zoe, the founder of the mood alarm application. She visited our main hospital a year back but if I remember correctly, you were on leave right?”

“On a personal leave,” Levi clarified. He couldn’t find much else to say. He took a long sip of tea.

“This is Levi Ackerman,” Moblit said. “One of our best in IT support. He learned how to use your application pretty fast.”

“Yes…” Hange said. “And ever since you told me about him, I’ve been very excited to meet him.” Her grin only got wider as she studied his features, her eyes giving him a good once over. “I guess that’s the reason I ended up taking my own tour of the center while you too were catching up. I wanted to see your genius IT support in action,” she joked.

It was almost unbelievable that that morning, Hange had showed a completely different side to him. She had wiped her own tears pretty fast, shifting her expression to something very professional as soon as Onyankopon and Moblit had entered the office just that morning.

The whole afternoon, Hange was busy with activities and tours of the town, Levi busy with his own work. They barely got to talk. Fortunately, that had allowed Levi time to compose himself, enough to keep a straight face when Onyankopon had invited them over for some tea.

Then and there, there were conversations of partnerships and business, almost reminiscent to whatever bullshit he had to deal with in his old company. But this conversation had Hange, and Hange had shifted her gaze towards him enough times for Levi to feel it only proper to reciprocate.

“Once this project is over, would you consider letting Levi go?” Hange asked. “I’d love to have him visit our main office, maybe help out with some of our development work.”

Moblit shook his head vigorously. “No hesitation. It always felt like he was overqualified for this type of job.”

“By the way you talk about him, I can tell.” She looked at Levi knowingly, a silent form of communication just between both of them. She turned back to Moblit then Onyankopon, her face once again all business. “There are many things I hope to still improve with this application so any support on research, troubleshooting, development is very much appreciated.”

“What do you suggest?” Moblit asked.

A quick glance at Onyankopon and Levi knew he was asking the same question.

Hange put one finger to her chin in thought “A partnership…”

It looked like they had expected Hange to talk Levi’s ear off non stop about the application. Moblit had mentioned something about going straight home while Hange discussed the partnership with Levi, mentioning bugs, the debugger that had been stuck in the system and the bugs which Levi had been quick to point out.

Levi, being respectful, had only listened.

That was until Onyankopon and Moblit offered to walk ahead, leaving Levi and Hange alone on the red brick road overlooking the large lake.

It was early in the evening but it still felt like late afternoon. The sun never set until seven or eight during the mid months of spring.

Yet, the streets was empty, bereft of anything but the both of them.

With one quick scan of their surroundings, Hange turned back to him, she bit her lip and took a deep breath.

Her demeanor was suddenly a stark contrast with the enthusiastic, eloquent one back at a cafe. The sudden transformation was enough for Levi to tense up,

Hange spoke up. “This town really sleeps early,” she commented. “You're planning on going home now too?”

“I usually go home an hour earlier, especially on weekdays,” Levi responded. “I’m only out at this time because they invited me for late afternoon tea.” Technically it was dinner.

“Do you go home….” Hange started, she paused for a second, a very out-of-place pause. “To anyone?”

It took a lot of effort for Levi to resist choking or even letting out a ghost of a laugh at that question. I’m married to my job. That was the answer that popped into his mind out of instinct.

“Did I make it time?” Hange added a second later, only reminding Levi that he hadn’t even mustered a glimmer of answer.

“Make it in time?” Levi asked, in an attempt to stall for time.

“Petra…”

“She married Oluo.”

Hange didn’t seem satisfied. “Is there someone else…” she pressed. “Someone else...”

Hange started to speak with her hands, gesturing for Levi to ‘go on,’ in some awkward wave of a hand. The first awkward gesture Hange had done since they arrived.

Levi couldn’t help but just appreciate that bout of vulnerability he could pull out of her. “There is,” he said.

Just for a second, Hange’s face fell and for a moment Levi relished it.

“Oh…” Hange turned away. “Then, I should take you home… I’d love to meet her…”

Then suddenly, Levi felt just a little bad for that trick. “I was fucking kidding,” he said.

Hange let out a loud sigh of relief, an ugly huff and she looked away, suddenly self conscious.

Levi had to admit, it was an ugly snort. He was tempted to take a good look at her face, and maybe he had craned his neck as she kept silent for a second longer. “I’m not some idiot who would marry someone just because it’s convenient," he said.

“Give me a break. I just graduated from college when I decided to get married,” Hange said. “Besides, we enjoyed each other’s company.”

“If you chose that type of life, I wouldn’t have stopped you. Besides, you had a lot on the line, your PhD, your mood alarm, the love alarm, your reputation. It wouldn’t have been easy choice to make.”

Hange hummed. “The PhD is done, my reputation, I don’t give too much of a rat’s ass about that. And the mood alarm? That has always been mine. I put my own money into building that business.”

“It definitely wasn’t cheap.”

“It wasn’t,” Hange admitted. “What if I told you, I earned my own capital for building it in one night in a casino.”

Levi's thoughts flew back to the night at the casino. He grinned. “I’d believe you.”

“So the mood alarm is mine and I managed to keep it,” Hange said. “But I never forgot you know... The plans, the codes, they’re all yours.”

“So you did get the email,” Levi said.

Hange nodded. “And the email got me thinking…” she trailed off for what seemed like an eternity.

Levi couldn’t wait. “About what?”

Hange thought for a few seconds longer, putting her hands behind her back. “That ended up one reason why I even considered leaving Zeke,” she said. “He has a different way of loving, I have a different one too. Love is freedom. Love is just trusting. Zeke on the other hand, always likes to play safe, tie people down.”

“What happened to ‘love is a choice?’”

Hange seemed unperturbed. “Love still is a choice.”

“Then why not choose to love Zeke?” Levi challenged.

Hange sighed and put one hand up. “You said it yourself, deciding to leave wouldn’t be an easy decision,” she started. “I considered three things.”

She put one finger up. “Our own views of love. Zeke sees it as a game, as an investment and he approaches it conservatively… On the other hand, I see love and relationships as a form of freedom, a risk. In love, I don't believe in playing to win.”

She put another finger up. “I considered how I was feeling, this really weird feeling, my thoughts on Pemberley then on colors.”

“I thought you didn’t want to be a slave to your emotions.”

Hange shook her head. “I’m not. I approached this methodically. Even before considering my feelings, I considered my circumstances.” She put the third finger up. “I considered the backlash, I considered Zeke’s feelings, dealing with a divorce. And that’s what brought me here, despite the criticism, despite my inability to buy the love alarm and to barely salvage the mood alarm.”

“You still gave in to your emotions.”

Hange nodded. “After thinking long and hard about it, I did. But before that, I weighed all three, and I decided to take the risk.”

“Was it worth it?”

Hange shrugged and she leaned over the rail, seeming mesmerized by the lake. “I won’t know yet but I guess, even when I thought you had someone else…” There was a flash of hurt on her face, enough for Levi to regret playing that little joke on her.

“I don’t have anyone else,” Levi clarified.

Hange continued to speak. “I still thought the risk was worth taking. It would have been unfair to Zeke if I stayed and who am I to stop you if someone makes you feel happy.” She turned back to him. “This is the way I’ll choose to love. I’ll weigh my emotions, my circumstances and my worst case scenarios. Then I decide the most loving thing to do. If I have to take a risk, I take it. And I guess, given all that, looking for you seemed like the correct decision.”

Levi couldn’t stifle that smile any longer, and he hoped somehow, his own words would stop it from getting any wider. “Well, it's too early to tell if it's a good decision.”

Hange opened her phone and opened the application. “Can we try again?”

“You wanna use the love alarm?” Levi asked. “Your ex-husband’s application.”

“It’s still your brainchild,” Hange said as she waited for it to load. She hovered her thumb over it.

“I don’t have it installed,” Levi said.

“I can wait,” Hange said. And there was no room for argument in her voice.

An awkward few minutes as Hange watched him download the application. Levi focused on the loading bar, and luckily, his biometrics were still registered from that brief experiment of a year ago.

“On three…” Hange said, her voice a little stilted.

But they didn’t finish counting or maybe they just counted at completely different paces.

The alarms rang, filling the empty space between them, two rings which never seemed to find a uniform pace. Even with a very dominant fastidious side though, Levi wasn’t thinking too much about such a small detail.

Hange’s was smiling, grinning, or whatever that was called. Her face was a mix between pure ecstasy and pure passion. She wrinkled her eyes at him, her mouth climbed into a grin wider than he had ever been used to.

She let out a loud sigh. “I was fucking scared.”

“Scared of what?”

“That you would have gotten over me… I dunno, thought you might just think love was a choice, and I dunno, stop feeling whatever that love alarm thing was feeling.”

“I don’t think the love alarm works like that,” Levi said. Really, he started to realize he didn’t know how it worked.

Hange shook her head. “I’m probably just overthinking. You know… I learned how to code over the years, talked to a few developers and tried to look into how the application works,” she said.

“Did you find anything?”

“Remember when you told me that the love alarm starts to figure out for its own what love is. It creates its own definition. Something we can’t even comprehend...” Hange was still grinning, her voice coming out as breaths and sometimes sounds.

Still, Levi could comprehend most of it. “You have any theories?” he pressed. Hange always had theories.

“Soulmates? Relationships in a past life?” Hange suggested.

“Well, we can’t really look back at those right?” Levi said. “Well, what else?”

One word, one word out of Hange’s mouth. “Pemberley.”

“Pemberley?” Levi asked. Somehow though as Hange looked back at the lake, up at the sky then at the gaudy main street of that small town. Levi started to understand it himself.

“It’s ugly here,” Levi said. At first he had meant it. As Hange started to look at her surroundings then back at the lake, with a look of wonder in her eyes, Levi was sure he had meant it as a challenge.

“When you’re in love then with the person we love, everywhere starts to feel like Pemberley,” Hange completed a second later.

Does it? And he wondered why the hell, he needed Hange to point it out.

They were in an ugly town, a place people were paid to live in. The sky was constantly overcast. When it wasn’t raining, it was snowing and it snowed six months a year. When it wasn’t snowing or raining, the sky was at least threatening it.

The way that Hange had looked at it with such naive wonder, the way she had just stood there, looking at everything and back at him, Levi couldn’t help but entertain the idea of Pemberley.

Maybe give the colors a chance to show themselves? Hange didn’t say it out loud. In the moment they made eye contact though, Levi couldn’t help but just give that little piece of advice a chance, whether it had been his own or Hange’s.

He looked first at the main road and the red brick path, noting how the gaudy red, worn by the elements more than actual foot traffic seemed to still glow a bright red despite the grey undertones. He then looked to the buildings, varying shades of concrete grey yet ‘the varying shades’ of it seemed to still have some sense of novelty.

He then looked back at the ocean, the dark sky above never allowed it a more beautiful shade of blue, yet the bluish black still continued to glow. The waves only sent glimmers of silver against the dark blue. Then it was only natural that he looked up at the sky, the sky which never allowed any other shade for itself, except on a few select days a year.

The fog blocked whatever green the mountains beyond the lake would have shown him.

Looking back at Hange then back at his surroundings, he started to accept it. There were greens, reds, blues, yellows and every other color in the spectrum. The world glowed with so many colors, so many lights and sounds. His emotions were a whirlwind that spun to whatever rhythm the lights and colors blinked at.

Colors persevered and they’ve always persevered.

Emotions persevered and they’ve always persevered.

Even emotions we don’t understand ourselves. Levi added to himself.

Maybe Hange was right. That was what the love alarm had been trying to show. The one person who made the colors, the emotions all the clearer.

“This is a beautiful place,” Hange said. “And I wouldn’t mind staying here, lay low a bit, just long enough for people to forget the divorce fiasco.”

“There are a few nice places here,” Levi said.

Hange continued to stare.

Why don’t we just live here together right Levi?

I know you, you wouldn’t be able to stay out of the action.

Levi felt almost ashamed at that mystery response that seemed to pop into his head out of nowhere. We can live here long enough to get our shit together. "First things first, let’s discuss this partnership, over tea in my house.”

“Now?” Hange’s widened her eyes. And her eyes were smiling.

“Well, unless you have other plans tonight,” Levi said.

Hange shook her head. “Nothing much…”

They made the whole way back to his home in silence. Surprisingly, Levi preferred it that way. It had been enough for him to appreciate his new comprehension of his surroundings, the small details he hadn't noticed before.

It wasn’t just the view. The rhythm of their footsteps, their uncoordinated breathing, and just the way the trees rustled, the wind blew, always found a way to glow different colors. His emotions, the chaos of every moment after that were also challenging him to find their colors.

And the circumstances that had them locked in his cramped apartment, sitting over tea, with no one else watching, nothing restricting them had Levi reflecting. It probably had Hange reflecting too. They spoke unhindered with just thoughts, expressions and locked gazes.

For one reason or the other, it happened quickly and abruptly, leaving no space or time to comprehend it.

Sitting on his living room sofa right next to her. Hands clasped against the other. Her dry lips were on his.

The magic welling in his chest, the thunder that climbed quickly up his throat, persevering even underneath the grey. They were all screaming at him then, they all glowed colors.

At that moment though, he had been to tired to reflect on it for any longer. He decided to just roll with it.

It was no use making sense of it. After all, life, love and emotions... They were all just complicated that way.

#levihan #levihan fanfiction

86 notes · View notes

novalunosiss · 3 years

Text

Okay!! The post strangerthingstv just made on Instagram looks really interesting! The whole thing gives me fear street vibes (like the title sequence with the news paper articles and whatnot) but I digress… Seems like season 4 is going to have some kind of murder plot.. or this murder could potentially be one from the past (like how Hop was looking at old newspaper articles in season 1). Anyway the video goes really fast but I saved it to my camera roll and slowed it down to read. Most of the information is blacked out but I’ll write what is legible below. I’ll write everything in the newspaper in a different font, my own thoughts will be in the regular font. For simplicities sake and because I don’t know terminology I’ll be calling the pictures “frames”. I won’t be discussing the frames that are just pictures, only the ones that show the text. This means that when I say “second frame” or something, it might not actually be the second frame in the video, but it’s the second frame with text on it. Hope that’s not confusing. Not sure if anyone will find this useful but i thought it was interesting, so here goes. Just as a warning, it’s 3:00 am where I live rn so this will probably be a little scattered.

First frame:

THE WEEKLY WATCHER

Lana stalked by crazed fan page 3

BLANK CLAIMS: VENGEFUL DEMON KILLED FAMILY

The Murder That Shocked A Small Community - PAGE 10

The Star-studded ‘bonanza’ premiere - CENTER PAGES

Policeman shot 12 times survives - PAGE 3

Inside Jayne and Mickey’s ‘Palace’ - PAGE 24

Thousands seek gold in jungle - PAGE 7

Magic Pill helping people lose weight

Second frame: you can only see part of the newspaper in this bit, but I’ll still try my best

s are certain Creel is to blame, but he claims

BLANK: Killer or t

m of a vengeful sp

by Addie Ba-cock

Okay so after this there’s a blank block of text but I’ll use this to point out some stuff. In this frame the text starts with the end letter of a word, s. I’m gonna assume that the word in question was ‘Authorities’. That would make sense considering it’s about a murder case and it fits well into the rest of the sentence. Not sure what the T or the M could be for, but the Sp is definitely the beginning of Spirit. This is later confirmed by another slide. As for the dash in the surname of whoever wrote this article, I couldn’t quite make out a letter so I left it like that. Back onto the text.

Whoever you believe, the strange case of the Creel family has put the heretofore sleepy town of Hawkins, Indiana, on the map. It is safe to say that the entire region will never be the same again. District attorney Phillip Bradley said of the ordeal.

Once again this is followed by a block of text. Now. Im fairly confident I’ve got most of this right, but it’s hard to be sure because the text is pretty small and blurry. The two lots of dashes are words I couldn’t quite figure out. Credit to @the-one-and-only-asha who figured out that the missing words were entire and region and let me know in the comments. For some reason it won’t allow me to link to their profile, as it says her blog is missing. But full credit goes to them :) To the right of this text is another bit that is featured in two slides. By piecing together both bits it is still incomplete but more together. It says the following.

‘I thought I was dying… so I w

flooded with relief… but there

a sense of terrible grief, too.’

The first time this bit of text appears it is in the second frame and has a block of blanked out text under it. However, the second time it appears, in the fourth frame, you can see some of the previously blanked out text. It says:

The discovery of a dead an-

the property. One evening,

ether Alice found a rotting

The third slide is also a closer up version of the second slide with a bit more information that was not previously seen.

Crime scene photos from inside the Creel Home obtained EXCLUSIVELY by TWW reveal a complete blood bath.

Underneath it is a picture of the scene but it’s blurry and you can’t see much. To the right there is more text, though most of it is cut off.

to the super

The Cre

home in Ha

Court docum

had recently

itance with

murder hou

Creel cl

in to their

a series of

paranormal

A lot of this you can use common sense to figure out. Cre is obviously Creed, Ha is most likely Hawkins, docum is documents, hou is house, cl is claimed, and after paranormal I’d assume it says events.

After this the video blurs through some more text but if you slow it down you can read one bit.

Didn’t know what I

told the court.

“I said I thought

teenagers set the gra

wouldn’t listen to me

dener tells our source

ly had enough

Not sure if i got all of this part right, it was lighter than the rest of the text so it was a little harder to read. For “gra” that could be grave, I’m thinking. Dener sounds like it could be a person, probably a surname, but im definitely not sure I got that right, it could be a completely different word/name. The ly in the final sentence is probably finally, as in “finally had enough.”

That’s it, I’ll include the video and the screenshots I took below but hopefully someone finds this as interesting as I did!

40 notes · View notes

snowstark · 3 years

Text

No Use Crying Over Spilled Coffee ☕️

For @buckybarnesbingo | Y3 - AU: Coffee Shop

LINK TO AO3

Summary: Steve hasn’t been to the coffee shop across his street in two years. To his surprise, the barista still remembers his order. There’s no way that means anything though, right? (Spoiler alert: it does).

Steve hadn’t been to this place in two years.

Two years was a long time.

In two years, he’d grown a beard. In two years, he’d managed to earn enough that he was able to switch his polyester suits for cashmere. In two years, Steve went from a stammering, newly-hired intern to Pepper Potts’ personal assistant in Stark Industries.

So yeah, Steve Rogers was a grown ass man, and he was still scared of showing his face to his neighbourhood coffee shop. Humiliating.

But, well. That was two years ago. And there was no way Twink Barista would still be working here.

He was wrong. Twink Barista was still working there, and somehow, even assuming that he would’ve been able to find a new, better job where he didn’t have to deal with angry businessmen made Steve feel even guiltier. He of all people knew that job hunting wasn’t easy. Had been jobless and couch surfing for a while, until he’d met Pepper and she’d seen something in him.

This was fine. He could deal with this. Two years had passed. He’d probably forgotten all about Steve, had probably allowed the memory to fade into other similar ones. Besides, he’d changed. He had a beard now. Wasn't that basically a disguise?

There was a long line, so Steve sat down at a table. He hated lines; he was willing to wait half an hour until it cleared out.

Then he started second-guessing himself, because shit, maybe he should just get in line to order when the barista was busy with multiple customers waiting so that he wouldn’t even take a long look at Steve’s face.

What if he remembered Steve? What if he reacted badly? What if—why did Steve even care? Baristas dealt with angry people on the daily. Steve knew from experience. So why did he care?

Because he didn’t like being an asshole, or a bully.

And he’d been both, and hadn’t ever bothered to try to make amends afterwards, had just disappeared.

All over spilled coffee.

Twink Barista was still cute. Same hair, same shy look on his face, same flushed cheeks. The first time Steve had laid eyes on him, he’d, well, he’d been charmed, to say the least. The way he’d nervously fidgeted as he let Steve pay for his order had made him smile, and his squeaked, “Thank you, Sir, your order will be right with you,” had really just been the cherry on the top.

Sir.

Steve… liked that.

Steve liked being called Sir. Not just at work, but in bed. And hearing Twink Barista—fuck, what was his name again?—utter that title had… well, he hadn’t had to deal with that problem when scalding hot coffee had soaked his stomach and pants. And crotch.

Twink Barista had a co-worker now, too, he noted. He was cute, like a golden retriever, with how much he smiled and nodded as he took orders from customers, how he handed them their drinks with an extra flourish, beaming. Like life was content, and everything was rainbows and sunshine. If Steve squinted from where he was, he could see that his name started with a C, and when he leaned closer—subtly—the best he got was… Cit? Clit? Oh, god, please don’t let his name be Clit.

Two customers left, which left just a few in the store. He should probably get in line now. But his feet couldn’t move, like they were stuck to the floor, because he wasn’t sure whether facing Twink Barista or a blonde guy potentially named Clit would be worse.

Fortunately—unfortunately?—he didn't have to decide.

Blonde guy—Steve refused to refer to him as “Clit,” even mentally, goddammit—started bustling around after Twink Barista murmured something to him, and stepped out from behind the counter with a mug.

And headed straight for Steve.

Oh, god. This wasn’t—this couldn’t—

Steve tried to look anywhere and everywhere else he could, even considered getting up to flee, but it was too late.

Blonde guy—Clint! Steve noted with dizzying relief—set down the mug on the small round table that he was sitting at and beamed. “For you!”

Steve swallowed back… whatever he’d been about to say, and hesitated for a long few moments before saying dumbly, “I didn’t stand in line.” He could feel his shirt begin to get damp with sweat.

Clint seemed unfazed. He shrugged and smiled politely, maybe a bit awkwardly, but it was still just as warm as the one he’d given the other customers. “My buddy Bucky says it’s your favourite. Don’t worry, it’s on the house.”

Steve opened his mouth to reply, but Clint hurried away before he could. His favourite. What the hell did that mean?

He reached out, picked up the warm mug, and took a sip. His cheeks flushed with heat the moment the drink hit his taste buds. He pulled back almost reflexively, nearly choking on his drink, tongue burning both from the flavour and how hot it was.

He jerked his head up and towards the direction of the counter, and met Twink—Bucky’s—eyes for a split second before Bucky hurriedly looked away. His cheeks flushed a darker shade of pink than usual, Steve noted, because Steve always noticed small things like that. He suddenly began talking animatedly with customers, but Steve could pick out the tension in his shoulders, the way he kept swallowing reflexively like he was trying to push down bile, like he was nervous that Steve would—like he might—

No. Enough. Steve had a meeting in a bit more than half an hour. He’d come here to relax. So that was what he’d do.

He picked up the mug again and took another sip, then began to read his newspaper, because he was here to relax.

The article was talking about a dog that had managed to save four people from a fire before firefighters could step in.

Lucky, a golden lab at the spry age of two, suffered three mild burns after—

“Sir, please, I didn’t—please don’t leave without pay—”

“What the fuck did you say? You think it’s okay to just say that after you fuckin’ spill that all over me?”

“Sir, I’m s-so—”

—safe to say that Lucky did not suffer any serious injuries. Our furry neighbourhood hero—

“You think you can fucking get a bill after that clown show? You think—god, are you—are you that dense?”

“I promise, Sir, I’ll get you a new drink—”

“I don’t wanna fucking hear it. Unbelievable. You think it’s easy to get this dry-cleaned? Do you even realize how much I—”

Steve’s grip tightened on the paper, and he wished the store would turn up their soft jazz music, if only to block out the sounds in his head.

By the time he finished his drink, he had fifteen minutes to spare, but he didn’t want to spend a second longer in here. So, he yanked out his wallet, pulled out a few bills at random—they happened to be hundreds—and shifted the mug so that he could slide it under, just enough so that half of the bills were poking out. He grabbed the unused napkin Clint had brought with it, pulled out a pen from his pocket, and scrawled, Thank you for the drink, Bucky. My favourite. - S.R.

Then, he got the fuck out of there without looking back even once.

__________

For some unfathomable reason, Steve returned to the coffee shop a few days later.

Maybe it was to try to make amends, since his little napkin note wasn’t, well, enough. Or maybe he just wanted to stare at Bucky again. He was pretty.

He was disappointed to see that Bucky wasn’t there when he stood in line; it was just Clint again, and a red-haired girl, but that was okay. It wasn’t like his life depended on seeing the guy. Besides, Bucky had to have a life outside of his job too.

Steve wondered if he still thought about the incident as frequently as Steve did. He clearly remembered it, considering he’d remembered Steve’s order, but…

He jumped when the door opened with a loud jingle, and speak of the devil, in stepped Bucky. He looked flushed, and his hair was a sweaty mess that he reached up to push away from his forehead. He still looked pretty.

Steve almost raised a hand to say hi, and barely stopped himself in time as Bucky turned and met his eyes, covering his ass by pretending to scritch at his beard. He gave a small smile, a hopeful one, wait, no, what was wrong with him, and Bucky flashed him one that didn’t quite reach his eyes before scrambling to get behind the counter.

There were only two people in front of him, so it wasn’t a long wait, and in less than two minutes, Steve found himself standing in front of Bucky. Clint and the red-head squawked inaudibly to each other, but it was clearly some teasing thrown at Bucky, because Steve noticed Bucky subtly stepping on Clint’s toes, drawing out a muffled yelp from him.

“Hi, what can I get for you?” Bucky gave him a small smile. Again, didn’t quite reach his eyes.

That was mostly Steve’s fault, he supposed. He didn’t exactly look like a sweet, innocent little lamb right now either, probably worse than two years ago. “The usual,” he supplied, raising an eyebrow to see if Bucky understood, just because he wanted to.

Bucky’s cheeks grew rosy. “Of course. Is that all?”

“Mmm…” Steve let his gaze slide over to the pastries that were on display. “Give me your favourite from the desserts, too.”

“Of course.” Bucky tapped into the screen, brows knitting as he concentrated, and shit, he was really cute.

Steve swallowed. “Thanks. How much?”

“Oh, um, it’s fine. I’ll just—it’s on me. You paid more than enough last time.”

Steve rolled his eyes. “No, c’mon, kid. How much?”

Bucky flushed. “‘m not a kid.”

“No?” Steve pointedly let his eyes roam over Bucky’s face, then down to his chest before flicking back up, delighted—because he was a sadist, sue him—to see Bucky’s face growing even warmer at the attention. “Sure look like one.”

Bucky gaped, and Steve suddenly—he—what the fuck was he doing? Jesus. He shook his head. “Sorry, just, look, just tell me how much.” He was—that was so inappropriate and unprofessional, he shouldn’t even be—

“Ten bucks,” Bucky mumbled, and Steve paid.

He glanced over his shoulder and noted that there were only three people actually sitting in the shop and no one in line behind him, which, cool, that was good. “Thanks,” he said simply, then moved to sit down.

He watched as Bucky hurriedly bowed his head, making his drinks, hissing something to his co-workers, cheeks still pink, and Steve saw him pop a matcha strawberry brownie into the oven.

He glanced down at his phone, answered a quick email, then sent Pepper a text saying that he might be a few minutes late back from his break, which she responded to with a thumbs up, and then the water gun emoji. He smiled.

“Your wife?”

Steve jumped and looked up, turning his phone off reflexively. Bucky set down the plate and mug in front of him. “Oh, no, my, uh, my boss.” He laughed awkwardly.

Bucky looked mortified. “Oh my god, I’m—I don’t even know why I asked that, I shouldn’t have even been looking, I’m so sorry, I don’t usually—I didn’t—”

“Bucky, it’s fine.” Steve gave him a smile that he hoped was warm, and reached out to take his drink. Bucky’s eyes followed his movements anxiously. “Thank you for the drink.”

Bucky blinked. “You paid for it.”

Steve bit the inside of his cheek. “I guess so.”

Bucky swallowed, glanced over his shoulder at Clint, who raised an eyebrow at him, and Steve smiled, he couldn’t help it, okay? “Is there a problem?”

Bucky shook his head, hard. “No, no, oh—it’s just—you know, it’s just an inside joke or something.” He flushed again, and Steve’s eyes lingered on his face for a few moments before he tore it away to take a bite from the brownie. “Um, is there anything else I can—that I can do? So that—I don’t want to mess up like—maybe you don’t even remember that it was me, but—”

“Two years ago?” The words slipped before Steve could bite them back.

Bucky swallowed and nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, um, okay, you do remember. That’s… not fun.”

Steve took the time to think over his words before responding. “No, I suppose not,” he finally said. Bucky twitched. “But only because I keep remembering your tears while I yelled at you.” He huffed humourlessly.

Bucky hesitated, then— “My crocodile tears, you mean?”

“Oh, shit, I did call them that, didn’t I?” Steve gave him a rueful glance. “Look, Bucky, I didn’t—that was two years ago. And I don’t know what possessed me to say those things.” His chest tightened up anxiously, but it was fine, this was good, he’d have some closure, and if he was lucky, he’d be on good terms with Bucky. Who was very pretty. “I guess what I’m tryin’ to say is: I’m sorry.”

Bucky gaped at Steve, and Steve shifted uncomfortably in his seat, busying himself with his drink as he waited for—something. “It’s… it’s okay,” he croaked. “Thanks. I didn’t mean to.”

“I know.” Steve gave him a small smile. “We’re good now, okay? I promise.”

Bucky nodded, looking just as relieved as Steve felt. “Yeah, okay, cool.”

Steve saw Clint pump his fist in the air behind the counter not-so-subtly out of the corner of his eye.

__________

Steve visited every day during his break.

Bucky was less shy and anxious around him now, sometimes even cracking jokes with him, sometimes holding small talk with him, and no matter what he did, it felt perfect. Steve… was having fun. For the first time in years.

Sometimes, he didn’t even get anything besides a cup of water, and Bucky would still treat it like it was the most precious thing in the world as he carried it over to his table.

Bucky set down his coffee in front of him, beaming. “For you.”

Steve laughed. “Bucky, I’m—god, you’re gonna turn me into an addict.”

Bucky smiled shyly. “That’s okay. It just means you’ll keep coming back here, won’t it?”

Steve melted. “Aw, shit.” He grinned. “You’re a real charmer.”

Bucky laughed. “Yeah, yeah, says the guy in the suit.” He raised an eyebrow. “I’m glad everything’s going well for you.”

“Thank you,” Steve said warmly. “You—I didn’t know you’d still be here, actually.” He took a sip. “Thought you’d have, well, I dunno. Moved on.”

“Oh!” Bucky shuffled his feet, and he scratched at the back of his neck in a way, cheeks rosy. “Yeah, well, I mean. No Fortune 500 company wants a college dropout. I’ve tried, but not much success.”

Shit. “Sorry. That was rude.”

“‘s fine. It’s true. I mean, two years is a long time.”

That was true. Two years was a long time. Two years and Steve had changed. Maybe Bucky could, too. If Steve helped. And he wanted to. Bucky was… Bucky was the biggest sweetheart Steve had ever met. He already knew Pepper would be charmed by him, would love him, maybe even take him under her wing like she’d done for Steve, and that was good, because then Bucky would get a promotion—

You mean if it’s good because it means you get to see more of his cute ass— shut up.

Steve sipped his drink thoughtfully, then— fuck it. “I could try to help,” he said. “Pepper—my boss—she’s looking for another assistant. Well, assistant to her assistant, I guess, would be a better way to explain it. So, a personal assistant for me. It’s at Stark Industries.” He shrugged. “I already know you—” Barely. “—so it’s not like making a recommendation would be odd. Networking.”

Bucky gaped at him. “You’re—oh my god, you’re insane.”

Steve laughed, surprised. “Am I?”

“Yes!” Bucky spluttered. “I just—you can’t just offer a job like that, Steve.”

“Why the hell not? It’s my assistant, Pepper won’t care.” He shrugged. She really wouldn’t. Bucky continued to stare disbelievingly, and Steve suddenly began to wonder if it’d been the wrong decision, if he’d pushed too hard, too fast, too— Shhh. “We’re friends now, aren’t we? ‘s what friends do for each other.” Steve waited, then broke into a grin at the expression on Bucky’s face. He was pretty sure Bucky would be at a loss for words for the next five minutes, when—

“And does being your personal assistant entail some action behind the scenes at home?”

Steve choked on his drink, coughing, his face glowing with heat.

Bucky looked equally mortified and taken aback by the words that had left his mouth, and he cried out, “Oh my god, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—I swear I didn’t—”

“Bucky!” Steve spluttered. “You’re fine! It’s fine!”

Bucky was still red in the face, and he was back to not looking Steve in the eyes, which, ugh, that was progress gone one step backwards. “I’m sorry. That was so unprofessional, I didn’t—”

Steve shook his head, shoulders shaking with laughter. “No, you’re fine. We’re friends. Friends joke around, don’t they?”

“Yeah,” Bucky said faintly. “Yeah, I guess so. ‘m still sorry.”

Suddenly feeling mischievous, Steve grinned and replied, “Forgiven—but only if you spell out what you meant for me.”

Bucky gaped.

Steve raised an eyebrow, and Bucky’s throat bobbed as he swallowed. “I’m waiting,” he drawled.

Bucky blushed and made a frustrated, embarrassed noise as he shifted his weight on the balls of his feet, looking hesitant as Clint and the girl bustled around behind him, clearly trying to be inconspicuous while eavesdropping. It made Steve’s lips twitch in amusement. “It’s just, I guess… you’re like, you emit rich energy now, my stupid brain just classified you—your offer as a sugar daddy thing, but as a joke, but I swear—”

Steve had been joking about earning his forgiveness, but curiosity took over against his better judgement, and he involuntarily leaned closer, but he never got to hear the rest of Bucky’s response because his phone suddenly rang out loudly in the nearly empty store, and he scowled. He snatched his phone up and the screen flashed the name TONY up at him. “Shit, I’m sorry. I have to take this.”

“Oh.” Bucky stared. “Oh, okay.”

Steve felt a pang of regret watching him back away, but there wasn’t anything he could do, not when Tony was calling him for god knew what. He picked up and when he spoke, his voice came out more curtly than he’d intended for it to, which was even worse because he knew Tony would pick up on that. “Tony.”

“Ohhh, Steve. Steve, Steve, Steve. You sound busy. Are you busy, Steve-o?” Tony drawled into the phone, then hissed, “Dummy, I swear to god, I’m gonna turn you into a pile of scraps, I’m gonna sell your parts, I’m gonna—”

“A bit,” Steve interrupted. “I was just in the middle of a conversation.” His gaze drifted to Bucky, who was cleaning up a table nearby. His cheeks reddened the slightest bit at Steve’s attention. Cute.

“Oh, really now?” God, Steve could just picture Tony wiggling his eyebrows delightedly. “That’s cute, baby, that’s real cute. Look, I need you to do something.”

“Don’t call me ‘baby.’” Steve rolled his eyes. “What is it?”

“You’ll find out. Tomorrow. Don’t ask Pepper about it. Can’t spoil the surprise, soldier. Just got excited, couldn’t help but call you about it.”

“God, Tony, you’re like, the CEO of the biggest company in the world; don’t you have better, more important things to do?” Steve chuckled fondly.

“Mm, nope.” Tony was smirking. Steve knew he was. “Now, I’ll let you go back to trying to hook up with twinks at your local cafe.”

“I— what?” Steve spluttered, and now it was his turn to get red in the face. “How do you even—”

“Byeee, Steve,” Tony sing-songed, and then the call ended.

Steve left shortly after that, because Bucky became too busy with a group of teenagers who’d come into the shop, and he could only make Pepper wait so long.

He didn’t forget to scribble his number on a napkin, though.

For networking purposes.

Totally.

__________

He waited, but his phone stayed silent for the rest of the day.

Steve had nearly given up by eleven when his phone buzzed, and the screen lit up with a message from an unknown number. He snatched it up immediately, unlocked his phone, and opened the Messages app.

Unknown Number: Hi. It’s Bucky.

Steve took the time to add Bucky to his contacts because duh, then replied.

Steve: Hey! :) Good rest of the day?

The response came immediately.

Bucky: Yeah, just got weirdly busy after our talk.

Bucky: Did you really mean it? The job thing?

Steve: Of course I did. I can’t guarantee it for sure, but I have some influence over who we hire, so. Better than nothing, right?

Bucky: Yeah, yeah.

Steve sucked the inside of his cheek, trying to think of what to say, when—

Bucky: Thank you. I appreciate it

Steve: No problem. A new (better) start to our friendship lol

Bucky: Lol yes. I promise I won’t ruin your suit this time

Steve typed out, You can ruin my suit anytime you want as a joke, but he hastily deleted it because that sounded way too sexual.

Steve: I’ll count on it ;)

Bucky: Stop by the shop tmr?

Steve: Baby, all you had to do was ask. Xoxo goodnight now

Shit. He hadn’t meant to use the pet name.

Bucky: Goodnight!!!

Bucky: <3

Okay, it was fine, then. More than fine. Bucky had sent him a heart. Steve grinned, then set his phone down to prepare for bed.

This was good. It was. It was a new friendship, and Steve couldn’t remember the last time he’d actually made a friend, and he should be happy with himself for having the courage to apologize and come to a reconciliation with Bucky. He had no idea how this was going to end, but that didn’t matter. He was satisfied with what he had.

He most definitely should not be wishing that they were more than just friends.

#stucky #steve/bucky #stevebucky #steve x bucky #buckybarnesbingo2021 #coffee shop au #dom!steve #sub!bucky #my fics #lmk if u wanna be tagged for part 2 or smth <3

130 notes · View notes

populationtyre · 3 years

Note

Why do you reblog pride post’s while also posting transphobic and transmisogynist posts? Pride was started by TRANS WOMEN throwing bricks at cops. Maybe do some research before blindly following terfs? I feel like maybe you’re better than that but I could be wrong. Idk do some soul searching

pride absolutely was NOT “started by trans women”. that’s a MYTH that has been debunked multiple times. Marsha P. Johnson wasn’t even THERE at the start. He showed up after the riots had already started (yes, he. He self-identified as a GAY MAN who was also a radical drag queen). Sylvia Rivera was also not there at the start either.

It was a BLACK BUTCH LESBIAN —believed to be Stormé — who kicked it off by resisting arrest, and the GAY MEN in the bar threw bottles and drinks in protest (the bricks also came later).

i know you think i might be uneducated and have no idea what i’m talking about, but i actually used to believe the gender stuff too when i was younger. i believed it and wholeheartedly tried to spread it FOR YEARS. in fact, i myself was on the verge of transitioning as a teenager when i did some SOUL SEARCHING and found that i had just been regurgitating absolute horseshit, and took it upon myself to rethink some things about my feminism.

then i ACTUALLY looked into the information out there, i looked at the research and i listened to the stories and i read the books and had real life discussions with real people. i questioned what i was being told and i drew my own conclusions. and it wasn’t just an overnight change of heart. it took at least a couple years while i came to terms with the new information i was being exposed to and took my time to consider it and mull it over.

like, my dude, i come from a family of academics, and i have a degree in psychological sciences. i think i’ve got a pretty good handle on research.

further than that, i’ve been an active, passionate feminist for over a decade now. i’ve been writing essays and learning and exploring this topic for years. i’ve been exposed to a variety of feminist movements, attended a variety of feminist gatherings and consciousness raising meetings, and been involved in a variety of feminist circles. I’ve met with women from all over the world, from all kinds of backgrounds, and listened to their experiences. I also came out as same-sex attracted when i was twelve, and attended a bunch of groups and volunteered with a bunch of events for the alphabet community. we had our own dances and camps and trivia nights and regular meetings to talk about our experiences and learn from eachother and our elders. i’ve watched how this community has treated eachother, I’ve seen it first hand.

this is not some new hobby i just picked up in lockdown. this is not some passive interest. i have been active and involved and i come from a place of actually being informed, and continue to learn new things every day. if you think i’m just blindly following others, you clearly don’t actually know anything about me.

ANYWAY, if you’d like to do your own research, there’s some wonderful resources out there.

I have a few recommendations but I encourage you to seek more out yourself.

I’ll start with my favourite. It’s an incredible analysis of the mythologising of Stonewall, looking at the derailing question of “who threw the first brick?”, challenging the ahistorical reporting of who was there and how they were involved, and remembering the significance of homosexuality’s criminalisation.

«If Johnson and Rivera didn’t throw the first brick — who did?[...] Maybe we simply don’t know. It was a collective effort by a group of angry homosexuals.

All the Stonewall rioters, they had no reason to riot if homosexuality wasn’t criminalized. They would not have lived the lives they did if homosexuality wasn’t criminalized. Yet today, the hagiography of Stonewall is weaponized against homosexuals, used to say that homosexuals ‘owe’ transgender people their time, movement, and rights.

The brick-thrower, whoever they may be or even if they exist, did not then single-handedly create fifty years worth of LGBT activism. That was a collective project. It’s okay to acknowledge that. We do not need to mythologize the brick-thrower. I feel that any attempt to find the ‘first brick thrower’ or the one person who started Stonewall, or doling out credit for Stonewall marks a departure from historiography [source-based accounts and facts] into hagiography [mythologisation and idolisation]. No single figure was responsible for Stonewall, nor any single demographic, group, or social class. But one thing united them. At that moment, the moment the lesbian fought back, the moment the first objects were thrown, that one thing was their homosexuality — their love for the same sex. It’s time to re-establish that historical fact.» via Sue Donym’s ‘Stonewasn’t’ https://archive.is/tn6tl

More resources under the break.

Sue Donym also has an incredible archive of well-researched, sourced articles that are a valuable asset to the feminist movement. She got banned from Medium.com, but you can find her archive here: https://archive.is/eUOLD

Here’s a masterpost of TRA lies about stonewall: https://transgenderlies.tumblr.com/post/165438110827/countering-transgender-lies-about-stonewall

Here’s another masterpost of more resources you can look at: https://auntiewanda.tumblr.com/post/178824977986/feminism-what-kinda-terf-y-bullshit-all-that

And here’s a few neat little summaries regarding Stonewall, if you don’t feel like reading actual articles. But i do recommend you come back at a later time and actually read the articles, because it’s important for you to be able to engage with the literature and draw your own conclusions instead of having it spoonfed to you.

Here’s a masterpost of receipts regarding things the TRA movement has stolen and been disingenuous about.

Here’s the masterpost of all masterposts, on a wide variety of feminist topics, so you can look at resources and receipts to your heart’s content https://evil-wrongthink-lesbian.tumblr.com/post/652918840174460928/masterpost-of-masterposts

Here’s yet another masterpost: https://radfemhancock.tumblr.com/post/620852335187542016/masterpost-links-gendercrit-trans-people

Mind, you don’t have to read any of those links. It’s your choice what you read and what you look into and what you consume. I’m just trying to suggest that you maybe consider that you possibly haven’t looked at all the facts necessary in order to take an informed stance. If you read all these resources and still hold the same beliefs, then okay. I just ask that you try to look at some perspectives outside of your own.

Anyway it’s almost midnight and this is the longest thing i’ve written in quite a while so I’m gonna go tf to bed now peace XX

#radfem #radfems do interact #masterpost #reference #aj speaks #ref #radical feminism #masterlist

81 notes · View notes

berriusagi · 3 years

Text

Stomach Bug Ch10

Doctor’s Visit

Alright I am back with another chapter and with this I bring something special. I want all of you to help me decide what our lovely Mari will be having so place your votes in the poll.

LINK REMOVED

Thank you to everyone who voted I’ll be using the results gathered and I hope everyone’s happy with what the final tally was.

~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.

“Damian’s not home right?” Tim asked, making his way into the Batcave where all the other bats sans Damian were sitting around the computer.

“No, tomorrow’s pixies first appointment with that new doctor so he decided to stay the night to give her moral support since she’s never been to a gyno before.” Jason said looking up from the files he was reading over, “honestly from what I’ve heard about what happens during those exams I don’t blame her for wanting a little support before going.”

“It’s all routine and can’t be any worse than the baby-making process.” Dick hummed typing away on the computer.

“I think that’s enough talk about that; why did you want to know Tim?” Bruce asked looking over at his second youngest.

“I found more info on Marinette thought I’d share with you all while Damian wasn’t here to stop me or compromise the data,” he explained walking over to the bat computer connecting his laptop to it.

The other men all sat silently around waiting for Tim to begin his presentation as he sorted through different encrypted files before bringing up a few pictures. “To begin her original name was Marinette Dupain-Cheng and her parents were bakers back in France, Tom Dupain and Sabine Cheng,” Tim said pointing them out.

“Marinette told me they essentially kicked her out,” Bruce said crossing his arms, “They believed the words of some liar and threw her out. She lived with a friend her last year in Paris before moving here.”

“Wait, hold on,” Dick said turning to Bruce, “Her parents kicked her out when she was still a minor? Isn’t that illegal?”

“Yes, and they knew that, she mentioned that when she told her grandmother she came and took custody from her parents, who seemed more than happy to hand it over, and let her stay to finish out that school year with a friend then moved here to finish out her schooling.” Bruce nodded.

“Yeah that all tracks to what I found,” Tim nodded, showing them documents next, “I have here the transfer of custody, her transcript for moving here, as well as the adoption papers for Ivy and Harley. I also went ahead and started running some background checks on the people still in her phone.” he added typing away.

“Anyone, we should be worried about?” Jason asked leaning back in his seat content to just watching Tim work, “She told me a bit about one of her friends’ guy seemed a bit sketch when he was a Paris hero though now I think he’s meh but never got a name from her.”

“You said he was one of the heroes?” Tim asked looking over at Jason.

“Yeah, she said he gave up his miraculous after the fight because his dad was the villain and he didn’t think Ladybug would want anything to do with him if she found out who he was so he bit the bullet and gave it up. He left Paris shortly after to live with his aunt.” Jason said looking around at the others.

“If the villain were outed then it’d be easy to find out who his son was,” Tim said, turning back to the computer the clicking of keys filling the Batcave as he searched through multiple French websites. The other three just watched as screen after screen flew by before settling on a trashy tabloid-like website.

“I don’t think this is what could be considered a credible source Timmy,” Dick winced looking over all the clickbait titles and the like to dislike ratio on the articles.

“No, but it does have quite a bit on the Paris heroes,” Tim said scrolling through to articles that had more likes and seemed of better quality, “here we go, Hawkmoth Defeated: How a Recluse Held Paris Hostage.”

The four men all leaned forward reading through the article that detailed the final battle between Hawkmoth and the Paris Heroes with a written description of what happened as well as a video that seemed to have been taken from a mix of sources and spliced together. The article detailed what Hawkmoth had been doing for three years and in the end, revealed him and his accomplice to be Gabriel Agrest and his assistant Nathalie Sancoeur.

“So we know that Gabriel Agrest was the big bad so who was his kid?” Jason asked as Tim typed away.

“Adrien Agrest, teen model for the Agrest Fashion Label. Looks like after his dad got taken down he had to go through months of interrogations and court hearings just to prove his innocence. His mother was found dead in the Agrest Mansion and with no one else it looks like his aunt took him in once he was cleared.” Tim said reading through the files he dug up.

“That would mean he probably gave his miraculous to Pixie right after he was cleared. If he was going to do something sketch he’d just hold onto it.” Jason said.

“He probably was so messed up after the battle he didn’t want any connection to the miraculous I mean his father turned evil because of them.” Dick hummed crossing his arms.

The four fell silent as they took in the information they had received, “Well Tim you got anything on that liar?” Jason asked, tilting his head.

“This whole blog is about that liar.” Tim said motioning to the tabloid, “I’ll email you guys the link and read it at your own pace there is years of garbage on here.”

“Then with that, I think we should all be heading out. We'll go over more of what Tim found later for now we should get to work,” Bruce said, getting to his feet and moving to change into his costume.

The other three nodded as Tim packed up his laptop and stored it away before they all got dressed and took their way out of the cave to begin their nightly rounds.

~.~.~.~

“So what do you think they found?” Marinette asked cuddled up to Damian's side on her bed with the hyenas crowded around them on either side resting their heads over their laps, “Chloe didn’t exactly hold back on mentioning certain names.”

“I would be surprised if Drake didn’t have an entire dossier on all your friends.” Damian said rubbing Marinette’s back, “You know he probably took all your contact info right?”

“Yeah oh well,” she shrugged turning to bury her face into his neck, “They were bound to find out eventually, might as well let some of the greatest detectives around have some fun piecing my life together.”

Damian hummed closing his eyes as he relaxed back into the plush pillows covering Marinette’s bed, “Are you nervous about tomorrow?” he asked.

“A little,” she sighed tightening her grip on his shirt, “Mum told me what to expect and said she’d sit in the room with me if I wanted her to, you can’t exactly join me since we can’t have this whole thing getting out.”

“I’ll be waiting here for you when you get home don’t worry,” he said kissing her forehead, “now try to get some sleep you barely got any at the manor.”

Marinette nodded letting out a deep sigh as she shifted around to get comfortable between Damian and the hyenas. Eventually, she settled down and dozed off into a dreamless sleep with Damian rubbing her back and the familiar weight of Bud’s head on her hip.

Damian stayed up for a bit longer listening to the quiet sounds around and thinking over what to do for the next day. He eventually made his way into a dreamless sleep as well a bit after one AM when he finally managed to shut his mind off.

~.~.~.~

“Marigold are you ready?” Ivy called from the kitchen as she looked through her back to make sure she had everything.

“Almost,” Marinette said, coming out in a comfortable knit sweater and skinny jeans, “I was looking for my purse. I think Lou took it,” she said, looking around in the usual spots for her bag.

“I’ll keep your wallet and Tiki in my bag we have to get going,” Ivy said, grabbing Marinette’s wallet off the counter and stowing it in her bag as Tiki flew over and settled into the bag as well giving Ivy a nod to close the bag once she was comfortable.

Marinette nodded and went back to her room grabbing her phone quickly checking it before putting it away in her pocket and leaned down kissing Damian’s cheek as he groaned slowly blinking his eyes open. “I’m leaving I’ll text you when we’re on our way back.”

“Okay habibti call me if you need me.” he yawned reaching up and pulled her down for a kiss, “good luck with your appointment I’ll see you after.”

Marinette nodded kissing him again as Ivy shouted for Marinette that they were leaving. She gave Damian another quick peck on the lips before pulling back and ran out to meet Ivy at the door. “Had to get my phone.” she smiled stepping out of the apartment and waited as Ivy locked up and ushered down to the cab waiting outside.

“Now remember Marigold just relax and everything will go smoothly, it will be uncomfortable but it won’t hurt okay.” Ivy said, settling into the cab beside Marinette and rubbing her back, “I can sit inside the room with you if need me to.”

“I think I’ll be okay,” Marinette said, taking a few calming breaths as they made their way to the doctor’s office. Once they arrived Marinette was starting to look a little green as they went through the check-in process and filled out their info.

Waiting for her name to be called felt like an eternity and her stomach was twisting into knots as she watched other women come and go through the office. Marinette sat there twisting her fingers in her sweater and took slow deep breaths trying to calm herself when the door opened, “Marinette?” a nurse called.

Marinette shot up her face going from pale to a deep red as she made her way to the nurse. The nurse smiled and ushered her inside and went about getting her blood pressure, “Hmm little elevated but I think it could just be your nerves.” the nurse smiled, and her height and weight.

“Alright girly so here’s your room I’m going to need you to completely strip down underwear and all then put this paper gown on opening to the front and here’s a privacy blanket for your legs.” the nurse said motioning to the items on the bed, “the doctor will be in here shortly.”

Marinette nodded as the nurse closed the door leaving her alone, “It’s just a check-up.” Marinette mumbled undressing and taking her time to carefully fold her clothes and set them on the table in the corner of the room. She put on the provided gown and settled on the table keeping her phone clenched tightly in her hand as she waited for the doctor to arrive.

It felt like an eternity when there was a knock at the door and the doctor stepped in, a petite redhead with a smattering of freckles covering her pale face, “Hello Miss Marinette I’m Doctor Amelia.” she smiled coming over to shake Marinette’s hand, “I see you’re here for a wellness exam and you’re expecting.”

“Uh yes,” Marinette coughed her voice, cracking a bit from her nerves, “I uh just found out a few weeks ago.” she blushed, gripping the paper blanket covering her legs.

Doctor Amelia nodded looking over the file, “This is your first-ever wellness exam yes?” she asked, taking a seat.

Marinette nodded keeping her head bowed trying to not let her nerves take over her.

“Okay sweetie we’ll go at your pace so just relax okay.” Doctor Amelia smiled setting the file aside and grabbed her stethoscope.

~.~.~.~

The entire exam didn’t take more than five minutes before the doctor was cleaning up and stepping out to give Marinette some privacy to redress. Marinette wasted no time pulling her clothes back on and sending Damian a text saying, ‘Making this baby was less violating than that.’ before putting her phone in her pocket as there was another knock, “Miss Marinette if you're ready you can go to the front and schedule the next appointment.” Doctor Amelia said through the door.

Marinette walked over opening the door her face still a bit flushed, “Okay uh when should I come back next?” she asked.

“I think in a month should be enough time and we should be able to hear the heartbeat by then.” she smiled, “Your moms waiting for you upfront, and here’s the card to one of my nurses if you have any questions feel free to call her okay.”

“Thank you.” Marinette nodded, taking the card and quickly went to the front to meet back up with Ivy and schedule the next appointment and made their way out to walk back home.

“I think we should pick up some breakfast.” Ivy smiled putting a hand on Marinette’s shoulder as they walked. “There’s a nice little bakery around the corner should we pick up something from there?”

“Yeah, that sounds good.” Marinette nodded following Ivy down to the bakery and got in line looking over the different pastries they had for sale. Between the two of them, they picked out an array of sweet and savory options with Marinette making sure to pick out some vegetarian options for Damian. Soon they were walking out with two large bags and were walking down the street back to their home.

Upon entering both had to hold their bags of treats high out the reach of Bud and Lou trying hard to reach the goodies hidden away. Harley quickly came over pulling them back by their collars so the two could set the bags down in the kitchen.

Damian was settled at the table and got up coming over to help them unpack as Harley got some coffee and tea going as they all settled down to enjoy a bit of a late breakfast. Marinette ate her croissants and fruit danish taking small bites so as not to upset her stomach any further. The small group spoke of anything and everything as they enjoyed their meal. Harley taking the time to pick out the meat from her sandwich to give to the two hyenas and Damian holding a small conversation with Tiki as she munched on the cookies Marinette picked out.

“So when are you going back?” Harley asked looking over at Marinette as she bit into her bagel.

“In a month, the doctor said we should be able to hear the heartbeat by then,” Marinette said, finishing off her danish, “I don’t know if I’m ready.”

“You’ll be fine Marigold we’re here for you every step.” Ivy smiled ruffling her hair, “Now I think you should go lay down, maybe settle your stomach and your nerves. You were looking a bit green and tense after your appointment.”

Marinette nodded, finishing her tea and croissant before heading back to her room to lay down. Damian finished off his breakfast quickly and excused himself before following Marinette leaving the two sirens and the small goddess at the table.

“At least he’s good for our little Mari.” Harley hummed sipping her coffee, “So long as he makes her happy he can stick around I guess but not too sure I forgive him for knocking our baby up.”

“Oh, now you don’t like him?” Ivy chuckled, raising her eyebrow at her.

“Oh, I adore the kid but you know one of us has to give him the shovel talk eventually.” Harley chuckled getting up to clean the dishes and put the leftovers away.

~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.

@myazael @beautiful-disasters-sunshine @moonlightstar64 @moonlitceleste @stainedglassm @casual-darkness @mochegato @ultimatetornshipper @heemsanddamemes @nathleigh @qualitypeacepainter @raven-frost-21 @maskedpainter @demonicbusiness @dood-space @trippingovermyfeet @emimar7 @indecisive-mess-named-me @changelinggarden @zerotosiki @alysrose-starchild @s-and-n @wolf2118 @athena452 @jjmjjktth @eliza-bich @solangelo252 @icerosecrystal @heinrode @Junarvion

@babylovebug18 @animegirlweeb @corporeal-terrestrial

#daminette #damianette #damidad #mominette #maribat #maridami #ml x dc #teen pregnancy #stomach bug

179 notes · View notes

purpletaecup · 3 years

Photo

10 ☾ he said that’s how he still remembers me

warnings: explicit language (cursing), mentions of miscarriage, mentions of infidelity (not rlly but on thin ice)

notes: you guys... this is a long one and it’s kind of fast paced, but we are finally getting some answers and the drama really begins! next chapter will be emotional, that’s all I know. I’m sorry for putting you through all this angst!! also, I wanted to bring some attention to the crisis in the Philippines right now with all of the dangerous typhoons. A lot of people need donations and rescuing, so HERE is a link to a twitter thread of donation drives! Please make sure to check it out, share and help spread awareness!

as always, come talk to me in my ask box! and if you want to be added to the taglist, please send an ask, or reply to this post or the masterlist!

not edited!! sorry if there are any mistakes lmfao i usually am sleep deprived when i write so yeah, there are probably some errors.

word count: 5,614

☾

The days following Jungkook’s visit were dull, if anything. You’ve received texts from Yoongi saying that he couldn’t come visit until that weekend because he had to finish wrapping things up in advance at the company so that he could spend some time with you. You had argued over the phone like teenagers when you insisted that he didn’t need to do that and you could take care of yourself until Jin came back. Of course, that led to him ranting about what the doctor said about monitoring you and your symptoms for concussion and to get him to just shut up about the medical stuff (it made your brain hurt more than it did usually), you reluctantly agreed to his ‘visits’, as you’d rather call them.

[nov. 20, 2020]

It was Friday now and you still haven’t gotten any glimpse of actual memories back, although you have been having these strange dreams that you couldn’t really remember when you woke up. You could only describe the feeling it gave you as ‘sinking’, like you were drowning and you couldn’t escape. As much as possible, you tried not to think about these feelings, and focused more on trying to get to know the version of you who lived in this amazing apartment.

The past couple of days that you spent at this apartment put you in awe. It really was the apartment of your dreams, from the color of the furniture down to the little plants stuck in the corner of that tiny shelf in the kitchen. It was beautiful and so you. The only problem was that you couldn’t find anything to help with your current situation. You scoured every nook and cranny and couldn’t find anything dated after your wedding reception. No pictures, no post-its, notes or anything past that date. What you had found in your apartment, you already knew of (aside from the wedding photos). Past photoshoots, high school photos, a notebook full of movie ticket stubs. There was absolutely nothing in this apartment that gave you a clue to the life you lived during the four year gap in your memory.

You even tried to get into your twitter and instagram from when you were nineteen but you couldn’t log in. Wrong password every single time. When you tried to change your password for social media, the email you used had a different password too. You couldn’t figure out what you could have changed your password to. Every password combination you could think of, you tried, but none worked, so you decided to just skip that and maybe go over it later on. Or make a new one. That could work, too.

You couldn’t even look at your twitter account because for some reason, it was private and that seemed strange for someone with almost 130,000 followers. You could see your instagram account from your browser, but it wouldn’t let you see the pictures and posts in full size with the captions and comments, so you were really stuck.

A quick internet search of your name yielded things you already knew. Former model, current writer (that fact was still surprising to you). Old news articles of dating scandals that weren’t true, except for the one with Yoongi. More news articles about your divorce with no further information than what Yoongi had told you already.

It’s as if any clue about your life during your memory loss is unaccounted for. It seemed like at this point, you could only rely on other people telling you about your life and pray to whatever higher power there was to give you your memories back.

This futile search was beginning to make your stomach churn. You almost couldn’t suppress the bile rising up in your throat. Hopefully Jin would return soon. Maybe he could put all of the pieces back together for you.

☾

Jungkook sat in on the uncomfortable leather couch in Yoongi’s office as he waited for the man to finish up whatever he was typing. He looked through his instagram feed and saw one of your posts from July. For a while, he was confused as to why this picture from July would end up on his feed, but he remembered the new instagram algorithm. Curious, he clicked on your profile and looked through it slowly. He couldn’t remember the last time he actually paid attention to your posts.

“I forgot to ask but what did you and Yn do at her apartment? She said you stayed over for a couple of hours.” Yoongi asked though his eyes never strayed from his paperwork.

Jungkook looked up at him and pondered on what to say.

“Hm, yeah. I got roped into staying. She asked a bunch of questions and we looked through her apartment and her photo albums. Her apartment’s cute, by the way. Way different from what your house looked like.” He comments.

“Really?”

“Yeah. It was bright. Lots of green. Nothing I’ve ever seen in the house you guys shared.”

“How was she when you picked her up? She told me a couple of things but I haven’t seen her yet so I can’t know if what she’s telling is the truth or not.”

It was quiet for a moment, with only the sound of turning pages filling the room, as Jungkook wondered what to say to this. He didn’t really know when to start with you, especially with how different you were acting.

“Well, she’s fine. The personality is definitely different. She seems a lot more outgoing, and she had a lot of questions but she didn’t push. I think she wants to try and figure things out on her own.” Jungkook replies as he continued to slowly look through your previous instagram posts.

“She’s been like that. She hates being a burden and gets really defensive about it sometimes.” Yoongi comments.

Jungkook pauses at your most recent post. He checks the date. September 22.

“When did you guys divorce again?” He asked.

At this, Yoongi looked up.

“The divorce was finalized on September 29, I think.” He answered, but looked questioningly at Jungkook as if to ask why.

“Did you know she was going to therapy?” Jungkook asked again.

Hearing this, Yoongi stood up abruptly and hurried over to where Jungkook was sitting.

“What? Where did you see that?” Yoongi asked as he looked over Jungkook’s shoulder.

Jungkook showed him the post. Yoongi took the phone from him and examined the post carefully.

It was a picture of clouds with text on it. Is this the life we really want? The caption read “as per the advice of my therapist, i’m just here to pop in and say that I’ll be going on a hiatus for a little bit”.

“What the fuck? I didn’t know this!” Yoongi yelled, evidently angry.

Jungkook looked at him confused. They were together for four years, how could he not know that you were at least going to therapy?

The same question was running through Yoongi’s head. He took a seat next to Jungkook to process this new information.

“Hyung, can I ask you a couple of questions?” Jungkook requested.

Yoongi could only nod.

“What was Yn like when you were together? Why did you marry her?” Those were the first questions that came out of Jungkook’s mouth.

He was truly, genuinely curious. Though he’s heard some things that Yoongi had said about you, he never knew the full story.

“We married each other because we loved each other. Wasn’t that obvious?” Yoongi retorted.

Jungkook pursed his lips at this. “Well that's what you tell everybody and yeah we get it, but considering the fact that I’ve barely seen you two together more than two handful of times in the past two years, I had to ask.”

“That’s because we were both busy, but that didn’t mean we didn’t spend time together. Of course you never saw it because you weren’t there and I’m not one to actively talk about my love life. Yn and I both liked our privacy.”

“Okay, then what was she like when you were together?”

Yoongi was quiet for a while. There were a lot of things he could say about you when you were together. He just didn’t know how to articulate it to Jungkook.

“When we were together… she was charismatic, beautiful and intelligent. Something about the way she communicated made you feel like you could forget about all of your worries and live life to its extent with her. She constantly dragged me out to picnics and made me forget about the business and my career. She made me feel young again. And she had so much love and care for people around her. For a long time, I felt like I would never be deserving of her. She was kind of like a sunflower. Or sunshine, you know what I mean?” Yoongi poured out.

Jungkook nodded. He realized that this was the time to try to figure out what happened to you in your marriage. From his conversation with you at your apartment, to the description of you that Yoongi had just given, he surmised that the version of you that he knew was someone different and he could only wonder if Yoongi saw it too.

“Did you ever feel like she changed? In the time you guys were together?” He probed.

Yoongi thought about it for a while.

“Yeah, I think so. I always found it strange that she decided to quit modelling. When I met her, she said it was all she ever wanted. I never asked because it seemed like a sensitive topic to her, but I supported her regardless. Writing seemed so out of nowhere for her. I don’t know where it came from. Then she stopped wanting to go to business dinners and events with me and after that we just drifted. And in between that, you introduced me to Yura.”

When Yoongi mentioned Yura, Jungkook winced. He had thought about it some nights ago, but he realized that he might have had a hand in your divorce by introducing Yura to Yoongi. Though he knows Yoongi would have never physically cheated on you, he could see how Yoongi and Yura gravitated towards each other. Jungkook had to admit that Yura was a sweet girl. She was beautiful, and when she smiled it was like sunshine.

Yoongi interrupted his train of thought. “Yura is kind of a complicated subject to our marriage. I would never, ever cheat on someone I loved. And I loved Yn, so much. When you introduced Yura to me, I was happy to meet a new friend and that’s all I saw, but the more you made me hang out with you guys, the more I started to see something in her that I stopped seeing in Yn. I never meant to have any sort of romantic feelings for Yura, but it happened and I feel so fucking shitty for doing that to Yn when I’m the one who promised her a lifetime together.”

Jungkook straightened his posture as Yoongi’s confession.

“Wait, what do you mean by that?” He asked.

“By what?” Yoongi looked at him confused.

“What happened to Yn that pushed you to Yura?”

At this, Yoongi scratched his head.

“I wouldn’t say that it pushed me to Yura, but remember when I said Yn and I started getting distant? As time went on, I felt like she changed and I didn’t know who she was. She used to be so bubbly and happy and always wanting to go look at flowers, but towards the end of our marriage, she stayed holed up in our room no matter how much I asked her to spend time with me. Yura, she was happy to spend time with me. She made me feel like I could forget about everything just by talking to me.”

“Yura made you feel like how Yn used to make you feel?” Jungkook cut him off.

“Well… I guess so.”

Jungkook thought about this for a while but narrowed his eyes at his hyung.

“Hyung, answer this truthfully; do you love Yura?”

The tips of Yoongi’s ears turned red after hearing this.

“Love? I don’t know. I like her? I like the way she makes me feel. She’s beautiful and smart and she makes me happy.”

“Hyung, I don’t know if you realize this, but the way you described Yura is exactly the same way you described Yn.”

“What do you mean?”

“It sounds like you started liking Yura because she reminded you of Yn when you met her. So, do you really, truly like Yura? Or do you just like her because she reminds you of what you don’t have anymore?”

Yoongi lowered his head.

“I-I don’t know. I never thought of it like that.”

Jungkook put his hand on Yoongi’s back to comfort him. Obviously, the man was confused.

“I don’t know if this helps, but I just wanted to let you know that whenever I saw Yn, during those dinners or events, she never gave off the vibe that you described her to be. To me, she was quiet, reserved and never bothered trying to get to know us, your friends, or your business. That’s what she came off as. When you told us that you loved each other and that you eloped, I thought you were joking. When I saw her, she just seemed like the typical trophy wife. Just for show. I never liked her and wondered what you saw in her all the fucking time, but now after hearing this, and after being with her for a couple of hours, it’s obvious that something happened that fucked her up and then fucked your marriage up.” Jungkook ranted.

“I think you might need to reevaluate the relationship you had with Yn so we could help her recover from this whole amnesia thing and hopefully figure out what happened. Something definitely happened, but since I don’t know your marriage like you do, I don't know what it is. I feel guilty now after realizing that I might have had a hand in whatever the fuck she was going through. And maybe figure out what you’re going to do about Yura. Can you keep dating her when your feelings for her are based off of your feelings for your ex-wife, who is currently pregnant with your wife and doesn’t know about it?” He continued.

Yoongi took a deep breath, taking all of this conversation in.

“Yeah, you’re right. I’m almost done with the shit here at the company. When I go home, I’ll sort everything out and talk to Yn and Yura tomorrow. I don’t think I can keep seeing Yura with the current situation. I have to tell Yn about the pregnancy as soon as possible, but I’m scared because the doctor told me to monitor for residual symptoms for her concussion. I don’t even know where to begin with the situation.”

“It’s okay, hyung. I’m here for you. You have to tell her about the pregnancy before she finds out herself. In the meantime, I’ll help you out when you can’t take care of her. I already feel shitty enough for how I acted with her when you two were married. I feel like I had the wrong impression this whole time.” Jungkook offered.

Yoongi remembered the moment earlier when Jungkook confessed that he never liked you and that baffled him because he thought that you two, of all people, would get along well together. More often than not, he would feel jealous of Jungkook, who had your admiration when you first started dating. He remembered you always asking him to introduce you to Jungkook and it took a year for him to budge and actually make it happen.

“I’m sure you’ll get along now. I always thought you did get along. Did you know she liked you before?” Yoongi asked.

Jungkook shook his head. “I didn’t know until the other day when you had me take her home. It probably would have helped if you told me she knew who I was before you introduced us after you got together. She never acted like she was a fan of my music and admittedly, I was a dick to her.”

Yoongi glared at him. It was a first for him to hear about how Jungkook treated his ex-wife.

“Well, you should feel shitty because she really liked you and your music. For a while, I thought she liked you more than me. If I had known you were an asshole to her, I probably would have ripped you a new one. Hearing you admit you treated her like shit makes me feel like shit because I never knew and just assumed you guys were good with each other. You didn’t do or say anything bad to her, right? You’re not that type of person.”

Jungkook could only pretend to smile at Yoongi as he asked this.

He shook his head and lied. “No, never.”

Lying through his teeth to his best friend about how he treated you made his heart fall to his stomach. Well, Yoongi didn’t have to know because it was in the past. You couldn’t remember any of the mean things he’d said to you, so now was the perfect time to make a new, much better impression of himself to you. He decided days ago that he would be better, because deep down, he knew that you didn’t deserve to be treated like how he treated you.

[nov. 21, 2020]

Yoongi had taken the day off after his somewhat enlightening conversation with Jungkook last night. He decided that he needed to go see you and spend some time with you today, but before that, he needed to settle things with Yura.

They decided to meet up at his apartment for maximum privacy, just in case anything happened. He wanted to account for the worst case scenario of Yura probably getting angry and throwing things around, but he doesn’t think she’s the type of person to do dramatic things like that.

Turns out, she’s not. When he reluctantly tells her that he can’t continue on with what they had because of residual feelings for you, in addition to the fact that there were complications in that relationship that he can’t speak about carelessly, she had reacted calmly and amicably. Though Yoongi hadn’t expected her to throw a tantrum, he was expecting some kind of anger, but all he got was a sad look passing on her face followed by comforting words.

He apologized profusely for having dragged her around when he still had apparent feelings for his ex-wife and not figuring out his feelings for her, or lack thereof, sooner. She reassured him that it was okay and she’ll be fine.

“I’ll be fine Yoongi. I liked you, but it’s pretty obvious that you used me as some kind of rebound or replacement for your ex-wife, and I was okay with it. Truthfully, I was waiting for you to just come clean and break it off with me. I hope you and Yn figure things out this time, and I hope you can talk to her. Communication is important.” She reminds him before she leaves, but not before letting him know that she would always be there for him as a friend.

He had texted her after she left, and after a couple of minutes to himself, that he was thankful for her being so nice about the situation and all in all, he didn’t regret whatever short-lived affection they had for each other.

Yoongi still couldn’t believe how smoothly everything with Yura went. He hoped that the rest of the day would be the same.

☾

You woke up to a message from Jungkook asking if you were free, so you had to tidy up the apartment and yourself because you didn’t want to look messy in front of someone you had idolized for a long time.

Luckily enough, you didn’t have to cook since Jungkook offered to bring food. You thank your lucky stars for that because for some reason, you’ve been feeling incredibly sluggish and nauseous. It was probably some symptoms of the concussion you suffered. You remembered your doctor saying something about that the last time you were at the hospital.

About 20 minutes later, you heard your doorbell ring so practically skip to the door, excited to see Jungkook and steal the food that he brought.

You opened the door to see Jungkook standing there with a big back of food in his hands. He was wearing all black, with a leather jacket that looked a tad too big on him.

“You look warm.” You comment.

He rolled his eyes. “Are you gonna invite me in or not? I even brought you food.”

You laugh a little and move to the side to give him room to step inside the apartment.

“So, what have you been doing?” He asks as he makes his way to your dining room to put the food down.

You make your way to the kitchen to get some plates for the both of you.

“Nothing. I’ve been trying to look for some stuff but I don’t know where to start so I just gave up until you or Yoongi could come help.” You reply as you move to the dining room to set the plates down.

Jungkook takes the food out and puts some on the plates. Kimbap, like you asked, and some seaweed soup.

“How have you been feeling? Okay?” He questioned.

You nodded, though hesitantly.

“Eh, I’ve been feeling kind of tired. I think I might be sick because I keep wanting to vomit. Is that my wintermelon tea, by the way?” You pointed to the drink in his hand.

Jungkook poked the straw through the lid and handed it to you.

“Sick? Did you take any medicine? Are you feeling better now?”

You took a sip of your tea and sighed, missing the sweet taste of the drink. It felt nostalgic.

“Mhm, took some earlier and I'm feeling much better thanks to the food you brought!” You smiled.

Jungkook rolled his eyes jokingly once again. “You’re welcome, by the way.”

He didn’t think about your illness any further. It was probably a cold and nothing else.

For about 20 minutes, the two of you ate and spoke about little things, mostly about Jungkook and his career. It helped you get to know him a little bit better since he’s the only person besides Yoongi who could help you in your situation until Jin comes back.

After you finished eating, you told him that you needed his help going through your room in case there was anything that could jog your memory.

“I would ask Yoongi but he’s been busy lately.”

“So I’m just your last resort?”

“You’re literally the only other person in my contact list besides Yoongi and Jin.”

“Right, anyways, lead the way!” He exclaimed.

You laughed as you led him to the room at the end of the hallway.

“Sorry if it’s a little messy, I didn’t have that much time to clean up before you got here!” You explained.

Jungkook shook his head, telling you it didn’t really matter since it was gonna be a mess anyways while you two went through your things.

☾

When Jungkook walked into your room, he was once again hit with the feeling that he had no fucking clue who you were in the past years he’d known you. If he could describe your room in one word, it would be enchanting. White walls, white sheets adorn with a baby blue blanket, wooden floors, giant plants and a mirror much bigger than himself. Your desk was filled with different kinds of pens, different notebooks that look to have been trifled through, and an unnatural amount of books and crystals.

From the looks of the rest of your house, he probably shouldn’t be surprised at your bedroom, but it’s still a bit difficult for him to wrap his mind around the fact that you were this type of person. Bright, intelligent, and incredibly neat.

He walked up to your desk and picked up the different notebooks laid out messily on the table. When he opened each of them, he noticed that they were mostly blank, with the exception of a few doodles. There were some things he’d recognized as lyrics from songs he knew, but nothing truly relevant to the memories you lost.

You stood next to Jungkook and looked at the notebooks in his hands.

“I went through those already. Nothing but a few sad lyrics here and there. None of them triggered any memories.” You mentioned.

Jungkook put them down and started walking around the room with you as you talked about what you did find during the days that you were left alone. What he got from that conversation was that you had no luck with anything and that’s why you waited until either he or Yoongi could come over and help you. Jungkook knew that Yoongi was coming over later, so if he couldn’t help you find anything or answer any of your questions today, then maybe Yoongi could.

“Oh! I forgot to mention that I can’t even access any of my social media, so do you think I can look through my instagram through your phone? I mean, if that’s okay with you. I know some people feel uncomfortable giving their phone to someone else to play around with.” You asked.

Jungkook shook his head and stuck his hand in his pant pocket, reaching for his phone.

“It’s fine, you can look at your profile, I think I follow you. The password is 061313.” He stated as he handed his phone over to you.

You grabbed it excitedly, finally getting the chance to see what your life was like during the four years that were missing from your memory. You fell back onto your bed as you unlocked Jungkook’s phone and clicked on his instagram app quickly.

You took a look at his profile first, staring in awe at the pictures he’s posted. Most of his pictures are very dark and he had quite a few selfies. You smiled a little bit as you admitted in your head that he was indeed handsome.

Okay, Yn, onto the more important things! You thought to yourself as you quickly searched your username ‘faeyn’ on the search bar. At first you were excited, but it deflated when you saw just how many posts you had. 13 posts. And almost all of them were just landscapes. Some had pictures of you by yourself, or with Jin, but that was it. How the fuck were you supposed to try to figure out your life through 13 pictures?

Scrolling through each picture and their captions from the oldest to newest, you quickly realized that you must have decided that privacy was something that should be valued. There was nothing of substance to your situation in the captions you’d written. Just casual mentions of how your day was, or what you did that day. The only thing that caught your eye was the latest post you had, dated September 22. It was a picture of clouds and the caption said something about your therapist advising you to take a break, so you were going to be on a social media cleanse for a while.

Well, at least you learned one thing. Apparently, you started going to therapy again. For what? You don’t know. You only remembered going to therapy a couple of times after the whole incident with your bastard ex-boyfriend.

You filed this little detail into your brain and hoped that maybe it would make more sense later on. Swiping up on Jungkook’s phone took you to his home screen, but you paused for a little. Maybe you could snoop through some more apps and see if there was anything else you can find.

No, that would be an invasion of Jungkook’s privacy, you thought. Another part of you argued that he wasn’t going to know and he’s here to help you. If there was anything worth hiding, he wouldn’t have given you his phone and his password so easily. And if there was anything, it wouldn’t be incriminating since he mentioned that you two didn’t really know each other that well, so you shrugged and clicked on his messages.

I’ll just see if there are any messages to me. I won’t look at anything else, you justified, as if it made it any better.

After scrolling for a little while, you finally saw something worthwhile. A text convo between you and Jungkook and from the preview of the message, it looks like it was from the middle of September. You opened it, excited to see the contents, but what you saw made you furrow your brows.

What is this?

☾

After Jungkook gave you his phone, he continued walking around your room until he got to the side of your bed that was next to the window. He looked around for a bit and saw something in the corner of his eyes. Crouching down lower, he saw something on the floor behind your headboard. He couldn’t tell what it was at first, but as soon as he moved closer, he realized it was a thick notebook. Jungkook surmises that you probably hadn’t seen it despite telling him that you looked ‘everywhere’. He took the notebook and sat down on the floor, completely hiding his figure, but not before he could look at you. He wanted to see what was in the notebook before he showed it to you, and luckily enough, you had been facing away from him.

So he sat down and opened the notebook. From just the first page, he could tell it was some kind of diary or journal. There were lots of drawings and stickers and a picture of you in a field of flowers right in the middle of the first page. He flipped through the whole notebook really quickly and found that half of it was already filled.

A part of him wanted to read through the whole thing and see what kind of things you wrote, but another part told him that it wasn’t appropriate. Despite that, he convinced himself that he should read maybe just one entry, just to see if this notebook was something substantial to your current situation.

Jungkook took a peek at you again and noticed you still had your back turned to him so he took that as a sign that he could probably get away with reading an entry. He flipped to a page randomly and focused his eyes on the writing.

The entry was dated August 4, 2020. Fairly recent. He noticed that there were some dark blotches on the paper that made the ink bleed.

He began to read the entry, not knowing what he was going to find out.

It still seems weird to be writing about my problems in a journal. I’m still not used to it, but it’s been helpful since I don’t really have anyone to talk to about this.

That made him frown.

I went to my OBGYN today because I’ve been having severe cramps and bleeding, but I already had my period so I was worried. And the cramps were starting to really hurt, so I had to go get it checked out just in case. Well, apparently I was pregnant and lost the baby.

Jungkook’s eyes widened and he gasped audibly. Luckily enough, it wasn’t loud enough for you to notice. He clasped his hand over his mouth at the disbelief in reading this information. A miscarriage? And so recent, too. He didn’t know how to feel. Yoongi had never said anything about this.

Jin actually just left my house a couple of hours ago. I don’t think the news hit me until now. I texted Yoongi earlier to tell him but he was busy so I think that was a sign that I should probably not tell him. It’s not like it matters right? Since the baby was gone anyways.

I know my therapist told me to stop with the negative self-talk, but it’s moments like this that really push me to just keep thinking I’ll never be good enough for the men that I love. Thanks to my bastard ex for fucking my mind up like this. No matter how hard I try, I always just circle back to the fact that I wasn’t good enough for him, and that I’m not good enough for Yoongi. Even fate is telling me that I’m not good enough to carry a child with the man I love. How fucked up is that?

Jungkook’s heart dropped to his stomach. He felt sick. There were so many things going through his head right now. He felt like he was violating something that was so private. Yoongi didn’t even know that you went through this. You didn’t even know you went through this. He shut the journal quickly, wiping the tears that formed in his eyes.

At that exact moment, he heard your heavy breathing and quickly got up to check on you. He walked around to your side of the bed and found you trembling with his phone in your hands. He noticed that his messages were open and he began to panic.

“What the fuck is this?” was the last thing he heard you say before your eyes rolled to the back of your head and you fell limp into your bed.

← masterlist →

taglist: @victoriedulce @yoongistruth @rebeccawoodrow @moon-asia @koochiekoo @sonderkook @fangirling-gallifreyan @teresaisla @veronawrites @haeilove @rjsmochii @mama-m0chi @agustd-2020 @imluckybitches @dreamer95 @coldfreakeggsexpert @loveyoongles @selfproducingfanfictionauthor @mr-robot-x @alinerl @lunaarya @somewhereinthestarss @moonlitmyg @liriaus @coolpeanutskeletonpersona @scentedsope @seoul9711 @sbtzhoe @ggukkieland @mariand @deolly @fandomstogetherweunite @pairdeune @baekstans @mickmoon @iamnamjoonsbxtch @cloudbuffalo @kimmalik @laabellaavitaa21 @liveoffyou @vantedollz @1this1is1me1 @yulisaangelica @madnesstaking0ver @venxtaetae @pimpnameyannie @bobrouxsky @cheesecakes-randomshitz @ceoofjjksimping @minclangyyy @ysljoon @eilenebeniquez @laurynne5 @jalexad @yoongicap @hellotherehoneybee @thequeen-kat @haveumetbadeth @goldenkookietae @miss-jupiter @arcadechick @neverthefirstchoice @zxlummxxd

375 notes · View notes

kiingocreative · 3 years

Text

The Structure of Story is now available! Check it out on Amazon, via the link in our bio, or at https://kiingo.co/book

There are some buzz words everywhere and, in the writing world, and it feels to me like ‘journaling’ is one of them. It’s something everyone seems to be doing.

It took me a while to build a journaling habit, and I wouldn’t say I’m quite there yet with my Journaling discipline, but whatever experience I’ve had with it has been incredibly beneficial.

What’s Journaling?

Back to the old trusted dictionary! Journaling is defined as:

To write in a journal or diary.

Simple, right?

For those of you with a penchant for etymology and random fun facts, the word ‘journal’ comes from the Latin ‘diurnalis’, or ‘diurnus’, meaning ‘daily’. In late Middle English, a journal originally referred to a book containing the appointed times of daily prayers. (If you use this as an ice-breaker at your next dinner party, please let me know!)

Nowadays, journaling is a lot more about keeping track of one’s praying schedule, and much more about recording one’s thoughts in an informal, free-flowing, stream-of-consciousness manner.

It’ll take different forms for different people, and the great thing about it is that (in my view) there isn’t a right or wrong way to journal. The only right way to do it is the way that feels right to you. As with any form of writing, craft or art in general, it’s all about individual preference, and highly subjective. And because Journaling is generally something that remains personal and private, you can do whatever the heck you want with it.

Pretty great, isn’t it?

Why Journaling is Good For You.

Based on my own experience, I’ve found a few benefits to journaling:

Pressure-free writing.

I’ve found that Journaling, because it follows no set rule and isn’t meant to be shared, is a great chance to write without any pressure. To write just because you want to write, with no other agenda than indulging in your love of putting words together on a page.

To me, writing without an outcome in mind is always liberating. It’s a chance to reconnect with your craft in way you might not if there was a clear purpose to it, like writing a book due to be published or a blog article meant to be posted online.

Experiment with your writing.

Journaling is also the perfect format to experiment with your writing, and try your hand at something new. Maybe you normally write fiction, and Journaling is a chance to give poetry a go. Maybe you generally blog, and your journal can start hosting plots and ideas for a novel, regardless of what you make of it later. Maybe you’ll want to try writing exercises—like jotting down ideas from a prompt or in a specific style. Or you could start recording dreams and memories you can remember.

Discomfort is where we grow, so putting yourself in those situations regularly is a great opportunity to expand your writing abilities and hone your skills. Who knows, there may be writing gold in there somewhere!

Never forget an idea.

I don’t know about you, but I often get ideas for my writing and beyond at the most inconvenient moments—in the shower, whilst cooking, doing the dishes, or picking up dog poop (I know, oh the glamour of a writer’s life!). I always think that I’ll remember these, but the truth is, most of them get forgotten, never to be retrieved again from the confines of my mind.

Journaling is a great way never to lose sight of an idea. My Journaling involves a lot of notes about random ideas I have for a plot, a story, a post, or life activities in general. They serve as inspiration for the future. Writing them down helps me rest assured that I can go back to that list and explore it later, whenever convenient.

Free your mind &notice trends.

One of the most important things I’ve notice happen when I journal, is that it helps me empty my mind fro ma lot of the never-ending thinking loops I tend to fall victim to. By putting thoughts down on paper, I’m able to see them more clearly, and my brain finally feels like it no longer needs to hold onto them. Jotting things down is a great way to break your pattern of thinking (or, if you’re like me, obsessing) and to allow yourself time to take a step back and look at the big picture.

Whether it’s something you’re stuck on in your writing, or in your life in general, journaling on it is powerful, especially if you do it regularly. Not only will you create more space in your mind for better and brighter things—say, your next brilliant writing idea!—but it’ll also give you a chance to notice trends and recurring themes. And that’s a great way to build awareness about your own patterns of behaviour, and start eradicating your most negative or toxic thinking habits.

Keep a record.

Performance coach Tony Robbins (yes, him again! What can I say, I’m a huge fan) says that ‘if your life is worth living it’s worth recording’. I couldn’t agree more. Journaling gives you a chance to be your own life historian. To keep track of where you’ve been and how far you’ve gone. To look back on those day-to-day accomplishments that may look minute at the time but all add up to something big and wonderful in the end.

Looking at your own existence and experience as something that’s worth keeping a record of also sends your subconscious mind a clear message: that’s you’re worthy. You’re enough. Every moment of your life has an impact, the good and the bad, and helps mould who you become.

I’d say there are few more powerful truths to embrace in your lifetime!

Getting Started with Journaling.

That’s all well and good, you might say, but where do I start?

Fear not, my friend, here are some suggestions to get you started.

1. Set a schedule — If you don’t make time for it, chances are it won’t happen, because life has a habit of getting in the way. Identify a time that works best for you—whether that’s morning, midday, evening etc.—and schedule it in your calendar, setting a reminder so you don’t forget about it. If finding time daily feels daunting or unrealistic, why not start with once a week, or a couple of times a week?

2. Make it a habit — Stick to it! Whether it comes naturally or not, be disciplined about it. Embrace whatever comes, both the joys and the discomfort of it. Set yourself a goal—every day for a week, every other day for a month etc.—and sit with it for the entire duration you committed to.

3. Set a timer — Journaling doesn’t have to take a lot of time. I tend to journal for about ten minutes at a time on average, sometimes less and sometimes more. If you’re unsure what duration to start with, set a timer for ten minutes and see what comes up.

4. Let it flow — As I mentioned above, Journaling may or may not feel natural at first. It may feel great or it may feel uncomfortable. Whatever comes up for you, let it flow. Why not journal about the sensations and feelings the experience of journaling brings up? It may end up being one thing one day and something altogether different the next. Whatever it is for you at any given time is what’s right. Be open-minded, remember this is unique and personal, and no one—not even you—should ever judge it.

The Power of Rituals.

If you’re still unsure about the value of journaling, or about getting started with it, let me say this one final thing: the most important piece of the puzzle, as with anything else you do, is defining your ‘why’—i.e. the reasons behind your decision to start (or continue) journaling. Ask yourself:

Why do you want to start journaling?

Why is it important to you?

How do you think it’ll make you feel? How do you want it to make you feel?

What difference do you think it’ll make to you, to your life, to your writing?

Clearly defining your ‘why’ and your intentions will help you maintain the habit. More importantly, understanding the value this holds to you will take journaling from a mere habit—which can feel like a chore—to a ritual of self-care. That’s the difference between doing it because you think it’s cool, or because everyone is doing it, or because you think you should do it, and doing it because you know for a fact, in your core, that this will make you and your writing better and stronger.

This will go a long way in making it more enjoyable. It’ll help you build rituals around it that are nurturing and caring. Get yourself to acknowledge why it’s good for you and why it’s pleasurable, and then set up the environment to make your journaling time feel like an absolute treat. Maybe that’s setting the scene in the room where you journal with a candle or some background music. Maybe that’s selecting a nice notebook if you’re doing this by hand, or picking your favourite writing spot, at home or beyond.

Eventually, these will all act as triggers to get you into the right journaling mindset whenever you’re sitting down for it.

And if you’re not quite sure what that all looks like for you… Well. Isn’t that a great topic to start journaling about?

#writingtips #screenwriting #creative writing #writers on tumblr #writers #writing #writerblr #writing advice #writing community #writing resources

27 notes · View notes

julemmaes · 3 years

Text

Honey - part two

Elide Lochan x Lorcan Salvaterre roommates au

A/N: I’m so tired yall have no idea. My eyes are burning and my fingers are cramping cause I’ve been writing all day to get this done, so yeah, I’m very satisfied and some of the blogs that I consider big or are big for a fact started following me and commented on the first part, so I freaked out a little, but I can tell that I’ll sleep peacefully tonight because of that, so thank you all. Enjoy!:)

Oh, and I almost forgot, the song at the end is called “Honey” and it’s by Johnny Balik (shoker, as my man Kieran would say)

masterlist

Word count: 4,966

Lorcan's least favourite day was definitely Friday, unlike all people his age. Not because he didn't like going out in the city at night to have fun and drink until you forgot even your mother's name, but because it was the only day of the week he had to work at both the shelter and the toy shop.

He loved working with the dogs and the few cats they brought in, and although he wasn't really a people person, he enjoyed spending time deciding with the kids and parents what was the best gift to go home with. And although Lorcan would never admit it out loud, he had grown fond of some of the regulars - especially a mother of three who he knew worked as a lawyer in one of the offices above the shop. Almost every day she would come in during her lunch break to buy one of those surprise sachets that cost a euro each and if Lorcan didn't see her coming before he went on his break, he would wait a few minutes before closing up just for her. Elide had managed to find out this detail a few months later after she moved in and he knew she would never stop teasing him because he had a heart of gold.

The phone vibrated in his hand just as he got behind the wheel and he wasn't at all surprised to see that the last message he had gotten was from Elide.

He huffed, not even opening yet another link that would surely send him to yet another website with information on why the world was ending very slowly and why humans were to be blamed entirely. He started the car and drove off towards their house.

Lorcan wasn't a bad person and he really cared about everything Elide was sending him, but he was tremendously tired and all he could think about was how much he wanted to take a shower and pass out in his bed. The fact that none of this was going to happen because Fenrys and Rowan had forced him to accept the invitation out to dinner made it all worse.

It took him less than ten minutes to get home and when he parked and saw the lights in their living room on, he seriously considered backing up and getting out of there to get to Vaughan's house before Elide noticed his car and he wouldn't be able to get away no more.

He was sure his friend would take him in without question if he asked to put him up for a night.

But luck was not on his side as Elide's petite figure appeared in the window and Lorcan could not see her face, but he knew she was smiling as she bounced and waved to greet him.

Despite everything, Lorcan raised his hand in turn and smiled back at her, knowing full well that even she could not see him so low and hidden by the evening shadows.

As he climbed the sixth flight of stairs and mentally prepared himself for two more, he could foresee the flood of words that would wash over him when he entered the house. Elide hadn't kept quiet for the entire day, sending him voice messages and staying with him on calls for the entire duration of his lunch break, so much so that at one point he had wondered if she had gone to class and then to work. He had discovered that yes, she had gone, but she hadn't paid the slightest attention to what they had explained and had gotten half the customers' orders wrong.

When he opened the front door, he recognized the melody of one of the songs she'd put on her apology playlist, the one he'd made for her nearly three weeks earlier after she'd found out he still smoked. She'd seemed so hurt that after he'd gone to bed and cleaned the tiles of his blood until they glistened, he'd stood at the kitchen table and spent hours and hours searching for the perfect apology songs. A bit dramatic perhaps, but it had had the desired effect.

He sighed, slipping off his jacket and putting it as far away from Elide's as possible, so that no animal hair would get on hers. He would clean it later.

The girl in question sputtered out of the living room with a beaming smile on her face, her cheeks strangely red and her eyes so bright they were glossy, "Hello, handsome."

"Hi, Ellie." he murmured, straightening his back and making the bones in his neck crack. Elide approached and Lorcan took a step back, bumping his back against the door, "I haven't showered yet," he put his hands forward to keep her at arm's length, "you can touch and hug me all you want later, but please not now," he begged her.

She gave the cutest pout he had ever seen, "But-"

"No buts, you can wait three minutes for me to wash up without dying," he continued, walking past her without touching her or making any overly sudden movements.

"You're such a pain in the ass," she complained, that adorable pout deepening all the more, "I can always take the antihistamine if I get allergies."

Lorcan shook his head, turning a confused expression on her, "I'd rather you didn't take medication just because you want to hug me."

It was true.

To their great misfortune, Elide was one of the very few people he knew who was allergic to animal hair. Any animal. More precisely, she was allergic to the mites that lived in the fur and the dust that accumulated in it in enormous quantities even on a normal basis. Given that the dogs Lorcan worked with were left to run loose in the fields all day, when he came home he was covered in anything that could kill his friend and roommate in one sniff and he didn't want to have to take her to the emergency room again because they couldn't tell if she was breathing properly.

It was why every night since he'd started working at the shelter he had taken a shower before doing anything else. It was why their water bill had gone up so much since they had found out about this allergy of hers.

"It's just a pill Lor, it's not like I have to get shots or..." she shrugged, as if to indicate anything more invasive than a simple pill.

He brought his hands in front of his mouth like a prayer, looking her in the eyes, "How many times do I have to explain to you that if you take one type of medicine every day, after a while your body no longer perceives it as an extra foreign thing to help you, but as the norm and so it no longer has any effect?"

Elide grimaced, "I hate you."

He chuckled, walking backwards until he reached the bathroom door, just in case she had the great idea to ambush him and jump on his back, "Just wait five minutes."

"It was three before," she said frowning, "And, speaking of showers-" and then she did something that made Lorcan freeze in his tracks. He didn't register what was going on until Elide's shirt was too high up for him to avoid seeing everything. And by everything, he meant everything.

"Elide what the fuck are you doing?!" he turned around, screaming, then his eyes went wide, trying to figure out if what had just happened was true or not. He squeezed his eyes shut, closing his hands into fists, biting his knuckles, "You're not wearing a fucking bra." he said in a voice sharper than he had intended.

He heard her giggle, but the sound came out muffled, "Loorcaaan." she crooned, "Help."

"I can't turn around Ellie, you're naked," he pointed out to her with his eyes still closed, then in a lower voice, "God, you're naked. What has gotten into you?"

He felt her move as she walked around him and stopped in front of him, "Help." she said in a flat tone. Lorcan had to laugh, her tone reminded him so much of the way the green aliens in Toy Story talked.

"Help what?" he asked letting out an amused laugh.

"I'm stuck." she said slurring her words and he felt her move, she was probably wiggling to get out of her t-shirt. And if she was wiggling, that meant her-

Lorcan took a sharp breath, cursing under his breath and trying to quiet his wandering mind.

He arched an eyebrow, though he was pretty sure she couldn't see him either, as doubt crept into him, "Are you drunk?"

Elide was silent for a while, then giggled like a child, "Just a little tipsy."

"Ellie it's seven o'clock," he exclaimed amused, but surprised to learn that she had been drinking, "why on earth are you drunk at seven?"

"Just a little tipsy," she repeated like a broken record. Then she screeched like a pterodactyl and Lorcan burst out laughing again, turning and taking a step or two forward to avoid risking accidentally touching her once more.

"Alright, why are you just a little tipsy at seven o'clock on a night when we're supposed to be going out with the others?" he asked now a little more eager to know the answer.

He heard her snort audibly, "The world is ending, Lorcan, why won't you understand that?"

He opened his eyes wide, not believing what she was saying, pinning them on the picture their friends had given them for Christmas, the one with all their best pictures collaged on a coloured canvas.

And here he thought he was the dramatic one of the two.

He nodded to himself, "So you're telling me that the reason you decided to get drunk before you even went out is because of global warming?"

He heard a rustle and then something hit him on the head, "Sorry, I didn't mean to slap you," she said in the tone of someone who couldn't care less about having hit him, "Anyway, yeah. Global warming and forests catching fire and animals dying and plastic burning..." she took a deep breath and then continued for a few minutes, making a list of all the things she had learned that afternoon by reading all the articles she could find about why humans were the worst living thing in the world.

Lorcan stood patiently listening to her, occasionally getting lost when she introduced topics that were a little too specific, but listen to her he did. The way she was saying all those things was always reminiscent of the little green aliens, but he knew the subject was more serious than it sounded.

With his arms crossed over his chest, he didn't think he'd moved too much, but at one point Elide sneezed and he cursed himself for not having moved fast enough to go to the bathroom.

"I told you you'd get allergies."

"But I didn't even touch you," she squealed back.

"You know that's not necessary for even your soul to start itching too," he scolded her.

Elide remained silent for a while longer, then started talking again, "And we should seriously get some glass bottles, if I see you with those stupid plastic bottles again I'll kill you. Scout's honor." she threatened him.

Lorcan chuckled, "Elide you've never been in scouts."

"How punctilious of you." she scoffed at him, then gasped, "We could buy matching flasks, with glitter and," she gasped again, sounding increasingly excited, "We could have one of our pictures printed on it."

A smile broke out on Lorcan's lips and he knew that if he had looked in the mirror at that moment he would have seen the face of a boy lost in love. He pulled himself together, straightening his back, trying not to think about how he felt about Elide. It wouldn't have done any good to admit that those feelings were real and tangible inside him.

He was staring at Fenrys' face in one of the pictures they had taken on holiday that summer, when Elide spoke again.

"This is a list of things that should make you understand why we have to shower together."

Lorcan choked on his saliva. He coughed a few times, patting his chest.

How had they gone from polar bears dying from melting ice to them showering together?

"What are you talking about?" he asked her in a squeaky voice.

The fact that she was alluding to them showering together while he knew she was half naked behind him, a breath away practically, made him feel so many different kinds of wrong.

"We can't waste water Lor, it's not hard." she sounded exasperated, then muttered, "Sometimes I really think you're being obtuse or stupid."

Lorcan's eyes went wide, "Wow, thanks Ellie."

"You're welcome." she chipped.

He shook his head, sighing and running a hand over his face, "Don't you think there are plenty of other ways we can start saving the world, before we have to shower together?" he took the fact that she wasn't answering as a cue to continue, "Like start recycling?"

Elide gasped again, making him chuckle, "Did you sign the petition?"

"Which-" he trailed off. She was talking about the petition to have a door-to-door rubbish collection service introduced in their town. Something that would force everyone to sort their garbage. "Yes, I signed it."

"Good." she whispered.

"I signed them all," he reiterated, because it was true and he knew that Elide never sent him stupid petitions, that whatever she sent him must be important and it didn't cost him anything to put his email and name on a website if it meant he could make a difference in his own small way.

"Thank you. I really appreciate it." she said in a weak voice.

Lorcan felt strangely uncomfortable all of a sudden.

And not because of the fact that Elide was naked behind him and had just confessed to wanting to shower with him, but because he would have wanted to turn around and kiss her, not do what any other guy would have thought of doing with a half-naked girl. No. Lorcan just wanted to kiss her and take his time in the process, savour the kiss and not be hasty and quick.

He wanted it to be slow and heartfelt, he wanted her to feel every single thing he couldn't say out loud.

"Lorcan?" she whispered, "I'm always stuck and I'm starting to get cold."

He blinked, "Yeah, you're right." then interrupted. They were silent a few seconds, "You really can't pull your shirt down?"

"No."

He took a deep breath. Then another.

"Okay, I'm going to turn around and keep my eyes closed, please stay still so I don't touch- anything. I'm not touching anything. I'll try to help you." he stammered, clasping his hands along his sides. She made a simple grunt of assent and he huffed, raising his hands in the air and lowering them slowly until he touched her head. He squeezed his eyes shut tighter and then released the elbow that had gotten stuck in her shirt.

"Yay." exclaimed Elide.

Sensing that she was moving freely on her own, Lorcan pulled away again and when the sound of clothes stopped, he asked, "Are you done?"

"Yes," she said singing.

His shoulder sagged a little and he smiled. He opened his eyes, ready to move Elide to the side and go take that holy shower, but whatever he'd thought when he'd asked if she was done must have been the exact opposite of what she'd thought, because Elide's tits were freer than ever between the two of them.

Lorcan grunted, slapping a hand over his face to cover his eyes, "What the fuck, Ellie. Stop flashing me, I'm begging you."

He heard her giggle and then a gust of wind and her laughter fading down the corridor let him know she had run off. He opened his eyes tentatively, peering through his fingers to make sure she wasn't still in front of him and sighed with relief when he finally managed to get into the bathroom and lock the door behind him.

He leaned against the sink, clutching the ceramic between his fingers and staring at his reflection in the mirror.

He never thought the first time he would see Elide's tits would be under these circumstances. He ran a hand over his face again, trying to somehow erase the image he knew he would never forget.

He had just stepped into the shower when he heard something very large and heavy slam against the door. Something that seconds later burst out laughing. Lorcan could only follow as he imagined a half-naked Elide running towards the bathroom and failing to stop in time.

"Are you alright, honey?" he asked her just in case. He turned on the water, hissing when he found it frozen, but not moving from under the jet. After all, a cold shower wouldn't hurt him.

"Let me in." she shouted, slamming her fist against the door, "Let me iiin!"

"Are you dressed?"

"No."

"Then you can't come in."

A scream of despair followed by what could only be a fake hysterical cry made him burst out laughing again, but then for a few minutes all that was heard was the sound of the shower and water falling from his hair.

"Ellie, are you still there?"

The answer came quickly, "Yes."

"Are you still naked?"

"Maybe." then he heard her move against the door and realised she'd been sitting on the floor.

Perfect, he was stuck in there. He reached for the phone and thought of something.

As he finished untangling the knots in his hair and washing out the conditioner, Elide was talking about how harmful the soaps they used were and had even gone so far as to say that they should both shave their heads so as to minimise their impact on the environment.

"What did you do today?" she asked him suddenly.

Lorcan didn't answer, dialling the number of a certain blonde girl who could help him out of this situation. Aelin answered after the fifth ring and Lorcan knew full well that she had done it on purpose, hoping he would hang up so she wouldn't have to talk to him.

"Hello?"

"Listen, something kind of weird happened and I need-"

"Who is this?" Lorcan arched an eyebrow, pulling his ear away from the phone to check the number. It was Aelin's phone. And the chick's voice on the other end was her, he was sure of it. "God, Lorcan, I'm fucking with you, what's up?"

"Funny," he deadpanned, "Elide's already drunk."

"What? But it's not even eight o'clock."

"I know, I came home and she was already like that."

A few moments of silence passed, "Okay, and what do you want me to do?"

"Well, she took her shirt off at one point."

Lorcan waited for a reaction, but Aelin didn't respond.

"And now she's naked in the hallway and blocking the bathroom door and-"

"She's what?" the friend burst out laughing.

"She's naked," he gritted through his teeth, "And she's blocking the bathroom door. I don't know how to get out and I don't want to open the door and push her off and risk hurting her. Is there any way you could come over here and help her? Help me?"

"I’ll make sure she'll never hear the end of it." Aelin laughed louder and Lorcan heard Rowan ask her what was going on. The blonde took breaths before saying, "Ellie flashed Lorcan and how he's stuck in the bathroom because he's afraid of a pair of nice-looking boobies."

"So are you planning on coming?" he asked before he completely lost his patience.

He imagined her wiping tears from under her eyes, "Yes, we'll be there in fifteen minutes."

"We?"

"Me, Ro and Fen. He's the one driving tonight and he picked us up."

"Okay," Lorcan murmured, "but they can't come up to the house."

"Why?" drawled Aelin, "Because you're jealous?"

He counted to ten, restraining himself from hanging up on her, "No, because this is going to be humiliating enough for Elide without two more of her friends seeing her half naked, so please just come up alone."

Aelin huffed, "You're right, but you're no fun."

They said their goodbyes and Lorcan put the phone down, starting to blow dry his hair.

"Lorcan."

Elide hadn't stopped saying his name for half a second throughout the call and it was starting to annoy him. Then he shook his head, no. He wasn't annoyed by Elide, it was Aelin.

That girl could get under his skin like few could.

"What?"

"You didn't tell me what you did today."

And Lorcan did, so that at least she would stop slamming her hand against the door.

He told her about the last man who'd come to see what dogs he could give his daughter and how he'd seemed so much like the guy who'd abandoned them on the side of the road after not even a week and it had pissed him off. He told her the morning had been even worse, because one of the children had started opening all the toys on display and his mother, who had been right next to him the whole time with her eyes fixed on the phone screen, hadn't stopped him and it had been up to Lorcan to tell him he couldn't do it. It was only then that the woman had realised what a mess it was and had simply apologised to him, running out of the shop so fast that he hadn't even noticed they had left. He had to call his manager and he was not exactly pleased to hear this story, but he also said that they would donate the toys to the church down the street, which was responsible for distributing them to kindergartens in the neighbourhood. That cheered him up a little.

By the time he had finished his story, Aelin had arrived and once he had taken her to her room. Lorcan could finally go out and get ready himself.

***

It was after midnight, the entire group was rocking out on the dance floor of their favorite outdoor club, a place called "The Wild Night" that was on the edge of town, closer to the forest than anything else, and normally Lorcan would have joined his friends to dance and sing, but there was a problem.

A big, huge, handsome problem.

And the problem was called Kyllian.

He couldn't figure out whose idea it had been to invite the boy with them that night, but whoever it was, this person's days were numbered, because Lorcan would kill them first and then use the limbs of their corpse to kill Kyllian.

Kyllian who had now been rubbing up against Elide for hours and who had offered her more drinks than stupid charming grins - and he really was reserving a lot of those for her.

"If you don't stop looking at him like that you're going to make his head explode," someone said, throwing themselves onto the small bench next to him.

He turned his head so fast he wondered how he had managed not to break his neck, "What are you talking about?"

Fenrys arched an eyebrow, "Even if you weren't staring at Kyllian like you wanted to see him disappear off the face of the earth, everyone here, including Elide," he told him with so much as a glare, giving him a slight shove, "would know that you're not really into what's going on on that dance floor."

"He's right," Rowan said to his left, sipping the drink of Aelin's she'd left him. When the hell had he sat there?

Lorcan didn't answer, remaining motionless with his sullen expression.

"I can give you a hand if you want," Fenrys murmured, sucking on the fuchsia straw sticking out of his equally pink glass.

He inhaled through his nose, "And how would you do that?"

"You have to trust me."

"Never." said Lorcan as Rowan said at the same time, "Don't."

Fenrys looked at them both with his mouth wide open and a hand to his chest, "I'm hurt." then finished what was left of the drink in one gulp and stood up abruptly, staggering a little, but holding himself up nonetheless. He cast a glance over his shoulder at the two boys still sitting, grinning, and Lorcan knew immediately what was going to happen.

"Ellie!" he shouted, turning more heads than necessary, "Love of my life!"

Kyllian pulled away from Ellie just enough for Fenrys to grab her hand and spin her around a few times until she burst out laughing and begged him to stop. The new boy didn't even seem to exist anymore as his best friend laced her arms around Fenrys' hips and rocked left and right, increasingly drunk.

Lorcan's heart clenched in his chest as he heard that sound so carefree, so happy.

He didn't realise he was smiling until Rowan cackled beside him, "God, you're fucked."

He didn't pay any attention to him and stood up, keeping his gaze fixed on her face.

He heard Lysandra and Aelin calling his name, hyping him up and threw them a real, quick smile that made them scream even louder, as if they were fans at one of his concerts. When he finally reached Fenrys and Elide's side, the blond spun her around ninety degrees and for a moment she closed her eyes, giggling, intoxicated by the amount of alcohol she had ingested, but when she opened them again and saw Lorcan standing in front of her, a smile as wide as he had ever seen it spread across her face.

"I'll leave you Ellie, you're in good hands," Fenrys told her, winking at him from above her head.

But neither of them even looked at him.

His eyes locked into hers as they both took a step forward and found themselves a caress away. Her chest rose and fell in an agitated rhythm. After all, she'd been dancing with everyone for hours, so much so that Lorcan wondered how she hadn't thrown up yet.

His gaze ran over her body, her bare shoulders, the line of her collarbones, and further down between her breasts. Breasts he'd had the chance to see for a millisecond a few hours before and remembered perfectly. The darker shade of pink that had characterized her-

"Lorcan."

He felt his heart pounding in his throat.

She had never said his name like that.

His eyes went up, sliding over lips so full, so perfect, up, over her nose and then up again, finding hers and the music changed, becoming slower, the lights dimmed as the strobes were turned off. Elide seemed to recognise the tune as her lips parted slightly, "Lor," she repeated. He raised a hand until his knuckles brushed her cheek and when she let go a shuddering breath, Lorcan began to sing under his breath.

"Tell me everything and hold no lies. Say you're waiting for better skies," he leaned forward as his other hand slid to her hip and Elide moved closer, until their bodies were fully joined to each other and one of her legs was between his and their hips were one thing moving in sync with the music. He felt Elide's breath against his neck and had to suppress a shudder when she too began to sing along with him.

"Oh, but honey don't taste like summer no more. Stick around now, I miss you every night,"

He lowered his head even more, brushing her nose with his own. The hand that had been on her cheek had slipped over her shoulder and was now tracing the path down her back, grazing the top of her bottom until it rested on her hip.

"Elide," he whispered, breathing on her lips. She closed her eyes, pushing herself up, towards him, and Lorcan held her tighter, moving his fingers over the exposed skin between her miniskirt and the black top she was wearing and there he was. Elide was there, with him, and she was so close to his body that he could feel the heart beating in her chest.

She was there and the next second... she wasn't. Because Elide had snapped away and was now vomiting on his feet. Lorcan held his breath as she was shaken by another gag and he had just enough time to take a step back that she threw up again.

The people around them quickly scampered away, creating a small circle of spectators and casting a quick glance at his friends he saw that they had a large audience. He just hoped Elide was too drunk to remember what happened the next day.

He looked down and grimaced, all sorts of emotions swirling inside him as the girl he loved clutched at him and puked her dinner all over his clothes.

He cursed at whoever decided how things went for breaking the best moment of his life with vomit and then gathered her hair into a loose ponytail, tying it with an elastic band he kept on his wrist specifically for these occasions.

He heard her whimper and put both hands on her shoulders, stroking her in circular motions to help her warm up. Aelin and Lysandra appeared next to them shortly after and when Ellie was firm enough on her feet to walk, they stepped over the pool of vomit and Lorcan wrapped an arm around her shoulders, pushing her towards the exit.

"Let's go home, Ellie."

tog tag list (if you wanna be added or removed just dm me or send an ask)

@tottenhamboys20 @maastrash @ireallyshouldsleeprn @sleeping-and-books @ladywitchling @thegoddessofyou @ghostlyrose2 @claralady @anne-reads @sayosdreams @perseusannabeth @letstakethedawn @simping4bookboisngrls @post-it-notes33 @booksstorm @nalgenewhore @queen-of-demons-and-hell @miserablemusings @lanyjoy-13 @vasudharaghavan @cupcakey00 @bri-loves-sunflowers @queen-of-glass

#elorcan #tog fic #throne of glass #elide lochan #lorcan salvaterre #elorcan roommates au #fluff #elorcan fluff #elorcan fic #rowan whitethorn #fenrys moonbeam #aelin galathynius #honey

175 notes · View notes