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icyowl · 1 year

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Vash Soulmate AU

Pairing: Vash the Stampede x f!reader

Synopsis: soulmate trope where injuries are transferred between one another. You've managed to hide it until now. 3k

A/N: I got nothing. Have fun!

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Soulmates: two people characterized by an undeniable pull towards and affection for one another. Signs include, but are not limited to, romantic attraction, frequently similar interests, and the sharing of injuries.

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Team: disheveled, exhausted, alive.

Body: pained, sore.

Brain: dizzy.

Sleep: beckoning. As soon as you could patch yourself up, whatever meager mattress awaited you would nonetheless be a welcomed friend. Just a bit longer.

“Hey, you alright?” Vash said while everyone began to split for their assigned rooms. Count on someone as caring as he to sense your exhaustion.

“Yeah, of course.” You replied. “Just tired.”

“After the day we had, I don't blame you.”

“Take care of that knife wound you got, okay? I saw what those bounty hunters did to you.”

“I'll be good as new tomorrow, promise.”

You knew that was a lie in more ways than one.

“Get some sleep.” He added before leaving the hallway for the boys' room. With the Stampede safely away, you listened closely for any sign of his return, and when you heard none, promptly collapsed into the wall and finally let your quivering legs let go of their last bit of strength. A relieved exhale, the kind that came only when you could let you guard down after having it up for so many hours, left you nothing but a sagging corpse against the hallway wall. Your hand delved under your clothing to assess the damage.

Blood.

Surprise? You wished.

Weary eyelids fell blissfully shut. Perhaps you'd wake up, maybe you didn't care whether you did or not, all you knew was the mere act of staying awake was more displeasing by the second. A part of you knew this couldn't continue. Your poor, feeble human body couldn't take much more of this. Just a quick rest. . .

“Hey.” Meryl said once she emerged from your shared room. Her tone indicated she'd finally had enough of your shenanigans.

“I know what you're gonna say.” You replied around a dry cough. The blood leaving your body was taking your energy with it. “Go away.”

“I could, but then you'd bleed to death. So come on, at least give me a chance of getting you on your feet.”

“Yes, Captain.”

Through a bit of struggle, Meryl finally managed to get you off the floor and into the room. Vash or any of the boys could have come into the hall if they caught sound of any of the groans and hisses and whimpers you gave, but thankfully did not. Your steps were slow, vision distorted, and Meryl barely managed to get you into the room and onto a bed before you spasmed from the pain and bit your sleeve to keep the boys from hearing it. Meryl reluctantly helped you out of your top and took the time to complain the entire way. This is ridiculous and I'm not helping you again. If you were more coherent you were sure you'd care.

A hefty weight landed square in your lap. “A first aid kit. You're welcome.” Meryl spoke as she took a seat on her own bed. This had happened enough that she didn't bother with you much and instead set about getting ready for the night. If you passed out, then maybe she'd worry.

Meryl pinned you with a dark glare when she had put up her jacket for the evening. “When are you going to tell him?”

Your hands worked down to open the kit without looking. Right now energy was too sparse to bother lifting your head. “He's already got so much on his plate, I—”

“You can't keep going like this. With how reckless he is, it'll kill you.” She bit back angrily. The fact she was angry made her even more angry. Soulmates were supposed to be a time of joy, not pain, sorrow, apprehension, trepidation. You and Vash should have been enjoying the bond ages ago; instead, she got to watch you hide away from him, patch yourself up in the dark and holding back tears when you needed a shoulder to cry on. Preferably the shoulder of a lean, glasses-wearing, gun-wielding, messy-headed typhoon.

“I will.” You said. The near-nightly routine you developed began to take shape even with the room's minimal light: unroll bandages, find gauze, lay out the towel, etc. Unfortunately, Meryl had heard your lies before and no longer bought them. She continued like you'd said nothing at all.

“Nick's too dense to have any idea, but Roberto's suspicious. He'll catch on soon, and do you think he's gonna keep your secret?”

“Can you just—” The brief blaze of intense fury coming to life in your blood was quelled under the knowledge that she had good intensions and clearly came from a place of compassion. Factually? Yes, she was right. You hated having to hide your injuries too. Obviously it would be so much easier to cry out whenever Vash got punched, kicked, grazed, beaten, tossed, pummeled, dropped—

You get the idea.

But emotionally? You just couldn't bare letting Vash and the others know of your situation. They'd only worry more, be more stressed, miss more sleep, treat you differently, carefully, like you were more important than them. This also felt like something you needed to keep up now that you'd gone along with the lie for so long. If you told the truth now, they'd only feel betrayed and distrusted. That was so far from the truth it nearly made you tear up just thinking of their faces. Vash especially. He'd feel it deeper than the other two.

“Can you just find some water, please? I can't hardly swallow.”

Thankfully Meryl did as you asked and made for the door.

“Swallow your pride, how's that sound?” She asked and closed the door before you could reply.

This wasn't about pride. Both of you knew that. You didn't have pride when you poured alcohol over the gash, screaming into your sleeve to stifle the noise and hopefully not tip off the boys next door. It wasn't there when the touches of the gauze made you thrash and your vision whiten with the spikes of agony. Pride wasn't felt when you looked at yourself — shaking hands, helpless sniffles, welling tears, tucked away in the dark of the room like you were ashamed to exist. You hadn't felt pride in a long time.

Pain. Pain was all you could comprehend. The gash was deep and oozed fresh blood readily every time you squeezed the surrounding area. You were probably queazy from seeing the life-force leave you and ebb uselessly onto your skin, clothing, and the bandages, but you were too light-headed to care. Trying to keep your dirty shirt out of the wound was difficult and eventually you accepted that it had to go. Infection would be hard to stave off and harder to conceal. It took a few tries to move your body in a way that would allow it to come off, but after some crying and more biting your hand to keep the screams at bay, it dropped from your hands onto the bed.

Fortunately Meryl came back swiftly with the water—

“You got any bandag-”

You heard Vash's voice, recognized his silhouette, cried out some sound of distress, just as he saw the blood, wraps, scars, bruises, stopped dead both physically and somewhere deep in his chest.

Some worthless insecurity - or maybe you stupidly still believed he hadn't seen even though his eyes had yet to leave you - made you grab your shirt to cover yourself, yell out at the flaring agony consuming you from the sudden move, and freeze. Even if he hadn't seen the wounds (he most certainly had), your shout would have tipped him off.

The shirt did a lousy job covering the scars - after all, they were everywhere. Neck, shoulders, chest, arms, hands, it was endless. Bruises filled in the rest of the macabre mosaic. Vash was only a few feet away from you, but when he called your name, it sounded distorted and distant. The heartbroken tone was the very thing you'd tried so hard to avoid.

“Its just a small cut, I'm oka-”

Then he began to cry, no, sob. His tears were endless and he did nothing to wipe them away so the two streams left his eyes, met at his chin, and fell in a steady drip to the floor. He started to violently shake, wrought with grief at the soul-breaking realization that you were hurt, he had caused it, and he'd been causing you pain for a long time.

He called your name like a plea. There was no real reason behind it. He wasn't mad, or calling you over to him. It was the hapless cry a child might do when looking for comfort. You hissed through the pain, shortened the distance, and stood in front of him on trembling legs. There was no point in hiding it any more. Slowly you let go of your dusty shirt with one hand, then the other, watching it fall, utterly terrified to look him in the eye. When had you heartbeat gotten so loud?

Vash's hands reached for you, then closed and retreated, before reaching again and holding your hands preciously. The weight of his guilt had his teeth creaking under the clench of his jaw and the tears had yet to slow.

“God,” he fumbled, “- I - fucking, god damn it - no-”

“Va-”

His fingers brushed over a scar near your collarbone. “When I let that guy stab me,” then they moved to the mark in your shoulder, “and I took the bullet for that girl, and here,” now they tickled your side, “when Nai burned me, god, this was when I got held hostage by those sisters,” he said after suddenly walking around you and seeing the minefield on your back. Some kind of wounded sound exploded from deep in his throat. The shame was crushing. “And here is from the police, and that's from those scientists taking biopsies—”

“Okay, okay.” You stepped away from the constant skim of his prying fingers and tried to hide yourself. It wasn't because you didn't like his reaction — it was perfectly reasonable — but being exposed like this was uncomfortable to say the least.

Now that you'd put space between your bodies, Vash hunched under the self-loathing flooding him, chin touching his chest, eyes pinched shut, and hands clenched furiously by his shivering sides. He had no right being close to you. “I'm sorry, I'm so, so, so sorry. Words can't - I can't-” He said through tears and snotty sniffles.

This is what you wanted to avoid. What should you say? What did he need right now? Comfort, obviously, and you yearned to hold him, but Vash was the type to push people away, to think himself a burden, a poison. How could you get him to change his tendencies without him thinking he was doing something wrong? How would you tell him to take it easy, not because you wanted to spare yourself from the pain or change who he was, but because seeing him in pain hurt like any real wound?

“Maybe we can come up with a solution together. If its - if you want. I don't want to force anything.” You offered into the subtle quiet of the room. This moment was pivotal. Rejection. Acceptance. It would be now.

Realization began to work into Vash's psyche. His fists loosened, his eyes stared far past the floor. It began to come into his mind that you were his soulmate, that he had a soulmate, that it was you, that he was so happy it was you and you were right in front of him, here, needing him physically, mentally, and all he could do was weep and cross your boundaries and then refuse to touch you like you weren't hurting.

“Y. . .” He started. Your incredulous statement was hard for him to process. “You think I don't want this? You think I'm even gonna let you out of my sight now-” Vash rushed through the distance between you in just a couple of steps, but stopped just before yanking you into him for the bone-crushing hug he desperately wanted to give. He knew the first rule of soulmates - skin to skin - but didn't want to overstep any bounds. You still looked a little embarrassed to be shirtless in front of him.

You also looked. . . pale. He always worried for you, but now that he knew of the unspoken connection between you two, he looked at you more carefully. Clammy, shaky, dull gaze, a slight sway to your weight. You had just began to lean dangerously far to one side but Vash was quick to support you by the elbows with lightening speed.

“Sorry.” Was all you could come up with.

“Don't be.” Vash replied. He should be the one apologizing, he thought.

Relaxing back against the bed was a godsend. Scratchy covers or not, getting off your feet was a blessing. You let Vash inspect your wound, too caught up in the relief to care. The secret was out, he wanted something with you, and now you were being diligently tended to by his gentle hands. You looked at the dusty ceiling, focusing on anything but the off-colored plaster.

“How are you able to focus?” You asked to try and stop thinking about the tickling sensation of his fingers. “You've got the same wound I do.”

He replied without looking up: “Biology, I guess.”

There was nothing to say to that. All you could do was try and remain still when his thumb gently brushed over a bruise. It was a kind touch, all of his were, but it was hard to let it happen. Topless, prone, letting him see so much of you; it was a little intimidating. You supposed you made it a fair trade when your eyes unabashedly locked onto him. The faint tint to his glasses wasn't enough to stop you from seeing his focus, touched with traces of sorrow. This quiet - two people sharing themselves with gazes and touches in the solace only a dark room could provide - was quickly feeding the connection previously snuffed out. Rapidly this man's face, respectfully tending to your injuries and looking nowhere else, was becoming quite the sight to behold. You didn't know you were looking at guilt. You didn't know that he felt like he'd done all this to you by his own hand: every scar, cut, scab, bruise, or knot.

Vash sat up, surmising he could only help with the most recent gash. “Alright, I'll need to clean it.”

“I already did.”

“Pouring booze over it doesn't count.”

“It's not that bad-”

Vash's eyes glared at you with a sudden edge. “I'm not letting this get worse.”

Now he looked a bit more like the infamous gunslinger everyone thought him to be. You decided to stay silent after that. He rummaged through various bags - knowing he was going through Meryl's things but not caring because this was you we're talking about and he wasn't going to let notions of respect stop him from helping you - and finally procured a bottle of rubbing alcohol. Vash was even meticulous enough to pinch the gauze between a set of tweezers before liberally dousing it in rubbing alcohol, worried his hands might cause infection.

“You ready?” He asked quietly, the soaking material hovering dangerously close to your skin. His grip was steady. Much steadier than yours would have been.

“Ready as ever.”

The last-ditch attempt at humor didn't last long. As soon as the gauze made a home in your skin, any thoughts other than the intense, stabbing discomfort spiraled away. The effort it took to stay still and not try to thrash away from the horrific feeling of course fabric digging through your screaming flesh was borderline incomprehensible. Perhaps it was the pain, perhaps the blood loss, but your brain began to float and swirl with a queazy nausea. In an effort to stay in the present reality you lashed out, grabbing onto anything that could give you some comfort. The warm clothes between your fingers meant you'd grabbed onto Vash — in itself nothing terrible — but when you looked and saw it was the flesh of his upper thigh in your grip, you hastily let go and instead settled for the bed linens beneath you.

“Sorry!” You rushed.

“I don't mind.” He replied. Nothing in his expression gave any of his emotions away (he really was very focused on stitching you up) which made it even more unnerving. Was he put off? Did ignoring what happened make you feel better? Did he not care? Did you want him to? “I like when you feel like you can rely on me.”

You continued to fist the sheets while Vash took his sweet time getting into every single nook and cranny of the cut. Even laying down you began to feel lightheaded. Sometimes Vash flinched, the only indication he felt what you did. It made sense; the transfer of pain and injury could be deadened until soulmates' bonds grew. From here on, both of you would have to be more careful. When he said he was done you sighed in relief, only to be told he needed to get you to sit up so he could wrap it properly.

“I'm gonna need some help.” You said.

“I wouldn't want it any other way.” He replied like it was nothing. His arms were warm and gentle as they worked between you and the sheets to support you properly. “Ready?” He asked, voice just a few inches from the skin of your neck and surprisingly smooth for how much he quivered on the inside.

You nodded.

Your grasp on his shoulders turned to hooked claws when the pain became too much. Vash had tried to be gentle, but it was going to hurt regardless. Then, wordlessly, he set about cushioning the gash with perhaps too much gauze and encircling your midsection in bandages. Again, maybe it was the blood loss, maybe not, but you shivered when he crossed the minimal space between you both to pass the wrappings behind your back.

“I never thought I'd have one.” He began. “I mean, I'm not even really human.”

“Didn't you feel every time I got hurt? Sure, it's not much compared to you, but you had to have felt my injuries too.”

“Honestly, it's hard to tell what's old and what's new at this point.” Vash finished by taking off his coat and wrapping you in it. After he pulled the front together to keep you warm (the shaking didn't escape him), he continued. His eyes stared at his coat, refusing to rise to meet you. “I know I don't have much right to ask this, but I can't stay quiet. Please, please promise me you'll try to be more open with me from now on? If you're hurting, I want to help.”

“If you'll do the same.”

Vash's eyes lifted in surprise. It would be hard - frankly he wasn't even really sure how - but it was fair. To share the hardships. “Then. . . we have a lot to talk about, I guess.”

#vash the stampede #vash x reader #soulmate au #blood #trigun stampede #vash the stampede x reader #trigun x reader #io has ideas

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imaginethezeldaverse · 10 months

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Masked Menace (Part 1) - Yunobo x Reader (NSFW)

Warning ahead: there are some Tears of the Kingdom spoilers with characterization and setting the scene for Goron City past this point, please take heed!

Alright, bout time I finally made this one (which I was very excited to do 🥴). I want to preface this with: Keep in mind of what that mask did to Yunobo, so he is not acting like himself at all! Also, just an fyi: reader is written female here.

“Phew, the hike to Death Mountain never gets easier…” you sighed, exasperated. Even with your travels going as far out into the Gerudo desert, you still struggled to acclimate with the trip to Eldin. Six months kept you away from the volcanic venture as you explored the other parts of Hyrule, researching plant life and exchanging goods along the way to bring home souvenirs for you and your beau. Upon your walk up to Goron City, you couldn’t help but take notice of strange magenta slabs stacked endlessly in your path. Gorons, who you’d made friends with due to all your time there, didn’t seem to recognize or even acknowledge you really. The constant crackling and crunching at their purpled rock roasts being their only focus. You had an overwhelming suspicion that something was horribly wrong. Trekking carefully into the central city, you took in the sight - a gigantic mass of the same marbled earth standing tall and terrifying in the middle of the normally bustling area.

Yet…bustling wasn’t the word you would’ve used right now.

No, around you elder Gorons and the children of the city seemed downtrod, quiet and keeping to themselves even as they saw you pass. Any of the adults, or worse yet, your mining friends, seemed completely dazed - entranced by whatever this new culinary cobblestone dish this was. Eventually you caught sight of the boss Goron, Bludo, scolding one of his workers.

“Boss,” you approached him slowly, taking in the sight of one of your friends spread out on the ground, eyes splotched a dark reddish-purple as he droned on about marbled rock roast, “…What’s going on? So many Gorons are stuffing their faces but they all look…sick.”

Your nickname for him caught his attention, only for the sigh that left the patriarch to lean on the heavy side. A large finger scratched at his head, “What a time for you to come back, I’ll say…I don’t even know where to start.”

Your head tilted, gaze shifting about the city in search of someone in particular. His absence gave you some slight unease. Trepidation filled your chest as you feared to ask,

“Bludo…where’s Yunobo?”

That got the boss fired up, “Oooooh that crag-craniumed wisecrack! This is all his fault!” You were taken aback by such an animated response from the patriarch. Normally he was a soft worrywart over the Goron champion, to hear him say something negative only added to the notion that something definitely wasn’t right. Bludo growled, his fist thumping into the ground, thick eyebrows turning downward in anger, “When I get my hands on that boy, I’m gonna- AUGHH!” a sickening crack sounded from behind him before he yowled in pain, his hands shooting to his back. After a few moments of groaning and trying to stabilize himself, the boss Goron pointed a shaky finger to one of the higher peaks, closer to the mines.

“Just…see for yourself” he creaked out.

Checking to make sure Bludo was going to be okay with his sore back was your priority before you headed off. When he assured you he’d be fine (especially with one of the younglings fetching him his pain medicine), you quickly zipped to the next mountainous area that the Gorons frequented. At the end of the cart’s destination stood YunoboCo HQ, the main cave systems that Yunobo and his team not only mined in, but addressed business matters. You remembered being incredibly proud of your boyfriend, building a whole new empire of mining services and blue collar trade for Goron City while using his reputation as a champion to generate revenue tenfold into the village’s economy after Death Mountain had completely cooled off. Business quite literally boomed at the birth of YunoboCo. So what could have possibly happened for even his mentor to speak so illy of him? Trying to wrap your head around any possibilities just deemed impossible for you, leaving you with little choice other than to confront the source himself. Thankfully, or rather, unthankfully, you were alerted by the sound of an ill-tempered voice hollering not too far off.

“Offrak! Slergo! I thought I asked you two to move this supply of marbled rock roast out to the shipping carts?”

The two little Gorons looked at one another in timid confusion before the lighter Goron, who you recognized as young Offrak, shakily spoke up, “B-But President Yunobo…you said those shipments weren’t going out until tomorrow…”

The champion leaned forward, narrowing his eyes, “Looks I changed my mind, now didn’t I?”

With a stomp of his foot he shouted, “Now get these roasts to the shipping carts or I’ll make slab stew out of the both of you!”

“YUNOBO! THAT IS ENOUGH!” came your angered yell. The Goron turned to face you, slight surprise adjusting his previous pout. Slergo and Offrak’s faces dropped in shock at your sudden appearance. They’d never seen you so angry before! Your gaze took in the appearance of your beloved: the gaudy outfit sticking out like a sore thumb on him. His sturdy fingers were covered in large gold rings, a leopard print pelt vest covering his back and shoulders, and worst of all - a golden mask covering the lot of his face. Six months and he’d completely changed his entire appearance? That didn’t make sense to you - all you remembered him adding to his wardrobe was his company chestplate. But for the moment that mattered little to you as your eyes quickly shifted over to the two frightened Goron children behind him. The disappointment and fear on their faces was blatant, they were scared of him.

“You leave those boys alone! I can’t believe you’d ever raise your voice to them like this!” your index finger shoved into his chestplate, “This is NOT the Yunobo I know - what’s the matter with you?!”

Yunobo’s mouth turned up in a sneer. His hand jutted out, as if to signal to the younglings behind him, “Boys…watch the door for me. Seems like the lady and I needta have a chat in my office.”

You shot him a confused look, “I don’t understand what’s happening, wh-” Suddenly your arm was snatched up in his vice-like grip, “We’ll talk in my office. Not here.”

Trying to yank your appendage from him did very little other than to cause yourself grief. You reluctantly followed him as he pulled you toward his designated cave. He was careless in how he handled you, not even allowing for you to properly get your full footing as you both walked. When you finally arrived at his office, his grip loosened just enough for you to take your arm back from his clutches. There was anger inside of you that you’ve never felt towards him before, you were stunned at how easily he pulled you around like a mere rag doll - he never tested his full strength on you like that. Rubbing your arm you seethed, “You have some serious explaining to do, Yunobo.”

“Me?” his arms crossed over his chest, “You’re gone for six months and the minute you get back, you’re over here makin’ a scene and yellin’ at me!”

Your hands slotted on your hips, “The way you’ve been acting SINCE I got here, I think you deserve it!”

“You know what I think?” grumbled Yunobo, who was steadily stomping his way over to you. Before you could retort, he had backed you up against his giant slab of a “desk”, his arms slamming at your sides, effectively caging you in, “I think your president deserves a proper greeting.” His close proximity shook your originally stern position, and your hands flew up to his chest to try and create space between you two. His roughened disposition unnerved you, and yet you were falling so weak to it.

“Y-Yunobo, please, you’re too close…” but he would only press closer still. A large hand swooped you at your lower back, forcing you to sit on the hard stone. The Goron shoved your knees apart, sliding his sturdy body between them. You had very little to keep your body shielded from the cold steel on his chest, having disposed of your heavier travel wear before climbing the path on Death Mountain’s trail. The mere tank top, bra, and shorts combination was all you had left on you. So when the solidity of his chest presses against your own, it takes a considerable amount of force to bite back the pleasure just that contact alone gave you. Six months alone really did take a toll on you as you were starting to find out. Trying to close your legs proved to be obviously ineffectual as well, Yunobo made sure of it. A knuckle took under your chin, pulling your gaze upwards to meet his.

“Look at you…don’t you even realize this is exactly where you belong?” His thick fingers tangled into the locks of your hair, and then suddenly gripped tight, directing your head backward. His face buried into the crook of your neck, a sharp inhale sounding before you. You whined, slight pain blooming at your scalp at first, but deafened by the sensation of his wet tongue dragging up the length of your neck. He held you in place as about as flush to him as he could get you. Hyper aware was your body now, your thighs being seized open by the mass of him, nipples pebbling against the slowly warming metal adorning his chest. Yunobo’s lips blazed a trail of love bites down your neck while his other hand busied itself with grasping the front of your tank top. Your first thought was that he was going to shove the straps off of you - but to your surprise, his fist bunch into the fabric, twisted, and shred the thin covering off of your body. A shout of annoyance and protest bubbled at your lips, but it would never surface. Yunobo slammed his mouth over your own, his tongue sliding past your lips with surprising ease. Your instincts fought with your morals, wanting to equally stop and scold him for mistreating you so far AND finding yourself melting under his touch. He unfurled his hand from your hair, dragging it slowly down your body before cupping around the roundness of your breast. Feeling your barely clad nipple rub against his palm had you pressing your thighs harder against his torso.

Another inhale into your neck. His voice held a touch of softness as he said, “You smell incredible…I hated having you so far from me. I waited every day for you.”

That heart of yours, so in love with the Goron above you, thumped with guilt. Your eyes fell away to a random corner of the room, your fingers curling into the fabric of his pelt, “Yuno…I…” your voice trailed away, emotions welling into your throat. Before you could will yourself to continue, you were unceremoniously flipped over, your stomach and chest now pressed against the desk. Peering over your shoulder, you watched as Yunobo stripped himself of his leopard pelt and began untying his chestplate - your cheeks lighting up with such a macho display.

“I’m tired of waiting.”

The thrumming in your loins was becoming too heavy for even you to ignore. You took a deep breath, your fingers fumbling with the buttons of your shorts. You’d beat him to it if it meant saving you a set of pants from being torn in two as well. This wasn’t the sweet and tender Yunobo you knew - this aggressiveness, this ‘total dominance’ attitude was unheard of for him…but you’d be lying if you said you hated it at the moment. Despite something being incredibly off, you couldn’t pause your feelings for him if you tried, both emotional and physical - and when you looked up, that face was still his after all. There were a billion questions you needed answered, and you swore you’d make him pay for the loss of your shirt, but right now, you needed him.

Six months too long were you without his touch, and today you recognized how it made you ache desperately for him.

You slid off your lower garments entirely, leaning fully forward now, your ass on full display. There was a pause behind you. Deafening silence that kept you waiting and wondering. Your lashes sat heavily over your eyes when you looked back at him. “C’mon, Mr. President,” you goaded, a mix of want and mockery in your tone, “You wanted to see me, didn’t you?”

His chest was hot against your back, one of his big hands now weaving fingers with your own and holding you down against the desk. You spread your legs, arching ever so slightly to give him what he was looking for. Over the cheek of your ass came the caress of his opposite hand, “Don’t forget exactly who is in charge here.”

WHAP!

A sharp smack stung your backside, you had to nearly bite your tongue so as not to squeal. He rubbed the affected area, the grin in his voice prominent, “Hope you’re ready for me.” You shot him a slight glare over your shoulder, though the reddened cheeks of your face registered more embarrassed than anything. Deliberately you pushed back, your ass rubbing against his length to tease him. The rumble that sounded behind you was your last warning. Yunobo grasped himself, lining up with your slit and shoving forward. You hissed, your forehead baring down into the stone beneath you - the stretch, how he filled you, you swore you were already so close to cumming. His hand slid over your ass once more and up to the small of your back, flattening out against it. A slow withdrawing slide out - a quick thrust back in. His hand smoothed over the length of your spine, keeping you still while the Goron worked inside of you. The pace he set already had you whimpering: slow, but hard and very deep. You grasped at the stone under you, desperately trying to find purchase. With your feet planted, you shoved your hips back on him, his thrust filling you all the more as he met you halfway.

“Y-Yunooo” was your wanton whine. Shoulders heaving, your hair beginning to stick to your forehead as the heat of being fucked was beginning to overwhelm you. Yunobo grunted harshly above you, hunger evident in the grit of his teeth and the way his eyes roamed over your frame. Your ass bouncing off of his thrusting hips, the obscene sounds of your pussy taking every inch of he had to give. The Goron Champion felt for you like no other - love of his life that you were; but ever since you came back, something coerced him to stake claim to you. He didn’t understand this need, but his body moved on its own. There was something primal in his chest that made the growl in his throat surface when you cried out, “Oh! Ohhh god, Yunobo!”

You were his.

“You’re mine, understand?” he echoed into your ear, his chest caging your body to the desk. Yes, he had to take you. It was him you wanted. Him you needed. You came back to see him after all. His sight was blurred with flurries of red but still he drank the sight of your ecstasy in. What he was doing to you.

It only made sense.

You belonged to him.

“You belong to me,” he repeated over your dampened skin, his hips picking up speed. Your throat was drawing horse from your constant panting and whining, and you felt yourself clench tightly when Yunobo’s tongue traced the curve of your shoulder.

“Yuno, please nghh, I can’t ! I-I’m gonnaaa” you sobbed out.

His hands slid down to your hips, pulling you back onto his cock harshly, the series of grunts and groans above you giving you the impression that he was getting closer. You were teetering over the edge yourself, one of your hands clasping onto his at your hip for purchase. With no warning the Goron above you closed his mouth over the junction of your neck and shoulder and sucked hard. The prick of pain flowed into a tsunami of pleasure as the scream of Yunobo’s name echoed all throughout the cave - your orgasm slamming into you at full speed. Yunobo clapped his hand over your mouth as you came, silencing your pleasured sobbing behind his thick digits. He fucked you mindlessly now, thrust after thrust after relentless thrust, chasing his own end as your pussy milked him. He came shortly after - his teeth sinking into your flesh, not enough to break your skin, but definitely enough for you to feel it. You gasped, hot liquid heat pumping you full as your boyfriend finally slowed his hips. Yunobo’s mouth left your neck with a hum before he finally easing off of your overstimulated body. He drank in the sight of you: sweating and spent, fucked out and trying to find the strength in your legs. Just how he wanted you.

You felt his eyes on you, and though your legs trembled, you mustered the will to turn and face him. His dark blue hues were almost purple - a reddish hue swimming in them. This concerned you, you knew your gut instinct was spot on - something was wrong. Your hands reached for his face, “Yuno…what’s hap-“ but as soon as your fingers touched his golden mask, your hand was smacked away. Yunobo clutched his head, groaning in pain now as he backed away from you.

“Someone’s…here.”

Puzzled, you looked around, hoping to understand or catch sight of what your beau was talking about. But before you could ask what he meant, Yunobo was already pulling his leopard pelt back on and rushing to the entrance of his headquarters. He left you alone, confused and half naked. After some rummaging around his office you found his champion’s scarf with which you tied around your chest. You heard a cart descending back toward Goron City; you felt it in your best interest to wait for him at his home then - at least this way you could get to the bottom of what was going on in private.

Suddenly you winced, pain and soreness scattering across your shoulder. Your fingers found the indentations of broad marks on your shoulder blade - the remnants of your beloved’s lust ridden bite. Rubbing the aching skin you looked over to the window, some structures of Goron City visible from where you were standing. Worry panged in your heart.

Yunobo…what’s happened to you?

#the legend of zelda #the legend of zelda: tears of the kingdom #tloz #tloz: totk #tears of the kingdom #totk #totk yunobo #Yunobo #yunobo x reader #x reader #nws #n$fw #loz yunobo #tears of the kingdom spoilers #zelda imagines #legend of zelda imagines #Yunobo smut

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rebelrebelwrites · 1 year

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Fic Friday! ❤️ Rebel’s Weekly Fic Recs

Sorry it took so long to get this out! It’s been a week. Thankfully, as always, this week's recs are...

As always, please mind the tags on any recommended story for your own personal preferences.

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The Classic You’ve Heard Of But Somehow Haven’t Read Yet: But mine is as hungry as the sea by @liminal-zone

What you need to know going in:

When I say classic, I mean classic. Fairly certain this masterpiece was one of the first fics I read in the fandom, and in preparation of writing this rec I decided to bask in its beauty another time. The story is one of the first to chart Galadriel and Sauron after Eregion visiting each other in their dreams for some seriously smoldering smut and angst. As the ages of Middle-earth pass, Galadriel grows in both power and wisdom, retreating into Lothlorien and herself. I don’t want to add too much more—just tell you to go experience this gem yourself. It’s beautifully written, achingly sad, and one I—and you—will return to time and again.

Complete, Explicit

Read the story.

Follow the author on Tumblr or AO3.

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The AU You Need to Immerse Yourself In Because, Well, Wow: internal combustion by Lexicon935

What you need to know going in:

This AU is aptly titled because it describes my reaction while reading it to a T—absolute 🔥🔥🔥. A one-shot, modern AU featuring a mean Halbrand (which is quickly becoming something of a flavor of these two I’m enjoying more and more, particularly in AU settings) and a rightfully bowled over Galadriel. The premise is simple: Gal is late to her mechanic’s appointment. Hal is her mechanic, and he’s not pleased. Or…is he? 👀 An absolutely filthy, heaping helping of smut. Like I said: 🔥🔥🔥!

Complete, Explicit

Read the story.

Follow the author on Twitter or AO3.

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The Complete But Never Forgotten Masterpiece: Fabricated by @frotu

What you need to know going in:

Oo, I love this fic! I feel like I stumbled across it by chance and was in love immediately. The premise grabs you straight away: Galadriel and Sauron rule Pelargir not-so-happily together, and when Sauron overhears a few subjects gossiping over their lack of an heir, he impresses on her the need for them to keep up appearances with a few recurring nighttime visits. The resulting arrangement creates this tentative, tantalizing trickle of a relationship that builds so satisfyingly well, and tugs at the heartstrings in a sighing, swoon-worthy way.

Complete, Teen

Read the story.

Follow the author Tumblr on AO3.

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The WIP That Will Wreck You (In the Best Way): with hands as gentle as rain, i shall strangle him by @bad-surprise

What you need to know going in:

Oooooof, this story. I shiver just thinking about it! From trepidation and a little bit of terror and just how freaking terrific it is. The premise: Sauron goes full Annatar, Lord of Gifts, in a bid to try and entice Galadriel to reconsider his proposal after leaving Eregion—and each gift he gives her is more unsettling than the one before it. Sauron is delightfully disturbing in this while still being captivating and very much enthralled with Galadriel, who, however terrified, can’t shake him, either. The tension’s at an all-time high in this WIP and I can’t wait to see where it goes next.

WIP, Explicit

Read the story.

Follow the author on Tumblr or AO3.

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The Can’t Stop Consuming No Matter What Time It Is Fic: I could be your king by @cliffdivingsblog

What you need to know going in:

Another favorite WIP that when I get an update in my inbox, I rush to finish whatever I’m doing and read ASAP. A season 1 retelling that diverges from canon in some really unique ways, be ready for glimpses into a redemption-seeking Sauron (in his own limited way) an always-charging forward Galadriel, dreamlike flashbacks into Sauron’s past (Melkor is a real standout amongst the Valar in this, but the characterization of everyone is top-tier), and insanely scintillating smut. To just name a few of the things that make this fic totally binge-worthy.

WIP, Explicit

Read the story.

Follow the author on Tumblr or AO3.

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🤩🤩🤩

Me at all these fics:

Don’t see your story on this list yet? Keyword: yet. Please don’t fret! I can only recommend so many each week, but I am always looking for more stuff to read, share, and generally shower with love, so please feel free to reply with your own fics or your personal faves. I have plenty more to recommend… ❤️

Until next week!

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ms-all-sunday · 3 months

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ive personally gotten over the flaws in sanjis articulation and i understand what i think is the intent behind his character but i remember for like months past watching one piece originally i did not get it at all (i have a semi popular post about my friend getting him immediately while shading people who don't but that's me, i was that person) and i had to play around with interpretations of him to truly settle on what i think is concretely understanding him.

the reason, partially, for my original trepidation is twofold,

one, shonen does not have a good track record.

two, more personally, it's kind of insulting to the audience to expect this character who you've established has a relationship with women that has it's pros and cons (i always go back to the arlong park articulation of zoro respecting nami enough to see her as a threat and sanji because she's a woman, willing to look past what is obviously a mental breakdown from someone whos struggling. that was like the best articulation oda couldve done it all goes downhill from there) and like fully acknowledge inherently the social injustice that women face within that, while also doing the social injustice. it's hypocritical.*

ive taken to just categorically ignoring the pervert jokes and pretending we never progressed past pre ts sanjis jokes (which by the way and i say this with every spiteful bone in my entire body, were FUNNIER. it is such a fucking crime that sanji a character that had SO many consistently funny jokes because he is an hilarious comedy character, gets absolutely no funny jokes. the most recent funny joke he's had is egghead but before that it wasn't for years that he had a funny joke.) because the good thing and also the function of the sanji jokes especially as they relate to nami is that nami can and does cushion how creepy he comes off. they are in a weird consensual heterosexual chicken game and it says something about them that they treat eachother like this. unfortunately when you reduce sanjis jokes down to pervert anime jokes you also loose their back and forth which hurts namis characterization and as i've said before. the group dynamic is everything. you cannot hurt it it is sacred or one pieces quality declines (post timeskip)

*This is also a similar way that one piece as a story treats abuse more broadly. There's this thing that I call in my head "intent is effect" logic where basically if a character had good intent dot tm they're forgiven for abuse by the narrative and their abuse is played off as a joke (garp) or you're judge (the most evilest man on the planet which btw did you know all abusers are evil and not complicated human beings /s) (do NOT interpret me as saying this as a hashtag abuse apologist thing i will kill you. i am a persona 5 fan, ideologically.) i would pretty much definitively say that uh the same logic is applied to sanjis sexual assault/harassment jokes, as they are a type of abuse. and uh that's bad. it's shitty on all accounts for sure.

although im sure id become more fuelled by rage and question the stability of my own opinions if i watched the shittier parts of post TS again, I'll eventually get there in my rewatch don't worry.

#modposts #op #one piece #meta #black leg sanji #you see if someone asked me spefifically what my interpretation of sanji is id crumple #the reason id crumple is the way i interpret him is based on my own experiences with women and what having the types of emotional issues he #does looks like. i took what originally i resented for being a negative protrayal of an emotional issue i have to uh an articulation of #my own experiences.#unless you want to explictly base your sanji interpretation off of me. which fine okay do whatever im not the government #but i assume most people wouldnt want to.#to some degree every strawhat ive ever written is explictly based on myself thats just how i write characters #uh. just osdd things i guess #abuse tw

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thevindicativevordan · 10 months

Note

What did you think about Lizzie first appearance in Wonder Woman #800?

She reminded me of my youngest sister and I enjoyed her. Yes King was laying it on thick about how awesome Trinity is with all the bravado and boasting about leading the JL, but that’s actually very in-line with Golden Age Diana being very confident in herself, and refusing to tamper herself down for anyone:

With Wonder Woman herself having moved past that kind of characterization, and the jury still out on if Yara is going to stick around, I think it’s perfectly fine to give that attitude to Lizzie. I’m sure that King isn’t going to avoid giving Trinity flaws or showing her fail, but I will admit some trepidation regarding him getting too enamored with his creation that he forgets Diana needs to be the focus. For now at least I am on board with her existence.

#wonder woman #trinity #lizzie prince #wonder woman 800

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magicshopaholic · 2 years

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About You (Namjoon x OC)

Summary: There's something Namjoon isn't telling you. After finally getting out of him, though, you find yourself wishing you'd never asked.

Pairing: Namjoon x OC, minor Taehyung x OC (different OCs)

Genre: Angst, hurt/comfort

Rating: 18+

Word Count: 10.1 K

Warnings: language; arguments; implied mentions of past trauma, particularly SA; mentions of campus assaults

Additional warning: This fic contains discussions of triggering topics centering around SA and r*pe, so please do NOT read this if you are not comfortable. While there is no description of any kind and no member of BTS is involved in it, the fic is meant to depict realistic conversations and implications of past trauma which may be difficult for some to read. This fic is extremely personal, not to mention important for characterization within the series, but please do exercise appropriate discretion before reading.

A/N: This fic is set around six months after Suburbia, on the same day as You Make Me Live. It also consists of important plot points for Taehyung and Dilara, a couple of months before the events of Los Angeles.

Tagging: @kflixnet @k-radio @bbl32 @dreaming-with-happiness, @sweetieguk, @ggukkieland (if you want to be added to the taglist, drop me a message)

Listen to: "nothing's gonna hurt you baby" by cigarettes after sex

namjoon masterlist | main masterlist

“Milk?”

“None.”

“Okay. Sugar?”

“Only if you’re giving it to me.”

Namjoon snorts, spilling a few drops of the Americano he’s stirring. “You mean right now?”

“Depends on how interesting the movie they’re all watching out there is.” Kaya leans against the kitchen counter of the dorm and folds her arms across her chest, watching him sheepishly wipe the spilt coffee. “Any chance we’ll be interrupted?”

“I would rather get caught by paparazzi than by any of the guys,” he says seriously, shuddering. “They’ll make it a whole thing and ten years down the line, they’ll still act like it’s the funniest thing that’s ever happened.”

Kaya frowns. “So none of you have ever walked in on each other, in all these years?” she asks sceptically. “I find that a little hard to believe. Seokjin told me you all lived together in one room or something. You had to have, you know… interrupted each other, some time.”

“Sure we have. It’s why Jimin, to this day, calls Hoseok The Closet Hyung. Or that’s the closest translation, anyway,” he amends.

“Was he… in the closet?” Kaya asks, with a bit of trepidation, biting her lip as Namjoon shakes a small sachet of sugar into his glass.

“No, he was in a closet, with another trainee, and his pants were, well -” He breaks off and winces, shaking his head. “Not something I want to relive.”

She laughs. “How dramatic.” She watches him for a moment, his tall frame next to her, as he takes a sip of the second glass he’s stirring, this one most likely his. “Are you going to put yours in there, too?”

Namjoon chokes. “Put my - what?”

Kaya grins, nudging him as he coughs. “Sugar,” she says, enunciating every syllable.

“You called?” Yoongi’s dry voice enters the kitchen before he does, strolling in and stopping on her other side to look inside a couple of cabinets.

“Here,” says Namjoon, sliding the first glass of coffee carefully across the counter to him. “One sugar.”

“Thanks.”

“Yoongi, you tell me.” Kaya turns to him, resting her palm on the counter. “Have you guys ever walked in on each other in the dorm?”

It takes Yoongi seemingly a second to process this, before he chuckles dryly and glances over at Namjoon. “I don’t know, have we?”

Behind her, Namjoon sighs. “Oh, come on, that doesn’t count.”

“Really?” Kaya turns back to her boyfriend, thoroughly amused. “When was this?”

“Never. We didn’t get caught.”

“It’s true. We just found him sneaking her out of the dorm when he accidentally closed the door on his own hand.”

Namjoon winces, sipping his coffee. “Still hurts.”

“Oh, is this the girl you were telling me about? The hashtag-dangerous one, with the whole bad girl thing going on?” Kaya asks curiously.

Yoongi raises his eyebrows. “You two really talk about your exes, huh?”

“Well, it’s not dinner table conversation,” she says reasonably. “But we know about our exes. It’s healthy.”

“I happen to agree.” He looks up at Namjoon, raising his eyebrows. “She’s a wise one.”

“It’s the Ph.D. On the downside, I have no bad girl thing to speak of.”

“You really don’t,” agrees Namjoon, grinning when she mock-glares at him. “And in any case, if serious exes are what we’re counting, then I only really have Yu-jin.”

“And I only have Nick. College boyfriend,” she adds for Yoongi’s benefit as they start walking outside to the living room, Namjoon slightly behind them. His free hand brushes her waist as they take a seat on the couch, him on the edge and Kaya next to him, with Jimin on her other side. The rest of the group is spread out around the room while a political drama plays on the television. The early evening sun is warm and dim, the last rays skimming the back of the sofa before it disappears over the horizon.

“Nick was much more recent, though,” points out Namjoon, continuing their earlier conversation. “You have to count him.”

“Five years is a lifetime ago. And duration doesn’t matter,” she adds, holding up a finger. “It’s the nature of the relationship that determines its seriousness. So Yu-jin was just as serious,” she concludes.

“Wait, we’re talking about Yu-jin?” Jungkook pipes up in English, and both of them turn to see him grinning from his place on the floor, a can of beer precariously balanced between his knees. “Your Yu-jin?”

“I wouldn’t say my -”

But Namjoon is cut off by a smattering of Korean, Seokjin snorting into his cup of ramen and Jimin laughing out loud at something. Hoseok simply goes “no, no, no” in Korean while Namjoon sighs, and the former notices Kaya and shakes his head.

“He’s saying she was -” His eyes flit to Namjoon for confirmation “- badass.”

“That’s… that’s stretching it a bit,” says Namjoon weakly, but Seokjin waves him off.

“No, no, he’s right,” he says quickly. “Not badass, but like…” He struggles for a bit and finally says a Korean word, and Kaya dubs it in her head as ballsy. “Didn’t she also have a motorcycle?”

“That was her brother’s. Can we -”

“Oh, yeah,” interrupts Taehyung, ignoring Namjoon entirely. Kaya’s once again taken aback by his casual elegance from his spot next to Jungkook, unashamedly sprawled on the ground with his hands behind his head. “She drove us home in her car once, remember?” he asks, looking at Jimin who nods. “She drove so fast, I almost threw up.”

“Doesn’t Dilara drive faster?” Jimin asks innocently, grinning when Taehyung bites his lip.

“Much faster,” answers Jungkook, taking the ramen Seokjin offers him and scooping a mouthful into his mouth. “Explains why she has all those guy fans,” he adds, slurping the noodles.

There are snickers around the room and even Namjoon chuckles, but the name finally clicks in Kaya’s mind. “Wait, Dilara? Dilara Komyshan? You - you guys know who she is?” she asks, not suspecting Formula One was popular in this country at all.

Jungkook’s eyes go wide and Jimin turns to her, comically shocked. From her other side, Namjoon nudges her. “How do you know her?” he asks, a bit incredulous.

“I mean, I know of her. I live in Amsterdam. The whole country is a shrine to Max Verstappen, especially now that he’s started being in the running for world champion… anyway, she’s his teammate.” Kaya waits for him to nod slowly in confirmation. “They’re a legendary pairing. I saw them race in Zandvoort last year. I told you, remember?”

“Oh, yeah…”

“When did you guys meet her?”

There’s silence until Namjoon speaks up again. “We met her in - in Japan last year. We were there for Honda.”

“Oh, yeah, you told me. Did you get to meet Alex Turner, too? Actually, no, they probably weren’t dating back then, but -”

“What?”

Kaya breaks off, realising Taehyung’s spoken in Korean. “Uh, yeah, I don’t think they started dating till earlier this year, actually - or, at least that’s when they became public -”

“Um… Alex Turner?” Namjoon’s spoken this time, and there’s something too deliberate in his tone.

She hesitates. “Yeah… from the Arctic Monkeys,” she says slowly. “They were performing at this club in London and my friend Marianne had an extra ticket because her girlfriend couldn’t make it…” She realises she’s rambling and pulls herself together. “Anyway, Dilara Komyshan was there and… well, it certainly looked like they were a couple.”

There’s not too much ambiguity in the way she says it, despite her refraining from detail as much as possible. The silence is clear now and it’s starting to make her uneasy, as though there’s something everyone but her is in on. She almost jumps when Jimin speaks from next to her.

“Are you sure it was her?”

“Yeah, pretty sure… wait, I have a selfie with her,” she mutters, reaching for her phone and swiping through her gallery, relieved for something to do. She finds the picture and both Namjoon and Jimin lean in from the other side to look at it. It’s in a dimly lit area, with all the members of Arctic Monkeys, her friend Marianne, Kaya herself, and Dilara Komyshan, with three people separating Kaya and Dilara.

Jimin moves away, sighing, while Namjoon leans closer and zooms in. She catches a whiff of his woody cologne and her toes curl automatically on the bare floor.

“Oh. Crap.”

Kaya looks up at him curiously to see him looking in the opposite direction before he closes his eyes, as though just spotting a problem. She turns to see Taehyung stalk out of the room, too conspicuously for it to be a coincidence, and something suddenly falls into place, something so obvious that she can’t believe she didn’t catch it the moment he interrupted her the first time.

“Oh, God,” she whispers, cringing and turning back to her boyfriend, “are they -”

“Something like that,” he mutters, sighing.

“Shit. I had no idea. I -”

“Don’t worry about it,” he says, putting an arm around her shoulder. “Even we don’t, really. We just know they met in Japan and… got close.”

There’s an awkward silence for a moment, the movie playing uselessly in the background, before Jimin gets to his feet. “I should…”

“Oh, of course,” she says immediately, shuffling her legs so he can step out from behind the coffee table. “Tell him I’m sorry,” she adds uneasily, sighing when Jimin nods reassuringly before disappearing into the hallway.

The embarrassment doesn’t disappear, though. It takes a backseat for a while, once the movie is over and there’s some general chatter about dinner and what to watch next. Seokjin leaves midway once he gets a phone call, already pulling on his shoes before the call even ends.

“It’s Nari,” is all he says, in Korean, before ducking out. They carry on from where they left off, Jimin eventually rejoining everyone but making some thin excuse for Taehyung that absolutely nobody believes. Namjoon, preempting her reaction, hugs her to him a bit more before telling her to let it go.

Even two hours later, once they reach Namjoon’s apartment, Kaya isn’t able to.

“You think he’ll be okay?” she asks, stepping out of the car.

“Yes, Kaya, he will,” says Namjoon, sighing and closing his door shut. “I told you. Let it go.”

Kaya frowns. “I just can’t believe I didn’t figure it out,” she mutters after a moment. “I’m usually a lot better at reading people,” she adds, glancing at him out of the corner of her eye.

If he catches on, he doesn’t respond. Kaya bites her lip, deciding that she isn’t imagining his aloofness after all. It had started a little while before they’d left the dorm, but in the midst of five other men talking and laughing in Korean, she couldn’t be certain and it hadn’t been that obvious either.

The walk to the car had been quiet, something she’d chalked down to tiredness, but the actual car ride had been strange, too. They had a running joke ever since he’d gotten his licence last year where she’d give him a dramatic pep talk as he started the car, keeping it up until he hit the road, and making a big show of it once they reached their destination. She’d been about to start tonight as well but before she could even get a word out, he’d reversed out of the parking lot, his jaw harder than usual.

Now, she follows him silently into his apartment, frowning and trying to recreate the night in her mind to guess what might be bothering him. They enter and take off their shoes by the door, Namjoon turning on the light behind her.

“Do you want a drink?” she asks, taking off her jacket and walking inside, stopping near the kitchen island.

“Didn’t we just have a lot to drink?”

“Not really. You drove home.”

Namjoon seems to consider this. “I don’t want a drink,” he says finally, opening the fridge behind her and retrieving a bottle of water.

Kaya is dumbfounded for a moment, noting belatedly that this is the first time he’s ever iced her out like this - if that is indeed what he’s doing. She watches him walk over to the bookshelf and scan the spines, quietly drinking the water. Her guess is he’s already finished the book he started yesterday, but the way his back looks stiff and his jaw is still hard, she doubts he’s actually looking for a second book right now.

Normally, her instinct would be to let him be, knowing he’ll talk to her when he wants to. It was one of the most important aspects of their relationship she’d seen change over time: his reluctance to confide in her, as though afraid he would demotivate her by venting to her. She’d had to remind him more than once that he wasn’t her leader, that he absolutely could vent to her if he needed to. It had been hard for him, but once he’d consciously started opening up to her, their relationship only felt stronger.

But this feels different. She can’t fathom what, but something about this feels directed at her. She’s not one for mind games, though, so she simply sighs. “Okay, do you want to tell me what’s wrong?” she asks softly.

Namjoon’s hand holding the bottle momentarily pauses halfway up to his mouth, before he continues. “Nothing’s wrong.”

“Really?”

The pause is longer this time, as he continues drinking. He’s definitely not focusing on the books anymore. Finally, he swallows a mouthful of water and exhales. “We don’t need to talk about it.”

There we go. “I don’t even know what it is,” she says, somewhat relieved he’s at least responding. “Why can’t you just tell me? If something’s bothering you, I want to know.”

“It’s nothing.”

“It’s not nothing,” she states. “Did you want to stay back and watch the movie? Did I make you leave too early?”

“I wanted to leave before you did,” he points out, turning around to face her and leaning against the bookshelf. His eyes flicker towards hers before looking away, and he crosses his arms loosely against his torso. “And Pulp Fiction is not very high on my list of movies to watch.”

Me, neither. But he already knows that, and he knows why. Kaya moves on without dwelling on it. “Then what? Is it the joke I made about Nick?” she guesses, referring to a throwaway line about her ex-boyfriend she’d made when the boys had been arguing over which movie to watch. It had seemed harmless, but she also knew that Namjoon, for better or for worse, had a jealous streak he wasn’t proud of.

“No,” he mutters.

He’s also proud. Kaya shakes her head. “If it is, I apologise. I didn’t think it would be a big deal, but I can understand if you didn’t like it. If that’s what it is, then I’m sorry.” When Namjoon doesn’t respond and simply looks in the other direction, she sighs in frustration. “What is it?”

His tongue is poking into his lower lip, and his jaw looks as hard as rock. She’s never seen anything bother him so much and the fact that she doesn’t know what it is doesn’t sit well with her at all.

Finally, he speaks. “I don’t want to start a fight,” he says quietly.

“Well, I don’t want to spend the rest of the night wondering what’s bothering you so much that you can’t even look at me.” Her eyes bore into him but he still doesn’t turn. “If it becomes a fight, we have a fight. And then we move on from it.”

“I don’t…” Namjoon trails off, clicking his tongue in what she takes to be annoyance. His eyes flicker to her again before averting. “Can we drop this?”

“Not now that you’re making such a big deal about it.”

“I’m not making a big deal about anything. You’re the one who won’t stop talking about it.”

Kaya scoffs incredulously, her heart already starting to race painfully. “You’re the one being evasive,” she says tightly, trying not to raise her voice as he runs a hand over his face. “Namjoon, you’ve never been like this,” she adds in a smaller voice. “Can you just tell me?”

It seems to give him pause, too, for he closes his eyes and exhales slowly. “I don’t want to upset you,” he says quietly.

There’s a strange and uncomfortable sensation in her stomach at his change in tone. This is bad. “I appreciate that,” she murmurs steadily. “But I’m a big girl. I can take it.”

Namjoon simply looks at her, observing, before pursing his lips and turning away. The dimple appears faintly in his cheek, the one that had popped as he’d grinned down at her in bed this morning, and in the kitchen at the dorm, and on the sofa when they’d been watching their debut music videos.

She shakes her head in disappointment. “I’m sorry, I can’t think of anything that would piss you off this much except for that joke about Nick, which was about something that happened five years ago but if that’s the case, then I -”

“Why didn’t you ever report him?”

Namjoon’s words cut through her sentence, voice deep and steady, yet seeming louder than anything she’s heard him say all night.

“What?” she asks in a low voice, wondering if she could’ve possibly misheard his words.

He’s looking right at her now, finally, and she suddenly wishes he wouldn’t. “Five years,” he says slowly, his voice trembling with barely concealed emotion. “It’s been five years, and he still has a hold over your life. Why didn’t you report him?”

Her breathing feels loud to her own ears. “Please tell me we’re still talking about Nick,” she says quietly. Namjoon doesn’t answer, and Kaya takes that as a confirmation.

“I guess,” he begins after a moment, as though choosing his words carefully, “I can’t understand that after everything that happened, after everything he did to you -” His voice breaks and he bites his lip. “How could you not report him?” he asks softly, shaking his head.

“For starters,” she answers, voice oddly toneless, “I couldn’t see his face.”

“I - I know. But… there are ways for the police to do this stuff, to find people based on evidence…” It’s clear from his words that he’s thought about this before. “You didn’t tell anyone, though. Except -”

“Marianne and Nick,” she finishes. “Yeah, I told my closest friend and my boyfriend. That was enough for me.”

“And they didn’t tell you to go to the police?” Namjoon scoffs softly, but it doesn’t sound directed at her. “Not even your boyfriend?”

“He - he wasn’t my boyfriend anymore at the time,” she stutters, feeling rather like they’re about to digress. “And you know that. Why would you bring up -”

“Because it’s been five years, Kaya!” he exclaims, looking truly hassled now. “It’s been five years, and you still can’t watch a movie without being affected by it! And he’s just - he’s just free! How is that fair?”

She bites her lip, her heart racing. Iconic dialogues of an iconic movie, floating out through a loudspeaker in the common room hours before dawn, all the way into the empty streets of a university campus… her stomach churns.

“I thought you didn’t care about watching Pulp Fiction.”

“I don’t care about - come on, you know that’s not my point.”

“I can watch it whenever I want,” she states, hearing the tremor in her voice. “I have watched it, since then. I can - don’t you dare walk away, Kim Namjoon!” she says loudly, as he begins making his way into the living room.

He halts immediately, however, turning around. “I’m not walking away,” he promises, taking a seat on the cream-coloured couch. She takes a step back and feels the back of a chair dig into her spine. She’d told him about the worst night of her life at this kitchen island nearly a year ago, coming up behind him as he worked on his laptop and wrapping her arms around his broad shoulders, whispering calmly to him that if he had a minute, there was something important she needed to talk to him about.

They’d been together officially for six months by then, even though they’d been hovering back and forth for a few months prior to that. A level of trust had been established by then, though, not to mention a profound sense of safety she felt with him, even when he was halfway across the world from her. Later that night, after she’d told him and he’d expressed both anger and support but mostly shock, they’d cuddled on that very couch as they watched Cloud Atlas.

Sharing her secret hadn’t been easy, but no part of her regretted it. As she watches him rest his elbows on his thighs and run his fingers through his hair, she wonders if she’s finally about to.

Namjoon sighs like he’s bracing himself. “I’m not saying you can’t watch the movie, Kaya. I’m saying you don’t, for a reason. And that’s his fault.”

“A lot of things are his fault. Reporting him wouldn’t have changed that. Even if I knew whom to actually report in the first place.”

“You weren’t even drinking,” he reminds her. “Even if all you remembered was the colour of his jacket, they could’ve at least narrowed it down to -”

“No, they couldn’t! It was dark, it was - I could’ve been mistaken,” she stammers, starting to feel anxious now as the edges of her mind start letting in scraps of memories from that night.

“You were not mistaken. You’re the most detail-oriented person I know.”

“Well, unless you were there that night, I don’t see how you could possibly have an opinion on that.”

Namjoon sighs. "This is why I didn't want to bring this up, Kaya.”

“No, please, I’m glad you did,” she says immediately, scoffing. “I’m glad I know what you think now. Have you been judging me for this ever since I told you last year?”

“I am not judging you - how can you say that?" he demands, looking stung. "I care about you. I love you, and I hate that you still have to make sacrifices and compromises, even if it is just over a movie. You’re still haunted by it, and he’s roaming around free!”

“And you think reporting him would’ve helped that?” Kaya exclaims. “Do you think we’d be back at the dorm watching Pulp Fiction right now if I’d gone to the cops? If I’d been neck-deep in paperwork, being asked to recount the incident a hundred times to a hundred different people about a guy whose face I couldn’t see and voice I could barely make out, only to be asked why I was walking alone around campus while wearing shorts?”

“I - I don’t know. I’m not -” He drops his head in his hands, breathing slowly and deeply. “I just… I fucking hate him, Kaya,” he confesses quietly, as though letting her in on a secret. “I hate him so, so much. I want to hurt him - I want to kill him with my bare hands.”

Kaya exhales shakily, never having heard him speak this disdainfully before, with this much hatred, about anyone or anything. “I hate him, too,” she murmurs after a moment. “Of course, I do. But I also had finals in two weeks and believe it or not, I knew my priorities.”

“I’m not saying you didn’t, I’m saying -” He sighs in frustration, his tongue poking into his lower lip again. “I just wish he would have suffered the consequences. Or just suffered.”

The fury in his voice is evident now, and is now starting to show on his face, but Kaya tries to hold her ground. She has to. “I told you: I had finals. I had a masters’ seat in the balance waiting for me in London, I had graduation - I had a million other things that I thought were more important for me. I couldn’t report him,” she adds after a moment, hearing the desperation in her own voice. “I couldn’t afford to get caught up in it.”

“You… you could report it,” he corrects her in a low voice. “You chose not to.”

“Yes, and that was my choice to make.” She grits her teeth, feeling her eyes start to sting. “I didn’t think this far ahead and anticipate that five years down the line, my boyfriend would be making me defend that decision to him.”

“That’s not what I’m doing! I care about -”

“Then listen to me! Listen to what I’m saying! It didn’t matter to me that -”

“How could it not matter? Kaya, he got away with it!” Namjoon stands up now, and his height is suddenly looming, even from across the room. “He’s out there, still, and he’s living his life while you’re -” He breaks off.

Kaya forces herself to breathe. “While I’m what?”

“While you’re still hurting.”

There’s no stopping it now; she feels her vision blur. “I’m perfectly happy with my life,” she says, her voice trembling.

“I’m not saying you aren’t. I just wish you’d -” He breaks off again and sighs, while Kaya turns around and lowers her head, unable to look at him any longer. Her chest feels constricted now, and she realises after a moment that it’s because she’s holding her breath. Letting it out seems dangerous, though, like she’s setting herself up to break down.

It’s a tall order for her to cry in front of anyone; it makes her feel uncomfortable and she avoids it at all costs. She wonders for the first time if it’s got anything to do with this incident, and acknowledges with a heaviness that any comfort she might have had in succumbing to tears in front of Namjoon has disappeared, at least for tonight.

“I just wish you’d see how much more you could’ve done,” he says, his tone taking on a different quality, something that reminds her inexplicably of Nick for a moment. It makes her feel inadequate and her heart hurts, even as Namjoon continues. “Even if he didn’t end up behind bars, you could’ve called him out publicly. You saw his varsity jacket - that college could’ve been made aware that one of their students is a -”

“Stop,” murmurs Kaya weakly, but he doesn’t hear her.

“It’s a world of things, and it only takes one to create change. I mean… how do you know he hasn’t done this again, to someone else?”

It’s the straw that breaks the camel’s back, and Kaya feels her chest finally unclench as she swallows a sob. Her face and throat burn in discomfort as she tries not to make a sound, her hair falling down the sides of her face and shielding it from his view. Namjoon has fallen silent; whether it’s due to her reaction or because he realises the implication of what he’s said, she doesn’t know. At the moment, she can’t bear to be around him for another moment to find out.

She opens her eyes to see a tear fall onto the white kitchen island and hastily wipes it, taking a shaky breath as quietly as she can. “I’m, uh -” She breaks off, cringing when she hears the tremble in her voice. She turns slightly in his direction, not looking at him. “I’m going to sleep in the guest room tonight, if you don’t mind.”

Namjoon watches her turn and leave with a sinking heart, her smaller figure padding quietly down the corridor and passing his bedroom before she disappears from his view. There’s no point in going after her right now; it won’t be a fruitful argument, if that’s what they’re indeed in the middle of.

There’s a twinge of regret taking form in his chest that stings when he hears the door to the guest room open and close. He sighs; he knew he shouldn’t have initiated this topic.

He’d had no intention of doing so. After she’d confided in him about it, it had probably come up once, and only when she’d brought it up. The night she’d told him, he hadn’t dreamed in a million years that this was the important thing she wanted to discuss. He hadn’t been able to process it past a certain point initially; he’d listened in stunned silence as she recounted that night, skipping the most horrific details (for whose benefit, he wasn’t sure, but he was thankful) and ending it with a short yet heartfelt declaration of how much she trusted him.

Kaya had seemed relieved after that, almost like telling him had been a catharsis of sorts. She’d been just as affectionate as normal after that, and Namjoon had silently gone along with it in a daze, his mind replaying her words and expressions the entire time, including when they were watching a movie on the couch later. It wasn’t until they’d gone to bed that the shock had finally worn off and he’d been able to register everything she’d told him, and the white hot anger at a faceless stranger had coursed through his body in a way he’d never felt before.

Namjoon drops his head in his hands, the living room suddenly feeling far too big and empty. He closes his eyes, trying half-heartedly to search for an apology or words of comfort but nothing comes to mind, not now that his mind is occupied with this.

Earlier this evening, when Yoongi had suggested Pulp Fiction, Namjoon had immediately expected Kaya to say no. But she hadn’t, and one by one the members had voted and before they knew it, the opening credits were playing. He’d nudged her gently, asking her silently if she was really okay with this, and she’d shrugged and given him a small smile before settling into his side.

Even after the movie began, Namjoon’s attention remained on Kaya, observing her for any movements that might signal her discomfort. It was an odd detail that had made it through the incident, the loud volume at which the movie was playing inside the campus common room, the dramatic and aggressive dialogues that floated out being the only thing her mind had been able to process.

She’d given nothing away today, though, not until halfway through when John Travolta, Samuel L Jackson and Quentin Tarantino’s voices had blared through the television amidst gunshots and male voices yelling, and Kaya’s face had suddenly crumpled.

It had been brief, a moment of heartbreaking agony that Namjoon had been powerless to stop, before she’d immediately straightened her expression. But he wasn’t fooled, and he’d taken it as a cue to casually say to everyone else that they were going to be heading out. Kaya hadn’t protested, for which he was glad, because the fury at her assailant was returning swiftly and Namjoon’s only focus from here on out was to ensure he drove them back safely to his apartment.

There’s a soft rattle, like an ominous rumble. Namjoon peeks out from behind his hands, wondering briefly if it’s an earthquake before he realises it’s him. His leg is jerking up and down, as though of its own accord, and the movement is making the wooden coffee table shake.

Just… just a jacket. Looked like a varsity football one. Yellow, I think… there were too many people from too many colleges on campus that week. So I don’t know.

It feels like his limbs are moving with a mind of their own, making him stand up and walk over to the kitchen island where Kaya had been standing a little while ago, his hands reaching for the sleek, silver laptop he’d left there this morning. He’s opened the screen and switched it on before even returning to the sofa, and the moment he’s logged in, he goes straight to the browser.

Here, Namjoon’s stuck. Watching the cursor blink, as though waiting for him to show what he knows, he chews on his lower lip. Finally, he types Colleges in New York, only to get almost a hundred results. He combines it with football team, before realising he doesn’t know if she meant American football or soccer, so he replaces it with sports team.

The results go into the hundreds now, with the swim teams and water polo and chess players popping up on his screen. He sighs, suddenly feeling ridiculous, when he spots a picture. Frowning, he clicks on it until it fits his screen: it’s of a Caucasian male, early twenties, with dark hair and dark eyes. He’s smiling straight into the camera, tall and confident - and wearing a yellow jersey.

It’s like a dull punch to his stomach, for even though Namjoon knows neither head nor tail about this individual - his eyes flicker to the name in the caption to see Mark Rivers - it occurs to him that the person who attacked Kaya, who hurt her all those years ago like a coward in the dark - that person could be Mark Rivers.

Namjoon forces himself to take a deep breath before slowly scrolling down, begrudgingly noting that nearly every male he comes across could have been him. He’s in no mood to back down, though. The image of Kaya all those months ago, her face carefully calm as he told him about that night, her face earlier this evening when Pulp Fiction had been playing, every single scene in Namjoon’s imagination that reveals itself in the darkest of times when he thinks about how it might have played out five years ago… He shakes his head, resolutely opening multiple tabs on his browser, each with a different college and its sports teams on the screen.

He doesn’t know how long he sits there, scrolling from picture to picture, eyes skimming over the names and the sports. At some point, in order to narrow it down, he makes an executive decision to filter out sports that aren’t high intensity, for while she hadn’t ever said it explicitly, she’d implied a level of strength that she hadn’t been able to fight back against.

Swallowing the bile in his throat, he moves on quickly. It also occurs to him soon enough that just because NYU was in New York, it didn’t mean that every college team that had landed up there was also from New York, and Namjoon is thus forced to expand his search to outside the city as well. He restricts it to the tristate area, however, and continues looking for links in the college websites about alumni and galleries with pictures of their sports teams.

He combs through the links, looking for teams or graduating classes that would have overlapped with Kaya’s senior year. Some of the links have members listed by name and Namjoon pounces on them with a vengeance, flipping through picture after picture of former students who eventually start to blur into each other.

There are some faces who, for some reason, just strike Namjoon as suspicious. He starts bookmarking the names, copy-pasting them onto an Excel sheet to maintain some kind of list, some kind of indication that this unorganized exercise he’s conducting in this frame of mind isn’t a waste, that there’s actually something fruitful coming out of it.

Namjoon pauses, his mind still working amidst the tiredness and a dull pain between his eyes that he knows is the onset of a headache. He needs to narrow the search down further - it’s the only way. His fingers fly across the keyboard, the typos increasing both in number and his irritation, and he starts searching for known college campus assaults in Kaya’s senior year, along with two years before and after. He’s mostly met with newspaper and magazine articles about campus safety and the like, but names elude him.

Somehow, he starts getting directed to chat rooms and message boards that have been inactive for years, and while he wishes to interact with none of them, he scrolls through the hundreds of messages, pausing every time he sees a name mentioned. Finally, in what seems to be the fifth or sixth message board started by a former sorority girl half a decade ago, he sees a name that makes his heart leap weakly.

He can’t understand why at first; it doesn’t sound too common but something about it stands out to him. The message doesn’t even mention a school associated but after a moment, he thinks he knows what it could be. Vaguely seeing the pieces in his mind, about to fall into place, he goes back to the Excel sheet, and searches for the name, gasping softly when the name matches.

It’s at that moment that he spots two numbers: the time, showing him that it’s nearly three am, and the row number of the name he’s just searched, showing him row two hundred and thirty-six. He squeezes his eyes shut, unwilling to acknowledge how far gone he is.

It was… it probably didn’t last more than fifteen minutes. It just felt like a lifetime. But turns out it was just one long scene of Pulp Fiction.

Clenching his fist on the keyboard so he isn’t tempted to throw the laptop against the wall, Namjoon tries to gather himself. In a desperate move, he enters the first name into Naver to find a LinkedIn profile. It’s him; it’s the same person, but his profile picture is no longer of a college student with a cocky grin and bangs, but an older version in a suit and tie, gazing calmly at Namjoon through the screen. A half-hearted scroll shows him that this person - Geoffrey Dominic - is currently residing in Dubai and working for an airline company.

Something about it makes Namjoon’s throat close up in frustration, and it takes him a moment to realise it’s the fact that any of these men, or all of them, could be anywhere in the world now. The way Kaya was in London less than three months after the incident, any of these men could be anywhere else, across the world from her or even in the same building as her in Amsterdam, and they would have no way of knowing.

Namjoon runs his hands through his hair, his fingers trembling, and feels a sense of such helplessness that it makes him want to scream. It occurs to him with some regret that Kaya might have been feeling the same, only magnified to proportions he would never understand. He suspects now - or, rather, he’d suspected all the way back then but didn’t want to admit it - that she was probably driven to tears before she’d quietly declared her intention to go to bed, effectively ending their argument.

Keeping the laptop aside, he stands for the first time in hours and winces when his knees cramp. Stretching his legs and making his way inside the apartment towards the bedrooms, he passes by his room; not only is his mind too cluttered to sleep right now, he also can’t imagine doing so in his bedroom, without Kaya. He stops in front of the guest room, his heart hammering when he imagines her in there, at her choice to actively be apart from him for the night.

They need to talk about this. He’s willing to concede that he might have been too harsh, that he may have brought up the topic too suddenly - but he cannot let this argument fizzle out and have them pretend to have moved on from it in the morning. Not this particular discussion, not after the way they left it tonight, and not with how Kaya left.

Namjoon stares at the door, hoping something will knock on it for him. His hand won’t move and with each passing second, his tiredness and frustration with his unsuccessful investigation turns into regret and something that resembles guilt.

He wonders if she’s crying in there; the thought makes his heart twist. If it’s true, if that’s what she’s doing inside, he has to go in there. Maybe he’ll apologise, maybe they’ll agree to pick it up some other time under calmer circumstances.

The moment his hand goes up to the door, however, he realises it’s been hours since their argument; she’s most likely asleep. It occurs to him, out of nowhere, that all her things are in his room. He pictures her, alone in bed amidst the covers, still in the jeans and top she’d worn today. It’s one night out of the ten they have during her stay in Seoul this time, and they’re sleeping apart - and it’s seeming more and more clear by now that it’s his fault.

The fist that’s resting against the door, about to knock, becomes flat. Namjoon leans against it, suddenly exhausted, feeling like it’s the closest he’s going to get to her tonight, wanting to let her know he’s still here. He can’t go inside now, though, even if she is asleep. As much as it may kill him to be out here, on the other side of the door that she closed on him, he can’t not respect her wishes, especially tonight. He doesn’t want to leave either, though, so after a moment, he turns around and slides down against the door until he’s sitting on the floor, knees bent and feet flat on the ground.

Namjoon hasn’t a clue what to expect in the morning, how they’re ever going to move past this. If it becomes a fight, we have a fight. And then we move on from it. He closes his eyes as he replays her words in his mind. They were rational and pragmatic, just like everything about her he’d known he needed in his life from the day he’d met her. This probably wasn’t what she had in mind, though, a small part of his mind chimes in. It’s true, and he simply hopes she’ll remember her own words tomorrow.

He sits there for a while, contemplating more than once if he should quietly step inside. He could slip into bed with her, maybe gently hold her to him, possibly kiss her shoulder in the dark and ensure she doesn’t wake up alone. The thought makes his chest hurt but he knows he can’t, so in a pathetic attempt to distract himself from it, he picks up his phone and scrolls through it for a while, remembering with a dull sort of victory that he’s a day away from his credit card bill being due for payment.

His wallet isn’t in his pocket, though, and when he trudges into the living room, he finds it’s not in his jacket pocket or anywhere else on the coffee table or the kitchen island. Mildly panicking, Namjoon shuffles between both rooms, the only places he’s set foot in all night, and searches behind jars and under the sofa, until he’s forced to conclude - and hope to high heavens - that it’s probably in the car.

It feels like the longest distance, from his penthouse to the building basement, but he takes his keys and heads out anyway. He locates the wallet in between the driver’s seat and the gear shift, lodged in the gap and peeking out apologetically when he reaches over to tug it out. Shutting the door and turning the car off, he rubs his eyes, wondering briefly that if he isn’t able to sleep, if he should head to the studio for some late night editing.

Only somewhat intrigued by the idea, he exits the building on foot, deciding that the solution to being stuck in his living room with the results of his deep-dive into the worst night of his girlfriend’s life probably isn’t another tiny room with a laptop. He walks along the pavement outside, shivering slightly in the chilly air in the absence of a jacket, in nothing but the white t-shirt he’s been wearing all day.

It was late… really late. I went back to my room. I didn’t want to be anywhere else. I just wanted to sleep, possibly forever, but by the time I got into bed, it was already dawn outside.

Around this time of the night, then. Out of nowhere, Namjoon feels his face twist, the memory of her words and her voice feeling like a punch to his stomach. He stops in his tracks, dropping his face into his hands and squeezing his eyes shut, as though hoping it will get rid of everything, every memory of that night she’s recounted to him in the tamest fashion, every horrifying image that his imagination has ever created in his mind, bringing back the particular kind of rage that’s only ever shown its face when he’s thought about how a tall, faceless man had hurt Kaya.

Another cool breeze forces him to snap out of it, and he immediately crosses the street, hearing vague honking and blurred yelling but able to focus on none of it. He enters a coffee shop, a dimly lit one with fluorescent lighting that makes his sleep-deprived brain shirk away uncomfortably, but he rallies, going over to the counter and ordering a plain Americano to go. The moment he picks it up and turns towards the door, he realises he has no desire to go back into the cold.

Taking a seat at a single table in the corner and reasonably sure no one here will recognise him, he takes a sip of his coffee and turns on his phone, his fingers automatically going onto Naver and waiting, once again, for the fury in his mind to tell him what to do. It does no such thing, though, and eventually Namjoon half-heartedly enters in the same search he’d last put in at the apartment, regarding known culprits in New York campus assault cases.

He finds he has no energy to scroll anymore, though, none of that adrenaline that pushed him to search college websites, sports teams, cross-reference them with age and whatnot. His mind is awake, but his anger isn’t as easily in his grasp anymore, not when he’s aware of Kaya back in the apartment, alone. She’s safe, of course; his building has some of the highest security in Seoul’s residential areas, and his floor is only accessible by a select few who possess key cards. Additionally, the only person in the world who has a key card to his own apartment, apart from him, is Kaya.

Namjoon hopes she’s sleeping. She’d been working unbelievably hard in the weeks leading up to her visit here so she wouldn’t have to work as much on the trip; coupled with the lingering jet lag, he’s reasonably hopeful that sleep would have caught up to her by now. His chest aches when he thinks, once again, of how she left the room in tears at the end of their argument. At the moment, he’d let her go because not only had it been evident that he’d possibly pushed her too far, but because a part of him was also frustrated that he would never be able to express to her just how much it hurt to see her hurting, and how much he wished he’d be able to give her the justice she deserved.

His stomach churns uncomfortably when he pictures her again, alone in the penthouse. Despite the security, the fear of her being hurt again, in absolutely anyway, nauseates him. It was the hardest part when she’d told him about that night, the part where she’d made him promise that he wouldn’t look at her differently and wouldn’t treat her like a victim.

Namjoon hadn’t done either, to the best of his abilities; his worry for her safety and security while she lived alone in Amsterdam pre-dated his knowledge about her past. He’d tried never to impose on how she lived, however, apart from reminding her every night to check if she’d locked the door or to let him know when she made it home after a late night in the library. It’s the one thing, even now, that gives him some comfort all the way in a different timezone, but he doubts she’ll ever know the intensity of his desire to keep her safe.

He scrolls down the screen once, the words now truly blurring into each other, until something catches his eye. You’re Not Alone: Supporting a Survivor, with further text undereath. Namjoon hesitates before opening it, spending the next ten minutes on each and every word of the article until he reaches the end and lets out a breath he didn’t even know he was holding.

He clicks on the next suggested link, and the next, and the next, until they’re all basically saying the same thing. A soft ding catches his attention and he looks up to see the last customer besides him leaving the restaurant. The waitress smiles politely at the older man before surreptitiously glancing at Namjoon, and he takes the hint, realising also that it’s half past four now and Kaya’s still alone in his apartment.

After leaving a generous tip, he heads out, the tiredness of the last twenty or so hours finally sinking in. The walk back is cold but the coffee helps and by the time he reaches his building, all he can think about is his comfortable sofa and the stacks of ramen cups in his pantry.

Over an hour later, after two cups of ramen and a small cup of chocolate ice cream he’d had no intention of eating, he finds himself watching a mediocre episode of the latest k-drama. It’s on mute, for any sound right now might make his head explode, but the subtitles work well enough. He wills sleep to find him; he can’t bring himself to get into his own bed right now, but a few minutes of sleep on this couch would suffice for a bit…

His eyelids start getting heavy just as the first rays of light start peeking in through the curtains, but he’s jolted awake by a sound that he realises a second later is a door opening and closing. His heart racing, he straightens up to see Kaya step gingerly out of the hallway, her long hair slightly dishevelled from her sleep. She’s in nothing but one of his white t-shirts, hanging loose on her smaller frame and reaching the middle of her thighs.

She stops at the edge of the kitchen island, close to where she’d been standing last night, and clears her throat. “Did you sleep at all?” she asks, frowning.

“Not really,” he answers softly, hearing the hoarseness in his own voice. “How - how did you sleep?”

“Late,” she says, and offers no further explanation. After a moment, she bites her lip. “I thought you…” She licks her lips and looks at the ground, folding her arms tightly across her chest. “I heard the door close.”

“Yeah… I dropped my wallet in the car.” He watches as she nods, and it takes him a second to realise she was probably thinking something else when she said it. “And went to get a coffee, down the block.”

She raises an eyebrow. “You went to get coffee at four am?”

“I couldn’t sleep.” Namjoon sees her eyes dart to the plastic coffee cup on the table, and a pang goes through his heart. “Did you - did you think I left?”

Kaya doesn’t answer, and it suddenly makes him want to cry. Need to start somewhere. He clears his throat. “Kaya, I want to just -”

“No, wait.” She holds up a hand, her gaze still on the ground. He sees her swallow and take a deep breath before looking up, this time straight at him. “I think there are some things I need to say. I don’t think I was really very clear the last time we spoke about this, but… I don’t regret anything.” She pauses, as though waiting for him to contradict her. When he says nothing, she continues.

“I’ve thought about this more than you know. I’ve thought about every single moment,” she says. “I’ve wondered why I had to have been walking alone on that street on that night, or why I went to NYU or why I didn’t scream louder so that someone would hear me. But it’s pointless. I was walking back from a committee meeting where we were making posters for an adoption drive at a dog shelter, which I don’t regret. I lived in one of the most amazing cities in the world and made friends for life because I went to NYU, and I can’t regret that.”

She pauses again, and this time Namjoon nods, if only to let her know he’s listening to every word.

“I chose not to report him because I was scared, and because I had next to no description of him. I know women have pressed charges with less, and I respect the hell out of that kind of courage. But I had finals, which my masters’ admission in London was contingent on. I had graduation, where I had to make a speech to my entire class. I had an internship to finish up which would round up my entire resumé - I had a world of things waiting for me.”

Her voice is trembling now, and Namjoon has to make a conscious effort to not walk over to her right now and pull her into his arms. The words are tumbling out of her mouth as though she’s been thinking about them all night, with a fear and defiance he’s both sad and proud of.

“I didn’t want to get caught up in - in spending hours at the police station, in having my classmates talk about me behind my back…” She takes a shaky breath. “I’m not saying it was easy to choose not to do it. It haunted me every day for years, but I - I had to choose me. Who else would? I had to choose my future - and I was not going to let him or what he did define me or make my decisions for me.”

“Every single day I’m glad I chose me because five years in, I’m living in a beautiful city, I’m the youngest doctoral candidate in the university, I’m working on a world famous research grant under Professor Woodstock who is a scholar -” She scoffs in mild disbelief, just as she had the day she’d secured the research project, and Namjoon can’t help but smile a bit “- I have good friends, I have a boyfriend who loves me, I have… I have a life. I have a good life, and I have it because I made a decision. You can - you can judge me for it… but I don’t regret it for a second. I just hope you understand that.”

Kaya bites her lip, feeling her vision blur again just like last night, as she watches him nod slowly, as though processing everything she’s just said. She makes no further motion, leaving the ball in his court. It feels like the most vulnerable she’s ever been before him, for she knows it’s a sliding scale. Either he does what the man she fell in love with would do, which would be to instantly understand her… or she finds out something new about him today, and they acknowledge the fundamental differences in their outlooks.

Namjoon rests his elbows on his thighs, running his fingers through his hair. The platinum blond looks slightly darker - or maybe it’s the light - as though making it clear that he hasn’t slept all night. He looks straight at her, though, and for a moment she’s comforted with the expression in his eyes.

“I, uh -” He sighs, his gaze flickering to the floor. “I tried to look him up last night.”

Her heart stops. “You did what?”

He immediately holds up both hands. “I know, it was a - a violation of your privacy, and I’m sorry. It’s not like I found anything,” he adds after a moment, and she doesn’t know if she’s imagining a note of defeat in his voice. “I don’t know if I actually thought I would, but it felt like I wanted to. Looking back, though, I don’t even know if that would help.”

“Kaya, I -” He exhales, and the look in his eyes becomes even more pronounced. “I worry about you,” he says after a moment. “I worry whenever you’re alone in your apartment, when you tell me you’re staying late in the library, when you’re drinking with friends… even last night, when I was twenty minutes away from you, I - I worried.”

She doesn’t know what to say to that. “I can take care of myself. You don’t have to -”

“No, I - I know. You’re more than capable of taking care of yourself. It’s one of the things I love most about you.” He’s quiet for a few seconds, his gaze not moving away from her, like he’s seeing her in the flesh after a long time. “I still worry, though. And it’s okay - I like worrying about you,” he adds, a playful smile flashing in his eyes momentarily, almost as though he can hear her heart flutter.

“It’s got nothing to do with your capabilities. I just worry because - well, partly because it’s the only thing I can do from here - but also because…” He sighs. “God, Kaya, it would kill me if something ever happened to you. If you ever got hurt.” He finally lowers his head, and she feels her heart ache. “To know that you did get hurt and that I can’t do anything about -” He breaks off, sniffing and looking up at her.

“But that’s my problem. Worrying about you, dealing with that anger… I guess somewhere in that manic searching I did all night, something pointed me to the fact that it doesn’t matter how I feel about it. It’s not about me. Or him.”

Kaya nods, not knowing what to say. She doesn’t know what he spent all night searching for and it’s too overwhelming to try to understand, even as her brain automatically begins dissecting the various demographics and data he could’ve started slicing and dicing. “Thank you,” she whispers finally.

“Did you ever consider it?” Namjoon asks after a few seconds. “Therapy? Or counselling?”

She bites her lip and nods. “I tried it for a bit, in London. I stopped because I moved to Amsterdam,” she says, anticipating his silent question. “Finding a new person, telling them everything… It seemed like a lot. We can talk about it,” she offers softly after a moment.

Namjoon stands up then and walks over to her slowly, as though giving her enough time to back away. She doesn’t, though, for his height feels comforting again unlike during their argument last night. He stops in front of her, almost a foot’s distance between them.

“I hope you know,” he begins, his voice low, “that I would never judge you. Definitely not for anything to do with this.” He purses his lips before sighing, his dimple appearing briefly. “I’m sorry.”

Kaya nods. “You should get some sleep,” she murmurs, reaching up to touch the bags under his eyes, his fingers ghosting over his skin.

“I will.”

A few moments pass, and Kaya feels like she needs to say it again, just in case. “You can’t treat me differently, okay?”

Namjoon doesn’t answer right away. He brushes her cheekbone with his knuckle and she feels her toes curl on the bare floor. “Kaya, I’ll always be protective of you.”

It’s not an answer, but it feels like the thing she needs to hear right now. “I’ll allow it,” she murmurs, tugging at the bottom of his t-shirt. It’s almost identical to the one she’s wearing; she’d found it in the closet of the guest room and didn’t imagine he’d have a problem with her borrowing it. Sleeping in his oversized t-shirt, smelling of his detergent… it was the closest thing to comfort she’d gotten last night.

Kaya feels her throat start to hurt uncomfortably. “I need you to understand my decision, okay?” she whispers in a small voice, looking up at him, more vulnerable than she can remember. “I need you to be in my corner.”

As though he’s been waiting forever to do it, Namjoon immediately pulls her into him, kissing her forehead and wrapping his arms around her. “Of course, I am. I love you,” he whispers into her hair, and she feels him inhaling. Coconut and vanilla. Kaya buries her face into his shoulder, having missed his broad chest and strong arms so unbearably last night. “I’m always in your corner. No matter what.”

Thank you for reading. Don't forget to leave a review :)

#namjoon x oc #namjoon x reader #namjoon fanfic #btswritingcafe #ficscafe #thebtswritersclub #btshoneyhive #bangtanbathhouse #bangtaninn #bangtanwhq #houseofddaeng #52hertz #rm x reader #rm fanfic #bts rm #hyunglinenetwork

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degloved · 5 months

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saw: 8 + 6 + 16 and hannibal: 1 + 12 + 19 :*

8. common fandom opinion that everyone is wrong about

i for sure had to sit down and think about this a sec, but i think i'd say the belief that lawrence is, like... a perfectly morally sound golden retriever boyfriend. yes, it sure is sweet to picture him romancing adam and taking his breath away with these grand gentlemanny gestures, but i just don't see it. he's not much of a dad, he's a cheater, his callousness landed him in a jigsaw game. gimme some more scheming, jaded, bitchy lawrence. gimme some straight up Not Nice lawrence. he's not an apprentice for nothing. i want to see this man put hoffman's stunts to shame

6. which ship fans are the most annoying?

i feel like i'm gonna land into some hot water with this one YOWZA but chainshipping sorryyyyy... largely for the reasons above. this isn't applicable to everyone obv, i follow some people with absolutely delicious interpretations of the characters and the ship itself. but by and large.... yknow

16. you can't understand why so many people like this thing (characterization, trope, headcanon, etc)

oh my god i feel like this post is just me dogging on chainshipping IT WASN'T THE INTENTION i have nothing against it. but anyway, apprentice adam. i don't hate the trope as a whole, i think it's a fun thing to dabble into, ESPECIALLY if you're doing some kind of a dark!au. but ! in almost every adam lives scenario i've seen, if lawrence is an apprentice, so is he. and i just personally, in my own interpretation, do not see that for him

1. the character everyone gets wrong

hannibal. i'm sorry. also will, coming in second. but largely hannibal

12. the unpopular character that you actually like and why more people should like them

i actually am not sure if any of the main hannibal cast can be classifed as unpopular because it feels like there's a little insanity corner for all of them, but i am deeply deeply obsessed with freddie lounds. this woman regularly bullied a serial killer, an up-and-coming serial killer, head of the fbi, many other important people, and got to walk away unschated. her power?

19. you're mad/ashamed/horrified you actually kind of like...

there is this one specific scenario/scene i rotate around my head sometimes. will/bedelia hatesex THERE I SAID IT. I SAID IT. they would actually be trying to kill each other during the whole thing i NEED to witness it

THANK YOU for sending these i am hitting post with much trepidation

[choose violence asks]

#ask #ask game

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jack-kellys · 1 year

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do your absolute worst bestie

there is honestly one way to go about this and im very happy about it. like actually i did my Best.

send me some aus bc u get shit like this!

so naturally, the cruise ship is hell. and each floor of the ship, of course, is a circle of said hell. (whats funny abt this is now i get to send fucking newsies the musical characters to hell what the fuck)

no one remembers how they got there initially. racetrack wakes up in a room without his boyfriend but with his ex-girlfriend spot conlon on a bed across from him. jokingly he thinks this is hell but also. yes it is.

they argue for a straight two hours before they realize that something is not. right abt this. like they weren't a successful pair romantically in the end but they never spoke like that to each other. upon leaving the room the hallway is lined with doors within which other pairs are doing the exact same thing they just were- spot and race can hear other screaming matches through the whole hallway.

they find jack on a floor/circle filled with fear. jack cannot do anything except helplessly give into it every time, terrifying himself and repeatedly losing the one thing racer knows jack holds highest about himself- his pride. (of which probably earned his spot in hell to begin with.)

next floor/circle is the typical cruise ship for-some-reason waterpark. because ross dorrington (splasher @ uk newsies) has given splasher an origin of leaping into the docks' water to save a drowning kid, this is the guilt circle! splasher, tommy boy and gasp! davey?? is here??? why hadnt he been with jack?

(because it was hell to be away from each other.)

it continues down to the engine room which is dark and disorienting and sort of psionically damaging because it's me and this would actually be my second hell/demonic au LMFAO. but something is grating on their brains because they have headed in the wrong direction to get out. they get some answers down here– they have to find the Captain to try and leave. of whom is at the top.

the Captain is Snyder and he's determined personal reasons why they should all be in hell bc he hates these people since they've consistently denied their personal demons tbh when it comes to canon characterization:

jack overcomes his pride by protecting his friends ("vote no") and accepts the mistrust and anger pointed his way rather than getting defensive or denying the deal in the first place

davey overcomes his trepidation in getting involved in something bigger than his family and despite putting himself, his brother, and potentially his family in danger, he refuses to feel guilt for it bc he was doing the right thing

spot overcomes her pride when siding with manhattan after seeing the damage they'd taken without her borough to assist them

race overcomes his fear of striking as well as his mistrust of davey just bc of where davey comes from financially

tommy overcomes his fear and potential greed after being the last one to renounce his scabbing

splasher overcame his own fear also after renouncing his scabbing and also by hurling himself into the water to save someone else or basically die trying!

so we slot the above into modern au contexts and we've got a very angry youth detention center warden who is also spoiler alert the devil. im not sure how they get out though... part of me is like it'd be funny if they just beat him up but i think maybe they gain control of the ship itself and literally and metaphorically change its course. yeah. and then they're brought...back to the living. because idt a hell au means that they're dead, just that they got sent to hell. so they wake up in a hospital after breaking extremely high fevers (its hot as HELL in this fuckin ass, hot ass room im in...)!!

and that is a cruise ship hell au about taking charge of the things that are a part of you and changing the course of their meaning!!! a nautical adventure!!!!

#if shane madej wrote a novel it would be this #newsies #newsies aus #is this how jac felt writing a cohesive golf au......#racetrack higgins #spot conlon #jack kelly #davey jacobs #splasher newsies #bc i. love him and hes never done anything wrong #tommy boy #bc i love him and hed knock a mf out #newsies uk #uksies #fizz wants to write #fizz answers #fizz freaks #mutuals #I DID IT MF LMAOOOOO

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llsilvertail · 7 months

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Okay. So.

I accidentally wrote this in the tags of a post about a different ship that involved one of these characters. And then I realized that it's probably a bad idea to do that bc, for one, idk the ins and outs of this fandom and, two, it's just in poor taste honestly. But I didn't want to loose what I wrote either, so ig that means an actual post from me for once XD.

#I am unfortunately deep in the throes of Shanks/Mihawks#and I can't find enough long content for them to satisfy my hungering#so here we are#me: staring at a blank doc with trepidation cuz I've never written a long fic#the doc: staring back at me cuz it knows my pain and revels in it#send help#please#I am about to cry#I don't know enough about them to properly get the characterizations#I think I've pinned down Mihawk#but Shanks is a bit slippery#you think you've got him#but then he goes and does something insane#and you can't quite figure out what his reaction to Mihawks' reaction would be#so now you're just stuck on the outline and haven't actually written anything#but oh well ig

#seriously #I didn't expect it to take over my mind quite like this #and I still have 3 fics from 2 different fandoms that've been nearly ready to post since January #oops??#and I've seriously never written a long fic before #so I have no clue how (if) it's gonna go #shanks x mihawk #my thoughts #queued

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sun-undone · 2 years

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OBX details that make me feral (12/?)

An unqualified and unsolicited analysis of JJ's defense and coping mechanisms in the first half of 1x07

Okay huge disclaimer (this is how you know it's gonna be good):

I am by no means an expert on this stuff!! I’m just someone with a psych degree who likes to think too much about fictional characters’ psyches when there usually isn’t enough evidence to accurately do so. With that being said, the Pogue fight in 1x07 over JJ stealing 25K from Barry is one of my all time favorite obx scenes because I just think that the way that JJ acts and reacts throughout it is so incredibly interesting. And this is just one potential theory for his actions in this scene (and a bit of the aftermath), but I’m sure that there are an infinite number of possible explanations.

Why JJ takes the money in the first place

Okay so I think it's probably pretty clear that he's acting out here, doing something that he knows is probably a bad idea in the long run and actively ignoring the Pogues' trepidations. And acting out is actually an immature defense mechanism that is characterized by impulsive, often self-destructive acts as a way to (unhealthily) protect oneself against negative emotions that arise from stressful situations.

JJ has definitely just been thrown into a stressful situation when he and the rest of the Pogues are held at gunpoint, and then that stress grows exponentially when he realizes that Barry, someone who he sees as a facilitator of his father’s addictive tendencies, is the culprit.

In a split second, all of the stress that he's already feeling gets inexplicably tied to Luke, which automatically triggers a bunch of other negative emotions and thus, other defense mechanisms, leading JJ to go rogue in the bulldozer kind of way that he does.

With more defense mechanisms dogpiling as JJ starts scouring Barry's trailer, I think displacement could also potentially be in play here. Displacement is another immature defense in which someone reattributes their negative emotions for one person/situation to another person/situation, usually one that is easier to control or less threatening.

In this case, I think that JJ could be so deadset on "justice" for the incident with Barry because he is actually craving justice for the situation with his father.

This makes sense because the connection between Barry and Luke is very salient for him in this moment, and he actually has some semblance of control and power over Barry right now (since he and the Pogues had just beat him up on the road), whereas he feels he has none of that over Luke. So maybe he can't relieve some of the angst he feels over his father, but he can steal Barry's money and enact some sort of "justice".

One more interesting thing I just wanna point out that doesn't really have to do with defense mechanisms is that JJ clearly doesn't take all of the money that he finds in Barry's stash.

This little detail makes me stop and think every single time I rewatch this scene (which is more often than I'd like to admit). Even when he’s acting on impulse and already has some major defensive blinders up, he still maintains some level of moral compass/conscience by only taking 25K. Stuff like that just makes JJ such a complex character and ugh I love him okay moving on

How JJ handles the ensuing Pogue fight

Okay so this one is super super interesting to me, and this is the part where I might be thinking WAY too much and trying to fit JJ's behavior into the boxes that I think he should fit into, based on his history of abuse. I think I've got some pretty compelling evidence, but y'know, grain of salt and all that.

So splitting is yet another immature defense mechanism in which someone can only see themselves or others in terms of personality extremes: either all good or all bad. The person is unable to integrate nuance into their perceptions of the self and others, usually due to being raised in a chronically unpredictable environment.

Seemingly on a dime, the person can switch from seeing themselves/others as untouchable heroes to instead seeing themselves/others as worthless weaklings or hostile objects. When confronted with the potential anxiety of having to reconcile their contradictory views of themselves/others, they unconsciously choose whichever perceptual extreme is more salient in the moment. I think there is evidence of JJ using this defense mechanism throughout the series, but especially in 1x07.

Splitting of the self In terms of JJ’s self-image, I feel like he has two settings: 1) incredibly high confidence, cocky JJ, and 2) incredibly low self-esteem, “good for nothing” JJ.

In the few montages of social situations in which we’ve seen JJ, he seems to have no problem being the center of attention. I can't really get a good screenshot of it (and i still can't gif i'm sorry), but I'm definitely thinking of that very first montage in 1x01 when John B is introducing everyone, and we see JJ literally in the center of a circle, animatedly regaling people with some surf story. But there's also this moment in 1x01 where we can more clearly see JJ right in the middle of another party circle, with everyone's attention on him.

It’s also heavily implied that he’s a player who is highly charismatic and just good with people in general, a skill that he knows he has and often takes advantage of (like lying on the spot in 1x03, 1x05, and earlier in 1x07 in order to help the Pogues out).

He tends to come off as very cocky, especially when coming up with plans, as he often overestimates his own abilities and underestimates those of others. This happens more in season 2, but think of any of the times he comes up with a plan and genuinely believes that it'll work, even when everyone else can realize that it's ridiculous.

But despite this, we’ve also seen JJ express incredibly low opinions about himself, usually related to his status as a Maybank. Once again, I feel like this is more upfront in season 2, but you can definitely see it shining through when he takes the blame for Pope in 1x04 ("You know where I'm from"), or even just through the "nothing to lose" thing in general. He is the one who came up with that motto in the first place, potentially because that idea of having no prospects is already so salient in his mind. And of course, we see where this portion of his self-image comes from in 1x05 when Luke calls him a "worthless piece of shit". (hey btw fuck luke maybank)

This may just be more of a feeling kind of thing, but from everything we’ve seen from him so far, I highly doubt that JJ has a very nuanced perception of himself that healthily reconciles these two extremes. It seems like whenever we get any insight into JJ’s psyche (which admittedly isn’t very often), he’s only ever expressing one or the other. Half the time, he sees himself as this overly capable, vigilante-like figure, and the other half of the time, he sees himself as trash.

Splitting of others Okay now we finally return to the Pogue fight in 1x07. I think we can see this other version of splitting when the Pogues get mad at JJ for stealing the 25K. Most of the time, I think it’s safe to assume that JJ views the Pogues very highly, maybe even too highly. He has an extremely positive perception of them because they’re his found family, and he’s (potentially overly) attached himself to them in lieu of his blood family. When they start showing negative emotions towards him, he (subconsciously) doesn’t know how to reconcile that with the super positive perceptions that he has of them, so he immediately switches to seeing them as hostile and goes on the defensive. JJ is totally unable to have a nuanced discussion about what’s happened because he’s already in defense mode. This then triggers the use of other immature defense mechanisms like rationalization,

denial,

and more acting out (this looks stupid without a gif but you know what i'm talking about okay he shoves John B against the Twinkie),

until he eventually shuts down completely and walks away from the conflict, an avoidant coping mechanism that he assumedly falls back on frequently, judging by how John B later describes it as “a JJ thing”.

Some other dialogue/acting details during the Pogue fight that do in fact make me feral

"Pope, I took the fall for you, man!"

This line is the only moment in this scene where JJ’s deeper emotions of dejection and desperation are seeping through (that little quiver when he says “man"???? oooooooh Rudy Pankow thank you so much for your service), while all of his other lines and actions are clouded by defensive anger. It absolutely breaks my heart because I feel like he’s trying to express that all the “crazy shit” that he does is for the Pogues, but he doesn’t really know how to verbalize it properly or fully, so he just kinda blurts this out as an incomplete rationalization. And when Pope responds by saying that he didn’t even ask JJ to do that for him, I feel like that just makes JJ shut down even more because it’s like Pope is rejecting his act of selfless friendship.

"I just did. Pay it back."

I adore the way that this line is disjointed because it gives the “I just did” part a double meaning. At first, it seems like JJ is saying that he just acted selflessly for Pope without being asked to (“I didn’t even ask you to do that.” “I just did.”), but then he decides to continue on, shifting the meaning of the phrase to instead connect to how he just got the money to pay the restitution (“I just did. Pay it back.”). Because of that tiny pause in the dialogue, you can literally hear and see the last bit of vulnerability fade away from JJ’s speech as he covers it back up with his defensiveness, which subsequently reaches its highest point as he decides to completely distance himself (both emotionally and physically) from the Pogues.

(this drone shot of JJ walking off on his own makes me so emotional because he looks so small. it reminds me of other drone shots that are used to convey a similar type of emotional smallness/loneliness in 1x08 with John B after he's escaped Ward, and then in 1x10 with John B and Sarah when they're stranded in the ocean)

How JJ copes in the aftermath of the Pogue fight

After being rejected by his found family, JJ immediately goes to his blood family in search of love and validation, unconsciously or maybe even consciously knowing that Luke will ignore the immorality of JJ’s actions, which the Pogues were unable to do.

It always breaks my heart how childlike this reaction is. After a fight with your friends, wouldn't you also just naturally want to go to your parents for some comfort? It's like JJ completely ignores the threat of Luke in this moment because this primal craving for love is stronger than the potential danger of the situation. God it's so heartbreaking, but this scene really reminds you that JJ is still such a kid in so many ways. He's been forced to deal with adult situations and stressors, but his emotional level hasn't really caught up in some key domains, which potentially contributes to his frequent use of these immature defenses and coping mechanisms.

And for a bit, he does get the validation and acceptance that he’s searching for, as Luke praises him and offers him a beer, which is a depressing but very in character way for Luke to express his love. But this comfort is also very quickly ripped away from JJ, which ultimately leads him to the hot tub incident (shocker, i have things to say about that scene too, but that’ll be in the next post cause this is already way too long).

If anyone read all of this, let's be besties right now i love you mwah

previous post // next post

#so this took way too long and it's not perfect BUT it's mine #pls let me know if i'm crazy and don't make any sense #god i could really talk about jj maybank for days huh #sof thinks too much about obx #obx #jj maybank #john b routledge #pope heyward #luke maybank #obx s1 #obx season 1 #outer banks

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