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#i always assumed they just learned modern dance

lokisgoodgirl · 2 years

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Burn it to the Ground [Avenger! Loki x Fem.Reader] 18+

A link to my Masterlist is HERE Summary: Soft Dom!Loki has his jealousy ignited at a party in Avengers Tower due to everyone thinking you’re pretty great (w/c 4k) Warnings: Smut. 18+ NSFW. Soft Dom, Public Sex, Language, Rough Sex, Dubious Consent, Jealous Partner, Possible overuse of ellipsis. Minors DNI.

You could feel those thunderous eyes drilling into the back of your head from across the crowded room. They swept down to analyse the minute body language tells, making note of each and every one with increasing jealousy.

Outwardly, your lover would appear engaged in whatever conversation he was having over by the bar in Avengers Tower you were sure. You could hear his chiming laugh, just a little too loudly. But you could feel his eyes on your ass as keenly as if they were his hands.

"...and then' Steve continued, tears forming in his eyes from laughter, 'Y/N told him to go fuck himself... and hit him over the head with a pizza oven". Punchline over, his fit of giggles spilled over to a fully raucous laugh that turned several heads. "Why was there even a pizza oven in a lab?" Scott Lang scrunched his face in bemusement, before raising his brows, "although I mean, just cos you're Hydra doesn't mean you can't appreciate a nice home baked pizza in between creating biological warfare I guess". Steve doubled over, and you sipped your drink smiling coyly at their antics. In his slightly inebriated state, Cap misjudged the space, his cheek grazing against the curve of your breast, outlined in your black skater dress.

"Woww, careful buddy", Scott steadied him up to a vertical stance as Steve wiped his eyes, "you'll have Mischief Managed over here in a second with moves like that'" He peered over his shoulder, in what you could only assume he thought was a subtle move, to mistakenly directly meet Loki's eyes and immediately turn back to you, a frozen look of confusion on his face.

"Y/N how does he know...like...I mean really", Scott leaned in to whisper, "does he have a spell on you or something...like he knows when people get too close?"

"You mean like you are now?", you laughed - and Scott jumped a foot backward. "No, of course not...he's just, protective."

"Possessive, more like", Steve interjected, his prior jolly mood swept aside. He was gazing at Loki with his blue stare sharpened, and Loki stared right back, raising his glass with a nod to the Captain before turning back to his conversation with Natasha. Smug bastard. He loved every second of this.

"Dance with me, Cap", you asked with a soft smile, "it's been a while since you and I showed off our moves."

Steve looked away from Loki's direction, his features warming as he took your outstretched hand. "It would be my pleasure- let's hit it!"

Scott sprayed his drink mid swallow, rum and coke dribbling down his chin as he processed what he'd heard. "Are you crazy?!"He looked up from assessing his t-shirt now stained with booze...but the two of you were already gone.

It always amazed you how good a dancer Steve was, considering his bulky frame. Years ago, not long after he came out of the ice, the two of you had taken dancing lessons together. He had a chip on his shoulder about Agent Carter and dancing, and learning in this new world had helped him adapt...plus it had been a hell of a lot of fun. The crowd on Tony's dance floor parted as the two of you stormed through a modern foxtrot to the sound of mid noughties music Stark played non stop at parties like this. Steve liked to tease you with unexpected box turns, his dancing mirroring his fighting style- always the element of surprise. "You ready for the big one?" he shouted as he twirled you over enthusiastically. "No!" you yelled in response over Jason Derulo - but he dipped you anyway and suddenly you were looking at the ceiling. The crowd around you cheered as you lay balanced on Cap's bended knee, leg subconsciously stretched out, toe pointed in a balanced display of ballroom perfection. After he twirled you into a standing position, the two of you took a little bow to more applause before making your way back to where Scott was standing, looking amazingly uncomfortable.

"What's the matter, Scott? Never seen a couple of pros throwing some classic moves at one of these parties?" You adjusted your dress straps as you said it, and Scott instinctively looked away comically, his eyes trailing the ceiling.

"Nothing I, uh...just can't get over the feeling that I am seconds from death by the hand of your other worldly boyfriend..." "I wouldn't worry Scott", you smiled mischievously, "if anyone's getting in a fight tonight it'll be Steve here, and I don't think we need to worry about that, do we?", you looked at him as a full stop to that rhetorical question.

"Darling."

A silken voice with a hard edge floated in from behind you, as long fingers encased your waist, "That was quite a show you two put on out there", He looked across at Steve with a forced smile that didn't reach his eyes, head tilted to the side.

"Glad you enjoyed it, Loki – you should try it sometime, your girl can really move." Steve knocked back one of the shots of tequila that Clint was passing around.

"Au contraire, Rogers'" he winked, and suddenly you were spinning and came to a stop an arm's length from your ebony haired God, arm outstretched. "'I've had time for a bit of tutelage myself over the last 1500 years'" He pulled you in, staring intensely into your wide eyes, "I think it's time for me to teach you a few new steps Y/N, hmm?".

Before you had a chance to respond you were on the dance floor again, the lights inexplicably dimmed, the music suspiciously sensual. The people dancing around you had faltered, obviously wondering the same as you. Some amorous pairs, Nat and Bruce included, got closer, making the most of a stolen semi – public moment. Loki led you directly to the centre of the dance floor, the dimmed party lights skimming across you in a dreamy glow.

The familiar sound of Chase Atlantic filled the air like smoke as Loki spun you again, bringing you in to his chest – your arm on his shoulder as he led you in a slow, rhythmic salsa in time to the music. Damn, he looked good tonight. On paper, his ensemble was nothing special, black suit pants and a dark evergreen shirt; but on him? It was glorious. The trousers hugged his straight hips creating the smallest of creases in the thick fabric as they strained against the movement of his muscular thighs, the slim fit skimming down to his ankles creating a silhouette that could only be described as god-like. His shirt was smooth, ring-spun cotton that fit perfectly to his torso and probably cost more than your old rent in Brooklyn. The sleeves were casually rolled to his elbows but perfectly folded, he knew what he was doing... exposing those thick forearms, with four buttons tactfully undone giving you a tantalising reminder of what lay underneath. You could smell the cologne he always dabbed on the base of his neck. Understated. Irresistible. He knew it always made you lean in for more. You felt your face inching forward to his exposed skin to inhale it, met with another spin as he turned you to face outward. "Not quite, kitten", he growled seductively in your ear, "after your little display earlier I think I've earned some fun of my own...such a naughty girl teasing other men like that...right in front of me..."Loki tsk'd three times softly, the methodical sound of his chastising tongue making your pussy tingle.

Your body moved seamlessly against his as he raised your arms above your head, hands twisted together in a clasped prayer. How appropriate. You needed all the help you could get. You felt his large hands slide slowly down your outstretched arms, then tracing the outline of figure eight as he pressed against the curves of your body, moving his hips rhythmically against yours in time. His hands came to rest of your hipbones, forcing your pelvis to tilt backwards into his crotch, right where he wanted you. "Move for me, my goddess' he murmured in your ear. Lord, he'd only called you that previously when he was on the edge of climax, usually with you dressed in a suspender belt with a leather paddle in hand. You obliged, grinding your ass purposefully against him, searching for any sign of his growing arousal as he directed your hips right, then left, then right again in a Latin sway driving you deeper into the heady haze of the moment. His voice penetrated your consciousness, warm breath in your ear. "What did I tell you, kitten...I'm in control here, was I not clear?"

Suddenly you were so entangled in a salsa routine that you had no choice but to accept your fate. Loki twisted, looped and manipulated your limbs like water in a fountain, twirling and dropping and sliding you across the floor in a series of moves that you were sure looked spectacular. You trusted him completely, gave in to him as he controlled your body; turning and caressing you in time with the music with his godly strength. After a particularly sudden stop, he'd pulled you in, once more adopting his hands to your hips as you faced away from him. You took a moment to breathe. Centring yourself after the previous few minute’s exertions, you felt the hair brushed from the side of your neck and a deep kiss planted there. You moaned. With a flick of his wrist, he turned you to face him, arms thrown over his shoulders. He drew you in to a deep kiss that left you breathless as he lowered both hands to your ass.

"I have a surprise for you, my goddess, a little something I've been working on for a situation just like this..."

You raised your eyebrow as you gazed up at him. You knew that look. It was rarely an entirely pleasant surprise. "And what situation would that be, Loki?"

He broke his gaze from yours to flicker over your shoulder to where Steve and Scott still stood, now joined by Tony and Thor, to form a jovial semi-circle facing the dance floor. They were laughing and joking but he could see the air of suspicion floating around them as clear as the haze from the smoke machines as one by one they looked at Loki. His mouth curled into a smile. "My sweet Y/N...you didn't expect to get me all hot and bothered watching you with that dull all-American boy toy and not expect retaliation...did you?' The intonation of his question made you tingle with anticipation, a fizzing sensation gathering around your core as you pondered his words. That was when you realised the warm feeling down below wasn't just desire...your panties were gone.

"Loki..." It was a warning, but also an invitation. He had always been a jealous lover, but this was new. He squeezed your ass firmly with both hands, watching your expression under hooded lids. "What have you been working on, Loki?'" you whispered.

He spun you to face outwards again, his fingertips digging in to your hips just above your thigh, wrapped in the thin folds of your skater dress, inches from your needy pussy which was growing wetter by the second. The music seemed to grow louder as he began peppering dirty whispers in your ear, his lips brushing against you cruelly as the world looked on.

"When I carry you back to my chambers tonight my pet, you will be on your knees for me, won't you...

...such a wanton mortal, who can't get enough of her God's hot cum inside her...

...or for that matter, can't get enough of her own sweet juices inside him, mmm I can taste that glorious cunt of yours now, I can smell it teasing me now that those little lace panties you like so much have gone missing, what a shame...

...but you are a selfish girl aren't you. You want me all to yourself, you want your perfect, insatiable body to be the only one I crave, fantasise about, obsess over, the only one I sink my cock into every night...

....the only one I deign worthy of my service, to pleasure you however you see fit. The only one I will get on my knees for, kneeling face first into that delicious pussy...

...and yet you drive me half mad with lustful jealousy for fun. Naughty girl. Well if you wish them to stare and wonder what it's like to fuck you, perhaps how we fuck each other... let's give them a little more to work with, hmmm?”

You were so engrossed in his dark, velvet voice melodically delivering exactly what you wanted to hear that you almost didn't feel it at first. Your senses were engorged. The bass pumped through you, pounding your blood as Loki swayed you expertly to the rhythm, the heat from his body radiating his scent while he delivered his delicious filthy promises.

Tendrils of his magic were flowing through the fabric of your dress, the green glow concealed by the black fabric wrapped around his fingers as he pressed against you. They snaked slowly around your thighs, resting gently at your core, poised for the command of their master.

'Mmm, Loki', you murmured against his cheek, your hand reaching behind you to tug gently at his hair, 'why did you stop?'

'Darling, I've barely started', his deep seductive tone infused with a warning you didn't quite understand. And then you did.

Right on cue, you could feel the familiar warmth of Loki's tongue lapping gently at your sex, and your eyes flew to his in alarm. He stared you down, never missing a beat of the music as he moved you gently side to side, 'just relax Y/N, enjoy it...it's our secret'.

You scanned the room, and sure enough...no one was batting an eye. 'Ohhh', you stifled a moan as his magic between your legs grew stronger, as though Loki was truly on his knees before you in service, and not standing behind you kissing your neck as he held you tightly.

You closed your eyes at the sensation, feeling your legs automatically step wider to allow your lover's tongue better access. Your could feel hands around the backs of your thighs as he had done many times, drawing you in to him like a man possessed, smothering himself deep inside you. His tongue slid inside your opening, soliciting a sharp moan from your lips which was drowned by a kiss from the flesh and blood Loki grinding into you in a rhythmic embrace, steadying your back against his firm chest.

The invisible force between your thighs began licking thick stripes of hot wetness between your folds, just like its maker...god it felt good, you almost buckled in Loki's arms. It made its way slowly to your swollen clit, rubbing flatly back and forth as the pressure of your orgasm began building quickly. Too quickly. You angled your face up to Loki's, drinking in his incomparably sexy features as he understood your urgency, your hand coming up to tangle in his hair once more, forcing him into a passionate kiss as his fingers dug into your hips, his magic pushing through you, overcoming you, like water through a sieve.

You felt your legs tremble as your climax approached rapidly, the attempts to keep up with Loki's swaying dance faltering.

"I have you, darling, don't worry", he whispered, and with that you tumbled into bliss. The tendrils of magic pleasuring you in the invisible ways of your lover did not let up as you came hard, screaming in your head as you arched against Loki's chest, pressing your ass into his crotch. 'Ohhh Loki', the words you meant to whisper at the height of your ecstasy came out a touch louder than you anticipated, coinciding with a lull in the song, but you didn't care.

His strong arms nursed you back to reality, spinning you round to face him once more as you came down from your high, tucking a strand of hair behind your ear as you laid your head on his shoulder. Loki's eyes travelled upwards to check that the group of men, his brother included, who so enjoyed your company, had seen everything. They had. Lang was in the middle of questioning Steve to exactly what had just happened. The rest of them knew. He could see it, hear their passing comments ('did she just...’/ ‘..did he just make her...you know.. by dancing?’/ ‘I gotta learn those moves...' / 'no of course not, don’t be obscene’). They knew you belonged to him, but a little reminder of his superiority every now and then didn't hurt.

You could feel the slickness of your cum against your thighs as you pressed into the body before you, absorbing him. "I should probably go clean up a little", you whispered into Loki's ear with a smirk. "Especially since it looks like I won't be getting my panties back".

"Oh absolutely not, darling. Now run along." He spun you around one final time, releasing you at arm's length to allow you to walk away, shooting a brief glance over your bare shoulder as you did.

Loki slid his hands in his pockets and meandered over to the bar with long strides. His magic should hold long enough to hide the arousal straining within his trousers, he just needed five minutes. Five minutes without you, and without any distractio-

'BROTHER!', he flinched as a loud smack on his shoulder coupled the greeting, propelling him forward several inches. He managed a strained smile, nodding to Thor as he motioned to the bartender.

'That was quite something, brother. I managed to catch Y/N’s turn with Captain Rogers earlier but, even if I am a little biased, I did enjoy the Asguardian display a little more', he winked as one thick muscled arm rested on the bar facing Loki, his eyes glinting with humour.

'Don't.' Loki grimaced as he re-adjusted himself with his hands under the bar, his cock definitely visible against the fabric as he tried to regain his concentration.

'Don't what, Loki? I'm paying you a compliment. You love compliments!' Thor's keen eyes skimmed down his brother's body, noting his awkward stance, 'and everyone is definitely in agreement that your lady enjoyed her...dance...with you much more than with Rogers,' he paused, smirking, '...as did you it seems'.

Loki's head swivelled up, his eyes meeting Thor's with a smirk, 'jealous, brother?', his pupils still wide with the lust pumping through his veins at the thought of you shuddering in ecstasy in public under his power.

'Oh, absolutely. I am jealous both of your lovely companion... who I am still mystified is enamoured by you... as well as your ability to bring her to Valhalla in a room full of her closest friends with your mere touch. Or perhaps it was a little more...' Thor winked, grabbing the glass tankard that had been placed in front of him and swiftly returning to the group before Loki could muster a response.

You smoothed your hair a final time before heading back to the party, the signs of a pink flush still on your cheeks visible in the mirror. You could hear the familiar beating bass of some classic Usher, indicating that Jarvis had regained control of the sound system from Loki’s magic. Your heels clicked along the tile as you swung open the bathroom door, exiting into the long hallway dimmed with mood lighting. You only got ten steps before you saw him striding toward you, his look of determination no less than if he’d been wearing his armoured battle suit. Your eyes grew wide with alarm. "Loki what’s happened-?’" You were silenced by his mouth covering yours, pushing you to the nearest wall with unbridled passion. His huge strength was barely concealed as he overpowered you, pinning your hands to your sides. He moved his lustful intentions to your neck, as you threw your head back, eyes closed. Whatever had gotten into him tonight, you liked it. A lot.

"I want you, Y/N," you heard him growl from beneath your ear as he sucked your delicate skin, leaving marks. "...now." He had conveniently ambushed you in the hallway’s alcove, albeit the main thoroughfare to and from the party. You could see figures striding back and forth to the bar, but you couldn’t make out the faces –and that was good enough for you.

"You were right, Loki", you purred seductively in his ear.

"Oh my darling, you’re going to have to be more specific…" he chuckled as his long fingers found their way to your pussy, now slick again from his work, and slipped inside you.

"I am selfish. I do want you all to myself. I’m just your little wanton mortal who fantasises about her God’s cock exploding inside her, seeing your face as I take it all for you, your good girl…"

Your words spurred him on as he expertly manipulated your pussy with one hand, the other unbuttoning his trousers and freeing his long, perfect cock in the dim light. You encased its length in your hand, firmly stroking back and forth as he buried his head in your neck once more, a rumble of pent up lust escaping his lips as you continued to whisper, "...I want to be the only one filling your head with dirty thoughts, living out your desires, I can’t stand the thought of anyone else having you, I need all of you to mys-" The force of his cock entering you made you gasp as he scooped one of your legs up under his arm, wrapped around his waist and held in place by one of those fucking perfect arms. Not a sliver of light would have gotten between you, your bodies painted flush to the wall as he slid in and out of you furiously, your slick hole tightening around him at every stroke. There were no dirty whispers now. This was a sprint, not a marathon, that much was clear. The arm not encasing your leg to his waist was braced above your head, allowing him to ram his hips against you. Powerful, primal growls emitting from him at every hit of your hot cunt. You began to feel heady, your needy body giving in to its obsession with this man for the second time that evening in a wholly inappropriate setting. His hair was falling around his face, dark curls encasing your view as your foreheads pressed together, locked in pursuit of your highs. Your audible pants turned to pitched moans as you felt your orgasm building within you, spurred on by your lover’s breaths becoming ragged, his thrusts becoming more erratic as he hung on to the moment.

"Come with me, Loki" you gasped as you reached your peak, "claim me."

You’d chosen the right word to re-ignite his competitive jealousy.

He claimed you. You felt the force of his cum hit the back of your channel as he thrust into you ferociously one final time, the effort to keep his cry in the low decibel range was enormous as you felt his body shudder against you. You leant forward to catch him in a deep kiss, tongues meeting as he devoured you, swallowing his pleasure like a wave. You rode your own high on his stilling cock, pleasure filling you from the bottom up. As your moans subsided, he lowered your leg, re-adjusting your dress. With one arm still leaning on the wall, Loki steadied his breaths as you stepped in to zip up his fly, when something over his shoulder caught your eye.

"Scott?" you said, questioningly as Loki looked up. A cruel smile formed at one side of his mouth as he saw Lang standing frozen ten feet away, turned at a 45 degree angle, with his hands over his eyes.

"I swear, I didn’t see anything. Or hear anything. Okay... maybe a little but I gotta be honest guys...I was just going to the bathroom and this isn’t a super private spot, I’m just saying, please don’t melt me or something God of Darkness or...whatever, I can’t remember right now I’m sorry... dude, I have a daughter...don’t kill me please…fuck’" He trailed off as silence filled the air, broken only by the sound of Loki pulling up his zipper. "Kill you?" Loki stepped toward Scott, who was lowering his hands from his face, eyes wide with alarm as Loki bent slightly to his eye level, hands clasped behind his back. "Then who would tell everyone that we were having hot, carnal sex in the hallway?". He straightened when he saw the look of bemused relief on Scott’s face as he registered that he was safe.

"Come, Y/N, the night is young." The mischievous scamp took your hand and led you towards the party as you mouthed an apologetic sorry to Scott, who seemed to have forgotten what he was doing there in the first place.

You felt the glow of Loki’s magic on your pussy again, cleaning away the evidence of your hallway encounter – although it made you miss its earlier uses. "So, uh…do you have any other surprises I should know about planned for tonight?" you quipped.

Loki twirled you once and dipped you to his knee in the classical ballroom pose. "Surprises? Me? No, darling." He chuckled at the look on your face, "but I wouldn’t mind seeing more sparks flying off your heels on that dance floor, as long as you’re dancing me with me of course, pet." You smiled up at him, wondering what else tonight could possibly have in store for you. "Well, what are we waiting for?" you purred. "Let’s burn it to the ground".

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dulcewrites · 1 year

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Masterlist

Welcome! You can call me Flower. I am a relatively new writer (fanfic wise). This is my side blog so replies/follows will come from dulcelibra. I write basically anything. Fluff, angst etc. So far the fandoms I’ve written for are: Top Gun Maverick, Outer Range, and House of the Dragon. I am open writing for other fandoms so just let me know if you have any request. My inbox is always open. I try to upload or post regularly, even if it is just posting ideas for feedback. That being said, I would appreciate patience. Also I do have works that are ambiguous readers but as a black woman is important for me to represent that in my writing. Please like, reblog, and follow if you see anything you like 🫶🏽🫶🏽

Ao3

Top Gun Maverick

Good Wife: As their marriage goes through a rough patch, Nia finds her reevaluating her relationship with Bradley, and what she signed up for when she said ‘I Do’. Slight character study based on some lyrics from good wife by Kacey Musgraves (Bradley x oc)

Crush Preview

Outer Range

Despite My Better Judgement: Your eccentric but kind hearted best friend tasks you with the duty of throwing “the best bachelorette party ever” in Wyoming of all places. An unexpected night with a brooding cowboy happens.

New Traditions: As the first holiday season in your new home approaches, Rhett and you start new traditions and make promises

Moodboard*

House of the Dragon

Fool Me Once (multi part - finished): Learning about Aemond’s indiscretions hurts more than you thought it would, and leads you to accepting help from an unlikely source (Aemond x reader)

Finding Common Cause (multi part- on going): A little white lie on Helaena’s part lands both Aemond and Myrah in situation they can’t get out of (Aemond x oc)

Blood in the Water (multi part - on going): Some will say that the deaths of Lady Laena Velaryon and Ser Laenor Velaryon, daughter and son of the Sea Snake and Queen That Never Was, were the first cracks in the long standing alliance between House Velaryon and House Targaryen. But most claim it was sudden union between Ser Vaemond Velaryon's daughter and the King's first born son. (Aegon x oc)

Intrinsically Linked: Love and Pain are two sides of the same coin. Fluid and never ending. Laena and Alicent both know that all too well.

Drowned in Love (multi part): Love in painful and all consuming, and the three of them would not have it any other way. (Aemond x alys x oc)

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back (paused): Sometimes Aegon is sure that the Gods like playing tricks on him. Your reintroduction into his life only proves that further (modern hotd au, Aegon centric).

Acquired Taste (paused): Sometimes the hungry grows too strong. Edith and Aegon know that all too well. (Modern au Aegon x oc)

Unnerved: Being at court is a game is a game, and your favorite player is a certain long haired prince (Aemond x reader)

Fire & Desire: Many sacrifices have been made to get Aegon on the throne. Including ones made by you (Aegon x reader x aemond)

Paparazzi: Loving Aemond is cherry pie (modern au Aemond centric)

Gone… But Not Forgotten (request): Aemond and you always had a great relationship. But as the Dance of the Dragons begins and tensions rise, you find yourself on the outside looking in (Aemond x reader)

Promises and Premonitions (request): Since finding out you’re with child, you’ve been having the strangest nights (Aemond x reader)

For You Always: you always knew Aemond had a soft spot for you, but you always just assumed it was him wanting to look out for his brother’s wife. Soon you find out that his devotion knows no bounds (Aemond x reader)

Oc list

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charlottesuzee · 1 year

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Favorite Animated Film To Watch With You (Modern One Piece X Black Reader)

Monkey D Luffy

- This boy loves The Lion King

- He's watched it at least a million times

- He knows all the words to the songs

- His favorite song is I Just Can't Wait To Be King and trust me, he will scream that shit at the top of his lungs randomly. Your neighbors absolutely hate you and people stare at you two in public but he obviously doesn't care

- He loves watching it with you, and one time, during the Can You Feel the Love Tonight scene, he started play fighting with you line Simba and Nala were doing on screen but when he pinned you to the bed and looked into your eyes, something more escalated.

- Let's just say, he always looks forward to watching it with you again, especially in bed.

Roronoa Zoro

- Luffy dragged him to see Kubo and The Two Strings and he honestly thought it was going to be boring and that he'd fall asleep

- Instead, he left the theater with tears in his eyes and a new favorite movie.

- He was embarrassed to introduce you to it though, when you asked what was his favorite movie. He didn't want you to make fun of him for enjoying something that was considered a kids film

- But when you watched it with him and he saw that your eyes were fixated on the screen in amazement and wonder, he became more at ease and was open to talking about it more and how the movie made him feel like he could be connected to his feelings and realize that he doesn't have to go through grief alone and it helped him deal with losing Kuina.

- Because of this movie, if he ever has a kid with you, especially a son, he wants to name him Kubo.

- He's also trying to learn how to play the shamisen in secret.

Blackleg Sanji

- Most people assume that his favorite movie is Ratatouille but that's just in his top five. His real favorite movie is Lupin the Third: Castle of Cagliostro.

- He sees himself in both Lupin and Clarisse, with him wanting to save a lady in need and he himself wanting to be rescued from his terrible home life.

- No matter how many times he's seen this movie, it still leaves him bawling. He tears up in the opening when he hears the films theme Fire Treasure, he cries when Clarisse is being mistreated by the Count, he cries when Lupin finally saves Clarisse and he absolutely sobs at the end, when Lupin says goodbye to Clarisse.

- Doesn't like to admit it, but he loves watching The Count's demise because the Count looks like and acts like his father.

- If you ever marry him, he'll insist on you wearing a wedding dress that resembles Clarisse's and will want Fire Treasure as your dance song for your wedding.

Charlotte Katakuri

- His favorite film is A Monster in Paris. Something gets accused and judged of being a horrifying monster because of how they look ? That's him to a T.

- He found this movie when he was younger, by accident. It was family movie night and he and his siblings were trying to figure out what to watch when Daifuku suggested that they watch something new and unheard of and Perospero decided to pick A Monster in Paris because it sounded like it was interested.

- Most of his siblings walked away from the movie uninterested and unaffected, but not him. The movie touched his soul and became his instant favorite.

- He used to like watching the movie when eating donuts, alone, wondering if anyone could ever love him like Lucille loved Francoeur.

- Then he met you. He was hesitant to watch the movie with you at first, because he thought you'd judge him for loving a kids film but when he saw that you actually enjoyed the film, he felt his heart swell.

- Shortly after watching the movie, he removed his scarf to show you his face for the first time and was overcome with joy and relief when you accepted him. Him watching the movie with you gave him the confidence he needed to move forward with you.

- He'll shyly ask you to do a couples cosplay with him as Lucille and Francoeur for Halloween and even has a pretty, custom blue scarf made for the costume that he wears sometimes.

Eustass Kid

- He just saw it on Netflix one day and watched it because he was intrigued by the animation style. After watching it, he quickly called you over to watch it for a second time. You were confused when he asked you to come over and watch a movie called Mutafukaz.

- Kid is a sucker for movies with unique styles. He'll deadass grab you by the shoulders and explain to you why a gang leader who speaks in Shakespeare quotes is one of the coolest things he's ever seen.

- Vinz and Angelino also remind him of him and Killer, with the way the two are ride or die for each other.

- He will fight people online for saying that this movie is a bad movie and will also buy the comics the movie is based off of. He might also try to get you to dress like the main characters love interest, Luna, since he thinks you'd look good in a gothic Bratz doll type style.

- He's mostly into the movie because of the animation style and the creative choices of writing and characterization, because deep down, Eustass Kid is a creative type at heart.

Killer

- Heavy Metal is one of his all time favorite films, mostly because of how well the music went with the animation on the screen.

- A majority of his playlist comes from this movie. When you asked him why his playlist is full of old school rock songs, he grabbed your hand, took you to his room, sat you down, and without another word, turned on Heavy Metal.

- His favorite songs from the movie comes from his favorite scene. Queen Bee by Grand Funk Railroad and I Must Be Dreamin by Cheap Trick in the segment So Beautiful & So Dangerous, when the aliens abduct a female stenographer from the Pentagon and she falls in love with a robot while the alien pilots do space cocaine. He thinks it's the funniest thing ever and even though he's insecure about his laugh, he'll still burst into chuckles during the scene.

- Kid was actually the one who showed him this movie when they were teens. Let's just say that the introduction to heavy metal rock music and women drawn in such detailed ways awakened something in them at a young age. You don't know if that was a good thing or a bad thing, but it gave you the Killer you know and love today.

Law

- You actually picked this movie out to watch for a date night and he ended up loving it.

- At first, he thought that it was just going to be some silly kids film but was quickly captivated by the metaphors, the character designs, the symbolism, the music.... and he related to Jack more than anything.

- When Jack's heart started burning at the sight of Miss Acacia, he realized that's how he felt when he met you. When Jack started tearing out the screws of his heart out of anguish, that's how he felt when he lost Rosiante.

- Law would never admit it, but he actually teared up at the end of the movie. He was grateful it was dark, because he didn't want you seeing him cry over a movie with a boy with a clock for a heart.

- The movie made him realize some things about himself and learn how to just let go of all of his pain and hurt, instead of clinging to it and letting it fester and realize that he can start a new, and let himself be happy, with you.

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axelsagewrites · 1 year

Text

Modern Luke Headcannons

Masterlist Here

Luke is a little troll

He is so sarcastic. So, sassy. So rude. Yet so funny

Despite a lot of his jokes being edgy 15 year old humour he’s still got some good ones in his sleeve

Apart from when he’s gaming then his come backs are shit

“Yeah, well YOUR MOM!” “I carry YOUR MOM” “Is that what your MOMMY told you to say?”

Rhaynera is constantly yelling up to him to shut up

“Sorry mommy- YEAH THAT’S RIGHT I LOVE MY MOM AND WHAT BITCHES-“

Games more than he sleeps

When he’s not gaming, he’s sleeping. When he’s not sleeping, he’s listening to music on blast. When he doesn’t have earphones in he’s gaming.

Not once is he studying

He’s been fine so far but Jace has been warning him schools gonna get harder and its gonna hit that boy like a ton of bricks

Despite being filled with pure gaming trolling rage he is still considered the sweet little gem of the family because of his looks

He hates that he looks so young, and he sounds even younger. Its probably why he’s so mean in games

He’s managed to troll Aegon into rage quitting so many times

Aegon started to refuse to play with him so he logged in on Jace’s account and now just whoops his ass with his mic muted

He hates babysitting yet always seems to be doing it because Jace is ‘too busy’ when in reality he knows his brother is secretly a great liar

He has very few IRL friends but tons of them online

Sadly, it means he got bullied a lot in school. It wasn’t till Jace beat the crap out of someone for hitting Luke did it stop but the isolation continued

It sucked and he started to hide it. by now his parents assumed that it had stopped but Luke still sat alone at most lunches. Sometimes pity would lead him to sit at the end of someone else’s table not saying anything

This means he is an incredible shy kid

One day while gaming with ‘the3eyed_raven’ they were in a slow part of the game and ended up bitching about school when the other boy mentioned Ms C Lannister giving him a hard time

That’s when Luke realised he’d been online friends with Bran Stark for over a year online and nether had even realised

Bran wasn’t particularly popular but his siblings were making him popular by associating meaning once Luke befriended him things finally started to go up for him

Suddenly Luke showered more, gamed slightly less, and actually went to the next school dance

His family was shocked

Luke soon became a class clown and realised he liked to entertain

So of course like any other 15 year old he started a gaming YouTube channel

Except Luke was actually good at it and now runs a decently successful twitch and YouTube channel with his friends the3eyed_raven and jojothemojo

Under the surface though he is still a little kid

When he has a particularly bad day he sits in front of his mom as she sits on the couch and passes her a comb to do his hair

He also falls asleep everywhere like a baby

Car rides, schools, on the couch, sitting up, one time standing up

He’s learned not to take life too seriously and despite still being insecure about the bullying overall he’s the most normal out of his whole family

Even if it doesn’t feel normal when he unleashes his gamer rage at 2 am

“LUCERYS SHUT THE FUCK UP BEFORE I WHOP YOUR ASS SO HARD YOU FLY BACK INSIDE MOM!”

A/N: I wanna write more on Luke cause he's just a wholesome little evil troll in my head

#luke velaryon #lucerys targaryen #lucerys strong #lucerys headcannons #modern house of the dragon #modern hotd #hotd luke #hotd luke headcannons #luke targaryen #luke targaryen imagine #lucerys targaryen x reader #game of thrones x reader #game of thrones imagine #game of thrones

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neo-shitty · 2 years

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slow dancing in a burning room — l.dh

description. the past ripples in the present, the currents of history crashing on the shores of the new day. in the halls of a place you’ve never been, you and haechan are caught up in a riptide—your paths always destined to meet, forever entwined and doomed to the same fate. is history really bound to repeat itself no matter how hard you try to change it?

pairings. lee donghyuck x female reader

genre. angst, suspense, fluff, established relationship!au, soulmates!au, reincarnation!au, museum!au

warnings. suggestive jokes, major character death(s), mentions of arson and suicide, reader’s discretion is advised.

word count. 14.1k

notes. 2022 really is becoming the year i finish ideas i had way back in 2020. i planned on making a playlist for this but, honestly, i only ever listened to all i wanted by paramore throughout the whole writing process. so go listen to the queen belt out one high note after the other and (try to) enjoy this fic bc i enjoyed writing it! :) | taglist: @rae-blogging @cavaree @late-minhours @soobin-chois @kkooongie @hyunkins @httpmuffin

Places you have seen but never been to hold a certain peculiarity to them, a veil shrouding its exterior in a mist meant to draw the eye in but never allowing anything closer. By virtue of human curiosity, you wonder what it keeps behind its closed doors, what entities fill the hollowness inside. There’s only so much you can draw out of your imagination, images concocted of what you assumed places like these would look like on the inside but you could never be certain.

When you look at places you’ve been, you see not only its windows and the solid walls that make up its exteriors. You see the partitions that subdivide it into layers, into floors, into rooms. You see the patterned tiles that people step on, the boards that line the ceiling, the doors that lead to other hidden nooks. Memories from before keep the place alive, each glimpse sending you back to the past in a half-second as you remember what you did when you’ve been there last. It’s normal, it’s human. Except when it shouldn’t be.

The mansion looms across the street from where the bus drops you off, its roof leveled with the rest of the buildings nearby, even dwarfed. What it lacks there, it makes up for in the way it occupies four lots until the next street—leaving no room for backyard neighbors. As you walk up to the front, past the shrubs that lined its front yard, its presence dawns on you. It was something that has been there long before you have, withstanding more tests of time than its modern neighbors that flank it.

When something is just there, you learn to underestimate it. The mansion turned museum was nothing but a view you passed on the way to the school, a break from the glass panes of skyscrapers and fences. The lot was encapsulated, shielded from the gust that aged the whole avenue through the past few decades. It has stood there since the 80s, built by the then president Na Minju as a guest house for foreign visitors who’d like to stay somewhere outside the capital city. You know little to none of its history, just how it nearly fell into ruin because of an accident and rebuilt for keepsake.

It’s the closest you’ve been to the mansion ever since but it doesn’t feel like it when you walk up the marble steps leading up to the entrance. Everything feels familiar, though you shrug it off thinking it’s because you looked at the mansion’s exterior enough that it’s embedded in your mind. Then you hear echoes of laughter down empty halls, the shuffle of heels and boots across a chessboard flooring, and a glimpse of an enormous chandelier dangling from the ceiling.

The images surge through you in a blink and they’re gone just as quick, vivid as a memory and fluid as a dream. You’ve never seen inside the mansion before but it feels as though you had it mapped out and memorized like the back of your hand. The feeling gnaws in the back of your mind, that unshakeable instinct that you have been there before, you just couldn’t remember when.

The others aren’t at the entrance when you arrive, the veranda empty and quiet. There are no plaid-bottomed people, no chatter of hyperactive kids burning patience to get inside. Your heels click against marble as you walk up to the tall entry way, its wooden doors open but unwelcoming.

“Are you here for the tour?”

You startle at the voice, skipping a few steps away from the direction it came from. The shadows by the door stir as a woman emerges, the pair of glasses balanced on her nose catching the bits of light from the outside. Without them, you would’ve barely seen her at all.

The woman studies you when you nod, her eyes falling on the patch on your left chest. She turns away, picking up a record book to hand it to you, “Fill it out. They can’t be far into the house, the tour just started.”

Nodding, you sign your name beneath other familiar ones. Even with your head down, you can feel her staring, the heaviness making you stiffen under her watch. Her gaze seeps through like she can sense your every motion, every molecule of oxygen that makes its way to your lungs, every pulse that drums against your skin. The heaviness of her stare is bone-chilling, making you just as aware of your actions as you think she is.

When you’re through with signing everything you meet her eyes and it’s her turn to startle when she’s caught staring. “Is there anything else I need to do?” you ask, handing the book back.

The woman shakes her head, “Go ahead.”

Your thanks comes out in a mutter as you turn your attention away from her and into the museum as your own tour of it begins. You still feel her boring holes down your back even long after you leave.

The grand entrance opens to a spacious hall, resembling nothing of a standard home living room. The room alone spans the width of the building with a ceiling too high for your own liking held up by off-white pillars. Blue velvet caked the walls in a muted lapis hue, accented by brown and gold that exuded elegance even at its age. Where standard lights should be are chandeliers, dangling in even intervals off a tiled ceiling, not as bright as they used to and leaving patches of darkness all around the hall.

There is nothing here but an unoccupied sofa set far too small compared to the rest of the room. You move along, your shoes tapping against the mosaic of tiles that made the flooring and echoing down the whole hall. The house is beautiful now, less beautiful than it was in its prime. The velvet walls have been recently refurbished and the pillars repainted, but there are indents and signs of wearing that were beyond fixing. It’s not hard to imagine how it looked back when it was just built, back when the president and his family walked the halls before it was left to rot. The house flickers where your gaze falls and you catch glimpses of how the house was like, what paintings hung on which walls, which doors led to which crevices. For a moment, you wish you visited the house earlier, back when its glory was in full display.

But the feeling washes out just as quick as it came like a wave crashing on the shore for a second before retreating back into the sea. Just as it would cost much to restore it, you knew it took a fortune to build it in the first place. The nostalgia for a place that you’ve never been vanishes, replaced by a twist that makes you sick. The house was built on a graveyard, its foundation the bones of those who were never allowed to step foot inside. It was pieced together, brick by boring brick, by those who worked tirelessly to make ends meet only to never receive the fruits of their labor; all of it funneled into the pockets of the rich and the selfish who never once lifted a finger beyond commanding those they looked down upon.

“You just got here and you’re frowning already?”

The call reverberates through the whole floor, the mansion’s closed structure only amplifying his voice. You turn to the end of the hall where the staircases are, twin snakes of steel twisting up to bite into the second floor veranda. Haechan leans against the railing, his figure standing out against the banister.

“Be careful, I heard they’re repainting.” It’s a white lie but it serves its petty purpose and he backs away from the railing, wiping his arm free of non-existent fresh paint.

“Funny.”

He waits for you at the top of the staircase and you take the time to climb up. The second floor follows the same motif; blue walls and accents of white and gold. On your left, the veranda meets with the mansion’s front wall.

“There’s nothing interesting there, just rooms,” says Haechan.

The pattern of doors and empty walls repeats until the end of the hall, this side of the floor nothing but a mirror of the opposite. “For a family of three, they have way too many rooms.”

Haechan tails behind you, shadowing your footsteps as you walk into one of the bedrooms. “They’re all guest rooms.”

“I can tell.”

“And they all look the same.”

Where you expect natural light to peek through was a window bolted shut, draped with a thick curtain spanning the height of the entire room. It was as if they meant for the place to remain untouched and preserved, mediating the effects of time as the years passed.

A single bed wide enough for two is pushed against the wall, adjacent to a tall cabinet with a full body mirror embedded to its door. The only other touch of life in the room was the low table that accented the center of the floor and the dresser pushed aside. Low things and high ceilings for not even middle-sized people.

You walk a door down, peeking through the doorway of another room.

“See, I told you.”

Haechan is both right and wrong. While the rooms contain the same essentials—bed, cabinet, dresser, table—they are arranged differently. The bed is pushed against the opposite wall, the cabinet sits beside the ever-shut windows. Your patience thins when you reach the third door, finding the same things in different order and you no longer bother to check the other rooms.

“Let’s go,” he points down the hall to the other end of the veranda. Instead of a front wall, the other end is a pair of double doors leading further into the mansion. “They went through there.”

You find yourselves in another central room, one that opens into new rooms in each cardinal direction except from where you came from where a grand staircase led up to the next floor. To your left there is another reception area like the one in the floor below, a ratan set topped with the same signages that asked visitors to not sit on them. Haechan vanishes when you turn back, the central room going quiet with only your footsteps echoing against the marble floors.

“Hey, _____. I’m in here!”

His voice comes from the other room and it’s the giddiness laced in his tone that tells you this is where he left off the tour to come and get you.

Through an arch, the room branches into a closed annex—a conference hall. A long wooden table occupies the majority of the space, flanked with a couple of wooden chairs on each side. You find Haechan at the end of the table. “Sit across me,” he says, slowly pulling the chair on his end, wary of the way it scratches against the tiles.

Your eyes pan over to the other end, the offer tempting, but you catch another ‘Thank you for not sitting!’ sign. “I don’t think we’re allowed to.”

But Haechan’s already making himself comfortable on the chair down the table, the chair creaking every so slightly beneath his wait. “That’s alright. No one’s watching.”

There is no one else but the both of you this far out into the mansion. Outside, the second floor is devoid of any footsteps and the closest you could hear of anyone is the muffled voice of who you think is the tour guide echoing off the walls of the third floor.

Haechan cheers in silence, pumped fist and all smiles as you cross the room to where the chair is, watching as you squeeze yourself between it and the table before you take your place. The chair doesn’t give way when you put your weight on it, sturdy even at its age. Neither does Haechan’s, even as he leans against the back, his figure dwarfed with the chair’s enormity. It’s taller than the rest of the chairs, matching only the one you sat on.

“Do you think people still hear each other this far away?” he asks, and you hear him but that’s only because you were the only two people around.

“I never thought of that.”

You try to imagine a room full of people and then suddenly, you weren’t imagining it anymore. The chairs on either side of you are occupied with men and women clad in fancy suits and gowns, their secretaries coming and going on call but never staying. The image transcends to reality when you look back on the table to find that it’s no longer empty. Gone was the flimsy signage, replaced with a half-eaten banquet touched with only gloved fingers.

Across the table, Haechan is in a suit of his own, his head cocked as he listens to the man on the seat closest to him. The air is warm with the presence of other people, the chandeliers are brighter. Pairs of lips open and shut, their mouths moving as if to speak but their words never reach you. Their voices come faint and muffled, grumbled as if you’re hearing them from the bottom of a swimming pool.

“Haechan,” you call out, expecting your voice to come out just as muffled. But he hears it through the barrier and the water drains out when his eyes snap back to you.

Everything is gone in a blink of an eye; the people beside you, the table cleared, the room plunged back into the eerie darkness the rest of the museum had.

“Is something wrong?” he asks. “Is there a ghost behind me?”

The boy twists in his seat, his head turning a complete one hundred and eighty to study the vacancy behind him. There is nothing there, of course. The lack of a presence comforts him just as much as it bothers you. A second ago, the room felt suffocating with the number of people talking all at once. You hear the laughter, the clinks of metal against glass, the shuffling of people filing in and out.

Clearly, there was nothing there. It wasn’t inherently impossible for a room full of people to appear and disappear in a blink of an eye.

“It’s nothing.”

The conference hall falls quiet when you leave it, back in the still state it had been before you walked in. Haechan follows you out, passing you to peek at the last annex.

“There you are! Where have you been?”

Even the new voice seems familiar when you hear it, your vision floating between the present and the past in a foggy haze that puts you off. Jeno makes his way down the grandiose staircase, his stomps muffled by the carpet running up the steps. For a moment you don’t see him in uniform; midnight black where there should be plaid print, a button-down where his polo shirt was, holding a silver pitcher as he rushes on his way down. Then the vision fades.

You shake it off, looking over your shoulder to call Haechan back to the central room. He emerges from the shadows with a smile on his face, agreeing to ditch the boring annex for the next floor.

Jeno waits half-way up, a sly smirk adorning his lips when you meet him. “What were you two doing?” he teases, his eyebrows arched.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Haechan answers.

You, on the other hand, don’t miss the chance to strike at the other boy’s chest when you walk past him.

The staircase spans the entire wall between the double doors and it opens to an even larger hole on the floor of the third level. The white marble of its steps is blanketed with a red carpet, its railings a brownish-gold. You feel the air shift when you reach the top and you’re unsure if it’s because of the climb up, or the poor ventilation. The air is thicker, humid now that you’re deeper into the house. Sweats beads on your skin but the surroundings keep it trapped in your skin, making you feel sticky.

The marble tiles end here, swapped with a mahogany floor glazed in a top coat that shines in the same way the tiles do. Your footsteps thud against its surface, the wooden bricks knocking when your weight shifts. The others are here, the floor noisier than the ones you were in. Haechan, on the other hand, is nowhere to be seen.

You’re left alone in the main room, the voices of the others muffled behind the walls. The right wall is holed with three arches, each one leading into the bedrooms of each family member—one for the president, one for his wife, and one for his only child. Paintings occupied the spaces between the arches, filling the vacancy of the spacious walls.

You make your way to the back of the floor where the main attraction of the room was. It was the sole piece of the house you’ve seen whenever you looked up the house. On the back wall was a scaled portrait of the three family members, framed by white spires drilling into the ceiling. No other light in the mansion illuminated anything else the same way it does the painting, spotlights fixated and shining so bright the masterpiece’s blemishes are drowned out by the light.

Na Yeongsuk sat on a throne chair; her hands bright with gold and her neck adorned in stones that glinted even in painting. She wore only the best, the painter paying special attention to show that the silk she wore was fine even without you having to touch it. Her hair was pinned up in a halo around her head, an ironic show of her rule as the wife of the fifth republic’s president. Her head was tilted to the front, her lips never smiling.

Beside her, the late president stood in full military uniform. Na Minju had a chest-full of medals, each one representing battles won by the nation, each one he never fought. He pressed his cap against his stomach with a gloved hand, the other draped over the throne where his wife sat. Like her, he stared straight forward—stoic, uncaring. The coldness of his stare transcends the stillness of his image, a mirror of how his presence lingers in the present in the shadow of those who remained loyal to him and his family.

Then Na Jaemin, the sole person in the painting with a tinge of a smile tugging on the corners of his lips. But there is no brightness in his eyes, devoid of emotions like the others with him. He was at his prime then, sharp jaw, wide-eyed, and the epitome of a gentleman. He grew up to be nothing like he used to, a shell of the charm of his younger self, a man on strings in the hands of a dead puppeteer.

The main room of the third floor is mostly vacant besides the grand staircase and its banister, but not as empty as the floor below. All four quadrants of the room are alight with paintings and tables, one space even occupied by a grand piano.

When the others file back into the room, Haechan heads straight to it. A sweet melody fills the air as his fingers fall on the ivory keys. It’s a familiar tune but it’s something you can’t quite put your finger on. He picks up, the pace shifting from slow to an up-beat waltz. Before you know it, your vision is stirring again and it feels as if you’re both in the empty hall but aren’t. The past swamps your present, the colors of the walls more vibrant. There is a rush of people around you, people talking with no sound and they’re not in the same uniform you’re wearing.

But Haechan misses a note and the vision breaks. He tries it again, only to find that the key itself was off tune so he leaves it be.

“I’ve said this countless times today but I feel the need to say it again.” A voice booms through the hall, louder than any other whisper. Everyone else falls quiet as the voice fills the room, chatter turning into hushed whispers as a woman walks through the last of the arches and into the third floor hall. “I’m reminding all of you to please refrain from touching any of the items in the house, including furniture, paintings, sculptures, and pianos.”

The woman eyes the corner where the boys were, only to find the piano vacated and the people nearby looking at anything just to avoid her gaze. The rest of the crowd reenters the main hall, their voices no longer muted by walls and partitions. The emptiness of the house is filled with indistinguishable mutters, however only partly. Even with a few dozen people in the same space, it doesn’t feel crowded.

Your friends greet you as they pass, their cameras flashing at the portraits hanging on the wall and at the nimble artifacts that decorate the other spaces. The tour guide points at a portrait of the president and his wife on one of the walls between the archways.

“Yeongsuk, whenever interviewed about their marriage, always answered that it was fated—meant to be,” the tour guide says, followed by a humorless laugh from the back of the room. “She recalls that when they first got acquainted, she saw a red string linking her to someone in the room which she soon found out was Minju. She said that when her eyes met, she knew he was the one he was going to marry.”

“And look where that got us?” Heads turn to the back of the crowd where the boys are. Jeno meets the gazes that watch him fearlessly, an eyebrow cocked with the mixed reactions that stirred his audience. “You believe in that? Maybe she didn’t see a red string of fate, maybe she saw his bank account full of money.”

“Full of money he stole?” Haechan adds, his eyes elsewhere to avoid the stares bearing down on him. Watered down snickers fill the room, even a giggle bubbles out of your lips at his comment. But the joke isn’t funny.

The tour guide quiets the crowd a second time but it isn’t because she had something to add to her description of the paintings. When you turn to look back at her, you know by her eyes she took offense to it—the joke scarring her for all the wrong reasons.

It was during the Na regime that the country saw one of its biggest recessions. Corrupt practices went by unnoticed under the corrupt leadership. While the rest of the country starved, the rich managed to live in luxury, their lavish living at the expense of everyone else’s sacrifices. It was one thing you loathed about the house; the image of their bodies slipping down these wide halls while others roamed the streets homeless, enduring the most inhumane places just to have somewhere to rest.

You can’t help but pity her, the tour guide and her furious stare at the boys who made those light comments. To see these pieces of history preserved disgusted you, to hear the Na regime glorified, even worse. You pity those who have cloth draped over their eyes, blinded by the same people they worship. But what could you do when you’re taught to never bite the hand that feeds you?

The whole floor is divided by yet another wall but isn’t empty like its second floor counterpart. On its surface is a painting, the white base of the canvas completely covered beneath layers upon layers of oil. Unlike the family portrait, there are no lights that draw your attention to it, the image blending into the shadows.

It takes your focus to make out its details and you understand why it’s left as it is. The painting is too grotesque, set apart from the rest of its kind. It paints multiple figures but a single one takes your focus at the center, a limp man being dragged away with a trail of his own blood trailing him. Beside him lie other carcasses, some abandoned and others crowded. It’s the sole one that draws a scene out of reality, where the subjects don’t pose to be recreated. It tells a tale of an underground, a picture painted from memory of someone who had been behind the scenes of a gladiator show. It means to disturb the comfortable, to remind them what expense others suffer for their entertainment. You think the Na’s kept it for solely its history, its purpose brushed under the rug.

The tour guide doesn’t even bother turning anyone’s attention to it and it remains out of everyone’s focus, no one caring enough to ask about it.

“Let’s move on to the next room, shall we?” she says, not even batting an eye its way.

She steers the crowd to one of the entrances to the other hall, and even with the towering wooden doors still shut, you already know what lies beyond it.

“This is the ballroom of the Na’s where they held their parties whenever their guests came to visit.” The massive room makes up the rest of the floor, the counterpart of the grand entrance on the first floor. The ceiling is tent-like, meeting down the center of the chamber and held up with arches spaced out to keep it from falling. The floor is spacious and devoid of obstructions, the walls velvet decorated with paintings like the rest of the house.

But its center-piece is a showstealer, a chandelier with an enormity befitting the rest of the room. It hangs from a web of beams, clawing down on the air like branches of a tree with light bulbs for leaves. It dwarves all the others in the mansion, ominous with its enormity in the middle of the room.

Distracted, you don’t notice it when Haechan slips beside you, hooking his arm around yours before pulling over. “Let’s dance,” he says and the squeak you let out when you lose your balance draws the attention of the people around you.

Giggles and whistles fill the air as you stumble after him. The tour guide lets you be, remnants of what happened in the room before gone completely. Someone in the room hums a tune, the same one Haechan never finished on the piano earlier.

There are no lyrics to it but Haechan sings it like it does. He leads you with a single hand, gently tugging you by your fingers when you don’t fight him anymore. Others join you on the dance floor but you barely make out who they are as he spins you around. When you come right back to meet him, he holds out one of your arms, your hands clasped, while the other rests behind your shoulder blade.

“I don’t know how to dance, Haechan,” you tell him. Your hold on him is flimsy, your posture crooked compared to his.

But he keeps you in the closed position, clicking his tongue as he leads you around. You feel the eyes watching you from the sidelines, seeing how you fall a half-step behind him. His steps are calculated, mapping out the floor even when he’s never been here, while yours are always too short and off-beat. He spins you one way, slowly inching you both closer to the spot beneath the chandelier.

Your hold on him tightens. “We can dance anywhere in this damn hall, just not there!” you say, whispering in the most aggressive tone you could manage without letting the others around you hear.

He peers at you for a moment, smirking and you know he’s only going to ignore your warning, steering the both of you closer and closer to the chandelier. But you drop your arms, letting him go.

Haechan chases after you, grabbing you by the arm when you walk away from him. When he spins you around to face him, you’re met with another face. No, it’s the same face but his hair is waxed in a way that reveals his forehead. His uniform is gone, replaced with a black suit with a tie to match it, and so is yours because of the lace lining your arms. The room is cold, the wind from outside sweeping into the room through the open windows. It’s dark outside and the lights in the room shine bright, a ceiling of faux stars over a sea of slow drifting people, all orbiting around the moonshine of the centerpiece.

He keeps one hand clasped with yours, the other resting by your waist instead of your shoulder. And it’s in the slowness of everything around you that you get a better view of the crowd watching, the mumbles they utter and the eyes that follow you as you sweep by. Couples flock around you but something tells you that you’re the center of their attention—you and the boy you’re dancing with.

“_____.”

The air feels humid again, the windows are shut and there are beads of sweat that dot your forehead. The chandelier hangs above you in its ominous enormity, looming overhead like it’s bound to come crashing down on you at any given moment. There are no eyes watching you now, no one besides the classmates who’ve lingered to take photos of the architecture.

You let go of Haechan almost too quickly, your hands feeling clammy from the prolonged clasp.

“You looked like you were enjoying the dance. I didn’t want to spoil it, but the tour guide said she’ll switch the lights off on us if we take any longer.” he explains, a humorless laugh following it.

But you only give him a nod, half-distracted, following the crowd out the ballroom and leaving him behind without meaning to. Still, you feel tethered to the spot beneath the chandelier in the same way a part of you remained seated at the end of the long table. Again, you try to shake it off, but the feeling lingers like an itch beneath your skin that you can’t satiate. It entrances you the same way deja vu does, tricking your mind into thinking that you’ve been in the same place even when you haven’t.

You walk out the ballroom through the other pair of doors, greeted by a wall of photographs—the only part of the mansion completely nonexistent back when it was still lived in. Numerous photos line the blank space, covering the wall from floor to ceiling. The photos are large, its content easy to make out even at a distance. There are photos from trips to other places, family photos of the Na’s along with equally powerful families, photos of the mansion back when it was first built, parties that have been held along with the guests that attended it. Dates and details were written in plaques beneath each photo, ending the series in the year 1984 with pictures from what was labeled as “The Last Party”.

“Trivia,” the woman upfront said, “the mansion nearly burned down in the 1980s during a party. Two people managed to sneak in, light a fire which nearly destroyed the whole place.”

Gasps, a lot of them, they fill the air before the crowd argues to call it an act of stupidity or a show of courageousness.

“While most of the guests made it out unscathed, it was that act that sparked the revolt that eventually put an end to the rule of the Na’s.” The woman goes on to explain why the third floor barely resembles the rest of the building, rebuilt on substandard materials to preserve the mansion’s structure rather than its original glory. The Na’s never set foot in it ever since.

It isn’t new information but it isn’t because it’s the first thing that comes up when you look the place up. You were there, the single thought dawns on you like a bucket of cold water dumped over your head—chilling your whole body and cementing you to the floor where you stood. The fear holds you to the ground, its enormity beyond the eerie atmosphere of the worn down place. But it’s the familiarity of the black and white images, the memories that resurface when you stared at it too long. You remember it like a memory of something that happened recently, vivid in your mind even when you’ve seen only glimpses of it.

There’s a gentle tug on your hand, a feeling you mistake as the images draw you to them. It’s faint, a mere brush and you barely notice it with your attention fixated elsewhere. You’re staring at one of the photos from The Last Party, one taken from the ballroom. The first family sat on two throne-like seats, flanked by their guests for the night. It’s a panoramic shot, women by Yeongsuk’s side and men by Minju’s.

By the first lady, there’s a blurred face, the image of a turned head captured as the camera flashes. Even without seeing her face you feel the tethers tying you to it, an unexplainable instinct that you are the one in the image. Because you can remember what she’s looking at, you can remember the reason why she turned her head in the first place.

“It was said that the culprits were photographed in these photos so we chose to hang them here as a reminder to honor what they had done or at least what they were said to be fighting for,” the tour guide says, humorous and mocking. “It was a rather controversial case at the time but it died out when the other party refused to speak about it on top of the eventual ousting of Na Minju.”

“What happened?” A single voice asks from the crowd.

It’s nothing you don’t know, and if it wouldn’t be off-putting to answer it yourself you would’ve. But you let the tour guide continue, “The culprits have been said to have committed a double suicide to avoid questioning and arrest. One of them was identified as the child of Na’s trusted generals, kickstarting the rumors of a coup d’etat stirring the military. The Na’s, with their dwindling trust in their own people, resorted to taking matters into their own hands. But we all know how that ended.”

The revolution, the inevitable oust, the victory of the people. Even without her dropping names, their faces pop up in your mind. The generals who plotted against them, the ones who turned a blind eye on their crimes as a show of loyalty. You know which general suffered the weight of the rumors of the uprising, the bitter irony that he never once showed any opposition to the ruling family. You knew who was to blame, the one he referred to as a disgrace, and you pick him out of the dozen faces in the photographs.

The tug on your finger comes again, this time earning your attention. A thread was looped around your finger, twisting against the small extremity from another entity’s influence. But you’re not moving, your arm glued to your side. You stood unmoving before the wall of photographs, barely taking in the surge of memories that come one after the other.

A blur of movement sweeps your periphery, a pair coming up to stand by your side. “You see that? I told you he looks exactly like you!” The voice belongs to Jeno and you turn to find him pointing out a face in the panorama.

The thread pulls on you now, enough to yank the finger out of the order it rested against your thighs. It moves on its own volition, tickling your skin as it twists with more movement. The other end becomes visible as another person walks over, the loop tied loosely around another boy’s finger. When you look at him, the thread stops pulling. Instead, it bursts into flames like your gaze had struck a match and set it on fire. It nips at your finger but never burns, licking up the thread clinging onto your hand.

“Donghyuck.” The name isn’t his but it’s what slips out of your mouth naturally. The surprise on your face is mirrored in his, moments before his turn into a look of confusion. You’re unsure where the feeling is coming from, the surge of panic as if your lungs were filling with water instead of air. It burns when you try to breathe, your vision clouding up and your heartbeat erratic, even when you know you’re in open air. Your heart pounds against your chest, loud enough you hear it pulsing in your ear. “Donghyuck, we have to go.”

He doesn’t move but the panic is blinding. Your mind urges you to run, unknowing of what you’re running away from. Around you, the walls are crumbling, closing in on your twin figures standing by the walls marred with fragments of history the Na’s want the world to see. The feeling shrinks, the beams groaning as they lowered inch by boring inch. The flame looped around your finger now stings but it never seems to scorch your skin. It zips across the space between you and Donghyuck like it was laced in gasoline.

“Hyuck!”

It comes out as a hiccup but where the flame touches his skin, he shows no signs of feeling it. You rush up to him, finally freeing your body of your own mind’s prison. You pinch at it, tugging it away, pat it down to let the fire die out but it holds. When you turn to look around, you find that the thread isn’t the only thing burning. The room is on fire; curtains, paintings, carpet, walls. Everything around you is engulfed in a roaring bright flame, crackling as it licks up the spires swirling to the ceiling.

“We have to leave,” you say, adamant, your irritation rising when he doesn’t mirror your worry.

Donghyuck remains immovable, like his feet replaced yours the second you were free from the burning flooring. Like everything else about your visions, you see him talking but his words are gibberish to you, drowned out by your breaths and the pulse drumming your ears. This was it, you were doomed.

The smoke grows thicker as you stay there longer, toxins filling the spaces where oxygen should be. Your hand curls around his arm, your grip tight as you try to yank him elsewhere. But you’re now too weak, adrenaline already dwindling. The staircase down is close yet it feels like an impossible journey. The smell of charred wood is nauseating, feeling it weigh on your lungs with the ashes you’ve inhaled. You cough between your words, your attempts to lead him out nothing but futile.

Donghyuck shakes your grip off gently but it makes you lose what little balance holds you up, your fall prevented when he moves just as quick to catch you. He holds you upright to keep you standing, even as you begin to feel your body shutting down. His hands are warm against your cheek, the finger with the thread looped a tad bit warmer. He’s saying something, another thing you can’t make out in the haze of your dizziness. His face is the last thing you see moments before your exhaustion pulls you under.

The party is in full swing by the time the person you were expecting reappears back in the stock room. The heavy wooden door groans as it’s pushed open, your panic making your blood run cold until a familiar mop of hair pops in through the door.

“Put that damn pan down, it’s just me.”

Lee Jeno slips through the crack in the doorway, pushing the door back shut behind him just as quick as he opened it. The air seals again, stilling now that you’re trapped inside the cramped-up stockroom. It feels hotter now with another presence sharing the oxygen, or maybe it’s just your heart pumping erratically in your ribcage. Still, now with him here, you finally take your first breath of relief in what felt like hours.

Even with Donghyuck’s word that this annex of the mansion would be devoid of people, your paranoia doesn’t fall tranquil. Rightfully so because you’ve heard footsteps drumming against the floor outside, matching the pace of your heart whenever they came too close. What would you do if they found you here? Beat them up with whatever item you could find so you could escape? What would you do then if you stumble upon one of their guards? That’s a problem for another time. You scour the junk pile for something lightweight but hard-hitting, praising whoever was watching over you when you come upon their kitchenware set, wielding a pan for a melee weapon.

Still, things have gone in your favor. The man you were waiting for was here now and the realization of what you were about to do looms over you like a black cloud sinking. The steel pitchers sit on top of the craters, the thick scent of gasoline nauseating but you’ve learned to endure it.

“What took you so long?” you ask. You don’t really know how long you’ve been there, no watches or clocks to tell you how much time has passed. It felt like a while, time stretched as your anxiousness grew with every off-sounding footstep, even longer with nothing better to do but to inhale gasoline. “Did we need to wait for everyone to be gathered in the ballroom?”

But whatever sign the man on the top floor sent you, it was here now—the wait was over. In the minutes you spent isolated, the stunt felt less nerve-wracking; your fear dragged out and lulled into a dull hum in the back of your mind.

Jeno eyes you from across the room, which wasn’t too far with what little space the room had. Things piled in stacks on either side of you, all threatening to topple over with the slightest misstep. “Don’t get mad.”

“Take your chances.”

He purses his lips, braves himself to tell you. It couldn’t be that bad, right? “Donghyuck waited for his parents to leave.”

It’s not as bad as you expected but the news leaves a bitter taste on your tongue. It wasn’t something you'd call off the plan for, nor something you’d hold against him. You take it easier than Jeno thinks you would, the simple ‘okay’ not being the reaction he was looking forward to. Maybe it was the nerve-wracking task ahead that made you think straight, rationality overtaking your pettiness. The difference in social classes comes clear at the final moment. You’ve spent a number of your dates hating the rich, loathing those who have the power to help others yet choose not to because who were they if there was no one to look down upon?

The thought of Donghyuck coming from a family like that annoyed you, even when you knew he couldn’t do anything about it. There was an irritability towards him that you couldn’t explain to his face, maybe even an internalized insecurity fueled by the hierarchy of social classes.

When he first started showing up to the rallies, you were skeptical about it, a lot of you were. Everyone skirted around him, avoiding him entirely whenever he tried to get more involved than he already was. There was an unspoken consensus, that he was not an ally but another attempt tof the government to source out who to question for information, a key to dismantling the growing resistance.

Looking back on it, everyone’s perspectives were valid. But it took guts to be the general’s son and to be openly at odds with their parents’ loyalties. Now, he was the ticket to the execution of your plan, the love-child of hatred towards lavish snobs and a collective worn out patience for a better governance—unachievable under a selfish man’s rule.

“_____.”

“It’s fine.” You tell him, trying to be more understanding of the situation rather than lashing out.

There was no time to police Donghyuck for giving his family a free pass when he was the reason you even made it this far. Far from what you’ve long grown up to, family was still family to him, curse his soft heart for thinking so. But of the three of you, if things went south from here, he had the most to lose. Turning a blind eye to this was the least you could do.

You turn your attention to other matters, moving to the pitchers lined up on top of the craters. One aisle of pitchers is filled with Coca-Cola, fizzled out with how long Jeno took to get back here. The ice you were keeping had begun to melt, the styrofoam boxes’ floor covered in a thin layer of freezing water. You fill the pitchers with ice one by one, the ice numbing your shaking nerves. It isn’t the best way to momentarily calm yourself but it works.

“These hold actual drinks,” you tell him, pointing out the distinctions. “These have gasoline.”

You pop one of the lids up, the smell of gasoline comes up like a fume that jams your nostrils. Jeno cringes. Having two people pouring gasoline around would be too inconspicuous so the other had to orbit around along with the other waiters to serve actual beverages—the both of you switching roles every other pitcher.

The stockroom is adjacent to the kitchen and you walk out to a flurry of service people, coming and going to fulfill their roles. You exit out of the annex, into the central room of the second floor. The grand staircase is decorated, its entryway accented with bows of cloth. You easily blend in and it kills you to bow at every elite you brush into.

Jeno follows you out but you lose him in the hall of gowns and suits, never imagining the third floor to be as crowded as it was. There aren’t that many people, you assume the rest are behind the closed doors—lost in the hypnosis of the ballroom. The guests here are chatting while walking, drinking and talking. The piano is put to use, ivory keys simulated by a man, and a soothing tune fills the room. It’s meant to calm those who've begun to drink too much, to let the mind rest, but it makes you restless.

You begin your roleplay of playing waitress, bowing at men in suits and girls in dresses and offering to fill up their glasses like the other waiters. Across the room, you see Jeno casually making his way around, mirroring your actions of bows and greetings. These rich people are simple-minded creatures, they love having their egos stroked. Any show of submission blinded them with a sense of superiority, everything else goes unnoticed. Jeno pours the contents of his pitcher on the floor instead of the glasses on the table—everyone who’s close to noticing, you sweep away, steering their attention away from Jeno as subtle as you can. Both of you work in tandem, in a harmony you didn’t expect you’d pull off that easily. You weren’t there to pour gasoline in the waiting room alone, the best people weren’t even here.

Some time into the second cycle, you decide to give it a rest, both to recuperate and rethink your strategies. Your sources were diminishing by each round and the ballroom remained inaccessible. You momentarily set the pitcher down on a table in front of you, taking a moment to breathe away from the gasoline.

But when you turn back around to the table, it’s gone—both the pitcher and the table you set it on. The room shrunk around you, the wide hall of the third floor turning into a meter-wide cubicle. A mirror hangs on the wall in front of you, the sink a clean slate of marble laid out where the table was. Your face is wet, water dripping down your cheek where you splashed it. Your blood boils beneath your skin, frustration mixing with your anxiousness that you went this far for nothing.

“If I didn’t come out, I wouldn’t have known you started with the plan.”

You spin around and find Donghyuck standing by the doorway. He leans against the frame, dressed in a manner different from how you always see him. He’s dressed in a suit, the classic black and white elite wear. He’s recognizable but not easily, his hair swept up where it should be patted down.

“The ballroom doors are locked, I don’t think they’ll let just any waiter in,” you answer.

“I got that covered. I’ll get Jeno in, but I need someone in the room along with me,” he says.

When Donghyuck comes into the light, he isn’t empty-handed. A gown unfurls itself before you, its skirts swaying when he lets it go. The dress is almost the same shade as the lapis hue that coats the walls, more vibrant and studded with silver that grint in the faint light. It’s a beautiful dress and while you know it’s something he’s offering you to wear, you’re not sure if you’ll suit it. Your disbelief tumbles out of your lips, your gratitude falling short.

You run your fingers along the bodice, the fibers fine against your skin. “Where did you get this?”

“Connections. I happen to have a lot of them,” he says, scratching his head as you check it out. “Try it, I think it would fit you.”

“I don’t think it would suit me.”

“You look good in anything.” When you look back at him, he isn’t looking. His eyes study the dress as he hands it, meeting your gaze only when you take it from him. You notice the moment he realizes what he let slip out, the dilation of his eyes when it occurs to him that he was thinking out loud. But he doesn’t add on to it. “Meet me inside. I’ll find you, don’t worry.”

He doesn’t wait on you, leaving you alone in the dimly lit comfort room. You strip out of the waiter’s uniform, disposing of it in a garbage chute beneath the sink which was impractical if you didn’t want to leave any traces. But if you succeeded with what you were about to, you didn’t have to worry about anything you would be leaving behind.

There is one thing you keep from it, a small packet in a ziplock bag that you kept in your breast pocket. You pat down the dress for any pockets, surprised to find a shallow one by the side that’s visible beneath the pleats of the skirt. You scramble through the dressers for anything, makeup to touch yourself up with, colors to smear on your lips, anything to make you a bit more presentable than haggard. Your hair isn’t as bad as you think it is, holding its place even after your rounds as a waitress. It takes a knock on the comfort room door for you to rush out.

Unbeknownst to your knowledge, you open the way to the ballroom. The chandelier centerpiece holds much of the decor, the meters upon meters of cloth meeting up in a swirl in the middle of the room. Tables full of guests make up the border around the dance floor, empty with no dancers swaying about. At a corner, musicians play jazz to accompany the chatter that fills the room in a consistent buzz.

When the tune switches from jazz to a more mellow song, the crowd woos. From his family’s table, Na Jaemin rises, ushered by the host to pick a girl in the crowd to dance. But the room is crowded, it isn’t an easy task. His eyes pass yours easily, not even expecting them to linger on you for longer than a second. He picks a girl from one of the tables close to you, noting that the girl hails from a family on par with the Na’s in riches. It doesn’t take long for you to piece that it’s scripted, a chess piece nudged by Na Minju to retain power over fields he doesn’t fully control.

You don’t move away from the doorway just yet, so you notice it when a familiar figure walks in. Jeno was now clad in a black vest, a permit for entry into the ballroom for those who were serving. When he passes, you catch a quiff of the gasoline—one of the pitchers he carried holding it, but you hope that no one else does. You try not to turn to where he slips into the crowd, doing his work in stealth. It feels like walking on a tightrope, how everything could be ruined by a single mistake.

Everyone else’s attention is still elsewhere, on the pair making the most out of the dance floor. It helps that the people here are half-intoxicated, senses dulled and easily hypnotized.

Jaemin, entranced as he was, turned his head too often to the crowd. His head would snap in a certain direction, eyebrows furrowed as howls of laughter erupted from the audience. With his patience thinned, he drags someone out into the dance floor. “If you’re such a loudmouth about it, come here and dance!”

The man he yanks from the seats stumbles, his head bowed in petty laughter. Jaemin stirs himself and his partner away, leaving the poor boy at the mercy of his friends by the table. But right as he’s about to take his seat again, his chair is occupied, leaving him standing at the edge of the dance floor.

“Looks like we have another young boy willing to dance!” announces the host and the crowd cheers, others laughing while others woo him. “Is there anyone who wants to share a dance with General Lee’s eldest son?”

He looks around the room, lost in the sea of attention. Mothers offer their daughters, never really meaning them in genuine interest in the boy himself, but in the influence of his family. Donghyuck stands at the center, his eyes searching the sea of people. He looks far and wide, turning in directions where you aren’t. When his gaze does eventually pass you, you feel your heart drop when he looks on in the same way Jaemin did.

In the seconds it took him to look back at you, you started rethinking whether he only needed you inside the ballroom to help Jeno with his work—the dress a mere prop to look the part. You feel the blood rise to your cheeks, the sheer embarrassment of getting your hopes up making you want to curl into a ball.

But his eyes find yours again, a second late as if your mind failed to register it was you the first time he looked around. He makes his way to the crowd, eyes following him where he walks until he finds his way to you. You try to drown out the wave of whispers you’re overhearing, the backhanded compliments both from the people around and the host whose voice was amplified by his microphone. He bows, shy and awkward, the way he would greet a complete stranger.

In the eyes of the people around you, you are a new face, nobody’s daughter. It’s all an elaborate act and you’re just there to play along. You’re hoping the Na’s wouldn’t pay too much attention, the strangeness of your face tied with the rationality that you might just be one of the people they knew by name not by face—not someone scheming on something.

The crowd woos as he takes your hand, leading you to the dance floor. The song is slow, befitting for the swaying that Donghyuck guides you in. His hand rests on your waist, while yours hesitantly brush his shoulders, free hands clasped together as the dance begins. You can feel the people’s eyes on you, even with the president’s son on the same floor as you were.

The eyes follow you even as he spins you around, catching you and guiding you as you waltz over the carpet—the ominous chandelier dangling over your heads but out of your worries. Donghyuck still belonged to a prominent family, his charismatic personality a show-stealer in conventions. But who were you? Whose daughter were you?

“Screw this plan, Donghyuck. We’re drawing more attention,” you whisper at him, your voice drowned out by the music.

“That’s the point,” he answers.

From the corner of your eye, you catch a dim figure moving through the crowd like a shadow, behind rows of distracted rich folk. Chatter envelops the room and with the music overlapping it, everything else in between was brushed under the rugs. You stiffen when the Na’s themselves rise from their seats, joining the people on the dance floor.

Donghyuck feels the shift in your hold, adjusting his hand to keep them clasped comfortably. “Keep your eyes on me,” he whispers, never looking. He squeezes you through a closing gap between two couples, spinning you at the next free space to guide you further away from the crowd gathering on the dance floor. But the audience who remained seated still have their eyes drawn to you, the swaying of black and blue still hypnotizing in the sea of dazzles.

You know his actions are calculated and it takes you longer to take into account why he was eager to steal the spotlight. He carries himself with a confidence that exudes his being, though it spills over and splashes on you a tadbit. It’s in the middle of the dance that you realize that he wants their eyes on him, on the both of you—the spilling of gasoline going right under their noses as their eyes are drawn to the subjects at the center. There’s the president and his first lady, the president’s son and who could be his future wife, the right hand’s son and the girl from nowhere.

He knows the controversy that smears his name, the rumors that he befriended one of the leaders of the resistance and became one of them. Of course, that wasn’t the entire truth, but does that really matter if it’s not what the people believe? Their version of the truth, the one glazed with half-truths and scandals made to appeal, would come out eventually—probably sooner than you both think. Your faces will be plastered on papers and shown on TV screens, regardless of how tonight ends.

In that moment, you realize that Donghyuck wants to be seen, your images embedded in their minds long after the night is over. He wants them to know that if this all goes up in flames, he wants them to remember that you’re the two people who planned it. Whatever happens, whether you get out scathed or die trying, you’ve done what you could to fight for what you believed in—for the betterment of the whole at the expense of a few sacrifices. Here, with your hand in his, the fear feels distant, your desire for a freedom withheld from you by the people inside the room clouding the possibility that this might be your last night alive. Then so be it.

A camera from the corner flashes once, capturing the dance floor and the couples locked in embrace. When it flashes again, you’re no longer on the dance floor and Donghyuck is nowhere.

The dance floor is empty, the ghosts of the tipsy dancers the sole things lingering. The air hangs heavy, alcohol mixing with the scent of gasoline. It’s a nauseating mix, the figures in your vision lagging whenever you turn other ways. You stand at the end of a row of women, squeezed against the body of someone you don’t recognize.

“Madam,” the man behind the camera peeks behind the mechanism, “move, if you want to be included in the photo!”

Complaints down the row urge you to move, pressing yourself up against the next girl even when you don’t want to be situated beside her, nor in the shot they were urging you to be in. You never belonged there in the first place. Even with your bodies pressed together, you feel the social divide. What you wore lacked in luster, your entire being not befitting the socialite status. They don’t even know you, but the mystery clouding your being doesn’t even suffice in making you pass off as one of them.

But the photo is the last thing you need to stick around for, the time bomb ticking its last seconds.

Then you hear it, the clink of metal against metal and your head turns. A lamp mounted on one of the tables toppled over the edge, shattering just as the camera flashes to snap the photo and before you know it, you’re running. Jeno’s silhouette slips from behind the crowd, out the door before the people around could realize what happened. The lamp’s glass shatters as it hits the floor, the fire inside meeting the thin coat of gasoline at rest on the floor. An explosion rattles the room, shaking the windows by the corner where the lamp fell.

The whole room erupts into chaos, the air growing hotter as the fire spreads across the floor. Panicked screams echo around the chamber, each person scrambling for the exit—but you’re already there, slipping past the door Jeno left open. You slam it back shut in their faces, hearing the doors on the opposite side swinging shut as Donghyuck comes out.

Behind the doors, you could hear their panicked screams, the exits barricaded by a wall of fire with doorknobs slicked with the same oil burning the rest of the room. You know the fire is spreading but not fast enough, because the hall outside the ballroom remains untouched. The guests outside look at you, their foreheads creased in confusion. The cacophony of screams is distant but audible. You don’t have it in you to act like you managed to escape before the others did, you’re no saint in the situation. You’re not here to clean your name, you’re here to burn the mansion to the ground with everyone in it.

“What’s going on?” a man asks Donghyuck as he passes him. The young boy doesn’t answer, his eyes fixated on you. He holds something in his hand, a gold rectangle fitting snugly in his palm. Without a single word exchanged, you get him and what he’s suggesting, the fate you’ve decided for everyone who chose to attend the ball.

You find the pitcher you set aside from earlier, taking it with you as you march to the top of the grand staircase leading down. It’s half-empty but it’s enough. You spill its contents on the floor by the steps, Donghyuck strikes it just as the doors to the ballroom burst open with a herd of people spilling out.

A single bodyguard catches your eyes, his face twisted in a permanent scowl. His arm is draped protectively over the president, the powerful man reduced to a spitfire of curses. He’s the first to identify you as a culprit, his face knowing that he’s looking straight into the eyes of the one responsible. It explained the stranger in the crowd, one he chose to ignore. And if he survives the night, he’s one of the few whose fates are tied with yours—who was he as a bodyguard, if he let things like this slip? You hope he realizes he’s a mere pawn in a bigger game, easy to lose.

“Get them!” The voice is hoarse and deep, only the first of the series of commands that labeled you as enemies of the state. Seize them! Kill them!

The orders are barked not by the head of security but the president himself. You don’t get to glimpse at him longer, the floor burning up as the lighter hits the floor. You rush down the staircase, never looking back. Heavy footfalls chase after you, thundering across the top floor as they try to catch up. The counterflow of people is harder to navigate but you make it to the annex where Jeno mapped an exit route free of waiting guards.

“Help me with this!” You look back to see Donghyuck trying to push a wooden cabinet to the kitchen doorway, a temporary blockade to give you more time to run. The wood splinters your skin but you can’t bring yourself to mind it. A single gun fires, the bullet completely missing you. It won’t be soon before they rain bullets on the room.

“That’ll hold, come on!”

You make it out of the mansion, slipping out a fire exit, an unguarded back door. The backyard is an empty lot, nothing but a helipad and a stagnant swimming pool. Once you’re off property, the soldiers would be easier to lose in the maze of houses. You try to hold, even as your shoes carve against the skin of your ankles.

Your vision shifts too many times for you to count. The place changes with every doorway you barge through, with every alley you slip past, with every corner that you turn. You run through the trails of a forest, down the sidewalks of city blocks. There are endless roads and confusing mazes, sceneries you couldn’t enjoy in your panic. Your feet throb beneath you, the switches in terrain wearing you down until you would rather chop them off than run any longer.

But finally, you stop somewhere. You don’t know how long you’ve been on the run from the world, unknowing of who to trust and which people to turn to. Donghyuck no longer wore his suit, your dress long discarded. The clothes you wear are inconspicuous, rendering you both invisible to the eye at first glance. Where you got it, you refuse to recall it; the thought of the extent you’d go for your own survival too horrifying.

You’ve dreamt about this house countless times before, the darkness no longer shrouding the face of your companion in a shadow. This part of the nightmare is always vivid, its ending unchangeable no matter how hard you try to change your choices. It happens everytime; word for word, detail by detail.

You’re not sure where you are in the city but you know that you haven’t made it far. The town you live in is small, the borders heavily guarded ever since the incident happened. There are trucks roving the streets night and day. You have nowhere to go, no one to trust, nothing else you could do but wait it out. But you couldn’t hold on another day without food, your throat dry permanently. Your feet hurt when you tried to walk, bleeding whenever you put too much weight on it.

It could’ve just been hours, a few days at most, since you set the mansion on fire. The whole city is on lockdown, searching for the three known culprits of the fire. You haven’t seen Jeno since he slipped out of the ballroom and with the tabloids still looking for three people, you know he hasn’t fallen into their hands yet. You could only hope that he was doing better than you both were.

You were stuck inside a room of an abandoned home, the first place of solitude you managed to find in what felt like days. By the doorway, Donghyuck listens for anything that could indicate that the soldiers were close by. In his hands was a pistol, a single one he managed to snag before you left the mansion. You haven’t had the chance to use it yet, saving the numbered bullets for the worst of emergencies.

You’re seated slumped against the wall opposite to him, your feet unrecognizable with the pattern of blisters on your skin. You lost your shoes today, your soles heavily wounded with the terrain you covered. The mere act of standing is an insurmountable task, shifting your weight even worse. You had no choice but to rest and while your feet throbbed sore, you could no longer feel the pain of the open wounds.

“We can rest for the night,” he says. “Then we can try moving again tomorrow, we might just run into Jeno.”

Or worse, the police. He’s been saying this for days now, his means to cope with the dawning consequences of your actions. You think it’s naive for him to keep believing that Jeno was still out looking for them—Jeno, whose family didn’t abandon him the way Donghyuck’s did. But you think it’s his sole beacon of hope, the light at the end of the tunnel. You don’t blame him for anything, his upbringing in silver spoons and rose-colored glasses clouding how bad your situation had gotten.

After the uproar from both sides, you might as well assume that you were on your own. There was no knowing who were trying to save themselves from the government’s wrath and who were genuinely looking out to help those who needed it. They were hunted down either way, unsafe in unfamiliar territory. There’s an uprising waiting in the horizon, a coup d’etat suspected in the ranks stemming from General Lee’s involvement. Whatever you sparked, it’s not large enough to overthrow the administration yet—the fire doused just as easily as it was started, in the same way the mansion fire died that night despite your efforts.

“We don’t have a night, Donghyuck.” The boy remains quiet, his shoulders slumping as he considers your words. “They’re bound to find us here. If they don’t burst in now, it could be any time soon.”

You know this because you slowed your progress down significantly today, catching eyes with countless military folk in this side of the city. You know they’re watching, they know where you are. They’re only waiting on the perfect chance to make the catch.

Across the room, Donghyuck doesn’t add on to it. It’s been an argument you’ve been having for days now, today worse than others with the weight of your injury. You barely made it through each day without being trailed, it’s a miracle you even held up for this long. But you’ve finally been backed into the corner, your feet utterly useless and you’re both tired fighting off something inevitable.

Tonight, he finally looks helpless—unbelieving of his own belief that you’d cross paths with Jeno and miraculously escaping the clutches of the military. The past few days show on his skin, sunken cheeks and dark under-eyes. You’re both worn out, will to continue going on diminished.

“How about you try to get away while you still can?”

Donghyuck’s head snaps in your direction, “And leave you here? I won’t let them take you.”

His voice fills the room, the first distinguishable sound besides your breathing. It shatters the silence momentarily, falling back into quiet as if it had never happened at all. It was a mistake, a dead giveaway that you were both in the house, in that room in particular if the right ears heard you. But it seems that you’ve come to terms with it, and so did he.

I won’t let them take you. It makes you smile because it used to work. His dad in the higher ranks, regardless of his reputation to maintain, let you off along with the others whenever he could. It was easier done than said, an automatic blind eye. Now that he was suspected for being involved, he was nowhere, not even bothering to look for his son. You figured that if this was the end, there was no way of justifying the means. To what extent did the general love his son, where did his loyalties really lie?

“They won’t take me.” The packet feels heavy against your breast pocket. You pat it out of the pouch, holding the plastic before the both of you. The pills hang suspended in the air in between, three lethal doses of a heart-stopping drug you kept in case the worse happened. “Not alive at least.”

Donghyuck turns the lock, hooking the latch on as the door’s last stand to anyone barging in. Walking over he keeps his gaze on either the floor or you, never once on the packet. The look he gives you is solemn, his face painted in moonlight.

“I can’t force you out of here, huh?” he asks, stopping by your feet.

“I don’t think I can take another step without falling over.” You wriggle your feet, wincing when a wound reopens. “You have a shot out of here, so take it.”

“And what if I don’t want to?” Donghyuck mumbles. “I dragged you into this, I planned the whole thing and you think I’d run away? If you think I’d do the same thing my father did, I won’t. I mean I think about it, but I’m not doing it.”

You find him staring at you in the darkness. The days have worn you out enough that his sadness doesn’t even show on his face. Where there should’ve been a gnawing grief for a life to be lost, there was relief. This was the end of the line for you, the consequences of your actions awaiting you like the jury’s judgment. You’ve reached the point of no return, the ending clear as day with only the matter of getting there.

Even when you know how this ends, you don’t skip through the few moments. The night is quiet, too quiet. The paranoia seeps into your mind and it has every reason to. You know how the night ends but you didn’t know that then, and you had seconds before you hear the first signs of them coming for you.

Donghyuck takes his place, tucking his feet beneath his legs as he sits on the space next to you. It occurs to you that you’ve never had him this close before, or you never cared enough to notice. Your hostility towards nepotism kids is mediated when it comes to him, albeit a little too late.

“I heard the mansion’s fine. Third floor was charred but no one died.” he says. It’s strange to feel relief at the news when you haven’t thought of them back when you doused the floorboards in gasoline. You heard the rumors too, but with the family’s history with lying to the media, you don’t trust their word on it. “Did you regret what we did?”

It takes you a moment to answer, torn between which part you were supposed to regret on—making it this far, or letting your conscience mull over the innocent lives that could’ve been lost if the house did burn up in flames.

Still, you shake your head. “No.”

“Even with the state we’re in right now?” Stuck inside a bedroom of an abandoned house, resting against filthy walls and seated on filthy floors. You haven’t had a full meal in days now, proper sleep for far longer.

Again, you answer with a shake of your head.

“Even if we die tonight?” Donghyuck asks, his eyes glinting in the moonlight as he looks at you. In the pools of darkness lies fear, right in the center of it.

Then you hear it, the first knock on the front door, the arrival of an unwanted guest. The fist rattles the wood, the thuds deep and whole. You can hear the jingle of the lock barely holding, the sound of a bolt falling off its hook.

“They’re he—”

He never gets to finish it, his airway jammed with the pill you chucked into his mouth. His hands fly up to yours as you reach for him, an instinct triggered muscle gripping on your wrist but eventually loosening. He remains quiet, never once shaking his head to get the pill out. You lift his chin up, watching gravity pull the pill down his throat, Adam’ apple bobbing as he swallows.

“I would’ve taken it without your help,” he says and you notice the pill taking effect almost immediately when he breathes slower, his words staggered between breaths that run out too quickly.

“I won’t leave you,” you tell him as his body slowly gives way to the drug, slumped against your upright figure. “Even if we die tonight.”

He never answers again.

You take matters into your own hands, untangling his slim fingers from the gun he held. Outside, the bangs get louder, no longer a singular force trying to break it down. The barrel is cold against your temple when you hold it but your fingers never bring themselves to pull the trigger. You’ve tried this before, always stopping on the second before you put your strength to it. A coward, even in your final moments.

So you resort to the pill, the two remaining pieces finding home in your tongue as you down them. It feels like the opposite of coffee, palpitations in reverse. You feel the drowsiness immediately, the world around you blurring and fading as the side effects kick in. The thud of the front door comes muted, their footsteps muffled as they race up the stairs to the only bedroom that showed any signs of living. If they wanted to, they could’ve stormed you through the windows. Why they chose not to was beyond you.

They try the doorknob once, then twice, concluding that it had been locked the third time. But even with the doorknob detached, the bolt remains intact. You’re thankful for the few seconds of extra time. Donghyuck’s head rests limply against your shoulder and you sandwich him in between—your own head against his. If you didn’t know any better, you would’ve thought that he was just sleeping. But there is no breath fogging up the air but yours and soon enough, that would disappear too.

You die with the secrets of tonight buried with you. You wished you didn’t have to take the pill tonight but it was heaven compared to torture; death by your own hands a thousand times better a death from someone else’s. There is no cruelty beyond your shortened time, but you knew the consequences of your actions long before you agreed to execute the plan. You feel the wave of fatigue pulse through you, almost like the gentle waves that sweep the coast you lie on. You stared at the door until your own eyelids gave in.

You only hear the door being knocked down, the bolt finally giving. The footsteps drum against the wooden floorboards, louder than your heart when the latter was supposed to out do it. Voices fill the quiet room. To this day, even as the dream replays itself in your mind over and over, you still can’t make out what they’re saying.

When you open your eyes this time, the view is different, but you feel just as bad. You wake up with your chest tight, your heart pounding. The bed beneath you creaks as you shoot upright, tears spilling out of your eyes from sorrow you couldn’t quite place. When you cry it leaves your throat dry, your lips trembling. It felt like the first gasp of fresh air when you break the surface, all the while remembering the ache as the water filled your lungs. Your cheeks were damp in a streak to your hairline, you must’ve been crying for a while now—trying countless times to wake yourself up from the nightmare. You remember nothing but the heaviness that weighs down on your chest, the way it tricks you into thinking that whatever the dream was, it was real.

Even when foreign skin touches yours, you still feel alone, stuck in the space that your mind has trapped you in. The cage is further now, its iron bars off in the horizon, but it’s still there.

“Hey, I’m here. It’s over.” Is it?

You wander the fog of your mind, the anchor keeping you steady distant in the bottom but its presence keeps you tethered. The bed shifts as the voice moves closer, the tinge of familiarity sending a wave of relief through your unnerved system.

“I’m here and I’m not going anywhere. I won’t leave you.” You wonder if he’s saying it in response to something you were saying in your dream. His arms wrap in a shell enclosing you, melting into him as you let his warmth course through you. He rubs circles against your back, quelling the storm that clouded your mind. He whispers reassurances, each one barely getting to you with the haze you were still trying to navigate through.

But you catch a quiff of his perfume, the muskiness of it colluding your system, and it’s the last tug that pulls you back to the shore. You’re here now, not in the void of the dream you couldn’t piece together.

You peel him away from you, one arm at a time. While your breaths shudder, cut every few inhales, you’re feeling better now. You’ve run out of tears to cry.

“Where are we? What happened?” you ask, brushing the back of your palm against your cheek.

“Outside,” Haechan says, “inside the emergency response team’s tent. You were saying things back there, I couldn’t remember what exactly you were saying, then you passed out. They said it must’ve been the poor ventilation.”

You nod, remembering the feeling of the room closing in on you, the thickness of the air and your chest constricting. A cacophony of voices echo in your ear, too many people talking at once that you’re barely making sense of anything. Even when it makes sense, you feel that the explanation lacks something.

“Why did you wake up crying? Did you have a bad dream?” Haechan’s hand brushes against your cheek, thumb brushing where another tear threatens to spill.

Why did you wake up crying? When you breathe, your airways are clogged, your inhales reduced to sniffles. The tightness of your throat hasn’t gone yet, even as you downed the glass of water handed to you. Most of the ache is still there, the feeling looming like a dark sky over you. Your chest felt trampled upon, the leather soles pressed against your helpless body even as you tried to stand. There is a heaviness you can’t shake off, one weighing your shoulders as you try to piece together the image of your dream from the sand beneath your feet. No matter how hard you raked your mind for the reasons, you just couldn’t remember.

“It was bad,” you tell him, “but I can’t remember what it was about.”

Haechan seems satisfied with your answer even when you aren’t, it wasn’t something that hasn’t happened before. “Maybe it was the place, the whole house was pretty but it gave me goosebumps where we went,” he says. You can’t see the mansion from here, the tent’s white walls blocking the view. You remember how the house looked, the ambiance, the regal majesticness of a piece of the past preserved in the present. The richness of its history bled through its walls, haunting even after decades. “If you’re feeling well enough, we can leave.”

“The tour’s over?” You test your feet slowly, your lower limbs shaking as you put your weight on it. Your soles burn when you press them against the floor, but you manage to keep yourself upright.

“You alright?” Haechan grabs you at the smallest sign of imbalance, his hold keeping you steady. “You want to go back? And if you faint again?”

“What about you?”

Haechan just shakes his head, the subject dropped without another word. You don’t question it then but you realize that you should have. There was something about the place, something about an inanimate object holding just as much personality as a person would—maybe even more. Something about the place and the tethers you feel towards it even when you were a mere visitor.

You walk away bearing a heaviness you can’t put a finger on, the ache in your chest rooting from something you can’t bring yourself to remember. You forget about it soon enough, just another bad dream better off left forgotten. But it resurfaces when you pass it on your way to school, leaving you wondering what about the place keeps you drawn to it.

Curiosity was one thing, a centrifugal force that propels the entire human race forward. But you were no influential person, your curiosity wouldn’t lead you places no one else has ever been. It was something you could shove aside for the betterment of your well-being, even when it gnaws every time you pass the mansion by.

Ignorance is bliss. Like an instinct, something in your mind tells you that things were better left off that way, knowledge locked away out of your reach. You don’t ask him about it, but things have never been the same between you and Haechan ever since.

#haechan angst #nct angst #haechan fluff #nct fluff #ficscafe #neowritingsnet #nct-writers #kwritersworldnet #haechan x reader #haechan imagines #haechan scenarios #nct imagines #nct scenario #nct haechan #haechan blurbs #haechan drabbles #toff.writes

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guitarsolosmakemefeellthings · 1 year

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Idk if it sounds dumb or if anyone said it before buuuut:

What about a Steddie AU (probably modern day for homophobia reasons) based on something like Strictly Come Dancing or Dancing with the Stars or whatever it's called in your country. Basically a dancing show where famous people get paired with a pro dancer and have to learn a new dance every week etc etc.

Steve is the pro dancer, on the show since the first season, excellent at his job, loved by the viewers and pretty much everyone. Always patient with his assigned star, but can also be strict if they're an ass. There's been a few times times where people assumed he's having a thing with his dancing partner, because he's just having that much chemistry with some people. it's all rumors tho. he did have a thing with his fellow pro dancer Nancy but that's in the past (they're still friends and still dance together at competitions)

Eddie enters for shits and giggles at first not thinking he'd actually get chosen to be on the show with all his big badass metalhead attitude and his request to be dancing with another man. But he gets a call from his management and after a serious confirmation that 'yes I know what being on that show means and I really wanna do it!' he finds himself in a dancing studio a few weeks later. For the first show he and the other candidates get a randomly assigned partner and get started with an easy choreography and he finds himself actually enjoying the whole dancing part. (He doesn't get paired with Steve just yet but they get talking backstage)

After the first show they get paired together and that's when it really starts. The two of them instantly getting along, being equally snarky & goofy together but also serious. Steve has no trouble adjusting to dancing with a man instead, switching up the choreos so sometimes he's dancing the leading part and other times Eddie does. Eddie is a little uncoordinated at first, having no experience with dance besides a moshpit and jumping around on stage(and that hardly counts as dancing) but he's a quick learner.

The fans of the show love seeing the two of them dance together, Eddie loves pissing off the homophobes and Steve does too. Part of why they get along so good is because they bonded over being queer and everything that comes with it. Of course the rumors start once again because Eddie is a naturally flirty guy and Steve goes along with it. They get asked about it during the show and deny everything infront of the cameras. Not because they want to be secretive, but because they're idiots and literally didn't notice that they've pretty much fallen in love over the course of the last few weeks. They just chalked their entire chemistry and flirting up as part of their show.

In the end Eddie doesn't win the show (he's gotten quite good but he's not that good) but he does get a boyfriend and that's much better anyways.

#eddie munson #steve harrington #steddie #steve harrington x eddie munson #steve x eddie #can you tell i've been watching strictly come dancing again #that show is a guilty pleasure and well now these two get put in there #idk what to tag this as #steddie headcanon #my writing

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moriohradiojanitorroom · 1 month

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Hi, I stumbled across your blog and I'm really excited to try the match-up✨

Sorry if I write anything wrong, this is my first experience

I have always been told I am a very kind, caring and compassionate person. I think this is true, I always try to help people around me. I am also very optimistic and always try to think of the best. I am still a very shy, insecure and irascible person, but my bad moods pass quickly. If this helps you I am pisces and infp

Speaking of hobbies I really love my favorite manga and anime and cooking. Although some of my recipes sound suspicious but the dishes turn out really delicious. I can't imagine my life without music, I listen to it all the time. I think it's a bit funny, but I do know a lot of facts from many different fields

Oh, I'm afraid I've written too much. If something is unclear then please apologize, English is not my native language. Anyway thanks and good luck, looking forward to your reply💐

Hi there!!! Thanks so much for this request, I was really excited to fulfill it! And don’t worry about too much info or anything like that, this is great! This is also my first time writing a matchup so I hope it’s alright dkdnjsmd You didn’t specify an age or any preferences, so I’m gonna give you a canonically adult character & assume you don’t have a preference for other stuff, like gender or what part they’re from - if you’d like to resubmit with that in mind tho, that’s okay!

With all that in mind, here are some honourable mentions:

Noriaki Kakyoin was the first to come to mind when I read your request, but with the age thing in consideration, I decided to choose someone else.

After that, I considered Jonathan Joestar, Erina Pendleton, and Mohammad Avdol! Ultimately, though, I ended up choosing:

Robert E.O. Speedwagon!

Your positivity and kindness hooked the man in faster than he could even blink - we all know exactly how loyal he is and how quickly he can tell who deserves that loyalty. It only took him a few minutes to read that you’re one of those people.

He’s also pretty intrigued by how much you know. He likes to exchange little bits of knowledge and stories with you, especially after he’s done some travelling and has a wider expanse of knowledge. Even before that, though, he always keeps your words in mind - who knows, one day one of those facts might just save a life!

He also very well understands the difficulties of insecurity and hotheadedness, having faced them himself. He does his best to keep you grounded, and encourages you to leave your comfort zone now and then - it’s key to growth, after all - but he knows when to back off. He can be a little stubborn, especially if he’s enthusiastic, but in the end your comfort matters more. If you’d rather stay at home with him than go out and dance or something, that’s fine by him. Hell, with all the travelling he does, he may actually grow to prefer that more relaxed atmosphere.

On that topic, Speedwagon’s pretty good at reading people’s moods and actions. On top of knowing when he needs to let you chill, he also knows if/when he should make somebody else do the same. If he sees something or someone bothering you, he’s quick to swoop in and do whatever he can to settle the situation, whether that’s just to comfort some insecurities or get a particularly annoying person to back off. If he knows that you can handle it, though, he’ll take a backseat and play cheerleader. In fact, it makes him proud to see it.

Also, this man grew up on the most dangerous street in London. He’s no stranger to meals with some odd ingredients, and frankly, he’ll be even happier to learn how good they taste! He’s not the best cook himself, he’s the type of man who uses whatever he has on hand to try scraping together something reasonable, so a good meal will go straight to his heart.

For the sake of anime and manga, I’m gonna go ahead and pretend we’re a little more modern day for the next few. I feel like Speedwagon is more of a reading guy than a television guy. After a long day, he’ll to sit down and read with you, manga or not. He’ll watch a show too if you ask, but there’s something quite romantic about cuddling up and sharing a book that he feels can’t be matched by much else.

On that note, please forgive him ahead of time - if you do get him to sit down and watch your favourite shows, he will have a lot of commentary. He’s the type of guy who will interrupt a scene to enthusiastically declare something like, “So THAT’S why the bugger carries that chain around!”, or confoundedly question what a character thinks they’re doing. He’ll probably do this while reading too, just maybe not as often. He’s not trying to interrupt, he just gets excited - if you tell him to settle down, he’ll do his best to accommodate, but he might slip from time to time.

Also, (and this is another one of those modern day ones) depending on your music taste, he may or may not buy vinyls or discs of your favourite bands and try to get you to dance with him to them. He’ll probably suggest a concert at least once - something tells me that he’s the type to prefer live music.

Knowing that you’re passionate about something makes him passionate, too. He’ll try his best to look into your interests on his own time, and try to involve you in whatever he finds - maybe he asks an older lady he knows for interesting recipes to show you, or he scours a book store for a series he hasn’t heard you talk about yet. He’s doing his best to match your love for these things, even if they’re sometimes new to him.

Your bright outlook on life, your compassion, your love for the things you enjoy - they’re all astoundingly inspirational to this man. He may sometimes worry that you deserve better than an Ogre Street ex-thief, but by god, will he use all the motivation you give him to make a good life for you.

Okay - I think I might have rambled a bit there, but yeah, thank you so much for the request!! It’s the first one I’ve gotten anyways so I hope you’ll forgive all the babbling jehdjjfs

This was a ton of fun to write, and I hope that you’re happy with it!

#anonymous #matchups #jjba x reader #speedwagon x reader #robert e.o. speedwagon #thank you so much for sending in a submission!#Ik I kind of fell into writing headcanons too but I couldn’t help myself #just felt right #believe it or not I actually tried to trim this version bc it was too long originally LOL-#okay yes thank you again! Enjoy!

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keibea · 1 year

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15 Questions for 15 Mutuals

Is everyone sick of learning random facts about me yet? Yes? Well, here we go again, cause I LOVE THEM. Thank you @vmsims23 , @nectar-cellar and @johziii for tagging me, you all know me too well.

Are you named after anyone? LOL nope, I honestly wish I was. Jessica was the only name my parents could agree on BAHHAHA.

When was the last time you cried? Monday 🙃I had a painful exam experience.

Do you have kids? Nope and thank goodness for that because I can barely take care of myself BAHAHHA.

Do you use sarcasm a lot? Oh yeah, I'm terrible. Not as much as I used to I don't think though, but often WHOOPS.

What sports do you play/have you played? I was forced to play a lot for school, as I think most people were. The ones I can remember the most clearly are netball (I was let on the team out of necessity I think), bocce (because we could all get away with sitting around most of the time and occasionaly rolling the balls), zumba (it was mostly just dance which was SICK), and ballet (if that counts??) is the one I stuck with the longest and the only one I chose to wilingly do myself.

What’s the first thing you notice about other people? Hair or smile. I'm not quite sure. One of those I think.

Scary movies or happy endings? No scary movies for me, nope. I'm horribly paranoid, I will start checking my wardorbe. Happy endings ALL THE WAY. Genuinely I will only watch a movie and read a book if I know it has a happy ending idc YES IM ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE.

Any special talents? Depends on what you define as a special talent. So I don't know if this counts, but I am weirdly a natural at baking??? Definitely not freestyle but if I follow a recipe (which I always do because I like doing things in order) it always turns out really well. So I guess that's just following a recipe, but I like to think I'm special and naturally talented at baking. My mum always finishes my baking off though because I get bored halfway through whoops and she genrally always helps me because I'm terrible with the oven so tbh maybe it's just mum that's talented.

Where were you born? AUSSIE AUSSIE AUSSIE, OI, OI, OI 🦘

What are your hobbies? Sims, sims, also sims, reading about early Victorian fashion, reading about the Victorian era, reading and that's probably it.

Do you have any pets? I have a beautiful little cat named Mikey. He is my best cat friend (and tbh, best friend in general) and I love him very much.

How tall are you? My father says I'm very short, and calls me a worm (both said affectionately I should add), so I assume pretty short. In terms of numbers though, not a clue. I believe I'm average-ish height for a woman, maybe a bit shorter.

Fave subject in school? HISTORY ALL THE WAY. Mostly modern history, purely because I love the Victorian era, but I do enjoy ancient history as well.

Dream job? Fashion historian! That or an author of historical fiction OR a book on early Victorian women's fashion.

Eye colour? I like to call them swamp green, but my mum would disagree, so I'll say green.

I shall annoy @lazysunjade , @amuhav , @thesimperiuscurse (oh yes you bet I am @ ing people who are inactive and who also never do these things, I am 100% that sort of person), @akioakashiya , @itssimplythesims , @lifewithmysims , @elderwisp , @happy-lemon , @servospawn , @tau1tvec , @bunmou , @stinkrascal , @cozygirlsimmer , @moonsonnet , @doka-chan

Please forgive/ignore me if you hate doing this sort of thing, or if you've been tagged and done it already, and wow thank you all for being my mutuals I didn't know I had so many amazing people following me back LETS GOOOO

#nonsims #saviourhide #aboutkeibea #:)#alright off to uni BYE EVERYONE LOVE U

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slaughterlocked · 3 months

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relationship building meme. ☎ for your muse’s info in my muses phone (name, ringtone, picture, last text received/sent). / for mike!

RELATIONSHIP BUILDING MEME: mike & william!

name: michael. bland. basic. sometimes changes it to mike if he's having a period where their relationship is actually good! but almost always changes it back within a few days.

ringtone: this man does NOT customise his ringtone. but. i like to think michael set it to dancing queen. initially william has no idea how to change it back and he HATES it... at least, he says he does, but learns how to change it after a year and never does.

picture: a picture of him and mike when they went on holiday as a whole family ! probably taken when mike was a kid, and william hasn't changed it despite having recent photos of him. he likes to remember the times before evan's death [because i'm imagining this is just a modern verse where everything else stays the same HSDJFH]. probably taken in front of a famous landmark. niagra falls or something. but they both look genuinely happy. maybe mike is on william's shoulders. hey wait im making myself really really sad.

last text received: a thumbs up !! probably very passive aggressive in response to the text below where william is demanding he gets himself to circus baby's pizza world :') last message ever sent before uhmmm well. you know. william holds onto this

last text sent: I'm proud of you. it was going to be i love you but william figured that was too much of a giveaway that he was literally sending his son to his death. instead he waited for michael to get scooped, and, assuming his son is dead, finally decides to have a sweet fatherly moment with him. typical williamcore!

#(( if you don't read the small text. this is very sweet and wholesome for these two ! ))#( grit your teeth and look straight ahead: headcanons. )#( a father is a claw lodged deep: william & michael. )#( just to be alive: default v. )#(( IM SAD NOW. ))#tw dysfunctional family #a; florietiae

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chimsmom1013 · 7 months

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On Ballet, PJM's thighs 🤭, Gender Norms, Society, and Parenting Teens...when insomnia plays you like a plague.

Four in the morning and I'm in my walrus form...rolling on the bed like it'll help shut down my brain, until this walrus decided to give up and get up. Welcome to today's insomnia episode feat. me and my attempt to write/blog again.

It's on nights, rather early dawns, like these where my mind ponders on the mundane things in life...like where the hell is Min Yoongi?...Lol! Is slime liquid? Is water wet? Silly questions until the most precious nerds in my life go on a full scientific debate on these (true story). Today was me scouting frames online for my kids' ballet recital pics. I was being a cheesy mom admiring with googly eyes, my children's photos until I was "mom mode no more" when the quads my not so little boy's ballet tights were showcasing caught my attention...and I went *😳* my boy's really starting to morph into pre-debut PJM (Jimin's thighs for President! woot! woot!😂)

It's been over a year since my children decided to "formally" learn ballet. My eldest would be considered late to the game at 16 as most ballerinas start tippy toeing garbed in pink tutus as early as three; she though, has always had an eye for the arts. As a little girl I remember her craning her neck to the other toddlers who were attending the ballet classes held on the second level of the local grocery we used to frequent in QC. She never really says anything, she just watches and stares at the cute girls her age in tutus with her big bright eyes; meanwhile the dense, sleep deprived, mother *c'est moi* never paid it much thought, my last braincells running on the remaining 10 mg of caffeine and whatever nicotine poison was still lingering in my bloodstream. A walking zombie on auto pilot trying to get my errands done so I can hit the sack, wake up to the moon and live life as part of the vampires toiling the night shifts. This was 2010.

Fast forward to the pandemic era when we all got sucked into the purple rabbit hole *another story for another day* and count 2 more years of my whole fam being fans of a particular kid from Busan, SoKor who studied Modern Dance in an Arts School (before an Army gets the wrong idea, we're OT7, just putting that out) and you see me enrolling my children in their first ballet class.

I will spare you the details of how this debacle gave rise to the Kraken that, unbeknownst to la maman, actually lives inside my sweet, darling girl (segway...you know those moments when you look at your child and say, I can't see any of me in her *of which you're mighty glad* then BOOM! Yep there it is, that's definitely me right there. I had that scene play in front of me in 4HD...end of segway). Now despite being a bit relieved in discovering that she actually had this side - when the need calls for it - I knew the crowd that triggered it wasn't healthy for them anymore. I pulled them out of that place in a snap. It was just a summer thing after all, it was just me letting them dip their toes into ballet because we were PJM stans, it was ever really just that - haha! NOT! As I witnessed my daughter's demeanor turn a full 360° because some kids thought it was a good idea to mess with her brother...to which of course they were wrong. I thought that exiting them out of that cesspool was the "parent thing to do'' and that-that experience eventually pulled the lights out on their, "what I initially assumed only as", fangirling/boying fascination for ballet, but like those silly kids who ate the bars that were spat out my daughter's angry mouth for afternoon tea- of course I TOO WAS WRONG.

My then 12yr old son was crying his eyes out, feelings of disgust, betrayal, self-doubt, anger, self-doubt again doused him like an August monsoon, bouts of nausea and a slight fever followed thereafter. It was a sight any mother would demand someone's head for *ofc I'm being exaggeratedly dramatic but you get my point*. I could have *metaphorically* dragged someone by the hair for it, I knew I was entitled to that -we had receipts. But as much as I love my boy, he is THAT- a BOY, biologically assigned male at birth who'll soon turn into a MAN. He needed to learn from this, know how to profile people. Learn the consequences of being naive and gullible, understand the inevitable outcome of what you're getting yourself into. The little vixen was no Taylor Swift and my son is absolutefanfucktabously NOT her John Mayer. Society, however, in this province that is, wouldn't, even at this present day & age, agree with me. Petite, pretty, doe-eyed, damsel type girls will always bag the biggest crowd. He needed to understand this, cuddling and soothing him would be second nature to any mother, but I would like to think I knew better. So that was that or so I thought. We can go back to baking giant cookies, mocking the diabetes curse that ran in our genes, but my son wanted to write a different ending to this chapter and start a new one. So with eyes puffy and tears endlessly falling; nose so red Rudolf would've been threatened, speech garbled from sobbing and the urge to not ingest his snot *graphic ain't I?* he let out a phrase that left me momentarily stunted. "But Mommy, I really wanna dance ballet". I was silent as my incoherent son tried to get his message to my skull. I watched his beautiful face being aggressively rubbed with the collar of his shirt by his own hands. Sounds reminiscent of trumpets being blown ensued right after and I thought to myself, "whoa 😧 the laundromat ladies has got work cut out for them" before I snapped out of my momentary Ally McBeal moment and reminded myself that I'm this human's mother.

And so after a financial debrief with the chief of command in my household a.k.a my husband, the hunt was on for a new ballet school that would be willing to take in my then 16 yr old princess and my 12 yr old snot factory of a son *oh shut up, we all have different love languages mine just happens to exclude being a mopey unfunny mother*. I swept through Metaverse overnight and by 9am-ish the next day, I was on the phone with the owner of the Aims Academy School for the Performing Arts formerly known as Arts in Motion Studio *all puns related to "the artist formerly known as Prince" intended tee-hee* with my V8 of a motor mouth ranting at the speed of light. The school's headmistress being the poor soul to become recipient of my motherly verbal diarrhea. A millenia and a half on my verbal rampage on mean girls, my take on the performing arts, my hope that they could consider taking in my 2 dorks and I'm purchasing a ballet barre online... just like that, my 12 yr old son is once again the only ballet student with a third leg in this new school - grateful for this new chapter in their lives.

Has it ever bothered him that he's the only student danseur in ballet school? nah...he was raised a feminist - and by that I don't mean Beyonce and her booty shaking to "Who Run the World? Girls!" I mean, being raised to respect the differences and contribution each biologically assigned sex contributes to humanity, did I phrase that out right? I am honestly too old to delve into the complexities of pronouns and the whole LGBTQrstuv you know the rest of the alphabet. My son understands and respects that you can embrace whatever pronoun you find fits you, yet equally respects that a pea sized pie hole can pop out a human head but the Jr nestled between his quads will never be able to. He understands that we, biologically assigned women at birth, cannot play the game of how many d*cks around a coffee mug can fill it up with pee in 30 secs *no you cannot unread that bwahaha evil laugh* My son understands that colors, fragrance, one's palate has no gender assignment, munching on siling labuyo does not make one MORE male, lmao. He loves playing war games on his pc but cosplays in a Japanese maid costume without a care in the world if some people raise their brows and think that's queer. Most importantly he knows the difference between a hobby and an art form, and that art is gender fluid.

My kids were unfortunately birthed in an obnoxiously patriarchal society that associates sh*t to being male or female. Society expects my daughter to be domesticated, she is, but equally so is my son. If you can't cook, don't eat, if you don't know how to wash your undergarments then by all means itch where it hurts the most. No one dares give an opinion on my son studying to be a danseur, either they actually funnily think it's just a hobby (believe me when I say what an insanely expensive hobby it is then for a middle class household) as I've caught conversations from older male figures subtly hinting at basketball and taekwondo... or they're very much aware that trying to meddle with how I raise my kids is a pretty bad idea, knowing that I am literally able to get away with murder haha.

Let me ramble on this just once...DANCING is NOT merely a HOBBY! PERFORMING ARTS is WHAT it reads as A-R-T! Ballet is not for wimps and girly soft boys, as is with any other artform - it's a DISCIPLINE; an utterly painful one at that. If anyone then, gets the slightest misogynistic itch to poke fun at my boy in tights- try standing on relevé with a steady bras bas for 20 secs then you can talk to me about how pain makes a man a "MAN"...*blows knuckles*.

Some misguided poor souls can cheat their way into academic high honors; some screwed up parents can kiss ass and/or payV the way for their children, but believe me no amount of ass-kissing skills or deep pockets can ever fool a room full of audience into knowing what talent or the absolute lack of it looks like on stage. Not everyone is born with it, and when you see it, you don't call it a "hobby", you call that talent, skills, what you're seeing is an execution of "Art".

The insatiable and savage thirst for raising ruthless fighting cocks for merciless cockpit battles is what I can call an example of a "hobby" - a gruesomely barbaric one at that but absurdly regarded as Ultra Male — not a skill, definitely not a talent and watching two rooster try to unalive each other will never be a form of Art. I object - admiration for the showcase violence is not manly, on the contrary it defies all that nature intended the male species to be...the supposed caretaker and nurturer of all things created by the Almighty.

My children were sadly born into a society that sees ART as a hobby and the belief that one's only gateway to a stable meal ticket is through the traditional academe. Where grades define them and their peers parents' brag about them like trophies with necks clad in metal you can't even pawn for a cent; and while me and the hubs have hardcoded the importance of school and the sometimes absurd rules of society to our kids' psyche - that a good college degree is still their gate pass to a stable future, we keep them grounded and sane by reiterating that reciting Newton's Law will not help you cook an egg. Life skills are just as important. Social skills, street smarts and most of all empathy, compassion, and kindness are what make you human. No, we are not the type of absurdly idealistic, incel, "stoned hippie-like" parents that teach our children to blame the gov't for our effed up lives or blind them with the idea that politics is divided into black & white. We don't romanticize poverty and tell our children that money isn't the most important thing in the world- eros LOVE is (oh cge shutamez, kumain ka ng pagmamahal tignan ko kung mabusog ka sa kaka-bebetaym haha). NO! we actually tell them that in the hierarchy of things to help you survive, it is next to oxygen. Money can be both a blessing and a curse, you need it but don't be obsessed with it. Recognize the power it holds, respect that to a certain degree but never be a slave to it. Be wary of how people act around money. Do not classify people according to their lack and excess of it, and equally stay away from those who would do just that to you. Work Hard/Play Hard. Be kind to yourself. Pat yourself on the back for a job well done. Recognize and humble yourselves when you realize you're at fault. Learn from mistakes and learn to forgive mistakes and never wallow in them. Try to always see the good in humans. In this cruel world, it will be the only thing that keeps you from being part of a herd made up of bad sheep that despite having a shepherd and being surrounded by a fence, still always think that everyone around them are predators (the disgusting mentality na kala mo laging iisahan, dadayain at lalamangan, these are the worst people to trust as you will never have theirs). Be careful of those who believe that in order to survive, the best mantra to live by was coined by Machiavelli. School, at some point, will teach you the idea of Utopia; tell you what it looks like, explain to you the do's and don'ts and make you think you're it's future hope as long as you keep the black from bleeding into the white. When you get out in the real world though you'll realize that Utopia is a unicorn. The great Kim Namjoon once said, "Life is a soup, and I'm a fork", my personal favorite is "Life isn't Burger King, you can't always have it your way."

In a year where people are still at odds as to whether the 1969 moon landing was real, the greatest mystery and challenge is still the perfect formula in raising Gen Z teens. I have yet to figure it out as well. I've once been called to speak on the topic of successful parenting and gladly indulged my audience with what maybe perceived as food for thought; when in truth my anxiety laced brain was just as clueless to what successful parenting really is. I guess people think having well mannered and well behaved kids qualifies me to hold a podium. In reality though; while I'm definitely accountable for their upbringing, I can't take any credit for the humans my children decide to become. They are their own person/s the moment they realize they have the ability to feed themselves with their own cooking that will not have them dying from food poisoning.

And so with all these letters jumbled to become words, that become sentences and progressed into paragraphs of mundane thoughts that decided to fill insomnia nights instead of being sleep waste products called dreams; I spill my mind into writing, if you can even call this that. Whoever is reading this has been fooled into tagging along a rollercoaster mumble-jumble ride that started with my admittedly disgusting simp/thirst for Park Jimin's thighs, ballet, gender norms, society, and trying to be a passable parent to my teens...like how in the fowcking world did it jump from there to here? Insomnia indeed plays me like a plague.

#ballet #parenting #random musings #park jimin #bts jimin #bts army #mom blog #SoundCloud

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truly-morgan · 8 months

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[cuckJade brothers]

ChengXian | Mo Dao Zu Shi Modern AU 10-06-2021

[#chengxian feat. xicheng and wangxian]

We often see cuckji, but what about cuckjade twin? Both brothers end up being clueless cuck at first, until they realise chengxian aren't just friends again.

Like, they finally reunite after /years/ apart and spark old thing.

maybe chengxian has a little something going on already, dancing around each other for years as they are teens. yet they still are each other's first kiss (they argued who kissed better), experimented with each other (out of curiosity of how someone else would feel). they had /something/ going on despite never admitting to loving each other more than what was expected of them.

They were still each other most trusted and cherished person.

then wwx was gone for about 13-15 years to keep his family away from the big problems he got himself into.

Maybe he's gone at first to try and repay a debt he owns to the wens, hides and runs from jc for 3 years until he just disappears from the earth surface. he actually ends up in prison for like, 7-9 years for some crime he ended up committing to finish paying his debt, hence completely losing tie with anyone and making him basically disappear.

when he's finally out of prison wwx doesn't know how to contact anyone (after all, it has been 7-9 years), but he's also scared to even /try/ contacting jc. What would he say? Can he show his face after what he did? What if jc wouldn't want a criminal?

too many doubts and too many things he is still processing from the past 10-12 past years. He lives by jumping from odd job to odd job until one day he stumbles onto lwj (he did try running away but he was not fast enough against lwj). This is a bit weird and awkward, especially since the last times they met was in some of his worst time and the very last time had been a huge argument (and three days later he was arrested).

but lwj is understanding and helps him get back on his feet. they grow closer over that and ends up playing family (wwx is surprised when he learns that baby a-yuan has been with lwj all this time, but happy to know he was safe).

He's nearly a "stay at home wife", trying to find a job he can do well and without being kicked out.

As for jc, when wwx suddenly disappear after a fight they had about wwx refusing to tell him what kind of problems he got himself into.

Sure, he did refuse to contact him for a while because he was angry, but then he got anxious when wwx wouldn't reply to him.

only once did wwx replied to his call, sounding so tired, jc had never heard him like this. All he manages to get is that he /cannot/ look for wwx because it's dangerous, but that wwx doesn't hate him. ("I could never hate my chengcheng" he is told, the chuckle sounding genuine and a bit more alive).

but he still tries to chase wwx, sometimes hears snippet and hints, but he seemingly always misses him by little. Lwj that traitor would never tell him, but he /know/ the man has had contact with wwx (it does sour they relationship, how can he refuse to tell him where to find wwx?)

then suddenly nothing, even lwj looks has though he had lost everything and it only made jc gut drop, assuming the worst.

Then his family got into a deadly accident.

lxc was the one to help him all this time, slowly gaining trust from jc, helping him slowly pick up all the broken pieces, helping him with jl.

He never forces his feelings on jc (he can pine until he dies if needed, he just wanna be by jc side). It does take years before jc is steady on his feet again, jl his new reason to actually keep on living without giving up ("I have someone needing me, I cannot let my only family alone"). in these 10-12 years he warms up to lxc, slowly letting him in his heart until he allows himself to actually love again and let lxc take care of him fully.

Stability and a loving family are something he needs and lxc is more than happy to give him this.

Then the big reunion does need to happy, wwx somehow knew it was bound to happen, but he would never have thought it would happen the way it did.

of course, he learned about jc dating lxc (which did hurt his heart a bit, he could never let go of jc fully)., but he decided to stay hidden, still unsure how to meet him (even more now that he had been out of prison for /3/ years and never contacted him).

but it is a bit hard when they move to the same city as xicheng and that the juniors are all good friends.

Of course, lsz friends are over often, which means wwx has to deal with xicheng kids. He sure likes them, but it often makes him nervous. Have they told jc about him? Or is he just lwj's boyfriend and lsz new dad? He assumes not, otherwise, he feels like jc would surely have made a move.

and make a move he does.

when jl is on the phone with jc once at wangxian house, jc hears wwx talking and he also hears oyz calling out to him. He was so shocked that he nearly drop his phone, before asking jl to repeat what oyz just said. but he did hear well, wwx was /back/. He was back, safe and /close/. Why didn't he know?

in no time he rushes to where the juniors are hanging out, forgetting about his manner and he opens the door and enters to see wwx cooking for them. they both freeze when they see each other and wwx looks like a deer caught in headlight. this was jc.

This was jc in his house and look angry and about to cry.

he feels like running away, he is /not/ prepared.

but he doesn't and the atmosphere suddenly gets tense and filled with many emotions. jl and lsz are the first to get it, suddenly suggesting going out to get some snack for their movie night (jl quickly shut down ljy when he tries to point out they already did that).

then it shuangjie time, very emotional, maybe a bit of screaming, blaming and apologies, lot of crying too.

by the time the juniors come back (3 hours later), they are now talking at the table, eyes red a puffy, voices still a bit hoars.

they have /a lot/ to talk about, but right now is not the time. right now was the time for letting out all the negative, letting out all the bad accumulated over the past decade and a half. It was also the time for wwx to apologise for being missing like this, for not telling jc. only a couple of days later do they take a day to go over the past decade and a half, wwx finally telling all that had happened, not wanting to hide from jc anymore (plus, the danger has been taken care of when he was in jail).

of course, jc doesn't like hearing he went to jail, but the relief of knowing that /now/ he is alright and good is stronger.

Then wwx learns about all that has happened when he was gone and he wishes he could have been there. He regrets not finding another way, even though he isn't sure how he would have found a way. He just wishes he could have been by jc side when their family died like this,m leaving him all alone with jl.

it takes some time, but they do sorts out everything together, slowly working on what they missed, working to catch up.

Soon it's pretty evident to them that the love they had for each other and that they thought was gone (after all, they were genuinely happy with lxc and lwj) it's clear that finally being back next to each other is helping greatly for both of them.

the jade twin are pretty happy to see them happy like this again, simply thinking they are happy to finally have their family back again. But then what started as them being back to "just being bros" started being a bit more when old feelings decided to come hitting hard. Old habits were coming back, old desires follows suit.

It started with lingering looks when no one else was looking, lingering and discreet touch, going out (on date) to "catch up" (away from their boyfriend's eyes).

Then at some point, they finally cross the line, unsure who actually initiated the kiss, hands roaming around, trying to find old familiarity.

They both know they should feel guilty for their makeout session in the car and they do a little bit, but the happiness somehow drowns everything. of course, they promise not to do this again.

But now that they finally tasted what they wanted all these years, can they really stop?

and then they broke this promise.

many times.

they would sneak away from other's eyes, using the excuse of hanging out to rediscover each other's body. This is what they could have had if life hadn't been this hard on them, they could have had that all this time without needing to hide like this.

on the other side, lxc and lwj were first happy for them, then suspicion settled in. They both had a vague idea of what kind of feeling chengxian had for each other in the past.

lwj had a funny impression when most of the time he met up with wwx in his difficult time, he would ask about jc, making sure he was doing alright. More than once did he saw him looking longingly at a picture wxx had of jc, sometimes his thumb hovering above the call button.

lxc had obviously known that all these years jc had still tried to keep looking for wwx, his eyes looking suddenly hopeful anytime someone similar to wwx would pass them, the similar figure that could have been wwx if he hadn't been in jail. He felt like jc wouldn't have been /this/ obsessed with finding wwx if his feeling weren't deeper.

yet they both had been dating the young men and hoped that they would forget about it

(especially since lxc didn't expect wwx to suddenly reappear like this).

So how could they not suspect something when wwx and jc seemed to have grown a bit /too/ close after their reunion. Often going out until late, coming back smelling like each other and trying to hide possible marks and proof of what they did.

Eventually, the brothers stumble onto a kissing chengxian, surprising both men when they finally notice them.

It is pretty awkward afterwards, with everyone sitting in the living room without talking.

[poll to see what the ending should be]

(love how most of y'all decide cuckjade accept easily that they are cuck ijbfijb)

The atmosphere in the room was rather awkward and tense, wwx and jc sitting on the couch, on each end, as the Jade twins were sitting on chairs they brought from the kitchen.

The two who had been caught right-handed were not sure how to start explaining. But what was there to explain? It had been rather clear what they were doing, even wwx wouldn't be able to find excuses for it.

They couldn't say they regretted it, but they did feel bad in a way. Sure, they were still in love with each other, but their affection for each of the Jade brothers was not fake either, they didn't want to hurt them.

"Lan Huan, I'm-" tried to start jc, his voice tight as he didn't dare to look up at the man.

"I know," said lxc with a small smile on his lips.

on the other side of the couch, wwx dared a look at lwj, but it was hard to say what the other man was thinking about. Sure, he had gotten used to reading his rather unexpressive face, but right now it was hard to tell.

"We've actually been suspecting it for a while now" lwj finally says, only making wwx a jc pale a bit.

They knew? And they never said anything? They both thought they had been sneaky, but apparently, they couldn't escape the attentive attention of the Jade brothers. They had noticed and suspected it and now they had their confirmation. But what could they really do about it if they wanted to keep the?

after all, with all their love and passion, neither would want to break up with the cheating duo. It had taken /years/ before they could finally have their little lover, could they really let go like this?

But they couldn't really force the two to break off either. For a starter, if the two really wanted to be together, they would always end up meeting up and the Jade brothers couldn't just lock them up inside (although it did sound like a nice idea...). Plus, if they were to force them to break off when they clearly loved each other, wouldn't they start hating them?

breaking them off could have the same result as breaking up, only this time it would have the laying of wwx and jc just having negative feelings for them. It was not the best option.

With one look to his brother, lxc knew lwj had a similar thought. They only had one option...

wwx seemed to be about to talk this time, but he was cut off by lxc quickly, not allowed to end anything.

"We understand" he smiles, "And we don't... want to see either of you sad".

jc and wwx were a bit surprised, confused that they seemed to be giving up so easily. Were they really breaking up? It felt surreal for it to come from the Jade brothers.

"We grew up being told that sharing is also important" pointed out lwj.

oh.

now they understood.

wwx and jc ended up even more surprised, stunned when they realised lxc and lwj accepted so easily that they were being cheated on, but also accepted to let it happen because they wanted them to be happy together too.

it felt a bit too surreal when wwx remembered how lwj would chase away anyone who simply looked at him wrong. This lwj who was so in love with him was ready to share him with jc because he wanted him to be happy with the both of them?

jc was as surprised. Sure, lxc was not as possessive as his brother, but he had his fair share of scaring anyone who wanted to try anything with him away (as discreet as lxc tried to be, of course, jc noticed it). he was also ready to let jc give his love and attention to both lxc and wwx?

"You really mean it?" jc asked, looking as lxc stood up to instead kneel in front of him. "I know my a-cheng wouldn't have stayed with me if he had not even a little bit of love for me, you are not the kind of person to keep on faking feelings, but I also know you would be really sad without wwx next to you and I can't bear seeing you like this again" he smiled, cupping his cheek as jc's eyes were getting a bit teary.

He really meant it. He was really ready to share his love if it meant jc could still be by his side.

a yelp got their attention when lwj suddenly pulled wwx to him, hugging his smaller frame close to him. "I don't want to lose wei ying again," he said in a low voice, "Of see you longing desperately for jc as you did in the past".

he had seen how low wwx had been in the past, and he was scared to see him like this again. Maybe he wouldn't hit rock bottom again, after all, there was more than just losing jc at the time, but he knew it would be a hard hit after they were finally able to be together again.

"Just promise not to forget I am here too".

wwx gently returned the embrace, hand slowly rubbing his back to reassure. "I won't forget about a-zhan, don't worry" he whispered.

After that, jc and wwx shared a look, smiling at each other.

They were happy to have such accepting, generous and understanding boyfriends.

They wouldn't forget to love them the same way they loved each other.

Original

#tweet archive #mdzs #mo dao zu shi #chenxian #wangxian #xicheng #jiang cheng #wei wuxian #lan wangji #lan xichen #cuckji #cuckchen #modern au #shuangjie retrouvaille #secret relationship

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idiacide · 2 years

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matchup info for ❄️ ; pronouns are she/they, student only please!

I’m really friendly if we’re acquaintances, but i like to be quiet if we’re close friends and i’m comfortable with you

go with the flow is my motto, i don’t like strict schedules and i’m not very orderly. unfortunately this means i'm flighty with plans and projects too...haha

I’m pretty laid-back most of the time, but moody in that i’ll be extremely outgoing/talkative then shift to reserved/irritable rather quickly. i try not to take it out on others when i flip like a switch, but it’s a work in progress.

I’m very sensitive and don’t take sarcasm well at all, so i appreciate straightforwardness and emotional honesty! i don’t really do well with judgemental or high-strung people and can’t take criticism. I’ll assume the worst about someone’s intentions and latch onto the slightest perceived negativity; i also heavily dislike verbal conflict.

i feel excessive guilt about everything and care way too much about what others think, even though i like to pretend i don't

i think i’m observant when it comes to other people’s thoughts, and can pinpoint specific feelings with words. my love languages are primarily physical touch, words of affirmation, then quality time.

i spend a lot of time thinking about what i want to draw, write, work on later, etc and daydream a ton. but i do like being active and tend to be moving my body constantly

some hobbies/interests: painting, hiking+picking flowers, dancing, relaxing by lakes/bodies of water/nature in general for the sounds and ambience

sorry for the triple-mega-giga-description! i got a little excited! thank you so much

I match you with Malleus Draconia!

-Quiet, basically friendly, and laidback in general are good attributes to have around him. He’s a fae who’s very disjointed from the social conventions of the modern era. While he does value your time greatly, it can also be a little difficult for him to “tune in” to your normal rhythms. Being able to adapt around that means the basics tend to come easier, and he finds the idea of being able to be quiet and still With someone to be a refreshingly good fit.

-I won’t go so far as to say Malleus is never judgemental towards others. However, despite the reputation he gets for being unreadable he doesn’t really make it much of a secret when he dislikes someone. While it might require some adjustment (given that he isn’t the most emotive guy in the world) he’s always straightforward with you and doesn’t see the point in disguising his real intentions. If something bothers him, he’d tell you, so you don’t have to worry when he’s staying quiet.

-As an extension of that he tends not to beat around the bush about your emotions either. He recognizes he’s not likely to argue you out of feeling guilty, and that attempting to do so can often just make you feel worse. However, he’s in general good about talking you through the guilt your feeling, finding the source, and helping you address it if it can be addressed. He’s had to spend a lot of time teaching himself how to understand other people, and he’s happy if those skills can help you at all.

-At the same time, he values your insight. You’re both on a learning curve here when it comes to other people.

-Both of you appreciate the natural world greatly, and he’s happy to walk with you for well into the night. Both of you lost in thought, hand in hand, in quiet appreciation of each other as you explore your own inner worlds.

And now, the meetcute (well. Not quite a MEET cute in this case, decided to let you keep Tsunotaro’s encounters)

The night air was a refreshing chill on the heat of your skin, the crickets chirping in time with your heartbeat as you leaned forward to rest your hands on your knees. Oxygen had to fight hard to get into your lungs, and you tried to time your breathing with the sounds of water lapping on the shore.

Honestly, you weren’t sure what had possessed you to take a jog this late at night. You had had your eye on the lake in the woods behind campus ever since you’d first stumbled upon it. It was isolated, beautiful, and most importantly, familiar. There weren’t many spots on campus that didn’t scream “you are in a very different world”, so you had learned to treasure the spots that retained some degree of normalcy.

A midnight jog around its shores hadn’t been quite how you pictured it happening, but you’d needed the breather. Homework was swinging into its busy season and you’d had less and less time to relax. You’d been too antsy to sleep and too bored to try to do something quiet around the dorm while Grim slept, so you’d finally decided on some impromptu exercise.

Despite your burning lungs, it had been the right decision. The lake looked beautiful in the clear moonlight, the still water reflecting it back until the whole glade lit up. It was nice and still, with barely any animal sounds even to distract you from the sound of your own thoughts.

Until a quiet voice shatters the stillness as you straighten yourself up.

“I seem to keep finding you in my haunts. One might start to become suspicious.”

You whirl on your heel, temporarily startled....only to feel some relief (if a little of irritation) as you recognize the tall figure that’s somehow snuck up on you.

“Tsunotaro.” You say, clutching your chest. “You scared me half to death.”

“I could say the same,” Tsunotaro feels fear? You think idly. “I wasn’t expecting company here.”

“Uh...is it a problem?” You say tentatively, uncertain if there’s a double meaning there. He just shakes his head, that mysterious smile he wore creeping back onto his face.

“No.”

“.....I’ve been meaning to come here.” You say after a minute, hands clasping together as you turn to look back at the water. “There are a lot of flowers...”

“You’re fond of them?” He seems less to step out of the shadows than to melt out of them. Moonlight practically reflects off his ghostly skin, making him appear to glow too.

You nod. “They’re like the ones back home....like this one.” You crouch down, carefully cupping your hands around a stem full of delicate white blooms. “Its hyacinth, right?”

Tsunotaro sinks down next to you, balancing himself on his heels. He nods, tilting his head a bit as he regards the flower.

“I...wish I could remember the meanings.” You say after a minute, gently releasing the flowers. Later, you might come to pick some, but you didn’t want to carry them back home at the moment. “Is flower language a thing over here?”

Another nod, green eyes turning to pierce at you through the midnight gloom. “I do know the meanings, though I’m unsure if they’re the same.”

You hesitate. You had come up here to be alone, and inviting him into a conversation about flower language felt like a great way to get trapped.

Still, its not like you could just run away from the guy, you’d feel too bad. Not to mention...you aren’t exactly getting real chatterbox vibes from this guy.

“Fire away.”

If he’s surprised by your invitation, he doesn’t show it. Just turns back to examine the plant more closely. “Hyacinths are separated by color. White ones represent loveliness...but also good wishes.”

“I guess that has a little more weight to it here, in a world of magic.” You muse, tracing your fingertips along the petals.

“Magic or no,” He smiles, also reaching out for the plant. “There are some things that can only be longed for.”

Your fingertips brush, just for a second. Both of you freeze.

Is the fact that it feels like a shock to your whole system an effect of his magic? Or something else?

You clear your throat, carefully pulling your hand away to point at a small cluster of purple-blue blossoms further down the shore. “Uh...what about the irises?”

Tsunotaro takes a minute to respond, hand still frozen in place where you’d left it. After a second, he finally follows your pointing finger to its destination. “....I’m not sure if the water ones have a different meaning. Lilia’s told me they can encompass faith, wisdom, valor....a knightly flower.” The thought seems to amuse him. You feel the strangest flutter in your chest.

You’re there longer than you intend. He helps you identify a few more plants. For a longer time though, you both sit in silence. You skip rocks out over the still water while he seats himself on a nearby rock, watching them go and occasionally nudging them with his magic. You talk, a little, about school, about home...but it’s somehow only more companionable when you don’t speak at all. Maybe it’s the graveness on his face, but something about his presence is steadying.

You do end up leaving with some plants. A cluster of arrowheads, which seem to have no meaning of their own, but have a very simple beauty. The last words he speaks, almost murmurs, ringing in your ears as loud as a bell.

Until next we meet.

#twisted wonderland #twst #twst x reader #malleus draconia #commission #matchup

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ericanoelle · 2 years

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Petyr x Sansa Plot Bunny

I have this idea that probably will never get written but it was dancing around in my head this evening.

It would be through Ned’s POV. Its a modern AU were the Stark is an old name in Westeros. When Sansa was 18 she moved from the North to King’s Landing to be with her then boyfriend Joffrey and go to college. About three years after that, they broke up but she stayed in KL for school and rarely came home. Ned and Cat went down for her graduation where she was valedictorian and only say her a few times after that. She stayed in King’s Landing to start her own business, even though both her parents though she would come home to Winterfell for a time- she didn’t.

Both parents noticed that she never spoke abut a love life again.

When she is about 29, she has become one of the youngest billionaires in the country. She has taken over company after company and is considered to be a fair employer- if not a bit cold.

The fic would start with Ned coming to visit Sansa unexpectedly. He would have some business in King’s Landing (need to figure out what for) and surprises Sansa at her work. She cancels her lunch appointment (Shae is her assistant) and they spend some time together. She takes him back to her penthouse and he notices how cold and lifeless it is. It has him worried because it's obvious that she is a workaholic.

But then he finds something strange- a ring with a mockingbird on it that clearly belongs to a man. It's out in the open and he makes a comment about it. Sansa just says it's nothing to worry about. Ned now is a bit appeased that she is clearly seeing someone, assumes it's new and that she would tell them when she is ready.

He mentions that he will be in town again in a few months and that Cat would be joining him because there is a charity event that they want to attend. Sansa will also be there because she gave a good amount of money to this charity.

At said event, Sansa sees her parents and seems pleased to see them. Cat tries to ask when she will be coming home since she has not been there in years and mentions that Robb is getting married soon. Sansa assures them that she will be there for the wedding. - it will be the first time she will have been to Winterfell since she was 18.

Ned notices that she speaks with Margaery, who is Joffrey’s wife, and overhears Sansa telling her to be careful. Margaery assures that she has everything under control and that soon enough, when everything is over, she will be fine. He thinks he hears her say that she will be happily widowed but is convinced he misheard because Margaery seems very happy with Joffrey.

He also meets Petyr Baelish at this event. Now, Petyr is a few years younger than both Ned and Cat. I think Cat used to babysit him when she was a teenager and he had a childish crush on her. Cat mentions that Petyr had always been too smart and that he would rise high in the world- he is in finance. He is about 15 years older than Sansa and seems a bit untrustworthy to Ned. Then he sees something on Petyr’s finger that makes him pause.

Its the same mockingbird ring.

Ned assumed that whomever Sansa was seeing, it would have been someone around her age- not someone 15 years her senior. Ned confronts her about it and she gets defensive. She says that it is none of his business and if she is seeing Petyr then he will have to accept that.

Ned, who doesn’t say anything to Cat, does not like this. He asks a few people at the event about him and he learns that he is a genius with money, and is ruthless with powerful friends in high places. There is some hints of Petyr having some..less than savory business dealings within the city. Before he leaves King’s Landing, he goes to Petyr’s office and they have lunch.

Petyr admits that he is seeing Sansa and that it is serious. He mentions that it has been going on for years and that he first met her when she was with Joffrey but nothing came of their relationship until years later. However, he states that he is following Sansa’s lead because he doesn’t want to push her for things she is not ready for. Petyr alludes to the fact that Sansa’s relationship with Joffrey was not healthy but Ned doesn’t pick up on that until later when he is obsessing over it as he tried to sleep.

Before leaving King’s Landing (stalling his trip home for a bit), Ned cannot stop thinking about Petyr and Sansa, but more over, what Petyr said about Joffrey. Ned looks into it and hires a PI, who reports that Sansa had been seen multiple times in the hospital during her time at university. Her old roommate, Jeyne Poole, had once taken her to the ER when she found her beaten rather brutally and left for dead. It appears that Cersei had covered everything up, ensuring that her son never faced consequences for what he had done.

Ned sees red and drives to see Joffrey with the intent of killing him but Petyr stops him, rear ending his car at a red light. Petyr says he knows that Ned is looking into Sansa’s time at school (because its Petyr so of course he does) and that it will not do any good to defend her honor now. Petyr says that he was the one who cleaned up the bruises, paid the hospital bills and got her out. Ned just does not know why she didn’t turn to him. Petyr convinces him to go home to Winterfell and let Sansa handle this. That his daughter is safe and fine, that she has control over her own life.

That is when he realized that there is something more at play than he thought.

By the time him and Cat reach Winterfell, the news of Joffrey Baratheon’s arrest for the murder of his entire family breaks. He was arrested for killing everyone (his mother, “uncles”, Tyrion, grandfather, siblings- everyone) with the exception of Margaery, who had been visiting her grandmother at the time. Casterly Rock Inc. stock crashes and Sansa buys the ruins of the company. Margaery had been working for Sansa the entire time, marrying Joffrey in order to steal secrets and sell them to Sansa - that way she could arrange for Joffrey to take the fall for murders she and Petyr planned out. I feel like there is some form of black mail with Jaime and Cersei along the way as welll. Its all very shady and dark but expertly executed. Sansa had set out to ruin the Lannisters for what they did to her while she was in school and had been planning for years. - none of this would be confirmed of course but Ned has his suspicions.

The epilogue would be Robb’s wedding. Ned never spoke of what he learned or what he thinks Sansa had done to the Lannisters. He is also suspicious that she will turn up with Petyr as her plus one.

She doesn’t.

Cat, who knows nothing of what happened, comments that Sansa looks happier than she had the last time they saw her. Ned dances with Sansa, who tells him that she knows that he figured it out. They go to his office or something, and he just asks why she never came to them. She doesn’t really have an answer but just that she felt that she couldn’t.

The fic would end with Ned accepting that his daughter had done horrible things and was with a man who had done things as equally as horrible, but with the Lannisters gone she can finally move on with her life. Knowing that this is a secret he would take to his grave.

#Petyr x Sansa #fic idea

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beckleysbooks · 4 months

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When Visions Of Sugar Plums Danced In Their Heads

Ten days out from Christmas and I'm trying to answer the age-old question, "What is a sugar plum?" I'm 64 years old and for the past 60 years when reading or listening to Clement Clarke Moore's "The Night Before Christmas", I always had an idea what a sugar plum looked like, kind of like a candied fruit.

It's a sweet plum, right? Hmm, not really. Referencing sweets historian Laura Mason's account found in an article in The Atlantic, sugar plums were well known to Englishmen between the 17th-19th century as a sweet made of sugar, also referred to as "comfit". To put you in the picture, take some caraway or cardamom seeds, or you may prefer almonds. Then, wrap a coating of sugar around the seeds, hardening it as you add each layer. Think of a modern day "jawbreaker" with seeds in the middle.

So, there's no fruit involved at all? Interesting. I know there's a history of children receiving fruit, mostly oranges, as a Christmas present, so I just assumed fruit was involved in the Christmas Story. Come to think of it, a nice juicy orange would've been a pleasant surprise on a cold wintry day.

And, isn't that same element of surprise a part of the fun when receiving and opening a Christmas parcel? What's inside?

Back in the beginning of the tradition of gift giving (mid-late 19th century in America), shop keepers targeted the public at Christmas time suggesting, "What are gifts but the proof and signs of love?".

In my historical fiction, "Oh! Susannah", I chose the Christmas of 1861 (Chapter 17) to describe what times were like back then at this time of year. For one, it was the first December since 1851 that Susannah had not been pregnant or sick. Secondly, her children were coming of age to appreciate the efforts their mother would've taken to provide them the best Christmas ever. It helped that Susannah was a weaver and was able to make clothes, especially for her daughters. These homemade gifts held more sentimental value to folks then the advertised store-bought ones.

Along with knitted mittens, Susannah's children received rag dolls and underwear as their presents. Looking back when as a child myself, who didn't receive underwear as a present wrapped under the tree? In our family, my sisters and I would have our "stash" of presents in front of us. We soon learned that each parcel did not contain a sugar plum. There were socks and clothes, and woolen hats, house slippers, and yes, underwear - every year! Don't get me wrong. My parents made sure there were a couple gifts that would take our fancy and occupy our attention for days or weeks to come - toys, bikes, games etc.

However, Christmas isn't all about receiving, but more importantly, the act of giving. In my historical fiction, while preparing her children's Christmas gifts, Susannah spares a thought for her brother Sam and his wife who had recently lost two of their children from diptheria. She also laments in the story for those less well-off families living around her who could surely use "the gift of her knitting". Would not a knitted blanket be received as a sugar plum to one in need?

Yesterday, my father-in-law passed away. For a slightly-built man, I was surprised at the heavy bulkiness of his winter coats, and so many of them! This weekend, my wife and I will be paying a visit to our local Haven Of Rest homeless shelter. We've got some sugar plums to deliver. May I suggest to my readers that you do a quick check of your storage closets as well, just to see if there might be a couple sugar plums hiding in there too.

#beckleysbooks #historical fiction #ohio history #women's rights

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allthemusic · 5 months

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Week ending: 20 May 1954

A two-song week, as we head towards summer. Will we be seeing signs of summeriness? One song looks like it's got some flowers in it, at least.

Friends and Neighbourgs - Billy Cotton & His Band (peaked at No. 3)

We've seen Billy Cotton before, on the time capsule of a song that was In a Golden Carriage (There's a Heart of Gold), a tune written and performed for Elizabeth II's coronation. I assumed then that Billy was being wheeled out as a reprentative of something that felt traditional and British, an old-fashioned performer for an occasion that called for a bit of pomp and circumstance - that is to say, that Billy, at this point, was a bit of a relic, beign dusted off as a topic one-off.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I get this - a Billy Cotton original song, in the charts, apparently entirely on its own merits. I guess there's a chance some sort of cultural event catapulted this into the charts - a TV appearance, or a film, or something - but it does seem a bit random that a sound like this can just pop up unannounced, all old-fashioned and sentimental.

Actually, I think the last one's the key here. This is a sentimental song, taken from a sentimental/melodramatic music hall tradition that had metamorphosed into the "British dance band" scene at some point before World War II. It's out of place in the 1950s, but I can imagine a lot of slightly older record-buyers finding this a nostalgic throwback.

Musically, it's a little bit jazzy, but in a staid, plodding way, not doing anything particularly wild. There's a muted trumped, an accordion, a clarinet, and a strummy banjo, plus a whole group of backing singers who don't sound half as polished as backing singers in this era often are. This feels like it could just be a bunch of people you're mates with, which is kind of fun.

The lyrics are banal, all about how good it is to have friends and neighbours, and how they make the world better, how you can talk to them about your troubles, and how "Although you've not a penny / And you house may be tumbling down / With friends and neighbours / You're the richest man in town." It's well-meaning, and sweet, I guess.

I'm still confused as to why it exists, I'm afraid. I suppose it's a nice sentiment for people who're still in rationing, for goodness' sake: you may not have money currently, but you've got neighbours, at least. Trite, but hard to get grumpy at it, and it's not actively irritating me yet.

Someone Else's Roses - Joan Regan (5)

Oh, I like this. It's not summery flowers at all, it's heartbroken-and-angry-at-your-lover flowers! I don't know if that was a surprise, per se, but I did enjoy the story told throughout this song. It's by Joan Regan, who also did Ricochet, whose bouncy charm I enjoyed, and while the tone of this song is different, the theme isn't a million miles away. Again, Joan's playing the jilted lover, angry at her unfaithful man.

It feels quite modern in a way, the way that this song takes a little moment and spins it into a whole narrative. The idea is that Joan's love has somehow sent Joan some roses, but with a note that was meant for somebody different. We don't learn exactly how this happened, or the specific details. Are they still a couple, or is this an ex accidentally sending her things? All we know - in true tragic fashion - is that "The note you send I wasn't meant to see". And worse, it's "The kind of rose you always chose for me". Oh no! She's lost her love

While there's a rich vein of anger that could be mined here, Joan doesn't quite go down that route - a shame, I thought at first, because she did it really well in Ricochet. Here, though, we have a slower, soupier song, and so she goes down the brokenhearted route instead, singing about how she won't forget his love and - possibly the most interesting line in the thing - begging him "Won't you tell me it was really meant for me". It's a fascinating insight into her brain - she'd rather have the reassuring lie to cling to, even though she knows the awful truth. But if he would only lie to her, she'd have the plausible deniability to stay with her unfaithful man. Unfortunately, the fact that she's begging seems to suggest that he can't even be bothered with that - he's moved on, ad she's left out in the cold.

You could get a whole song out of that one idea, actually - it's a shame Joan doesn't dwell on it more. Instead, we get a brief instrumental break, and then the song's over. It never quite gets worked up as much as it could, given its emotional subject material, and Joan also doesn't quite let loose as much as she maybe ought to. She sings in a very prim, proper way, and I can't help but miss Ricochet a bit. It's not a bad song, but I'm just not completely sold on it yet.

Actually, that might just be a soupy ballad issue for me. I'm not often as convinced by slow, dramatic songs, and the more you drape them in strings and elegant twirls, the less I'm inclined to buy into whatever they're selling me. They're just too smooth and pretty, I get distracted. Soz, Joan.

Both of these songs were very melodramatic and sentimental. Apparently the British public were in a slightly sappy mood at this point in 1954. And well they might be, with summer round the corner and proper rock and roll still nowhere to be seen. I can't quite love either of these songs, but one of them, at least, made me stop and think about its lyrics for a while.

Favourite song of the bunch: Someone Else's Roses

#uk charts #1954 #billy cotton & his band #joan regan

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