i know my anxiety is irrational and comprised of previous negative experiences instead of an accurate prediction of the future bc it still tries to make me feel bad about objectively funny things that no longer even align with my morals as a person

Devil’s Ballroom Ch.7

A year after the events from the earth’s final attack, Little Homeworld is finally complete, and there’s a new jazz bar where gems and humans mingle and drink. - As you’re typing back a reply, someone pulls the stool out next to you and takes a seat. You see a sliver of pink out of the corner of your eye as you try not to actually Look. Oh god. It’s her. God can’t help us now.

Spinel/Reader

collab with my lovely wife @firstofficertightpants​

ya’ll im sorry lmao

You spend the rest of your evening doing exactly none of the errands that you needed to deal with today. Instead, you're laying on your couch and texting your friends.

         Y/N: I'm so tornnnn.

     Y/N: Do I say something about the cheek smooch?

     Y/N: Should I leave it be?

     Y/N: Because she's texting like nothing happened.

     Y/N: What if I'm reading too much into it??

     Y/N: What if that's just how she shows friendship affection???

     Y/N: I might make it so fucking awkward if I assume something!

     Y/N: This entire ordeal is mortifying!!!

     Y/N: I want nothing more than to dig a big hole and lie in it forever.

     Y/N: I might be low-key having a panic attack about this rn but what's new.

     Harper: Y/N. chill. you're way overreacting to this.

     Harper: even if it meant nothing, she still likes you as a friend right?

     Harper: i think it would take a lot for her to like.. not wanna stay friends lol.

     Alex: im just saying you could probably kiss her and she'd be ok with it

     Alex: cheek kisses are pretty forward

     Harper: don't listen to him. all of his relationships ended in failure.

     Alex: wow

     Alex: im seriously hurt

     Harper: am I wrong?

     Alex: no..

     Harper: my point exactly.

     Harper: i’m not saying you have nothing to lose or anything.

     Harper: because i myself had to tread very carefully with leah..

     Harper: but i think you should just see where it goes and not like

     Harper: put too much emphasis on this incase it was nothing.

     Y/N: Yeah see now you have me worried it WAS nothing!!

     Alex: oh my goooooooddddddddddddddd

     Alex: the both of you approach women so.. pathetically

     Alex: take a risk

     Alex: live a little

     Alex: what is seriously the worst that could happen

     Alex: she kills you??

     Alex: lmao

     Alex: its funny cuz of.. you know

     Harper: i can’t wait to be home and smothering him with a pillow instead of affection.

     Y/N: You and me both.

     Y/N: Try being the only one available to play games with him.

     Alex: both of you fucking love me okay

     Alex: alsooooooo i get to be home the day after tomorrow

     Alex: the alex is back, babieeeeee

     Y/N: Harper please come home I’m BEGGING you.

     Harper: sorry you gotta deal with him alone for another month lmao.

     Y/N: Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.

     Alex: can i get a fucking crumb of love here please

         You swipe over to the couple of messages Spinel has left you in the past couple of minutes while you were talking to your friends.

         Spinel: It’s another stupid ball, I just found out.

     Spinel: I told her that I’m sitting this one out this time.

     Spinel: She has so many others that would absolutely love to help her, and yet, still absolutely insists that I must be there.

     Spinel: I don’t want to go back to homeworld right now, and not for this.

     Y/N: And you put your foot down? Hell yeah, dude.

     Y/N: Planning a ball for a bunch of gems sounds like a chore anyway.

     Spinel: oh, it is, believe me.

     Spinel: And they need everything to be PERFECT.

     Spinel: Which isn’t realistic anymore now that they don’t expect any of the gems to stay in line with their gem class nowadays.

     Spinel: The last ball they threw almost 4 months ago was utterly chaotic.

     Y/N: For thousands of years y'all as a race never pushed to deviate from the norm, and now that you guys are allowed to? I’d go batshit with it too.

     Y/N: Being stifled in everyday life, and finally you’re free?

     Y/N: Fuck, I’d go around fusing with anyone!

     Spinel: That is precisely what too many of them did.

     Y/N: Lmao. I wish I could’ve seen that.

         You tab back over to your group chat for a moment to see what they’re talking about.

         Harper: see? they’re everywhere.

     Harper: i wasn’t expecting the campsite to have so many.

     Alex: you could have built an army and instead you took pictures

     Alex: do you know how easy it is to lure chipmunks?

     Alex: oh that lil guy on the bottom right is so fucking chunky i love him

     Harper: that’s the one that got the closest when i fed them. :3

     Alex: oh i fuckin BET

     Alex: you dont get that chubby in the wild without takin a few risks

     Alex: if u know what i mean ;)

     Harper: i hate whatever you just implied.

     Y/N: It’s not a conversation with Alex unless you roll your eyes at least 3 times.

     Alex: hey i thought it was 4 times

     Alex: dont insult me

     Alex: anyway, y/n

     Alex: are you workin the day i come back

     Y/N: Yeah I’m actually scheduled a double.

     Alex: scheduled

     Y/N: Yes.

     Alex: a double

     Y/N: Yes.

     Alex: he can’t SCHEDULE you a DOUBLE

     Y/N: He can if he asks me ahead of time as a favor.

     Alex: that fuckin bastard

     Alex: always ruining my plans

     Harper: you’re still mad at him for firing you last summer, huh.

     Alex: OF COURSE I AM

     Y/N: Bro you stole like $300 of cotton candy sugar that summer.

     Y/N: It’s only fair.

     Y/N: Besides, I’m only doing this because he said he’d give me a long weekend for it.

     Alex: kay well

     Alex: i guess i’ll just go bug you at work and wait for you to get off that day :'(

     Y/N: Get me written up again, I swear to god.

         Your phone chimes several times, and you swipe down to see messages from both Spinel and Steven. You check Spinel's first.

         Spinel: Do me a favor and ignore any messages Steven has sent you.

     Y/N: What are you, my boss?

     Spinel: I MEAN IT

         You quickly switch over to Steven's texts.

         Steven: I was going to ask you if your date with Spinel went okay, but I'm assuming it went fine considering she hasn't really stopped talking about you.

         Ohhhh my god, this is wild. You reply to him.

         Y/N: It wasn't a date as far as I know.

     Y/N: I had fun.

     Y/N: She's telling me to not read your messages, lmao.

     Y/N: Also what do you mean she hasn't stopped talking about me??

     Steven: She’s been lying on my floor for the last hour basically gushing about you.

     Steven: But you didn’t hear that from me!

     Steven: :D

     Y/N: Haha thanks, kid.

         You switch back over to text Spinel, and get up off the couch to make yourself some tea. Pulling out your kettle, you turn the stove on and grab some raspberry flavored abomination tea bag that your dad loves more than any of the other good tea flavors.

         Y/N: Sooooo.

     Spinel: You talked to him, didn’t you.

     Y/N: Hahaha noooo. :)

     Spinel: The fuck did he say?

     Y/N: Absolutely nothing.

     Spinel: Seriously? I was sure he’d reveal something embarrassing.

     Y/N: Nope! You should probably get off his floor eventually, though.

         Your kettle goes off and you grab a clean mug, and pour the boiling water into it along with the tea packet. You look down at your phone, and grin.

         Spinel: goddammit.

         You let the bag steep for a little bit, and add in a small amount of sugar. Walking up to your bedroom you take a snap of Jellybean half lounging, half falling off the stairs and send it to Spinel. She replies with a couple heart emojis, and you wonder if Steven was the one to show her the proper use of them. You set your cup of tea down on your desk, and turn your computer on. It’s evening now, and it’s much too late to do anything left with the rest of your day productivity-wise, so you settle in on playing more minecraft. Your thoughts wander quite a bit, and you find yourself stuck on thinking about Spinel. Naturally. You wonder about a lot of things she’s learned while staying on earth, from things like - does she pay rent? Does she have a job? Does she know what taxes are? Does she know what a relationship with a human looks like? She said she watched a movie, but didn’t exactly elaborate. You don’t know what human-norms she’s been exposed to. You can’t even concentrate enough to mine any of this redstone for Alex, and you nearly die in-game when the thought of ‘does she know what sex is?’ pops into your mind. You grab your phone and shoot Spinel another message.

         Y/N: Quick question.

     Y/N: If you don’t mind me asking.

         It takes her a few minutes to reply.

         Spinel: Sure?

     Y/N: Do you know how humans are made?

     Spinel: w

     Spinel: Yes?

     Spinel: Steven told me about it a few weeks ago actually.

     Spinel: Why are you asking?

     Y/N: No reason! Just curious is all.

     Spinel: Hm.

         Yeah you’re not too confident that she actually knows, and you’re too chickenshit to elaborate right now. You’ll enlighten her later. You spend the rest of the night browsing memes on your phone, and texting your friends and Spinel on occasion. Before you know it, your eyes drift close with your phone in hand.

     You wake up when your alarm goes off for your morning shift, and curse at yourself for not charging it last night. It’s at a solid 32%, which isn’t really enough to go about your day, but you’ll have to make do. You get ready for a hopefully not shitty day, lock up the house, and head in to work.

     It’s a complete shitshow when you come in, and you turn your phone off to save battery and concentrate on dealing with more than an average amount of tourists. You find Mr. Smiley sleeping in the breakroom/office/supply closet, and have half a mind to lock him in there from the outside for the rest of your shift. It’s pretty busy, and messy, and it isn’t until you’re there for several exhausting hours that you finally have enough time for a break. You turn your phone on, and instantly you’re flooded with messages from several different people. Ugh.

           A couple from your dad - just checking in, really. Group chat too as usual, but none of it seems overly important. One from Spinel, and several from Steven. You open up Spinel’s message first.

         Spinel: Do you think we could talk about a couple of things later?

         Vague, and a little concerning. You text back an apology for getting back to her so late, and open the messages from Steven.

         Steven: Hey are you busy?

     Steven: I’m dealing with a bit of a situation right now, and could use your help.

     Steven: Spinel locked herself in my bathroom, and she won’t come out.

     Steven: She refuses to answer to anyone, and several of us have tried.

     Steven: I’m just really worried about her, and you guys seemed to bond, so I was hoping..

     Steven: That maybe you could come over?

     Steven: Thanks regardless.

         You check the timestamp, and that was over an hour ago. Jesus christ.

         Y/N: Steven I’m so sorry, my phone was off and I’m at work, give me a few and I’ll be right over, okay?

     Y/N: I’ll be quick.

         He replies almost immediately with a “please” and you pocket your phone. You try not to worry too hard about Spinel as you rush over to grab your things, and knock on Mr. Smiley’s office/broom closet door. He opens it groggily, clearly just waking up.

     “Yeah?” he slowly blinks at you.

     “I gotta leave early. Emergency.” You stare at him, trying to not be pissed at his lack of work ethic.

     “Are you for real? You’ve got another 3 hours left.” He says and crosses his arms, and you glare at him.

     “I’ve been working my ass off while you’ve been sleeping this whole time, AND I’m covering your ass tomorrow so you can go meet your old friend! So the LEAST you can do is let me go early when I have an emergency!!!” You almost yell out at him, and he holds his hands up in defense.

     “Okay, okay! Fine. Only because you’re a good worker.” He says, and has the gall to look at least a little ashamed of himself.

     “Damn right I am.” You spin around and head out of the building, practically running.

     You almost trip and bite it several times on the way over to Steven’s place, but you’re more worried about Spinel. You’ve only been to his place twice, but once you’re there you run up the stairs and open the door without knocking. You’re greeted by the only two people in the living room, Pearl, and Steven.

         “Oh, she’s here!” Pearl says and nudges Steven, who looks up from typing on his phone.

     “Y/N! Thank god you’re here.” He says with furrowed eyebrows.

     “What happened?” You say and shut the door, and cross the room over to him.

     “I’m not sure! We were just working on something together for Amethyst, and she got a call from Blue and Yellow. She’s been ignoring them lately, and they’ve been bothering me in turn because of that, so I asked her to take the call just see what they want.” He runs his hand through his brown curls, and just for a moment, you see that 12 year old him in again. The obvious stress masks just how young he really is, and you feel bad that he can’t live life like a normal kid. “She went outside to take the call, and was out there for quite a while. I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop, but I did hear some yelling. And just when I was going over to make sure they were alright, she comes back in tears, eyes spiraling like months ago, and nearly knocks Pearl over rushing into the bathroom.”

     “And nothing since?” You inquire, fidgeting with your hands.

     “No,” He says, frustratedly. “I’ve been trying to reach the diamonds to see what this is all about, but I’ve only been getting the pearls. I don’t know what to do. She hasn’t been like this in months. What were they talking about to make her this upset?”

     “Maybe I can find out. You said she’s in your bathroom?” You raise an eyebrow at him.

     “Yeah, the one right over here.” He says and points to it.

     “Is it locked?” You ask.

     “No,” Pearl glances towards the bathroom door and crosses her arms. “The lock has been broken on it for a while, since Peridot joined us actually. Both Garnet and I tried opening it, but I think once Spinel hears someone trying to come in she blocks the door.”

     Hm.

     “I’m gonna try something, but you guys are gonna wanna stay away.” You say to the two of them. “I don’t want to overwhelm her with more than one person.”

     “Let us know if we can do anything?” Steven makes to pass by you and gives your arm a light squeeze. “And thanks for coming to help.”

     “Anytime, dude.” You give him a half smile, and walk over to his bathroom. You turn to take a look back at the other two, and they’re already in the kitchen discussing something in soft tones. You move to knock at the door, make two light taps against the frame, and wait for an answer.

     A couple seconds pass, and nothing. Not even any movement. Nervously, you knock again, a little louder this time, and wait for a good ten seconds.

     Still nothing.

     You take a deep breath, reach out to grab the door handle, and very slowly and quietly open the bathroom door. You see nothing but absolute darkness, and step in. You feel around the wall to your right and flip a switch just as you close the door behind you with an audible click. The room instantly floods with the dark red light of the heat lamp, and before you can even think about finding another light source, you find yourself slammed up against the wall and let out a surprised yelp. You open your eyes to see Spinel’s face inches from yours, pupils wild, her hands splayed against your shoulders.

     “U-um,” Your voice cracks a little. “Hey.”

     You watch her eyes take a second to find yours, and almost instantly, she lets you go, arms trembling.

     “W.. what are YOU DOING HERE!?” She cries, large tears pouring down her face, eyebrows raised in confusion, mouth trembling. Her hair is in loose pigtails, strands untamed around her face, cheeks stained with tear tracks. She looks like a mess, and your heart breaks, just a little. “I-I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt y-”

     “I’m fine.” You cut her off. “I should have said who it was outside the door, I’m sorry. And um.. Steven texted me while I was at work, and told me what was going on so I rushed over..” You trail off as you watch Spinel’s entire body shake, and she covers her face with both of her hands.

     “I can’t believe I just did that.” You hear her wavering voice, muffled behind her fists, and she lets out a choked sob. “Maybe they were right. M-maybe I’m not meant to-” She quickly moves her hands down to look at the floor with wide, vulnerable eyes, and struggles to form the rest of her words. You hear her breathing pick up pace, and you’re starting to realize she’s hyperventilating.

     “Spinel, look at me.” Her eyes shoot up to yours, lips trembling. “I need you to breathe.” You do what your friends have always done with you, and gently grab both of her hands and hold them with yours, thumbs stroking her palms in slow circles. She freezes up instantly, and you’re about to panic, because while a familiar touch helps ground you, you register that maybe it’ll make it worse for her. But before you can pull your hands away, her hands relax ever so slightly, and she lets out a shaky breath. “Good. Just like that.” You motion for her to follow your breathing inverals, and she copies you, hands still shaking in yours.

     It’s been a while since you’ve had to deal with something like this, but you’re thankful for having similar life experiences. After a solid minute or two of this her breathing is back to a normal pace, but she’s still crying, and now not meeting your eyes. Almost like she’s avoiding them.

     “Look, I.. I don’t know what happened with you and the diamonds, but you can talk to me about it if you’d like. No pressure, though.” You give her hands a small squeeze, and she whimpers, looking up to meet your gaze. Tears are still actively streaming down her face, and you have no idea how to make any of this better. It physically hurts you to see her like this.

     “C-can I not talk about it? I don’t think I’m ready..” She pulls a hand from yours, and wipes at her face. She just kind of smeared half of her face with wetness, and she looks miserable.

     “You don’t have to talk about anything, Spinel.” You look at her, making sure she sees it in your eyes. You slowly let go of her other hand, and hold your arms out in a silent question instead. Her mouth opens slightly, the red glow of the light around her making her look extremely vulnerable and soft, and she looks at your open arms with a blank face for a moment before understanding. Almost instantaneously, she throws herself against you and wraps her arms around your shoulders, shoving her face into the cradle of your neck. You envelop your arms around her tightly, giving her sides a squeeze, and you feel her start to shake again.

     She lets out an unsteady sigh, and hiccups out another small sob. You pull her to lean fully against you as you stand there, bracing your back against the bathroom door. She lets you maneuver her, and you rest the side of your face against her temple while she cries. You resign yourself to letting her cry on you until she’s done, if she needs to.

       You feel her sniffle against your neck, and try not to mind that she’s getting your shirt soaked. You give her back a few gentle rubs, feeling her body quiver against yours as she’s trying to control her choked breathing. You’re not really counting the minutes, as right now you’re currently having way too many rampant thoughts about what the fuck the diamonds could’ve said to her. You’re mad as hell, honestly, and if you could say shit to them, you would in a heartbeat. You don’t want to make anything worse for her though, as much as you want to steal her phone and video call them to curse them out. It takes a few more minutes, but eventually her crying dies down, and you feel her breathing even out. Slowly, she dislodges her arms from twisting around you two, and you feel a sigh, her breath hot against your neck. You do your best to school your facial expression as you’re realize just how close you are to her, and she pulls her face from its resting position to look at you. She looks awful.

       “U-um,” She lifts up her hand to attempt to wipe her face, failing to rub half the tears away. “I don’t really want to go out there yet..”

       “You don’t have to.” You say, quietly. “I can leave if you’d like some quiet to yourself.” Her face looks panicked for a second, and she grabs your wrist.

       “Please don’t leave me.” She says, voice wavering again. You try not to let your heart shatter at her tone.

     “I won’t if you want me here.” You say, and sigh softly. “Here, hold on a second.”

     She lets your wrist go as you move slightly over to the sink, turn the hot water on, and grab a clean hand towel from the counter. You soak it in water, and squeeze out all the excess. Towel in hand, you turn back to her, and she’s looking at you cautiously. You lift the towel slightly, motioning to her face.

     “May I?” You ask, and she nods slightly.

     Tenderly, you brush a couple strands of hair away from her face, grasp her chin with your left hand and pull her forward, gently pressing the towel to her cheek. She closes her eyes, and her shoulders sag a little as she lets you dab at her face, cleaning her of any tear stain marks. She sighs into your touch, and it strikes you that it would be so easy to just.. lean in and kiss her.

       Your brain almost short circuits and you snap your thoughts back to reality. There’s a time and place for everything. This is not the time, nor the place.

       Once you’re satisfied that she looks a lot better than before, you pull your hands away to toss the rag in the sink, and Spinel, for a brief moment, looks disappointed that you had stopped. Which.. kind of gives you an idea.

       “Can I try something? Harper used to do this thing with me when I.. had similar breakdowns.” You ask her. She raises her eyebrow in response, clearly exhausted from crying so much. “Here.” You say, and take her hand and lead her over to the rim of the bathtub. You sit down on the edge, and motion for her to sit in front of you on the floor. She takes a seat in front of you, still confused, but obeys nonetheless. “Can I touch you?” You ask her, watching her face to make sure she’s alright.

       She looks up at you, the red light in the room flooding the entirety of her face, making her hair darker, and the whites of her eyes a bit more dramatic.

     “Yeah.” She says in reply, voice tired.

     You reach out to her hair, and stop for a moment.

     “Can I have you face the other direction, actually? Come over here.” You move to open your knees, making enough room for Spinel to turn around and lean against the bathtub. She’s close to you again.

     “What are you..” She trails off as you start to take the hair ties out of her pigtails, one after the other. It takes a second, as it’s a bit tangled, but you manage to get both out, and let her hair fall down. You comb out her hair with your fingers, gently, and she sighs audibly while leaning into your touch. You run your short nails along her scalp, scratching and massaging as you smooth out her hair, attempting to pull all the tangles out.

     “Touch used to calm me down, and Harper was really good at it, honestly.” You say while pulling out a particularly difficult tangle without hurting her. Her hair is long like this, and you like it. You wish you could grow your hair this long, but it’s kind of a pain to deal with, and the longest you’ve ever had yours wasn’t even to your mid back, you think to yourself. “Sometimes she’d give me shoulder and neck massages, but I preferred that she’d just play with my hair. There’s just something different about another person touching your hair.”

     “I kind of get what you mean.” She says, tiredly.

     “Can I braid your hair?” You lean closer to look at her face.

     “Do what you want.” She says, looking fairly relaxed.

     “Cool. Anyway, while Harper was good at that, Alex, on the other hand, was just terrible at any kind of physical comfort. He’s genuine, and he tries, but he’s an idiot. He’s a lot better at distractions, for the most part.” You run your fingers through her hair one more time, before starting to separate her hair into three parts for a french braid. “He’s funny, and comes from a large family, so he always has stories and jokes. Whenever I’d have a panic attack, those two were always so good about being there for me. I don’t know what I’d do without them.”

     You notice that Spinel‘s shoulders have lost most of the tension in them, and you’re secretly relieved. You keep talking to fill the quietness around you two, because you’ve always hated the quiet during moments like these. Your friends aren’t here, so it’s up to you to make up for it.

     “It was kind of hard, at first though,” You say, and start looping the chunks of hair around your fingers, starting at the top of her head. “Because for a while there, back when I was 16 and dealing with the worst of my abandonment issues, I clung onto Harper like a baby koala. I had this super weird crush on her even though we had been friends since we were practically babies. I think I idolized her because she was just.. good to me.” You accidentally tug a little too hard on a strand of hair, wince and utter an apology while massaging the spot on her scalp. “I’m glad that didn’t ruin our friendship, but for a while there I really pushed my feelings onto her, which was kinda fucked up on my part.”

     “Hm..” Spinel mumbles. “I kind of had a thing for Pink, I think. Which ended up screwing with me even more after what she did.” You stare at the back of her head and pause your hands for a second. Huh. Yeah, you had a hunch.

     “If she were still alive, I’d punch her in the face for you, I hope you know.” You state, in full seriousness. This gets the first chuckle that you’ve heard from her today, and you’re secretly overjoyed.

     “I’d pay to watch that.” She says, and you laugh out loud. You see her smile, just barely.

     “So,” You continue, with both your hands and conversation. “A week or so after my 17th birthday, right after Harper talked to me about this guy at school that she liked, I confess to her. And not like a, ‘oh hey, you’re my best friend and I really like you’ kind of way, either. It was more like a, ‘have a mental breakdown over your best friend liking someone else and make them feel like shit about it on your walk home from school’ kind of confession.” Your hands reach the nape of her neck now, braid mostly done on her head, but you’ve got around another 20 inches of length before being finished.

     “Harper avoided me for nearly a week after that. I was absolutely pathetic, and inconsolable. Alex was fed up with my shit after a few days, and nearly slapped me over it. He would’ve been in the right, doing so, honestly. I was a selfish asshole who only thought about her own feelings, and not about her best friends.” Your eyes drift to Spinel’s face, and her eyes are closed, eyebrows unfurrowed.

     “Anyway,” You’re nearly done with the entire braid now. “She did end up forgiving me. Thankfully. I don’t know what I’d do if it were my fault that I’d split up our friend group.” You pick up the discarded hair tie from earlier, and tie it around the end of the braid.

     “I’m all done, by the way.” You say to her. She opens her eyes tentatively, and she looks sleepy. You stand up, and stretch your back. She also gets up on wobbly legs, and turns to look at you.

     “Um.” She’s avoiding your eyes. “Thank you. For this.” She’s twisting her hands together, nervously. You lean your face closer to get at eye-level with her.

     “Anytime.. and for the record, you look really cute in a braid.” You say and smile, giving her a cheeky wink. You watch her entire face from the neck up turn bright red, and think that you could probably do this forever, and never get tired. She gives you a noncommittal grunt, halfheartedly smacks your arm and you grin at her.

     You hear a quiet knock at the door, and look over to Spinel. She shrugs, so I guess it’s okay now.

     “You can come in!” You say to the door. It opens slowly, and you see Steven peek his head in.

     “Um.. are we okay?” He asks, clearly very worried about her.

     “I’ll be okay.” She says, and you think that maybe she should lay down and sleep. You verbalize this immediately.

     “Spinel. I think you should go take a nap.” You look at her, and she blinks at you. “I’m serious.”

     “She’s kind of right.” Steven says in agreement with you. Spinel gives the both of you a shrug, and even that seems like it’s taking a lot out of her.

     “Okay.” She says, and turns to walk out of the bathroom. Steven opens the door wider, and you can see Pearl in the kitchen leaning against the counter, trying to not seem like she’s intently watching all of you.

     Spinel makes her way over to the couch and takes a seat, sitting up rigidly. You walk over to her to make sure she’s okay before you leave for home.

     “You know you can text me, right? And if you need me, I’ll be available. I’ll leave my volume turned on.” She gives you a nod. “Oh, and.. take this,” You say, and pull off the pullover hoodie you’re wearing right now, and hand it over to her. “Alex used to let me wear his oversized sweaters, and they used to help me sleep, so..”

     She tentatively reaches out, and takes it from your hands.

     “Thanks.” She says, and gives you a small smile. With her hair pulled back like this she almost looks human, for a fleeting moment. You sometimes forget she’s a gem. You return the smile back at her, and turn around to leave.

     After grabbing your bag that you set down earlier from beside the couch, you head over to the front door and open it. Shouldering the bag, you start to shut the door and see Steven behind you. He closes the door behind him, his face searching yours for something you don’t quite know.

     “I don’t know what you did, but thank you.” He says, completely genuine.

     “You don’t have to thank me. I’d do it for you, too, you know.” You say to him, and he smiles.

     “That’s why I like you, Y/N. You’re sweet.”

     “Yeahhhh, don’t tell anyone, though. You’ll ruin my reputation.” You smirk, giving him the side-eye. He laughs and pats your back.

     “Ohhhhhh no! Whatever will you do!?” He rolls his eyes in jest. “Get home safe, okay?”

     “No promises.” You reply, and jump down his steps, two at a time.  

     It doesn’t take you long to get home, and you’re pretty tired yourself. You make yourself busy by preparing dinner, cleaning the kitchen a little, and calling your dad for another check-in. Before you know it, it’s nearly 11, and you need to sleep for your double shift tomorrow that you almost forgot about. You’re laying in bed browsing social media before drifting off, and you receive a text from Spinel. You swipe down and open the message.

         Spinel: Thanks again for today.

     Spinel: I baked some new cookies with Steven, and would like to give you some tomorrow if that’s okay?

         You smile to yourself. Ughhhhhhhh, you’re catching the feelings disease, and you swat the air around you like it somehow physically manifested around you.

         Y/N: I work literally all day, but feel free to stop by and give them to me.

     Y/N: Then I get to see a pretty familiar face to break up all the lame tourists.

     Y/N: Cuz that sounds super nice. ;)

     Spinel: I’ll see you tomorrow, then.

         She didn’t react to your obvious teasing, but you won’t let that discourage you. You fall asleep thinking of the many different ways you can poke fun at her, and this time, you charge your phone.

     You wake up the next morning feeling well-rested for once, and get ready for work. Alex has sent you a couple texts about when his flight will arrive, and when he’ll roughly come to meet you. Sometime around 4pm, apparently. You shoot Spinel a good morning text, and she replies almost instantly with the same, which makes you smile.

     You head to work, texting your group chat about what happened yesterday with Spinel, and give them basically all the details. Alex makes fun of you for a bit, so you curse him out and pocket your phone as you clock in. Today’s going to suck, but you’ve got a few things to look forward to.

     You make it a couple hours into your shift before you finally get a break, and Spinel texts you that she’ll drop by sometime in the afternoon once she’s done helping Bismuth with something. God you hope it’s not when Alex gets here, because you are so not fucking ready for that interaction. You eat your lunch and pray to any god out there that you could have one more day of peace.

     You’re outside the main building repairing a couple parts on the carousel, ignoring the bulk of the tourists to focus on work. You don’t realize that quite a while has passed by, because someone walks up to you as you’ve got your head in a small door, and kicks you slightly on your ass. You jolt and bump your head against the opening, and you hear Alex burst out into laughter as you groan in pain.

     God fucking dammit, this guy. You pull your head out to glare at him, screwdriver pointing at him threateningly.

     “Do you want this up your ass? Because I can do that.” You say to him, and he laughs even harder. You roll your eyes at him.

     “Don’t promise me with a good time, Y/N.” He says, and you stand up to smack him.

     “I don’t think the pointy end would be a good time, idiot.” You deadpan stare at him. He grins.

     “You don’t know what I’m into.” He shrugs, and flips his hair dramatically. You hate that he’s stupid and charming, and you love him so much.

     “I know I haven’t seen you in 2 months, but like, I feel like you’ve grown taller?” You stare at him, a little mournfully. You’re the shortest one out of your friends, and you’re of average height. He also seems.. handsomer. You think he definitely got a lot more tan. He’s definitely grown into his looks, his dark curly hair and recently shaved face making him look older than you’re used to.

     “I don’t think I did, but I think you’ve grown shorter.” He laughs obnoxiously, and you smack his arm again, which makes him laugh harder.

     “You’re so mean to me, like all the time. Why do I love you?” You cross your arms and pout, because you know it gets a rise out of him.

     “Youuuuuuu knowww, because I’m just so loveable and gorgeous and the smartest one in the group??” He flutters his eyelashes at you like he thinks he’s cute.

     “Wow, you are none of these things.” You reply, smirking at him. He puts his hand over his heart in mock offense.

     “Y/N, I’m offended. I’ve been here for like, five minutes, and I’ve received absolutely no affection from you. If I don’t get love, I will wilt and die. Do you want to be responsible for my death?” He opens his arms wide, and you roll your eyes dramatically, and stand there.

     “We’re not doing this in public.” You say, standing your ground.

     “Ohhh, YES we are, Y/N.” He wiggles his eyebrows. “Prepare yourself for the onslaught.”

     You take a couple steps back, prepared to run. He grabs your arms, wraps his around your torso, and picks you up, swinging you around.

     “Nooooooooooooooooo!!” You cry. “Put me down you oaf!”

     “No! I want love!” He all but shouts, and spins you around. He grabs your cheek with one hand and starts giving you big ‘ol smooches all over your face, and you’re giggling and trying to push him away, when you hear something drop and spill on the pavement a good twenty feet from you. You look up.

     It’s Spinel.

       Her face is twisted with heartbreak, and before you can even speak up, she bolts.

       You look down, and see the cookies she made you scattered on the ground.

Through history to get to you. (1)

Request by @adela-topaz-caelon : Reader's an angel casted out of heaven because, well, she's weird. She's in love with Crowley and, of course Crowley is in love with her. Our poor Aziraphale is just fucking tired of seeing how neither of them realize the feelings of the other.

Part two: here

Pairing: Crowley x Angel!Reader (Good Omens)

Word Count: 3215.

Warnings: none.

A/N: I'm sorry, I didn't wanna make this request in two parts but I was having inspiration problems and... Well. I'll post the second part tomorrow, by the way. I hope you guys like this!

4004 B.C., the day that every christian remembers as the moment when everything went wrong,— when God expelled humanity from paradise and condemned them to an unhappy existence for the rest of their days because Eve bit the forbidden apple and escaped with Adam from the Garden of Eden; yeah, that day—, an angel and a demon were chatting for the first time in their lives, both standing on the top of the east gate wall of that cage of life that the first two humans in history left behind.

They were not friends, oh no, quite the opposite, they were hereditary enemies, but even so, they shared their existential concerns in a calm, friendly tone, typical of those who have known each other for a lifetime.

But they hadn’t know each other 10 minutes ago.

Meanwhile, another of the so many of the angels of Heaven, one expelled from it by her disturbing peculiarities but not bad enough —or so God considered it— to make her fall to Hell, observed from the north gate how his winged companion gave refuge to the vile demon of the first rain fallen on earth, and before she could realize it, she smiled.

Her corners rose in a sweet and tender expression before even being able to stop to think what it meant something like that, holy rain falling on her face, her clothes and her own wings, soaking every inch of her being until there was not a single dry hair.

Y/N was, indeed, peculiar, her way of seeing the world was completely out of tune with the rest of the cold, calculating, maniac and, in a summary, good soldiers of God who didn’t question absolutely anything that is ordered.

She must have fallen with the others, many thought, but she didn’t.

Instead, and because of the obvious discomfort that the playful angel caused in others, God simply and subtly banished her from Heaven, assuring her that her mission on Earth, guarding the North Gate of the Garden of Eden, was much more important than anything else she could do up there.

And that was the last thing God ever told her.

But she couldn’t care less, in fact, she was happy with her fate; she knew that wasn’t her place, anyway. She always knew.

''Hey, Aziraphale.'' Y/N greeted with a melodious tinkle in her voice, appearing out of nowhere and successfully scaring her co-worker. A sweet laugh then echoed in the girl's throat, whose wings swayed with the gentle breeze that ran up there.

''Y-Y/N, please,'' the blond platinum angel begged, right hand positioned over his left lung. ''You need to stop doing that to me because one day my heart won’t be able to take it anymore and the heart attack will send me right back to Heaven. Do you have any idea how much paperwork would be done? Uncountable.''

During his reprimand, the girl watched her colleague with a devilish smirk in her lips, enjoying every word of the dramatic attacks suffered by the former bearer of the flaming sword. But her eyes, inevitably and within a few seconds, went to a specific point on the ground, back to the garden, not too far from the apple tree and there they remained much longer than she would have thought, feeling how her attention was slowly fading away and the voice of the angel deafened with each second of the clock.

As expected, Aziraphale noticed this, but before he could ask out loud, Y/N beated him to it: ‘’Who was him?’’

Him? Was she talking about...?

‘’Crawly’’ he answered, knowing that lying to his extroverted companion was totally useless; she wouldn’t stop until she got the answers she wanted. Anyway, in his voice could be felt a bit of anxiety for that same matter. ‘’A demon.’’

''Oh, well'' her answer was immediate and without thinking, very typical when talking with Y/N. ''He's hot.''

41 AD, soft music enveloped a crowded tavern in some corner of the large and great Rome, warm weather, pleasant atmosphere and its people dressed in sleeveless tunics in pale ochre, white, or cinnamon tones.

Or at least most of them.

Then there she was, sitting on a low wooden bench next to a table not much taller than it, its surface occupied by a distant predecessor of the chess whose pieces consisted of stones and board on a sheet of brown leather.

She wore the typical and loose roman dress, barely fitted in her chest and waist by two thin bands that held the soft textile against her body, but it was in a eye-catching green color, making her stand out —inevitably— from the others.

In addition, her long hair was braided into a hairstyle that resembled one of the many sculptures that capture beautiful goddesses or nymphs of the mythology they so venerated, making her impossible to avoid in the eyes of the others; she was beautiful.

Perhaps the attention of many others was placed on her, a star that seemed to shine with its own light, but she didn’t notice it, her big eyes watching carefully the funny expressions Aziraphale adopted in his face while he decided what his next move would be, and it wasn’t until her friend's attention was scattered, stolen elsewhere —some point behind her— that  for the first time, the girl turned around to see.

Sitting on a stool, he was leaning slightly on the bar that separated the woman who attended the inn and the rest of the clients, his voice loud and clear, asking for anything that could be drunk. His body was covered by the typical clothing for men in that time, a tunic that reached to the ground and a horizontal piece held by a golden pin on his left shoulder, but like her, the black color he wore made him stand out from any of the others in the room.

Y/N found herself holding her breath; It was him.

She couldn’t believe she was seeing him again, not after 4,000 years since that day in the garden.

Aziraphale, who since his escape from Eden had spent a considerable amount of time with her, had dropped in some occasions, when both were reunited again after some of the many adventures that the woman liked to live on her own, that he met by chance the —for her— attractive demon, and in each and every one of these times, without missing, Y/N sighed abstracted, assuring her friend that she envied him so much.

It was stupid! A nonsense, feeling her heart beating faster inside her chest when she hadn’t even spoken to him once, when she hadn’t seen the color of his eyes or feel his voice reaching her ears, but the vague memory of the fallen angel on the wall of the garden knocked at her door some nights, and she couldn’t help but wonder what he would be like.

But that was how she was, an angel repudiated by her insatiable curiosity and her uncontrollable range of emotions that, for nothing in the world, she tried to repress or hide from anyone.

So, as expected, Aziraphale, with a small smile on his lips and feeling soft by her friend's attitude —although he didn’t understand it and, at times, even scared him because, for God's sake, he was a demon!— he realized instantly what was happening. "Do you want to come with me to say hello?" He asked in that tone of voice that he used to use when he was with her, full of love and understanding, of empathy and affection for an angel like her. ''I could, I don’t know, introduce you to him'' Aziraphale suggested right away, believing that such an idea would excite her to no end.

'’What?'' Y/N's head spinned so fast it was hard to believe she hadn’t hurt her neck in the process, and even though there was no blush on her cheeks, her expression, her eyes, left to see how nervous a scenario like that made her be. ''No no no no. What would I say? I can’t do it.'’

One could believe a celestial being like her, given her history and extrovert personality, able to get away with any situation and talk to anyone —whether or not she previously meet them—, would never feel embarrassed no matter what. The fact of her being nervous was, simply, unthinkable, but that same day, Aziraphale learned that, in matters of the heart, Y/N felt much more than she was physically and mentally able to endure.

Who knew the reason?

The only thing he totally understood was that the relationship between his friend and that very human emotion called love was so pure, so convoluted in its own way and so latent within her, that for the first time in 4000 years— and with absolute certainty, it wouldn’t be the last— he saw her hysterical, alarmed and a totally loss for words.

Little did she know that, the moment she finally introduced herself to Crawly —Crowley, as he corrected with that deep and velvety voice of his— and didn’t know after what façade hiding those skin-deep nerves that pushed her to play with her own hands and smiling like an absolute idiot throughout the meeting, the demon felt his heart skipped a beat, falling for her long before he could stop it.

Of course, the only one who noticed this was Aziraphale, who from the outside could see with absolute clarity how an angel and a demon smiled at each other, chatted at ease —after 10 minutes in which Y/N didn’t know what to say and Crowley practically had to tear the words out of her mouth— and in their eyes, a strange feeling that they would be shaping during their many encounters over almost 2,000 years for them was reflected, beginning this way an endless torture for Aziraphale.

Nowadays...

‘’Aziraphale.’’ A beautiful voice pleaded, although it sounded more like a warning to the angel who, without stopping, reminded her each and every one of her encounters with the love of her life as if he was the author of a painful love story whose end was still to write.

He was killing her patience.

‘’Aziraphale…’’ She tried again, this time a little louder and lengthening the last vowel of his name, emitting a heavy nasal sigh as her whole body rocked to the rhythm of that same breath.

She was going to explode.

‘’Aziraphale!’’ She exclaimed after a few seconds, seeing that the rest of her attempts were completely useless and that, if she didn’t scream, she would never be able to shut her friend up, who then watched her with eyes wide open and an expression between confused and offended. ''I get it! I fucking get it!'' She breathed, exasperated with the situation almost as much as the angel in front of her. ''But I won’t do it. You know I can’t.''

The blonde snorted, frowned and pressed his lips in a thin line that, in silence, intended to reprimand his friend for her behavior.

And strangely, even though Y/N was used to that mixture of anger and disappointment, he got it.

''Oh c’mon, don’t look at me like that! You know I’m physically incapable. Do you remember that human I was interested in in 1487, Florence?"

‘’You’re talking about Leonardo da Vinci, aren't you?’’

‘’Yeah, him!’’ Oh, everyone remembered those years, when Y/N fell in love with the young, eccentric, faddy and complicated artist and couldn’t do more than talk about him.

At all hours.

All over the place.

Oh, the girl was head over heels for him.

''You know I tried. Hundreds of times. But each and every time I felt a knot in my stomach and my brain stopped working," she apologized, lowering her gaze until she lost it somewhere on the ground, far from the eyes of the angel that only judged her in the distance and in silence. ''Also, it wouldn’t have worked. I'm sure he didn’t like me that way.’'

And there are theories that would refute the young woman's suspicions, such as the rumor that Leonardo da Vinci was homosexual when, all those who knew him, knew for sure he didn’t dislike anything, and enjoyed both female and male company at all hours.

Leonardo's problem, if Aziraphale didn’t remember badly —and he didn’t usually do— was that he was only truly committed to his art, and the moment when perhaps he considered committing himself to someone else —one of his many muses— and shared this thought one night with one of his questionable friends... this one definitely convinced him not to do it.

Aziraphale nipped nervously at his lower lip; he knew the one who convinced the young artist not to take the step with his friend was no one else than Crowley. He could still hear the music of the florentine tavern that night, the voices shouting one above the other and the demon doing what he knew best, manipulating others to dance to his song, assuring Leonardo that love wasn’t gonna do more than hinder his art career.

Jealous selfish bastard, he wanted her for him.

''W-Well, but that was eons ago, my dear. I thought you’d overcome a long time ago from the story with Leonardo.''

''Yeah, I got over it, of course, don’t get me wrong, that's not what I'm saying, '' quickly corrected the girl, raising her eyes again to meet her friend's, catching the guilty look in that ones but deciding to leave it aside and not to ask about it. ''All I’m saying is if I couldn’t do it with him and he was a human like any other who would die after no more than 80 years... How could I do it with Crowley? Just to think about it terrifies me.''

But recapping, he knew his friend had had a partner on more than one occasion. Lasting more or less time, the girl had her fun throughout history; so in summary, her problem was only and exclusively confessing, taking the first step.

It hurted, even physically, because he was literally fed up with watching Crowley and Y/N constantly flirting with each other but at the moment of truth, they both thought it was just a game, a joke, part of their relationship and their personalities, nothing more.

How could they be so fucking blind!?

''I know, I indeed know, the only thing I say is that... the situation has already become untenable. What am I saying? It has been almost 2000 years. But before, Crowley and you only saw each other on rare occasions, once every 30 or 50 years with luck. Now? Almost every day." He reasoned, sighing deeply and calmly and leaning his body a little forward to be a little closer to his friend. '’Besides, you know he’s gonna notice that sooner or later.'' And without thinking twice, the angel brushed the exposed skin behind his own right ear, tearing from the girl's throat an audible gasp, almost like a silent scream.

‘’Shut up!’’ Y/N's eyes quickly scanned the room, panicking, making sure the aforementioned demon wasn’t sneaking around and, instinctively, covering the same ear Aziraphale had touched on himself. ‘’I swear to God If you say anything about it I’ll—’’

‘’I never told him and I promised not to do it in death or life. Your secret is safe with me.'' He assured, amused by the girl's reaction. "But being honest, it's a miracle you managed to hide it for almost 30 years. Someday he’s gonna see it, Y/N, and I can only hope that by then, you have confessed what you feel because otherwise it would be, how to say it? Wild.’’

To understand the conversation the two angels kept in the back room of this small bookshop in London, we must move to the late 80's, when during one of her worst drunkenness, Y/N couldn’t think of anything better than tattooing herself a snake identical to the one Crowley wore on his sideburn, but behind her right ear.

When Aziraphale heard about this the next day, he was absolutely scandalized, asking why. The answer he got? '' Because I know he hates it because it reminds him of Hell but I like it because it's part of who he is and I wanted him to be loved.'' But of course —sober— she knew it was definitely a bad idea and she couldn’t show it to him under no circumstance.

For some odd reason, she didn’t want to miracle it away either, so her strategy during those 30 years was to leave her hair loose and relatively long so he couldn’t see it.

'’Listen, Aziraphale,'' the girl started, turning the curl over again, having had this conversation with her friend countless times throughout her life. And it’s not that she didn’t appreciate his tireless attempts to see her happy and from the hand of the demon that had stolen her heart, it’s that she didn’t believe it was even possible. ''I appreciate what you're trying to do, really, and you know you're my best friend and I'd follow you to the end of the world again, if necessary, but I can’t look Crowley in the eye and tell him I've been in love with him long before the wheel was invented.'' It felt like she was apologizing to him, but anyone would know that the real apology was directed to her heart for not following her feelings and doing what they dictated. ''What I can promise you,'' she rose from her seat after a small pat on her own legs. ''is that I’ll try not to talk to you about this ever again so as not burn your patience so much.'' and leaving a quick kiss on the angel's cheek, Y/N waved goodbye and started walking towards the shop door.

''Thanks for the coffee!''

‘’She’s gonna kill me, isn’t she?’’ Aziraphale's voice rose fearfully, concerned once the bell on the door of the bookshop signaled that his friend had left and slow steps were noticed right behind him, stopping by his side.

‘’Yeah, probably.’’ But the face of the demon showed no concern for the angel, too happy to do anything but bite his bottom lip in order to hide the huge smile that threatened to spread through his face.

He still couldn’t believe all that he’d heard, hidden for at least a couple hours behind one of the huge and crowded shelves of the place.

‘’Well, you better take advantage of the situation so that all the paperwork I’ll have to do if that happens would be worth it, Crowley.’’

“be still, my indelible friend, you are unbreaking” feels so unbelievably and notoriously gansey to me that i can’t help but include the line in its entirety??

When the world ends, Gansey doesn’t end with it.

Or, no, that’s not right.

When Gansey ends, the world doesn’t end with him. It doesn’t even slow down, really, to ease him through the veil. 

He disintegrates into dust, and is immediately vacuumed back up again. He’s not what he was, exactly, because ashes can’t be unburnt, but he’s standing upright in his urn of a body.

Sometimes, like a double exposed photo, he thinks of his joints as knots and his arms as branches and his eyes as light on the wind. He wonders if it’s what Adam used to feel when he was contracted by Cabeswater. Or Blue, when she slips through the surface of a tree. Or Ronan, when he dreams a reality so thoroughly that he must become it, a little. 

Or Noah, as he decayed.

What a pleasure to be closer to his friends, he tells himself. To be made of Cabeswater. To be the source of their magic once and for all, so that they can take everything they need from him.

It’s harder than that, of course. His head is a maze of rambling corridors and mirrored surfaces, and everyone who tries to come in is lost.

______

It’s summer, and he’s climbing the porch steps of the Barns. He’s strung between ten different moments where he had, has, will, is climbing the porch steps of the Barns.

It’s mild this time, like deja vu. He allows himself an indulgent moment to think of himself as a time traveller, caught in the rich folds of then and now.

He knocks smartly on the door’s gleaming cherry surface. Ronan’s been on a wood-staining kick lately. He’s always liked to leave things a little bloodier than he found them.

There’s a rumble from inside, a sound like a thunking hammer, and then the door wrenches inwards.

“Ha,” Opal says, hanging off the handle. “Beat you.” Her hooves are on full display, and her face is flushed with self-satisfaction. Ronan yanks her backwards by the collar of her shirt.

“Cut it out,” he snaps. “You’re going to answer the door for the wrong person one day, and they’re gonna cart you away to psychopomp jail.”

“No one ever comes here anyway,” she argues.

“Except me, evidently,” Gansey says.

“Dick,” Ronan says, as if just noticing him. He bumps their fists together. “What’s up?”

“Just checking up on things. The Lynch estate,” he says airily, letting himself into the foyer. There’s an above average mess threading through the hallway, pockmarked floors and empty cans. A sagging bag of trash.

Ronan eyes him flatly on his way past. “Checking on me, you mean.”

“Is that so wrong?”

“It’s weird,” Ronan says, “considering you were also here yesterday to check up on me. Did Adam ask you to keep doing this?”

“I’ve cared about you for longer than Adam’s been in the picture,” Gansey says defensively. He pauses, then laughs at himself, realizing how it sounds. “I mean— I don’t need to be told to worry about you.”

“Believe me, I know that better than fucking anybody,” Ronan says. He looks a little unsettled, which is strange, against the backdrop of his pleasant patchwork living room. Being home usually dulls that sharp edge of Ronan’s like a felt pad.

“Was I really here yesterday?” Gansey asks, at length.

“You were,” Ronan says stiffly. “Are you okay?”

“I’m—I don’t know—“ he looks around, suddenly overwhelmed. “I couldn’t—I don’t know.”

“Gansey,” Ronan starts.

Gansey waves him off. “It’s probably fine. This is so silly. I just wanted to see how you are. I thought maybe Adam would be here, and we could…”

“It’s Tuesday. He’s at work,” Ronan says. “You know that, man.”

“Is it?” he asks absently.

“Maybe you should get a job too,” Ronan says.

Gansey gives him a look. “What for?”

“So you remember what day of the fucking week it is, to start.”

“I don’t think you can lecture me about self-awareness.” It was supposed to be a joke, but it nicks Ronan like a bee-sting, and he swells up with righteous anger.

“Right. Fuck me, I guess.”

“Ronan,” he says, pinching the bridge of his nose. “You know I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Are you gonna be back tomorrow with more hot new ways to insult me in my own home?”

“No I—I don’t know what’s gotten into me,” Gansey says quietly. The fight swirls out of Ronan completely.

“Is it Cabeswater?”

“Maybe,” Gansey whispers. There’s so much more he should, has, will say. There’s an entire manifesto inside of him, written in invisible ink.

“Then we’ll fix it. Magic is our wheelhouse.” What he means is: dealing with trauma is hard and slow, and I’d rather fix you with a dream than with a heart to heart. Or maybe that’s not fair. Ronan’s always shown up for him, when it mattered.

“Okay,” Gansey says. He feels like he’s taking on the colour of Ronan’s certainty. He’s being stained and repurposed, and all his scepticism and fear is covered over with varnish, like it has been his whole life.

He wonders if Ronan could dream the old him back into existence, and this Gansey, put-together-wrong-Gansey, could quietly disappear.

______

“Ronan told me that you were having some memory loss,” Adam says. He’s looking at him from across the little table in the corner of Monmouth, an unreasonably expensive hand-crafted thing with two overturned plastic buckets as chairs. 

They’re eating leftover Nino’s, and talking circles around the conversation they should be having.

“A little,” Gansey admits. “It’s hardly a problem, though. I haven’t left any stovetops on or anything.”

Adam smiles with the corner of his mouth. “You don’t own an oven.”

“The point stands.”

“The point falls,” Adam says. “Completely apart. I can tell when you’re repressing. I’m an expert.”

“At repression, or at understanding me?”

Adam nods. Gansey snorts.

“Really, this is ridiculous. I’m supposed to be worrying about you, after what happened.”

“We’re supposed to be worrying about each other. See: friendship, appendix C.”

“Some of us happen to require more worry than others,“ Gansey says pointedly.

“If you’re talking about Ronan, believe me, I know. We’re working on it. But when have we even spoken about working on you?”

Gansey fidgets, uncomfortable. “It’s embarrassing. To act like what’s wrong with me is anything like—to pretend that my discomfort is the same as your tragedies—“

“Comparing yourself to other people never does anyone any good,” Adam says, chewing distractedly.

Which doesn’t make sense, because Gansey is rarely one person, alone. He is a many-headed thing. He watches his friends for cues, studies and takes notes and adopts his favourite things about them.

“I’m not comparing so much as I am prioritizing.”

“Repressing,” Adam reiterates.

“Anyway,” Gansey says. “Your boyfriend seems to think there’s a supernatural cure for me.”

“My boyfriend,” Adam starts, still stumbling over the title just a little, “uses whiskey and magic to dispel his bad days. I wouldn’t take a prescription from him.”

“What would you do, then. If you were me?” If you got resurrected wrong, and you didn’t know how to tell your friends that you shouldn’t have come back at all.

“Nowadays?” Adam’s eyes bore into his own, unsettlingly focused. “Ask for help.”

______

Sometimes, Blue holds him like she’s trying to overpower him. Not that he could ever resist her. She climbs over him on the purple couch in the sitting room at Fox Way, and hitches her legs over his lap, wrapping her arms so tightly around his chest that it changes the pattern of his breathing.

It’s an intensely physical kind of affection that she shares with Ronan, and even with Adam, in a way. They care so much that it chafes. They absorb him, and he absorbs them, and they never have to walk on their own.

“I’ve heard whispers, around Henrietta,” Blue says, “about a boy who won’t listen to his friends.”

“Oh?” Gansey says, playing along. There’s incense burning, somewhere, and the room is cloudy with it.

She nods into his chest. “Yeah, a real Dick, apparently.”

“Very funny,” he says affectionately.

“Yeah, except it’s not funny, actually.” She raises her head, and her pointy little chin jabs him just under his clavicle. “We’re worried about you. You feel like you’re everywhere at once.”

He wants to argue except—yes—that’s exactly how he feels. Everywhere at once. Too much at once. Unable to stop moving and thinking or he’ll die again, won’t he?

“I don’t want to be selfish,” he says.

“Gansey,” she says flatly. “You have been insufferable, and unintentionally self-serving—“

“I’ve so missed our pillow talk.”

She shoves him back so he splays across the couch, and then she follows him down. “You’re not selfish. You don’t have it in you. You’re like, so selfless that you end up being less of yourself.”

“I don’t think I know what that means.”

Blue kisses his shoulder, but it’s too hard, like she’d rather just headbutt him to get her point across.

“You died,” she reminds him.

“I’m sorry.”

“No,” she says. “No. Don’t be. It’s not your fault, and it’s not your fault that you’re not quite the same.”

His spine bows, and breaks. “Blue,” he breathes. He can’t believe she knows that. Is it so obvious, that that’s his problem? Is his impression of normal Gansey so terrible?

“You spend so much time just—marvelling at Adam and Ronan right?”

“And you,” he mumbles, but she ignores him. She gets like this, fired up and inspired and alone on her soapbox.

“Things get really hard for them, and they can be idiots about it, but they don’t let it break them, right? You don’t even realize that you’re doing the same thing.”

He frowns. “But I did break.”

She falters. “What?”

“I broke. I died. And things didn’t even get hard for me, Jane.”

She looks stricken, and she reaches down to hold his hand. “Of course they did.”

“It hurt, to watch my friends hurt. And I got a bit tired of responsibility. And that’s all it took,” he says bitterly.

Blue looks at him for a long time, still squeezing his hand.  

“Are you telling me you wanted to die?”

“No, no, not then,” Gansey says hastily.

Blue’s face spasms. “And now?” she asks.

“No,” he says again, but it’s see-through. A yes in no’s clothing. He tries again, and means it. “No.”

“Okay,” she says. “Jesus, Gansey.”

“I know,” he says. “I don’t know. It should be so easy to be happy. My friends brought me back to life, how many people can say that?”

“Maybe no one,” she says. “And that’s why no one else has had to talk about this problem.”

“It’s just—how am I supposed to feel worthy of that kind of sacrifice?”

“You’re a Gansey,” she says, half-smiling and ruffling his bangs. “Everything about you screams worthy.”

It’s the wrong thing to say, and it must show on his face, because Blue frowns, and her hand goes soft in his hair.

“You know we did it because we love you, right?”

He nods, overwhelmed. “I’d hoped.”

“Idiot,” Blue says. “When are you going to understand that as much as you’re impressed by us, and care for us, and want to fix our problems, we feel the exact same stupid way about you?”

“I don’t know,” he says honestly.

She puts her head back down on his chest, and traces shapes over his heart. “I guess I’ll just have to keep telling you.”

His whole body goes warm, and he catches her hand and kisses her on the palm.

______

On the anniversary of his death, they have a funeral that doubles as a birthday party. They drink, and mill from place to place, and stay close to one another. He thinks of Noah all day, of how they had died together in the end.

He remembers how Noah had always looked like he was fading in and out of reality, and he wonders if he ever flickers like that.

They bring balloons to his symbolic grave, and fix them to the nearest tree. 

Next to him, Blue cries, and Adam holds her shoulder. Ronan is furious, which is the same as crying. Henry hangs back a little, but he takes Gansey’s hand.

His friends surround him like they did on the night he came back. Like they do every day.

“He died for us,” Gansey says. “He should be here.”

“So did you,” Henry says.

“Exactly. So why did I come back and he didn’t?”

“He was dead for a long time,” Adam says slowly. “Cabeswater didn’t get to know him like it got to know you. It wasn’t feasible.”

“Magic isn’t feasible,” Gansey says fiercely. “What does seven years even matter to a timeless forest?”

“Magic has rules,” Ronan says.

“Since when do you care about rules?”

“Since when do you take your shit out on me all the time?” Ronan says calmly.

Gansey clenches his jaw, then drops Henry’s hand to hold his own over his eyes.

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re allowed to be mad,” Blue says.

“I am.” He watches the wind twirl Noah’s wooden grave-marker. “I’m mad.”

“Finally,” Ronan says.

“No,” Gansey says. “You don’t get to act like I’ve been taking too long, or, or like this should be easy for me.”

“Stop trying to make this about your emotional superiority to Ronan,” Adam says.

“Superiority,” Gansey repeats. He laughs, disbelieving.

“Guys,” Henry starts.

“It’s like you can’t believe that you could possibly be doing worse than us.”

“Adam,” Blue says. “That’s not it at all.”

“No,” Gansey says. “That’s exactly it. I’m doing worse. And worse. And nothing even happened to me.” He laughs again, and it stumbles into a sob. “Nothing ever happens to me.”

“You died,” Blue says, again. She’s always reminding him, like it’s not the whole of his identity now.

“I came back,” Gansey says automatically.

“So?” Ronan says, looking away, out into the darkness of the trees. “Anything can set off pain. It doesn’t have to make sense to feel like shit.”

Adam quietly shifts on his feet and curls his fingers into Ronan’s wristbands.

“You don’t have to feel bad about feeling bad, bud,” Henry says.

He can feel his face crumpling. The hurt throbs, persistent, so close to being discovered that it starts shouting and waving its arms.

“I think—“ he swallows. His friends crane in towards him, waiting for him to speak. They’re so attentive, and scared, and wounded, like him. “I need some help.”

A tear slips down his cheek and disappears. The wind whistles. Nothing changes, except his friends faces, which are all profoundly relieved.

Blue smiles, watery, and reaches for him. “Then it’s a good thing we’re all here.”

Gush about your fave DR character! ♡

WVJHKHKHKHK anon whoever you are please know that youre unleashing a beast but also thank you im….. 

(actually i made a tierlist for this though it might not be as accurate since it was a few months ago)

(also sorry for the characters that are in the lower tiers i swear even if i don’t like them most of them are still good memes. and the ones in “c” and “b” i’d definitely like more if there’s some good art/fics that explore their characters better though i might not actively look for it.)

OK so just to preface i havent seen most free times and most of my impression came from joseph anderson’s playthrough sooo i might be biased but im definitely planning on rewatching at least v3 in its entirety with all of its ftesO i guess it’s best if i start chronological and lemme just say. SAKURA OOGAMI IS BEST GIRL

it’s easy to say that im weak for big stronk gal who can lift me easily. and there is /definitely/ that point.

this is gonna sound weird but i really like the level-headedness she brings to the trials. i wouldnt say she’s the smartest but she rounds up the whole cast in a way that keeps the trials from being too absurd and non-sensical. there are other characters that also do this but seeing it come from her makes me happy somehow? maybe it’s because she also balances asahina in that sense and also that she’s the fourth trial stronk person who’s the most level headed compared to gonta and nekomaru. not saying those two are bad either, they’re great characters in their own right but i feel like their function is more on the side of entertaining rather than weighing in on the discussion. i especially think nekomaru’s whole thing with shitting is funny and it’s kinda a shame that sdr2 cut him from trials starting from the third.

speaking of sakura, yes i ship her with hina. no, duh. they’re good together. but i was also kinda touched when she talked about kenshiro. idk, sakura has two strong beefy hands and she can hold her girlfriend and boyfriend at the same time ok.(pretty sure kenshiro appears in udg but i havent experienced that game outside of seeing a few cutscenes so i wouldnt know)

also the fact that we get a callback to her in the strawberry house was. idk if i should say cool or if it was funny but it was something. and yep, her death was the saddest out of the fourth trials the games had. nekomaru’s death was more respectful for me and i felt more sad about gonta during his trial than his death. it’s more gruesome than sad, to be honest.(and ok the smoothskin joe gives to sakura is also kinda funny)

with other dr1 characters i like most of them are usually because of my friends’ (who got into dr years before i did) influence like kyoko and celeste. there are some others i laugh at but it’s more because of the inside jokes of the streamer i was watching.

.

ok so with sdr2 komaeda is easily one of the top. but tbh the reason why it is is bc a few years ago i read this (illegally distributed) doujin that had written his character really well. tbh i feel kinda bad now knowing that the doujinka stopped circulating their doujin bc of that and some of the subject matter of their doujin is… a bit too much for me. but the ones that are good are really good and when i came into canon i was like, “oh, this is the fingers in ass guy who got memed to death" nowadays, i see him more as pickle nagito though. i am interested in seeing how his character can be… well, not redeemed but i want to see him heal. whiiich might never happen in canon bc his hope bagel personality is too infamous now.

also i know everyone hcs nagito’s voice as smth along the lines of nico’s voice or john’s voice but like consider jph’s stoner voice. please. it’s so fucking funny with the fucking pickle komaeda meme. maybe it’s bc although im not obsessed with hope or despair, i related to his way of seeing karma. 

after experiencing sdr2 thoough, lemme just say that johnny yong bosch did a great job voicing hajimmy hinata. like im not even kidding i really like that voice and if i was ursula i would steal that voice for my own use. buutt i cant do that. unlike komaeda, i’m pretty indifferent to his character arc and enjoy his one on one interactions with the characters more and how he reacts to the immediate events that happened over the course of sdr2.

soo yeah komaeda and hinata are literally opposites in my head, ain’t much of a surprise that i ship them i guess. but!! i like a lot of the gals in sdr2 surprisingly.

like, ok. maybe i’m biased but the designs for the gals in sdr2 are so goddamn adorable. like okay there’s the obvious ones like chiaki and sonia. and i don’t know why sonia’s personality is so goddamn adorable. like not in the “awww you’re so fucking uwu” type of way but more in the sense that she’s funny? it feels like even through all her weirdness that she still manages to make genuine connections with the characters.

with peko, it’s hard to dislike her considering her whole arc with the second trial. of course liking her goes in hand with liking fuyuhiko’s character too but i just like.. how stoic she sounds??? it’s adorable????? and with mikan yeah she kinda went… off in the third trial but consider???? her voice when she snaps was so goddamn hot?????????????? sdr2 has the best voice acting cant change my mind.

and i don’t know why, gundham is so goddamn funny and if i wanna show how absurd sdr2 can get i show my friends gundham’s scenes. he’s fucking funny, ok. and alongside nekomaru i can respect his death in a way. i goddamn saluted when i first watched his execution (with the full context of the trial) because i just really liked the conviction he carried with his murder.

.

aand with v3…

miu’s one of the funniest character ever!! i swear. i know some people look at the sex jokes and go, “ugh” but im a manchild so i ended up enjoying her moments so much. though i’m kinda a bit meh on the fanservice side, i like how she’s one of the characters who sticks out more. in my language we call her “pentolan” i guess.

tenko’s kinda an easy character for me to like considering… stronk lady. would love for her to carry me. the misandry can get a bit too much but she’s also a pretty funny and genuine character on top of that so she came out with me liking her.

kaede and tsumugi are characters i grew to /love/ after i thought about them a lot.

with kaede, the point i started to relate to her… was with her thirst with girls. i swear im not joking. but. okay. i like her position as the protag and all her ideals. one thing i was surprised that didn’t manage to make me relate to her was her passion for piano considering i’ve also studied it for like, around 12 years. maybe it’s because i kinda fell out of it around 2 years ago because reasons. despite of that though, i like how assertive she was in her time as the protag. and her execution was goddamn beautiful.

tsumugi, though, i wouldn’t grow to love as much if it weren’t for 郁十‘s works. like. please. go watch all of their videos it’s all so good. i think someone else talked about this, but tsumugi’s position as the mastermind feels a lot more “human” than what we got with junko enoshima. compared to kaede, i feel like we could’ve gotten so much more with her as a villain and i just want to see more of her outside of her “plain bread” facade.

it might also be due to my own hcs for them so they’re on my head a lot more than most of the other v3 characters are. even more than my two actual favorites!!

ok, ok. kochiki and shuichi are definitely my favorites of the bunch. like, the toppest tiers of fav actually. it’s kinda hard to talk about these two separately tbh. maybe it’s because before danganronpa, my previous otp in my previous fandom had these two’s dynamics as well. and like, there’s a certain pairing to a fandom i haven’t caught up to in years who also have a detective/phantom thief dynamic. aaand also persona 5 and that one pairing that i don’t have to name for people to know which is my otp.

yeah i’m a sucker for these types of characters. it’s kinda typical that they’d be popular in the fandom. which i’ll  h a p p i l y  eat up.

soo it’s kinda easy to start with kochiki. i think i don’t have to go into every minute detail and go all meta on why i like him as a character because a lot of people have articulated better on why his character works. he’s fun to watch when interacting with other characters and figuring out his motivation put my brain on work. i’ll say this though, i actually enjoy kokichi better when he’s not being woobified. he’s a rat through and through and i will enjoy this possum boi for that.

(oh wait, possum boi is rantaro. nvm.)

and now mr. detective himself. so i loved his character at first. didn’t love him more than kochiki but. liked his arc, he was a fun protag. then the fan content came and he became very moe in my eyes so i guess it’s easier to say that i uh, like fancontent of shuichi better but i like canon kokichi better. and also how is it that the majority of ousai e-rated works has shuichi as a top SHUICHI IS NOT A TOP um yeah anyway. i feel like out of all the main characters he’d be a pretty nice person to hang out with.

also his eyelashes are nice. im totally not embarrassed while typing this out. im literally physically restraining myself from typing out more so i can not embarrass myself even further.

.

okay congrats anon here you are i hope you enjoyed this embarrassing mess it took me more than a day to type this out because i don’t know where i should stop myself regarding some characters. but uh yeah. i have gushed. now i shall return to the abyss.

(unless anybody asks me to gush about my ocs which might actually be thrice as long as this)

One More Night. Pt 7

Pairing: Kim Hongjoong / fem!Reader

Chapter: 7/14

Genre: Mutual pining, canon compliant, fluffy af, angsty af, suggestive, teasing and filled with that good shit that everyone loves

Words in this chapter: 6794

It was the 14th of May and we’d just landed in Japan. I was excited, since I’d never been there and my legs bounced so restlessly that Hongjoong, of all people, placed a hand on my knee to stop it. We took a car, and first drove to a nearby shop, where the boys got dropped off with a handful of cameramen to buy a punishment for when they were returning for Korea. I didn’t know why and only sighed as I waited restlessly in my car, longed for them to come back quickly so I could get started with work. They came back fifteen minutes later, smiles on their faces and I shook my head at their shenanigans. I loved to see this side of them as well, appreciated that they could just be themselves for a few minutes, and even though there were cameras in their faces, I could see how fun they’d had. We got to the hotel, checked in and unloaded our luggage. Hongjoong was paired to roommate with Yunho as usual and they looked back at me as soon as they got the key card and the lady at the reception handled me one as well so that I could have easy access to Hongjoong’s wardrobe. I smiled, thanked her and made eye contact with Hongjoong again, grateful, since there seemed to be a silent mutual agreement between the two brothers about our situation, and I was sure that Yunho didn't mind having the room for himself when his hyung would sneak into my room in the small hours of the night. I handled Hongjoong his personal bag, and all of us, members and staff went to our rooms to get started with the day. I rubbed my eyes sleepily, still tired from the plane ride and the adrenaline that had been pumping in my body from standing on soil I’d never touched before. Me and another styling noona named Lee Soo-jin, a sweet girl my age with light brown hair cut in a bob and round glasses that adorned her heart-shaped face, were roommates for this trip and I'd taken her under my wing since she’d gotten the news of a possible promotion. A promotion that would allow her to have her own complete focus on a member. "So, what's our first objective?" She asked after we’d made ourselves comfortable in the room and cleared her throat, nervous but excited to get started and the question caught me off guard. I was so used to being the one that asked the questions back in the days when I was new, and nowadays when I was so sure about my work, having a schedule that was rolling continuously and pretty much the same, since I only had to focus all my attention on one person, and working mainly alone, every day just went by without me having to think much. "You're going to get Yunho as your main focus, right?" I asked, maybe a bit too straightforward since it really hadn’t been decided yet and she blushed lightly and nodded, "That's the idea, but it really depends on how good I'm doing my work. " "I see" I drifted off, holding a conversation wasn't really my strong suit and she looked at me, slightly puzzled as she wondered where my questions would lead. I cleared my throat, opened up the big bag that held all of Hongjoong's stage clothes and outfits for interviews and grabbed the one on top. "Well, the first thing you need to know is that privacy really doesn't exist. It’s something you need to remember, mainly for your own sake" I motioned for her to follow me as I walked out through our door and across the corridor two doors down. I knocked on the door as a warning, waited a few seconds and then entered with the help of the key card. "Hey, what are you doing?" Hongjoong yelped, slightly surprised as he grabbed a pillow and hugged it close against his naked chest where he stood next to the bed. He was lonely but the sound of running water could be heard through the bathroom door and I guessed that Yunho must've taken the longer straw when it came to who would get to shower first. "It's nothing I haven't seen before, Joongie" I said casually and hung the outfit, still enclosed within its protective garment bag, over the edge of a wardrobe door. "No, but you're not alone" He pouted, and I didn’t know if it was because he felt embarrassed or disappointed as his eyes flicked between us and I looked back at Soo-jin, her gaze glued to the floor and I shook my head at her flustered state. "Sweetheart, you're not going to be able to do your job properly if you can't even look at the person in front of you” I started, voice soft but firm, “I mean, I get why. It can be intimidating and even a bit overwhelming, but I swear, Joongie here is as harmless as a fly. So, I'm sorry to say, but you just gotta suck it up if you want to keep your job" Hongjoong cocked his head to the side, one eyebrow raised, surprised at my lack of empathy and I shrugged. I liked her, she was sweet, did a great job as a designer and had a pleasant personality but I wasn't going to go easy on her just because of that. It was a tough job, the days were long, and it was hard enough without me needing to do extra work because the person I worked with was a bit shy. The shower stopped suddenly and Yunho didn't seem to even dry himself up a little before he walked out of the bathroom, drops of water still running over his naked chest and he froze as he realised that the room contained more people than when he’d left it. A yelp escaped his lips as he wrapped the towel closer around his hips. Water quickly collected on the floor underneath him and Hongjoong gave him a look under his brows, not amused at all by the now very wet floor. "Hi" I said, my eyes focused on his face, too used to seeing the members bodies that his nakedness didn’t bother me at all, I saw them all as brothers anyway and even though their great physique made me stare for a second too long sometimes, I wouldn’t dream to do anything with them that even resembled sex. "Hi?" He replied, more as a question and I placed a hand on Soo-jin's shoulder to introduce her. "This is Lee Soo-jin, and management has given her the chance to prove that she's ready to have a focus; you" Yunho's eyebrows rose up, surprised and a smile tugged on his lips, happy that it was finally his turn to have someone who could get to know him better instead of having to share his thoughts with three or more people when it came to his personal taste. He extended his right hand, bowed slightly, a true gentleman as always, the left still held onto the towel for dear life and Soo-jin finally looked up to meet his eyes when she grabbed his hand and shook it as she introduced herself. Amidst all that happened, Hongjoong made eye contact with me and I remembered back close to eight months ago when he introduced himself to me, eyes twinkling, freshly debuted and a big smile on his lips. Saving me in one of the most life changing moments I’ve ever experienced. .. The day continued, they had an interview after lunch, and I dressed Hongjoong with knowing hands. Buttoned up his white shirt and watched as he fastened his belt, my hand still resting over his fluttering heart and I met his eyes behind his round glasses as I felt it pick up in speed when his fingers brushed against my lower stomach because I stood so close to him. My tongue flicked out to lick my lower lip and his gaze wandered down to them, only for a few seconds before the moment passed and we let each other go again, standing on the edge of what was work appropriate. The interview was planned to take an hour and I couldn’t sit down, constantly chewed on my lip and drummed my fingers on the table I leaned on, only paused to sip on my coffee as I watched the members on the TV that was placed in the changing room, broadcasting the show live. Soo-jin joined at my side, and she pushed her glasses up higher on the bridge of her nose as she looked up as well, her gaze flicked between me and the program that was on. She chuckled and it broke the spell I was under as I looked over at her with confused eyes. “You know that you’ve been staring at the screen for twenty-seven minutes, now right?” She asked and I nodded, not really seeing what was so funny for a few seconds until I realized, and I smiled at her. “Oh, you mean the amount of time I spend staring at my client?” I asked and tried not to waver from the weird taste in my mouth as I placed Hongjoong in the box he was supposed to be in, not a lover, not even a friend. A client. She seemed to misunderstand my frown as disapproval because the smile on her lips disappeared quickly, “I’m sorry unnie… I didn’t mean to offend” She bowed low and I looked at her surprised, both at her honorific, I couldn’t guess that she was younger than me and the fact that she seemed genuinely upset that she might’ve hurt my feelings with her laughter, “I’d just heard stories from Eunji-nim and others that you were one of the most passionate that worked for the company. I guess I never thought that someone like that existed. I’m sorry, it’s a compliment” She hurried to add and bowed again. I scoffed out a laugh, thanked her for her kind words and promised that I wasn’t offended, crossed my arms over my chest, honour and happiness warmed my heart over her compliment and I looked back at the TV, and smiled when the boys shouted “8 makes 1 team” The camera panned over their feet as they did the signature move and I laughed with them, clapping my hands softly as if I was there with them, pride and joy made my heart jump as they, the people that I, over the time I spent with them, considered not only my friends but my second family, make their impact into the world. “You should see me when they have a concert. I always try to get finished so that I can watch the whole thing. That, my dear, is about two hours” I said and Soo-jin’s face fell in my peripheral vision. “No… wait, really?” She asked and a nervous giggle fell from her lips. I looked over at her again, completely serious, nodded and said, “Really” and she swallowed hard, as if she questioned her own dedication. .. We finished with the schedule for the day a few hours later and met Hongjoong and Yunho just as they walked out from their hotel room, newly changed to comfier clothes since we were just going to grab dinner and Hongjoong joined at my side, stretched his arms above his head before he placed his right arm around my figure and squeezed me in a half hug. “Did I do good today, noona?” He asked and I broke free slightly from his grasp to comb my fingers through the redness of his hair in the back of his head as we walked and he closed his eyes slightly, leaned in my touch and my heart jumped in my chest as I watched him, so amazingly gorgeous that it hurt. “You did amazing, darling” I said, and he sighed at the nickname, something that I came to call him more and more often, nuzzled his nose into my neck playfully and I yelped slightly from the ticklish feeling. - It was D-day, KCON and my heart beat so hard I thought it was going to jump out of my chest. The boys had been on stages, but this one was going to be the biggest so far, and an opening stage as well. Anxiety ran quickly through my veins, poisoned my blood and clouded my judgement as I pulled up the zipper on Hongjoong's jacket and wondered once again if I'd done him good. If I'd done enough to prove to the whole world that this group was going to be the next big thing. Hongjoong was calm though and I dressed him with shaky hands, my eyes flicked nervously as I ran my fingers over his clothed chest and I could feel how he held his breath as my fingers unconsciously travelled downwards, stopping just above the edge of his pants. We were surrounded by people, and he looked around nervously, not able to just grab my hands without causing a scene. “Do you want me to pop a boner, right here on the spot or what?” He hissed, as silently as he could and I looked down at my hands, realised that I’d basically slipped my fingers into the edge of his pants and quickly removed them as if I’d burned myself. “Sorry” I whispered and swallowed as my face heated up with embarrassment. “Don’t apologize, I understand that you’re anxious. I am as well. I just… want to be here with you for as long as I can. You bring calmness to my heart… just wait until I’m up at stage” He chuckled nervously, and I bit my lip, “But you think you look good right?” I asked and averted my eyes from his, my fingers back on his body as I played with the collar on his red dress shirt, undoing the highest button, “I tried to take as many elements of you that I could, bringing back the familiar design of the jacket because I know how much you liked it, and I tried to make you look unique even though all eight of you wear basically the same thing” I rambled and Hongjoong nodded, “You did amazing, noona” He said, and I looked up to meet his gaze. He gave me a soft smile and I paused, felt his words in my heart for a few seconds before I looked away again, and my fingers travelled down to the red chain that was attached to his jacket instead and he sighed and said with a gentle voice, “You’re more than you think of yourself, ok?” While he placed a warm hand on my cheek. I sighed, melted into his hand and didn’t even feel like protesting from his strong sentence because it was honestly everything I needed to hear at that moment, “You’ve done everything, from the tiniest detail, perfect. Just look at me in these clothes, don’t you feel your heart swoon just a little?” He asked, twirled around once and I giggled, feeling like a weight had been lifted and he took me in his arms again, held me tight and whispered, “Bet you’d prefer me naked though” Before he gave me a cheeky grin and I hit him lightly on his arm, scrunched my nose at his antics and he stuck out his tongue, delighted to have changed my mood. - It was late and I woke up to the soft click of a key card in the door before it slightly creaked open and light feet shuffled over the carpeted floor. My eyes were still closed and I just raised my blanket, the crinkling of the sheet signalled which bed I slept in and soon enough Hongjoong’s warm body laid down next to me, and he exhaled deeply, like he’d held his breath, before he placed a soft kiss on the crown of my head and laid his arm over my body. I counted on hearing his soft snores within minutes, but they never came, and I angle my head up, my nose bumped slightly into his chin. “What is it?” I whispered as silently as I could against his neck, fearing that I might wake up Soo-jin who slept in the bed just a few meters away from mine. Hongjoong sighed and if we wouldn’t be laying down, he’d look away, a small wrinkle between his eyebrows as he fought his own consciousness from laying his thoughts and worries on my mind as well, “I did good, right?” He asked and cleared his throat, still hoarse from screaming at the stage hours ago and hesitant, like he didn’t want to completely speak his mind. “You did good” I reassured him, a hand on his shirt clad chest and I felt his heartbeat picking up when he pressed on, “Even though my voice broke?” “Even though you hyped up both the members and the crowd with your enthusiastic energy” I added, and he sighed, “Even though I sweated all over the stage and the clothes that you’ve put together for me?” I exhaled through my nose, a bit frustratedly and pressed a soft kiss on his collarbone, “Yes darling, even though you gave your all and forced me to throw your clothes into the washing machine after a performance that enchanted thousands of people” He got the point and scoffed at my choice to turn around everything he said into something positive, “Thank you, babe” He whispered and pressed his body even closer to mine, tangled our legs and pressed his chest so hard against mine that I could swear I felt his heart, the beating of it matching mine. I breathed in his scent in the nape of his neck, the scent that was only him and he nuzzled his nose into my hair while a comforting warmth flooded my bloodstream. - I woke up the next morning from a surprised, “What the actual fuck?” and the shouting made me frown, still dazed from sleep. I rubbed my eyes and came face to face with a very perplexed Soo-jin who looked at me and my bed mate with wide eyes. “I’ve heard rumours being whispered at the company but it’s true, isn’t it?” She asked, slightly breathless and surprisingly giddy, hands clasped and feet stomping, like she was a kid who just got promised the biggest bag to fill at the candy store. “What rumours?” I asked and sat up slightly, lifted Hongjoong’s arm away from my body, rustling him up from his sleep in the process and he groaned softly, not wanting to wake up, wrapped his arms around my waist instead and buried his face against my side. Soo-jin raised her eyebrows and gave me a look that clearly explained everything she’d left unsaid. I waved my hand in front of me, stifled a yawn behind the other and said, “We’re not dating. If that’s what the rumour is about?” “Of course, that’s what it’s about. Look at you both, you're holding onto each other like two newlyweds… wait… did you have sex with me in the room?” She curled her lip and looked at me with disgust and I furrowed my brow, quickly getting pissed off at her persisting, “What? No! We’re not dating, and we haven't had sex! We’re just close, that’s all” Soo-jin looked at me like she didn’t believe me and was just about to open her mouth again to protest when I interrupted her, my voice calm but strict, “You need to keep your mouth shut, if you know what’s best for you. You’re under my supervision, remember that. One more word of this and you can say goodbye to that promotion. A perfect degree in design is not the only thing that matters in the real world. I will not work along someone who help spread false rumours no matter what it’s about, what you’re doing in your own time is your business but right now, especially with a client between us, this is a workplace and if I say that we’re not dating, you should take my word, not the gossip they spread about us at the company because people have nothing better to do than destroy each other’s lives. If you think that the skinship between us seem inappropriate and it’s bothering you, I will sleep in the boys’ room for the rest of your training” She closed her mouth immediately, regret in her eyes as she realized she’d crossed the line of what was considered professionalism and I softly shoved Hongjoong to the side, got up just as he opened his eyes and came face to face with Soo-jin as well. Fear shadowed his eyes and he looked over at me, as I took out my clothes for the day. “Good morning” Soo-jin swallowed hard when she met his eyes, a red shameful flush covered her cheeks, “I won’t tell” she added shortly and then looked away just as fast, stood up, grabbed her phone and key card, gave me a quick glance, nodded a quick goodbye and said, “I’m sorry” with a quivering voice before she turned on her heel and walked out. “What did you do? Hongjoong asked, half still terrified and half amused, I shrugged. “Told her simply that she needed to show some respect if she wanted to be respected” - It was friday and we’d been back in Korea for a few days now. I was working on some accessories, sitting at my desk in my apartment, material scattered all over it and I hummed along to the music that played on the radio. The boys were busy with preparations for the new comeback. Dancing up to twelve hours a day, rehearsing the new songs between food and a few hours of rest and most days, I wondered how they could even stand upright, with the soles of their feet red and bruised, muscles aching and bodies beaten up when the fatigue and loss of sleep failed them and they stumbled or even fell. I couldn’t spend time with them, mainly because there wasn’t any time over in the day to have any kind of social interaction but also because I was such a coward at heart, and it hurt to see them the way they were. I knew that this is what they wanted and fought for but the way they pushed themselves was unbelievable and I didn’t know if it was blind madness or intense passion that drove them as unit to keep forcing their way forward. I was impressed, I’d been with all their comebacks but this one seemed different, more intense and I could see and hear that they pressured themselves more severely this time, more often than not catching small glimpses of choked sobs behind closed doors in their dorm when I quickly went in and out to collect or leave a garment or clothes. It made my heart hurt and the part of me that considered them my family flinched with sorrow, but I couldn’t stay to comfort them, didn’t want to knock on the closed doors and potentially embarrass them with the fact that I caught them in a vulnerable moment. I sighed, rubbed the bridge of my nose and checked the time on my phone. It was dinnertime and I paused with what I was doing. Just thinking about them, made me miss them. Hongjoong in particular of course and I sighed and pouted, the accessory I worked on left ignored on the table. Should I take a guess? There was a small chance that they ate around this time anyway. I stood up and left without a second thought, just brought my phone and wallet with me as I drove directly to the company. I was right about the dinner, all eight of them sat in a circle on the floor, some take-out boxes which they all shared in the middle and I knocked softly on the glass door to the dance practise room before entering, only another stylist and two choreographers were there as well, eating by themselves while leaning against the wall at my left, deep into the screen of their phones to even notice me entering. “Noona! What are you doing here?” Jongho asked happily and I gave him a great smile back, feeling how my heart squeezed, since I regarded him as my little brother and he immediately rushed up to pick me up in his strong arms. I’d never considered myself the smallest, but Jongho never had a problem hoisting me up and he spun me around while I yelped, half terrified and half overjoyed as I begged him to put me down again, as you do when you get picked up as an adult, more or less scared that you’ll fall. I met the others eyes when I felt the floor under my feet again, Mingi and Yunho wasn’t slow to greet me, putting their arms around me, sandwiching me in a big hug and I disappeared slightly between them, just as Seonghwa and Yeosang joined as well, repeating the action. Wooyoung and San were quick to follow, and I embraced them both, one at the time this time though. Wooyoung gave me the same cute smile as always, embracing me with all his might and cuddled up at me like a puppy. Telling how much he missed me with an aegyo that would put any pretty woman to shame. San’s smile was as bright as the sun and I wondered in my mind if he still felt something for me when he placed his arms around me, gently, like I was made of glass. All seven turned to look at Hongjoong then where he stood by himself and they exchanged a certain look between them before they dissolved around me again, going back to their food at the floor to give us space. We couldn’t leave the room, both because of their tight schedule and because it would be highly suspicious if we did so, even though I could see how much Hongjoong wanted to as well. He still closed his arms around me in an innocent hug though and I was just about to let him go when he whispered, “Wait, don’t pull away just yet- I wanna hug you a little longer” and pressed his hands flat on my back, rubbing small circles there. I wore a dress, because of the hot humid weather outside, and his skin against my naked back send jolts of electricity through my body, making me sigh, like I could breathe properly for the first time in days. If we’d be alone, he’d probably place a few lithe kisses from underneath my chin to my collarbone, but we weren’t and he pressed his lips on my cheekbone instead, just in front of my right ear instead, on the side that was hidden from the staff and I bit my lip to stop myself from smiling like an idiot when he gave me a small nose scrunch afterward, our hearts beat hard both from being so sneaky and the fact that just seeing each other again, after three whole days of silence, made us giddy like two crushing fourteen year olds. “Thank you for visiting me” He whispered, and I shook my head and said, “I missed you so much it hurt” with so much honest that I almost surprised myself and his eyes soften. Tongue flicking out to wet his slightly cracked lips and I dug through my bag to fish out a lip balm, simply out of pure reflex to make sure that he always looked like a thousand bucks and he gladly took it as I felt my heart skip to the ridiculous thought that we’d second-hand kissed, when he pressed the stick to his lips. “Stay?” He asked and handled back the balm as I shook my head again, a sad smile on my lips. I could deal with pep-talks when we were alone, sitting on the couch, or resting between pillows and blankets but to actually see them receive the cuts and bruises I helped treated afterwards was another deal. “You know I can't, it’s too much” I said, silently, almost ashamed that I couldn’t be there for them in every way possible. “As long as you leave the door open for me tonight, then. I need someone to kiss me better” He whispered back, and I sighed, feeling my heart skip a beat, “Always” .. It was just after 22:00 that evening when a soft knock on the door made me sit up from my half lying position in my bed. I rushed over, excited, but my smile quickly faltered when I saw Hongjoong on the other side, leaning against the wall of my stairwell, lower lip red from his constant biting on it and it looked like he came to my place as soon as they wrapped up in the practise room. “How are you?” He asked with a smile as I stood aside to let him in and I furrowed my brows when he stumbled through the doorway, limping slightly and going directly into my bedroom, “I should be asking you, that” I said. Anger, frustration and an exorbitant grief hidden behind my words, but he still snapped it up, used to how I worked by now. “It’s nothing serious, I twisted my leg slightly because I landed wrong when we did ‘Wave’ The doctor said I should rest for a few days, which is basically impossible since the comeback is in eighteen days and I’m nowhere near as good as I know I have to be” He sulked and winched when he sat down at the edge of my bed, hoisted his leg up with a pained expression before he leaned back against the pillows, and closed his eyes, taking deep breaths through his nose and panted slightly from the pain, and I clenched my jaw at the sight, feeling how my heart burned with anguish to see him like this. “How can I help?” I asked and sat down in front of him, my apprehensive hands clasped in my lap and he opened his eyes to look at me again, a slight blush covering his cheeks. “I’d ask for a blowjob if we’d be dating, to take my mind off the pain… but a massage is just fine as well” I scoffed at his words, my heart skipped a beat and I averted my eyes, feeling how my cheeks flushed as well when my mind ran wild with fantasies of us together. He wore clothes that he’d reformed himself and I couldn’t help but smile as I observed him, proud of his aesthetic techniques when it came to make something anew again, much like I did with clothes as well. But as much as I enjoyed seeing them on him, I had to check if he had any other wounds that I needed to have in mind if I wanted to help. “Could you…” I trailed off and motioned towards his pants with my head, gulped hard when he looked down before he met my eyes again, a dangerous smirk on his lips as he shrugged. “I have a lot of pain in my arms as well, you know…” He said, raised his arms just a centimetre or so before he let them fall back against his sides to prove the point and I sighed, tensed my jaw at his fatal antics but couldn’t help the smile that tugged at the corners of my lips. I scooted forward slightly, and he moved to the side, supporting himself on his “hurting” arms when he did so, but I didn’t comment on it and just sat down, right next to him instead, sensing how an agitated feeling simmered in the pit of my stomach. I took my time and inhaled sharply when I reached for his belt, my fingers delicately gentle and movements slow but his stomach still clenched when I brushed against it. I unfastened it and he kept his eyes on me, eyelids already falling slightly, and he gasped faintly when I popped open the button on his pants. Already half hard when I pulled down the zipper and I bit back a moan, taking pleasure in the fact that he was so deeply gone in his desire for me that my simple touch impacted him so immensely. He looked away, ashamed of his impatience but I refused to let him escape. “There isn’t a greater compliment in the world, darling” I said and placed my hand on his cheek. The soft light from my bedside lamp illuminated his features and he clasped his hands in his lap, uncomfortable as he met my eyes again, a precious blush on his cheeks and I sucked on the inside of my cheek, a wrinkle between my brows when I looked at him. With his face bare from any products and so amazingly gorgeous, even though dark bags had collected under his eyes from lack of sleep lately and he had a small acne outbreak on both sides of his cheeks, probably from being too fatigued when they got home that he didn’t take the time to properly clean his face. His red hair had faded slightly, and I ran my fingers through it, brushing back some strands that covered his forehead. “Yeah, but-” He started but I violently shook my head and tugged on his pants instead. “Get these off” I interrupted and he raised himself up slightly without another word to pull the lining of the pants over his butt and down to his thighs where I took over and helped pulling them off completely, being extra careful of his wounded knee right next to me. It was a bit more swollen and I bit my lip when a mother hen feeling mixed with the aroused one in my stomach, swallowed hard, placed one hand on his thigh and he gulped, meeting my eyes under his lashes. “We’re all alone now, no one would know” He started, voice dangerously low and I just nodded slowly, my fingers tracing the insides of his thighs and he shuddered to my touch before he swallowed hard, “Only the members knows I’m here. I took a taxi and I’m pretty sure that the driver didn’t know either. We’re not that big, yet…” He continued and I bit onto my tongue as my sight unconsciously went lowered from his eyes, to his lips, his neck, the way his chest raised and lowered with every shaky breath and then came to rest at the clear dent in his underwear. “In five weeks” I said and met his hooded eyes again, so black that it made me squirm slightly. “Five weeks?” He repeated, confused and I licked my lower lip into my mouth, softly chewing on it, “When the promotions are done, and we get a day off. I’ll give myself to you” I exhaled, and he gasped, slumped slightly as if the air was punched out of his lungs. “Really?” He asked, as if he didn’t believe me at first. “Really…” I assured and stood up, reached for the knot on the front of my sweats and Hongjoong’s eyes widen when I slid my pants down over my thighs, “In the meantime, I want to feel what I’d gotten myself into” I continued and his guttural moan when I carefully straddled his lap almost made me lose it completely. Hands immediately came to rest on my hips, moulded perfectly around them and I inhaled sharply when I felt his skin against mine in a place I’d never felt them before, rested my forehead against his and fought every reflex to not just kiss him, his lips not even a decimetre from touching mine. “Fuck, baby. You caught me off guard” He said, hot breath against my face and I hummed along, not really in the state to think of something clever to answer when I collected my courage to do what I aimed to do. I took a deep breath and I sat down, planting my ass and cunt on him without any warning at all and the sound of Hongjoong’s surprised gasp went directly into my core as I clenched around nothing, feeling his throbbing cock against the burning wetness between my legs. He squeezed my hips, cautiously bucking his hips up as a reflex to chase my heat and I sobbed out, as the tip of his cock teased my clit. “You’re so warm. If this is how good, it feels when you’re just brushing up against me, I know I’ll probably die when I’m finally inside you” He groaned, and my breath hitched when he got braver and began moving my body back and forth over his length. I could feel myself soaking through my panties and Hongjoong gasped, delightful when he felt so as well, spreading the wetness between us and a spot started to show up on his underwear as well, where pre-cum had started to leak out. We settled into a rhythm, and the enticing feeling in my core grew as he threatened to dip into my entrance, the burning pleasure when he rubbed against my clit made my heart skip, and soon I was a gasping mess on top of him, taking my release in my own hands as I reached behind me, into my panties and pushed two fingers into my wet cunt, arching my body and letting my head fall back, spurred on by Hongjoongs loud groan as he watched me losing any ounce of control I still had. “Just like that baby” He groaned and cursed, “You look so beautiful like this, so totally lost against my hard cock. You wished that I was inside you so bad, don’t you?” I swallowed, knowing that it was a trick question. I’d given him a date and it was risky, knowing how fast our relationship had spiralled out of control just these past three months, “I’m a lot thicker than two fingers, you know that, you can feel that... “He continued but it was too late, I was already too far gone. “I’m gonna come” I warned and he only nodded, bit into his lower lip and bucked up harder, taking a possessive hold on me and nibbled down on the nape of my neck before he kissed the place sweetly, the feeling of his lips on my skin made me fall, and I clenched around my fingers, my eyes rolled back as a moan slipped out between my lips. “Say my name, baby. Make me know that I’m the one for you” He gasped and I whispered his name, still breathless from the high and he pressed me down harder, pushing me forward, trapping his cock between my oversensitive clit and his lower stomach and I met his black eyes, “You’re the one for me, Joong. The only one” I choked out, sincere and without a doubt. The truth resonated deep in my heart and I could feel my eyes tearing up, both from emotion and arousal and he nodded, satisfied with my answer, a wrinkle of concentration between his brows as he used my body to get himself off. The feeling of him made me writhe but he kept me put in place, too invested in his sprint for the finish line to consider my oversensitivity but I didn’t mind much, only enjoyed as I watched him and soon enough his facial expression changed and his thighs tensed up as the wetness of his cum spurted against the insides of his underwear, up against my cunt and he raised me up quickly, scared that I would get some on me. I sighed, satisfied and fell over to the side of my bed, curled up against him and he scooted down as well, slowly to make sure that his leg wouldn’t be in a compromising state, to lay next to me. Our breathing matched and the orgasm had blown out my hearing slightly, but I enjoyed the comforting feeling of white noise, my hands a bit numb and my heart beat hard in my chest. “That certainly was better than any massage I’d ever received” Hongjoong said with a smile and I giggled as his hand landed softly on my hip, carelessly playing with my panties and the feeling of amusement quickly changed as I met his eyes again, “Round two?”

One Short Day

A JSE Fanfic

Yay, I wrote something that isn’t connected to pain for once in my life! Or at least, the most you get are hints and maybe a moment. I was planning on working on something else, but...I don’t know, I just felt like I needed something softer, and I’m sure there are people who need that too. So behold, an attempt at mostly-fluff! I just wanted to write the boys having fun out on the town, simple enough ^-^

It was rare that there was a full day they could all be together. A day where Schneep wasn’t working, Chase wasn’t recording, Marvin didn’t have a show, and Jackie didn’t have to bolt off at the last minute to do heroic vigilantism. A day where they could just do whatever they wanted, all of them, together.

They met up at Jackie’s apartment building. Naturally, JJ arrived first, then Schneep and Chase at about the same time. Just when they were starting to get worried, Marvin showed up, sprinting up to the group and skidding to a halt beside them.

“Late again, I see?” Jackie said when Marvin finally caught his breath. “Maybe we should just tell you we’re meeting thirty minutes earlier than we actually are.”

“Gimme a break.” Marvin rolled his eyes. “My phone was out of battery so I couldn’t check the time, then I got distracted.”

Jackie raised an eyebrow. “With what?”

“Um...” Marvin looked away, embarrassed. “I may have started playing Plague Inc...for an hour...or more.”

“Dude. Set a timer next time or something,” Chase said. “Ask JJ if you can borrow one of his watches if you have to, I dunno, anything.”

“Enough of this, we are wasting minutes,” Schneep said, checking his own watch. “Jackie decided what to do, what is it?”

Jackie immediately brightened. “Okay, so, we all know JJ hasn’t seen much of the town.” Everyone nodded. “So I thought we could give him the grand tour! Get lunch, go to the park, and I think the fair is open tonight so we can finish with that. That good with everyone?”

“So we’re just gonna walk all over town?” Chase asked. “Only two of us can drive, and none of us have a car right now.”

“Toughen up, Chase, walking’s good for you!” Marvin teased. “Right? Schneep, you’re a doctor, tell him I’m right.”

“He’s right,” Schneep said.

“See?!”

JJ snapped his fingers for attention. I thought we were wasting time? I certainly can’t lead the way, so I’ll ask one of you to.

“Right!” Jackie started off. “C’mon guys, lunch is waiting for us!”

They ended up at a local restaurant near the center of town called Kassie’s. It was a quaint little place, and since it was a warm day they decided to sit at a table outside. The chipper waitress gave them a plate of free fries, then took their order, and headed back inside.

“Is it just me, or is it kind of hot today?” Chase asked, fanning himself with some of the napkins.

“No, it’s not just you. God, I’m dying,” Jackie agreed.

“Jackie, you are not only wearing long sleeves, you are wearing two layers of them,” Schneep pointed out with a smile.

“Oh, you’re one to talk, Mr. Sweater-all-the-time!” Jackie rolled his eyes. “What about Jays? He’s got that vest/dress shirt on.”

JJ looked aghast. You four can run around and show your arms all you like, but I’ll have you know it isn’t proper for a gentleman!

“Are you implying we aren’t gentlemen?” Marvin asked, right before tossing a fry into the air and catching it in his mouth.

JJ raised an eyebrow. Indeed.

“I don’t care, it’s hot. I’m taking this off.” With a few flailing arms, Jackie pulled his hoodie over his head and tugged it off, revealing a Marvel-themed T-shirt underneath. “Ah. That’s better.” He looked around to see the others staring at him with wide eyes. “What?”

“Holy shit, Jackie!” Chase yelled. “Your arm!”

“Wh—oh fuck I forgot I was wearing short sleeves today.” Jackie looked down at his left arm. “Yeah, okay, I got scars, you can look all you want.”

“So that’s why I’ve never seen you in T-shirts,” Marvin realized. “Jackie, what the fuck happened?”

Jackie frowned, then coughed awkwardly. “Y’know...I’d rather not talk about it right now. Maybe later. Besides, Schneep already knows the story. ‘S how we met.”

“Honestly, you three are making mountains out of mole hills,” Schneep said. “Is fine now. You should see his torso, now those are scars.”

That only made the other three look more worried. Jackie sighed. “Look, guys, we’re having a fun day. We’re gonna have fun, and not gonna get all concerned, though I do appreciate it. And you—” he glared at Schneep “—need to stop saying that, ‘cause it makes it sound like I lost some epic battle instead of just having top surgery.”

Chase and Marvin relaxed in unison. “I’m still convinced you have, I dunno, fucking bullet scars or something,” Marvin muttered as Chase pulled the remains of the fries towards him.

“Oh yeah, but Schneep’s talking about the surgery. He’s done this before, and it’s no longer funny!” Jackie looked pointedly at Schneep when saying that last part, who just responded with a massive grin.

JJ was the only one who still looked concerned, but now that was paired with confusion. He looked around at the others. What is top surgery?

You could almost hear the hiss as the others all inhaled sharply in unison. They’d all forgotten for a moment that JJ didn’t know. Schneep cleared his throat. “Jackie, would you like to explain?”

“Right yeah. God, where do I start with this?” There was a slight pause in the conversation as the waitress returned with their food. The moment she was out of earshot, Jackie started up again. “Alright, so...” he leaned forward, hands clasped together, eyes wide and nervous. “You know how I call myself Jackieboy Man, right?”

JJ nodded. A moniker I never understood, but yes.

“Well, I didn’t always call myself that. Neither did anyone else. Because, well, they all thought that...I was a, uh, girl. Even I did. For the longest time I just sort of...accepted it. I only started to figure it out in high school. I got my first job, and one of the customers called me ‘that nice lady,’ and hearing it...just sort of surprised me. Like someone gave the wrong answer to a really easy test question. So...I started thinking, and eventually I realized that I wasn’t...actually a girl. That was when I renamed myself.”

JJ didn’t look any less confused. Why would they not understand that? Wouldn’t they be able to...see that you are not?

Jackie winced. “Well, no...you see, I...fuck.” Jackie put his head in his hands, took a deep breath, then looked up again. “I was born...in the wrong body. Top surgery is...it’s to get rid of the parts I didn’t want. Are you...are you getting this now?”

After a moment, JJ’s eyes widened. He nodded hesitantly.

“Okay. Good. Great.” Jackie sighed. “I don’t know if this word existed in the twenties, but nowadays we have ‘transgender’ as...a thing. When someone is something other than what their body is born as. I’m still a he. Or, just, anything but she, really. Literally call me anything but a girl. And please, don’t ask about what my name was before. Or what’s...down there. Those questions make me...really uncomfortable.”

My good man! JJ signed. Why would I do such a rude thing? And to my dear friend, nonetheless. 

Jackie’s shoulders slumped. He leaned back in his chair and exhaled in relief. He’d been dreading this conversation, but better to rip the bandaid off now. “Thanks, man. I...appreciate your understanding.”

JJ smiled. No trouble at all, Jackie! I may not fully grasp the concept, but that’s no reason to disrespect your wishes.

“If you want, I can answer questions. Just...later. And as long as you get I don’t represent everyone who’s trans.”

JJ nodded and gave a thumbs-up. There was silence for a moment, before Chase broke it by saying “Hey, guys, I made a Jenga tower out of fries.”

Schneep rolled his eyes, and immediately knocked over Chase’s tower.

“Aw you bitch!” Chase gasped. “You didn’t even play the game right!”

“Fuck your games. Actually eat the food like it’s supposed to be.”

“You’re just jealous cause you got a salad instead.”

“Maybe I am! Did you think of that?!”

“Dude, I just said I did!”

The rest of lunch was covered in the blanket of familiar banter. Jackie smiled to himself. God, he was so glad nothing changed.

About two hours later, the boys had made their way to the southern part of the city. That was where the park was. It had an official name, but everyone just called it “the park” because there was only one of them and it was shorter. The park itself was pretty big, with trees, paths, flowerbeds, and two playgrounds at either end.

Since it was the middle of the afternoon, there were quite a few families with young children hanging around, parents watching their kids climb all over the jungle gyms and pushing them on the swings. While Marvin and Jackie walked ahead, pulling JJ with them and talking his ears off, Chase and Schneep hung back a bit. Chase was staring at the families on the playground.

“Chase? Are you okay?” Schneep asked gently. 

“Yeah...yeah, I’m fine. It’s not a down day.” Schneep gave him a Look. “No, really! It’s just...y’know, seeing all the kids kinda bums me out. You know?”

“Of course I do, Chase,” Schneep said. He was probably the only one of the boys who did. “If you are feeling upset, you can go home.”

“No! God, no, that’s not what I meant at all. This has been good so far. I don’t want it to end.” Chase frowned. “Now I’m just...man. I’m starting to lose it.”

“Chase.” Schneep grabbed his hand. “If you are not enjoying yourself, we can always go do something more quiet. We would hate to push you to do something you are not up to.”

Chase considered it for a moment, then shook his head. “Nah, it’s not too bad. It helps that you guys are here, I think. But I’ll let you know...if it gets too much.”

Schneep gave him a long look, before finally judging that everything was alright. “Okay. You have to do that, or I am going to break into your home at night and yell at you for lying.”

“Okay, okay, I get the idea,” Chase laughed. He looked down at their clasped hands. “You’re not worried people are gonna think we’re a couple, then?”

“What? Oh. Is there no such thing as regular hand-holding in this country?! Besides, it should not fucking matter. Also you are not my type anyway.”

“Yeah, you’re not mine, either. You’re a guy.” Chase and Schneep both had a good laugh at that.

Marvin looked over his shoulder at the two of them. “Are you two gonna walk fast or what?”

“Or what,” Chase said with a smirk.

“Oh, you’re hilarious. A fucking comedic genius. Hey guys!” he said that last part to Jackie and JJ. “We’re gonna slow down so these two assholes can join us.”

“Marvin, how dare you,” Schneep said, mock-offended. “At least be more creative in your insulting us.”

“No.” The two mini-groups merged together to form the main group once again. “So what’re you two talking about?”

“Chase is worried that hand-holding makes a couple,” Schneep tattled.

“Bullshit,” Marvin stated. Jackie went “yeah!” in the background. JJ frowned at the use of language, but nodded. “What makes a couple is the kissing. And romantic interest in each other, which leads to the former.”

“You say, having not been on a date in at least five months,” Jackie muttered.

“Shut your stupid face, you...lovely person.” Marvin pulled his wand out of his pocket and twirled it, like he did when he was nervous. “We’ve all been kinda busy lately.”

“Yeah...that’s true,” Jackie sighed. “But maybe if you went out more, you could find someone you could go out with. Just once, if a commitment isn’t your thing right now.”

Marvin frowned. “Why in the wide world of wingmen would I go on a date once deliberately?”

“A night of fun?” Schneep suggested.

“With a complete stranger that I have no interest in? No. I need to have some intrigue in whoever they end up being.”

“None of you are gonna get anywhere with him,” Chase said. “He doesn’t get one-night stands.”

“Damn right I don’t! There’s no point!”

And it just seems improper, JJ signed. If you aren’t going to court someone, don’t approach them at all.

“Marvin! You have an ally!” Jackie gasped. 

“Good. Finally, someone who agrees with me.” Marvin held up his hand and, after a moment of figuring out, JJ high-fived it. “Yeah! There we go, you got it!”

Jackie checked the time on his phone. “Alright, it’s starting to get a bit late. If we want to get enough time at the fair, we’re gonna have to book it to the eastern side.”

They didn’t actually run the whole way there, despite Jackie wanting to. By the time they got to the fair the sun was starting to set. They bought tickets and headed inside, where the Ferris wheel and the roller coaster towered over the smaller rides and the carnival games. It was a weekday, but it was one of the first days the fair was open, so the fairgrounds were crowded but not packed.

Chase gasped. “Games. We can do the games first.”

You do realized they’re all rigged, right? JJ asked.

“Who cares? They’re fun! Games now.”

Soon, the others started to suspect that the reason Chase was so eager to play games was because he knew he would win every time. The dude was scarily good. A combination of sheer luck, skill, and fuck-it-let’s-take-a-chance-ness led to many more victories than the others, something Marvin and Schneep immediately called him out for.

“You are cheating, I am sure of it!” Schneep huffed, folding his arms.

“Nah, just have a knack for it. And, in this case, practice.” Chase tossed one of the wooden balls back and forth while he waited for the carnival worker to hand him his prize. “Ya gotta aim for a bit above the spot where the third jug sits on top of the other two, then throw hard. It’s a bit of an arc.”

“No, you’re a cheater,” Marvin asserted, muttering darkly.

“Aw, c’mon! Here, will this make you less salty?” Chase accepted his stuffed prize from the worker, then handed it right over to Marvin. “I got it for you! You like cats.”

Marvin glared down at the plushie. “You’re lucky it has a cute face,” he said.

“See?!” Chase smiled. He was actually having a good time. It was a good change of pace from the park.

Eventually, everyone had a prize except for JJ. They were running out of games to play, but then Jackie spotted one of those ‘find the ball under the shuffling cups.’ “Hey guys, you up for that one?”

JJ brightened. I’m actually quite skilled at those!

“Well, then, let’s go!” Jackie pulled him over, the others in tow.

The carnival worker was calling out the rules of the game. “You get one, you win one of these lovely roses, you get two in a row, you win one of these tiny fellows here, and you get three in a row, you win one of these adorable penguins! Step right up, step right up!”

“Hey!” Jackie waved to get the worker’s attention. “We want to play!”

“Well then, young sirs, the rules are simple. Keep your eye on the ball, see right here, right here, it’s under the middle cup. Now watch as I take the cup this way, then that, then this and oh look at that! It’s goin’ fast, it’s goin’ fast don’t lose it don’t lose it! Now, which one is the ball under?”

Jackie was fairly sure he knew where it was, but he turned to JJ anyway. “So, which one?” he asked.

JJ bit his lip, then reached forward to point at one of the cups...only for the worker to slap his hand away. “I’m sorry sir, please don’t touch the cups. To prevent tamperin’, see? Just tell me.”

JJ looked a bit stunned at the worker’s aggressive tone. But he signed It’s under the left one.

“Excuse me?”

“He says it’s under the left one,” Marvin jumped in.

“...ah, I see.” The worker lifted up the cup to reveal the ball. “Seems you were right. Do you want to try again?”

The boys glanced uneasily between each other. The worker’s tone had dropped from the polite-carnival talk to one that was a bit...short. She was also talking much slower than she was before, drawing out the vowel sounds. “He can hear you perfectly fine,” Chase said. “He just can’t talk.”

“Mmm...I see...” The worker pursed her lips. “Do you want to try again?”

They all nodded. The worker was silent this time as she shuffled the cups, faster than before. When she stopped, she looked at Jackie. “Which one is the ball under?”

Jackie had a vague idea where, but he wasn’t sure. “JJ, do you know?”

The left one again, JJ signed, less enthusiastically.

“The left,” Jackie translated.

The worker frowned as she revealed the ball under the left cup. “You boys aren’t cheating, are you? Those weird gestures seem like symbols.”

Marvin laughed bitterly. “Yeah, they’re symbols alright. They stand for words. Do you not know how sign language fucking works? He’s telling us the answers ‘cause he’s the best one at it. Now let’s do this one more time.”

The worker shuffled the cups impossibly fast. Once more, she asked Jackie where the ball was. This time, he had no idea, and just looked at JJ. JJ, in turn, stiffened a bit, eyes hardening. It’s under the right one, though I wouldn’t put it past her to sneak it up her sleeve.

“Right,” all the boys said in unison.

The worker reluctantly lifted up the rightmost cup to show the ball sitting underneath. “Congratulations,” she said dully. “You win one of the big prizes. What color do you want?”

Turquoise, JJ signed. “Turquoise,” Jackie translated.

They walked away from the booth in silence. After a few moments of walking, Marvin said, “I could totally put a curse on her.”

“No,” Jackie said firmly.

“Just one little spell. She can lose her voice for a week.”

JJ shook his head, then tucked his prize under his arm so he could use his hands to sign. Revenge is never the best answer. 

“It’s what she deserves!” Marvin snarled. “She was making that difficult on purpose. I saw her, she was going much slower with the customers before us. JJ, I’m so absolutely sorry on her behalf, cause god knows she’s not gonna fucking apologize.”

It’s okay, JJ insisted. Believe it or not, I’ve faced worse, especially in my day. They were much less friendly back then.

“I am sure you are not using that word in the correct meaning,” Schneep mumbled.

Marvin shoved his hand into the pocket containing his wand. “One hex. Come on. Just one. I won’t even make her ears fall off or anything.”

Everyone refused to let Marvin curse the carnival worker, and he reluctantly relented. At this point, they’d finished with the games, and all that was left were the rides. They took turns, one or two of them sitting out to watch the accumulated prizes while the others spun and flew and then stumbled off the rides. After trying most of the rides out, they took a snack break for ice cream and cotton candy.

“I think the Ferris wheel is the only one left,” Jackie said. “Unless we want to catch that sideshow thing. There’s supposed to be magicians—”

“Fake,” Marvin interrupted.

“—clowns, animals, and they advertised a knife-thrower—”

Schneep nearly choked on his ice cream. “No.”

“Okay, got it. No show then.” Jackie nodded. “But I’m not too sure about the Ferris wheel. I know at least one of us is afraid of heights.”

“Yeah, uh, me.” Chase bit his lip. “But I think I’ll be fine if I don’t look over the edge. Unless someone else doesn’t want to go on it, then I’ll stay off with them.”

“I’m good,” Jackie said. “Schneep? Marv? Either of you scared of heights?” Both of them shook their heads. “Alright. JJ?”

JJ signed, A bit, but after all these dizzy rides, I’ll take something calm like the Ferris wheel, if you please.

“Alright. Guess we’re going on the wheel, then!”

Night had truly fallen by this point. The Ferris wheel wasn’t exceptionally tall, but it still rose above everything else in the fair, providing a fantastic view of the colored lights below. Instead of having the traditional two-person seats, this wheel had booths that could fit up to eight people, so all the boys fit into one just fine. The wheel turned, and the booth turned with it. Chase squirmed, resolutely not looking over the side. Jackie and Marvin did the exact opposite, practically leaning out of the booth to look down below.

JJ tapped Schneep, signing something real quick. Schneep nodded, then yelled “Can you two stop that?! You are going to fall out of the fucking side, and you are making Jamie nervous.”

“Oh, sorry.” Jackie sat back down.

“Aww,” Marvin groaned, but pulled back into his seat. “I hope you know I do this for you, JJ.”

JJ smiled. Thank you, it’s appreciated. And I’m sure your body feels the same way, having narrowly avoided a fall to great injury.

“Nah, I would’ve been fine.”

The wheel stopped. Their booth was right at the top. “Oh, fuck,” Chase muttered, covering his eyes with his hands.

“You know, you didn’t have to come,” Jackie said quietly. “We would’ve been alright letting you stay down on the ground.”

Chase peeked between his hands. “I know. But...it’s really nice up here. Quiet. And with just you guys. As long as I ignore the distance from the ground, I’m good. You’re my friends, you know, and you make everything better.”

“Oh, Chase,” Marvin gasped. “That’s...really sweet!”

“What? Didn’t think we where friends?”

“It’s...always nice to be reminded.” Marvin smiled softly.

Well then consider this your reminder, Marvin! JJ wiggled his mustache happily. I consider you all my friends, maybe even family. You are all wonderful people and I love having you in my life!

“Nooo, stop.” It was hard to see in the dark, only lit up by the lightbulbs on the Ferris wheel, but it was possible that Marvin was actually blushing.

“You know what? I love you guys.” Jackie grinned. “Not afraid to admit it! Best friends I’ve ever had.”

Schneep cleared his throat. “Yes, I feel the same. You are all great people, and I am fortunate to have met you. I...love you as well.”

“Aaaahck!” Marvin appeared to be trying to fold into himself. “Too much love! Fatality!”

Chase chuckled. “Marvin! Accept our love!”

We love you, Marvin! JJ signed eagerly. Now you have to say it back!

Marvin made a strange sort of groaning exhale before inhaling deeply, calming down. “Yeah...I—I love you guys too. God, I love you guys so much. You should all know that.”

“There we go!” Jackie said, triumphant. “Marvin, you are, truly, the emotionally constipated one. And I thought Schneep was the worst.”

“Excuse me?!” Schneep gasped. “I assure you I am very love-sharing. I just do not use words too much because they are complicated.”

“Understandable,” Chase shrugged. “I can barely speak half the time, and I was born in English.”

I thought you were born in Ireland, JJ signed, amused.

“Oh, you know what I mean!”

The Ferris wheel started lowering, stopping and starting as it let passengers off. The boys stepped out of the booth and onto land once again.

JJ yawned. I must say that I’m rather tired after all this. I think it’s time we go home.

“Yeah, I’m starting to feel it,” Jackie agreed.

“You all are weak!” Marvin countered. “I’m good for another couple hours.”

“Watch you crash immediately upon entering your room,” Chase laughed.

“Oh, shut up.”

“I think JJ is right,” Jackie said. “It’s time to go home.”

Schneep nodded. “Yes, I could stay up longer, but I have morning shift tomorrow so I should not push my luck. I will see you all later?”

“Oh yeah.”

“Course, dude!”

“Definitely.”

Count on it!

With that, they left the fair. Eventually they split up, each heading their own separate ways until they eventually got to wherever they were staying that night. Some went to sleep immediately, some stayed up a bit later, but eventually they all went to bed.

And when they decided to do it, none of them had trouble for once.

DIVE!! Book 2 Chapter 6-GOOD-BYE, TOKYO

This is where Tomoki’s breakup with Miu becomes funny

Full list of translations here

Last time on DIVE!!: Shibuki’s dreams get crushed.

Was the “love” part too much…?

Shibuki, who got on the bullet train from Oomiya Station, only felt a little guilty about leaving home without a word to anyone as he watched the scenery flying past quickly.

About this time, Ooshima would be coaching the elementary schoolers at Sakuragi High, and would never dream of his housemate would be taking a journey to return home. When he thought about his bewilderment when he returned from work at night, Shibuki felt somewhat remorseful. However, for the current Shibuki, whose contract with Kayoko had turned back into a blank piece of paper, Tokyo was nothing but a steaming hell without any use.

A burning hot summer. A plain heat with no sun or shadows. The asphalt, the buildings, the rushing cars, the wriggling wave of people—everything repelled the hot air like pinball—.

For Shibuki, who experienced the urban summer for the first time, everything was unpleasant.

“Then why don’t you come back?”

Late last night, when Kyouko quickly said that during their first phone call in a long time, Shibuki immediately thought that it was indeed a good idea, not only because of the longing in his girlfriend’s voice from not being touched for a while, but it might also be because he wanted to escape from this unfamiliar summer.

If he had to say more, he also wanted to see the sea.

However, before that Shibuki had had something that he had to settle.

He left the unreserved seats, which were crowded with people going home for the season, and while he plunked down on the deck that was separated by a partition, he thought back to this morning, when he paid a visit to Tomoki.

He checked for Tomoki’s address on the MDC’s register. They had only met once in the neighbourhood park, which wasn’t far from Shibuki’s apartment. Nevertheless, it wasn’t easy riding a bike and relying on only a street address with no familiarity with the land. Why did the neighbour of house number eight suddenly became number twenty-two?

For Shibuki, who grew up in a village where if someone asked, “Where’s Tashiro’s grandpa’s house?” everyone would instantly point to that direction, and even tell them the grandpa’s health condition, the complicated cityscape of Tokyo was mystery itself.

Even so, he just managed to find the Sakai home because of a familiar face peeking through the house door.

It was a shaggy dog. Tomoki had taken it with him before. Its name was…

“Chikuwa!”

When Shibuki got off his bike and tried to walk up to him, a boy who looked like Tomoki came out of the house.

“Stay.”

Even though the boy ordered him with food in his hand, Chikuwa didn’t look he was going to stay at all, and snorted his nose while demanding it by waggling his tail.

The boy gave up and placed the dish of food beneath Chikuwa’s feet. Then he suddenly looked up, and noticed Shibuki.

“Do you need something?”

He was probably suspicious of Shibuki standing in front of the door.

When Shibuki told him that he had come to see Tomoki, the boy said “Oh, Tomo” and softened his expression, then went back through the door. And several seconds later, he came back with suddenly decreased body fat. There was no reason for it, since the one who had appeared was Tomoki.

“Okitsu-kun?”

Tomoki, dressed in white track pants and a t-shirt, stared blankly at the unfamiliar combination of Chikuwa devouring his food, and Shibuki.

Shibuki said “Yo” in a light tone and lifted his hand.

“I want to talk to you for a bit.”

“Ah...okay. Um, well, let’s go upstairs.”

“No, we can just talk while taking a walk. It’ll be over soon.”

Shibuki pulled his bike along and walked out, and Tomoki chased after him. Although for a while neither of them spoke as they silently basked in the morning sun, Tomoki could guess what Shibuki had come to talk to him about, and Shibuki could guess that Tomoki guessed it. This was right after yesterday anyways.

“Is your back alright?”

It was Tomoki who opened his mouth first. It was when they were aimlessly walking around and approached the shrine, where Shibuki stopped his bike and set his foot on the stone steps.

“If I only get exhausted from only this much, then I wouldn’t be able to climb the ten-meter.” Shibuki said as he ascended the stone steps in long strides.

“Did it hurt every time you climbed onto the platform all this time?”

“It’s fine.”

“But…”

Shibuki looked back at Tomoki with irritated eyes.

“You’re going to Beijing.”

“What?”

“The way you care about others so hesitantly and let your chances escape is really annoying. Didn’t you say you want to surpass something with diving? You should surpass yourself before that.”

“…”

“You really want to go to Beijing, right? Then go. If you don’t go where you want to go, then where can you go?”

The two were surrounded by the chirping of birds as they climbed up the steps. The green leaves of the trees that encircled the grounds were rustling, so that even the trees could be an accompaniment to them.

“Youichi-kun also said that to me yesterday.”

Shibuki and Tomoki sat side by side on the top of the steps.

“He said that if I rejected this rare opportunity, then I’m a failure as a diver. He also said that I shouldn’t be competing from the beginning if I declined it here, and that I should just dive into the neighborhood pond with the frogs.”

“He’s pretty harsh.”

“Even if I declined, JASF would just choose someone else to replace me. That seemed to irritate Youichi-kun. I think it’s because Pinky Yamada is the next in line.”

“That pink guy?”

“He said that that pink speedo must not be sent abroad, since it’ll just be an embarrassment for Japan. Youichi-kun is awfully fussy over speedos. I think that any color apart from that is fine.”

“Well, and besides, Fujitani’s speedo color is also…”

“Lemon yellow. That’s why he hates it, since their personas are similar.”

They laughed in unison.

Tomoki continued to speak with a smile on his face. “But, this is different. You and Youichi-kun are overestimating me. It’s not that I feel sorry for you, it’s really not like that. It’s kind of more of a pride thing that I didn’t like going as your substitute…Coach Sun chose you in seventh place over me in fourth place for high diving. I thought that was so frustrating.”

“…”

“But, even though I said I don’t want to, in the end I thought that I would go to Beijing. I really wanted to go, and I also knew that I couldn’t refuse in the long run. I’m dishonest, aren’t I.” He said with a bitter smile, and couldn’t look at Shibuki. “I will go to Beijing. I’m sorry for worrying you. I will go without complaining, become even stronger, and come back. So that I can fight equally with you and Youichi-kun.”

Shibuki stared at the profile of Tomoki, who seemed to have suddenly grown up in just a few months.

“You’ve changed, after all.”

“Really?���

“Yeah. You say you were frustrated, but at the competition you were really amazing. You were like a different person from when we first met. I was shocked at what happened.”

“What…”

Fluffy bees buzzed above their heads. For a moment, Tomoki looked like he had been stung by one, but it was the more unseen part of him that was in pain.

“I got my heart broken.”

“Heartbroken?”

“You met my younger brother a while ago.”

“Ah, I thought that was your brother.”

“He stole my girlfriend.”

“…”

“While I was absorbed in diving, she became his girlfriend without me knowing anything about it. I’ve never held hands with her, but she already kissed him.” Tomoki sighed and pressed his head between his knees.

“Did you like her? That girl.” Shibuki asked, even though he was confused in the sudden jump in topics.

“I don’t know. I didn’t like her that way when we were going out, but when my brother stole her, I suddenly did like her…I just remembered the bento that she made before. Like how those rolled eggs were kind of salty.”

“Hmph.”

“Am I weird?”

“No, that’s not weird.”

“But nowadays everyone I meet says that. Youichi-kun said it yesterday. Coach Asaki said it too.”

“Maybe a little weird.”

“I also talked to Youichi-kun about it. He said something really smart like, ‘Look, you’re in love with love.’ He also said that I’m heartbroken about being heartbroken.”

“Heartbroken about being heartbroken…”

“But, you know, even so I can only forget about Miu when I’m diving. I forget everything and they become blank. My girlfriend was able to be stolen away from me because of diving, but it was also diving that saved me. If I go to Beijing I can also get away from my brother for a while, so maybe that’s why I want to go to the training camp so much. Is that dishonest of me?”

Shibuki tilted his head as he considered it slightly.

“No, it’s so pure that I envy you.” He muttered, as he stood up and clapped the back of his jeans, feeling his pocket for something. Shibuki took out several ten-yen coins, looking towards the offertory box at the front of the decaying shrine.

“I’m going to go pray for a bit while I’m here.”

“Eh, Okitsu-kun, you believe in the gods?”

“No, it’s just a habit.”

The two walked towards the offertory box and dropped the ten-yen coins into it. It was a customary prayer, offered to the god who was in the depths of the shrine.

“What did you pray for?”

“For my brother and Miu to break up soon.”

“You’re kind of petty, aren’t you.”

“Yeah. How about you, Okitsu-kun?”

“Just for a break.”

“A long break, right?”

“It probably wouldn’t get through if I don’t take a break seriously.” He muttered as he went down the steps. Even though Tomoki, who was three years younger than him, was too unreliable to call a friend, there was something that was saved by his simple-mindedness when he talked to him. Even though it seemed like he was brought out specifically to listen to his heartbreak problems, Shibuki’s steps were lighter than when he had come here.

“Well then, practice starts now. Don’t want to be late.” Shibuki said his farewells and was about to get on his bike when Tomoki turned around and said, “Hey.”

“Okitsu-kun, aren’t you going to practice?”

“I’m going somewhere else first for a bit.”

“Hmm. Take care.”

So simple.

Shibuki left with a “Work hard at the training camp” and rode his bike away.

Once he returned home, he packed the bare minimum of luggage in his backpack, then jumped out again, and connected to the Komachi shinkansen bullet train service via the Odakyu and Saikyou lines.

The way to his hometown was still far. After the three-and-a-half hour shinkansen journey to Akita, it was then a one-hour journey to the local train station, then two more hours by transferring to the local line. Originally, Shibuki still had to take the bus, but when he arrived at the last station the last bus had already left.

It was seven-thirty at night. Despite the summer weather, the country nights were cooler than in the cities. He might have walked the approximately twenty kilometers to the sea where the lights of the boats burned, and where his village was along the coast, but the almost ten-hour journey dealt considerable damage to Shibuki’s back.

He placed his backpack on the station bench, then called Kyouko from the faded pink public phone.

“It’s me. I’m at the station right now.”

“Got it. I’m coming.”

Which of them was the more blessed: he who was returning to his lover and failed in diving, or Tomoki who was going to Beijing and failed in love?

Though this question floated through his brain for an instant, he immediately chased it from his head because it was ridiculous to compare what was incomparable.

Until Kyouko’s bike arrived, Shibuki stared dazedly up at the night sky, searching for the scent of the tide that he longed for, with the wind brushing the sand beneath his feet.

Next time on DIVE!!: Shibuki and Kyouko.

A Bit Complicated 1

So, this is a long one again, I’ll split it into two parts. Also, I’m sorry, I have a lot of other things on my mind currently, so my writing is not at its best :/

Her skin felt smooth under his fingertips, his hands were outlining the curves of her body and the girl sighed softly. Her voice trembled through the air like a bird with nervously beating wings, and her breasts heaved violently. Everything about her was warm and soft, and she filled the room with the sweet scent of her perfume.

Ka-yu wished that she would leave.

His shirt had found its way to the floor minutes ago already, and their kisses had grown deeper and greedier.

She was cute - in an overstated kind of way - ka-yu thought.

He had never liked the blushing type that would turn their head away from him embarrassedly like she did now, and the noises tumbling from her lips sounded far too shy and insecure.

It was their fourth date and he had sacrificed a lot of patience for the higher course of getting laid already, but the only thing he could currently focus on was work.

The thought of the recordings that still needed to be finished kept nagging at the back of his head, distracting him from exposed skin and body heat underneath. Whenever he looked into the brown eyes of the woman he had brought over to his place tonight, he only kept hearing the bass line of their latest song, like the rhythm had turned into his own heartbeat, and his pulse had become music.

But if he was honest with himself, it wasn't just the bass line he kept hearing.

It was also a  voice.

Ka-yu preferred not to be honest with himself, though.

“Would you excuse me for a moment, baby?”, ka-yu asked and placed a short peck on the girl's forehead as he saw a dangerous pout forming on her lips.

Pouting was another thing that was overrated in ka-yu's opinion. Everything that was trying too hard annoyed him. What he was looking for in a partner was a kinky mind and a dorky grin, and if he was honest with himself he even looked for a certain kinky mind and a certain dorky grin.

But then again he did not fancy honesty much.

With an apologetic smile he got up from the bed and retreated to the door, trying not to stumble over the pieces of clothing laying around everywhere.

His knees felt weak and nauseous and like he really needed to get away fast.

For that he had the perfect escape route all lined out. It led through the dark corridor and right into the bathroom, where for a moment there would be silence and loneliness to catch his breath and collect his thoughts again.

There was nothing as such.

“Fuck, yasu”, he swore as he closed the door behind himself and leaned against the cold wood with his bare back. “Lock the fucking door when we have a guest.”

The vocalist did not bother with his words, nor with his sudden entrance. In fact, he did not pay much attention to ka-yu at all.

Instead he kept on brushing his teeth calmly, taking seconds that his heartbeat nervously measured while he was hiding out. Only then did his flatmate spit into the sink and turned around, a rest of white toothpaste still sticking to the corner of his mouth.

Ka-yu tried hard not to stare at his lips.

“You misplaced the words”, yasu corrected him dryly. “Since you're obviously fucking the guest and not the door.”

With a slight groan ka-yu rolled his eyes, a grin forming on his lips all on its own. There was nothing funny about the situation, but it was yasu's charm that made him smile no matter what.

“I'm not”, he owned up. “That's why I'm hiding in the bathroom.”

Normally he would have felt embarrassed to admit something like that to anyone.

It was just a girl. He shouldn't feel so scared. He shouldn't stress out about her presence so much. He shouldn't wish she was someone else.

But he was only telling yasu, and that did not really count at all.

His best friend did not even bat an eye, like nothing ka-yu had to say could possible surprise him. Like he already knew everything that was there to know.

“I figured”, he said.

Ka-yu nodded as if he hadn't expected anything else. He hadn't.

“She's pretty and all that”, he explained. “But all cute and very feminine, I just don't know what to do with her.���

He had meant for it to sound like a joke, but yasu did not laugh.

Usually he never looked serious, but right now he managed to look serious although he was already in his pyjamas; a shirt that was far too wide, and pants that were far too short.

The bright lights overhead the sink were falling onto him from behind, making his dark hair shine like a hallow and outlining his shape like a shadow on the wall. Ka-yu could even make out the small of his back reflected in the mirror and the side of his own face, looking confused and slightly scared for no reason.

“I know that feeling”, he stated much to ka-yu's surprise.

He doubted that anyone understood how he felt, least of all yasu.

There had been a lot of cute girls over to their place already, and he hadn't caught the vocalist hiding in the bathroom once.

“My mind just keeps drifting off”, he confessed.

Yasu shrugged and turned his back on ka-yu again. Nonetheless the bassist tried not to stare at him, not at the way he held his body, nor at his neck or the back of his knees; because he was scared of being exposed in the mirror.

“It's because we're growing old”, the vocalist pointed out matter-of-factly and grabbed for one of the many creams lined up on top of their sink.

A few years ago none of them would ever have bothered with things like that, but suddenly there was fame and there were photo shoots, there was make-up straining their skin and the overall pressure of having to look your absolute best.

“I mean, when I was a teenager, I was just so horny that I didn't care at all. I would try to get laid with any girl that pitied me”, yasu carried on with a dry laugh.

In the reflection ka-yu could see his face turning white as he applied cream on it.

“But nowadays it's different, right? I don't get excited that easily any more and started to wonder about my preferences in general. You don't have to force yourself to like anyone if she's not your type.”

Yasu spoke casually, but his words seemed to fall down onto ka-yu heavily. He was not used to his friend ever being serious about something, especially when it had to do with sexual matters.

“I can't believe this is coming from you”, he grinned. “I thought you'd be pro sex no matter what.”

His friend laughed at that and turned around again.

His skin had returned to a normal colour, but it seemed to be shining a bit like light came dripping out of his pores, and he was showing a lot of his crooked teeth.

He did not look like he had matured over the last years, but obviously he had. It was hard to imagine for ka-yu, though.

“I AM pro sex, but I want it to be good sex”, he chuckled “And I know that the cute type won't satisfy you. You need someone to push you against a wall and leave no chance for your mind to drift off.”

Yasu took a step forward and for a frightful moment ka-yu assumed that he was going to do just that, but then he just ran his hand through his own dark hair and left it ruffled, his lips slightly parted and slightly wet.

“You need someone who tells you: I'm gonna ride your dick tonight, and I'm gonna ride it so hard you'll forget about everything else.”

And for a few seconds ka-yu could believe in that breathless voice and those dark eyes. He did not think of anything else, the only thing on his mind was yasu, his long hair, his pink lips, his warm skin, the way he would feel, the way he would taste and the way he would moan. The excitement that had kept such a low profile before was now rising violently, causing his hands to tremble and his pants to feel uncomfortable tight.

Once more he wanted to run, but there was no retreat left.

“I guess I have to get back”, he said anyway.

Yasu did the weird little thing with his lips where you could never be sure if he wanted to smack them or turn them into a smile.

“I could tell her you have chlamydia”, he offered kindly.

Ka-yu just stared at him, trying to figure out if he was joking or not.

“Don't do that”, he finally protested weakly.

“Just wanted to help”, yasu shrugged and make a hand gesture to shush ka-yu away from the door he was still leaning on. “But if you don't want my chlamydia, you have to think of something else.”

Ka-yu chuckled at his choice of words, but stepped away from the door, to let both himself and yasu out. Although he wasn't sure if he was ready to face the situation yet he knew that he had not much of a choice.

When he slipped back into his room, he was still feeling a little aroused and for a moment he considered just going through with it anyway, but the last arousal vanished as his eyes fell upon the girl again.

Everything about her seemed pretty and innocent, and he thought of yasu's grin in the bathroom, and she just couldn't compare.

He sat down at the edge of his own bed, and only when she pulled down the blanket did he realize that she was fully dressed again.

Obviously she had noticed that he was hiding after all.

“I'm sorry”, he said softly.

A little frown formed at the root of her nose and it was hard to tell if she was angry or sad. Only now did ka-yu realize that he did not even know her well enough to tell the difference.

With his best friend he would have known immediately.

“Is there another woman?”, she inquired sternly and ka-yu looked away at his hands.

He could imagine how yasu was going to sleep next door right now, switching off the lights, pulling up the blankets. Ka-yu wondered whom he thought of, before falling asleep.

“Something like that”, he agreed.

The girl got up and ka-yu wanted to stand as well, but she cut his movement short with a small gesture.

“I'll find my way out. I just hope you know you are an idiot”, she added. “Don't toy with girls, just because you can't make up your mind. It's cruel.”

Ka-yu watched her go and had to admit that she was right. It was not fair to lure her here with fancy dinners and sweet words, fully aware that he would never be able to love her, just because he did not want to lay down alone.

But on the other hand it was not fair against himself to not even try.

He let himself sink back onto the sheets, but the pillow he rested his head on still smelled of her perfume, and he had to turn it around to forget about her reproachful eyes for a while.

The person he loved would never love him back. If he wanted to find happiness he had to look for someone else, wasn't that right?

He was not looking for a replacement, he was just looking for someone who would make it hurt a little less. That wasn't being cruel, it was rather being desperate.

----

Of course he had wondered about yasu's sexual orientation before. He had eyes after all. But they had never touched the topic, and it had always been girls who came over to their places, girls they took out on dates, and girls they talked about.

There was no way for yasu not to be taken aback, if his best friend confessed his feelings to him, so ka-yu had just kept shut.

Yasu did not even know he liked guys at all, and ka-yu wasn't too keen on him knowing. He was afraid that it would only make things weird and his friend would look at him differently all of a sudden.

It would have been easier if they hadn't been living together, he assumed.

But moving to Tokyo both of them had been lonely, not used to living without their families. It was good to have someone around who reminded you of home.

Right now ka-yu was making himself some tea in the kitchen, staring at yasu's used dishes from the evening before which he hadn't cleaned up yet. From the living room there was music blurting out of the speakers, playing one of yasu's CDs, because they were all over the place and the only thing that ka-yu had managed to find. There was also a used shirt of his dangling over the sofa that had found its way out of yasu's room already, but hadn't made it to the cleaner yet.

His stuff was just everywhere, filling the apartment with his presence like a strong odour, reminding ka-yu every minute of the day that he was around, that he slept in the bed next door, that he used the same shower as himself, that sometimes he tapped into the kitchen barefoot to get himself a midnight snack.

As if the thought of him had summoned the vocalist, he pushed open the kitchen door himself now and started looking through the refrigerator.

“Morning”, he mumbled, his clothes worn out and comfortable, his brunette hair uncombed.

“Morning”, ka-yu snorted and took up his teacup. “It's afternoon.”

“Artist life”, yasu shrugged and ka-yu had to smirk.

It was one of their inside jokes ever since they had decided to become musicians. It had been their main argument for considering a career in the entertainment business to begin with: The life of an artist consisted mostly of sleeping in late. At least that was what they had assumed. There was also work of course, countless meetings and the expectations of the fans. Luckily, they slept in a lot anyway.

“But I'm going out tonight”, yasu announced, closing the door of the refrigerator again without taking out anything as if he had suddenly changed his mind. “Our manager called me about this  party. A lot of other musicians will be there as well, so it's good for making contacts in the industry. Why don't you come along?”

Ka-yu thought about going out with yasu this evening, watching him laugh and be all charming around strangers and it made his heart sting a little already. It wasn't unbearable, he had learned to deal with it over the years, but yasu's open way of flirting with literally anyone got his jealously raging. Next to him he felt clumsy, and stupid for wanting to kiss perfect lips like that.

It would be so much nicer to just stay home alone for a bit and maybe forget that his best friend existed for the duration of a good movie and a can of beer.

“I think I'd rather stay in tonight”, he admitted and caused yasu to sigh loudly.

“Why do I have to do all the socialization for the band?”, he groaned and wrapped his arms around ka-yu's waist from behind.

The random touching was the worst.

His whole body went tense as yasu now placed his chin on ka-yu's shoulder and sighed into his ear again. His breath was tingling warmly on his neck and sent goose-bumps down his spine.

“I'm sure it would be more fun if we went together”, he begged.

Ka-yu never understood why he constantly had to touch him like that.

What was this display of affection? Was it attraction? Was it friendship? Was it missing his family? Was it missing a lover?

His arms felt warm and comforting around his body, and he wanted to kiss him badly.

But he could not dare to do something stupid like that when he wasn't even sure what the touch meant.

Since yasu was straight and not into ka-yu at all it probably meant nothing to him.

“You'll have fun anyway”, ka-yu scolded him and managed to sneak out of the embrace without even spilling his tea. “And don't hug me like that out of nowhere. You'll cause me a heart attack someday.”

Yasu flicked his tongue.

“And I thought you like it when I touch you”, he joked and for a moment ka-yu looked anywhere but at his face.

Flirting with anyone included ka-yu of course, but it was nothing but a painful teasing that would never turn into anything more. It was the cruel display of something he would never have and he hated yasu for not considering his feelings more, and thankful that he was so oblivious to them at the same time.

“It's annoying you're so clingy”, he said harshly, but yasu did not look hurt at his stern voice.

He looked like he did not take his words seriously anyhow.

“Anyway, our refrigerator is almost empty”, he changed the topic instead and walked towards the door that led to the living room again. “Why am I even living with you when you don't do the grocery shopping and offer me no sexual benefits?”

Ka-yu forced himself to overhear the last part of the sentence, because it felt like a punch in the face all over again. Yasu had no idea about the things he had to offer, and he never would.

“Because I do all the cleaning!”, he shouted after him instead and heard yasu's laugh through the closed door.

It was a sweet and gorgeous laugh and it made his chest feel painfully tight.

Staring after him ka-yu thought that maybe it was time for him to finally move out. Money was not an issue to them any more and he would never be able to let go with the vocalist smiling and chatting and touching around him like that.

They had gotten stuck in this relationship, and although it wasn't yasu's fault, ka-yu just felt damn tired of being best friends.

---

A loud knock on the door made ka-yu flinch out of his sleep and his head gave a meek protest.

He had stayed home alone last night indeed, and he had watched a movie, but unfortunately he had not stopped after one can of beer.

Somewhere behind his forehead something red seemed to be throbbing.

“Ka-yu!”, yasu shouted, dashing into his room with the speed of lightening and the noise of thunder.

With a heartily groan he managed to sit up and blinked at his friend standing at the end of his bed.

Everything was far too bright and far too noisy.

“You're still in bed?”, the vocalist observed surprised.

Ka-yu gave a sleepy shrug.

“Artist life”, he said and scanned his best friend again. “And you need my help?”

“Yes!”, yasu beamed, his face wrinkling up and his eyes gleaming with amusement as he looked down on himself. “How did you guess?”

Without much amusement in return ka-yu furrowed his brow.

“Dude, you're wearing three different shirts and no pants. It's obvious you need my help”, he pointed out.

Yasu gave a nervous snicker and managed to shrug somehow apologetic.

“I don't know what to wear”, he owned up. “I have a date today and I really, really need to look good. I'm so excited about it, I can't pick anything. Help me!”

Ka-yu sighed.

It wasn't the first time he helped yasu getting ready for a date, but he had never liked it much. It felt too much like supporting the enemy.

Why would he care if yasu looked good for some cute, dumb girl who did not know all the ways yasu's smile could twitch, who did not know what was the first TV show that had made him cry, or who had been his favourite teacher in high school? Ka-yu knew all those things, and he knew a lot more, but it was always someone else who got to kiss him goodnight at the end of the day.

“Alright”, he gave in nonetheless, because he could not name a good reason for not wanting to help him and he could not risk to blow his own cover. “What are your plans?”

“Just casually going for drinks”, yasu said and he stopped looking at ka-yu for the first time, his gaze trailing down to his feet as if he was embarrassed by the answer.

Casually going out for drinks meant that they were not taking it slow. Casual drinks was the kind of date that led into a hotel room pretty fast.

He felt angry at the thought that maybe yasu was going to have sex with someone else tonight, but also glad, because it probably meant he was not especially serious about that woman.

“Okay”, he began thoughtfully. “Nothing too fancy then, but still showing that you cared enough to dress up. The conservative type or more into your stage persona?”

Yasu bit his lips lightly.

“It's someone from the music industry as well. We met yesterday at this party, so I think I should go for normal. I don't plan to put on a show.”

“Tight black leather pants to make you look cool, but a casual button down shirt to show you're a normal guy that can pull of sexy and formal both at once”, he nodded.

“Oh, you think I'm sexy?”, yasu raised his eyebrows teasingly, but luckily he immediately carried on so ka-yu did not have to reply to it. “And what about my hair?”

“Just wear it open. You have beautiful hair so you don't have to do anything about it.”

The words were out before he could think about them and only when he heard them out loud they nearly made him blush.

He always tried so hard not to compliment yasu too much, but sometimes his mouth reacted before his brain could intervene.

But his hair did look great, glossy and healthy and just a shade lighter than it used to be.

“Good”, yasu sighed with relieve. “I'm a big fan, you know, so I really don't want to fuck this up.”

In his mind ka-yu went through all the female artists yasu listened to, but he could not think of anyone around their age whom he would call himself a big fan of.

Curiosity was lightly tapping his shoulder, but he ignored it deliberately. Yasu had not mentioned any name, so he assumed he didn't want him to know before he was sure about it working out. He wanted to respect his privacy and not pry into it, but he knew he would keep thinking about this for the entire day. Also, most of the night as well, probably.

He was feeling jealous again.

If yasu was a fan of her, ka-yu did not stand a change at all.

But maybe it was better that way. He should wish for yasu's happiness, and maybe this girl would be the one to make him happy.

As his male best friend he had no right to claim him, even if he wanted to.

“But ka-yu”, yasu started, his voice getting caught a little.

Worriedly ka-yu eyed him.

Yasu was hardly ever hesitant about addressing something, so it had to be something that really bothered him.

“Yeah?”, he asked.

“Just...just in case we come here after drinking. I mean, it's not sure, but maybe we will. If I get lucky.”

He laughed a little at that and ka-yu forced himself to smirk as well.

“Please, don't make it weird.”

Ka-yu sighed and let himself sink into the sheets again to go from waking up right into napping again.

Over the course of time yasu had brought home a lot of girls, and he had never been weird about any of them. At least he had never let it show.

“Why would I, idiot?”, he said.

---

Yasu was staying out late.

Of course ka-yu was not staying up to wait for him, although he was curious about how his ominous date had went.

He had just grown hungry somewhere past midnight and was now in the kitchen, heating up some leftovers from dinner in the microwave. It was just his stomach that had kept him awake and had nothing to do with his best friend.

He wasn't even worried how he would get home, but nonetheless he wondered if yasu would take a cab, or if he would sleep somewhere else entirely.

Anyway, that girl was damn lucky, if it had gotten this late already.

He took the heated plate and walked back into the living room, pausing for a moment to think about if he wanted to eat on the couch or in his own room, when he heard the front door unlocking.

His first impulse was to wait up for yasu to ask for details, even if every single one would hurt somewhere deep inside. He hated to hear about the touches, the intimacies, the things that made yasu smile, and most of all he hated hearing about him falling in love. He hoped it wouldn't happen again this time.

Then he heard laughter from the corridor.

Two people were chatting and his brain sent out an alarm to just disappear.

He did not want to see yasu all lovey-dovey with someone else, did not want to watch him smiling at someone else, and most of all he didn't want to see him walk into his bedroom with someone else.

Also, he wanted to make neither yasu nor the girl feel uncomfortable, but the panic just made him freeze.

Before he had decided if his curiosity or his dignity was stronger (it would probably have been the curiosity anyway), yasu was already walking into the living room, his cheeks a little flushed, his giggles loud and giddy, and his hand holding that of someone else.

For a short moment ka-yu's eyes just stayed fixed on yasu like they always did. He seemed to fill the entire room and take up all the space, until he was everything the bassist could see.

Only then did he pay closer attention to the person by his side.

He took in clean features, big eyes, short dark hair and a fragile frame that was even a bit smaller than yasu himself.

But he could have dealt with those observations.

What made his heart stop and caused his breath to get caught in his lungs were the shoulders that were just a little too wide, the lines of the face that were just a little too hard, and the chest that was just a little too flat.

“Hi”, the man said.

“Hi”, ka-yu said in return, completely terrified.

Yasu giggled.

His laughter sounded higher and younger when he got tipsy and his eyes shone even brighter than usual.

“Eh, this is my flatmate ka-yu. And this is Hyde. I'm showing Hyde our apartment.”

“It's a very nice apartment”, Hyde put on a big show of saying and both of them giggled again as if they had made a really hilarious joke just now.

Ka-yu did not see anything funny in it at all.

The shock started to vanish from his limps very slowly, and he still felt mostly numb, his brain not quite able to process all the new information.

“Thank you”, he said and felt very dumb.

Not just for not coming up with a smarter reply, but also because he hadn't seen it. Because he had missed his chance to tell yasu how he felt, when there actually still was something like a chance left.

If yasu liked men it wouldn't have been impossible.

He could have tried. He could have been the best version of himself every single day, if it had meant kissing yasu only once. He could have gotten up every morning with nothing but the determination to win over his best friend. His only goal in life could have been to make him smile and hold his hand.

But looking at this beautiful man, whose singing yasu adored so much, he knew that he couldn't compete with him.

The game was over the very moment ka-yu had realized it was on at all.

“I will show him the rest of the apartment now. Like, my bedroom is a real highlight”, yasu grinned and let go of Hyde's hand to tuck at his shirt instead and pull him over to his room.

Again, they both laughed.

“It was nice to meet you”, Hyde nodded into his direction, but ka-yu did not reply at all.

He just stared after them in silence, still holding on to his late night meal.

Unfortunately he did no longer feel hungry at all.

---

Ka-yu had shut his door tightly, but then it wasn't the door that was bothering him.

It was the wall.

The material was so thin that he could hear every noise from the other side clearly if the rest of the apartment went quiet.

At first he heard yasu laugh, and then he heard him moan.

He closed his eyes as if that could drown out the sounds.

The noises where so muffled that he could not differentiate the voices, but it was enough to set his imagination spinning.

Was that yasu moaning as Hyde took of his shirt and caressed his bare chest? He thought of his exposed skin, thought about Hyde placing kisses down his flat stomach, down to the line of his pants. He imagined his hands running over yasu's back and the vocalist biting his lips to suppress his voice.

Or was it Hyde moaning as yasu opened his pants to lick the downside of his dick? Images of yasu's pink lips closing around the smooth shaft, of his cheeks going hollow while he sucked gently, flared up behind ka-yu's eyes.

His own dick started to grow hard, and for a moment he fought with himself, but then he gave up.  Following a weak impulse he slid his hand down his own pants, taking hold of the hot flesh throbbing under his palm.

He had no dignity left to uphold, no pride that could restrain him. He had lost the only thing he had ever truly desired to someone else, because he had been stupid and frightened. What was the point in holding back now?

He thought of how yasu touched Hyde next door and how he was touched by him, and then he erased Hyde from those fantasies, and it was only yasu. Yasu moaning under his hands, yasu who looked up to him with dark and clouded eyes, yasu who took off his pants and kissed him with trembling, greedy lips.

He heard the moans from the other room and melted them together into one vivid dream, mixing yasu's voice with his own touch.

Muffled sounds escaped from his own lips and he mumbled the name he did not dare to speak louder over and over again.

The noises from the other side of the wall had changed a bit now, he could make out yasu's voice more clearly. He would have know that voice anywhere and right now his friend sounded almost like he was singing.

Ka-yu wished it had been him who had written that song for him.

His hand was clenching down firmly on his hard-on, stroking fiercely, because he wanted to get over with this as fast as possible. The pulsing flesh felt hot under his own fingers, heat building up below his waistline.

He thought of yasu's eyes and his lips, his forehead and his nose, his ruffled hair and his neckline, his chest and his collarbone, his hands, his upper arms, his skin, the way he would shiver if ka-yu touched him.

He was angry at himself for imagining those things, because yasu was his best friend and he should not abuse his trust by wanting more. And at the same time he was angry for imagining it instead of being over there right now, instead of being the man who drove those moans from yasu's lips.

Maybe, if he had tried just a little bit harder in time, maybe it could have been him.

Clenching his fingers even more violently now, ka-yu spilled himself into his own palm, sighing with relief and anger.

Floating warmth filled his system, but the small orgasm left behind no satisfaction, only emptiness and the wish to fall asleep in yasu's arms right now.

---

Ka-yu felt tired when he got up the next morning, although he had fallen asleep early last night.

The voices next door had stopped at some point and he had heard the closing of a door, pressing his eyes shut, because he assumed that this meant refreshments before second round. And he really wasn't ready to stand another round of passionate moaning.

Luckily his prayers had been answered and sleep had taken him in before the noises had started once more, so he was quite sure that he had slept several hours, although to him it seemed as if he had lain awake all night, cursing his luck and wishing he could turn back time.

Now he walked into the living room, finding yasu sitting on the couch and staring at a cup of coffee and an empty plate on the table before him as if they had both done him a personal injustice.

“Hyde didn't stay for breakfast?”, ka-yu observed, making it sound like a question so yasu had the opportunity to explain his gloomy expression if he wanted to.

“No, he left in the middle of the night before I even fell asleep”, yasu shrugged, but did not turn around to face ka-yu.

It wasn't like him to avoid looking at someone's face, and ka-yu felt something soften on his inside immediately.

Although it had been him who had ruined his own chances by keeping shut for so long, he still blamed yasu a bit. Why hadn't he told him he liked men? Why had he chosen Hyde and not even considered his best friend?

But the thought that yasu felt down made all his anger vanish within one second. He did not need to touch him, didn't need to kiss him, and didn't need him to love him back. The only thing he needed was that dorky grin to stay on yasu's face forever.

He walked closer and sat down on the couch beside the vocalist, eyeing him from the side.

“So he walked out on you right after having sex?”, he assured. “What a dick.”

He tried to say it light-heartedly and not like it made him want to burn everything that Hyde possessed and loved to the very ground.

Yasu let go of a loud groan and tilted back his head, so it was resting against the back of the couch.

“Even worse than that. He walked out on me before even having sex. Isn't that sad? I made such a fool of myself he couldn't even bother to fuck me.”

Relieve mixed with guilt flooded ka-yu's system. He shouldn't be so happy about the fact that yasu's feelings had been hurt, but he couldn't help to feel glad that nothing serious had happened between him and Hyde. At least for a bit his jealousy was soothed, but than he remembered the moans and how intimate the two of them had seemed when coming home.

“I had the impression that you guys really hit it off”, he pointed out carefully.

Yasu shrugged again and now turned his head towards ka-yu without lifting it from the pillows. The bassist was glad to see him smiling again.

“We did. We did some pretty hot stuff when we got here, but I was kinda nervous about having sex”, he confessed and ran his hand through his hair as if he had wanted to hide his face but then changed his mind in the last second.

Ka-yu's stomach thumbed weirdly.

“He did not pressure you, did he?”, he asked uncomfortable.

Hastily yasu shook his head and then rolled his eyes.

“No, he was super nice about it. That's the worst”, he sighed. “He told me we could take it slow and that it wouldn't be necessary to sleep with each other on the first date.”

Now the vocalist sat up straight and stared at ka-yu in a way that almost made him flinch with guilt, although he knew that this anger wasn't directed at him.

“What kind of guy would even say that? Didn't he want to do it at all? Why wasn't he at least a bit impatient? I was so fucking weird, just kept making awful jokes, but he was all understanding and kindness. Then he asked me how I would feel about oral sex instead, and I was even nervous about that, so I started singing.”

The words were now falling out of yasu's mouth hastily and babbling, and ka-yu could tell that he needed to get rid of them, but did not feel especially comfortable to say them out loud nonetheless.

“What?”, ka-yu finally caught up to the meaning of what he had just said.

The words had come so fast and hurriedly that he had a hard time keeping track of them.

In his ears the sentences did not really seem to make any sense.

“I panicked!”, yasu shrieked and then started laughing, because he obviously realized how stupid he sounded himself. “He was asking so formally about giving head, I thought singing one of his songs would break the ice. I changed the lyrics a bit, and I'm not gonna quote them ever again, but let's just say that sucking dick was a central theme in it.”

Now ka-yu had to laugh as well.

It explained the singing he had heard the other day, but if it had been anyone but yasu he still wouldn't have believed it. But with his best friend it was somehow easy to imagine. Sometimes yasu got funny ideas of what charming meant, especially when he got nervous.

In spite of himself ka-yu almost felt sorry for Hyde now.

“No wonder he left”, he admitted.

“Yeah”, yasu made a face. “He told me he'd call, but it was obvious he couldn't wait to get away. Things were too awkward.”

It also explained the shutting of a door and the silence afterwards that had stayed with ka-yu through the sleepless night.

“Maybe he wasn't the right one”, he offered consolingly and hoped for it to be true with his whole being.

“I just hate myself for getting so nervous”, yasu groaned and stared down into his own lap.

“Are you...?”

Ka-yu swallowed hard, not knowing how to address the questions properly.

There had never been the need for the right words between them before.

“...gay?”, yasu suggested and looked up with a smirk again. “I'm not sure, actually. I think I still like girls, but I don't get excited about them like I used to. Maybe I am and all the hormones of puberty just confused me.”

He laughed at that, but ka-yu could see that his eyes were not really joining in with the laughter, and it made him wonder if yasu was scared of being judged.

“You've never told me”, he stated, waiting for an explanation.

“There was no need for you to know”, the vocalist brushed it off, and the words burned when he finally processed them.

For yasu it did not even matter if ka-yu knew or not, because to him he could never be more than a friend.

“But it's good you know now”, he carried on. “I want to try to be more open about my sexuality and date guys for a change.”

The thought of more men coming to their apartment in the future, holding yasu's hand and kissing his lips and making him moan through the whole place, reminded ka-yu that it was really about high time he moved out.

“But you're still scared of having sex with a man?”, ka-yu asked, not sure if he had gotten his words right.

Thinking about yasu he had never considered that he might feel that way, he was all pervert and all self-confident, but his story about Hyde had made it obvious that he was insecure about the matter.

He watched his best friend lick his lips slowly, tasting the words before actually voicing them.

“I'm not scared of the sex. Like, that it will hurt or something”, he confessed. “I'm just scared that I will be very bad at it.”

Ka-yu opened his mouth to protest, but yasu cut him short, before he even knew what he wanted to say.

“I know, I know”, he assured. “But I have zero experience with guys and I don't know how it will feel and stuff. Maybe I'll embarrass myself. I just want to practice, but the only way of practising is doing it.”

He laughed at that and it was the laugh that sounded a little breathless and told ka-yu he was feeling awkward about what he had just said. For him it had always been easy to read his expressions like that.

“I guess I was just nervous because I was too eager to get it done with”, he closed.

Ka-yu took in a shaky breath.

It felt weird and somewhat wrong that yasu spoke about such things so honestly, when ka-yu could not even be honest to himself.

“Maybe it wasn't such a great idea to do it with someone you hardly know to begin with”, he pointed out, swallowing hard because he was afraid that yasu could read the meaning behind those words far too easily.

The vocalist gave a long sigh.

“Trust me, if I had a really good friend, who wanted to have gay sex with me, I'd really appreciate, but I don't know too many guys who are into men. I got really lucky with Hyde, you see. I think he's really cool, also good looking and he obviously wasn't opposed to me. It's hard to find someone like that, but of course I had to fuck it up”, he said and scrambled closer to ka-yu, so he could place his head on his shoulder.

Usually ka-yu disliked casual body-contact like that, but today he didn't mind. Today it wasn't just torture to feel yasu's warmth against himself and to smell the faint hint of his shampoo. Today it also meant that somewhere in this touch there rested hope.

“Yasu, you know...”, he started, gathering all his courage.

This was it, the second chance. He had grieved over having missed the opportunity to tell him before, and maybe it was now. Maybe now the timing was finally right.

“I also...”

A mobile rang.

Yasu flinched into an upright position, the warmth against ka-yu's skin vanishing so suddenly it left him cold and surprised.

Hectically the vocalist fumbled for his phone, getting it out of his pocket and then staring at it for a moment like it was a wild animal he didn't dare to provoke.

Then he accepted the call without even looking at ka-yu first.

And the words died on his tongue, never even reaching his lips.

“Hello, it's yasu”, yasu mumbled. “Oh, hi...really?”

He laughed at this, a little too high and a little too shrill, but no one but ka-yu would have known the difference, he was sure.

“I didn't expect you to call back, if I'm honest”, he went on. “Oh. Yeah, I'm glad to hear that. What? Tomorrow already? No, no, that's no trouble at all. So..., dinner sounds nice. Yes, okay, yes. See you.”

He hung up and stared at his mobile for another few seconds, which felt very painful in ka-yu's chest.

One half of the conversation had been enough to guess that all his hopes and dreams had been shattered with just one call.

Only then did yasu look up at him and his expression looked blank, but much to his own disappointment ka-yu could see that his eyes shone with happiness.

He did not want to resent him that happiness, but he did.

“He called me”, yasu whispered. “Hyde actually called me. He wants to go for dinner tomorrow. Not just drinks again, but dinner.”

Ka-yu wished back for the good old times when he had assumed that yasu was straight. If you didn't have any hopes they couldn't get crushed.

“That's great”, he said, although he did not mean it at all.

Of course he could have told him anyway. He could have put up a fight, but right now it would have seemed too much like he just wanted to ruin this for yasu.

Moreover, he was scared. Scared of the consequences, if yasu declined, because after all he couldn't compare to Hyde.

“But you know what this means, right?”, yasu grinned, his facial expression finally catching up with his giddy state of mind.

Ka-yu sighed.

“I have to help you pick an outfit again?”, he guessed.

Yasu shook his head deliberately.

“No”, he stated earnestly. “This time I want to go through with it. I want to be prepared. We have a research project now, like back in school, you remember that?”

Of course ka-yu did.

Back in school the thought of a research project had never frightened him as much as it did now, though.

“What's the topic?”, he wanted to know weakly.

Yasu's grin widened even more.

“Gay sex”, he said.

---

“Oh my god, put this back”, ka-yu winced, taking the device from yasu's hand to place it back onto the shelf.

Nervously he looked around the shop.

Although everything was clean, the shelves were brightly polished and the products neatly arranged, the place somehow managed to look shady.

The shop assistant threw a warning glance at them.

It wasn't the first one since they had entered.

Yasu was talking in a loud voice and starting to laugh every few seconds.

“No, I want this, it's with vibration!”, he beamed now as he grabbed for the next toy.

Ka-yu had always felt uncomfortable in sex shops, but he had underestimated the awkwardness to go shopping for dildos.

“Do you have to touch every single one of them?”, he groaned.

“I have to check for the feeling”, yasu defended himself. “But they are all kind of big, aren't they? I wonder if they will fit.”

Ka-yu tried his best not to think about what yasu meant with that. But even trying caused him a semi hard-on already.

“I think this one is average”, he nodded towards the vibrator yasu was holding right now. “Just buy it and we'll leave.”

The fact that he was carrying a stately collection of porn DVDs in his arms was not helping any to lessen his embarrassment.

“Average?!”, yasu repeated very loudly and stared at the device in disbelieve. “If that's your average I sure want to take a look down your pants, dude.”

“Okay, okay, it might be slightly big”, ka-yu owned up fast. “Just pick another one.”

He felt his cheeks colouring slightly and wasn't sure if it was because his friend eyed him somewhat too curiously, or because the shop assistant was about to run out of patience soon.

Yasu looked down the rows of lined up dildos in front of them, all different colours, sizes or special effects.

“What's your size, ka-yu?”, he asked almost innocently, but the bassist knew him far too well to fall for it. “I will pick this one to make sure I can fit a guy like you.”

Ka-yu wanted to be somewhere else very urgently.

He would have wondered why he had decided to come along in the first place, but then yasu had not left anything of a decision to him anyway. He could be very demanding, if he had set his mind to something, and today he had set his mind to visiting a sex shop.

“Why would you even want that? If a guy likes you he wouldn't expect you to be trained or something. And if he doesn't like you, you shouldn't have sex with him anyway”, ka-yu blurted out almost angrily.

He was getting annoyed with yasu's attitude, but truthfully it was only because of the role he played in this. He didn't want to be the friend helping yasu chose sex toys he would use with someone else. He wanted to make him feel loved and desired just the way he was. And maybe use some of the toys on him himself.

“I guess you're right”, yasu gave in. “Plus, we can always come back here.”

Ka-yu rolled his eyes at the word “we”, but he stayed silent and followed yasu over to the counter.

The shop assistant there was a young woman, who smiled at them slightly annoyed, and who obviously really needed the money. It did not seem like the kind of job you would take otherwise. Her blank expression appeared very professional.

He placed the DVDs in front of her and she started checking them out without betraying any emotion on her face.

Just when he started to hope they could finish this without further embarrassments, yasu bend forward over the counter and ka-yu assumed the worst.

“In case you wondered why we were looking at dildos, those weren't for us of course”, the vocalist started chatting, although the girl couldn't have cared any less. “They were meant for our girlfriends. Because we're both dating girls. I mean, we're not a couple or anything. Even if one of us was gay, we're still not dating.”

He passed some money over the counter, while the woman packed everything into a black plastic bag that did not betray any of its insides, which ka-yu was extremely thankful for.

“Just look at this guy”, yasu wouldn't keep shut and pointed at ka-yu. “Handsome, isn't he? It's obvious he's not dating someone like me. We're just two straight, male friends, who went shopping for presents to our girlfriends together. My girlfriend loves dildos. I mean, not there is anything wrong with my dick, it's a good, normal dick, but...”

Ka-yu took the bag and grabbed for yasu's arm to pull him after him, before he could say anything even more stupid. The assistant acknowledged his efforts with a short nod.

“What did you do this for?”, he hissed, slightly pissed off at yasu's weird behaviour.

“I don't know, I panicked”, yasu made a face. “I'm not used to being gay yet. I wanted to seem normal.”

“Normal?”, ka-yu repeated numbly. “That conversation was not normal.”

“You think she bought my story, though?”, yasu wanted to know nonetheless.

Ka-yu shook his head, suddenly not sure if yasu had really been nervous, or if he had just wanted to make him laugh. His lips were twitching the way they only ever did when he was trying to prank his friend.

“Not sure”, ka-yu smirked. “Since at the same time you bought their entire collection of gay porn.”

---

“Oh my, no!”, yasu squealed next to him, pulling his feet up onto the couch, forming a human bundle which his knees close to his chest. “That poor dude looks like he's in pain! ...or like he has eaten something funny. I don't want to look like that.”

Nonetheless he did not switch off the TV, but kept staring at the screen in shocked fascination.

Ka-yu tried not to look at the moving pictures too clearly himself.

The two guys there were doing things to each other that his brain could not quite process, and they did it in a way that looked neither friendly nor erotic.

He was feeling awkward again.

“I think I will just go to my room”, he tried for the third time already and like the other three times before yasu did not grand permission.

“I dare you”, he shook his head. “I will not do my share of the cleaning for the next two months if you leave me now.”

Ka-yu sighed and stayed put.

He had only made an effort to get up at all at the first time. Yasu's threats were only getting worse.

Next to him the vocalist got up himself to change the DVD in their player.

They were fast watching them, which hardly made it any better.

He put in the next film now and skipped forward while still standing next to the screen.

Ka-yu covered his eyes with one hand immediately.

“Bro, how many guys are there? What did you even buy that for?”

He felt horrified and like the few seconds in fast forward had already changed his life forever. He did no longer believe in love and human dignity to begin with.

After a moment of silence he dared to glimpse out between his fingers again. He regretted it immediately.

Yasu had paused the DVD and was now silently moving his lips as if dealing with a very complicated question.

“Eleven, I think”, he stated after a while, causing ka-yu to snort.

Usually it made him laugh when yasu answered his rhetoric questions. It also made him feel slightly annoyed.

“Also, I just bought everything that looked gay. In case Hyde brings along nine other guys to our date I will be prepared now.”

Now ka-yu had to laugh for real, the noises falling out between his lips and betraying him when he really just wanted to scold his best friend.

He hated all those small laughs and goofy moments, because they made it impossible for him to stay mad, and they made it impossible for him to fall out of love.

“God, just put it out already. Aren't we finished yet?”, he rolled his eyes and saw yasu pointing towards the TV.

“I bet that's what he said”, he mocked, but took out the DVD and exchanged it with the next one.

Again he skipped fast forward, slowing down to normal pace only after a while. When another moment had passed, he returned to the couch and sat down next to ka-yu again.

He could feel the heat of his arm nearly brushing against his own.

Over the obtrusive moaning from the speakers he could even sense his soft breathing and it took him all his willpower not to reach out and touch him right now. The vocalist seemed to be extremely present and ka-yu realized that he was in a slight state of arousal himself, intensifying every sensation connected to yasu.

“This one looks kinda normal”, his friend observed. “I think I could do that.”

Only now did ka-yu turn his full attention towards the screen in front of them again.

The two men on there were maybe moaning a little too loudly, but other than that it looked pretty similar to what ka-yu had experienced with girls so far. One was on top of the other, thrusting into him between spread legs.

“It looks a bit uncomfortable, though”, he said, just to say anything that wasn't exactly encouraging yasu to go and have sex with other men who were not ka-yu.

“Well, I'm quite agile”, yasu assured him with a grin and ka-yu did his best not to picture his friend in any position where that might be of good use. “I could do that, if Hyde was up for it.”

Ka-yu held back a quite sigh.

The mention of the name alone made his stomach feel funny.

Maybe he should tell him. Maybe he should tell him now.

He stayed silent and looked at the TV again.

They were doing a dangerous close zoom-in now, and automatically he started to imagine what it would feel like to thrust into yasu just like this. It was a line he had never crossed before. He had imagined kissing him before, touching him, even going down on him, but the real act of sexual intercourse had always felt like too much of a violation to their friendship. Even imagining it without yasu's permission felt like he was abusing his trust, but this very moment he couldn't help it.

Watching the motions on the screen his own body began to grow hotter, goose-bumps popping up along his spine and he wondered what yasu's insides would feel like clenching down on him.

“You were right”, his friend said quietly. “It was a weird idea to watch this together. I'm already hard.”

This time ka-yu sighed out loud.

The state of yasu's dick was nothing he wanted to be informed about.

“Why are you even telling me this?”, he groaned and was thankful that yasu finally grabbed for the remote and switched off the TV.

“I would feel weirder not mentioning stuff like that at all!”, the vocalist protested. “You're still my best friend after all. Nothing has changed.”

“You just made me watch gay porn with you, you never did that before”, ka-yu lunged back angrily.

Without meaning to they had both raised their voices, but it wasn't a real fight. The never fought, they just had very passionate arguments that blew over in seconds.

As if he had thought the same yasu laughed out loud and nodded.

“That's true, I made you watch straight porn with me twice, though”, he remembered and ka-yu rolled his eyes, but also started to grin.

All those weird memories that had made him so angry back then became fond over time. All those memories led up to what yasu meant to him now.

“That was awkward as well. Did you not learn anything from that?”

“Only that I always get my will”, yasu winked at him and got up. “And now I will take a cold shower, because I don't want to masturbate before meeting Hyde today. Or is that weird?”

Ka-yu shook his head slightly, not sure what he was supposed to say to that.

For a moment he wanted to tell yasu urgently how much the thought of him doing the things they had just watched with Hyde tonight made his heart sting.

So he said the only thing he could say while really meaning it:

“Either way, he's a very lucky guy.”

---

This time he was staying up late to wait for yasu, and he was not even trying to hide it from himself.

The TV was flickering angry lights at him, and ka-yu had already turned down the volume, because it started to make his head spin.

He needed to know how the date had went. He needed to know if yasu would sleep alone tonight, even if he was just torturing himself.

His curiosity did not care. His curiosity was basically a heartless bitch that did not consider ka-yu's feelings at all.

He yawned loudly and forced his eyes to stay open.

It was around 1am already and still there was no sign of yasu.

How long could dinner take?

It probably wasn't just dinner, if it was past midnight already.

Ka-yu thought of the porn they had watched this afternoon, and the faces of the actors started to get blurry in his memory, until they could have been anyone. They could have been yasu and Hyde.

A rattling came from the front door and ka-yu flinched violently, straining his ears to listen for voices.

The only thing he heard were footsteps in the corridor and he felt relieved and sad at once.

Of course he was curious about how the date had went, but he was also scared of knowing.

At this time of the night it was likely that it had went well.

“Hey”, he called out into the darkness of the corridor and got a low sigh in return as yasu stepped into the living room.

He looked good, but also tired.

Without a word he sat down next to ka-yu, staring at the TV screen, obviously trying to make sense of the show that was playing. Ka-yu himself had been watching it for 30 minutes already and hadn't yet made sense of it himself.

“How was it?”, he asked after a while.

Yasu sighed once more and pulled up his legs, lying down next to ka-yu and placing his head on his thigh.

For a while ka-yu just looked down on his friend, feeling the warm weight of his head on his leg, and studying the familiar outlines of his face. His cheeks were still a little chubby, but his eyes and lips looked gorgeous.

Very hesitantly ka-yu reached out to stroke back some of his brunette hair. It felt extremely soft under his hands and he started to swirl some of the strands absent-mindedly between his fingers. It was the kind of thing he had never done with his girlfriends, because it seemed too affectionate and made him feel weak and vulnerable. With yasu he was vulnerable anyway, and he was always weak.

“It was nice”, yasu said after a while, his voice barely carrying over the noises from the TV.

“Good”, ka-yu replied, and for a moment he really meant it, because yasu's silence had started to worry him.

“We chatted a lot”, the vocalist added. “He told me that he likes me and that he wants to take it slow. He kissed me goodbye and helped me into my jacket. Hyde's a nice guy.”

“Good”, ka-yu repeated, a little sad, but mostly glad that at least yasu got treated the way he deserved.

Looking down he could see the vocalist closing his eyes as if overwhelmed by exhaustion.

“I just don't know if I'm into nice guys”, he admitted quietly, and for a weird heart-beat ka-yu felt like he just ought to kiss him.

Like this was what yasu needed, and maybe that it was what he needed as well. They both needed ka-yu to be brave, but he wasn't.

Lightly he ran his forefinger across yasu's cheek.

“Yasu, I...”, he started, not sure what he wanted to say.

Maybe the words that needed to be said the most, maybe something else entirely.

He broke off and there was a little silence, waiting to be filled.

“I invited Hyde over for dinner”, his friend announced.

The mood died.

Yasu had killed it.

Ka-yu pulled back his hand.

“You mean you will cook?”, he tried to tease, but his voice sounded strange as if he had to swallow all the words underneath that question.

“Yeah, or get something”, yasu mumbled. “But I thought it would be nice if you met. I talk about you a lot and we're living together after all. Also, I hoped I would feel less awkward if we just hang out at our place, and you are there as well. Maybe you could invite a girl over.”

Ka-yu thought about it, and the idea seemed wrong to him for so many reasons.

“I don't think any girl would feel comfortable to have a date at someone's home with only three guys around”, he pointed out.

Yasu exhaled softly.

“You're right, I hadn't thought about that”, he admitted.

Ka-yu could tell he was extremely sleepy, because he usually didn't admit for his friend to be right easily.

“Then it's just the three of us, I guess.”

It still felt wrong.

“I think that would be pretty weird”, ka-yu objected. “Three people is just one too many.”

Yasu fumbled for his hand without even opening his eyes.

“Please”, he sighed. “I'm scared to fuck up again. I need you, ka-yu.”

And this stupid heart fluttered in ka-yu's chest and told him that he had no choice.

(1)a BUNCH of long asks coming your way, i'm so sorry I just love discussing KS with other people so I run my keyboard down lol.... so I finally read your latest post on KS. Anyway, I thought it was mind blowing on the point that the current story is almost always being narrated by Bum, so perhaps all the images are in Bum's perspective--which makes complete sense to why Sangwoo is always 'yaoi' sized compared to poorlittle Bum. I threw my hands up in surrender to you after that paragraph

Firstly,here’s the rest of the asks: 

To move onto my question, actual penetration seems to be the next step between Bum and Sangwoo in their 'physical relationship'. But part of me thinks that Sangwoo will never do it with Bum. Many times in the past chapters, Sangwoo has expressed dislike for homosexuals. Hell, he even dresses Bum as a country gal to (imo) remove any masculinity from Bum and sort of 'project' this image that Sangwoo is holding hostage a woman, not a man (imo again). 

There was only one time (I think) during a sexual act when Bum and Sangwoo exposed their dicks to each other, which was that one BJ scene where Bum gets Sangwoo off and pulls out his own dick. Honestly I can't remember if that was accurate or not cuz it's very hard for me to read those earlier chapters (I get so nervous and disturbed omfg). But going back to that BJ scene, Bum is still dressed like a girl as well.

So for my question (finally) I know you said that Sangwoo will /most likely/ give Bum some sort of sexual reward after all this, but do you think that Sangwoo will some how 'feminine Bum' in order to justify their sexual acts? Perhaps slapping that bra onto Bum?? Another question that just came into my mind was this.. it's goes back to your point about how Sangwoo looks so much bigger and whatnot.

You've said that you're not a sensitive person in your post and I also agree with that for myself. I've seen a lot of things in the past and I don't get too affected by it all. I usually can shrug off things pretty easily. But what I can't shrug off is rereading those earlier chapters.

As I stated in my past question, I get deeply disturbed and really anxious even /thinking/ about the situation that Bum is going through (don't get me started with the arc where Sangwoo was acting kind to Bum--I was hyperventilating the entire time). Do you think that because the story is most likely viewed through Bum's eyes, that the anxiety and panic or any emotion anyone gets when reading these chapters is a mirror to Bum's?

It's probably an obvious answer but I'm curious to reading your response. And also, if you believe that it is a mirror, what about during the short time Ji Eun took control of the narration? Is there something different? Sorry again if these are stupidly long asks and that I spammed you with all of them, but you pose such good analysis that I feel like I wanna dive deep with you on it as well LOL... ANYWAY THAT'S IT I'M GONE NOW LOL.

Secondly - hehe, thank you! I really am enjoying this even if it is slightly embarrassing how much I think about all this stuff. It’s interesting because nowadays I don’t normally need to wait for anything - media wise (except videos games but that’s on me). Like, with Netflix, all the episodes come out at one time and there’s no time for speculation or analysis. Until YOI, I hadn’t waited on anything, so I found myself reading a lot of meta and analysis and I guess I figured this is the time to get involved and do my own.

Thirdly, this is a great ask, and there’s stuff in here I hadn’t really thought about and there stuff in here that I have so I’ll do my best with both of those.

So that next step question? It’s an interesting one, and one that I don’t have any final opinion on, but rather a few directions I could see where it could go. Because you’re right, Sangwoo is homophobic and that does manifest in the sexual encounters with Bum. And yet, he also just clearly doesn’t give a fuck as long as he’s getting something out of it. So it’s a very unique mindset to be in when it comes to sex. Because nothing outside of how Sangwoo thinks, feels or reacts matters. He’s not completely homophobic because society, as a whole, tends to be homophobic. But because he sees it as a... difference? weakness? something to take advantage of and look down on. Like for him, it’s just so weird that this little freak likes men wow he’s such a freak but that also this freak surprises me and will do anything for me and I’m into it.

So the panel that keeps coming to mine is the “have you even had sex yes” panel with the dildo. And that concerns me because, well for one, Bum has had sex - and I don’t think a single time has that sex been consensual - just rape. And he and SANGWOO have had sex? And I sort of talked about this before, but clearly Sangwoo doesn’t consider what they’ve as “sex” despite it definitely being yes. So maybe he’s just one of those penetration=sex or maybe what he and Bum are is completely outside of anything he would normally define. I’m not sure. 

So, my concerns lie in how does Sangwoo expect Bum to participate in this sexual portion of the murder? If he involved Bum as anything more than shock value for Jieun or will he try to have him lose his supposed virginity? Eh, probably not but maybe. And I realize I’m not answering your actual question here so let me get to a point.

I, personally, hope that “penetrative sex” is not the next step in their sexual relationship. Now - or ever. Because Sangwoo will hurt Bum. There is no gosh darn way he knows how to sleep with other men. He’s probably never even heard of lube - women are supposed to be doing all the work for him here. Plus, prep and going slow, like we have literally just seen how little time or care he takes when sleeping with someone because with Jieun he sort of just gets right in there - at least according to my reading of their intercourse. Time is a funny thing when it comes to sex scenes though. But, to get to your point, penetrative sex sort of makes sense when it comes to Sangwoo and his idea of power and control and homophobia. He simply wants to Bum submitting to him. That’s really what any sort of sexual interaction with Bum requires, I think? 

But you bring up a good, and interesting point. Bum has never been sexually naked in front of Sangwoo. And I think that’s on purpose. But not necessarily because Bum being naked would remind Sangwoo that he’s in fact, a man, but he had no problems messing around with his flat chest before. So the lack of boobs aren’t an issue. Instead, it might be more, he just doesn’t consider Bum’s pleasure a priority. He just assumes Bum’s gonna get all the pleasure he needs out of pleasing Sangwoo and that’s not really Sangwoo’s priority to solve.

So if he and Bum do have sex again post-Jieun (and I expect they will) it’s important to note that it’s not really a “reward” for Bum. But rather something Sangwoo will want to do because he feels close and intimate with Bum and wants to get his rocks off again, and Bum is expected to go along for the ride. And that’s the thesis of this. I’m so sorry how much I ramble. I guess, in short, the feminization won’t really... come into play here? Or rather it will but because submission is the key.

To your second question, I’ll put the thesis right up front.

AB-SO-FREAKING-LUTELY. Like, y’all, that’s the entire point of reading this story. And that’s why I started off my whole meta series over how GOOD Koogi is as a story-teller because she does a near flawless job of getting you into Bum’s head/mind without you having a single clue. Why were we all so upset at Sangwoo sleeping with Jieun? I even admitted if gave me the actual feeling of that time I was cheated on because for us, we had just been cheated on too, through Bum. Even though, taking even half a step back - um, they are not in a romantic, consensual, healthy relationship. Sangwoo can and will have sex with whomever we wants. But for Bum, not one whole chapter ago he made Sangwoo tell him what he and Jieun had done together. And for him, his assurance that Sangwoo had not slept with Jieun has been both betrayed and thrown right in his face, can we’re only getting a taste of that betrayal. Bum is breaking, and we are along with him. 

I can’t decide if I think Bum knows what’s coming. If he’s going to have to help kill her. I have a feeling he doesn’t, especially now when the fact he’s watching Sangwoo sleep with her is all he’ll be able to process, and obsess, and destroy himself over. 

Every step of the way, we are meant to feel a little what Bum feels. That’s good, psychological horror at its finest. All of our sane rational selves know that this story is horrific, and abusive and something none of us would want any real part of. But hip hip hooray this is fiction and the point of fiction is to explore parts of ourselves (and I mean this holistically, like us a species) in situations and relationships and terror that we hope  to never find ourselves in. That’s why humans have told stories since the dawn of time (and to like, pass down history and shit but you get my point).

And as far as Jieun, I mentioned it briefly before, but Jieun is 10000000% a foil/mirror for Bum. Break down their roles in the narrative and they are the EXACT. SAME. PERSON. Both love(d) Sangwoo, they’re devoted to him. They WANT him. Both have consciously placed themselves right into Sangwoo’s hands. And like, think about that dinner scene. People are making such a fuss because Jieun is being “mean” to Bum. But she’s acting like literally anyone would. She’s acting like Bum would if the roles were reversed. Nevermind, she’s acting like Bum IS ACTING because they’re both jealous, and possessive and wanting Sangwoo’s attention and affection. 

We got into her head because narratively, we’re basically still in Bum’s. No, Jieun and Bum are not the same person. But the distinction we’re meant to see, I theorize, will be the moment when Jieun finds out who Sangwoo really is. I seriously doubt she’ll react like Bum did. I imagine she’ll reject Sangwoo instead of getting on her knees and confessing love for him - like she even has the opportunity. 

I admit to being a little bit disturbed by the fandom’s overall reaction to Jieun. But in the same note, I doubt most are stepping back to see her as a mirror to Bum because Bum doesn’t see that. He sees her as a threat to him and to his relationship with Sangwoo. So I get the defensiveness on the part of the fandom, especially since most of y’all seem to be pretty young and it’s hard for your brains to take a step back. Hope that doesn’t offend, but it’s true because I was a teenager once too and I know what it’s like. lol.

This was long, but it’s also sort of my brand. Hope this was good!