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k-s-morgan · 3 years

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What He Grows to Be: Snippet 5

Thank you to everyone who expressed their preference over what they’d prefer to see in the snippet! Tom watching Harry’s memories about the Chamber of Secrets got the most votes, so here is the draft version of it. Though since it’s almost 4K long, maybe calling it a snippet isn’t appropriate :D

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Talking through a diary was an interesting idea. Tom wasn’t sure what kind of magic this was, but now that he’d seen it, he could figure it out. He and Harry would be able to have immediate conversations instead of relying on letters or Patronuses.

Then again, considering what this diary had led to, perhaps this wasn’t a good idea. The last thing Tom wanted was to add himself into Harry’s collection of negative associations in one more way.

He didn’t see how Harry had managed to get into the Chamber of Secrets. One moment, he was staring at the bloody inscription on the wall; the next one, he was standing in an entirely new vast space. Tom still had no idea where it was located or how to access it.

His heart sank in disappointment, but when the full implications hit him, it stopped entirely.

Harry had excluded this memory on purpose. He didn’t trust Tom with the knowledge of where the Chamber was. He showed him the core events but not the details because his trust and his faith were already gone by that point.

And the ritual made it even worse.

An uncomfortable itchy heat began to radiate from Tom’s chest. The sensation was entirely unfamiliar, so he pressed his palm against it, confused and hoping to squash it down.

He couldn’t name it, but it felt a little like shame. He’d never experienced it to this extent before, and it was never mixed with this kind of almost desperate hurt.

He’d been trying. For years, he’d been trying to be someone Harry would approve of. The craving, the longing for his acceptance stayed his hand so many times that now Tom couldn’t count them all — he even allowed that scum Morfin to blackmail him, no matter how maddeningly outrageous the whole situation was, simply because he refused to risk Harry finding out.

He’d made mistakes, but they were minimal in comparison to what he would have done if he hadn’t been trying. And yet Harry still didn’t trust him.

The shame began to curl away, giving way to dejection. Loneliness suddenly felt sharp and uncompromising, and Tom wrapped his hands around himself, watching how Harry’s head snapped up.

“She won’t wake,” a voice said. It was soft but cold, so it took a moment for Tom to recognise it. His eyes quickly moved towards one of the pillars, and something in him shuddered from what he saw.

It was like watching his reflection in someone else’s dream. Something was wrong with the boy he was looking at, and it wasn’t just about the fact that his physical contours were blurred, as if he was being held together by magic alone.

No, he was simply different. He didn’t have the splendour Tom prided himself on. He was thinner and hollow-cheeked; his clothes, while neat, came from some cheap store Tom would have never stepped into. He was but a shadow with empty vicious eyes and greed that swarmed around him in a cloud — greed Tom wasn’t sure he could relate to.

He longed for things. He longed for Harry. But even from here, he could read the shallowness and the arrogance written all over his twin’s face, and he didn’t like it one bit.

This wasn’t him. This was Tom Riddle. Someone he could have been.

“Are you a ghost?” Harry asked. He was staring at Riddle with such earnestness, like he trusted him entirely and couldn’t see what a hollow shell he was. This was the first time Tom would disappoint him — the first in a long line of failures and betrayals.

“No,” Tom murmured to himself, shaking his head briefly. He couldn’t keep blurring himself and Riddle — that way madness lied. Despite some superficial similarities, they were completely different people. He might have let Harry down, too, but their story was different. This abomination was dead and could never touch it.

“A memory,” Riddle replied. His voice was quiet, but its sinister and bitter undertones were as loud as shouting. “Preserved in a diary for fifty years.”

Tom’s brows furrowed. What? A memory? That must have been some ritual. Why would he condemn himself to this kind of existence? To give Voldemort more power? Maybe Voldemort had managed to subdue his will and make him into a brainless soldier somehow. This was more plausible than any version of him feeling such loyalty to some monster that he would follow him blindly and sacrifice his life force for him.

How did one become a memory in the first place? Even Tom with his knowledge about all possible forms of dark arts couldn’t figure it out.

Riddle burst into an animated, mostly one-sided conversation, and several minutes later, Tom had to admit that listening to his own voice was surprisingly challenging. Riddle’s arrogance was distorting his words; his excitement over successfully breaking an 11-year-old girl was embarrassing — Tom had felt less enthusiastic when he killed Charlus, and that happened back when he was a child himself. His first impression had been accurate: Riddle was worlds away from him. He was stupid, and Tom would have never believed it if he wasn’t witnessing it with his own eyes.

“I have been waiting for you to appear since we arrived here,” Riddle said pleasantly. His eyes were fixed on Harry in an intense, hungry way — and well, they did have something in common, after all. “I knew you’d come. I have many questions for you, Harry Potter.”

“Like what?” Harry spat angrily. He didn’t look intimidated in the slightest — his anger and righteousness made him appear taller, and his blazing eyes were furious enough to stop anyone in their tracks.

“How is it that you, a skinny boy with no extraordinary magical talent, managed to defeat the greatest wizard of all time?” Riddle wondered. The pleasant notes were disappearing again under the piles of bitterness and odd envy. “How did you escape with nothing but a scar while Lord Voldemort’s powers were destroyed?”

By the end of it, a red gleam entered his eyes. It looked unnatural enough for Tom to make an instinctive step towards Harry.

This was unnerving. Magic was one thing, but what would turn his eyes — Riddle’s eyes — red? Humans couldn’t do that, it went against all laws of nature. Unless… Unless Riddle wasn’t human.

If so, what was he?

“Why do you care how I escaped?” Harry asked slowly. His own gaze was narrowed in a dawning realisation that Tom couldn’t decipher. Did Harry have a theory? How could he — he was only twelve. “Voldemort was after your time.”

Riddle smirked at him, looking almost giddy, and Tom had to amend his opinion. This impostor wasn’t simply stupid, he was crazy. He grew excited over irrelevant things and reacted inappropriately to every logical question Harry asked.

“Voldemort,” he uttered, “is my past, present, and future, Harry Potter.”

Pulling a wand out of his pocket, he slashed the air with it, writing three rapid words.

Tom Marvolo Riddle

Tom studied them, his stare lingering on “Marvolo.” Something about it stood out. Something was strangely familiar.

Before he could follow the clues, Riddle waved the wand again, rearranging the letters. The syllables shifted and clung to each other briefly before assuming their designated places.

I Am Lord Voldemort

His mind went utterly blank. Time stopped. The existence of the world lost its meaning. Tom stared at these words, re-reading them again, and again, and again.

I Am Lord Voldemort.

Tom Riddle. Voldemort.

He was Voldemort.

He was Voldemort. All this time, he was watching himself, and he didn’t even realise this.

The bottom dropped out of his stomach. Tom recoiled from the damning words so violently that he lost his balance and collapsed onto the wet floor. His body didn’t feel the impact — it couldn’t, he didn’t even have it here, but it still burned, it still groaned and shuddered, as if the weight of his mind and his feelings was too much for it to bear.

“It can’t be,” he tried to speak. No words reached his ears, so he did it again. “It’s not possible. I’m not him.”

Still nothing.

Acid burned at the back of his throat. His stomach contorted in pained shock, and then the terrible screaming something filled his ears, crawling in them until it was the only sound they could perceive. It was violent and shredding — it echoed in his very bones.

He was Voldemort. All along, he was Voldemort. He’d killed Harry’s parents. He tried to kill Harry. He made so many Horcruxes that he had gone insane, losing his mind along with his powers, losing the respect of his followers, leaving only fear in its place.

He wasn’t the right hand of Harry’s nemesis. He was his nemesis. Harry had spent his entire first life hating and fearing him — he had single-handedly ruined Harry’s existence so thoroughly that Harry was forced to escape into the past. To accept guardianship over someone who tortured and destroyed him.

An icy fist closed around his lungs, clawing and squeezing the remains of air out of them. Tom gasped, his body jerking in odd abrupt movements that he had no control over. The next second, the contours of the Chamber of Secrets faded, melting back into Harry’s bedroom. The phantoms of the past were gone — they stayed trapped in the Pensieve, but their terrible echoes remained with Tom. They latched onto his mind with hungry vengeance, throwing an image after an image of the pictures he had seen when he was first watching Harry’s memories.

It didn’t matter then. Those pictures were just that — the images of a monster he didn’t know and had no direct relationship with. But recalling them now and putting his own face onto them��

His mind rebelled. Tom pressed his hands to his ears, trying to silence the screaming, but it kept getting louder. It hurled accusations and mockeries, painted every crime he committed, every time he hurt Harry and raised his wand against him.

There was no silencing something like this. The only thing Tom could do was outcry it, so he screamed, too.

He found that he couldn’t stop.

***

That night, he added just one sentence to his letter.

Why would you love me?

***

The sleep didn’t come. The desire to tear into his skin and shred it until physical pain remained the only sensation was strong, but every time Tom raised his wand or his hands, he stopped.

He wanted to hurt himself. He didn’t want to hurt Harry.

It was easier before. In Harry’s absence, for a long time, he’d been putting his own hurt above everything, even above Harry himself; he’d marred his skin without care, wanting, needing acknowledgement.

But he couldn’t do it now. The thought of leaving even a small scratch on Harry made him sick.

That cursed ritual.

Tom managed to stay physically intact throughout the night, yet he spent it curled into a tight ball, shaking under the pressure of ache and grief and emotions he couldn’t identify. There were so many of them — they were crowding his chest, interfering with his heart, making him feel like he was about to explode with them.

When the morning came and nothing changed, Tom made himself get up. He cooked breakfast, then stared at it silently, knowing that he could never eat it without vomiting it back.

He needed… something. Something comforting. Harry wouldn’t return; Harry’s blanket and things no longer produced the same soothing effect, so it had to be something new.

If he could capture Harry’s Patronus into some vial… if he could consume the letters Harry had written him…

The letters. He still had the letters. They were the last thing he’d gotten from Harry — they had his personality, his handwriting; they had a whole part of him because Tom could easily trace the story of their creation. From the pressure Harry had applied to a quill in different instances, it was evident where he hesitated, where he took a break, where he got anxious or passionate. It was the closest thing to him Tom had in his possession now.

Without thinking further, he returned to the bedroom and grabbed the last letter. His eyes immediately zeroed in on three specific half-lines.

…I’m going to keep explaining until you do.

…I’ve promised you’ll always be my priority.

…I might consider returning.

A promise of future communication.

The use of future tense.

Future possibility.

This was evidence. Whatever Tom was, Harry didn’t give up on him. Harry still loved him. He might still return.

Tom closed his eyes, nuzzling into the letter, and finally, for the first time in hours, the ache lessened. The sick feeling grew dimmer, too, and he felt solid and grounded again. When he pulled back, his gaze dropped to another passage.

Watch those memories. Don’t contact me until you do.

Tom pressed his lips to these lines, trying to breathe them in, feeling how their rough surface scratched his mouth.

Permission to contact Harry. He still had it. He was simply supposed to meet Harry’s condition.

That meant that he had to return to the Pensieve. The sooner he was done, the closer to Harry he could feel again.

Carefully, Tom folded the letter and put it in his pocket. If things got bad again, he could always touch it and remind himself of the future.

The memories weren’t a punishment. They were a chance to improve things.

Tom couldn’t really be certain, but he preferred to cling to this notion.

This made things easier at least to a small degree.

***

He chose to return to the start of the memory. Silently, he watched his shadow speak with Harry, lingered on how it hissed the words of self-admiration and hung onto its useless pride.

“I fashioned myself a new name,” Riddle boasted breathlessly, “a name I knew wizards everywhere would one day fear to speak, when I had become the greatest sorcerer in the world!”

“You are not,” Harry said quietly. Despite his age, his resolution was steely, and if Tom had to choose whom he admired more at this moment... it wouldn’t even be a competition.

“Not what?” Riddle snapped. Insecurity and rage were twisting his ghostly face — it was a pitiful display. If the words of a 12-year-old boy had the power to affect him, then he had not only failed at greatness, he was also a failure of a sorcerer.

“Sorry to disappoint you and all that, but the greatest wizard in the world is Albus Dumbledore,” Harry said hotly. “Everyone says so!”

The reasoning was… like that of a child. Even though his stomach was clenched into a tight knot, Tom smiled a little, suddenly overcome with a rush of gentleness and fondness for this particular version of Harry.

He was trusting. He was pure in a way that even his Harry wasn’t — he didn’t see death and destruction yet; he was not betrayed by Dumbledore.

He was not betrayed by Tom.

The smile disappeared, leaving Tom hollow.

When Dumbledore’s phoenix burst into the Chamber, carrying the Sorting Hat, Riddle laughed, and Tom laughed with him — only his laughter was hysterical because all pieces in his head suddenly clicked into one clear picture.

Dumbledore. Of course. Of course it was Dumbledore’s plan all along, how did he not see this from the start?

Harry hadn’t sneaked into the Chamber secretly — Dumbledore allowed him to. Dumbledore was likely watching him even now, invisible, waiting for the outcome.

Harry was a Horcrux, and Horcruxes could be destroyed with basilisk’s venom.

This was a test. Dumbledore wanted to see if he could get rid of the Horcrux inside Harry without necessarily killing him. The Hat was here to give Harry the Sword — with his mindless bravery, it was not a surprise that he could pull it out. The phoenix was here to decrease the chances of Harry dying and to heal him after he was stabbed.

Clever. And enraging. Because for Dumbledore, Harry was a game piece. For Tom, he was the world.

He would have let Voldemort live for a thousand of years. He would have allowed him to destroy this universe until nothing was left if it meant he could keep Harry safe. Dumbledore would never prioritise one over a billion, and for that, Tom hated him.

“Kill him,” Riddle hissed. The words sent a jolt of automatic panic through him, and Tom moved between Harry and the basilisk before he could think rationally about it.

The snake was magnificent, there was no denying it. Even the first time, when he’d been distracted to the point of ignorance, he stopped to watch it because it was breath-taking in every way.

There was only one drawback. It wanted to kill Harry, and it meant that Tom would see it destroyed.

Harry broke into a run with his eyes shut. He managed to half-cross the room when he tripped and crashed down, his chin colliding with the cold stone. The sound of it launched Tom into immediate action again before he could stop his stupid feet.

Feeling this protective for such an extended period of time was exhausting. His heart kept hammering relentlessly and his hands were itching with magic, needing to pour it somewhere to protect Harry and to make sure he never got hurt again. How could anyone live in such a state?

The basilisk roared from pain when Dumbledore’s phoenix attacked it. Its tail whipped across the floor, approaching Harry with deadly speed, and Tom’s heart stopped. It stumbled forwards again only when Harry ducked, crouching, dirty and bloodied but with determination still burning brightly on his face. He was beautiful and desperate, and Tom would have cradled him in his arms if he could touch him.

A gust of wind sent the Hat right in Harry’s face. He grabbed it, put it onto his head, and threw himself to the side when the basilisk’s tail snapped forward again, almost crushing him into nothingness.

This was all strategic. It wasn’t a coincidence that the phoenix appeared immediately after Harry pledged his loyalty to Dumbledore. This was training — training in blind devotion, in recklessness, in self-sacrifice. And Harry had no idea.

At least this Harry didn’t. The adult version knew everything yet he still seemed to hold deep respect for Dumbledore.

Perhaps some training was too ingrained to ever fade from one’s core. This explained… almost everything about Harry. If Tom got another chance to make things right, he would dedicate himself entirely to removing these suicidal ideas from his head once and for all.

Harry pulled out the Sword from the Hat. He spent only a second on contemplating it — the next one, he was already standing and pointing it at the basilisk.

Nothing about this picture was palatable. The sword was too heavy for a child his size: Harry was struggling with it, and the basilisk kept thrashing, hitting everything in sight. How he survived was a matter of miracle. If he had died… If he’d died, this would be it. Tom would never be the person he was now. He would be limited to a memory in his own diary, to a ruin incapable of human thought. He would never get his second chance, and the life as he knew it would never exist.

Terror that rolled through him could only be rivalled by the sheer horror of witnessing the basilisk’s fang separate itself from its mouth and plunge into Harry’s arm. Static electricity burned somewhere above his elbow in a phantom sensation of pain Harry had to be experiencing. It wasn’t real, but Tom’s breathing still quickened, and his fingers wrapped around his arm convulsively.

He couldn’t tell if the fang fell out because Harry had aimed his Sword there or if it was Dumbledore again. Either way, Harry was dying, and even though Tom knew he’d survive, watching this was no less excruciating.

“Fawkes,” Harry murmured hoarsely. His eyes were fluttering shut in an image that came straight from Tom’s worst nightmares. “You were fantastic, Fawkes.”

Giving praise to an impervious bird when life was bleeding out of him. Harry was insane. He was the Harry — his Harry. It was no wonder that an overwhelming longing for him had been and was going to be Tom’s undoing in every life he lived.

“You’re dead, Harry Potter,” Riddle crowed, and Tom turned to face him with a snarl.

He hated this version of himself. Hated him. It was just a shard of him, dull and shallow, and if this underwhelming thing was ever his future, he would have preferred death.

Riddle wasn’t a powerful wizard. Even now, when faced with a dying wandless boy, he was too wary of making his own move. He let the basilisk be his weapon; he was watching Harry die and not intervening because he was intimidated.

Though perhaps it made sense. Maybe even Riddle could see Harry’s brilliance despite his narrow-mindedness — maybe, beneath the hatred and the fear, he was fascinated. Tom knew he would be.

Harry might not have much power, and he certainly didn’t at the age of twelve, but he still managed something no other wizard had tried. He’d defeated a giant basilisk with a sword; his agility was almost otherworldly as he twisted, crouched, and ducked from the heavy blows.

This was worthy of admiration. Even Riddle couldn’t be that blind so as to miss it.

When the phoenix healed Harry, Riddle didn’t cry out in alarm or anger like Tom might have expected him to. Instead, his face shifted between different conflicting expressions, and his eyes regained the hungry glint Tom found intimately familiar.

“It makes no difference,” Riddle spoke confidently, with only the tiniest twitch of uncertainty underneath. “In fact, I prefer it this way. Just you and me, Harry Potter... you and me.”

The surprising jealousy raised its ugly head, making Tom tense. He didn’t know in what way his shadow meant these words — he didn’t like to think about it either. It didn’t matter any way because there would never be such thing as Riddle and Harry, not until Harry came back to the past and gave the real Tom a chance at rebirth.

Without answering, Harry stabbed the diary with the fang, his eyes glistening with fevered hatred. Even Riddle’s piercing scream didn’t shake Tom the way this look had. He barely heard a sound through the sudden roaring in his ears, the sudden realisation that this was Harry’s first and last meeting with an actual Tom Riddle. Voldemort was a monstrosity with a face Tom refused to claim, but physically, Riddle was him.

How did Harry feel, watching him grow up? Had he ever looked at him and seen Riddle from the Chamber of Secrets? How could the feeling of love prevail over the feeling of hatred the 12-year-old Harry was currently wearing?

Tom turned away, unable to keep looking. His throat was dry, and as his knees started to shake, threatening to buckle right under him, he thrust his hand into his pocket, gripping the letter there.

In some other world, this moment had been Riddle’s end. But it wouldn’t be his.

He could do better. He would do better.

He’d finish watching these memories, he’d complete his letter to Harry, and then he’d start working. Harry would never look at him like he had at Riddle. In years, the memories of the Chamber of Secrets would fade; Riddle would become a shadow of a shadow, and Tom’s image would outshine him. It would take precedence in Harry’s mind.

This determination washed away the worms of doubts and self-hatred. When the new wave of memories swept him along, Tom felt prepared to face them.

#my fics #tomarry

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imagesofthegreatgull · 4 years

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Hybrid Rainbow

Joy has always been a rare and precious commodity. I would argue, though, that in the developed world (Wherever, exactly, that is), it has become somewhat less rare in recent times, as standards of living and education continue to go up. That’s an absurdly privileged thing to say, I realize, but I’m trying to start this thing as evenhandedly as I can. I understand about suffering and poverty; I’m reading A Tree Grows In Brooklyn right now, even! Okay, saying we’re closer now than ever to utopia is going to smack of ignorance no matter how you phrase it, but it also strikes me as undeniably true, in the grand scheme of things. I think most people--aside from the fascists--would refuse a one-way trip in a time machine to any previous era, or at the very least, would recognize that it wouldn’t improve much of anything for them. As unruly as our age is, it’s still probably the best one we’ve gotten thus far, and as the boot-heel of oppression starts to ever so slowly ease up its pressure on the necks of the long-suffering masses, the question has begun to enter into the collective consciousness: what is to be done with joy when it begins to fall, unbidden, into your life with something like abundance? What is to be done if moments of joy no longer must be pried with great effort and sacrifice from the rockface of life, but lie strewn liberally throughout our days, needing only the will and lack of embarrassment to seize them?

Thus far, the latter-day generations have faced up to this problem with decidedly mixed success. The idea that expecting anything other than the very worst leaves one vulnerable to the universe’s cruel whims has been stamped upon the human brain for centuries, and has left many sadly unable to recognize their own privilege (Which, by the way, is a big part of why a whole lotta white folks refuse to admit they have it better than anyone else and continue to dig their heels in against progress because to them it looks like cutting in line). It is still widely accepted that constantly finding joy and peace and purpose in one’s own life is the purview of children and children alone, that it is a naivete to be grown out of. We have the impulse always within us to be hard, to be warlike, to show the world that we’re not weak and frivolous but monsters to be feared, without emotions to be appealed to or ideals to be fallen short of.

Remedying this problem has turned out to be one of the primary functions of counterculture. If it is often unhelpful to simply look at the entire value system of one’s parents and say “Fuck that”, as it tends to foster a rather negative self-definition, still, if part of that value system is a deeply entrenched distrust of happiness, “Fuck that” may be exactly the response called for. The beauty of “Fuck that” is that it leaps past the slow loss of faith in something and arrives immediately at a flat rejection of it, and since much of the history of civilization has been bound up with blind faith in arbitrary and harmful things, the ability and the courage to flatly reject something, to give it no credit for however widely accepted it is but to dismiss it as bullshit from the ground up, is a step forward in human consciousness tantamount to the reinvention of the wheel.

The great irony of the end of the sixties is that all the hippies were miserable for no reason: they won. Rock n’ roll did change the world, it just didn’t immediately transform it on every level into an unrecognizable nirvana. For all the apparent emptiness of its utopian dreams, the basic thrust of the thing worked out just fine: that particular cat will never be put back into its bag, and those ideas are now out in the ether forever, always waiting for someone to find them and be inspired to change their own life and the lives of those around them for the better. The same goes for the punk rock revolution a few years later: they may not have brought the bastards down, but they did successfully bring personal liberation to a lot of people, and poured exactly as much gas on the fires of populism as they intended to. Culture, and in particular art and in particular music, cannot, unassisted, change the world, but it can change your world, and has been changing small worlds all over the frigging place at least since those mop-topped Brits set foot on American shores and probably since Johnny B. Goode learned to play guitar just like a-ringin’ a bell.

The thread can get lost, however. Culture is always a reflection of the people, and the people still spend a lot of their time bored, frustrated, and terrified of letting on that they have feelings about stuff. Young people especially, formerly the eternal pirate crew waving high the flags of “Liberty” and “Up Yours”, in recent times have often capitulated and resigned themselves to no more than a few stray moments of fun pilfered from the fortresses of the almighty Money Man-Kings, usually in the form of drugs, sex, and reckless self-endangerment. The cost of the hippies and the punks giving up their battles is that the counterculture lost its intellectual leadership, at least until the resurgence in political literacy in the 2010s. In the wasteland following the 70s, there were no John Lennons or Joe Strummers to look to for guidance; even the people who were elected to speak for their generation seemed adamant that there was fuck-all they could really say. Yeah, it’s nice to know that someone else feels stupid and contagious, but that’s not really a direction, is it? The generation-defining message Kurt Cobain and his peers sent out was “We’re all way too fucked up to do anything about anything”, and that introspective moodiness pervaded American underground rock music from the invention of hardcore at least all the way up to the moment Craig Finn watched The Last Waltz with Tad Kubler and said “Why aren’t there bands like this anymore?” and set out with rest of the Steadies in tow to remind everyone that music can save your immortal soul and that hey, that Springsteen guy was really onto something, headband and all, and together they all successfully ushered in the New Uncool and now we’ve got Patrick Stickles wailing that “If the weather’s as bad as the weatherman says, we’re in for a real mean storm!” and Brian Fallon admitting “I always kinda sorta wished I looked like Elvis” and everything’s great, except it’s not, everything’s fucked, but rock n’ roll is here to stay, come inside now it’s okay, and I’ll shake you, ooo-ooo-ooo.

The point of all this is my belief that even with the responsibility rock music has to provide cathartic outlets for dissatisfaction, is has an equal or greater responsibility to provide heroes. I think it’s time we all got over pretending that we’re better than the need for heroes, because we all insist on having them anyway, imperfect roses by any other name, and we’d do a hell of a lot better selecting them if we just admitted what we were after. We don’t just want particularly talented comrades, we want King Arthur, Robin Hood, Superman, Malcolm Reynolds. Damn it all, they don’t need to be perfect, they don’t even need to be all that great really, and yeah, Arthur dies, and Robin never gets Prince John, and Superman can’t save everyone, and the war’s over, we’re all just folk now, and John Lennon beat women and Van Morrison is a grumpy old fart and John Lydon’s a disgrace, but it’s the faith that counts. The faith that there’s something greater than ourselves that some people are more keyed into than others, and that whatever they can relay from that other side is what’ll see us through. All the best prophets are madmen, and madmen aren’t always romantic fools; sometimes they hurt people, or fail at crucial moments due to a compulsion they can’t control. Let he who is without sin etcetera, right? Why not cast aside realism and sincerely believe in something or someone, huh?

I believe in the Pillows. I don’t know hardly anything about them; my expertise of Japanese culture and history extends to the anime I’ve seen and that “History of Japan” YouTube video that made the rounds a while back. I can’t locate them within the Japanese music scene; all their western influences seem obvious to me, and the rest I know nothing about. They’re the only rock band from their country I’ve listened to any great amount of, I don’t speak the language they mostly sing in, I don’t even know their career very well. The particulars of any experiences they might have had that motivated them to make the art they make are not ones I could possibly share in, so, saying that I “Relate” to their work sounds a little preposterous. They ought to be a novelty to me, a band that clearly likes a lot of the same bands I do despite hailing from a foreign shore, marrying that shared music taste with a cultural identity I have nothing to do with, a small, nice upswing of globalism pleasing to my sense of universalism but not having any kind of quantifiable impact on me.

Yet I, like a good many other westerners, believe in the Pillows. I’m a little buster, and my eyes just watered as I wrote that. In fact, it’s likely because of the barriers of language and culture that exist between us that my belief in the Pillows is so strong. Pete Townshend, someone else I believe in, once opened a show by saying “You are very far away...but we will fucking reach you”, and though the Pillows are both geographically (At the moment) and culturally miles away from me, Lord strike me down if they don’t fucking reach me. They reach me in a way many of their American college rock peers, many of their biggest influences in fact, never have. Dinosaur Jr, Bob Mould, Sonic Youth, the Pixies, Nirvana--all these artists speak directly to the American adolescent experience, but though they have all moved me to one degree or another, none of them have produced a body of work I can so readily see myself in as that of the Pillows. Maybe it is the novelty of it, maybe I’m fooling myself and it is just my sense of universalism carrying me away, but there’s something I hear in the Pillows that I don’t hear in those bands, and though the obvious candidate for that thing would be the foreign tongue the majority of the lyrics are written in, when it comes down to it, I think that thing is joy.

Joy, to me, is the possibility glimpsed by rock n’ roll. Not hedonistic pleasure, not a sadistic glee over the outrage of authority figures, but real, true, open-hearted, “Freude, schöner Götterfunken/Tochter aus Elysium”--type joy. Buddy Holly had joy. The Beatles, The Who, the pre-fall Rod Stewart, they had joy. Springsteen’s got joy to spare. Those people have such profound love for their art and their audience that just the continual recognition of the fact that they have a guitar in their hands and they’re being allowed to play it is enough to make them ecstatic, and whenever they want to actually express something serious they have to get themselves under control to do it. Yet, whether it’s the unfashionability of those utopian dreams, or the simple fact that rock music has become accepted by mainstream culture and is now a commonplace, unremarkable thing, but half the people who have picked up an electric guitar for the past few decades don’t seem all that excited about it. From Kim Gordon snarling about how people go down to the store to buy some more and more and more and more, to Thom Yorke moaning about how he’s let down and hanging around, crushed like a bug in the ground, even up to Courtney Barnett asking how’s that for first impressions, this place seems depressing, it’s not really a given anymore, if it ever was, that people who make rock music are very joyful in what they do.

Of course, I’m not demanding that our artists be empty-headed fluff-factories; far from it. The Pillows write sad songs and angry songs same as everybody else. But the important thing is this: every song the Pillows play is played with an exuberance and abandon that is immediately striking, regardless of the emotional content of each song. Channelling that kind of revelry into rock music is both to my mind the initial purpose of the genre in the first place and something which has become so rare as to be remarkable. A veneer of detached cool, a howling ferocity, a whimpering woundedness--these have become the hallmarks of American rock music, and they are nowhere to be found in the Pillows.

At the same time, the Pillows are the very antithesis of artlessness. Joy of the caliber they deal in is more commonly found in folky rave-ups, a lack of musicianship giving way to trancelike festivity. But the Pillows are skilled song craftsmen like few others; their sound has evolved throughout the years, but they tend to settle in the neighborhood of power-pop, abounding in glorious hooks and surprising structures. A hundred unnecessary, perfect touches seem to exist in every song; a pause, a solo, a bassline, all deftly elevating the song into a perfect expression of something sublime, something that always--always--takes ahold of the musicians themselves and imbues their performances with power and purpose the likes of which most little busters can only dream of feeling. It should be testament enough to their brilliance that upon first listen to a song I never know what most of the lyrics mean, but whenever I look up a translation, they always turn out to be exactly what I felt they must be; their songs are so musically communicative that they all but lack the need for lyrics.

This dual nature is why I believe in the Pillows: by so utterly failing to neglect both the highest possibilities of musical composition as an unparalleled tool for capturing emotional nuance and the unrestrained id-like rush that is the province of rock n’ roll, they successfully attain the lofty realm that is--or ought to be--the goal of music in the first place. Never once is there a hint of straying into the realm of primitivism nor into overthought seriousness, and instead they locate themselves somehow exactly center on the scale between punk and prog, lacking the weaknesses and gaining the strengths of both. They make rock whole again by finally disproving the tenet initially laid out by their heroes, your heroes, and mine, The Beatles: the notion that growing up means having less fun. The viscerally exciting early work of The Beatles lacks any of the depth and vision displayed by their later records, but those records are so carefully and expertly crafted that they tend to lose spontaneity, and constantly second-guess themselves where the juvenilia they followed forged unselfconsciously ahead. That legendary career path has laid out a false dichotomy that every proceeding generation of kids with guitars has chosen between, save for the few who could see past it, the ones who heard the wildness in “Revolution” and the wisdom in “Twist and Shout” and realized that they were of a piece, were one and the same, not to be chosen between but embraced fully. Pete Townshend. Bruce Springsteen. Joe Strummer. David Byrne. Paul Westerberg. The Pillows. The real heroes are not those who champion one side or another but fight all their lives for peace between them, knowing that we have not yet begun to imagine what could be accomplished if that were made possible.

Just as they bypass the divide between what Patrick Stickles termed the Apollonian and Dionysian tendencies of rock (I prefer to think of the usual battle as being between the Dionysians and the Athenians, with the true devotees of Apollo being most of those heroes I keep referring to, except Dylan, who might be a Hermesian), so too do the Pillows bypass the Pacific frigging ocean. And the Atlantic, to boot. Their music quotes the Pixies and The Beatles directly, and obviously owes much to Nirvana and all their college rock predecessors who spent the entire 80s desperately stacking themselves until the doomed power trio could finally vault over the wall. Their first record is practically a tribute to XTC. They do speak a lot of English, too. I’m informed that much of western culture is seen as the epitome of coolness in Japan, which might explain their obsession with Baseball, and apparently sprinkling a bit of the Saxon tongue into the mix is far from uncommon in the music scene(s). Regardless, there is something ineffably touching to a distant fan in a foreign land about hearing Sawao Yamanaka spit “No surrender!” or exclaim “Just runner’s high!” It looks from here like a show of mutual effort to understand me as much as I’m trying to understand them. They’re generous enough to have already walked to the middle where they’re asking me to meet them, a middle where it doesn’t matter that I don’t have a suffix attached to my name or that they don’t wear shoes in houses. The invisible continent that all forward-thinking and sensitive people come to long for is where the Pillows are broadcasting from, because they’ve realized that its golden shores and spiraling cities are attainable. They’re attainable with joy, with the fundamentally rebellious act of refusing to let the fascists bring down even your globdamn day, because who the hell gave them that power other than us? I know enough about Japan and America to know that either one accusing the other of being imperialist and socially conservative to a fault is a fucking joke, and to know that we’ve done a lot more wrong to them than they’ll ever do to us and the presence of the Pillows amounts to a “We forgive you”, not an “I’m sorry”. Having watched a decent amount of anime, which is basically the result of Japan’s mind being blown by western media and then proceeding to show their love by often almost inadvertently surpassing their inspirations, I know that the only way to save our respective national souls and everybody else’s too is to put our knuckles down, have Jesus and Buddha shake hands like Kerouac tried to explain that they would anyway, and embrace each other’s dreams and passions and adopt them into our own.

It takes better people to inhabit that better world, and in case that sounds like fascist talk, I mean we’ve got to do better, not be better. It’s no physical imperfection that holds us back, nor a mental imperfection exactly, as we all have our own neuroses and if we expunge those then we’ll be kissing art and lot of other vital stuff goodbye. No, it’s our discomfort with ourselves, our world, our neighbors, our aliens, that keep us from seeing that crazy sunshine. If we can’t even acknowledge the greatness around us, that surplus of joy I mentioned a while back that we just seem to have no idea what to do with, then we have no hope of ever achieving further greatness, of ever quelling man’s inhumanity to man down to an inevitable fringe rather than the basic order of the world.

There was always more to do

Than just eat and work and screw

But now that there’s time at last to do those things, we’re still afraid to, afraid that we’ll come up empty, that the search for fulfillment leads only to disappointment, better to hang back and play it safe, better not to risk becoming one of those people I shake my head at and pity and will secretly envy until I die. It’s a new world, and we must learn to be new people. I believe in the Pillows because I believe they make excellent models for that new kind of person. The way they behave in the studio and on the stage is the way people behave when they’re truly free, and we’ve all been set free already or will be soon, so if we’re going to try and learn what the fuck is next from anyone, I think we might as well learn from the Pillows. At least, that’s one of the places we could get that insight. There’s a lot of art and a lot of philosophy and political theory to sift through to in order to put together a workable 21st century identity, and the Pillows are hardly the only people to have begun making the leap. But because of a silly thing like the size of the earth, the infinitesimal size of the earth even compared to the distance between us and the next rock we’re gonna try and get to, not everybody is getting their particular brand of free thought and action, and I happen to think that’s regrettable, and it’s my will as a free individual to rectify it as much as I can.

Writing about music really is worthless, isn’t it? I haven’t said jackshit about what the Pillows actually do other than to vaguely qualify their genre and temperament, and the only more useless thing I could do than not describing their songs would be to describe their songs. If you don’t hear the bracing weightlessness in “Blues Drive Monster”, or the aching nostalgia in “Patricia”, or the soul-bearing cry in “Hybrid Rainbow” then nothing I could write about those would be more effective than “Little Busters is a really good album.” The better primer might be Happy Bivouac, from a few years later; it has the melancholic rush of “Last Dinosaur”, the ascended teenybopper “Whoa, whoa, yeah” chorus in “Backseat Dog”, and the intro that should make it obvious immediately that you’re listening to one of the best songs ever recorded which opens “Funny Bunny”. Those two, Runners High, and Please, Mr. Lostman are the classic era, selections from the former three immortalized in their biggest claim to western fame, the FLCL soundtrack, a brilliant use of their music that could warrant an equally long piece. Before and after those four are periods of experimentation and discovery equally worth your time, not all of which I’m familiar with yet. See, now I’m just an incomplete Wikipedia article; it’d be equally worthless to expound upon the individual bandmates, on the pure yawp of Yamanaka’s vocals, on the passionate drumming of Yoshiaki Manabe and the supernaturally faultless lead guitar of Shinichiro Sato, or the contribution of founding bassist Kenji Ueda, which was so valued by the others that when he left he was never officially replaced (They’re so sweet). I’m not here to write an advertisement or a press-release, I don’t really even know why I’m here writing this, but I know that I believe in the Pillows, that they’re important, and that people should write about them. I’m being the change I want to see in the world, get it? That’s all we can be asked to do.

It occurs to me that people believed in Harvey Dent too, and that didn’t turn out so well. Hell, let’s leave the comic book pages behind, people believe in Donald Trump, they think he’s a hero, and that’s all going down in flames as I write this. Having heroes can be dangerous, but I still believe it’s not as dangerous as not having heroes. “Lesser of two evils” sounds an awful lot like one of those false dichotomies between fun and intelligence or between misery and foolishness I mentioned earlier, so, let’s call it a qualified good. I’m not much of a responsible world-citizen if my only effort towards bringing the planet together is spinning some sweet Japanese alt-rock tunes and bragging about how open-minded I am, but if I do ever end up doing anyone any good, then I’d consider it paying forward the good done to me by the Pillows, among others. They helped me form my identity as an artist (Read: functional human being) and they made my adolescence a lot easier. Actually, that’s a lie: my adolescence was (And continues to be) pretty easy already, and the Pillows reassured me that I wasn’t avoiding reality by feeling that. While American bands sang about the downsides of being a mallrat or a non-mallrat, the Pillows offered a vision of teenagedome much like my own, one that was grandly romantic, in which suffering wasn’t a cosmic stupidity but a trial with pathos and merit, and joy was not an occasional indulgence but a constant presence, whether it was lived in or lost and needing recovery.

That’s the old idea of youth, the youth of John Keats, the youth that makes the old miss it, makes it required that we explain to them that it’s still there, it never left, it’s a dream, a momentary affirmation, an attitude, a muttered curse word. So many of my peers, now no longer engaged in a constant race to stay out of the grave as their ancestors were, seemed intent on beating each other into their tombs, as if reaching walking death before their parents was the only way to outgrow them. There’s so much life just lying around and it’s just plain wasteful to let it lie in the sun and rust in the rain. There’s space enough to stretch, to not keep who you are awkwardly curled up inside yourself, to breathe the air and taste the wine and dig the brains of your fellow travelers in this loosely-defined circus. I found that space in the Pillows, having often suspected it was there, and while everyone is going to find that space in their own way--or not, still, tragically not--I have to think that experience was due in part to some innate and unique quality of the music itself, not just a complimentary sensibility contained within myself. The Pillows are free, and that makes them freeing, it’s easy as that. Their liberation is plain as day; it rings in every chord, every snare-hit, every harmony; it’s up to us ascertain what we can do in our own limited capacity to hoist ourselves up to their level and give some other folks a boost along the way and a hand to grab afterwards. It’s the gift that art gives us, and the Pillows just give it more freely than most is all, which is why I think the suggestion to listen to them is more than just a solid recommendation. Like the insistence on listening to The Beatles, or The Clash, or any of the others, it’s a plea to save your soul, to learn the language of tomorrow and drink the lifeblood of peace and love and piss and vinegar, or else you’ll be lost, lost, lost.

Can you feel? Can you feel that hybrid rainbow?

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pleasurextreasure · 6 years

Text

❜Moment in Time (pt. 1/?)

genre: yoongi x reader, angst, fluff, university!au

word count: 3k

warnings: cute reader tbh

prompt: heartbroken yoongi can’t get over an ended relationship. until he meets you does he begin to feel what love is again

a/n: I freaking love Min Yoongi okay ➵admin kiki

I miss you. I miss you. I miss you.

It’s the only thing that runs through his mind whenever he looks down at the polaroid in his hand. Inside the white bordered frame is a picture of him and her. The him who is in the picture contrasts to the him now. He’s all smiles, striking the dumbest pose topped off with a peace sign high in the air. Her pose is no different. Their outfits are similar, and the two tiny ponytails on his head matches her long, frizzy ones. It was ‘twins’ day’ during their welcoming week of being First Year university students. That was back when times were good. When he was happier, and she was the reason for it.

This picture was well over two years old, yet it was still in good condition, save for the small crinkle at the corner due to it always being carried around in his wallet. He couldn’t find a good enough reason as to why he still has it other than the fact that he missed her. Namjoon says it’s a waste to keep it. But he thinks differently. It was hard for him to throw the memories of her away when there were approximately two years, eight months, and fourteen days that taunted him every day. How could someone so easily forget the one thing that made them feel so full of life and motivated them to keep going?

He catches himself gripping the picture tightly and relaxes his fingers, sighing in the process. He gently tucks the polaroid back into his wallet, into the crevice behind the plastic holder for his license and shoves his wallet back into his pocket. He grabs his phone, pressing the power button to look at the time. He notices a notification from Jimin and unlocks his phone to answer the younger one.

From: Jimin P

Boys & I are going to

Delta Pi Sigma’s tonight…

You in?

That’s right, it was Friday. Lately, the days have been blurring by despite his constant knowledge of what the date was. It slipped his mind that another week has ended, and he only had three classes today.

To: Jimin P

I don’t know.

From: Jimin P

Come onnn, you didn’t party with

us last weekend either :(

To: Jimin P

I have a shit load of

assignments to do. The

semester’s kicking my ass.

From: Jimin P

Don’t lie to me?? Namjoon said you

were up for the past two nights

to finish homework to relax over

the weekend or some shit

Curse his roommate and his big mouth that he can never keep shut. Despite it being true he was homework-free for the weekend, it didn’t give him an excuse to go out partying. The last party he went to with his friends and roommate ended badly. He woke up hungover with French fries in his shoes and the stench of alcohol stinging his nostrils with its pungent smell. Was it also worth mentioning he awoke in Jimin’s closet, apparently claiming the night before that he refused to ‘get out of the closet’.

His phone buzzes, again.

From: Jimin P

…Please come?

To: Jimin P What time?

From: Jimin P

:) eight

To: Jimin P

We’ll see.

From: Jimin P

THAT’S MY BOY :’) Tae & I will swing by to grab you and Namjoon after our 5pm.

He’s about to set his phone back down when he vibrates once more, the message’s preview leaves a bitter after taste in his mouth. He doesn’t bother to reply and drops his phone on his ruffled sheets, bringing himself up off the bed to get ready for his afternoon classes.

From: Jimin P

You deserve to be

happy, Yoongi.

∴ ∵ ∴ ∵ ∴ ∵ ∴ ∵ ∴ ∵ ∴ ∵ ∴

The History and Art of Rock n’ Roll had to be the most excruciating, time-consuming, and overall boring class Yoongi has had to take in the three years he’s been here at Seoul University. The class was ridiculously easy but was such a drag that most students struggled to stay awake. As he made his way to the back of the room, and began to take his seat, he was interrupted when someone bumped their backpack into him.

Turning around to see what asshole couldn’t watch where they were going, he was mildly surprised to lock gazes with big, round (y/e/c) eyes that were already looking at him.

“I’m so sorry,” you begin, bowing your head in apology. You offer a polite smile, “These seats are too close to the wall, and I have one too many binders in my bag.”

Yoongi couldn’t help but think of how similar this stranger looked like her, and it made his gut wrench in an unknown way. The hand that gripped the back of his chair tightens as he lets out a forced chuckle.

“I was ready to cuss you out,” he jokes, and you laugh at this. His heart stutters at the sound, something that hasn’t happened for far too many months now. “Anyway, no worries.”

You bob your head in a short nod and show him another smile, this one relaxed. “Thank you.” You begin to shuffle away from him without another word and take the chair two seats away. Yoongi takes note of this.

As soon as the digital clock on Yoongi’s laptop screen switches to ‘12:00’, his professor begins his devastating fifty-minute lecture. He spends his time scrolling through the Yamaha website, window-shopping their selection of electric keyboards and various piano styles. Every so often, he’d catch himself glancing to his left where you were seated, his interest piquing with your appearance.

You currently wore glasses, he assumes it’s to see the chicken-scratch handwriting on the whiteboard. Black hair is pulled to the side in a braid and he takes a few seconds to marvel at the braid type.

“It’s a fishtail braid,” she explained, holding the ends of the braid to give him a better view of the folded strands of hair. His fingers had gently run down the length of her hair, impressed at how talented his girlfriend was.

Yoongi forces himself to push away the memory, not wanting to sink into a pool of self-pity.

“Are you alright?” You, now noticing this guy staring rather intently at you, asks, leaning towards him to keep as quiet as possible.

He looks up at you, startled and embarrassed that you caught him in a moment. “Sorry… I, uh, like your hair. It suites you.”

You brighten at the compliment, much to his surprise. He was expecting an unimpressed look and for you to begin to think of him as a weirdo. A smile that made your eyes crinkle at the corners was the last thing he was expecting to receive. “Thank you.”

The conversation came to an end and you went back to listening to the professor. Throughout the rest of the lecture, despite his willfulness, Yoongi couldn’t help but sneak in a few more glances.

∴ ∵ ∴ ∵ ∴ ∵ ∴ ∵ ∴ ∵ ∴ ∵ ∴

“Who’s ready to par-tay?” Taehyung’s excitement rumbles throughout the dorm room as he barges in, arms flying into the air and allowing the door to swing back into the wall. Jimin follows close behind, looking unamused by the outburst his roommate was making.

“Started without us, didn’t he?” Namjoon asks, and Jimin helplessly shrugs. The older rolls his eyes and looks over at Yoongi, who is battling to put on one of his black hoodies.

“You’re seriously going to wear that?” Jimin criticizes, crossing his arms over his chest for added effect. “Do you own anything that isn’t fifty shades of black?”

“Shut up,” Yoongi snaps as his head pokes through the hoodie’s hole. “I said I would go but I never said I’d dress up for it. Plus, who the hell am I trying to impress?”

“Yeah, sure, alright.” Jimin nods, refusing to bring himself into an argument he’s found himself in one too many times. It was hard to convince his friend that it was time to move on, to let things go, and move on. It pained him to see Yoongi suffer but it was out of his control on just how much of his help was accepted.

The group of friends depart for the party and soon find themselves walking up the steps of the hosting Fraternity house. After going through the usual ‘What’s the password?’ from one of the rushing members (this week’s party password is cheesy Cheetos), and being accepted into the house, Yoongi finds himself feeling suffocated.

There must be around five people per square foot and he doesn’t think that’s even physically possible. But from the number of grinding, dancing, and walking bodies, he begins to believe it as a possibility. He pulls Taehyung to the side, informing him he’ll be at the back of the house then proceeds to do just that.

He fights his way through the crowd – literally fights his way through because no one knows what ‘excuse me’ stands for anymore. He is finally free from the jungle of flailing limbs and breathes in deeply when he finds a less populated area out on the patio. He allows himself to sink into the cushioned seats of the swinging bench and props his head back, gazing up at the stars.

They used to do this quite often. Mainly at the request of her because she’s loved the stars since she was a little girl and could name almost every one that shone that night. Talking about the night sky and its wonders made her eyes light up brighter than the North Star or any star. Yoongi loved watching the raw passion she bore whenever she talked about or did something she loved.

“Beautiful, aren’t they?” The sudden voice makes Yoongi lift his head faster than he anticipates and a sense of rush courses its way through his head. His breath noticeably hitches when he sees the same girl, you, from earlier. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.”

To his disappoint, your hair wasn’t in the braid you wore earlier, and instead sat atop your head in a bun. He shakes the negative feeling off and offers a grin.

“Two in one day. Are you trying to set a record with me?”

“Who knows,” you tease in return, much to his pleasure. Your sense of humor reminded him of her and Yoongi enjoyed this. You motion to the empty spot beside him, “Would you mind if I sat with you?”

“No, not at all.” He makes the effort of scooting further from the spot and allows you to take the seat beside him.

His fingers are beginning to twitch, wanting to tap against something to calm his nerves. Yoongi wasn’t sure why he was getting worked up over this girl. Deep down, deep within his heart, he wondered if the similarities you bore with his first love is what’s causing all of this.

He isn’t one to believe in love at first sight. It was a cliché that almost never worked out in the end. Yoongi preferred the kind of love that starts off as friends and gradually evolves into something more. Much like what he had until a few months ago.

“So…” you begin, “do you want to talk about why you looked like you were about to cry? Or is it too personal to tell a stranger?”

He’s taken aback by your brashness, which is something she never had. She had always beat around the bush when it came to questioning things, never directly asking the real question. Yet, he couldn’t help but think that he didn’t not like it. Not wanting to admit to you – and to himself – the reason for his solemnness, Yoongi utters the first thing that comes to his mind.

“I forgot to blink.” He wants to slap himself for how dumb he’s sounded.

“You forgot to… blink?” your head tilts to the side as you questioningly look at him. He dumbly nods, and you snort, “Well, not everyone remembers to. I won’t judge.”

Yoongi’s not sure why he feels a sense of relief at you words. Maybe because there won’t be one extra person out there who thinks he’s weird.

“Anyway!” Your outburst shocks him. “What are you doing out here by yourself? Friends ditch you or something?”

“For your information, I ditched them,” he replies, smoothly.

“Mhm, gotcha. Still kind of boring to be out here alone, don’t you think?”

“You’re here now, aren’t you?” He notices the redness in your cheeks begin to deepen. He makes the effort not to put much thought into it. “What were you doing out here by yourself?”

“Same as you, I guess. The friends I came with are party animals and I’m… not.” You bashfully reply, scratching your upper lip as you refuse to make eye contact with him.

“Then why’d you come?” Yoongi internally flinches at how accusing he’s sounded but doesn’t verbally acknowledge it. Instead, he just waits for your response.

“To get out of the dorm, I suppose. Irene says I need to get some fresh air occasionally if I want to stay alive.”

“I see.”

You two fall silent once your short-lived conversation ends, the duo unable to find words to create a new topic of discussion. Yoongi finds himself gazing down at your hands, noticing the monochromatic polish that your nails adorn and the slight chubbiness of your fingers.

You breathe out a sigh, attracting his attention back to your face. Your head was tilted upwards as a smile graced your thin lips. “Are you a fan of astronomy?”

“Not really, no.”

“Ah, I see.” You’re staring back at him now and Yoongi can’t stop the erratic beat his heart picks up. “You looked really interested in the sky just now, so I thought you were.”

“I took a class back in my first year, though.” he replies. “My… friend and I decided to take it together.”

“Sounded fun.” You muse. “I wish I could take fun classes like astronomy. I’m stuck with those boring ones everyone tries to avoid taking.”

“Well, if the classes are boring, then the major has to be on the same level.” Yoongi teases, taking joy in the fake gasp you give.

“Psychology isn’t as boring as everyone makes it out to be.” You defend, eyebrows furrowing to match your jutting bottom lip. He found the look to almost be cute. “There’s a lot of interesting things you can learn. If you really pay attention to the person, you could tell if they’re lying or telling the truth, for example. How can that be boring?”

“Sounds like a load to me.”

“Oh, really?” You scoff. “Then what do you do, huh? You look like you’re a business major, especially if you’re dragging mine down like this.”

“Music major, actually.” Yoongi corrects, a smug-tone accompanying his words. “My roommate’s in business, though.”

“Whoa, really?” Your previous episode of mock offense diminishes, and you brightly beams. “That’s so cool! Do you sing?”

“No, I’m studying to become a music producer.”

“That’s even cooler!” You clasp your hands together in excitement and Yoongi couldn’t help the smile from forming on his lips. “So, you write your own music then?” He nods in answer. “Wow.”

“It isn’t that interesting.” He meekly shrugs, growing bashful at your compliments.

Your reaction differed from hers. Despite the continuing support he was given by his ex-girlfriend, she was never truly on the same level as him of passion. There were times when she would gently urge him to pick a more practical career path, claiming that music wasn’t for everyone and it was difficult to pursue.

But this reaction he was currently receiving… it was refreshing. Someone other than his friends, was supporting him with his decision. And it was someone he didn’t even know the name of.

“What’s your name?” He found himself asking without a second thought to it. He inwardly screams, scolding himself for acting weird once again.

“(Y/N).” You answer, tone indifferent from the one you’ve been using. “Yours?”

“Yoongi.”

“Cute.” The word is out before you could stop yourself, causing both to grow flustered. “Ah, um… sorry.”

Yoongi says nothing in return, allowing the dismissive wave of his hand be enough of an answer. He currently couldn’t trust his voice because of how embarrassed he grew to be. Before another wave of silence could sweep over, your attention is brought to the screeching of the glass sliding door being pushed open.

“There you are.” Jimin says, his usual cheerful smile on full display. “I couldn’t find you anywhere and was beginning to think you bailed on us.”

“The thought crossed my mind.” Yoongi replies, forcing himself to stand up and leave the comforting aura he was beginning to indulge in. “What’s wrong?”

“So, before you get mad…” his friend nervously chuckles, hand coming to sit on the back of his neck as he looks off to the woodened patio. “Jungkook may or may not have snuck in through some connections and is wasted.”

“Jeon Jungkook?” you question, unknowingly stopping Yoongi’s outburst that was ready to unleash itself. “Isn’t he a freshman?”

“Well, funny story—”

“Where is he?” Yoongi interrupts. “Did one of you at least stay with him?”

“Of course! We’re not that dumb.” Jimin quickly defends as he re-opens the sliding door. “He’s out in the front yard with Namjoon. We figured you’d want to be the one to see him safely home.” He heads back inside, not waiting for Yoongi to follow.

“Ugh, that kid…” he trails off, glancing back at you who looked confused over the situation. “Looks like they need me. I’m sorry.”

“Oh no, go right ahead! Your friend needs you.” The kind smile you offer him is one he doesn’t deserve, not with how abruptly he must leave you and your comforting appearance. “It was nice talking to you, Yoongi. See you Monday?”

He purses his lips together in a polite smile of his own and nods. He slips through the opening and closes the glass door behind him, fingers momentarily squeezing the handle. As he made his way through the overcrowded rooms for a second time, the only thing that crossed his mind was how pretty you looked while smiling.

He wanted to see it again.

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