#and having a laugh at my abysmal formatting
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Ten Characters, Ten Fandoms, Ten Tags
Tagged by ❤️ @voidfromouterspace ❤️
Under the cut because I'm a peasant on mobile who can't format her post properly. 🥲 They're in no particular order and definitely reveal something about me lol.
Tagging @soapskneebrace @blingblong55 @reeser333 @hexqueensupreme @mischievoussealll and anyone else who feels like participating. Or don't. I'll find a way to carry on.
Solas, everyone's favorite snooty apostate elf - Dragon Age Inquisition (it was a toss up between him and Anders, but Solas/Trevelyan is such a damn hot ship that I couldn't resist.)
John Graves Simcoe - TURN: Washington's Spies
The Drifter - Destiny
Paladin Danse - Fallout 4
Miraak - Elder Scrolls Skyrim
Simon "Ghost" Riley - Call of Duty: MW2
Garrus Vakarian - Mass Effect
Grima Wormtongue - Lord of the Rings
Severus Snape - Harry Potter (Severus deserved so much better, but don't get me started on that.)
Gabriel Reyes/Reaper - Overwatch
#fandom tag game#I'm exposing myself here and i hope you're all happy#and having a laugh at my abysmal formatting
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Nowhere, MI - Story Goals
This post talks about my goals with the narrative and the themes I want to go over with Nowhere, MI. There is a major spoiler regarding the second act of the story, but it's been helpfully marked with big spoiler tags so you'll know what to skip if you want to enjoy the game blind.
Why am I writing this? I think it's fun to have little scraps left over so when a game's done you can laugh at how quaint some of the ideas were when they've been run through the wringer to the point that they can no longer be recognized. Consider this a little personal journal.
On a final note, if you do read the spoilers, recognize that what's there probably won't show up in the final game in the way I've talked about it. Nobody can predict the weather. More than a year from now the final ending could be extremely different than what you're going to read.
With that said, let's get cracking.
The main thing I want to focus on is that James' sole objective is JUST to rescue Alex. He initially does "good things" solely because they aid him in getting closer to saving his brother in order to alleviate his own guilt for having driven him away from home. I don't want the game to turn into one of those "okay I want a bottle of milk" to "now we must kill god to save the multiverse!!!" type stories because I despise that format immensely. It's an overplayed narrative arc and it sucks. "Hero from humble beginnings with basic goals having to own up to his legacy as the true hero of fate or whatever" crap. It's abysmal and plays into some kind of weird idea that every person who motivates major events in the history of a narrative is some kind of fated hero/villain who embodies some vague universal concept of good or evil. That idea doesn't really translate to real life, people's motivations are complex and typically don't just converge to "hero of destiny." Not every historically "good" action comes from a place of moral righteousness.
James is selfish. That's the main thing I want Nowhere, MI to convey. He's rescuing his brother because he was the one who drove him away, and the guilt of having done the wrong thing is what compels him to try and rescue him. He's not here to save the world or Nowhere itself, he's here to get his brother and go home because he thinks it can redeem the negligence he showed his family during their father's decline.
Concord serves as James' missing conscience. He's optimistic and upbeat, he's sensitive and empathetic, he's everything James fails to be. The reason he exists is to try and help James improve, but the point the game makes is that there isn't just a simple cure for being a bad person. An adventure in a fun and strange town doesn't fix years and years of learned behavior. James is initially so adverse to helping people who don't benefit him that he's willing to abandon Concord in the Nerve Cradle because he doesn't deem him as "useful" enough in the search for his brother. James doesn't want a talking gun so he can play hero, he just wants information towards finding his brother so that he can leave. It's only because Concord might know something about Alex that James considers taking him along.
The adventure that follows is James having to help people through their individual struggles because in return they can help him continue his search for Alex. The process of doing this is the initial breakthrough for helping James grow as a person once the adventure is over, but the adventure itself isn't where James makes a 180 and turns into a beautiful shining hero. He's still just focused on fixing what he did wrong for his own reasons.
This next part is a MAJOR spoiler for the second act of the game, so please skip it if you want to wait for the full game. You'll know when a spoiler's about to happen when you see a block of text between two [!SPOILER!] tags:
[!SPOILER!]
During the end of Act 1, James and Concord find Alex's body. He died in a freak accident while trying to find a cure for their ailing father. What's left of Alex's body is reanimated and feral, and attacks James and Concord using the surrogates Alex found during his own journey to Nowhere. Once it's defeated, bright fragments escape from the body and collect in Concord.
Suddenly, Concord regains his memories and it's revealed that Concord is actually Alex's soul trapped in a gun. The two brothers speak face to face for the first time (well, first time that Alex was whole again after running away from home) and James reveals that their father died while Alex was gone, rendering his entire "journey for the cure" futile. The two resolve that they can at least try and save Alex by finding Nox, a god of entropy who Alex believed had the ability to undo their father's illness.
The adventure does culminate in James having to kill a god of sorts, but it's not some heroic journey to save the world. Nox, who's power results in the miraculous inky rot that allows human souls to possess objects, just wants to be left alone. His powers are volatile and inherently against life itself. Despite being a god of entropy, he's extremely guilty about his past actions in the town and doesn't want to hurt anyone ever again. He's not sealed away because some council of elders dared to stop his horrible reign of terror, he sealed himself away because he's afraid of the nature of his own existence. James undoes Nox's own efforts because he's desperate to save Alex, disregarding the fact that Nox's imprisonment was probably for the best. Nox - being as courteous as he is - hears the brothers out, but declines their request because undoing Alex's transformation into a poltergeist could have unpredictable consequences. He wants the brothers to just seal him back inside the tomb and leave. While Alex is willing to accept this because he understands what's at stake, James is blinded with rage and decides to fight Nox and make him yield.
James doesn't end up killing Nox because he's a hero, James kills him because he's enraged that he's being denied what he believes he and Alex are owed. Despite all of the effort to improve, at the end of the day James is still selfish. In the aftermath when James sacrifices all of his surrogates to revive Alex as a human, Alex doesn't get to confront him about what just happened because James has fallen asleep thanks to Nox's powers draining his body of energy. The final sequence is a montage of Alex dragging James back through all of the levels to the truck, pilfering James' keys from his pocket, and driving them both home.
The point is to have enough of a character arc to feel like James is growing as a person the more he explores Nowhere, but I want to emphasize that at the end of the day, old habits die hard and that a couple days won't be enough to fix years of troubled thinking.
[!SPOILER!]
Anyhow, that's all I have to share for today. I can't predict if Nowhere will live up to the planning document I wrote, but regardless of what comes out of it, just know it comes from the heart.
Thanks for reading.
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I won't lie - queries are hard. I've joked that writing a query (and a synopsis, though that's a whole other beast) is harder than writing a book, and in a way it's true. From word counts, to comps, to formats, to hooks, queries are forbidding, prohibitive, and almost mythical in their formulation. Confusion, pressure, and - worst of all - unsolicited advice abounds. People will tell you that there is one way to write a query that will get you an agent, guaranteed. But the truth of the matter is that there is no guaranteed way to get an agent. And there's no perfect way to write a query. It's all about a little presentation, and a lot of luck.
The query that got me an agent was probably the hundredth query that I wrote. My first query was... embarrassing. I think about all the agents that read it with their own two human eyes, and I think about shriveling and dying. But I read other successful queries. I learned. And I tweaked. Learning by watching others - particularly in an industry as rife with unnecessary gatekeeping and mysticism as this one - is key. So I'm going to show you my first query for EYE OF THE OUROBOROS and the last. I won't tell you what to do and what not to do. But I will show you what worked for me. Point and laugh at my abysmal attempt to be cool, different, and a standout from the slush... and then learn from my mistakes.
First, the dreaded "oh lord, what fresh hell is this" query, complete with weird formatting and meta references:
Dear [AGENT],
FEDERAL BUREAU OF REALITY
-- CONFIDENTIAL --
Theodora Buchanan’s missing sister is the one case she can’t solve.
Since the day her sister, Flora, disappeared in the National Forest catacombed around Mill Creek, Theo has devoted her life to finding her. But her tenacity, and her proclivity for sticking her crooked nose where it doesn’t belong, has caught the attention of the Federal Bureau of Reality, who arrive on the eve of a spectacular rescue in the woods to ensure that Theo’s findings never see the light of day.
The members of the National Parks Service Search and Rescue team know better than anyone that the woods have a habit of taking people and refusing to give them back. They also know that when you find a door in the woods, you don’t go through it - for fear of never coming back through again. Theo’s obsession with these strange doors has stacked the odds against her; no matter how many lost little girls she finds in the woods, she will never be able to reconcile the fact that it’s not Flora who’s come home safe, and that it’s her fault that she’s missing in the first place. Theo cares little for men in suits looking to silence question-askers, nor for Mothman-groupies who insist that Flora was taken by little green men in the sky.
However, when she goes through an open doorway in the woods, only to find herself flung through space and time with no more than a step across a threshold, she is sure that Flora’s disappearance is something not of this world at all. Or, perhaps, not of this reality.
The Federal Bureau of Reality is always watching. And they don’t like it when doors to other worlds are opened by local drunks - certainly not doors to the Ouroboros, the stomach of the universe, and the place where all beginnings and ends intersect. Together with a ladder-climbing journalist, a fellow ranger, a conspiracy theorist, and a rogue member of the Bureau’s Requisitions Department, Theo must enter the Ouroboros and its infinite connected realities to find Flora - before the Bureau does.
The doors to other worlds are open. And Theo doesn’t plan to let them close again. Not without [REDACTED].
Eye of the Ouroboros is a 116k horror novel with thriller and sci-fi crossover potential for fans of Gillian Flynn and “The Magnus Archives”, and is comparable to The Hollow Places and Annihilation. It is a stand-alone novel with series potential.
Because of your interest in both paranormal/supernatural horror and thrillers, I think that this project would be great for your representation. You mention both on your Twitter MSWL and your actual MSWL page that you're also interested in socially claustrophobic and relationship-driven horror and thriller, and a major through-line of this project is grief and blame in both an insular small town and an oppressive family. This project also features OwnVoices LGBTQ+ representation.
Please find the first ten sample pages below. Content warnings include gore and body horror. Thank you for your consideration!
Best,
Megan Bontrager
There is... so much wrong with this query. I thought that by emulating a confidential government document - which is relevant to the book - I could stand out. But it just makes me look like I don't know the conventions of query-writing. It's also way too long for a query (not to mention the word count of the book itself; you'll notice that change in the last draft as well), and rambles on forever. Theo's motivations and desires are muddied by overwrought language, the stakes are unclear (they're literally redacted - what was I thinking?), and it's just all-around ineffective. At this point, I also hadn't fully committed to one genre. I'd hoped that the multi-genre bag could get me into more inboxes, but it didn't. Here, at least, it made me look unprepared.
Conversely, let's look at the query that I sent to my now-agent:
Dear Mr. Johnson,
When vengeful and guilt-stricken park ranger Theo Buchanan gets too close to the truth of her sister Flora’s strange disappearance, the Federal Bureau of Reality intervenes to ensure that the otherworldly answers she finds never see the light of day.
The members of the National Parks Service Search and Rescue team know better than anyone that the woods surrounding the insular town of Mill Creek, West Virginia have a habit of taking people and refusing to give them back. They also know that when you find a door in the woods, you don’t go through it - for fear of never coming back through again. But Theo's tenacity, and her proclivity for sticking her crooked nose where it doesn’t belong, has caught the attention of the Federal Bureau of Reality: those who stand sentinel at the gates of the Infinite Corridor, in which endless hostile realities converge. And when Theo steps boldly through a door in the woods and into the Infinite Corridor, she learns just how far they're willing to go in order to keep all its doors locked tight - and to silence those who stumble upon it, like Flora, permanently.
Together with her journalist ex-girlfriend, a fellow ranger, a conspiracy theorist, and a rogue member of the Bureau’s Requisitions Department, Theo must enter the Infinite Corridor and its web of connected realities to find Flora - before the Bureau does.
Eye of the Ouroboros is a 108k cosmic horror novel with science fiction crossover potential for fans of “The Magnus Archives”, and is comparable to The Fisherman and Dark Matter. This book is also what would happen if Gillian Flynn wrote “The X-Files”. It’s a stand-alone with series potential, and is a queer story written by a queer author.
I am a recent graduate of Johns Hopkins University’s Writing MA program, with a BFA in Creative Writing from the University of Central Florida. My publishing credits include short stories in literary journals and poems in university presses. Most recently, you can see my work in “Eros & Thanatos: An Anthology of Death and Desire” from Quill and Crow Publishing House.
I’m really excited to be querying you with this project, as all the interests listed on your MSWL page really align with what’s at work in this book. Because of your interest in SFF and thought-provoking horror, unconventional and found family dynamics, strong non-romantic relationships, themes of redemption, and complicated rivalries, I think that this project would be a stellar fit for your list. Also, my own real-life dog is a major character. His name is Bear, and he's the coolest. He lives, I promise!
Please find the first 25 pages attached. Thank you in advance for your consideration!
All the best,
Megan Bontrager
Sheesh! Talk about a difference! This query is so much more concise, more catchy, and more effective. I started with the kind of hook you could use in a Twitter pitch contest, and expanded from there. I made sure that the stakes were clear - from the grander stakes to the smaller interpersonal stakes - and prioritized telling the agent precisely what Theo wants. It also follows the formatting conventions that are generally accepted by agents and editors, which I'm sure was a relief to every inbox this version landed in.
There is no magical catch-all that'll guarantee you an agent or a book deal. As much as we all wish there was, there's just not. There's also no precise formula for the perfect query. But there is a way to present yourself, and your book, in the best way possible. Author Sami Ellis has a lot of great resources on her website for querying writers, and I probably would have thrown myself into the sea had I not used her cheat sheets while querying.
All in all, querying is a wild and lawless wilderness. But there are ways to see yourself to the other side. For me, it was watching and learning - and being willing to make mistakes. Compare these queries, and see where I went wrong. And then see where I went right!
As always, my inbox (and my Twitter DMs) are open for inquiries, questions, vents, and the like. Querying is lonely, but it can be less so with a good community.
Go out and be good!
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for the writers truth or dare game
🧃🐇🍄🦷🏜️🦴🪲🧩
🧃 ⇢ share some personal lore you never posted about before
I handwrote some truly abysmal Homestuck lore. I feel like I have deleted it (eg, ripped it up & burned it) out of embarrassment, but if I get jump-scared by it in futuro that might be the thing to drive me over the cliff, so to speak.
🐇 ⇢ do you prefer writing original characters, reader inserts, or a mix of both?
Usually original characters! I've dabbled at reader inserts but it's so hard not to make lore, so it ends up reading more like an unnamed narrator.
🍄 ⇢ share a head canon for one of your favourite ships or pairings
(I've only been writing for an oc lately so unless you want extremely specific details on my BG3 tav, oops! to the archives I go) I think Gawain sleeps with the green girdle he received, & he holds onto the shame he feels for having "failed" [literally only you think that my guy] because it's easier to him than admitting that he thought Bertilak was dreamy. However, I think he would eventually return to "give him [the Green Knight] a piece of his mind" (read: subtly ask for affection like a cat)
🦷 ⇢ share some personal wisdom or a life hack you swear on
You stuck? Put [an action] in those little square bitches and keep writing. Time skip to your fave parts. Get it all on the page because when you return to it eventually, you're gonna find new ways to link it all up.
🏜️ ⇢ what’s your favourite type of comment to receive on your work?
"this made me laugh out loud/giggle/sensible chortle" or "[one sentence in particular] NICE!" or "I like how you characterize" like literally cannot decide I love them all. I do not get many.
🦴 ⇢ is there a piece of media that inspires your writing?
Right now, the narration & dialogue in Howard's End is really speaking to me! Also omfg When We Lost Our Heads?! aaaa!!!! Otherwise, literally anything I'm reading/watching. TLT has sunk into my bones, sure, but a lotta Poe is also guiding my wrist.
🪲 ⇢ add 50 words to your current wip and share the paragraph here
"Apollonia didn’t hug. She felt constricted by it, much preferring the approving pat on the back and vocal praise. As such, she didn’t know what to do. If their positions were reversed, her brother would openly weep, dragging a recently healed Apollonia into his arms and pressing reassuring kisses on her temples. He would be inconsolable in his joy. She, meanwhile, felt like there was a hand around her throat: relief was so potent when it finally did arrive, it made her want to scream." [subject to editing]
🧩 ⇢ what will make you click away from a fanfiction immediately?
Characterization/fanon that I think is overdone/underripe. I can deal with weird formatting & grammar to a certain extent but if I think my blorbos are being smoothed to fit an agenda, I'm out.
Thank you so much for asking @mattressdemon !!!!
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Arkham Sessions: Captain Cold
These vignettes, and, more specifically, the characterization of Dr. Hugo Strange, are based on the wonderful Arkham Files YouTube videos produced by Mr. Rogues.
Here's his channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyxNOHiNclZlVpeRhYV2QRQ
Since I am a huge Flash nerd, I decided to use this idea as a jumping-off point to explore how the Rogues would respond to therapy sessions. Again, all credit to the basic format goes to Mr. Rogues.
Not everything Dr. Strange says should be taken as truth; his bias against costumed vigilantes affects most of his interviews with the patients.
Hugo Strange: From the patient files of Dr. Hugo Strange, director of Arkham Asylum. Patient: Leonard Snart, also known as Captain Cold. The patient displays a number of antisocial tendencies, but no formal diagnosis has ever been given to him, and since he arrived at Arkham only a few days ago, I have not had the time to give him a complete psychological examination. Session One. Good day, Mr. Snart.
Capt. Cold: Len.
Hugo Strange: Pardon?
Capt. Cold: Just call me Len, Doc. I ain’t the type to stand on formalities.
Hugo Strange: Very well, then. (Pause) So, Leonard-
Capt. Cold: Not Leonard, Len.
Hugo Strange: I take it you’re not especially fond of your given name?
Capt. Cold: Believe me, Doc, if your name was ‘Leonard Snart’, you wouldn’t be fond of it, either.
Hugo Strange: Fair enough. So, Len, what exactly influenced you to put on a parka and go running around robbing banks and jewelry stores with a freeze ray?
Capt. Cold: It ain’t a freeze ray, it’s a cold gun.
Hugo Strange: Besides semantics, what is the difference?
Capt. Cold: Mr. Freeze-you got him locked up somewhere in this loony bin, right?- has a freeze ray. It shoots ice. Me? I’ve got a cold gun. My gun negates thermal motion. Stops protons and electrons dead in their tracks. People too. Even the Flash slows to a crawl when I hit him with it.
Hugo Strange: (Surprised; a bit skeptical) Do you mean to say that you have invented a weapon that can create temperatures of absolute zero?
Capt. Cold: Yep. And I did it years before that lovesick freak got turned into a popsicle man.
Hugo Strange: Your records indicate that you dropped out of high school at the age of fourteen, Len. How could you possibly have the requisite knowledge to create such a weapon? Are you even familiar with James Prescott Joule or J.J. Thomson?
Capt. Cold: Who?
Hugo Strange: J. J. Thomson is the man who discovered the electron. James Prescott Joule is the scientist who discovered the First Law of Thermodynamics. If what you’re saying is true, you managed to exceed the wildest dreams of either of these illustrious men, without even knowing of them or their theories.
Capt. Cold: Huh. Guess I did. Well, how about that?
Hugo Strange: How could you possibly have managed this, Len?
Capt. Cold: Just ‘cause I’m trailer trash don’t mean I’m stupid, Doc.
Hugo Strange: Clearly not. So, how did you do it?
Capt. Cold: Sorry, Doc. Trade secret.
Hugo Strange: Len, we gave you a number of psychological and intelligence tests upon your admittance to Arkham Asylum, and-
Capt. Cold: (Cutting him off) About that-what’m I doin’ in this loony bin, anyhow? I ain’t crazy, and even if I were, I’m from Central City. That’s a thousand miles away from Gotham.
Hugo Strange: A few weeks ago, Iron Heights Penitentiary’s southwestern wall was destroyed in a mysterious accident. As a result, it is currently incapable of holding supercriminals, metahuman or otherwise, and you and your cohorts had to be housed somewhere. Through a series of political and judicial decisions that I confess make as little sense to me as they probably do to you, all of you so-called “Rogues” were transferred to Arkham Asylum until such time as Iron Heights is properly rebuilt.
Capt. Cold: I get havin’ to send us someplace else if Iron Heights is destroyed, but...I ain’t insane. Why not send me to Blackgate instead of the loony bin?
Hugo Strange: Many people are of the opinion that anyone who puts on a silly costume in order to commit crimes is insane by definition, Len.
Capt. Cold: That include you, Doc?
Hugo Strange: Whether or not you are insane in the legal sense of the term is not for me to decide, Len. That being said, I do believe that your decision to commit crimes in such a...theatrical...manner indicates some level of emotional disturbance.
Capt. Cold: Hey, Doc, you’re the expert on this stuff, not me.
Hugo Strange: In that case, why don’t we return to the subject of your astonishing invention?
Capt. Cold: I’m stuck in the loony bin anyway. Might as well.
Hugo Strange: Can you please refrain from describing this facility as a “loony bin”, Len? The term is pejorative, both for the staff who work here and the other patients who live here.
Capt. Cold: Pejorative? What’s that mean, Doc?
Hugo Strange: It means that it is rude. Describing the mentally ill as “lunatics” is unkind and unscientific.
Capt. Cold: Whatever you say, Doc. Whatever you say.
Hugo Strange: (Coughs) As I was saying, when you arrived at the asylum, we gave you a number of psychological and intelligence tests. While your scores in the area of mathematics were unusually high, especially for someone who never finished high school, your literacy scores were abysmal. You are thirty-eight years old, but you read at the level of the average six-year-old.
Capt. Cold: Well, we can’t all have your fancy education, Doc. What’s my reading ability got to do with my cold gun?
Hugo Strange: I find it difficult to believe that a high school dropout-a high school dropout, moreover, who can barely read-would be able to invent a gun that can produce absolute zero on his own.
Capt. Cold: Are you callin’ me a liar?
Hugo Strange: Not necessarily, Len. What I am saying is that I do not believe that the Cold Gun was created in the way that you may believe that it was.
Capt. Cold: Oh, so you ain’t callin’ me a liar-you’re callin’ me crazy.
Hugo Strange: I did not say that either, Len.
Capt. Cold: You didn’t have to, Doc. I may be a redneck high-school dropout, but I ain’t survived as long as I have by not knowin’ when people are bad-mouthin’ me.
Hugo Strange: Len, I am not bad-mouthing you. I am trying to help you.
Capt. Cold: Sure you are.
Hugo Strange: (Frustrated) Not everyone is looking to take advantage of you, Mr. Snart!
Capt. Cold: Funny. Hasn’t been my experience, Doc. (Pause) Look. I ain’t mad, Doc. If I had a buck for every time somebody called me trailer trash or a dumb thug or a stupid hick, I wouldn’t need to rob no more banks. You ain’t said nothin’ I haven’t heard a million times before. But I want you to know this: I invented my cold gun, and I did it by myself. I. Ain’t. Stupid.
Hugo Strange: (Looking to change the subject) Len, I never said that you were unintelligent. In fact, your criminal history makes it quite clear that you are an effective, pragmatic operative. An unintelligent man could never have organized the only successful costumed criminal combine in the nation. Every other group of costumed criminals has folded within a few months at most, usually due to interpersonal tensions, but you have somehow managed to keep your little group together for over a decade. What is it you call yourselves, again?
Capt. Cold: The Rogues.
Hugo Strange: That’s right. The Rogues. Now tell me, Len, what exactly is the secret to your group’s...ah...success?
Capt. Cold: (Amused) You plannin’ to start a costumed gang, Doc?
Hugo Strange: Certainly not. I am simply curious. It isn’t often that I get the opportunity to interview criminals from outside of Gotham’s borders.
Capt. Cold: It ain’t that complicated, Doc. The reason we’ve held together for so long is ‘cause we got an unspoken code. We watch one another’s backs to the end. Nobody gets left behind; everybody gets an equal share.
Hugo Strange: (Surprised) Are you implying that you are...friends...with your Rogues?
Capt. Cold: You think I’d trust people I hate to watch my back?
Hugo Strange: Admittedly, that wouldn’t make much sense...it’s just that I was under the impression that you were the leader of the group.
Capt. Cold: I am.
Hugo Strange: Most gang bosses I know keep the majority of the profits from their crimes for themselves.Why don’t you?
Capt. Cold: ‘Cause we’re a team. We do equal work; we get equal rewards.
Hugo Strange: A surprisingly admirable sentiment for a common thief.
Capt. Cold: (Proudly) There ain’t nothin’ common about me, Doc.
Hugo Strange: (Sigh) That’s certainly true, Len. (Pause) On the subject of things that are not common, why the parka and the silly goggles?
Capt. Cold: Practicality. Parka keeps me warm; goggles help focus my vision and keep me from bein’ blinded by the flare of my own cold gun.
Hugo Strange: I see. (Pause) And why call yourself “Captain Cold”? After all, you aren’t really a Captain of anything.
Capt. Cold: I’ll admit, it ain’t the most creative name in the world...but anything’s better than “Leonard Snart”.
Hugo Strange: Why not just change your name, then? Why take up a ridiculous costumed alias?
Capt. Cold: Because I’m not just an ordinary thug. Leonard Snart is ordinary; boring…..but Captain Cold? Captain Cold is cool.
Hugo Strange: Was that a...pun?
Capt. Cold: What can I say? I admit they’re dumb, but old habits die hard.
Hugo Strange: And the Flash had nothing to do with your decision to put on a costume and call yourself by a silly, alliterative name while committing crimes?
Capt. Cold: The Flash? Why would he have anything to do with it?
Hugo Strange: I was under the impression that the Flash was your arch-enemy.
Capt. Cold: (Laughs) Arch-enemy? What is this, a Saturday morning TV show?
Hugo Strange: The Central City papers make quite a big deal of your rivalry with the so-called “Scarlet Speedster”.
Capt. Cold: Look, the Flash is basically a cop. Sure, he’s a cop with superpowers, and he’s good for sharpening our wits, but at the end of the day, he’s just an obstacle to our getting the score.
Hugo Strange: Then you don’t view your battles with him as some epic confrontation between ideologies?
Capt. Cold: Why would I do that? Ideologies don’t pay the grocery bills, Doc.
Hugo Strange: And you haven’t dedicated your life to proving your superiority over him once and for all?
Capt. Cold: No. I fight the Flash for the same reasons I fight the cops: I want to get rich, and he’s standing in my way. Nothin’ more, nothin’ less.
Hugo Strange: So the Flash is nothing special to you?
Capt. Cold: I didn’t say that. Like I said, he’s good for sharpening the wits. I wouldn’t be half as successful as I am if he weren’t around to keep me and the guys on our toes, and yeah, it’d be neat to finally get the victory over him once and for all...but really, he ain’t so different from us. He’s just another guy workin’ a nine-to-five, tryin’ to provide for his family. I don’t like him-he’s a stuck-up, self-righteous prig sometimes-but he’s a good person. He’s not a superhero ‘cause he wants hero-worship. He actually wants to help people. He’s even helped me, and I make a career out of trying to freeze-dry him. You gotta respect a guy like that.
Hugo Strange: You actually see the Flash as a man?
Capt. Cold: What else would I see him as? A Martian? ‘Cause I’ve seen Martians, and I can tell you, the Flash ain’t green enough to be one.
Hugo Strange: It’s not that. It’s just that I’ve spent so much time with the patients who view Bruce Wayne, formerly the Batman, as some sort of supernatural entity or as a grand opposite in a never-ending conflict between order and chaos that it’s rather...odd to listen to a costumed criminal who claims to view their local costumed vigilante simply as a person.
Capt. Cold: Man, you have got to get out more.
Hugo Strange: (Coldly) I don’t recall requesting life advice from you, Mr. Snart.
Capt. Cold: Well, you should take it anyway. Ain’t often I give stuff away for free.
Hugo Strange: (Annoyed) This session is not about me, Mr. Snart. It’s about you.
Capt. Cold: What else do you wanna talk about? I’m not stupid, I’m not creepily obsessed with the Flash, I don’t butcher people for fun, and I don’t have any weird hang-ups about dead relatives or riddles or plants or dolls or jokes or the number two. I’m not a good guy, but I think I’m a pretty normal guy, all things considered.
Hugo Strange: Mr. Snart, no one puts on a costume without some sort of psychological disturbance. Even if the Flash was not in some way responsible for your decision-something which I am not yet fully convinced of-no rational human being would do such a thing. I just need to find out what your disturbance is. (Pause) Perhaps it began in your childhood, Mr. Snart?
Capt. Cold: (Icily) My childhood is none of your business.
Hugo Strange: I am your psychologist, Mr. Snart. That makes it my business. (Pause) Let’s see. Your file says that you were born to Lawrence Snart, a forty-year-old police officer who was kicked off the force for public drunkenness and suspected corruption, and Shirley Snart, a fifteen-year-old high school dropout. You and your family lived in a dilapidated trailer park, and your father was a known alcoholic who drank away your family’s welfare money. Five years after you came along, your younger sister, Lisa, was born...and your mother ran away, never to be seen again. The neighbors called the police because of domestic disputes between her and your father no less than thirteen times in five years, which leads me to suspect that she was spurred to leave the family because of her husband’s abuse. You were left to raise your sister, essentially on your own, at five years old, and you were effectively the head of the household from that point on. You never had a childhood, Mr. Snart.
Capt. Cold: Don’t you talk about my sister!
Hugo Strange: I take it that you’re close to her? Understandable, I suppose, given that you grew up with her in an abusive household. Your grandfather, who drove an ice cream truck, did his best to protect you and your sister from your father’s cruelty, but he was old and in poor health, and he died when you were only twelve years old. You never got over the loss, and your father’s abuse only got worse as you and your sister got older. When you turned 14, you dropped out of high school; you then worked a number of odd jobs to support yourself and your sister. However, shortly after you turned 18, you and your father got into a dreadful argument, one that ended with you running away from home and leaving your little sister alone with your father. After that, you eventually fell into a life of petty crime.
Capt. Cold: I...I had no choice. If I hadn’t left, he would’ve killed me!
Hugo Strange: I am not blaming you for choosing to run away, Mr. Snart. You were an abused child with very few options available to you.
Capt. Cold: (Quietly) I could’ve taken her with me.
Hugo Strange: And why didn’t you?
Capt. Cold: ‘Cause I was an 18-year-old dropout. Nobody was gonna give me custody of my sister...and besides, I’d started hangin’ out with dangerous people. I...I didn’t want her to get hurt.
Hugo Strange: In other words, she would have been in danger no matter what you had done.
Capt. Cold: It don’t matter! I’m her big brother! I was supposed to protect her!
Hugo Strange: (Coming to a realization) And because you weren’t able to protect her from your father as a boy, you’re trying to make up for it now by becoming this “Captain Cold”; a larger-than-life persona that can do all the things you weren’t able to do as a child. You’ve made yourself too powerful and dangerous for anyone to threaten, and you’ve made a surrogate family for yourself and your sister. That’s why the Rogues are so successful...it’s because they aren’t really a gang at all. They’re your family. Isn’t that right, Mr. Snart?
Capt. Cold: (Sarcastically) An’ I suppose the fact that my grandpa drove an ice cream truck somehow subconsciously influenced my decision to become Captain Cold?
Hugo Strange: (Aware of the sarcasm, but ignoring it) That’s perhaps a bit of a stretch, but it isn’t impossible.
Capt. Cold: I don’t believe this….
Hugo Strange: Don’t be afraid, Mr. Snart. Admitting you have a problem is difficult, but it’s also the first step on the road to recovery.
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The Price of Life Chapter Three
So I’ve sent this to be Beta’d but I’m frankly too excited to wait so happy birthday to you, tumblr. I reserve the right to make changes, such as when I discover tumblr formatting has eaten all my italics.
Anyway this was fun to write and I hope you all enjoy it.
Read on A03
----
“I'm bored.”
“Well that makes two of us,” Havoc deadpanned, scrubbing at his eyes with one hand. It was a little after three in the morning and they were situated outside Rebecca's hospital room. It was a fairly unconventional birth plan, with he and Riza taking it in turns to sit with Rebecca, ostensibly so they each could rest but realistically so they could switch out before she got too annoyed with either of them. Their five year old, Marcus, was at Mustang's for the night, but wherever Riza went her shadow was sure to follow. And her shadow happened to be twelve and mouthy.
“Did I take this long to be born?” Mae wanted to know, yawning hugely. She had, of course, been given the choice to stay home but true to form she wanted to be where the action was. Havoc loved the kid to death but he'd forgotten how abysmally obnoxious tweens could be. A while back he'd joked to Mustang that Mae was now the same age that Edward Elric has been when he'd been recruited into the military. Far from finding this funny, the General had gone white as a sheet and spent half an hour locked in his office on the phone with his head in his hands and Riza glaring daggers at Jean.
It had not been a pleasant afternoon.
“No idea,” he said. “I mean, I wasn't there. I know you also decided to show up sometime after midnight and your Aunt Rebecca was up all night waiting for you, so you definitely owe her one.”
“What about-” she began, sitting straighter in her chair, before pausing as though thinking through what she was about to say. “Was anyone else there apart from Aunt Becca?”
He grinned tiredly. “Oh I think someone else might have showed up,” he said, a hand on his chin. “What was that guy's name? Troy?”
“Ha ha.”
“I think you maybe met him once or twice. Dark-haired fellow, lots of stars on his jacket? Thinks you're cool for some reason?”
“Whatever,” she rolled her eyes. “Forget I asked.”
They were quiet for a moment under the fluorescent lights of the hallway. Havoc knew well that hospitals were places apart from time; the lights and people were unchanging. Well, mostly unchanging, he thought, as he spied Breda walking up the hall juggling three styrofoam cups.
“I told you to stay home,” Jean said, accepting the cup which turned out to be full of coffee.
“Yeah well,” Breda said with a shrug. “There was nothing good on the radio.” He handed a cup to Mae, who sniffed it suspiciously. “Black coffee's your drink, right?”
“Yeah but hot chocolate is fine too,” Mae told him, taking a sip. “Uncle Breda were you there when I was born?” Breda shook his head no, settling into a chair on her other side.
“Nah we missed the action. I got to see you a little while after though, you were all pink and tiny and cute. I wonder what happened?” Mae made a face at him, and he nudged her with an elbow playfully. She wasn’t spoiled exactly - Hawkeye would never let that happen - but she had grown up with an abundance of Uncles who were inclined to indulge her every whim until such a time as they’d been sat down by their commanding officer and ordered to desist. (Mae’s Aunt Becca flatly refused a similar order.)
Mustang, for all that he clearly loved the little girl, could be surprisingly stern when he had to, a surprising aspect of their odd arrangement that Jean found made him respect the man even more. It was easy to be a kid’s pal, to take them to the zoo and buy them gifts. It was harder to make them do their homework, or their chores, or eat their vegetables.
“Uncle Breda was almost as afraid of you as he is of dogs,” Havoc confided. “Remember when we sat you down with a pillow and made you hold her?”
“One of the more terrifying experiences of my life, and I helped stage a coup,” Haymans remarked. “You hated me, wouldn't stop screaming until Havoc here took you back. Same thing with Fuery. I think babies can smell fear or something.”
“Maybe you just took some getting used to,” Mae remarked primly, setting her cup down and stretching. The door opened and a tired-looking Riza emerged, amid what sounded like Rebecca threatening the doctor with surprising vigor and creativity for a woman who had been in labor for something like six hours already.
“You're up, Jean,” Hawkeye told him, hauling him to his feet before he had the chance to process what she meant. “I think it's finally time for the big event.” he froze, unbelieving that their long wait was about to pay off and he was about to become a father for the second time. Hawkeye saw his dazed expression and chuckled softly.
“It helps if you open the door,” Mae supplied helpfully, reaching over to pluck the coffee from his hands before he spilled it.
“Can it, squirt,” he said without any real venom, and walked past Riza into the delivery room.
Rebecca looked beautiful: even sweaty and frizzy and tired as she was, Jean didn’t think he’d ever seen someone so radiant. Of course she was also screaming a string of curses so apart from being beautiful she was also terrifying . Like a vengeful goddess or something, he mused. She caught him looking and beckoned him over with the hand not clutching one of the nurses’ arms.
“JEAN HAVOC STOP STARING AT ME AND GET OVER HERE SO I CAN BREAK ALL THE BONES IN YOUR FING-AAAGH!!”
He did as he was told, offering a hand that she clung to painfully.
“You’re doing so well,” he said in what he hoped was a soothing voice.
“I,” she panted, “am doing a FANTASTIC job.”
“That’s what I meant to say,” he told her. “Can’t be long now right?” He directed this at the doctor, though Rebecca’s ensuing yell of expletives let him know she’d taken it personally.
“All right, Rebecca,” the nurse said after a glance under the sheet that covered her. “It’s time to push.” Havoc felt himself go clammy at the thought, and he brushed a hand across Rebecca’s forehead tenderly.
“You,” he told her, “Are the best baby-haver in history. Nobody pops em out like you can. You’re crushing it.” She grinned wearily, and despite her myriad of threats he could see the genuine affection in her eyes as she squeezed his hand more gently this time.
“This kind of blind adoration is exactly why I keep you around. Now don’t you dare look away, if I have to witness this then so do you.”
It was a boy.
-x-
“Good boy, Taisa! Here, you throw it this time, Mae, you can throw further than I can.” The bushy-haired boy handed the frisbee to the dark-haired girl, who turned, aimed, and threw in one smooth motion.
Jean watched them fondly. He’d been out with Marcus, since Riza and Rebecca had a standing appointment to have lunch together on Saturday afternoons, and Becca had brought the baby. They’d gotten ice cream and were walking through the park when they’d run into Mustang and Mae, who coincidentally alsohad a standing appointment to have lunch together on Saturday afternoons. He’d just assumed she tagged along with her mom and Becca on those occasions but he had to admit it was the perfect opportunity for Mustang to have some quality time with his bodyguard’s kid. It had been Marcus to point them out first, and Havoc had looked to see the General seated on a park bench, chuckling at normally reserved Mae animatedly telling a story that seemed to involve an explosion.
Seeing them side by side really highlighted the passing of time; he remembered when Mae was seven and would play in this same park with Black Hayate, before he passed on to Good Boy Heaven. Mae and Riza had both been inconsolable, and the General had made sure that Hayate was promoted two ranks posthumously and given a proper sendoff befitting his station. Now Mae was fourteen, long-limbed and getting taller almost by the minute.
“I can't believe how big they're getting,” Havoc remarked, watching Mae and Marcus take turns throwing the frisbee for Taisa, one of the late great Black Hayate’s children.
“Do you know she came to me the other day and asked me how to get a boy in her class to notice her?” Roy said, pushing his hair off his face in an exasperated gesture while Havoc barked out a laugh.
“Oh man, I'm guessing you weren't ready for that kind of a talk, huh boss?”
“Yeah, no shit.”
“So what did you tell her?” Now he thought about it, Jean realized that even in his capacity as favorite uncle (or so he liked to believe) he wasn't ready for Mae to start dating either. She’d always been the bookish type, on the quiet side with people she didn’t know well. He had just assumed they wouldn’t have to worry about boys for years yet. Mustang shrugged.
“I was so surprised I just told her to be herself and that any boy who didn't notice her wasn't worth her time.”
“Well that seems like solid advice to me,” Jean told him. A little boring, but he doubted he’d have been able to come up with anything better when put on the spot like that.
“I'm glad you think so; Mae rolled her eyes and said never mind, she'd just go look through Aunt Becca's magazines for actual advice and thanks for nothing,” Roy said bitterly, though he was clearly amused.
Now that he thought about it, Havoc could recall a day last week when Mae had come over and talked to her aunt in hushed tones. At a certain point there had been a peal of laughter and his wife crowing that finally a Hawkeye wanted to look through trashy periodicals with her. He had avoided the kitchen after that and so didn’t hear anything else.
“Ouch. Did you tell Hawkeye?” Roy looked at him in surprise.
“Well no, Mae asked me not to.”
“So you're more afraid of the wrath of a teenage girl than the wrath of Riza Hawkeye, your trusted adjutant and infamous sharpshooter,” he said flatly. “Interesting perspective.”
“It's not like that. If I want Mae to continue trusting me, I need to prove myself worthy of that trust. She should be able to come to me with questions, or things she might not want to talk to her mother about. The Captain understands this.” Of course , Havoc thought. As usual, he was three steps and a nonverbal conversation behind Mustang and Hawkeye. They would have talked about this, probably years ago – probably before Mae herself was even able to talk. They were as much of one mind about Mae's upbringing as they were about anything else.
“Sounds like solid reasoning to me.”
“Besides, if I told Hawkeye there was a boy at school not giving her daughter the time of day you know she’d find a way to show up and ‘accidentally’ let slip how many guns she keeps on her person,” he said cheerfully and Havoc had to admit that he was probably not all that far from the truth.
-x-
The office was filled with the sound of last minute paperwork being gathered up, and Mae's soft begging at the General's desk. It was almost quitting time on a Friday and Hawkeye was delivering some documents while her daughter did her best to cajole her mother's senior officer.
“Please, please please please,
“I can't sign this; I'm not your legal guardian,” Mustang deadpanned, glancing at the final paper she had placed on his desk.
“But you're practically the most important man in Amestris, after the Fuhrer,” Mae reasoned, trying to hand him a pen as he crossed his arms over his chest and raised an eyebrow at her.
“Go try this on him, then: you'll probably have better luck.” Mae rolled her eyes at the suggestion.
“He'll make me play him for it and I can never beat him.”
“Well, I can't help you either. Have you even asked your mother?” the General asked with a shrug.
“You know she'll never say yes, she always changes the subject when I ask about alchemy. It's just a short term course and I'm doing really well in school this year,” she explained. “I thought you'd understand.” This child of the military really was getting to be a master manipulator, Havoc thought, watching as she batted large amber eyes at Mustang. Sure she lacked subtlety but she knew how to play Roy like a fiddle. She could ask for the moon and he'd find a way to bring it down for her.
“Look Mae,” he said slowly, as though choosing his words carefully, “I know you might think that alchemy is a glamorous profession, but it's not easy. It's a lot of hard work. Most alchemists aren't up to the task of working for the state and there's not much money without government funding.” This was, apparently, the wrong thing to say. Mae's eyes flashed and she squared her shoulders.
“I know I'm not some kind of prodigy like you or Uncle Ed but I don't want to do anything flashy. I want to go to Xing and study with Uncle Al and Aunt May,” she explained. “I've been reading through some of your books and medical alchemy is really cool.”
“When the hell did you read any of my books?” he demanded, and she shrugged, looking slightly guilty.
“Sometimes I borrow them. I always bring them back though. I've been looking through them for years, and I've done a few transmutations. Little ones,” she admitted. Mustang leaned his chin on his hand lazily, regarding Mae as he might look at a fascinating equation.
“Have you? That's actually pretty advanced, you know.”
She blinked, obviously not expecting praise. “Really?”
“You must have an aptitude for it.”
“I know,” she looked around before lowering her voice. “I know mom's father was an alchemist. I think that's maybe why she doesn't want me learning it.”
“Could be,” he said in his most bland, I-know-nothing-whatsoever-about-this-matter voice.
“But I thought you might understand why... why I'm so interested in it.”
“I can't sign the permission slip for you,” he repeated. “Do you know what would happen to me if your mom found out? Terrible things, unspeakable things. Remember the time I got you roller skates before she thought you were ready?” Havoc winced – he was sure none of them would ever forget the roller skate incident.
“Will you – will you talk to her then?”
“And what makes you think that would help?” Mae rolled her eyes.
“She listens to you, Sir. She might not act like it but you should hear her sometimes, it's all “General this” and “General that”, I think she really respects your opinion.” Flattery would get her everywhere, it seemed, as Mustang sat up straighter and ran a hand through his hair, as the Captain reentered the room.
“Follow my lead,” he muttered, and she nodded. “Evening Major, what do you have planned on this beautiful Friday night?” Riza lifted an eyebrow at his flowery tone, a smile playing around her mouth.
“Well it’s Mae’s turn to cook, so I thought I might do some reading,” she answered lightly.
“Oh that's unfortunate, you see I was planning on sweeping her off her feet for a night on the town. Since you seem to be delighted by the prospect of not cooking I suppose you could join us, if that's all right with you of course madam,” this was directed at Mae, who pretended to consider. Havoc started slowly gathering his things, interested to see how this would play out.
“I guess she can come, if she promises not to talk too much.”
“Yes of course, leave those chatterbox tendencies at home and we've got a deal,” Roy said, gazing at Riza evenly over his hands, steepled before him on the desk.
“I think I can agree to that,” Riza said, with another of her barely perceivable smiles that nonetheless seemed to light up her whole face.
“Great,” the General said. “It's a date.”
“Oh shoot!” Mae exclaimed, snatching up her school book - without the form, which she swept into the General's lap seemingly by accident. “I forgot I told Aunt Rebecca I would babysit for her tonight! Oh how terrible, I suppose you'll have to just go without me.” Jean thought that should he want to, he could have knocked Roy over with a feather, while Riza just gave her daughter a small wave, face almost suspiciously bland.
“Well if you promised. We'll miss you though.”
“You'll manage. By mom, bye Sir,” Mae chirped, turning to fall into step with Havoc, who had paused after donning his jacket.
“You realize we're not actually going anywhere,” he said quietly as she took one of his massive binders filled with cases he needed to review before Monday without being asked.
“Keep walking, Uncle Havoc,” she hissed.
“What's in it for me?”
“Free babysitting for a month.”
“Two.”
“One and I'll throw in an overnight trip.”
“Deal,” he said. They'd been wanting to take a weekend off to see Falman in Briggs for a while. “And well played,” he added with a nod.
“Thank you, I learn from the best. What's for dinner?” Hardened con artist and all, she was still a teenager who was somehow constantly hungry. He reached out and ruffled her shoulder length black hair and she responded by ducking away from him and smoothing it back down with a motion that he’d seen his superior officer make a million times.
-x-
BANG BANG BANG
Havoc almost jumped out of his seat at the knocking at the door. It was sometime after eight and dark outside. He picked up his sidearm off the mantle and inched towards the door carefully, before snatching the handle and wrenching it open. Springing back, he brought the gun up and then back down almost as quickly when he saw who it was. Mae Hawkeye, face red and wet with tears, was standing on his doorstep with wide eyes on his gun.
“You scared me,” he explained, dropping his weapon and clicking the safety back on. “What's up, kiddo? Everything ok?” Everything was clearly not okay but everything he knew about teenagers and this teenager in particularly told him to tread lightly. She looked like a frightened animal, and he kept his distance lest she bolt.
“Hey,” she sniffed, looking around him into the empty living room. “Is Aunt Rebecca here?” Great, he thought, girl stuff. Perfect. This was much better than the quiet hour alone with a book and a scotch he'd been anticipating. He poured the scotch anyway, thinking he'd need it.
“She took the boys for ice cream,” he said. “Can, uh, can I make you some tea?” Mae swept by him, dropping a suspiciously large bag on the floor near the coat rack with a thunk . Sounded like a couple changes of clothes and about five books, he estimated. This was serious.
“Sure,” she said, sinking into one of the armchairs and putting her head in her hands. Jean closed the door and headed to the kitchen to switch the kettle on, and by the time he came back she was sitting upright, having dried her face and smoothed her hair back. She looked young, and she was wearing an expression he knew all too well.
“You wanna talk about it?” he asked, and she gave him a withering stare that was ironically all Hawkeye, considering what she was probably mad about.
“I can't,” she said in a long-suffering tone. “I mean, I just, I had a fight with mom and I needed to get out.”
“Right,” he said, leaning back and taking a sip of scotch. “Let me guess, girl stuff?” Mae snorted.
“You couldn't even begin to imagine.”
“Right, of course not,” he said, rubbing the bridge of his nose in exasperation. When did she get so needlessly dramatic? She certainly didn't get that particular trait from her mother.
She sat on the edge of the couch, arms tightly crossed. He sat next to her and playfully bumped her elbow with one of his.
“Hey come on, you guys usually get along great. Whatever you were fighting about can’t have been that bad.”
“Oh yes it can,” Mae hissed.
“Did she return a book to the library you weren’t finished with yet?” He asked, recalling the source of a previous rift. Mae had a habit of not using bookmarks, claiming to always remember her page, and Riza had a habit of fastidiously following rules, such as the rule that library books could only be borrowed for a fortnight at a time. It was surprising the mistake didn’t happen more often, when you thought about it.
“She’s a liar,” Mae said softly and Havoc blinked at this. Riza Hawkeye was honest to the point of (always tactful) bluntness at times. Sure she could keep a secret when she had to but usually only … when she had to…
He kept his expression carefully neutral.
“It’s not my business,” he told her, hoping this would discourage her from fully revealing the cause of their argument, “But if you caught her in a fib it was probably for good reason.”
“It wasn’t a fib, she’s been lying to me since I was born,” Mae spat bitterly. “And I gave her the chance to finally come clean but she just kept up the lie, like I’m stupid —“
“No one could ever accuse you of being stupid,” he told her. And it was true, she had taken to her alchemy lessons like a fish to water. At fifteen she was at the top of her class and rapidly outpacing the curriculum available. He’d once heard Mustang quietly say to Hawkeye that he’d been looking into finding a private tutor in Central, but he had been immediately shut down by one of her withering stares that seemed to speak volumes to Roy. Havoc couldn’t see why - the girl was a natural, let her do the thing she was clearly great at. “You know how protective your mom can be. Maybe this lie, that I have no knowledge of and is not my business, was for your own good when you were younger. She doesn’t realize how fast you’ve grown up.”
“She still should tell me the truth.”
“You know, your mom’s a person too,” he told her gently, well aware that he was divulging one of the biggest secrets of parentkind. “Have you considered that maybe, uh, whatever it is, is a sensitive topic for her too? It’s probably not a fun secret to keep. I bet you she wishes she doesn’t have to.”
Mae scrubbed the back of her hand across her eyes.
“Thank you, Uncle Havoc. I’m gonna go wash my face.” She headed off down the hall and he breathed a sigh of relief, glad that playing dumb had worked. He reached for his scotch and took a long drink.
Another knock, and Havoc set down his glass in annoyance, before opening the door. It was Riza, of course, looking world-weary and almost like she'd been crying. Jean had known Riza for, geez, at least twenty years now. He didn't think he'd ever seen her cry.
“Hey. Is my daughter here?”
Wordlessly, Havoc opened the door and she walked past him, setting her purse on the coffee table heavily. The tea kettle started to sing in the kitchen and he hastened to take if off the heat, bringing Riza a cup of chamomile without asking.
“Just wait until yours are teenagers,” she said wryly, accepting the mug from him.
“Well when they are, and they run out during an argument, I'll know to go look for them at your place,” he said, and found that despite his joking tone he meant it. This earned him a sad little smile.
“It'll be nice to be the fun aunt for once,” she said softly. “People always say parenting is hard, but no one ever tells you it can be so heartbreaking.” She shook her head slowly. “I didn't mean that. Not exactly.”
“I know what you mean,” Havoc assured her. He hated having arguments with his kids, even if it was just little stuff right now, like whether or not one should jump on the bed. Mae hadn't come out with it, but he could guess what they'd been fighting about.
“I'm the one who ran out,” she confessed. Havoc inched closer to the couch and put what he hoped was a comforting hand on her shoulder. “Not now, but this morning. I was going in to work early and she kept asking me about – well it doesn't matter what. I owe her an answer but I brushed her off.”
“Whatever it is, I'm sure it's ...complicated,” Jean said delicately. Her hand came up briefly to rest on his.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Mom?” came a small voice from the hallway. It was of course Mae, face freshly scrubbed, looking remorseful, yet with a familiar glint of determination in her eyes. “Let's go home,” she said. Riza took a deep breath, and stood up.
“Good idea.”
He’d thought about using Rebecca as a go between to find out the result of this argument, but in the end decided against it. As he’d told Mae, it really wasn’t his business, even though he was desperately curious to find out whether she’d been told of her true parentage. But as it happened, there was no espionage necessary; Hawkeye approached him the next day while he was making coffee in the office.
“Thank you,” she said quietly. “For whatever you said to Mae about me.”
“Oh, it was nothing,” he said. “I just ah, told her that whatever it was, the situation isn’t ideal for you either.”
“She said that whenever I was ready to … discuss the subject we were arguing over, she would like to hear it.” Riza shrugged. “Sometimes being a parent is a wretch, but then they do something mature and it was all worth it.”
“She’s a great kid,” Jean told Riza solemnly. “You did a good job there.” She smiled a little sadly and he thought he saw her eyes flick to the front of the room, just for a second.
“Oh, you know,” she said softly. “It takes a village.”
-x-
With Grumman retiring and General Mustang moving into his old office, their team was all but disbanded. It meant promotions and pay raises all around, of course, and Havoc was pleased to finally be given his own unit, but this last afternoon lazily packing up the office was bittersweet. He, Breda, and Fuery lingered, chatting and arguing over pens, while Roy finished some paperwork. Colonel Hawkeye had been conspicuously absent, a fact none of them had mentioned due to the stormclouds that had immediately gathered over the Flame Alchemist’s head when one of the subordinates had asked.
The door flew open, and sixteen-year-old Mae stormed in and directly up to the large desk, the spitting image of her mother in a rage. Roy looked up, did a double take, and sighed.
“Oh hell,” he began. “Mae-”
“Don’t you even-” she spat, crossing her arms over her chest. “You fired my mother - how could you possibly-”
Jean exchanged panicked glances with Breda and Fuery. This was a situation he could never have foreseen - even in his paperwork-induced stress dreams he was the one being fired, never Hawkeye. He couldn’t say he really blamed Mae for being upset; he personally was going to be having a word with his superior officer the moment the kid left, insubordination be damned. Fire Hawkeye? Had the General lost his mind, he wouldn’t last two weeks without her watching his back! Mustang was massaging his temples as though he felt a headache coming on.
“She shouldn’t be telling you that kind of thing,” he muttered, which was of course the wrong thing to say.
“She didn’t tell me anything, I know what termination paperwork is, and I know your signature!”
Havoc found himself in the unique position of both wanting to stay and see the pending Fuhrer of Amestris be torn a new one by a teenaged girl and simultaneously wanting to be nowhere near the impending firestorm that was undoubtedly going to take place. From Fuery and Breda’s shell-shocked expressions they were also frozen to where they stood.
“You know believe it or not I do have my reasons,” the General said, voice quiet. “And I am planning to enlighten you, despite the fact that I do not have to, but this is neither the time nor the place.”
“Oh save it,” Mae snapped, though the shaking in her voice told Jean that she was close to tears. He had no idea how Roy was still staring at her levelly; he would have crumbled if she’d used that tone on him. “You’re just a snake - all this time you’ve been pretending to care about us but now you’re getting promoted you’re suddenly too good-”
Behind the desk, Mustang’s eyes narrowed dangerously.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, young lady,” he said carefully.
“Well then tell me!” She demanded, fists clenched at her side. None of them had ever seen her this upset with Roy before, and Havoc suddenly recalled Mustang, holding a baby while Edward Elric angrily asked him what Mae would think of him when she was older. He had never given it a second thought, assuming that Mae’s affection for the General meant that she didn’t harbor any resentment.
The tears in her eyes told him he’d been wrong.
From across the room Havoc noticed a few MPs peering into the office, looking for the source of the yelling, and he locked eyes with Fuery, who casually picked up one of his boxes and headed for the door, closing it behind him. Neither of the two at the desk seemed to notice.
“Look,” he said, changing tacks, “I’m almost done here, go wait outside and I’ll-”
“You can’t tell me what to do,” Mae hissed, “You’re not my father, remember?” The dam broke. She dropped her head into her hands, shoulders shaking with sobs. Roy reached out in what seemed to be an automatic gesture, pulling her into a hug, rubbing small circles into her back while she cried on his epaulets. When she finally pulled away, sniffling, he handed her a handkerchief and regarded her seriously.
“There’s a set of rules the military has in place,” he began, and Havoc and Breda were suddenly both very busy placing stacks of documents and books into the boxes, “that forbids romantic relationships between officers.”
“Oh,” was all Mae said.
“If evidence of fraternization is discovered, then depending on the rank of the officers involved and the seriousness of the infraction, then at the very least those officers don’t remain stationed in the same city. At worst they could be court-martialed.”
“I didn’t think-“
“I meant to discuss this with you,” he told her, rifling around in his desk. “Clearly I didn’t think you would find out when you did.” Whatever he’d pulled out of his desk elicited a gasp from Mae, and her whole demeanor suddenly shifted. Havoc was too busy minding his own business to catch a glimpse of the object, but he had a guess at what it could be, and why it meant Hawkeye couldn’t continue to work in the military.
“You know most people would start by asking someone on a date first,” Mae told him shakily. “How do you even know if she likes you?” she teased. Mustang had the grace to keep his expression neutral.
“I think she does. I could be wrong.”
Mae had taken the small box and was turning it over in her hands. “She’s pretty upset right now. Even if she didn’t tell me why, I could tell she was mad.”
“I jumped the gun,” he explained. “I was supposed to wait until after the inauguration. She’ll forgive me though. Will you?” Havoc fought the strong urge to run out of the large office, but he couldn’t bring himself to move, or do anything else to break the spell of the moment. He just continued to crouch, rifling aimlessly through the open drawer of his desk. Roy was clearly not asking for forgiveness for what had happened today and Mae, ever the clever one, could tell. It was a tense few moments before she leaned forward and wrapped her arms around his shoulders, choking back a sob.
“Of course,” she murmured, and pulled away with a grin. “You know if mom says yes then you’ll be my stepfather.”
There’s a long moment where Havoc realized he’d somehow gotten dust in his eye and it was wildly uncomfortable.
“No,” Roy said, considering. “I’ll be your dad.”
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Tony Stark’s Guide to Being a Functional Adult
Step 2: Learn Basic Adulting (AO3)
Dinner that evening was a slightly awkward affair; Bucky was clearly self-conscious about having a virtual stranger in his home and Tony was too tired to turn on the charm like he normally would. They had ordered cheap Chinese takeout that Bucky must be enjoying, judging from the way he was steadily emptying his carton of General Tso’s, but Tony mostly picked at his and wondered if it was possible to develop atherosclerosis from a single meal.
“So are you going to get the rest of your stuff tomorrow?” Bucky asked as he got up to pour himself another glass of water.
Tony toyed with his chopsticks and stared down at the glutinous mass on his plate. “That is all my stuff. My dad kicked me out of the house and that was everything I had on me when I left.”
“Oh, shit, I’m sorry.” Bucky’s face creased with sympathy. “You know, if you need to pick up some stuff I can take you to the store.”
Tony sighed and rubbed his eyes. “I can go myself, if you just tell me where it is.”
“It’s not a big deal, I need to pick up some stuff too. We can go tomorrow.” Bucky pushed back from the table and started cleaning up, tossing his empty food carton in the trash and putting his silverware and glass in the sink. “I figure we’ll trade off doing dishes?” Bucky said over his shoulder as he grabbed a towel from his room and headed to the bathroom.
“Sounds fair,” Tony called back. He put his almost untouched Chinese food away and eyed the pile of dishes in the sink like it was a nest of snakes. But there was a sponge behind the faucet and one of the bottles below the sink identified itself as dishwashing liquid, so he was almost done when Bucky got out of the shower.
“Oh, you washed them all by hand,” Bucky said in surprise, toweling his hair dry, his t-shirt and sweatpants clinging to his damp skin in a way that almost had Tony dropping the slippery glass in his hand. “You could have put them in the dishwasher.”
“Oh,” Tony said, looking back down at the soapy sink, face getting hot. “I, um, didn’t see it there. I’m almost done anyway.”
As Bucky shrugged and turned away, Tony glared at the dishwasher and quickly finished scrubbing the plates.
(More after the break!)
After an abysmal night’s sleep getting used to the night sounds in an alien part of the city, Tony made himself a bowl of cereal and then spent a solid fifteen minutes staring at the blinking cursor on his screen, struggling with indecision. He’d googled the proper format for a resume but got stumped at the very first step – having his name on the top of the document. The word “Stark” marched black and ominous across the top and revealed the gaping hole in Tony’s plan: who in their right mind was going to hire him? Who would believe that a Stark was genuinely interested in working a wage job, and then could be trusted to keep quiet about it when any tabloid would pay good money for the hot tip that Tony Stark was punching a time clock? He couldn’t lie, like he had to Bucky, because he didn’t have a fake ID nor the vaguest idea of how to get one. “Shit,” he said, raking his hands through his hair as he thought furiously. He didn’t even know how to go about finding a job under the table; do you just go around to businesses and ask?
Eventually he closed the resume document – “No, don’t bother saving it,” he muttered resentfully, closing the dialogue box on his screen – and sent an email to his old professors, asking if they knew of any paid positions that were accepting students, carefully phrasing it so it looked like he just needed work experience instead of money. One guy got back to him immediately, but his response was not encouraging. “Paid positions are usually limited to students with financial need,” Tony read. “Well, shit.” He thought about writing back and explaining that he was one of those students, but again, the prospect of reading about his family drama on the New York Daily News stopped him. With another curse of frustration he closed his laptop and set it on the floor, then rolled over to bury his face in his pillow. How do people do this?
There was a knock on the door and then Bucky said “Tony? Are you ready to go to the store?”
Tony sighed and sat up. “Sure, hold on a second.”
The drive was short but Tony spent most of it frowning to himself as he watched Bucky navigate the car’s controls one-handed. Doing almost anything, like hitting the turn signal or putting down a window, involved holding the steering wheel still with a knee and awkwardly reaching over; Tony imagined he didn’t listen to the radio very often because changing the channel would be a hell of a hassle. But it wouldn’t be that difficult to move the important things to the right side of the steering column where Bucky could reach them, Tony mused. If he could wire the controls for the radio and windows straight into the steering wheel that would be best, but you would need to-
“Alright, we’re here,” Bucky announced, putting the car in park and interrupting Tony’s thoughts.
“Dollar Tree?” Tony read the store’s sign as he climbed out of the car. “What is this place?”
“It’s like a Dollar General but cheaper.” At Tony’s still baffled look, he said, “You’ve never heard of Dollar General? What about Walmart?”
“Oh, yeah, Walmart,” Tony echoed, making a conscious effort to smooth the look of confusion from his face. He obediently followed Bucky around the store with a shopping cart, wincing at the squeaky wheel that announced his progress through the store and using his best poker face to keep from wrinkling his nose at the musty smell and the crowded, overflowing shelves. When they came up to the register Tony handed over his credit card and prayed that his father hadn’t gotten around to cancelling it yet, because the cash he had in his pocket wouldn’t cover it and they still had to go get groceries.
“You seem like you’ve had some experience with this,” Tony commented as they loaded all of his newly acquired stuff in the trunk. Bucky had been the one to take the lead, letting Tony push the cart around while he threw stuff into the basket, stuff Tony hadn’t even thought of needing like socks and underwear and spare toothbrushes. His matter-of-fact attitude about the entire trip had gone a long way to making Tony feel better about not knowing what the hell he was doing.
Bucky snorted. “People like to think it’s all kumbaya out there for gay kids since gay marriage was legalized, but I know plenty of people that got kicked out of their homes for being gay or trans. So yeah, I’ve done this a time or two.”
Tony couldn’t help but wonder if maybe that was part of his dad’s problem with him going back to school, like maybe Howard thought that if Tony came home to work at SI he would settle down into respectable heterosexuality with some high society debutante. “Did it happen to you?” He blurted as they got into the car.
“No, my parents were really cool about it when I came out,” Bucky answered, apparently not bothered by the fact that Tony had pretty much just asked him if he were gay. “Where to now? Grocery store?”
“Yes please.” As Bucky cranked the car, Tony took a deep breath and said, “By the way, I’m bi.”
Bucky flashed him a grin as he turned around in his seat to back up the car. “Nice to meet you, Bi. I’m Bucky.”
“Oh, God,” Tony groaned with a short laugh. “Is that what your parents said to you when you came out?”
“Kind of. When I told my mom I was gay she said, ‘Nice to meet you, Mr. Gay, you look an awful lot like my son Bucky.’”
“Yeah, my parents did not have that reaction,” Tony said with a grimace. His mom had looked confused and cried a little and his dad had locked himself in the office for the rest of the evening, and then they had never really talked about it again. The one time Tony had brought a guy over for dinner his father left on a ‘sudden’ business trip that ended up lasting the whole weekend; Tony had gotten the message after that.
“I’m sorry,” Bucky said.
Tony shrugged and looked out the window to avoid the sympathy in Bucky’s eyes. “Not the first time I’ve disappointed my family,” Tony said lightly, flashing a smile he didn’t feel, “and definitely not the last, I’m sure.”
That night Bucky showed Tony how to cook frozen pizza because it had been on sale at the grocery store. Tony was chewing dismally through what tasted like damp cardboard when Bucky came up the stairs from the shop. “Tony? You’ve got a visitor,” he said as he opened the door, and Tony put down the pizza and wiped his fingers on his pants nervously as he stood.
“Oh, Jarvis!” He said in relief. “I didn’t know you were coming. Let me help you.” Jarvis’s hands were full so he took the boxes and bags from him, hurriedly cleaning his cheap thin-crust pizza from the table for him to sit. Jarvis accepted the seat with an almost silent sigh, rubbing his knee a little after the climb up the stairs.
“Would you like something to drink?” Bucky offered from the kitchen, discreetly trying to straighten up the small apartment for their unexpected guest.
“No, thank you, I shan’t be long,” Jarvis offered with a polite smile. “I was just bringing some things for Tony as a housewarming present.”
“Like what?” Tony asked curiously, and started digging through the bags. “Oh my God, you brought me food,” he said with reverence, opening the lid to one of the storage containers and wanting to cry from the smells inside.
“Your mother also sent along some things,” Jarvis said, handing him a small box that was undeniably his mom’s, Tiffany blue and edged in silver.
“Oh.” Tony started to open it and hesitated, then closed the lid. “Thank you.”
“How are you doing?” Jarvis’s hands crossed and he leaned over the table, the lines around his eyes creased with worry. “Howard is being stubborn and pretending that nothing has changed, but the rest of us are worrying.”
“I’m fine,” Tony said, trying to sound fine and not like he was terrified or homesick or lonely. “I like it here. It will be close to my degree program when class starts in the fall.”
“Good. You’ve already sent in your application?”
“It’s not due until February, but I’m not worried.” Kind of a lie. He was a bit worried, but it kind of seemed that a bit worried was just his life now, so what’s one more thing.
Jarvis smiled. “No, I imagine not.” He patted Tony on the shoulder, his knuckles swollen with arthritis. “I can’t stay long, I have dinner plans with Ana, but I did want to say that I’m proud of you for not letting Howard bully you.”
“Thanks, Jarvis. Say hello to Ana for me.” Tony walked Jarvis back to his car and watched him drive away, taking a moment to feel sorry for himself before he headed back up the stairs. He missed Ana and Jarvis with a physical ache; they had been the ones to make the Stark house a home, and he wanted to have that back so badly it hurt. Eventually though, he forced himself to go back up the stairs and help Bucky put the food in the fridge. “Have you eaten?” He asked, cracking the lid on one of the glass dishes. “Want some of this homemade lasagna?”
“You had me at homemade,” Bucky said with a crooked smile and turned to pull a couple of plates out of the cabinets. “Who was that? An uncle? He seemed nice.”
“Old family friend, though I did call him uncle when I was younger. Kind of like Aunt Peggy, but Jarvis is more like a dad than anything else. Better than my real one, most days,” he muttered under his breath, making a face as he put a slice of lasagna on each plate to reheat. “So how was your day?”
After dinner and dishes, Tony debated opening the box from his mother, chewing on his thumb as he studied it. After a moment, though, he put it in the bottom of the closet, not really emotionally ready for whatever was inside; probably some sort of emotional blackmail, like heartfelt letters from his dad when he was young or something. Instead he pulled his laptop out and tried to relax by reviewing his application to the Tanden School, which required a thesis project proposal along with the usual essay. Until recently, he’d been reviewing some of his father’s old scrapped designs with the idea that it would endear the old man to the idea of another doctorate, for all the good that’d done. He’d been particularly excited to work on the arc reactor, hoping to make it more efficient and preferably smaller, but now just looking at the blueprints were making him angry all over again.
With a sigh he set his computer on the floor next to the bed and fell back against the pillows. Out in the living room he could hear Bucky watching a movie and wondered if he’d be imposing if he went out to join him. To be honest, though, he wasn’t sure that he felt like the company anyway, so he rolled over and eventually fell asleep.
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Welcome to the year 2020. Do you want the bad news or the good news first?
March 21st, 2020
First post. I’ve been wanting to write down everything I’ve been feeling and seeing and thinking. Finally getting around to it. It has to be good for something.
I’m going to format my posts with a health update, society update(global, national, and local) and journal my thoughts and feelings.
To catch you up, this is the worst year we’ve had as a planet in a long time. Australia caught on fire for a few months, but they finally put it out, thankfully. A war almost started somewhere. I forget with who. But that has all been dwarfed in recent weeks.
A strange respiratory flu virus usually contained to animals somehow transferred to humans in Wuhan, China. It’s a type of Coronavirus. It is a flu at least 4x more deadly than the seasonal flu. It lies undetected in contagious individuals for up to two weeks, possibly longer. It doesn’t even show symptoms for a vast majority of carriers. But for those it does infect and who do show symptoms(10-30% of the population), 20% need hospitalization, and 4-7% die from it. So if the world is 7.5 billion people, up to 90 million people could die from it if not properly contained. These are wild numbers but some countries are not, in fact, containing responsibly.
China went into lockdown, built emergency hospitals overnight, and probably suppressed their data so no one knew how bad it really was. So the rest of the world didn’t quarantine anyone coming in from China.
Some countries did, like Guatemala and Tasmania.
For the rest...Big mistake. It hit South Korea first, then Japan. The diamond princess was a cruise ship off the coast of Japan that had been quarantined poorly for a month. Tons of people got it there. But japan and South Korea took it seriously overall, and they have avoided a huge outbreak.
It hit Iran and Italy very badly too. Citizens of Iran just aren’t self quarantining to prevent the spread. Last I heard, one person every three minutes was being diagnosed with it there. Italy, sadly, didn’t, and still isn’t, taking it seriously either. They didn’t shut down their borders until much later. Their sick and dead in the northern region have overwhelmed the medical system. Thousands are dying. They’re dying in hospital hallways. Alone. Doctors and Nurses are dying from it. Five so far. Most of the medical staff in hospitals seem to get it and work through it to help the rest of us.
The worst responses so far out of the wealthiest countries have for sure been The United States and The United Kingdom.
I can’t do much to comment on the UK, as reports from the US are much worse and local, so I see them more. But I do know people are only working if their bosses make them, so some are forced to, and risk exposure or spread in public. I also know the UK has offered to pay citizens 80% of their missed wages. That’s good.
What’s not good is the US’ response. A joke. Our abysmal president downplayed it for months. He even called it a lie. His constituents hushed the drama so they could sell stock before the market crashed. He defunded the pandemic response and preparedness team and ignored their warnings last years. So far, no real lockdown from the government either. Certain states have called for non essential business to close down. Luckily I live in one and luckily my employer has complied. I’m so thankful.
Tons of businesses are unable to stay afloat. Millions of Americans have already lost their jobs. We are in a recession. We will enter a depression.
Another issue for our country is the complete lack of preparedness, funding, and supplies. We have so few test kits that some places like LA have given up on testing. We went from 1 case to 200 to “not going to count anymore” in less than a week. The beds we have to support people stricken by this disease are far too few. Not enough gloves, ventilators, masks, or healthcare professionals. We’ll get to Italy’s state soon.
I don’t want to be involved. I’ve been self containing as much as possible for weeks. Now I’m in total lockdown at my family home. The government is saying 14 days of quarantine. Most of us know it’ll be 2-3 months.
What will happen to our society though? How will the unfortunate (read: 90% of Americans) be able to survive without income? Can and will my republican government support them with food banks and soup kitchens? I fear not, as we have an emotionally and logically inept president. He is no leader, he’s hardly even human. He’s evil, which I’ll define as cruel, abusive, and totally lacking of empathy.
I once read The Secret Life of Bees. One character ha something wrong with her, where she feels all the negativity from the world so can’t watch the news or it breaks her. I relate to that. Far too empathetic for my own good. I’m feeling emotionally broken lately. I fear for social unrest. I fear for violence. I fear for suffering. For others mostly. Myself, yes. But really, for us all. I’m aware of how powerful that much evil is and worried about what’s to come.
I’m currently sick with god knows what. Possibly it. I went to the hospital once after fever and vomiting and chest pain but they laughed in my face. Gave me tamiflu and sent me on my way. I got it again two weeks later. The cough never left. My chest hurts. But I’m lucky and can medicate at home. This may be the year that I die. Who knows with this wild disease. But I’m not going to stop living.
Ok, that’s enough Debbie downer content. Next post: the positivity of it all.
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Breathe
Formatting is working with me today, so here it is! As requested by @thedesignateddriver, whose prompt was “breathe.” Also available on AO3.
Breathe, she told herself. Just breathe.
In theory, it should have been easy. After all, she had been doing it since the day she was born. Breathing wasn’t the type of thing one typically needed to be reminded to do.
Today, however, she found herself focused on the simple act of taking air in and pushing it back out. Perhaps it was excitement, or nerves, or the simple fact that Sansa had laced her dress so tightly that Arya thought her insides might have been permanently damaged. Whatever the reason, she found herself gripping Jon’s arm a little tighter as he escorted her through the halls of Winterfell and repeating her internal mantra with every step.
Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out…
Jon paused as they approached the doors to the courtyard and turned to face her. “Are you ready?”
Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out…
She wasn’t sure how to answer. She knew what was waiting beyond those doors and she wasn’t afraid, but she also knew that if she had any doubts she needed to turn back now. Once they walked through those doors Jon would lead her to the Godswood, place her hand in Gendry’s, and join the rest of her family and friends in witnessing their wedding ceremony.
Was she ready for that?
Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out…
Arya smoothed her skirt down for what felt like the hundredth time since she’d put it on. Sansa hadn’t let her sew a single stitch on the gown, citing some old superstition. Arya couldn’t begrudge her the honor — not when her own sewing skills were still so abysmal and Sansa’s superstition had proven true once before. She’d worried it would come out flowery and soft-looking like the one Sansa had worn to her third (and final) wedding, but her sister knew her better than that.
Arya's was a simple dress made of pale grey fabric, but Sansa had embellished it with weirwood branches along the hem and neckline. When she saw it for the first time, Arya couldn’t help but think of a different dress from a lifetime ago — one with so many little acorns on it, she’d complained of looking like an oak tree. Even then Gendry had said she looked nice, though she was scrawny and her hair was cut short like a boy’s.
She didn’t look like a boy today. Not with her gown cinched tightly to exaggerate her meager curves and a neckline that dipped just low enough to allude to her modest cleavage without putting it on display. Her hair, which now fell just below her shoulders, had been styled with a few simple braids that swept it away from her face. No, she certainly didn’t look like a boy today.
“You look beautiful,” Jon assured her.
Arya let out a shaky laugh as she fanned her cloak out behind her. It was a simple fur-lined thing with no embellishment, save for the clasp which Gendry had made himself to resemble a dire wolf howling at the moon. Arya had to admit she was a bit sad she would be parting with the garment. “I feel like I’m missing something.”
“It’s because you’re not armed,” he chuckled, absentmindedly reaching for the place on his hip where Longclaw usually rested.
“Speak for yourself.” She lifted up her skirts just enough for him to see the hilt of her dagger poking out from the top of her boot.
Now he was laughing in earnest and Arya couldn’t help but join in. “And to think I was worried you’d turned into a real lady.”
“How quickly you lose faith,” she teased.
There was a stretch of silence before Jon spoke again. “Arya, if you don’t want to do this — ”
“I’m ready,” she announced, cutting him off. “I want to do this.”
And in the deepest part of her heart she knew it was true. She wanted to get married. She wanted to walk through those doors and become Gendry’s wife because he was her friend, her lover, her family, and her home all in one.
When she was a girl she had sworn that marriage was not for her and that she would never submit to some fat old lord who only wanted her for her title and her womb, but Gendry didn’t ask her to submit. Gendry never asked her for anything more than she was willing to give, and she loved him for it. Theirs, she had realized, could be a marriage of equals.
“In that case, let’s not keep him waiting.” Jon pushed the doors open and the two of them walked out into the cool evening. A fresh dusting of snow had fallen over the Godswood that day, making every branch of the weirwood tree glitter in the light of the many torches that shone beneath it.
She was vaguely aware of everyone turning towards them as she and Jon rounded the bend in the pathway, but none of them mattered when she found the one face she’d been searching for. Gendry was standing at the base of the weirwood tree in a dark cloak that fell just past his knees. His hair was longer than it had been when he’d arrived at Winterfell and Arya knew from experience that it was as soft and thick as it was dark and unruly. He looked like a man, not the boy she had met so long ago, though the awestruck look on his face did offer him an air of childish wonder.
She wanted to be standing next to him already but Jon’s steady pace and the hinderance of her skirts kept her from running towards him and throwing her arms around his neck.
Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out…
She kept the mantra up in her head as they slowly approached the base of the tree, stopping when Arya and Gendry were within arm’s reach of each other. Without a word, Jon turned to his sister and cradled her face in his hands as he pressed a kiss to her forehead. John had never been a man of many words, but the gesture spoke such volumes to Arya that she nearly teared up as he stepped away and made a spot for himself next to Brienne. The knowledge that he was there for her, and that his love for her remained despite the years apart helped ease the sting of her father’s absence, just as Sansa’s fawning had distracted her from the acute awareness that her mother should have been the one to help her into her gown today.
There had been some debate over who should officiate the ceremony but the task had eventually fallen to Bran, who slowly wheeled his chair to face the two of them. “Who comes before the Old Gods this night?”
“I, Arya, of the House Stark, come here to be wed. I come to beg the blessing of the Gods. Who comes to join me?”
The few people who were aware that she had deviated from tradition kept silent, which Arya took as a good sign. She had always hated the idea of being handed off like property from one man to another, so she had refused. Nobody seemed too shaken by the fact and soon it was Gendry’s turn to speak.
“I do. Gendry of the house Baratheon, heir to Storm’s End.”
Arya could tell the words still felt foreign to him, but he said them clearly nonetheless.
She glanced over at Bran as he spoke again. “And who gives this woman?”
“I give myself,” Arya announced, earning a few murmurs from the small crowd behind her.
Bran simply nodded. “Arya, will you take this man?”
“I will.”
Taking Gendry’s hand in her own, the two of them knelt before the tree in silence. Arya didn’t know what to pray for, so she simply asked the Old Gods for the same things she always did: health, happiness, and the wisdom to be a good leader. After a few more moments she squeezed Gendry’s hand, signaling that they should stand up and remove their cloaks.
Typically only the bride received a cloak — a symbol of her groom’s protection. Truth be told though, Arya didn’t need Gendry’s protection. Still, she appreciated it and offered him hers in return. They had agreed that their wedding should be representative of that.
She undid the elegant clasp on her own cloak first, missing its warmth almost as soon as she took it off. Luckily, it was soon replaced by the one Gendry had been wearing all night. When he had finished fastening the bronze antler clasp across her chest, he knelt down in front of her and allowed her to return the favor, tossing her cloak over his shoulders and securing it when he had returned to his full height.
It took all Arya had not to run backdown the aisle when he took her hand and led her away from the tree. She felt a sudden urge to jump or roll or somersault across the ground like she did when she was a child. She was overflowing, she realized. She was too full of happiness.
Gendry must have been too because the second they were out of sight, he picked her up in his arms and spun her around, laughing like he hadn’t in years. Arya looped her arms around his neck and laughed too. When he had made them both a little dizzy, he set her down, resting his forehead against hers and letting her steady herself with her hands on his chest.
“You’re finally my family,” she whispered, tracing one of the wolves on his chest with her finger.
“Finally,” he agreed, leaning forward.
When he kissed her, it felt like she was taking her first deep breath all day.
Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out…
Just keep breathing.
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Mark Morton - Anesthetic
Over the years I have learned to become wary of "star-studded", guest-feature-focused albums coming out of metal. It's not because guest features don't work as well in metal as they do in, say hip hop (Devin Townsend's Deconstruction is living proof of it being possible), but because these kinds of albums rarely seem to have any kind of cohesive vision and because the guests involved hardly ever bring their A-game to projects like these, if ever outside their main project(s).
Spearheaded by Lamb of God guitarist Mark Morton, Anesthetic is the latest of these big-time conglomerations of various artists within hard rock and heavy metal, and Jesus Christ it is fucking terrible.
I was actually kind of intrigued when I heard Mark Morton of all people had a solo album coming out. The dude's not really the most public figure in his band, and he's not really called upon too much outside Lamb of God as far as I know. But when I looked at the track list and saw the nutrition facts-length list of guest stars, I got a little bit nervous, and then when I saw it was being released under Spinefarm (one of the most trash-ass labels of late) I knew it wasn't going to be good. And God, sometimes it sucks being right.
For starters, this album has absolutely no identity, as these kinds of projects tend to, which the constant switching from guest singer to guest singer doesn't help, but for as much as Mark Morton often resorts to his usual Lamb of God blueprints to fill the voids of a lot of songs, nothing about this album gave me the sense that I was getting a glimpse into Morton's creative center. Because if he's not just adding what he knows how to do from Lamb of God, he's just providing super generic alternative rock/metal guitar work and he's not present at all really for huge portions of what is apparently his own album. As a lot of Spinefarm releases tend to be, this album is cookie-cutter as fuck, from the lazy, widely palatable alt rock/metal styling to the utterly unimaginative and predictable butt rock structures. And all of those stylistic choices would be fine if the songwriting was actually potent, but there is nothing to remember this album by other than the repeated feelings of confusion at what contrived style Morton and his main collaborators like Josh Wilbur are trying from track to track.
The album starts off with the single that perhaps gained it the most preemptive traction due to its featuring of a posthumous performance from Linkin Park's Chester Bennington. It's like the equivalent of listening to oil and water, with Chester sounding like he was recording vocals for an older Linkin Park track, and Morton playing like he's warming up for a Lamb of God show, in a radio alt metal format. The following song with Papa Roach's Jacoby Shaddix is essentially the same ultra played-out, formulaic butt rock bullshit with a little hint of Morton's playing style with Lamb of God coming through.
Aside from those two songs, "Save Defiance" with Altar Bridge's Myles Kennedy and "Back from the Dead" with Buckcherry frontman Josh Todd simply pad the album with another eight and a half minutes of by-the-numbers radio metal time-wasting. But it's the album's second to last track, on which Mark Morton himself apparently takes the mic, where the producer's overlooming touch is really highlighted. Morton's voice is layered and doctored as hell, just for the sake of letting him sing on his own album, probably for the gimmick of it, but of course not without the label making sure it was marketable in the same way the rest of the songs on here try to be. The album also gets into some weird genre dabbling/appropriation that shows how clearly poorly versed Morton and producer Josh Wilbur are in them. The songs "Axis" and "Blur" go for this cliché southern metal vibe that Mark Lanegan and Mark Morales clearly aren't feeling enough to put their best on for and aren't excited about performing for.
The two heavier songs on here are rather revealing of where Morton's compositional strengths really lie. The song "The Never" with Chuck Billy is practically just a modern Testament song with none of the flashiness of the band's instrumental virtuosity. As basic as it is, it feels far more natural than pretty much everything surrounding it, and the rest of the ham-fisted album doesn't feel natural at all until a few moments on the closing song with Alissa White-Gluz from Arch Enemy and Morton's longtime bandmate, Randy Blythe.
When Mark and Randy team up on the closing track's verses, a little bit of the vibrance they channel through Lamb of God comes through that highlights how out of his element Mark is on most of the rest of the album. Alissa White-Gluz is indeed a competent enough death metal vocalist, but performing on the track with Randy Blythe (granted one of the best and most signature in his field), she arguably doesn't hold her own well at all and it kind of shows how exaggerated her talent is in a lot of circles. Her clean vocals are also kind of a distraction when they show up and they break up the rhythm the song tries to develop.
Despite ending on its strongest foot, this album left nothing but a disgusting aftertaste in my mouth. I could at least laugh at how ridiculous Papa Roach's new album was earlier this year, but this, there's nothing funny about this. This is just a less than half-assed look-who's-here fest from everyone involved, and if Mark Morton himself did pour the effort he claims he did into this album, it clearly got snuffed out by the label's guide to wide audience pandering. Or who knows, maybe this really is a good representation of Morton's creative mind; if it is, I'm glad it's consistently overridden by the rest of his bandmates in his main project, which I might not even be able to look at quite the same because of how truly, abysmally unbearable this album is. I'm being hyperbolic with that of course, but I could not exaggerate how much I absolutely hated nearly every minute of sitting through this album. I would rather sit through Otep's last album, I would rather sit through the fucking Prophets of Rage album, I would even rather sit through the last Ministry album. Fuck it, I'd rather sit through all of them together, and then a Puddle of Mudd album. At least that'd be an entertaining shitshow. This shitshow, on the other hand, didn't even need to happen, and no one participating really seemed to care much about how it happened or if it did at all. If this thing fell through at some point after everyone submitted their parts, I don't think anyone would have been heartbroken by it. This is on par with, if not even worse than, Bullet for My Valentine's sellout cowardice last year (though Spinefarm as well incidentally) and perhaps even Black Veil Brides' atrocity from last year too. And this wasn't even me getting morbidly curious either, this had the ingredients to not be such rancid public bathroom trash. This utter shambles and mismanagement of this kind of uninvested, big bill collaboration didn't need to happen to what has been anticipated to be such a hype year for metal, and this is undoubtedly the worst thing I have heard all year.
The Camel (minus the fun)/10
#mark morton#lamb of god#metal#heavy metal#groove metal#alternative metal#new music#new album#album review
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the consolations of philosophy
⤷ “It doesn’t make you vulnerable to allow someone else to love you, to be kind to you. Most of the time, we are not kind to ourselves, anyways.”
✓ Couple: Jungkook x Reader | ChildhoodFriends!AU and College!AU
✓ Filed under: angst, fluff, implied smut, friends to lovers
✓ Words: 21,546
Author’s note: Truly one of the most personal-driven and overly emotional stories I have written in a while. Title from this piece.
Also, WRITTEN IN THIRD PERSON! Tell me if you like this format, or if you’d rather for me to stick to second person. All feedback is welcome (also, excuse my extra vocabulary, I promise it lightens up quickly lmao)
Days passed by monotonously.
At times, they passed in a homogeneous nebula of empty resolutions, a haziness of venomous smoke that permeated her lungs and suffocated her from the inside out. Consolidated, it could be comparable to the vapor that performed slow-motion pirouettes in her bathroom after a shower; the same foretelling of looming storms neighboring the obfuscous skyline. It was the deprivation of vivacity; the apathy for each and every aspect of her mundane chores, those being repeated again and again—a broken record, as she would contemplate, a vexatious rasping noise in the background of her every action, a recurring routine that leisurely strangled her with its hyperborean hands. Again: the outburst of opaque grey that came from cigars on the street; the licking of conflagrant flames that illuminated nocturnal alleyways. At least it was positive for some.
Other instances, it would be detected in the viscous hollowness that dwelled in her chest. We are all born with emptiness inside of us, her mother once verbalized. That pathless sentence was one of those fragments of ruptured dialogues that lived amongst her memories, reverberating and emerging when she least expected it too—yet, when she most necessitated. Some people, the woman speculated, decided to congest such lacuna with carnal desires: sex, drugs, food, alcohol; others preferred to spend hours upon hours haunted by the immersive universes of a good book, a movie, or frequent social interactions. Most, come what may, attempted to fill it up alternatively to properly learning how to endure the feeling. Lack of feeling. Whatever could describe it more properly.
Not solely monotonously: days passed lethargically, apathetically. Wintery, even—denuded of saturation and warmness. They came and went like self-perpetuating waves to the sands of a godforsaken beachside: crashing, cleaning, wiping away all traces that could have been left there aforetime. Undertow, drought, tormentous tides, and currents that led to the eclipsed oblivion. Comparisons aside, tracing parallels did not make those interminable hours any better; the ocean was still there, just as stupendous and immeasurable. Just as empty.
But of course, those were not all of her days. Some of them, Jungkook was there to keep her company.
Every instance his image effloresced amongst her thoughts, breaking the lifeless circle of her routine, the bliss of his memory induced for her absent-minded thoughts to describe the peculiar set of emotions that took the place of her boredom: nostalgia and longing; but also the euphoria of their shared adventures. Moreover, if the girl permitted herself to dive into those wisdomful recollections, she would discover that she was unable to elucidate someone as complex as Jeon Jungkook, finding herself lacking the proper terms to do so—that is, if there were any. After so many years by his side, traits became quite nebulous when compared to the memories they shared, but also volatile and unexpected, for they were no longer the same kids that wandered, unguarded, around their neighborhood.
There were hollow spaces in her heart only he could fill, that was for sure. Her best friend—companion; partner in crime—made her feel the happiest she would ever be; caused for several laughs to drip in between her smiley lips every instance a silly comment fell from his own. With all her heart, she could not characterize the boy with a mere enumeration of adjectives, since words could never describe the endless universe that opened in between them every time they encountered one another somewhere in the cold, desolated campus.
Yet, no rose is devoid of thorns, and hers was the kind that punctured layers much, much deeper than the barriers of carnality. There was an indiscernible element beyond the caresses of the vermillion petals, an aspect of her sentiment that did not match the ones she felt aforetime.
Pieces of the puzzle had been switched, but they had also fell into a flawless combination, a rearrangement of feelings that caused for her heart to hang by a threat: she had fallen in love with her best friend.
There was not an epiphanic moment like she once imagined it would occur. The genesis of such affection remained as a progressive, accumulative notion that had germinated within her chest without her cognizance and gradually made their way up her reason, blocking it from cutting it short when she was still able to. Before she could ever discern what had outstretched within her chest, the girl had already fallen for his laugh, such symphonious, lighthearted harmony that defeated the rhythm of the mumbling summer breeze. She had fallen for his enthusiastic gaze, grown weak under the aerial, sanctified lineaments of his diaphanous features. Heavens, she was in love with him. So profoundly, breathlessly, euphorically in love with her best friend.
What a fucking cosmical joke.
Truth was: there were more negatives than positives when it came to situations like that. Alternatively to every aspect she had expected, the very second the unwelcome realization fell upon her perception, there was more panic than there was adoration; more denial than acceptance. It was unignorable, threatening; it broke her faith into pieces and caused her throat to grow tight every instance they met. Disconsonant with her pulsating infatuation, she was aware that she could not tell him everything that haunted the walls of her heart, for she felt it bordered on unrealistic to do so. One should not tear a butterfly's wings apart just to keep its beauty, nor she should attempt to keep her best friend to herself in such egotistical manner. Jungkook was not hers, and most likely would never be. Unilateral: she knew it was all unilateral.
No: it was much, much more complicated than that simple-minded decision. It was not so easy to focus on the stars of logic when she had entire constellations of infatuation dancing and forming pulchritudinous images before her; to turn her gaze away from the phantasmal, ivory-like glow of the moon as it entwined every cell of her figure, resonating within her soul the poetic verses of the universe.
The mere act of longing for his presence was so common that it had already turned into a habit, a part of her routine that she could not simply throw away. How could she feel so lonely even when he was right there by her side? His text messages were still there, even if they held the words of cancelled plans or messy excuses. Sweet, the aroma of his perfume still impregnated her clothes, still danced over the cloud-white sheets of her unmade bed. Jungkook was still there—just at the margins of her reach, ridiculing the fact that she would never be fully able to place fill up the empty spaces between his fingers with her own.
Accordant to those claims, the girl would not cut him out just because she was unable to control the tides of her adoration, would not push his embrace away even if the mere compass of his calm heart against her chest caused for her soul to shatter into desolation. That being said, considering it bordered on the executable to ignore or revert it, she learned how to suppress it.
But—hell—some part of Jungkook was always there to torment her.
Memories would appear suddenly, taking her off guard. They connected to one another like insubstantial cords, a map of recurrent dreams that bloomed amongst her measured ponderations. Germinated within her brain in the most random of instances, coming and dragging her away to the fragmented retellings of aforetime meetings. And, amongst the billion pieces of their shared laughs and locked gazes, the girl focused on one special dialogue they had merely a few months ago.
It had been an overcast night, a very silent one at that. The two had dove into the obscuration of midnight, walking amongst the darkness of the asphalt and the dimly-illuminated streets. The same illumination that embraced his drowsy delineations like a spectral candlelight; dancing in his unfocused gaze and scintillating beyond the abysm of his stygian irises. His eyes could hold the entire universe inside, but it all apperated to get as cloudy as the sky above once he was in that situation: drunken out of his mind.
She could recall the small hiccup that erupted in Jungkook’s throat before he dared to bother the quiescence of the night, “Don’t place your happiness upon someone else,” he had told her without forewarning, his arm around her shoulder, voice flowing that way that always sent an explosion of warmth radiating through her chest—between a secretive whisper and a kind advice; almost as if he permitted himself to be wholesomely frank, yet remained to hesitant to share his thoughts with the rest of the word. It was okay, she did not want him to. “No one, you hear me? Value comes within yourself, and no one can take that away from you. Grow it, and the world can’t throw shit your way.”
Philosophical, almost. Did not matter that he was drunk, nor that she had been the only one to offer to guide the boy back to his dormitory. She decided to keep those elements out of focus and, instead, remained attentive to the words he had graced her with: something she needed to learn; needed to feel, “Value is a hard thing to grow,” she had responded, hoping he did not hear her subsequent words. “besides, you make me happier than I probably could ever make myself. I don’t see what’s wrong with that.”
She did not know if he had captured her delicate enunciations alongside with the mumbling of the midnight wind, all she knew is that Jungkook closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and continued walking with difficulty.
Then again, he was not always there for her.
Insomnia was usually the most fundamental element of her late night insights, and most were not as positive as she would like. Once, she came to the hypothesis that those unbelonging, unexpected life lessons that he gave her had a reason other than the lack of filter provided by alcohol: mayhaps Jungkook was sentient to the distance growing between them, the void that pulled the two friends into complete edges of an unfathomable cosmos. They were progressively growing apart with time, losing intimacy, and that was most likely why the boy always made sure to tell her those things: so he could be certain her happiness did not subside after he had departed.
Nothing but a utopian idea, if that had been the true cause. Most of the times, life was not at all that merciful nor rational. Justificatives were just broken, slumberous explanations that germinated amongst the intoxicated soil of her anxiety, no one could guarantee that their fruits were not, too, contaminated by its poison. Running while remaining in the same place, she would continue to attempt to find reasons for their progressive separation—though, just like the emptiness that they held inside, it could not be explained so ingenuously.
To lose a close friend to the world is always, in idiosyncratic levels, a traumatic experience. Primordially, the stages of drawing away were almost imperceptible: the long time to answer messages that before would appear so quickly; the change of demeanor into a more closed-off posture, or even a defensive one at times. Later on, it would be the lack of interest in shared activities; in scheduled plans; and, at last, in the person at the other edge of the spectrum. At times, that distance was usual and even inevitable; mutual or unilateral; purposeful or subconscious. Nevertheless, there was a point in which that separation would become more clear, and the signals would be far too vehement to be neglected or absolved
Jungkook was not someone she lost, per say, more of a companion who gradually creeped to the borders of their progressively evanescing friendship. He was still there, appearing like a lost phantasm amongst her mundane tasks, a shadow at the depths of her routine. His messages still came—some faster, some slower—and they still had nights in which they would spend entirely immersed in futile conversations. A fervent dialogue in which, eventually, more serious and personal topics would emerge, only to be avoided.
In all sincerity, she thought all those other fragments were perfectly normal and healthy—after all, everyone needs their personal space every once in awhile—but the second she noticed the manner he skirted those personal conversations, instead growing irritable, she knew there was something wrong.
Maybe one day she would learn how to breathe without his presence to warm the air that entered her lungs. Maybe there would be a day in the future that the ghost of his presence would not bother her as much; the lack of eurythmic laughs would not feel as sepulcral to endure. In the future, there might exist a day in which the static of the TV did not exasperate her, the emptiness of her dormitory did not appear as gargantuan as the longing within her chest. Surely, that day could be waiting ahead, but, as for now, she had to endure the scars of his departure with the prideful impassibility of her broken heart.
Two weeks before, she had convinced herself that she would, too, take some time for herself. Preposterous excuses and justifications came and went amongst the pandemonium of her confident thoughts, the mantra of her decision repeating over and over—a broken record. If space was what Jungkook desired, she would give it to him gracefully, she would keep her mouth shut and decorated with a smile; keep her ebullient sentiments on a leash; would accept that sometimes that was just the way friendships would unravel. She would not reject him, she would just stop searching for someone that was not even looking for her.
As pathetic as it was, that decision did not last for much more than a week.
Sunrays passed through the viridian leaves with resplendent smoothness, gifting it with a clearer shade of its characteristic pigmentation. In between undulating branches and twigs, came the ethereal radiance of the golden light, dripping past the spaces of the foliage and falling upon the two people sitting by that small circular table. They were the only two outside the establishment, and appeared to be more uncomfortable than other friends that passed by.
Jungkook exhaled, placing his white mug on top of the dark wood. In the midst of his downhearted features, the shadows of the leaves were casted over his serious expression, inducing his mere image to resemble a momentaneous hallucination, “I swear, sometimes it's like you’re a old woman trapped in a young girl’s body,” the outside of the small coffee shop was almost deserted as those words broke the breviloquent silence, dragging along the vague redolence of the cappuccino he had just took a slip of. He had just heard another negation in regards to a party invitation, and he was unable to mask his frustration towards it, “you’ve always been like this, ever since we were kids.” the boy added carelessly.
She could not pinpoint if what she heard in his voice was simple playfulness or if, amongst his light timbre, there were deep cuts of resentment pulsating in silence, “You never told me you were bothered by it,” she dared to say, hoping it would serve as a starting point for him to soothe her baseless worries. Mayhaps, he would sense the traces of shame that ornamented her speech and, if she were to be lucky, Jungkook would look at her with his deep eyes—that could hold the universe inside, from the stygian void to the oscillating specks of anemic stars—and laugh at how absurd she sounded. Light as the morning air, his smile would blow her preoccupations away, and it would all be okay.
However, that was not what that day enventualized. Instead of signals of empathy or the curious glimpse of his puzzled spirit, the boy merely scoffed, looking down at his half-empty mug with skepticism, “Bothered is not the right word, you know?” she did not know, and he never told her what it was, “whatever, we’ll do something else. Again. Can I see you later this week? I’ll be late to class if we stay here for much longer.” he was quick to add, not gifting her with the space she needed to fully absorb his words and construct a response based on it.
Always later—later today, later this week, maybe after midterms?—,always rushing somewhere else. Jungkook always had his mind above his clouds, hardly ever recalled where his feet touched. He was always looking miles upon miles ahead, dwelling in the hue that vacillated between the tangerine and the ochroid. Maybe he did not have time. Maybe he did not have interest. That lovely morning, for instance, the boy had twenty minutes to spend, and the walk to his building would not take more than four. He had time.
She knew it, but accepted his fruitless propoundment regardless of the afflicted laceration that punctured her fast-beating heart, “Later this week. Definitely,” she consented. Neither of them specified a date and, soon after, the girl found herself alone in that table for two.
The lump in her throat prevented her from thinking straight. Part of her mind swore it was merely an overreaction from her part, but the other made sure to vociferate the terrible possibility of her paranoias being close to the truth: Jungkook was gradually moving away from her.
But of course, not all of the days passed by his side were filled with empty promises and the vacant redolence of moments past. There were also the days that showed her just why Jungkook was so important, why the universe had pulled all the correct strings so they could grow up together, claiming ever so childishly to being kings and queens of their own personal glimpses of fantasia. Delightful moments which caused for her infatuation to effloresce to the melody of his vernal voice, for her preoccupations to fall like conflagrant autumn leaves; moments that belonged to the two of them, and them only.
That special Friday afternoon happened to be one of those days.
Comparable to the lively color of honey, the golden luminosity of the resplendent sun melted past the swinging of cream curtains, accumulating in auriferous puddles over the carpet’s extension. The air was slightly cold, but calm, holding to the welcoming aromatic combination of fresh coffee and the vanilla of her perfume; the buzzing sounds of the campus could barely be heard beyond the translucent windows. Peace impregnated each and every fragment of that shared instant, and it was a fantastic sensation to dwell in.
Sitting across from her on that two-chaired kitchen room table, the boy had his eyebrows knitted together in a permanent state of confusion, eager eyes now completely puzzled at the endless lines of ink that stared back at him. Surrounded by such diaphanous luminescence, Jungkook’s image reminded her of those graceful masterpieces produced during the romantic era—the same delicacy of forms; the contrast between his caramel skin and the onyx ink of his hair and eyelashes. His lips, such gentle shade of roseate, mumbled speechlessly the words he read, attempting to find meaning within the sentences that filled his slumberous mind.
Those unexpected glimpses at his beauty usually caught her off guard, causing for her eyes to navigate around his lineaments for a bit longer than necessary. That instant, however, she was somewhat prepared to the exquisite figure that would meet her eager gaze, and was able to dissimulate his effect with a deep inhale.
After a moment of ponderation, the girl placed her book over the ligneous surface, the subsided noise enough to call the boy’s attention to her direction. Even before the words left her lips, Jungkook was aware of what they would be, for that random enunciation of curiosities had turned into a customary part of their study routine, “Did you know that the modern musical notation was created by an italian monk?” she asked, pausing for a second to accompany the way his disquisitive eyes switched upwards, blinking away from the incomprehensible pages of his book. “Guido d’Arezzo was his name. From the basic names to the mnemonic system.”
Leaning back against her chair, she then suspired as if to mitigate the restlessness that had accumulated within her bosom, waiting for his acknowledgement patiently. She had the costume of communicating something along those lines, curiosities or thought-provoking facts that soon dispersed the weight of the overwhelming silence. Jungkook thought it was nothing more than a common idiosyncrasy amongst History students, and considered to be quite captivating, even adorable at times.
So precious, in fact, that the boy could not suppress the smirk that creeped up upon his lips, nor the crystalline engrossment that resounded in the background of his subsequent inquiry, “What? Seriously?” he wondered, incapacitated to camouflage the genesis of his interest.
Humming, she moved around on the chair, her rhapsodic tone causing for her enthusiasm to become transpicuous, “Yeah, it came from the first syllables of the first six half-lines of a religious hymn. To John the Baptist, if I’m not mistaken. Some stuff changed along the years, but the basic notation and the musical breakthrough is his to take,” the girl explained further, holding herself back from diving into more specific characteristics, for she soon noticed the fatigued splashes of violaceous underneath the boy’s eyes. “you, on the other hand, look as if you’re about to fall into the nearest grave. How are things hanging there?”
It was his turn to suspire in never ending lament, running of his hands through the cascade of his ink-pigmented strands of hair. Even so crepuscular, some parts of it still embraced the sanctified hue of the sun, and gifted the boy with a particular, empyrean golden aura, “My brain stopped working around two hours ago, honestly,” Jungkook confessed, his hand then moving to cup the back of his neck. He usually did that as a way to mask his anguish, “It’s Friday, why do I have to study?” then questioned the boy.
She had been prepared for that inquiry ever since he had arrived at her dormitory, around three hours ago. For someone as distinctive as Jungkook, he could be quite predictable at times, “Did you have any other plans?” she counterclaimed, waiting for a second as her childhood friend ruminated on an answer. As the only response she received was a small biting of his lower lip, she smiled, triumphant. “Didn’t think so.”
Jungkook whined, crossing his arms over his open book, “You don't have to be rude,” the boy pouted, placing his head over his arms. In that position, it appeared as if he was as near as possible to merely closing his eyes and taking a long nap—something she was quite aware he would do if she were not there to keep him awake. Jungkook turned his gaze upwards, appearing almost child-like as his vague manipulation spilled from in between his cherry-painted lips. “we have two weeks before finals, we could—”
“—We couldn't,” the girl interrupted his sentence even before his proposition could be enunciated. Secretly, she was a hundred percent certain she would never be able to deny the upcoming alternative, so it was wiser to cut his ideas short before they could grow within her own perceptions. Convincing: Jungkook had always been dangerously convincing when there was something he desired, “Last time I left you to study by yourself, you almost fainted from exhaustion in the middle of the exam. No all-nighters under my watch, Jeon.” she crossed her arms: you will not make up my mind, her body language firmly stated.
Wickedly, his smile grew larger by a few millimeters, “I did get that A, though.” he contradicted with pleasure.
She rolled her eyes, leaning in closer to the boy so she could enunciate her rationalization with smidgens of astringency, “Along with a possible brain damage. Don't fight me on this,” the history student warned, not gifting him with an instant to defend himself. Instead, she looked down upon the open pages before him, attempting to read those jumbled words upside down. “what are you even studying?”
“I'm trying to understand Descartes,” Jungkook responded, meeting the breviloquent coruscation of confusion that flashed over her features, “you know, the math guy. Cartesian coordinate system, analytical geometry...” he elucidated.
She elevated one of her eyebrows and unhurriedly nodded in a unspoken signal of her understanding, recalling her own personal studies in regards of the scientist. Fragments of the so called ‘Dutch Golden Age’ permeated her thoughts—alongside with a brief biography of the man: something about serving for Maurice de Nassau? She made a mental note to check that later on, “Yeah, I think you have told me something about him before,” YN acknowledged, pausing for an instant to recall the correct name of one of his works. “Discourse on the Method, right?”
Once anew, one of his hands ran through the black seas of his hair. He was truly beginning to get nervous, “Something like that, yeah.” he reluctantly agreed, instead thinking it would be wiser to go with the overly simplified title— ‘Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One's Reason and of Seeking Truth in the Sciences’ was not something that easily rolled off the tongue.
It was her turn to pout. The girl, too, crossed her arms over her disorganized stationary in a subconscious act of mirroring her friend, soon placing her head over the back of her hand. Now much closer to one another, Jungkook could consummately sense the sacchariferous aroma of her vanilla perfume, a scent which induced for his heart to skip a beat as she continued speaking on, “Hey, come on, don’t get sad because of the math guy,” the amicable history student smiled lightheartedly, leaning her head slightly to the left. “tell me what you know, maybe it’ll help you grasping the subject better.”
He disregarded her idea with a scoff, stare flickering towards an orange pencil that had been left over the wooden table. Rather than looking to encounter the welcoming world of her enthralled irises, the boy focused on the minor details of the object close to him; the unnoticeable grooves on the light-colored wood, the dark silver tip of the graphite that ever so dimly shone in a more pallid shade of grey under the weak incandescence, “I know jackshit.” he thoughtlessly mumbled.
The enchantment of her proximity was undone the second that, with a prolonged exhale, she leaned back against the wooden chair; the air that her figure dislocated appearing to have been removed from his own breathless lungs, “Don’t be ridiculous, you've told me tons about his philosophical trips,” she repudiated his claim as easily as one brushes off dirt, confident that it was his despair speaking louder than his logic, “you think, therefore you are. Make René Descartes proud and just tell me what you know.”
Deeply, she hoped she had not misused that quotation, for a momentaneous signal of confusion crossed over his expression. No... not confusion: she knew that face—the face of a mischievous kid; the same expression he had gifted her when they were younger, a few minutes before the school staff crossed the empty hallways with furrowed eyebrows, seeking for her best friend like there was no other culprit possible. Most times, there was not.
Without looking at her, the boy reached for the relinquished pencil, taking it in his hands and examining the sequence of numbers that had been imprinted in one of its sides, “What do I get in return?” mindlessly, he inquired.
“In return?” echoed his best friend, taken aback by the preposterous nature of his question. She swore to the heavens above that, at times, she simply could not comprehend the odd trail of thought that took turns within his mind, “A good grade, for starters.” she responded.
Jungkook shrugged; he, too, moving back to a sitting position. The cantaloupe pencil was placed over the disorganized sheets of achromatic paper and, if she did not know him for so long, she would have swore his disinterested tone meant arrogance, “I get those regardless,” he told her. At last, his gaze flickered upwards and, even if she did not meet it, she could practically feel the way his interested irises burned in expectation. “I was thinking more of a little something from you.”
She ridiculed his sentence with a puff of air that exploded in between her lips, skeptic at the vague proposition that found its way to her ears, “You’re aware that there is nothing I want from you, don’t you? This is the worst trade I have ever experienced,” the girl threw back at him, moving her hands back to the sides of her open book. Sometimes, it was like talking to a child with a superiority complex, going in circles without even understanding why the two had departed from their previous subject. “I’m going back to my own stuff, then. Don’t come crying to me when yo—”
“—Are you feeling like going out tomorrow?”
Just as simply, her voice receded into quiescence. Taken aback by the brusque invitation, the girl did not think her actions through, looking up from the endless ink of her book to encounter the same cimmerian shade that lived beyond the pupils of her company. All that she wanted was to make sure his controlled tone did not betray her, instead disguising a joke from his part, but she was met with more than she ever foresaw.
There it was again: the universes he hid inside, the shooting stars that crossed his ebony gaze every time he glanced at her direction. Again and again, she had wished upon the falling comets that ornamented his gaze for that instantaneous moment to stretch towards the margins of infinity—only to fall back into normality once she realized it was nothing beyond a faint distortion of her position; maybe even the projected necessity to have her feelings mirrored by someone so dear to her.
Each and every time she allowed herself so dive so profoundly into his eyes, a hazy memory would shimmer in her mind: she was laying on her garden, most likely bordering on her ten years of age, and observing the vast, awe-inspiring cosmos that mushroomed right before her infantile perceptions. The girl lamented and sighed continuously, wanting to send a signal up the oscillating stars; to contact the planets that lived beyond the line of her platitudinous atmosphere.
That was how she felt when she was trapped in the spacious infinity of his gaze—under the atramentous skyline of numberless constellations, wishing she could verbalize her sentiment into a brand new, unexplored cosmos. Nonetheless, equiparable to how her story had unraveled back then, she could not find the right words to do so. So, as a final attempt, she merely stood there, hoping the signals could arrive from the other edge of the galaxy’s muted iridescence.
Thought, they never truly did. Not that she could capt, at the very least.
Her pulse quickened, but she was able to mask her breviloquent surprise with the clearing of her throat. Hopefully, he did not perceive the way her fingers trembled against the hard book cover, growing paler at the tips as she attempted to hold down to substantiality—getting her hopes up was a suicidal mission, “What are you talking about?” she managed to say, glad that her tone was not nearly as undulating as her palpitations.
Like the static between two songs, the boy merely shrugged, allowing for silence to be casted over the room as he leaned back against the chair, “It’s been awhile since we went out and had fun together,” it surely took you some time to realize, she thought, but said nothing in return. Jungkook was avoiding her gaze, but nothing out of the ordinary. Yes, her hopes had in fact been raised, for she now felt them falling and crashing down like pieces of a mirror as the boy continued his apathetic speech, “I would invite you to a party, but I know you would deny even before I could finish my sentence.” he said.
She chuckled, even if humorlessly. Her heart felt heavy with despondency, and she convinced herself that she should have grown used to it by now, for it was the harsh reality she had faced for all the years that had passed, “You know me so well. Besides, the last party I’ve been through ended with me dragging a certain drunken someone back to their dorm,” and, with a faint smile—which he rapidly returned—she was sure her decaying sentiment had been flawlessly dissimulated once anew. “what’s your alternative?”
How melancholic was it that the same hand that saved her was the one who clung around her throat and prevented her from breathing? Ironic, at the very least.
Jungkook, regardless, remained unaffected by her subtle comment, “I already apologized for that, I got a bit too carried away,” he spoke out, but his words did not appear to carry any sort of true resentment. The girl did not even need to look up to see that his eyes had grown darker, the same way that happened all the times his mind started to wonder somewhere else, a place she was always unable to reach before it evanesced, rolling into a kindhearted—yet notoriously artificial—phrase. Which was precisely what occurred, “library, bookshop, museum, theater, movies, whatever you want. Outside is my only request.” he vocalized.
Shaking her head in skepticism, she took a moment to exhale before claiming, “You’re spoiling me,” still a bit hesitantly.
Then, something she did not expect fell from in between his lips. In that very second, the student thought the universe had been constructed for her to observe the beauty of his timid smile, the euphonic accordance of his mumbling voice as he enunciated his devoted confessions, “I’m missing you so bad lately. Missing us. It’s been awhile since we went out to have some fun,” Jungkook shrugged, pausing for a second as if to check the reflection his words had upon her expression: he saw none of the fireworks that exploded within her chest, none of the trembling heartbeats that echoed throughout the threads of her patched-up soul. “I just want to spend my Saturday with my best friend, could I do that?”
On the opposite side of the room, the movement of the curtains followed the rhythm of her own deep breathing—inflating, relaxing—before she responded with the phantasm of a smile, “You could,” the girl nodded, eyes flickering downwards. There was nothing printed amongst those inky lines that could hold more despondency than what resonated alongside with her subsequent words. “I missed you too, Jungkook.”
And, heavens, how acutely, profoundly, passionately did she miss him.
She was not certain if the reverberation of such confession was enough for his heart to suffocate in the same pain she felt within her own chest, but judged it to be sufficient for such peculiar circumstances. Her mind felt less clogged with negative ponderations the very instant that mundane—yet deeply personal—declaration departed from the captive of her incarnadine lips, a glimpse underneath her mask of artificial assuagement. High hopes corroded her spirit from the inside out, but she could not help to cut them off before they begun to germinate within her conceptualizations, infesting her mind with delusional ideas. They were solely friends—and that only—meaning that the concept of a ‘going out’ would not, could not, go anywhere above that definition. As much as it tormented her nature to think so, she had to be realistic, pragmatic even. It was for the best.
Back in the living room that now suffered under the poor, tangerine-pigmented phosphorescence of that lackadaisical day, boy cleared his throat, oblivious to the avalanche that had broke within her body, “That’s—”
“—Now, back to René,” her interruption was immediate, almost unaware that those warm-blooded, panicked words had left her vocal chords. As mercurial as such reaction escaped the grasp of her demeanor, the girl cursed her lack of control over her temperament—that was how she felt: vulnerable and vandalized by her inner, most uncontrollable sentiments. It was almost pathetic, if she were to be utterly sincere with herself, “rationalism, methodological skepticism… whatever that is. Spill your knowledge.” she pushed forward, hoping it would be sufficient for his focus to move away from the previous subject.
Jungkook’s lips parted as if there was something else needed to be said, but, from the space in between them, no sound came out. Even if he would most likely never admit it out loud, there were some sentences he did not know how to enunciate, some words that perished in his throat before they could be verbalized with the gentleness they necessitated. He felt as if his very soul was in dissonance with the commands of his flesh, somewhat out of tune with the instruments of his perception.
It did not matter. Another time, he would discover the most suitable words for his unspoken confessions.
Another time, perhaps—a better one.
According to Jungkook, there were some fragments of the world that could not be characterized solely by the senses, but also by what they caused upon one’s heart and soul.
Of course, if he could, he would go on and on about all the details of that specific piece of campus that felt ever so compelling to him, the way those interminable shelves were inundated by a particular type of classical elegance; the majestic resplendence of the golden sun that sliced the dust-filled air like blades of honey. He would pay close attention to each and every literary work, feeling the pleasant contrast in between each pigment and font, titles that could say everything and nothing at all. From Nietzsche to Voltaire, the ceremonious architecture of renaissance to the pictographic writing of ancient Egyptians; would read everything his tired eyes permitted him, diving into the erudite multiverses that were just at his reach.
As Jungkook stood there, feeling ever so minuscule when encircled by such honorable names of history, he thought of doing just that. Permeated by the fantastic aroma of new and old books, the lukewarm air would embrace his lungs like an amicable hug; the texture of the works underneath his fingertips would cause for his attention to be utterly trapped amongst those unexplored cellulose worlds. And, unquestionably, he could listen to the fumbling of students, and the delicate caressing of paper; the hushed whispers and the immersed conversations—but, then again, the senses alone said nothing beyond the substantial.
And that was when she came in.
It was in between two shelves that the two childhood friends spent around two hours, commenting and desiccating to the bones the most various works of literature that the small bookshop could entrust them. Amongst the turmoil of his ponderations, Jungkook could still notice the continuous repercussion of such discussions, the manner her eyes lighted up time and time again every time she discovered a title that was able to set her heart aflame. That, he thought, could never be explained merely by the response from senses—it was a reaction much more particular than that, an interest that whispered until it was given a chance so scream out, shining behind her eyes as her fingers followed the obsidian-printed letters, lips curling up in a smile that sucked out all the air from his lungs.
Somnolent, the sun unhurriedly moved to sleep beyond the horizon, submerging the campus in a progressive penumbra, guiding its inhabitants into the peaceful chromasia of a clear night. Time slipped through Jungkook’s fingers as the hours went by, remaining imperturbable with the gradual dimness of natural luminescence, then the switching on of the bookshop’s lights. It had always been like that, the absent-minded boy found himself thinking: he always lost his notion of time when he was by her side, dwelling in the comfort of her amicable company.
Moments like those at the relinquished bookstore shook up the margins of his controlled demeanor, causing for an eruption of infatuation to feel like magma in his lungs. It all felt so simple, yet so perfect. To him, importance hid behind the details: the diaphanous lineaments of her focused features to the way her hair embraced promptly the luminescence of the cantaloupe daylight; the gentle symphony of her timbre as her enthusiastic voice waltzed alongside dirt particles in the diffuse atmosphere, carrying along the most unexpected bits and pieces of the history she studied ever so vehemently.
Who was he kidding? It were not the details in those particular instants that enchanted him, but her particularities—hell, it was all of her.
It had always been her.
Jungkook had been in love with his best friend for so long now that he had almost grown accustomed to the quixotic, romantic sensations he held within the walls of his chest. Almost.
During some rare instances, he was able to push those preposterous feelings to the back of his head, attempted faithlessly to convince his infantile optimism that it was absurd—unrealistic, naive—to hold such deep affection for someone who did not see him as anything above a companion from her childhood. The two of you were—and have always been, always would be—merely friends, best friends; closer than anyone else could reach to the margins of their intimacy.
To throw all that away would be equiparable to tearing his soul apart—stitch by stitch, thread by thread, until there was nothing left but the arid interior of a hollow doll. It was best just to ignore it, he convinced himself continuously, forcing his impassioned spirit to move back behind the walls of his cognizance. By holding to reason, he would saving the glory of her company with the coast of his own shattering hope.
Ignore it, for it would all soon go away; forget it, Jeon Jungkook, don't be stupid—the boy repeated like a mental mantra, hoping the baseless frequency of its echoes would be sufficient to make his desperate wishes come to life. He should use logic when drawing possibilities about its consequences: it would never happen. Ignore it, forget it. It would evanesce eventually, and it all would come back to normal.
At times, it almost worked to soothe his worries. Almost.
The boy was cognizant of the fact that she was sharing something with him as he entered those subjective endeavours—most likely another haphazard curiosity about the cinnamon-colored book that rested upon her hands—, but he cursed his own limited mind for being unable to recall perfectly the sequence of words that departed from her lips. He swore he tried to drag his own enchanted mind back to the substantiality of her euphonic voice, but his fragmented attention had been completely shattered under her overpowering aura: so mellow and sympathetic.
And god, it felt like smelling the sweetened aroma of a rose, while remaining eternally oblivious to the way its thorns pierced his skin. To look down upon his ensanguined fingertips and wonder how he had gotten himself in such claustrophobic position; to wish to let go of the gracious flower, but being far too weak—too enamored—to perform such preposterous action. Heavens, it hurt him like the licking flames of inferno; but it was far too compelling to let it go to waste. Jungkook could not—would not—allow for his sentiments to continue to be tied to his reason for much longer. Control had a cost, and his was as painful as the hypothesis of rejection.
There were a million things he wished to have said instead, but all that left his throat was a faint provocation; a delicate, honey-like mockery that he knew would be sufficient to break the daydreams of her statuesque position, “You know, when I offered the bookshop, I wasn't being serious.” the boy smiled.
Blinking, she returned from the land of her phantasies and turned around to stare at her companion. When she smiled back at him, the story repeated itself anew: the same flower efflorescing within his heart, the same thorns piercing his lungs and preventing him from camouflaging the infatuated coral hue that painted his cheeks with such overwhelming heat. She is beautiful, Jungkook thought for what could have been the tenth time that night. She was beautiful: she was the entire ocean he drowned in, and he felt like nothing more than a mere drop of water amongst the fury of the rain.
In her fingers, she closed the literary work with a subdued noise, but did not let go of it, “Don't throw the bait then complain you caught the fish.” his best friend cooled, playful.
At that, he could discard his own reveries for the mere instant that took for a laugh to bubble in his chest, “Did you just compare yourself to a fish?” Jungkook questioned, taken aback by the unbelonging comparison. He felt as if he was floating above the horizon, pulled towards paradise by the force of his adoration.
Scoffing at his reaction—somewhat expected, if she were to be sincere—, the girl rolled her eyes at him, not hesitating for a second before speaking back, “Did you skip high school classes on allusions and metaphors?”
Unable to hold back his silly, love-struck smirk, Jungkook shrugged, taking that battle as lost, “Might as well have.” he agreed, causing for her to chuckle.
Suddenly, the boy felt taken aback with the amicable laugh that she presented him with, being faced with the surface of her divinity, “For a philosophy student, you’re so reckless about education.” her words sliced his impulses short right after, causing for his unspoken confessions to drown in the desert of his throat.
As unconventional as the realization appeared to be, Jungkook understood that he was one misstep away from pouring his inner contemplations out into the open, regardless of the consequences they could bring along. Alternatively to such reckless behavior, however, he merely laughed at her odd phrase, “I don’t see how the two could possibly be connected, but, please, don’t tell Socrates,” he joked back, thinking it would be wiser to switch the subject as soon as possible. So, as he pointed down at the object in her hands, that was precisely what he did. “what do you have there, after all? You’re basically on a date with that book instead of me.”
A date.
Cherise took over her cheeks like a flower swirling open, covering her skins in vermillion petals. Her lips instantaneously felt shut at the sudden term, mercurial heartbeat resounding in her blank mind with the chaotic rhythm of her surprise. Stop being so naive, he is just joking, the girl convinced herself, claiming on and on how idiotic it was of her to believe his words held any sort of deeper veracity. They were just friends.
Somewhere over the momentaneous shock, she could still hear a faint voice cursing her own infantile reaction. Even more, the suddenness of the term caught her so off guard that she was unable to mask its crystal clear effects as nervousness trembled amongst the syllables of her response, “Uh… what d-do you..." she stopped, and cleared her throat. Looking down at the book in her hands, her eyebrows moved together and, a second later, she was able to verbalize her inquiry better. She felt absolutely pathetic to be acting in such manner. "What do you... think of this one?”
Jungkook hummed and looked downwards in a way to mask the way his own hopes had shattered ever so gracefully. Numb was how his heart felt, for there was no initial signal within his brain that warned him of the term before it dripped from his mouth. Again and again, his demeanor cursed himself for not filtering better his choice of words—what was he thinking, throwing something like that so absent-mindedly? He truly felt like an idiot.
Flickering over the details on the cover, the boy’s eyes took in the odd image of the copy in her hands. Three cimmerian-pigmented words stood out amongst a clear cover—The Black Death—and, right underneath the title, there was a somewhat disturbing painting of what appeared to be a village back in the Middle Ages. In the image’s main focus, laid a woman and her child, both screaming out in a silent lament for that devastating, demonic torture to finally cease. All across the background, more nameless strangers curved in pain, skeletons visible through their feeble skins, and shadowy amethyst blemishes infecting their bodies. The figural simulacrum of death was casted over them, painted in fine brushstrokes of the most humane of angonies.
The choice, as odd as it appeared, no longer impressed her best friend—if anything, was even a bit predictable, “Medieval again? Didn't you read all the existing books on it already?” Jungkook questioned, looking back to meet her expectant gaze. Now compared to the horrendous image of a past long gone, her semblance appeared to be almost sanctified, angelic. She is beautiful, he came to terms once more.
Glancing at her eyes was like envisioning a waterfall, he usually thought. Not because of the tears she had shared with him, but for the way they mixed and transitioned so perfectly between the magnificence and peace of the unexplored scenery; though could also crash down upon his contemplations like the overwhelming ponderation of collapsing water, the impact of the roaring cascades. In that breviloquent moment, his reaction stood somewhere in between the two—admiring their exquisiteness, but also growing preoccupied of his choice of words.
Though, the girl chuckled at his response, lowering her book and pressing it against her chest, “One day, maybe,” she told him, pouting at the incredulous expression that emerged within his traces. “come on, you know it's one of my favorite periods.”
“The night that lasted a thousand years...” Jungkook trailed off, knowing what kind of reaction it would be received. Just as expected, her mouth opened in a silent exclamation of negation, eyebrows coming together in a frown. History students generally became very defensive over the claim that nothing was accomplished throughout the Middle Ages, and she was no different, “I'm joking, calm down. You have your history on check. You can stop with those medieval books.” he made sure to add it quickly.
She huffed, shoulders falling in an unspoken relaxation, “Define ‘on check.’” she spoke back.
It was his turn to roll his eyes, crossing his arms before his figure. Only then did she notice the pleasant contrast between his white shirt and the oceans of obsidian that existed in his hair, falling over his eyes like an obfuscous veil. Even under such delicate, lackluster lights, Jungkook still managed to hold the artistry of a renascentist masterpiece, mischievous eyes coruscating with the vitality of youth, “Correct me if I’m wrong, but you’re both at the top of your class, and you constantly shower me with more historical curiosities than I could ever recall. If that’s not being on check, I don’t know what it is.” he explained.
“I can't see how the two could possibly be connected,” she repeated his phrase from aforetime, quick to move her sentences forward before he could even consider a proper response, “I'm buying it anyways. I don’t have this one, and I want to change that.” she shrugged.
With a suspire, Jungkook accepted his defeat, reaching out of the book, “Fine, hand it over,” the boy requested, soon meeting the crashing puzzlement of her confused expression. “what? I'm paying for it. It’s a gift.”
The girl hesitated as if she had just been faced with a prospect far too unrealistic for her to comprehend immediately, “Did I just enter a parallel universe? You used to be bothered when I had no money to pay for ice cream, and now you’re buying me a book?” questioned the lost history student, moving the back of her hand to touch it against his forehead, “Are you feeling okay? Do you have a fever?”
Jungkook moved her hand away with a groan, getting the book from her in a harsh, impulsive manner. He was aware she most likely thought that the blush that covered his cheeks was nothing more than his irritation at her childlike demeanor, but it was specifically because of how dangerously close she had become. Hell, he felt like a teenager sometimes, “Don't get bratty, let me be nice to you before I change my mind,” the boy mumbled, taking a step back. The book felt oddly heavy in his hands, but he gave it no importance—was it hot in there? He was not thinking straight. “I'll be back soon with your stupid Black Plague book.”
Still taken aback by the sudden switch of his temperament, she stood there for an instant and, in an unexpected eruption of staggering words, claimed she would then wait for him on the outside of the bookshop. Jungkook merely agreed with a suppressed hum, then turned around to head towards the cashier—who was staring at the two college students with a certain level of interest.
As she walked towards the exit, she could not organize the confusion that had unraveled within her mind. Longing, her heart induced for her muffled steps to resound amongst the quick beating of her heart; the melody of her affection exploding within her chest in warm ondulations of appreciation. Something about that simple action awakened the love that she was ever so desperately attempting to keep six feet under, causing for a trembling sigh to break in between her curled up lips. Amorous and compassionate, waves of tenderness pulsated through her veins like the cadency of a bird’s wings—quick, precise—and called for her heartbeat to adopt more of an erratic rhythm.
As the afternoon air embraced her body, the contact with the chilly winds only made her position become even more corporeal, concrete; as if the sudden change of temperature only served to confirm that those past minutes had not been part of a faithless daydream. Deliquescing into igneous amber, the skyline welcomed the crepuscular indigo of the forthcoming night with open arms. By the side of the humble bookshop, small cerulean flowers trembled under the caresses of the wind, appearing to be far too fragile to endure their characteristic beauty; gradually, they, too, succumbed into the shadows of dusk.
On one of them, a yellow butterfly moved its wings in a lethargic, lackadaisical manner, setting a rhythm disconsonant to the one of the mumbling earth. It beat it once, twice; then flew away, utterly unbothered by the effervescent conversations that gradually resonated around campus. Inside her heart, the same tempo followed.
A date.
Heavens, she could feel the way her pulse trembled underneath the mere connotation of that term, never once used before by him. At the same instant she was aware it did not held the significance she wished, the girl could not shake away the endless sparks that ignited within her spirit once she had heard that term a few minutes ago. She felt so stupid, yet so blissfully happy.
Little did she know that, as Jungkook departed from the inside of that small store, he felt the very same.
Gratitude was plastered all over her features as an alluring smile appeared upon her traces, welcoming the boy as he returned with the small bag. She took it with delicacy, afraid that a brusque movement would be all that it took to shatter the wonderful world of reveries she had immersed herself in, “You're the best person I have ever met.” she spoke, fighting the urge to curl her arms around his body and pull him into a warm hug. Aforetime, that would have been so simple, casual, but now she was not certain that was inside his area of comfort.
Jungkook, regardless, merely responded with a satisfied smirk, glad that his small present had given her that much joy. Even if she could not tell, the affection that scintillated beyond his gaze took in the eternal glow of the stars, bordering on the euphoria he fought to keep inside, “You’re very welcome. If I knew the way to your heart was through lame history books, I would've done this years ago,” then, with a concise pause, the boy placed his hands inside the pockets of his pants, chewing on his following words as his eager eyes traced the details of the falling adumbration, “where to, captain?” he lightheartedly questioned.
Humming, she considered his inquiry as the two began to walk without a destination. She held the bag with two hands behind her back and, with every step, its vague noises resembled the calm melody of the wind that whispered through the trees. Again and again, her partner in crime could only wish to drink the sallow moonlight that bathed her focused features, to listen to her euphonic voice as she distractedly spoke out.
“Let's just... walk around,” at last, her response came. For an instant, the boy forgot what he had asked, but it soon emerged within his infatuated mind. Only then did he allow himself to chuckle in amusement, a reaction she had grown quite used to along the years. “I sense that you have another idea, don't you?”
With that single loose edge, his facade came undone, “I might have one, yes,” Jungkook agreed instantaneously, unable to disguise the sudden excitement that glimpsed within his features. As the two passed underneath the cascades of continuous streetlights, the shadows that melted down his features gifted the boy with an image that bordered on the mystery of his prolonged elucidation, “a certain someone might have the keys to a very empty and unwatched gymnasium.” at last, he said.
“Interesting…” the girl said, allowing for her word to trail off into the vacuum of night. The eternity of that moment reflected within his wicked eyes, dripped in between his cherise lips as a song she would adore to follow—a sailor allowing for a siren to trap him underneath the tempestuous waves of a stormy sea. “did a certain someone steal it?”
From the way Jungkook promptly chuckled at her inquiry, she was certain she had already accepted his unspoken request the very second it had fallen in between their bodies. Weak—she was dangerously weak when he looked at her like that: so meaningfully, yet in such infantile, naive manner, “A certain someone got it from their coach when they were still part of the football team, and then never gave it back,” the philosophy student responded without a trace of hesitation. “what do you think? Worth the shot?”
With a purposefully prolonged suspire, she pretended as if she had pondered upon his idea for an instant. Again, Jungkook was very convincing when he needed to. Or, mayhaps, she was just biased, manipulated by her bottled-up emotions, “Fine. Just because you got me that book.” finally, she accepted.
“Oh, I love how you act as if you're not the tiniest bit curious,” he managed to joke back, thanking the lack of luminescence for masking the roseate hue that burgeoned upon his cheeks. Instantaneously, Jungkook drowned in the oceans she held inside as her euphonic laugh dispersed into the ashen clouds above, her beautiful smile dragging him away from his broken, eclipsed reveries of years past. Once again, he thought about how beautiful she was—it was not as if he had any sort of control over those fascinated observations, anyways. “whatever helps you sleep at night, that's good enough for me. To the gymnasium we go.”
And, without an instant of hesitation, so they did.
Lost amongst the cimmerian shadows of the falling indigo skyline, the two could almost convince themselves that there was no destiny to be reached, merely the path of their intertwined souls; the mesmerizing melting of one color to another, dancing together to form the kaleidoscope masterpiece that was the blazing sundown—then the abysmal nightfall. As one subject progressively transfigured into another, they talked about the most frivolous of interests, jumping from topic to topic with the fluidity of the passing incandescent lights. The overwhelming comfort of something so simple took over their enamored hearts, for it was fantastic to simply go on about everything and nothing at all; the kind of liberty only conversations with him could provide her.
Enthusiastic like the wind, able to move between delicate breezes and the pull of a hurricane. Never once had the girl felt so light, so unrestricted by the ties of her subdued sentiment. As the wind caressed the spacious world that expanded in between their bodies, all her preoccupations dispersed into the nocturnal winds. As strange as it might have seemed, she sensed as if that instant became boundless, as immeasurable as their own story. It was ordinary, but lacking any flaws; momentary, but infinite—it was just the two of them and the perpetual embrace of dawn.
She missed that, she truly did.
So much, in fact, that the sentiment blinded her to the obvious manner her friend stole quick glances in her direction, hoping and praying his admiration would not become translucent through his armor. Even with so much adoration continuously blooming within her breathless chests, the two could not win against the enormous space in between their tentative hands.
Truly, one of the most melancholic kinds of love was the one that remained silent, afraid of never being returned with the same vehemence.
Jungkook could never quite elucidate the sentiment that sang inside his soul once she was there by his side, absolutely obvious to the mystical effects she had on his soul. Continuously, frequently, hopelessly—Jungkook had envisioned that determining occasion again and again, hoping his courageous spirit could show itself when facing the paralyzing, faceless nemesis of his confession. He had imaged how feather-like her honeyed lips would feel against his own, dwelled in the picturesque smile she would present to him once his idolatrous words dripped in between his clenched teeth.
Three small words never felt so threatening, so invencible; spinning his bravery around like a carousel, giving him the motion sickness of a hypothetical rejection from her part. Jungkook hoped for a smile, but could not face the possibility of a frown, of a confused stare; of an unilateral infatuation.
Uncountable instances aforetime he had considered pursuing the rocky path of a faithful confession. Frequently, he had portrayed the most absurd sequence of events, all of them intercalating the ethereal, paradisiacal glory of mutual feelings to the scalding inferno of a possible humiliation, the burning of being turned down by the one he adored ever so dearly. At some occasions, Jungkook got as far verbalizing the syllables that constituted her name with the harmony of his growing hope, words intoxicated by the same affection that hung ever so sweetly at the tip of his tongue—nevertheless, he never enunciated his love. Never found the sufficient amount of courage to do so.
Returning to the unbearable space that dwelled in between their bodies, Jungkook looked to his side in the internal expectation of meeting her image. Neighboring the otherworldly, there was an extraordinary aspect about the way her gaze was lost beyond the sempiternity of the violaceous skyline, how her skin glowed under the golden, aureate lights of a campus that slowly begun to embrace its nocturnal habitants. Heavens, he had lost himself in her charms so many instances, yet the boy was never entirely prepared for the way her grace monopolized his thoughts, causing for them to metamorphose into anarchy as he attempted to formulate the most basic of sentences.
It was brusque, impetuous—but it was not unnoticeable. Deep in the rampageous turbulence of his inner dilemmas, Jungkook thought that peaceful moment was perfect for his courage to present itself—it would finally arrive, and he would recklessly relocate his reluctancy aside, telling her with unshakable bravery how mindlessly, profoundly had he fell for her. Communicate it to her not as a request, not as faithful attempt for her to experience the same: Jungkook would confess his feelings for the girl as if it was nothing at all, a subject could be overlooked if she wished to do so. He would make sure to say how it would not change anything, how she had absolutely no obligation to feel the same.
Though, that was all that he could ever wish for.
Suspiring, the girl brought his attention back to the two of them, back to the grey asphalt and the howling of the autumn wind. At last, the prolonged tension of his expectation was broken with the notes of her voice, somewhat embarrassed at the subject being presented, “That chick you hooked up with that last party… the one with the long curly hair, you know?” YN asked, seeing from her peripheral vision how the boy nodded in agreement.
Jungkook looked at her in expectation, taking that brief instant to appreciate the cherubic way her features embraced the streetlights with so much grace—her nose appeared as if it had been outlined by gold, the pallid yellow of the lamps that fought the penumbra just to shine upon her cheeks, down her face, around her roseate, petal-like lips as she continued her reluctant speech, “She came to talk to me yesterday, wanting to see if I could give her your number.”
He frowned, clearly puzzled at the unforeseen prospect, “Did... you?”
Her mouth closed at that, eyes seeking for the answers that hid behind the trees of the silent campus. Guilt was not precisely what she was feeling, but it was the only word that emerged within her mind as she attempted to characterize her position, “I didn't know if you wanted me to, so I made up some excuse about breaking my phone and that I never memorized your number,” the girl confessed those words quickly, as if a part of her was silently begging for him to forgive the sins she never committed. “we ranted for a bit about the technological dependency we have, but she bought the lie just fine. I didn't give your number to her," and, after a pause, she made sure to add that, "I know her, though. If you want, I can reach out.”
Jungkook shook his head in negation, moving his hand in the air as if fanning away the nefarious clouds of his apprehension, “No, no, that's fine as it is,” he was quick to say, forcing his tone to remain somewhat controlled. “I don't even know her name. Don't want to change that.”
From the manner her lips fell back shut in a momentary image of hesitation, he knew there had been some fragments of his rapid negation that resonated with an erroneous chord within her soul, “I... understand. Maybe you should tell her, though,” his best friend counterclaimed, measuring her sentences with infinite care, so they would not show the personal pieces of such carefully constructed puzzle. “it's quite sad to just sit and wait for someone like that. Specially if they're avoiding you.”
The hidden gloominess that embellished the corners of her smile often induced for the boy to discover his limbs suddenly growing stiffer, his lungs contracting in apprehension as he met the wonders that dwelled in the fathomless world behind her gaze. In the captive of his throat, the words he would never say died once again. His confession had its spotlight prepared, but he was terrified of the stage, “Yes, you're right,” was what he proffered instead, masking the anxiety of his missed chance with a quick, almost timid cough, “I suppose I should... tell her.” Jungkook acknowledged.
At that, she only hummed in agreement, but said nothing else. As the terminal syllables of his thoughtful sentence lost themselves amongst the hyperborean atmosphere of the night, neither of them knew if they were still discussing that faceless stranger, or if their inner preoccupations had peeked through the cracks of their pride.
It did not matter. Another time, perhaps.
A better one.
Arriving at the gymnasium was not troublesome, but opening its passageway turned into a much more arduous task than they could have ever envisioned. Jungkook pushed and pulled the doors with just enough force so there would be no obstreperous reverberations, but none of his efforts appeared to cause any sort of change in the fact that such dark metal entrance remained imperturbable, standing in the same place as if it was a loyal soldier in its designed position.
Behind the two explorers, no other living being crossed those parts of the campus, for their Saturday night was reserved to other, more vivacious landscapes. Such unique equanimity became quickly cherished by the curious girl—for there was a secretive element about the forlornness of an universe once so ebullient that appeared to be mesmerizing, a piece of reality only the two could waltz in. To her, even if only as an internal conceptualization, the sands of time had stopped to run so the two could observe the gorgeous navigation of passing clouds, how the light of the moon bleed through the opaque nebulas of such onyx cosmos, then withered into the twilight of those dimly illuminated ambients.
Disregarding all those mystifying aspects, her focus solely resided in the boy before her. Bathed by the consecrated complexion of the caramel streetlights, Jungkook held tightly to the ethereal aura it gifted him, the golden aureole that slipped in between the charcoal strands of his disheveled hair—just like that day at the cafe, he appeared to be a pulchritudinous hallucination; a treasure that flinched away from her grasp continuously.
Fumbling with the newly discovered lock, Jungkook angrily mumbled at the overabundance of keys in his hands, uttering profanities at unseen divinities every instance he attempted to utilize the incorrect one, “Okay, I think I think I got it,” the boy said after a breviloquent instant of expecting silence, his shiny eyes looking at her with the endless stars of his bliss. She did not care the reason why he had grown so happy, for it was the image of his endless joy that brought her such euphoric comfort; memories of their childish years coming back to her like tides of wistfulness.
Repeatedly, she thought that she could still catch glimpses of his younger self slipping between the cracks of his controlled persona, and it was an extremely conflicting sentiment to endure. Youthful, his heart lured her into moments of magic and wonder—yet, they kept crashing down back into reality, turning her position into a much more anguishing one.
At last, an exclamation from his part sliced her reveries, causing for the whine of the opening door to echo in the nocturnal infinity that surrounded the two, “Welcome to the castle, princess,” her best friend joyfully greeted, dramatically moving his arm as if he was a painter presenting his newest masterpiece to eager art lovers. In some level, that was precisely what unfolded, “the world is yours to take.” Jungkook added, taking a step to the side so she could walk in first.
And, God, what a world it was.
Near the ceiling of the gymnasium, an elongated line of rectangular windows stood at the top of the wall opposite to them, allowing for the caliginous illumination of the street to welcome the two into those relinquished lands. The spiritless, aurulent phosphorescence from the neighboring lamps dripped from the dusty glass and caused for the specks of dust to oscillate in the static atmosphere, obtaining the achromatic pigmentation that made them seem like anemic lampyridae against the moonlight.
Casted away by her momentaneous reveries, the girl released a long sigh; looking all around as if checking any other peculiarities she could have missed at first: the wooden benches by the side of the court; the mountainous bleachers that embraced the blades of luminescence with its phantasm-like semblance; the polished cantaloupe wooden tiles, the bleached demarcations that separated the areas of the court, but also guided the two adventurers to enter its realms. There was something terribly alluring about the entire ambient, which she could not yet elucidate.
“God, I hate how pretty this place is at night," she groaned as she slowly walked towards the center of the court, lamenting how rapidly memorable situations like those could become. That small fragment of campus belonged to them—and them only—for god knows how long. If she could, she would have spent the rest of the night there, merely accompanying the midnight darkness as it grew thicker before, at last, gifting its position to the auric resplendence of the burgeoning sunlight, "have you been here before?” she questioned, turning around to meet his silhouette.
Momentaneously, she considered that an answer could not be exactly what she desired. The mere hypothesis of him taking other girls there was able to make her stomach turn. It was not induced by jealousy, but by the damage of replacement. The hurt of longing for someone who escaped in between her fingers like mercury.
Yet, her inner preoccupations did not appear to have any effect on the oblivious boy, “When it's empty?" Jungkook questioned, almost mindlessly. His friend only nodded in agreement, and he hummed for an instant as his mind worked around its memories. After a few prolonged seconds, he was able to construct an answer, "Only once, when I needed some space to think, but you're the first person I bring here.” he confessed.
Perfectly, she masked her alleviation with a shiny smile, “The honor is endless,” she spoke, those words holding more significance than she ever expected. Truly—the world was theirs to take, “it's... weird at the same time. So empty, devoid of noise.” she shared her thoughts.
“Yeah, I see what you mean,” Jungkook agreed, placing his hands inside the pockets of his pants as he moved closer to where she stood. Against every fiber of his body, he forced his gaze to remain on the endless lines of pallid windows, avoiding to meet the beauty of the girl amongst the consolidated penumbra of that secluded night, “I'm glad we got this night for ourselves. I really missed it.” he manifested that with so much tranquility that she overlooked the turbulent storm clouds that begun to accumulate within his obfuscous eyes.
Humming, the girl but down on her lower lip, taking a couple steps up the solitary bleachers—against what she expected, her footsteps did not sound like thunder amongst the emptiness of the gargantuan construction, but soft and precise as the heartbeats that pulsated within her veins, “We haven't done this since what, freshman year?” the history student questioned, at last sitting down, closer to the middle. By her side, she placed her new book. “Damn, you used to be bolder back then.”
Jungkook chuckled at her peculiar choice of words, forcing himself to follow his best friend up the steps, “Bolder?” he echoed, somewhat puzzled by such term. Communication appeared to be odd between the two childhood friends, for each syllable shared held a level of ambiguity that made him uneasy. “Are you talking freshman year of college or high school?”
With a sudden glimpse of interest, her eyes widened in the face of an upcoming recollection, “I was thinking about college, but you just made me remember something,” she said, promptly meeting the reluctant expectation that was casted over his focused lineaments as, finally, he stood and sat by her side. “and yes, we're going down memory lane whether you want it or not. Picture this: teenager Jeon Jungkook, climbing up my window in the middle of the winter, having to wait for almost twenty minutes on a tree before I got out of the shower to let you in.”
Of course, he could recall that perfectly. Even with some particularities lost amongst the nebulous trails of his mind, Jungkook could still feel the claws of the gelid winter diving deep in his skin; could recall the sound of her surprised exclamation as she left the bathroom with just a pale blue towel around her body, her widened eyes meeting his own behind the glass window. The scalding roseate hue that exploded in both of their faces was barely noticed under the hushed whispers and fervent curses, his excuses were quickly disregarded and curtains were rapidly moved in front of the translucent surface as she claimed she needed to get dressed. Almost twenty minutes later, the boy was allowed entrance. The price to pay: a couple playful hits to the head.
Back to the present, Jungkook then laughed—one of those free, careless laughs that he allowed himself to present when he are truly, foolishly happy. If anything, the most elementary kinds of bliss were the one he cherished the most, for they were both the most achievable and the most alleviating to experience, “Don't do that to me, that was such a traumatic night,” he confessed with a smirk, feeling as if some part of him had shattered under the ponderation of nostalgia. Their bodies were so close, just a few more millimeters and his hand would be placed over warmth of her own. “though, I remember you sneaking out with me to go to that party. Did you parents ever find out that we went there?”
She paused for an instant, ruminating on her memories. As the nuances of that peculiar nightfall returned to the surface of her chaotic memories, the history student came to the uncommon conclusion that she could remember minute, almost ignorable details about those comforting instants, small quirks and expressions that could never be applied to anyone else but her best friend. In the end, even unable to characterize the boy that now stared at her so patiently, Jungkook was one of the most singular individuals she had met, someone that completed her oh so perfectly.
Memories like those were the kind that remained in the depths of her childish mind and, when they returned, they caused for your heart to flutter under their overwhelming wistfulness. That instance, nevertheless, they only brought her a certain sense of disappointment, accompanied by a sign that appeared to hold the entire weight of the world within it, “Not that I know of,” her negation came with a measurement of hesitation, causing for him to grow preoccupied at what would follow. “it was a pretty terrible night, though. I spent most of it in the couch by myself, groaning at drunk people.”
Jungkook’s primordial response was a smirk, his eyes falling down to the polished court that awaited in the hollow spaced in between the steps of the faded bleachers. There was a certain sorrow camouflaged within his every syllable, and she would have never noticed it if she had not been so attentive to his every minor signal of irritation, “You do that during every party you go to.” he spoke underneath his breath, hoping that the traces of regret within his tone could be sufficient for her to understand his fragile position.
Open, then closed. Her lips moved as if delineating her words in the air, but allowed no sound to run from in between them. There was only silence, only the beating of their arrhythmic heartbeats. Open, closed.
It was during moments like those that the boy finally understood that the duality she presented him with was nothing but the existence of a melancholic soul in a vivacious personality; the glimpses of hope and despondency that morphed to form the girl he had fallen so deeply for, “Yeah, but you left me alone,” she spoke, breaking his romantic reveries instantaneously. That was not even close to a sentence Jungkook ever expected to receive, far too close to his nightmarish forthcomings for him to promptly take seriously. Paranoia was not all that it was, then: he had truly relinquished the one who he adored the most. “I mean, I get it. You wanted to have fun with your friends, I don't blame you for it. I'm also not saying it was on purpose, but it did make me feel down. For a long time, at that.”
Those words made him feel sick to his stomach, the impact of his guilt absorbing all the air from his already feeble lungs. Jungkook could not put into words how much he hated the fact that the girl felt that way, especially if it was because of infantile and reckless decisions he had once took. He would have done anything to put poetry into her life, to find the lyrism that tied them together with so much perfection. The white rymes, the flawless metric, the correct verses at the specific time. Everything he did not have, that is. Everything opposite to what he had truly given her.
“You never told me it bothered you so much,” he spoke those words with care, almost as if he was scared of the consequences of facing a wild animal. Though, he was aware YN was not even close to a roaring lion amongst the endless fields of the savannah, nor the calculative wolf that awaited for its pray in between the alabastrine snow—she was his best friend, someone that knew him even better than himself, “it's nothing that wouldn't happen nowadays, too.” he quickly added.
Subsequently, he came to realize that it was a calamitous choice of words. It was nothing that would not happen nowadays: he would still leave her alone, “I know. It does happen sometimes,” the girl agreed closely after, bringing his deeper nightmares to life. It was like watching a piece of glass falling to the ground in slow motion: body paralyzed, wide eyes merely awaiting for the crashing impact that would soon arrive. And, duly, it came. “Jungkook, you know I'm not someone that gets comfortable at parties. I only go because you want me to, and every time I think you'll keep me company, which you don’t. I don't demand to be exclusive, it's just kind of exhausting when you drop me to be with your friends or some random girl the very second we walk through the door.”
With her amable voice and the dainty reluctance it provided, Jungkook’s best friend shattered his spirit with the simple pronunciation of those words. Brusquely, all elements of nature he once perceived within her became the natural disasters that would tear him apart—calamities, oh calamities—the same calm breeze had now turned into a merciless hurricane. Paralyzed. Slow motion. He spoke out, “Is that why you... are already gone every time I go search for you?” he seemed unable to find the correct words to formulate his inquiry, but he did it regardless. Jungkook expected that amongst his shaky timbre, she would capt his disguised message: he had gone after her, she had not been simply forgotten nor replaced.
Though, it was much more complicated than a disguised apology and the infantile hope of a benevolent forgiveness, “Yeah, I get tired of waiting, so I just go home.” she shrugged, and moved her gaze away from his own. That was, in a way, the breaking point: a simple misstep that sent him flying down to the abyss of his suppressed frustrations.
Like wildfire, his frustration started to fumble around in his tight chest, taking over the arrhythmia of his heart and burning his logic thinking into ashes. He felt the pressure of the earth shaking beneath his feet as his subsequent words ate his mouth, bringing along a poison that he did not recognize as being his own, “I've seen you talking to some people every once in awhile, though. Some guys.” added the boy, trying to hold back the rivers of his awakening exasperation.
If the hidden connotation of his claims reached for her cognizance, she gave no signals that she had been affected by it, “I'm not socially inapt, Jungkook, I can talk to other people,” she spoke back with bittersweet aftertaste hanging at the tip of her tongue. She could not explain the reason for his sudden harshness, nor the way that it reflected upon her very temperament. “it's just the same story all over. The guys you see me talking to just want to flirt and fuck around, and I'm not interested in that. Besides, it's not like it's an excuse for you to just leave me like that.”
He frowned, unaffected by her sentence. The thing about resentfulness was the blindness it dragged along, preventing its owner from recognizing the irrationality that slipped through one’s every movement, “Why is that?” he thoughtlessly inquired.
Was that jealousy she perceived within his tremulous phrase? No, she was not being rational: of course Jungkook was not jealous. She supposed that was a common behavior amongst the ones who fell in love to place a special, idiosyncratic meaning in everything their loved one did, for it was much more soothing than to face the hypothesis of it being an one-sided devotion.
As much as she was sure it was the case, some stubborn, hopeful part of her heart expected otherwise, and it was sufficient to prolong her anguish even further. She paused for a second, taking in the vague question, and the curtain of such abstract feeling that had fallen over his eyes, “What do you mean?” she thought it was better to question.
For the first time, she did not see Jungkook as an unexplored mountain, did not force herself to fight the radiance of the sun in a faint attempt to glimpse at the secrets the cloud-hidden apex held. Now, the boy was nothing beyond the best friend she had lost a long time ago, an hesitant and even quite timid kid that was unable to construct his sentences with the correct words. His mouth was opening and closing, his flickering eyes were moving around—everywhere but on her—seeking for the answers that he necessitated. She could almost sense the waves of frustration that emanated from his body, but could not pinpoint the reason for such swift change of demeanor.
Each step forward, the boy felt as if he was taking two steps behind, crawling away from a reality he would forever deny to face. Keeping those thoughts at bay, he forced himself to clear his throat, resuming his speech with care, “Why are you... not interested in any of them?” at last, he reformulated his previous inquiry, his voice a note softer than before.
“I don't know, I'm just not,” she breathed out, allowing herself to embrace the profound waters of his gaze for a momentaneous instant of weakness—in her perceptions, his beauty still resided amongst the harshness of his expression. Fragility reluctantly opened before her like a efflorescing flower, presenting her will the prismatic magnificence of his kind spirit, the kindness that sometimes got eclipsed by his reckless acts. Yes, that piece of a lonely universe was duly was a beautiful ambient, but his presence managed to make it even better. “the heart doesn't pick what it wants, I suppose.”
Taken aback by the pulling currents of his heartache, the boy felt as if he was nothing more than a book with a torn out page: missing an imperative scene, a discontinued trail of thought. Jungkook truly despised how distant he had become, and was unable to direct his anger towards himself. Instead, it dripped in between his mouth like drops of a corrosive liquid, burning his patience to threats, “It really fucking doesn't,” he bitterly agreed. “I'm sorry, okay? I never noticed I was doing that.”
If it had been in any other situation, she would have left that slip. She would have overlooked the pendulum of emotions that guided his posture, would have disregarded his unbelonging frustration as being caused by the subjects the two would much rather avoid—however, that moment, everything switched back to place. The same constrained petulance that deteriorated his heart could be reflected within her own chest, crushing for her reckless speech to reverberate past the static air before she could ever hold it back. Not that she would have, for she was, too, reaching the margins of her patience.
“I told you about this at least two times already, though,” YN continued to say, refusing to acknowledge an apology that was as empty and mechanic as the others he had presented her with. She could see that the boy was compassionate towards her position, so she could not comprehend the reason for the prompt manner he avoided diving deeper into such matters. “you apologized, but the story remained the same. In fact, if I'm being honest, I feel like you purposely avoid me at this point.”
There it was, and there was no way to take it back. Her piercing words felt like cold daggers to his chest, slicing his pride in half and causing for his negation to shatter into reality: Jungkook could no longer escape from those demons. Perhaps, there was not another time—a better one—waiting for him ahead; the universe would not be merciful enough to take that miraculous decision for him, or even to plan the correct, unrealistic instant for his devoted speech to leave his mind. He was losing his best friend at every hollow apology, it was not worth the secret.
At the same time, running over that blame distribution made his limbs hurt, those fragmented opinions and past recollections that only induced for his inner guilt to shine with a new force, “What are you talking about?” Jungkook questioned, aware that he was being irrational, speaking in circles. She was right, and he was searching for signals that held absolutely no verisimilitude. “We're alone in a gymnasium. How is this avoiding?”
“Yeah, I'm as surprised as the next guy,” scoffed his best friend, her calm tone in dissonance with the clear astringency of her measured words. Heavens, he felt as if the paradise of her gaze had just metamorphosed into inferno, oscillating in a middle-ground in which her melancholy appeared ever so clearly. “you're always postponing our plans, always making up excuses to cancel or leave early. And when you do stay around, your mind is miles away, you never even hear what I’m saying.”
Syllables felt arid as a desert as his poorly pronounced negation fell from his mouth, “That's just not true, YN.” was all that he was able to say, even if he did not believe that claim for a mere second.
Truth was: Jungkook had been aware of how the two had followed separate ways, traveled different roads. Ever since they had gotten into college, they were no longer the kings and queens they once pretended to be, just two pathless students amongst an ocean of strangers. More than that, he knew perfectly the way he had purposefully avoided his best friend with the objective of muffling his feelings—which, ironically, only added to his overwhelming longing. She had all the right to be feeling lonely, to be placing the blame on him. God, he hated himself at that moment.
The girl, however, merely shrugged at his words. For the first instance, Jungkook came to the conclusion that her disappointment was so rooted down her mundane chores that she could barely present him any sort of sentiment: it had become part of her routine, “Perhaps not, but that's how I feel.” she humorlessly told him.
Stitch by stitch, his facade was torn apart, lying somewhere in between the broken and the frustrated, “Maybe you should ask me how I feel.” Jungkook said without a second instant of ponderation.
Parts of his forgotten reason still screamed within his mind for the boy to better filter his verbalizations, but he was aware that, phrase by phrase, the damage that was progressively being done could not be fixed so easily. He was certain, one way or another, that the time he had been waiting for now approached at full speed. It felt less and less like a kind embrace, and more like a truck about to hit him in the middle of a deserted road, its phosphorescent lights so strong that blinded the boy to any sort of self-control.
She, too, appeared to grow conflicted at the spectacle that unfolded before her eyes, pursing her lips together in a quiescent instant of hesitation, “Very well,” she agreed after a sigh, placing her hands on top of her knees. Her palms felt horribly cold, even if it ambient was warm, “for starters, why are you getting so defensive?”
“Defensive? I'm not getting defensive, I'm just getting mad,” and he only got himself to blame—the two of them knew that. “seems like every time I'm about to do something right for once, a talk like this blocks the way. We haven't been close ever since we started college, that's normal, but do you have to rub it in my face that it's all my fault?”
At that, her shield of apprehension shattered. Yet anew, the naivety of his younger self shimmered past his staggering tone, causing for the girl to remember that the two had a story far deeper than those shallow years of college, “I never said it was all your fault. Things like this are mostly never unilateral,” her shoulders fell at that, voice growing more delicate. Even if she still blamed the boy for the way he had departed, she could not pretend as if she could not have fighted harder for it. In a way, she, too, appreciated the security of distance. “I know you for too long, Jungkook, I know you wouldn't just cut me out because you're feeling like it. Or, at the very least, I'd like to think so.”
Her words felt like kerosene setting his soul aflame, the sparks that gradually consumed the rope of a dynamite. From the manner Jungkook swallowed his anguish dry, he could tell he was merely a couple steps away from the edge, holding himself back from a road divider he was so frightened of facing, “I would never do something like that, you're my best friend.” Jungkook spoke, but did not fully believe himself. He had done it, after all.
Patient, the girl breathed out, placing her hand over his own. Her touch was like poison ivy, burning every part of his skin and causing for his throat to itch under the bothersome presence of unspoken claims—nothing could ever come close to how much he wanted her at that instant, even if it was to solely feel her embrace, her heartbeat mixing with his own, “And you are mine. You just haven't been acting like it,” she tenderly responded, voice faltering for an instant before continuing with the subject. “what's going on with you lately? You know you can tell me anything, I won't judge you.”
What’s going on with me is that I have no fucking idea how to love you, and it’s tearing me to pieces, the boy innerly responded, but could never find the courage to push those brave claims out of his asphyxiated chest. He was two steps away from crying out mercy, giving up to the fatigue of his suffocated sentiment and merely allowing for it to spill out amongst the breaking thunder of his pride.
Regardless, what he said was the complete opposite, “Nothing’s going on with me.”
Breathing out, she took her time to find the air she necessitated to continue such personal conversation, “Look at me,” requested the girl and, after a concise second of vacillation, the boy glimpsed upwards. Jungkook could swear that it was almost sanctified the way the colorless glow of the moon dripped over her frown, the chimerical traces of her confusion standing out amongst such welcoming persona. Preoccupations painted her features in shadows, and he could tell that there was no way he could turn back from the path they were heading. “tell me what's wrong. We can't fix it otherwise.”
Jungkook scoffed at her sentence, promptly feeling terrible for doing so. His heart skipped a beat the the apathetic temperament that had taken over his spirit, for he was aware his defensive posture would soon get the best of him. For a moment, he found himself inquiring if that would be the last night she would spend by his side, if the subsequent renunciation he would present her with would be enough for their friendship to be ruined forever, “We can't fix everything, YN.” he counterclaimed.
In fact, it would make everything worse. One fallacious advancement, one misspoken sentence. One step out of the chord that divided who they were and who they had become, and the two would downgrade into the vacuum of utter evasion that existed in between.
However, the manner her fingertips curled around his hand in a silent comfort was enough to puncture his heart instantaneously. Her touch, as intoxicating as it was, was also warm as a splendiferous summer morning; welcoming as the oceans that stretched beyond her eyes—seas he had continuously drowned in, being pulled under by the enchanting spell of her voice. His own eyes, however, were again moving away from hers, focusing on the achromatic particles that danced in slow motion against the phantasmal lambency, “Let's at least try.” she told him with care.
Even hours after that scene had occurred, the boy could not pinpoint what it was about that simple sentence that felt like the last drop to him. Self-condemnation had corroded his soul for so long that Jungkook could not do anything but feel infuriated at himself, profoundly displeased by the manner she continued to be benevolent to him even though he had done her so wrong—Jungkook anathematized how much he loved her, how much she made him fall deeper and deeper with every loving touch. He hated how he continued to keep all that as a secret.
Of course, he was not obligated to.
Groaning in annoyance, he ran one of his hands through his cimmerian-pigmented strands of hair, leaning back against the bleachers as in a silent signal of defeat, “Fine. We're doing this, then,” Jungkook rolled his eyes, an action that felt like hyperborean arrows being shot straight through the walls of her hopeful heart. He was mad, frustrated even. “let's play guessing game, if that’s what you want from me. Guess why your best friend is unable to look you in the eye, guess why he can't stay around for you for long without making an absolute fool out of himself. Guess why I always go to search for you during parties and end up so frustrated that you left that I get the first chick I see in front of me.”
Once, twice—she blinked lethargically, using all the seconds she could to fully comprehend the explosion that had just came from his lips, “I... don't know the answer to any of those questions. That's what I'm asking you, Jungkook,” said the bewildered girl. His name slid off her tongue with so much easiness, so much harmony. It would soon be the end of him.
Of them, even.
Thunder broke once he opened his mouth, bringing along the reverberation of his suffocated misery, “Why do you think I got pissed drunk back in that party, uh? I was trying to man the fuck up and be straight up with you.” Jungkook said, aware that each syllable took him closer and closer to a path of no return. The boy was staring at the barrel of a gun; patching up each and every sliced up fragment of his temperament from which his genuine sentiment could slip through. Nevertheless, some calamities are stronger than the man’s will to control them, and to fight against nature is to lose sooner or later.
The wild winds of his tone shook what was left of her cognizance, his sentence holding meetings far too abstracts for her to promptly grasp, “Be straight up about... what?” strangely, she found that simple sentence particularly challenging to pronounce.
Like flowers that ruptured the cement, Jungkook's words broke upon his clenched jaw before he could ever measure their inevitable consequences; the ponderation of revealing his most secretive emotions to someone that could tears his very soul to pieces with a mere negation, “Are you that dense?” the boy spat, moving his head back so his eyes could meet the overwhelming infinity of her own: patient, kind, understanding. All at once, it all spilled out from his mouth. “I’m in love with you, YN, how can’t you tell?”
With that, their world withered into quiescence.
Cold and silent, the devastating space between their bodies appeared to grow within the span of a heartbeat, pulling the two lovers towards opposite edges of the ambient. Paralyzed by the connotation of those words, the two impassively watched as their story reached the end of a long-running chapter, turning to a page that still remained blank. Their young hearts faded for an instant and, ever so strongly, fell back to the turmoil of the present.
Encompassed by quivering stars, the moon casted its porcelain aurora on the eternal minutes that prolonged inside that gymnasium, embracing their still bodies in a ghostly, melancholic atmosphere. Ache and bliss irradiated inside her suffocated lungs, inducing for her dry lips part as she progressively absorbed the impact of such abrupt epiphany, “You’re… w-what?”
Jungkook had his eyes lost in the abyss far beyond her position, avoiding her presence vehemently. By her side, the cover of the book appeared to mock his coward nature, causing for the explosion of his devotion to progress into the weight of his words, “Don’t come to me pretending you didn’t hear it,” he spoke those words with weakness, finding it hard to discover the same ruthless he had tasted just before. “I hate this shit: I’m in love with my best friend. I've fallen for the oldest trick in the goddamn book. Fucking fantastic.”
It was sudden, overwhelming—but it was there in all its melancholic glory. The abrupt crash of their shared emotions, the spectral way his thoughtful irises still resembled the ones who stared so fondly at her all those years ago. The confirmation had reached her years, and the brokenness she felt for so long was now silent before the fulfillment of her numb euphoria.
Sincerely, she was planning to verbalize something back at the vulnerable boy—anything she could ever conceptualize, really. As her petal-like lips fell open in the wordless enunciation of a silent exclamation, the girl swore there was a vague idea of which baseless, improvised sentences would come out of her mouth, a broken inquiry or, perhaps, a faraway recollection of her profound reflections. Nevertheless, as her wide-eyed gaze met the beautified lineaments of Jungkook’s anguished semblance, all those blurred thoughts dispersed into a blank canvas, his very image causing for her breath to get trapped in her throat, “J-Jungkook, I—” she stuttered.
“—No, listen to me,” he interrupted vehemently, unsure if the fragile voice that left his lips was truly his own. It felt too rushed, too piercing; too broken, “I know I’m a prick sometimes, alright? I know I end up ignoring you, that I leave you hanging. I know I’m always overprotective of you, and I’m sorry. I’m sorry because I’m aware that’s not healthy, but I can’t work with what I’m feeling,” he spoke those endless confessions like a cascade of reverence, unable to pause and fully ruminate on everything that had been told. He hesitated, then continued after a sigh, “shit, I tried to ignore it, I tried to go out with other girls. But they weren’t... you. As stupid as that sounds, they weren’t you, and you’re the only one that I want, YN.”
Looking at him at that very instant was like losing her balance; equiparable to the absence of gravity that a lost astronaut would feel when floating around the void of space. Everything was so out of focus that she could only pay attention to the odd pattern of sensation that took hold of her: his eyes, that torn-apart gaze of someone who had just pulled the final loose edge of a decaying friendship, pulled her into the blurred hollowness that existed beyond it—no more phantasmal constellations in sight, “Why… why are you saying it now?” was all that she could ever question.
Amongst the fragmented adumbration that painted his features, she could perceive a niveous blanket of tears shimmering over his eyes, “Keeping this inside it’s just too much, alright? It's suffocating me, sometimes I feel like I can't even breathe,” Jungkook was honest with his every sentence, feeling as if it bordered on the inexecutable to respond without losing control of his already staggering speech. “I'm sorry that I couldn’t just pretend as if you weren’t such an important part of my life. I'm sorry I was a coward and that I pushed you away. I'm sorry I fell in love with you and now that I'm throwing it all on your shoulders.”
Once anew, the girl opened her lips to respond, but he silenced her with a quick raising of his hand—an unspoken request for her to continue listening to his unplanned confession, for he was uncertain if he could ever be able to find the correct words to continue if she verbalized something in between them, “I'm sorry I'm a fucking idiot, alright?” Jungkook breathed out, shaking his head. Yet again, his eyes fell to the spacious nothing that existed in between the steps of the bleaches, the hole that he wished could swallow him whole, deleting his existence or merely taking his tormented spirit away from such terrible position. “You deserve someone that will treat you better than this. It’s not fair with anyone.”
After Jungkook’s trepidation had dissolved into the obfuscous eternity of night, she awaited for an instant to check as if he had said everything he wished to. Amidst the soft infinite of the elephantine quiescence, YN melted into the nostalgia of their past, both embracing it and pushing it away from the present that they now dwelled in—for, no matter the ones that they once were, it would be infantile to grasp into moments that could never be replayed, people that had long moved away from those childish imaginations.
The two friends had truly grown up, enough so that he had spilled out his emotions in a momentaneous explosion of devotion, an uncalculated reverie that ended up holding much more significance than the two could have ever foreseen. Now, it was her turn.
Gentle sighs, deep breaths. As the afterglow of his confession tingled in the space between their silhouettes, a pallid shade of roseate burgeoned on her cheeks and she sighed, rupturing those never ending moments with the symphonious tranquility of her timbre, “Can I talk now?” delicately inquired the girl. Only then did she notice that, throughout his eruption of emotion, he had taken his hand away from her own, and the coldness of night felt as venomous and merciless as ever before.
Jungkook had immersed his demeanor on the unspoken task of maintaining his composure intact, for his pride had long fell like ashes to the ground, combusted by the volcanoes of scalding secrets that had just grown in between the two. Contoured by the waxlike luminescence of buzzing lights, his impassive lineaments did not show even a fragment of the pandemonium that exploded beyond the two simple words that constituted his response, “Go ahead.” he shrugged, hoping that the shame of her refusal would not scar his soul as deep as he expected.
The chuckle that dripped from her lips was enough for his eyes to unwillingly dart upwards, presenting the girl with the opening she needed to continue, “Jungkook, you have to be the denser person I have ever met in my entire life,” she playfully told him, instantaneously recognizing the way his gaze danced in between the confusion of assuagement and the shock of her reaction, “you don’t know if I feel the same? Really? What do you want me to do, wear a T-shirt with your name printed on it? Change my relationship status to ‘it’s complicated’?”
He rolled his eyes, turning his head forwards and staring at the now closed passageway. Meters from where they stood, he could still perceive the vague shimmering of the silver keys scintillating in the air like a solitary astro, guiding him into amenity like a personal north star, “Complicated is one way to put it.” was what he said back, for he felt unable to comprehend her reaction wholesomely.
Placing her hand on his tensed-up shoulder, she called for his attention again, “Hey, Jungkook?” his best friend’s mellifluous tune culminated in a swift movement of his gaze back towards her direction. Suddenly, the smile she presented him with was everything he could see—no dusty gymnasium, no silvery stars—and her sacchariferous timbre was the only melody he ever wished to hear. “Do me a favor and just... shut the fuck up.”
And then, the boy found the softness of her lips pressed against his own.
Kissing her was like having a drink of whiskey—addictive, intoxicating; it was drowning in the mesmerizing sensation of her lips without caring for the hangover that could arise alongside with the morning sun. Feeling her trembling heart against his own was like an earthquake inside his soul, like they were colliding and drowning away, feeling the spacious nothingness between their lips before diving back to it with much more adoration.
And god, the roses! The roses blossomed like galaxies exploding within his chest, the thorns no longer cut his breathing short. It was everything so perfect, so immaculate; a scene that could be part of a formidable romance—a painting, a masterpiece—of two friends finally succumbing to the feelings they have kept inside for so long; souls shining brighter than the lackluster moonlight that was casted over their interlaced fingers, their waltzing mouths.
Honeyed, then astringent. Peaceful, then tormenting. It was perfectly imperfect, flawlessly damaged. It was the two of them, and nothing more.
At last, she departed from his lips with another peck against his swollen mouth, her following words coming out in an infatuated whisper, “I’m in love with you too, Jungkook," the girl confessed in infinite devotion, her tone resembling the faint beating of a butterfly's wings, the rustle of the tall grass beneath its kaleidoscopic colors signaling the blowing of the vernal breezes. "maybe you would’ve noticed it if you weren’t so busy running away from me.”
However, at that instant, nothing about his poorly calculated mistakes mattered.
The bitterness of their past no longer held any sort of relevancy, for the honeyed nectar that danced at the tip of their tongues was sufficient to silence all the howling poltergeists that remained at the back of their heads—at times, things did not have to be so complicated, for the simple, innocent certainty of a shared love was already enough, “You know me, I can’t cope with some stuff. I just avoid it and hope it goes away magically,” the he chuckled at his own words, noticing promptly how pathetic they were after everything that had unfolded, “I guess it was too much at stake. I couldn’t just throw years of friendship out—”
“—Like you just did,” she was quick to interrupt, gaze flickering downwards to meet the contours of his swollen, scarlet-painted lips.
“Like I just did,” Jungkook echoed with infinite adoration, taking one of his hands so he could remove a strand of hair from the front of her pulchritudinous eyes. He paused at that, the warm feeling of her skin against his own awakening an exquisite emotion amidst the never ending haziness of his mercurial conceptualizations. If he were to elucidate such feeling, it seemed as if he had just woken up from a deep sleep, but his heart continued to waltz on a chimerical cosmos of unachievable reveries. “and I’m very, very glad I did.”
Time and time again, he would find himself getting lost in her details—the way her hair fell around her head, embraced by the aura of the tarnished incandescence; how her smile held the allurement of a thousand renaissance masterpieces, lips moving with the fluidity of a running river, oscillating like petals in the wind to form the most harmonious of notes, “I’m glad you did too.” she repeated, placing her hands on his shoulders in an unspoken cue for him to move even closer.
And so he did.
Breaking him down and building him back up, she used the architecture that hid in her kiss to fumble around with the pieces of his soul, writing unsaid poems on the silk of his mouth and a suppressed, indestructible suspire escaped from his mouth. One of his hand navigated to hold to her waist, touch light as a feather, electric as a lightning bolt that coruscated amidst the raven ink of dawn; as the other continued to cup her cheek, holding her in place as his mouth explored the gentleness of her kiss.
Jungkook swore he could still see her comeliness even with his eyes closed, for it was the same grace he had experienced time and time again throughout the years they had shared. He had fallen in love with her very soul; the color of sunset that it emanated, the heat of the sleeping sun’s radiance—those brief seconds in which the sky was in absolute equilibrium between light and penumbra, waltzing with strands of gold and the sapphire sea; painted in light brushstrokes of white and grey.
It was both an ending and a brand new beginning. When the day reached its ending, night would soon follow and, once the stars were already exhausted of its continuous glow, the everlasting flames of the sun would come to bring them assuagement. Like her, the sun would continue to rise, sunset would continue to embrace him.
The two would meet in the horizon, consoled by the philosophies of its equilibrium.
At times, Jungkook would catch himself thinking about the meaning of the most introspective of concepts. Often, love and beauty.
Love, to him, came and went in waves, and the movement of the seven seas never ceased. The pellucid waters slipped through his fingers and shone under the sun like they carried along a million diamonds; the alabastrine spume of the caressing ocean fell like a pulled blanket over the sand: crashing, cleaning, wiping away all traces that could have been left aforetime; turning the world into a clear canvas ready to be painted by a brand new story. Undertow; drought; tormentous tides and currents that led to everywhere he could ever imagine.
To her.
And, heavens, he had drowned in those crystalline waters a long time ago.
His most accepted characterization of beauty, however, came solely after a few months the two of them had been together. Not in an epiphany, as he once expected, but in between the tender caresses he had now grown so blissfully accustomed to, combining itself with the other special little word that haunted his contemplations—it was welcomed, regardless. For it was more perfect that he could have ever imagined.
Her lips were like the finest of silk against his own, the warm embrace of two bodies intertwined amongst the sheets of a messy bed. There was something tragically pulchritudinous about it, something so wholesome about the way her arms wrapped around his neck and pressed their chests down together—hearts intertwined, beating in consonance. It was like waiting for years for a rare flower to blossom, only to find yourself overwhelmed with its beauty, taken aback by the nectarous, sacchariferous scent it brought along. It was like home. Like the story they shared. Like her.
She moved apart from the embrace of his kiss with a prolonged sigh, her eyes fluttering open as the afterglow of their afternoon crashed down upon her nude figure, “I swear, this must be the third time we say we’re gonna study, but we end getting carried away,” the girl mumbled, using the snow-colored sheets to cover her chest, as the boy moved closer to her, placing his hand on her waist with a mischievous smile that she quickly recognized, “and don’t even think about saying it, Jungkook. This is not anatomy studying.” she cut his sentence short.
He merely smirked at that, never saying that he would have claimed otherwise, “Well, I’m not complaining,” Jungkook told her, hearing as the sound of the moving bed sheets danced on the stillness of the air.
Behind his figure, the window of his dormitory bedroom presented the girl with the beauteous imagery of the afternoon skies, unrealistically achromatic when compared to the conflagrant leaves of cantaloupe trees, burning like amber, dancing like autumn. The horizon casted an anemic silvery hue over his caramel-painted skin, appearing like a thin white line that contoured the lineaments of his shoulders; that melted in between the strands of his black hair. Many months had passed since the two shared that kiss in that abandoned gymnasium, but his gaze still held the same adoration, the same immaculate love.
“What’s with that face?” She questioned as she moved around, her chest facing his own. There was some sort of odd glorification shimmering inside his attentive eyes, precious metals that lured her into the treasures his soul held inside. Something has switched: they both understood, but could not pinpoint what it was.
Jungkook took the chance to pull her body closer, causing for their arrhythmic heartbeats to overlap one another as their skins collapsed together. As his inquiry reverberated on the thin air that existed in the middle of their lips, she felt as if the weight it carried caused for the gravity in her chest to increase, heart swallowing in infatuation, “What did I do to deserve someone as amazing as you?” he questioned.
She rolled her eyes, taking one of her hands to remove the disheveled strands of hair from her forehead—something she always did once she was trying to mask a reaction, in that case, the appearance of a roseate blush upon her cheeks. Even so messy after everything that had unfolded, her strands irradiated around her head, falling over the pillows like a silky cascade, “Piled up karma from your childhood, most likely.” groaned the girl in a sarcastic manner, hoping he would take her playfulness as a signal not to enter those emotional subjects.
Regardless, Jungkook was never quite able to catch signals from her part. That never truly changed.
“Stop it, I’m being serious,” mumbled the boy, allowing himself to smile just enough so comfort would return to shine within her chest. His nose scrunched up as another euphonic laugh ruptured the equanimity of his cherise lips, eyes shining in interminable amorousness, “I can't believe I have someone like you in my life. I'm being honest when I say that I could hear you talk all day about the invention of musical notes by some random Italian monk or whatever the hell you just discovered, and I'd never get tired of it. That's quite something, especially coming from me.”
Laughing feeling at his odd confession, the girl could only feel feel herself growing lighter again, “You’re being so cheesy, please.” she claimed, almost timidly.
Jungkook pouted at her words, leaning his body closer so his lips hovered over her own—light enough to touch her skin like diaphanous feathers, but not enough to gift her with any sort of pressure, “I don’t care, I’m being honest,” he counterclaimed, allowing for his eyes to flutter shut under the embrace of her presence. Both of them begun to value unpremeditated, filterless honesty more than ever after their unique night at the gymnasium. “just staying by your side… it’s enough to make my day so much better. You’re my everything, you know that.”
She did. It was something Jungkook told her often—not necessarily by spoken words, but by actions, the sudden surprise of welcomed affections and minor details that made their entire day count. It was within his every touch, within every glance that stood glued to her figure for a bit longer than necessary. Heavens, how deeply did she know that, “What about finding value within yourself?” Questioned the his best friend, taking one of her hands to the cataracts of his onyx hair.
Jungkook’s eyes opened at the delicate contact, the line of his lips curling up as if he had been waiting for that question to find its way back to him, “That doesn’t mean someone else can’t make you just as happy,” the boy promptly responded, each and every syllable feeling as if it was the part of an ethereal, gorgeous melody of affection. He looked into her eyes like he was able to envision the entire universe in them, and, in some way, he was. “it doesn’t make you vulnerable to allow someone else to love you, to be kind to you. Most of the time, we are not kind to ourselves, anyways.”
“Here comes the philosophy student,” the girl teased, but took his words to heart. It was true, after all: to love was not what culminated in torment. The element which did was what was done with a such sentiment; at times murdered by the hands of humans who did not know how to grow it, asphyxiated by hearts too feeble to find courage, “thank you, though. You know I feel just the same way.” she made sure to speak further.
And, yes, he truly did know.
Jungkook would not give up the roses that grew in his chest, regardless of the pain that they brought along. Just because the world was a never ending incendium, he would never allow for its blazing flames to consume the hope he held inside; to tear away from him one of the last comforts he still held to so tightly. Heavens, but how could he? How could the boy relinquish the warmth of her presence, how could he overlook the manner even the most gelid and merciless of winters melted under her scalding and welcoming aura?
Only the courageous showed their vulnerability with so much eagerness: they opened their arms and vociferated at the top of their lungs to bring on the pain of humanity—tear me apart, my love, they would bravade, tear me to ashes and throw me out of your life, burn my wings and break my soul apart: I can take it all, for I know the path was worth it. Kiss me like there is no tomorrow, ruin me like there was no yesterday. Show me that we were alive, that we meant something. That we are. Were. Will be.
Show me who you are, and I will be brave enough to show you who I am.
Then and there, she was graceless. She was courageous; vulnerable. She was everything he had imagined and a bit more. She was his. He was hers.
Perfect, gentle, palpitating—oh, God, how the roses effloresced! How their scarlatine hue dripped in between their lips, how their characteristic smell embraced them with the gentle aroma of the welcoming spring. How graceful their delicate petals felt, how perfectly articulated their touch caressed their skin with so much adoration. The roses burgenated; wilthered. Though, they never burned. No, never did.
Jungkook swore he could capture that moment forever, that the words that left his mouth would reverberate for all the years to come, guiding him throughout his times of doubt, “That’s the most fantastic part of it all, isn’t it?” her best friend questioned, hints of a smile daring to blossom in his roseate lips. They had such a sweet, delicate delineation, so perfectly sculpted to feel the graceful details of his features, “I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where...” the boy continued, pausing for a second as if to check her reaction.
And there it was: the brief confusion that transfigured into understanding, then the skepticism of his sudden reference, “Is that Pablo Neruda?” asked the history student, finding herself dwelling in the fuzzy sentiments that took over her chest.
With the euphony of her laugh, Jungkook was sure he would tear his very spirit to shreds if that was what it took him to listen to it again; would fight for the rest of this days for that gorgeous smile to remain locked into her features, “The one and only, love,” the boy responded before leaning in.
The reverberation of his heart against her chest increased as his lips met hers once anew, staying there for a moment far too quick for her to fully drown in the nectar they carried. Jungkook placed his forehead against hers, noses touching, and continued the poem as his mouths still brushed against one another line fine strokes of oil on canvas—each word meeting her flesh with awe-inspiring artistry, “I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you...”
The love that irradiated in her chest motioned her to move her head upwards, trapping his enamored words in between a kiss before the poem could reach its ending. Her fingertips, ever so patiently, traced the insubstantial path in between his shoulder blades to the back of his neck, then to the base of his hair, at last intertwining in his silky strands of ebony-painted hair. Jungkook half-smiled and half-sighed against her mouth, his own arms moving from her waist to wrap around her figure. It was so safe, so welcoming. It felt truly like home.
Breaking the kiss with a timid smirk, she closed her eyes. Again and again, she smiled by his side, filling her being with a sentiment she could not yet pinpoint—it did not matter, a label was not necessary, “I swear to god, you’re so cheesy sometimes.” she whined.
With slow, tender movements, the boy’s feather-like fingers caressed the softness of her skin with endless adoration, allowing for him to drown in the profound waters of her eyes as his subsequent words escaped the captive of his swollen, red-bitten lips, “Hm, maybe I am. But you love it.” Jungkook claimed.
She breathed out, taken aback by the hidden veracity of those simple words, “I really, really do.” the girl confessed, unable to hold back the smile that effloresced amongst her features. There was nothing she ever loved more than her best friend, especially during moments like those.
Reason relinquished amidst the diaphanous rhythm of their intertwined hearts, Jungkook kissed her once anew—he kissed her as if the universe was falling down to pieces, as if the shining stars could not reach the sparking incandescence that danced in between their nude bodies. His lips caressed hers as the roaring waters of the seven seas crashed down past her skin, hitting her legs in a silent, tender wish for the two to move closer. Nature was present within their every loving touch, as perfect as ever.
His hands moved towards hers, fingers filling the space between her own. Palm against palm, hearts beating in euphoric arrhythmia; Jungkook felt as if they were as profound and illimitable as the oceans of their naive adoration, lips trembling and caressing one another like the gentle wings of a butterfly beating against the vernal wind. Feeling her mouth dancing—oscillating, trembling—ever so tenderly against his culminated in a bottomless belief of security germinating within his veins. Just then, his arms held tighter to her figure, pulling her even closer.
An ethereal suspire escaped her as he did so. No matter how breaths she took, the girl still felt as if it was impossible to breathe under his embrace; the absolute infatuation the two shared finally exploding around them like polychromatic, soundless fireworks. It was poetic, thoughtless; impossible to be characterized or elucidated by a mere sequence of adjectives—it was Jungkook, and, for her, that was all you truly needed. A friend, a lover. Him.
Drinking the honey of her presence was equiparable to the grace of a dream, he realized. It was completely unreal the way her lips felt against the kiss prolonged itself with patience; absolutely fantasious the form she embraced him with the spell of her mouth. Beautiful, staggering, inspirational. It was the sempiternity of nocturnal endeavours; the tormenting flames of hell and ecstasy of paradise melting at the tip of their tongues. It was a long story that was far, far from reaching its terminal chapters.
Jungkook thought that beauty could be discovered within the simple, common fragments of life. It was breathing in the aspects of daily tasks most would consider mundane, the unnoticeable particulars and technicalities of the universe’s perfection; from the kindest of winds to the colder of dewdrops, the contours of snow-like clouds and the iridescent starlight that casted its glow over the obsidian blanket of dawn. It was the classical proportions of imperishable, timeless artworks, the mathematical precision of the golden ratio; the coordinated symphony of collapsing waves against the shore.
At last, beauty and love coexisted in the natural manner the two closed their eyes and dove into one another, finding synchrony in the oscillating breathing of their overwhelmed lungs. The flowers were there, blossoming like their bodies held spring in their veins, but their thorns were no longer hurtful.
On and on, their days passed beautifully.
#jungkook x reader#bts smut#jungkook smut#bts fic#bts fanfic#bts x you#bts x reader#jungkook x you#smut#fluff#angst#bts fluff#jungkook fluff#jungkook angst#jungkook college#jeon jungkook#jungkook fic#college au#friends to lovers
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↠ * mnet global auditions season 4 ,
♥«´¨`•°.. » episode eight ! seniors / semifinals »
¸.•* TELL ME by INFINITE MYNAME ! ( LINE DISTRIBUTION & STYLE ) `*•.
it feels surreal.
when she’d first auditioned for the show, she’d lacked so much confidence that she nearly didn’t audition, had to rely on her friends and her family to support her in order to go through with it. now she’s here, absolutely dumbfounded---but, of course, eternally grateful---that she’s made it so far, with only one more performance between now and the final episode.
her nerves are worse than ever.
but she can’t stop now, not when she’s so close. last week had been a roller coaster, having to compare herself to so many other great singers, many of whom were better than she was, with better experience, better technique. but all her practice during the previous week hadn’t gone in vain. despite the slew of eliminations done that week, a few that were such a plot twist that even she couldn’t believe it, she still stands, ready to tackle another challenge.
for this week, they’re once again given a list of songs to choose from, and it’s almost a little too easy for her to choose. she’s been a fan of myname since their debut, and she would love to do justice to one of their songs on a show as grand as the mga’s, so when it comes time for her turn to make a choice, she’s more than ecstatic when she finds that there are still spots left on that team.
when everything is said and done and all the teams are settled, she finds that bin is in her group again for the third week in a row, and she’s grateful for the familiarity after all the changes that have been happening quite rapidly over the past month and a half. even though she’s unfamiliar with the other three, the group as a whole settles into an easy comfortableness, likely spawned by the mutual understanding of the experience they’ve been going through over the course of the show and the mutual understanding that they must all do well not only for themselves, but for the overall group performance.
for some reason, choosing a team name always seems to have a bit of playfulness to it, and that continues on even into the semifinals. they linger a lot on the idea of pasta due to bin’s inherent playfulness, but eventually settle on the name rest, which they agreed would be stylized as RE5ET. it’s a meaningful name, not only for the song they’ve chosen to perform, but also as a concept for them as contestants on the show. they want to reset the audience’s perceptions of them, to show a new side, and it resonates with seola much stronger than any of the team names she’s performed under before. it immediately makes her feel connected to this piece more than any others despite not having had any practices for it yet.
lines are divided, and although there are no teams for this round, jei seems to carry herself with that aura, and it’s quite admirable. she reigns in the tomfoolery when she needs to, makes sure everyone’s on the same page before they move on to other details. it makes the process so much easier, and she honestly believes that it’s because of the other girl that everything is running so smoothly.
she’s more than satisfied with her lines this time around, feeling as if she’s being given parts that show off her range and technique, and it makes her feel appreciated and recognized, giving her all the more reason to want to do well. they trust her to be able to pull this off, and she doesn’t want to let them down, especially when they’re all so close to the end. she has to not only try her best, but do even better.
so she spends every waking moment practicing. even when she’s at work on the weekend, she’s practicing. cooking with her dad? singing. giving dogs baths? singing. taking them out for walks? singing. training them? feeding them? picking up their poop? singing. she even stays up late into the early mornings when the sun is about to rise, practicing choreography until her body can no longer stand and she knocks out cold on one of the benches in the practice room. these spacious rooms with mirrors for walls have become her second home in the past weeks, and though she’d previously struggled falling asleep on the hard surfaces, she no longer has any trouble finding dreams as she lies on the hardwood floors.
performance day draws closer and closer, and she gets more and more anxious by the second. it all builds up more and more until eventually it all unloads on poor, unsuspecting hyunjin. fortunately, rather than it being a burden on her teammate, it appears to be cathartic session as he, too, reveals his troubles for the upcoming performance, confiding in her that he’s nervous about doing another myname song when the first time he’d performed it, he hadn’t done so well. she can understand where the worries are coming from, but what she’d seen from him so far during practice, she’s fairly confident that he’ll be able to show how much he’s improved since the last time.
she has never been one for revealing her weaknesses, always hated doing so as a perfectionist, but with both their worries out in the open, she feels there’s a need for something more light-hearted. she suggests a rap battle, knowing he’s far more skilled in the skill than she is, but hoping it’ll help boost his confidence anyway. they throw on a beat, and as expected, he’s quite impressive. she feels almost embarrassed to follow it up with her own “rap.”
uh, yeah
ramen, corn balls, udon
chips, chocolate, jelly candies too
chocolate milk
vitamin water and hot dogs
don’t forget to buy your lotto tickets! yeah
she tries to keep to the beat as much as possible, but rather than coming up with a rap that makes any sort of sense, she merely lists off ingredients found at a convenience store. isn’t it always said that you should rap what you know? in the end, she dissolves into a fit of laughter, but despite the abysmal showing, hyunjin gasses her up nicely, giving her a much needed confidence boost as well and making her glad they’d talked.
on the final night before the rehearsals, the entire group agrees to a sleepover at the practice room, and with her stuff already there from the previous night, she doesn’t have any extra preparations to do. instead, she ends up buying snacks for everyone just before the rest arrive and, after another rigorous day of practicing, they all settle down for the night. however, instead of sleeping, they spend time together laughing, joking around, enjoying each others’ presence. it’s the last night they’ll have together, and they want it to be memorable.
pasta comes up as a topic of conversation again, and they end up talking about what pastas they would be, taking quizzes to help them make decisions. in the end, seola picks noodles, “because it’s my favorite.”
after another hour or so, they all finally fall asleep in preparation for the following day.
on the day of filming, her nerves are on fire. once again, she’s in a team that’s going last to perform, and she isn’t quite sure she’s going to make it all the way through to their turn this time, especially now that they’re performing outside. she still spends much of her time pacing around the backstage area, hands wringing, mouthing along to the lyrics of the song, performing the choreography with as little movement as humanly possible. she’s fairly certain she tries to make conversation with some of the other contestants, but it’s hard for her to focus on what they’re saying when she’s so preoccupied with performing in front of such a large crowd.
finally, their time comes, and she follows her team up onto the stage. they’re a vision in white with black accents, a clean and crisp monochromatic stage concept that fits in with both their team name and their song. they introduce themselves as a group first before following with their individual introductions.
“hello! we are team re5et!”
when it’s her turn, she steps forward, bows deeply, and speaks. “i want to keep on showing a better, more improved version of myself to the public, and only go up from here. i’m contest #4025, kim hyunjung.”
once everyone is done introducing themselves, they fall into their starting positions. she gives herself time to take one, long calming breath, eyes closed, her father’s words still as clear in her ears as the first time he’d said them to her so many weeks ago.
remember to have fun.
hyunjin starts off the song with some spoken lines and a bit of center focus, followed by bin’s singing. it feels like an appropriate way to begin, the both of them quite charismatic.
her first line doesn’t come until the pre-chorus, so she spends the first verse focused on her dancing, making sure each movement is not only sharp and precise, but that it also tells the story and conveys the feeling of the song. after all, body language speaks just as much, if not more, than words sung or spoken. she does the same with her expression, brows furrowed, bringing up painful memories of her own past to help emote.
she hasn’t thought about her mother leaving in such a long time.
i know you in my heart 날 위로했던 말
i know you in my heart; words that comforted me
--------------------------
다시 뜨거웠던 때로
just like the days when things were hot
she takes center stage for her first line, singing strong and clear even as she hits her choreographed moves with strength. she focuses her gaze out into the audience, engaging them in the story she’s trying to tell of wanting to reignite a past love that’s dwindled, of wanting an old love to return. her first line is fairly short, but she hopes she’s made an impact as she moves to the side to allow bin to take center stage again.
어딜 가든 어디 있든
wherever i go, wherever i am
네가 그리워 못 참겠어
i miss you so much, i can’t take it anymore
제발 다시 내게 내게 돌아와 줘
please come back to me again
제발 다시 내게 내게 돌아와 줘
please come back to me again
once bin has finished singing, she once again returns to the middle of the formation, voice loud and clear as she sings the second part of the chorus. she focuses on keeping her voice steady and lines sharp, all the while trying to remember to show the emotions of the song with her expression. she reaches out toward the crowd as part of the choreography, making it seem as if she’s reaching for what she’s lost.
tell me tell me
tell me tell me
she harmonizes a bit with hyunjin for part of the chorus, but takes special care not to overpower him so that he shines more than she does during the short segment. instead she focuses more on keeping in time with the beat and musicality of the song so that she’s synchronized with the rest of the group knowing that it’s what myname is known for.
the song flows effortlessly into the second verse, starting off with hyunjin’s rap. she puts her best effort into the choreography, demonstrating power when needed, and softer lines when they’re called for. her expressions remains both focused and pained as she dances, even as she falls to the back of the formation.
돌려볼게 안아볼게
i’ll look back, i’ll hold on
다시 뜨거웠던 때로
just like the days when things were hot
for her next lines at the end of the pre-chorus, she makes her way back up to the front but doesn’t take center position, allowing for a more seamless transition for bin to do so for his own lines.
어딜 가든 어디 있든
wherever i go, wherever i am
네가 그리워 못 참겠어
i miss you so much, i can’t take it anymore
제발 다시 내게 내게 돌아와 줘
please come back to me again
제발 다시 내게 내게 돌아와 줘
please come back to me again
tell me luv
once again, she moves into the center for the second part of the chorus, repeating the same choreography with the same gusto and emotion, reaching out toward the audience again in short bursts, expression full of longing. she sings with hyunjin again during the short line that follows, moving back in the formation to give him center once more. she keeps the focus on dancing and synchronization again during the rest of the chorus, including during the short line she has in between, up until the start of the bridge where they fall into a line of sorts, unmoving.
내 귓가를 가득 울린 melody
the melody that rang in my ears
during her line, she walks a few steps across the stage, each movement with strong intention as she sings, eyes focused on a camera that moves along with her. she moves along with the formation during bin’s line as the song eventually begins the chorus once more, though more slowed down and intentional than the first few times it was sung.
제발 다시 내게 내게 돌아와 줘
please come back to me again
제발 다시 내게 내게 돌아와 줘
please come back to me again
she sings her next lines with longing, each word extending into her dance lines, a perfect harmony, and, matched with her expression, conveys the song’s meaning well.
tell me luv (adlib)
she has one adlib in the song, but it’s a powerful one, and one that she’s practiced over and over again throughout the week, both in and out of the practice room. she moves off toward the side of the stage, stopping choreography for a bit in order to pull off the note. she doesn’t forget to maintain her expression as she opens her mouth wide enough to sing the note uninhibited though controlled, shutting her eyes tight to add to the effect of anguish for the song. it’s clear and strong and in tune, and she could not have asked for a better outcome of it, and it takes everything she has not to smile out of pride as she falls back into formation.
luv luv lu lu lu lu
her last line is short, almost imperceptible in the whole grand scheme of the song, but she treats it just like all her other lines, sings it with purpose and technique. she spends the rest of the song dancing, having fun with it even as she focuses, even as she emotes the song’s feeling on her features.
the song then draws to a close with bin’s final line, a fitting ending as she stands at the outer end of the formation, gaze drawn toward the ground. she stands there in her ending pose for a few seconds, the cheers of the crowds coming in as if she’s driving through a tunnel, gradually growing louder until she’s back to reality, no longer just performing on stage, but remembering she’s still a contestant on a show and that a high-five is next, followed by the eliminations. she only hopes she can properly thank all the people who’ve supported her, even with eliminations in the back of her mind.
the future is out of her hands for now. she hopes fate treats her kind.
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Cappadocia Capers
Today we visit the wonders of Cappadocia. Over breakfast Genevieve reported back on the balloon flight. Apparently is was fabulous if a little crowded in the basket with upwards of 20 people jostling for best positions. But she was glowing about the experience. Did we have a little balloon ride envy? Maybe a little bit but comfortable with the decision having both ballooned previously and the cost of €175 each (total $550+) was going to knock the budget around a bit.
Several stops were made during the course of the morning to view various sections of Cappadocia. It is an amazingly weird and wonderful sight. This natural phenomenon was caused by ancient volcanic eruptions blanketing the area with thick ash which solidified into a soft rock called tuff - something a little contradictory there I feel. Anyway, over thousands of years wind and water have shaped the landscape forming hills and mounds, lumps and bumps, crags and scrags, big and small, fat and thin. Some of the mounds, so charmingly called fairy chimneys are tall, tapering to skinny then topped with a fat blob. The area stretches into the distance and just when you think you have seen them all there is another vast plain of nobbles and bobbles. Plus many have been carved out and used as homes. Imagination is the key and we were encouraged to use it. The shapes and figures to be ‘found’ were so varied; a man in repose on a chair, kangaroos galore, a camel, birds, a buffalo. We all delighted in letting the mind go into creative free fall.
But while our imagination was busy seeing things in rocks Nahjo’s was centered on his commissions from shopping outlets cutting short our visits to some of the sights. As with all tours it was announced we would be going to the dreaded factories. First stop was the ‘Hi tits keramics’ (sic) . With a name like that I was immediately interested and Chris was definitely on board. And sure enough there on the factory was a sign ’Hi Tits’. Unfortunately high tits weren’t part of their range. Dougal finally worked out what was being referred to was in fact Hittites the ancient people who occupied Turkey (then Anatolia) prior to 1700 BC.
On approach we were given our time allowance of 40 minutes which seemed excessive compared to the 15 minutes at the rock formations. At this point Chris complained about the time imbalance which while didn’t reduce the time at the keramic factory seemed to result in longer visits to the next rock ‘panoramas to make some pictures’.
Trudged into keramics factory with Nahjo looking for a volunteer to spin some clay on a wheel. Needless to say Mr Russia was an enthusiastic rapid-fire volunteer. The gig was his. First we watched the pro then Mr Russia did his bit. Mrs Russia and son seemed mightily impressed. Next the showrooms and all the painted keramics. One design was supposed to be so intricate that only 5 master potters were skilled enough to create it. Dougal noted that these guys must be prolific considering the number of that design for sale. Mr Russia was convinced and bought one. Meanwhile Chris took a shining to an urn, entering into half-hearted negotiations while the group began heading out to the bus. Dougal noted that considering Chris’ earlier time objections he would lose all credibility if he was last out. Fortunately he joined the rest of us as we loaded back onto the bus with the keramics staff hot on his heels reducing the cost with every step. No deal.
Following some more visits to other sites with some amazing formations (they are so intriguing and oddly beautiful) it was time for the Open Air Museum. This site is a religious precinct containing a number of churches, chapels (or shapelles according to Nahjo) and a nunnery. Most of the churches belong to the 10th, 11th or 12th Century. Each chapel was cut into the rock with layers of decoration. Latter more intricate paintings had flaked away on some walls and ceilings revealing more rudimentary red paintings on the raw walls. The most magnificent one was apparently the Dark Church that Doug, Gene and Chris raved about. Apparently the paintings in there were the best preserved of all due to minimal light exposure. My claustrophobia got in the way of me visiting it. There were also some other ‘caves’ which were home to kitchens with adjoining dining area housing a table that would easily accommodate the largest of families at Christmas. Overall it was a fabulous museum and not overly crowded. Sadly no photos allowed.
Next the leather factory which was the same if somewhat provincial version of the one Chris and I had seen on the previous tour. Less glamorous models, no dimmed lights but the same deafening music. Dutifully followed the boss into the display rooms. Gene and Doug had no interest while at Chris’ persuasion I tried on a few things. Helps to be not really interested as the price plummets commensurate to lack of interest. One suede jacket dropped from starting price of $500 to final price of $250. Being the proud owner of new leather from Istanbul I didn’t need another no matter how cheap. Needless to say Mr Russia bought one for himself. Nothing for Mrs Russia.
By now it was about 2pm with Nahjo telling us the restaurant would be too busy so we wouldn’t be eating until 2.30. More rumblings from Aunty Margaret and Tina who were clearly unimpressed. So it was into the sweet and nut factory across the road where we all stuffed down samples to take the edge off our appetites. Finally Nahjo deemed it ok for us to head for lunch only to find out the kitchen closed at 3pm and it was nearly that now.
This played into our hands beautifully having not forked out for another abysmal lunch. Trouble was the poor local cafe we descended on was a one horse show that couldn’t cope with the sudden surprise influx at 3pm. Koftas were raw and chicken dry but we had a good laugh about it.
Nahjo’s on being asked cultural questions along the way had advised he would be answering them later. Well the time had come. This was Nahjo’s biggest moment of the tour. He was to play leading man in his own cultural play. We were taken into a local’s home built into one of the rock pinnacles. (Unfortunately we didn’t get any information about the home although the bloke who lived there spoke good English). A little claustrophobic for me so I headed for the window seat and quietly observed the performance that followed. Nahjo took the role of a suitor about to be introduced to his new partner’s family. Everyone was assigned roles as mother, father, grandparents, sisters, brothers, cousins or friends of the sweethearts. (Think he could see I was unimpressed as I only got to be a distant cousin as an after thought). But we were all supporting roles to Nahjo’s cameo. He clearly relished being lead actor, director, script writer and narrator remaining front and center the entire interminable performance.
At last when it was over we were released to the balcony where we enjoyed chi. But we left with our sum of knowledge about the underground houses unchanged. (How did they hollow them out, how old was the one we were in, how long had the gentleman lived there, does he own it or does the government etc...who knows?)
Finally returned to the ‘Special Class’ hotel in time for dinner and for those who had opted in for the Turkish night (interest level zero for us 4) to doll themselves up for €30 of guaranteed belly dancing and bottomless glasses. Aunty Margaret, Tina and Holly headed out in their party frocks ready for a big night. And my bet is Mr Russia would have been first up to gyrate with the dancers.
We bypassed dinner at the hotel instead opting to eat at a local cafe in town. Lentil soup (a Turkish favorite) Koftas - cooked this time - and stuffed zucchini were excellent. The wine apparently was not.
The tour while not 5 star, 4 star, 3 star and arguably not even 2 star was a whole lot of fun. Many laughs were had and in years to come we will enjoying reliving it as it’s often the dodgy holiday events that live with us the longest.
Tomorrow the tour returns to Side via another couple of factories while Chris and I and later Doug and Gene catch flights to Istanbul. From there Chris and I leave Turkey for Malta and Doug & Gene return to Canberra.
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So let me see if I got this right, I could watch season 1 & 2 on Nico-Nico subbed for free, with an art style and direction that took it’s queues straight from the manga, two seasons THAT ARE STILL SELLING WELL GLOBALLY ON BD, then I had to suffer my favorite arc getting a precure/90’s treatment with butchered subs that wasn’t even available in my region and I had to go the roundabout way to watch and now you’re telling me that I may have to wait for the one of the two arcs that has never been animated remotely close to the source material to be animated to get released in BD unless they throw us a bone and put it on some stream site first?
And it’s going to have THE SAME DIRECTOR AND TEAM THAT ALIENATED THE MANGA FANS WHICH WERE THE INCOME OF CRYSTAL? AND IT MAY OR MAY NOT BE DONE RIGHT CAUSE WE HAVE NO IDEA HOW THEY’RE GONNA APPROACH IT STORYWISE NOW DUE TO POSSIBLE LENGTH RESTRICTIONS?
Instead of oh I don’t know take a step back bring the team that actually worked on sales give them an appropriate budget and time schedule and stick to the original promise of animating the manga?
AND ALL THIS HAPPENING CAUSE TOEI WAS DUMB ENOUGH THAT INSTEAD OF LOOKING AT THE SALES NUMBERS THEY HEARD THE FANWANK AND WERE LAZY ENOUGH TO RELEASE SEASON 3 BD WITHOUT ANY ANIMATION CORRECTIONS AND EXTRAS WHICH I’M PRETTY SURE IS THE REASON THE SALES WERE ABYSMAL?
I don’t know if I should be laughing or crying here?
They should have released 2 compilation movies of season 3 WITH FIXED ANIMATION AND REDUCED STOCK FOOTAGE ETCH which would have given them more time to do Dream right or do a Sailor V or some of the sidestories in OVA format for instance
Just throwing ideas WHAT THE SHOULDN’T BE DOING IS ALIENATING THE LOYAL TARGET GROUP MORE!
sigh I know. Just make you shake your head in complete bewilderment...
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