Good luck surviving Jan's solo in the Stožice live album folks~

seventeen: how they would react to your relationship being mentioned at an award show

song recommendation: voices by daughter

note: reader is an idol too, also ignore how many times ‘presenter’ is mentioned 💀

seungcheol: lord help the presenter who cracked a joke at the new budding relationship of seventeen’s leader when mentioning the group. he immediately pans his eyes towards you, his teeth gritting in annoyance at the irritating voice continuing to speak in the background. all in all, his main focus was making sure you weren’t overwhelmed with the comment. he tried to convey his concern with a look in his eye, not glancing away until he receives a confirmation that you’re okay with a small nod.

jeonghan: he glares daggers at the presenter and doesn’t care one bit that the camera is focused on him, he was prepared for backlash with the announcement of your relationship but that didn’t mean he had to take it kindly. he also makes a snarky comment when the mic is passed to him on their award speech; coups should’ve thought twice before handing him the fuel to his deadliest weapon: his voice. 

joshua: he tries to distract himself by drinking water and avoiding eye contact with the presenter, but his anger is shown through his leg shaking and finger tapping against the table. he waits for an appropriate moment before leaving, making sure to catch your eye so you know to sneak away too. he embraces you behind closed curtains, only caring that you weren’t affected by the comments made.

jun: he’s quite uncomfortable with comments spoken but doesn’t outwardly show it. he commits acts that may be deemed as normal: fiddling with the sleeve of his suit and whatnot. he doesn’t say anything to you about the situation, instead that night when you’re both together, he makes sure you know those comments don’t matter by embracing you close and showing his love through physical contact.

hoshi: he’s one that actually hunts down the producers of the award show and makes them know his anger on the unnecessary comments made about his relationship. he blurts out that a music show is just that, about music, not about his personal life. you can also see his vexation show through his performance that night, the next day his sore bones protested to his aggressive dance moves the day previous.

wonwoo: he’s also another silent and angry type. he saves up his protectiveness over your relationship by focusing all of his attention on you, making sure you know that only you matter. he also makes sly comments about the award show and the presenter through vlives and weverse throughout the following weeks.

woozi: he’s one of the ones to outwardly scoff the second the comment slipped through the man’s lips. his smile is one of annoyance and simply from the fact that the award show has no idea what they had gotten themselves into. he stores his annoyance into song writing, many lyrics in seventeen’s next album containing slight digs at anyone who dares mock his relationship.

dokyeom: sweet soul dk just gets uncomfortable and quite sad about the situation. all he wants is to live his dream of being an idol as well as love you at the same time, but one can’t exist with the other harmoniously. that night he keeps quiet, finally confessing his dejection about the fact that he can’t protect your relationship from such things.

mingyu: he honestly becomes quite scary about the whole thing. just because he’s soft around those he loves does not mean he can become a beating bag for others. he actually runs into the presenter backstage and chews him out for the inappropriate comments. it’s safe to say word spread and no music show dared make a comment on his relationship again.

minghao: he’s another one to keep quiet the whole night, waiting until he’s alone with you to share his thoughts. he actually attempts to see the light, his warm heart not excusing the words that night but hoping to give you perspectives of others. all he needs is you, feeble opinions of others matter very little to him.

seungkwan: having much experience being an entertainer himself, he’s quite annoyed with the lack of creativity the presenter put forward with his words. he rolls his eyes very obviously, fake laughing at the other comments the presenter makes just so he knows how annoyed he is. he may not be as intimidating as mingyu, but that doesn’t stop him from conveying his infuriation every chance he gets.

vernon: he gives a look with his brows furrowed, shaking his head in pure irk before refusing to acknowledge the presenter from there on out. he doesn’t care what his company will say about his actions, nor about the camera as he blatantly searches for you among the seats of many other idols, catching your eye in an acknowledged glance; you don’t leave his sight for the rest of the night.

chan: he crosses his arms menacingly every time the presenter shows his face after letting his tongue slip on chan’s relationship. chan is so in tune with his emotions that he doesn’t even realise the pique that rests on his face until he seems himself on camera. the second he’s finishing performing and your group is scheduled to go next, he pulls you away for a hastily quick kiss and the encouragement that no other opinion but yours and his should matter to either of you.

cara mia

wednesday addams x enid sinclair

summary: Enid spends the holidays with her girlfriend's family to avoid her owns.

warnings; implications of homophobia from enid's mother.

requested by @crazyshipper67

°°°

She knew, the moment she step foot in her hometown, she'll be dragged straight to conversion therapy. Being in the comforting protection of the school didn't help much when a certain holiday lurked by the corner.

She remembered the fear drowning her as she scroll down through her mother's text messages.

disappointment,

abomination,

a lone wolf forever.

There were more of course, but as her eyes became blurry from tears and her lover had snatched her phone from her she saw nothing else.

Now as she sits next to Wednesday and opposites the infamous Addams family on the dinner table, she tries to convince herself that she's having fun.

Her uncle Fester, going in full detail of his adventures involving feeding on girl scouts, was making it a tad hard though.

She could feel Wednesdays evil, evil smile, burning through her sides.

Of course she enjoyed watching her squirming and uncomfortable.

Morticia, thank the heavens, immediately intervenes and changes the topic.

"Perhaps another time, for the tales of your endeavors, Fester."

He gets the hunt and laughs casually, "Hope I didn't scare ya kid! Don't worry, I usually avoid kids with dyed hair, too much chemicals, nggh." He laughs again and Enid forces herself to go along awkwardly, though her eyes evident with fear.

"Uncle Fester.." Wednesday's tone, a warning as he shakes his head and waves her off.

"Oh fine, fine."

The food, thankfully wasn't anything weird or some sort of dead corpse, she quite enjoys them and Wednesday looks satisfies when she finishes her plate.

Immediately after, Morticia has pulled her to the living room and brought out old photo albums of Wednesday's.

She was exactly the same was she is now besides the obvious age difference, black clothes, glaring at everyone, odd weapons as an accessory.

A specific picture of her holding a shovel in front of an open grave made Enid frown at her.

She only raised an eyebrow.

"Ah yes, her first digging kit, the perfect outlet for her growing obsessions with death at the moment." Morticia explains.

"She got started almost immediately! I think it's safe to say Wednesday's got her red thumb from me!"

Enid leans and whispers to Wednesday; "I don't even want to know what that means."

Wednesday only smirks and places a kiss on her temple.

As the collection of pictures starts to grow more ridiculous and embarassing for her, Wednesday dressed as a tree for school plays and forced into pink dresses for pageant shows her teachers signed up for.

Try as she might to pull the album from her lover's grasp, the werewolf strength always wins.

"Are you done now?" She questions as Enid finally calms down from her fits of giggles over Wednesday dressed as a shark for a costume party.

"Now, yes. But you'll be sure to know I'll be using this againts you in the future." She teases with a proud face as her girlfriend nods. "I expect nothing less."

Morticia, doubtful of the colourful girl at first, immediately softens at seeing her daughter's love for her, she had never seen Wednesday as infatuated with anyone, though it might not be obvious to anyone else. But a mother's eyes always sees.

She and Gomez has taken it to themselves to take Enid for a tour of their weaponry room.

Axes, swords, chains and even stink bombs used by ancestors of the Addams family hang from walls. Gomez had a splendid time explaining the histories and details of them.

A lot of Fester's creations also hangs there. In fact, he even has his own section.

From uncomfortableness, she grew more intrigued by the house and it's inhabitants. The peculiarity of her girl's family had interested her and had her in awe of the family legacy. They were truly one of a kind.

Her brother Pugsley, reveled in Enid's kind and sweet demeanor, a different treatment he usually gets from his sister. Wednesday was however, quick to insult his sensitivity and was immediately cut off by Enid scolding her.

Like a child being chastised by a mother, she sulks as Pugsley cheers over his newfound guardian angel.

By the end of the night she didn't need to convince herself she was gratefully for coming, she was sure of it.

Lying in the dark with her face facing Wednesday's, she feels her hand brush a hair behind her hear.

"What are you thinking about, cara mia?"

the roll of the r's send shivers down her spine, it always does when she calls her that, her rare little nickname for moments of intimacy and adoration when they're alone.

"nothing, I'm just glad I'm here, with you, and your family." Her hand goes to hold Wednesday's, their fingers intertwining.

"So am I." The monotonous girl speaks with a hint of softness only reserved for her love.

Enid let's herself fall into the comforting embrace of sleep as she leans into Wednesday's chest, automatically the dark haired girl's arms moves to wrap around her.

"Good night, cara mia."

blue lock boys with kpop stan s/o's !

disclaimer: i am not deep into the kpop universe. i literally know the absolute bare minimum, surface of the industry. so please, do not shoot me down for this 😕.

a/n: and for all the kpop stans who also simp terribly over the bllk boys. i have ur back.

nagi found your obsession with kpop quite interesting considering he has never been interested in something so large. he's heard of kpop, even listened to a couple of songs but he's never taken time to learn more about it. however, he was very willing to listen to you absolutely loose your mind over your current bias or one of your favorite groups/artists comeback. definitely buys you albums so that you can get the new photocard you've been hunting down.

isagi definitely understands the hype. you could show him your bias and we would take a minute but completely agree after analyzing the members talent and appearance. willing to go to any concert for literally any group, whether you stan them or not. probably heavily enjoys boy groups like bts or seventeen. would go on a karaoke date and try and impress you by singing/rapping your biases verse.

bachira is definitely the most informed of all the boys. i just feel like he spends a lot of time on twitter and randomly wandered upon kpop twt and discovered what weverse was and from there, found himself watching every single series of trainees about to debut. when he finds out your into kpop, he definitely asks you to teach him about the basics of being a stan. once you do, he immediately begins the foolishness right alongside you. is faithfully loyal to his biases, on every weverse live, every single video and fancam. you can bet that bachira is on it. i feel like you guys would have dates where you just watch the newest trainee series on youtube and debrief afterwards.

sae doesn't get the hype. the music is cool to him but obsessing over someone who isn't him? kind of ticks the jealousy bug in him but, he does find it cute when he finds you immersed in your favorite group/artists choreo. will even send you the fancams that appear on his for you page occasionally. although, he doesn't understand, he'll never judge. maybe...if he loves you enough (spoiler alert: he does) he'll do the super shy challenge with you but only because you were on the verge of getting on your knees to beg him.

author's closing thoughts: i wrote this because i've been consuming a lot of kpop content but i have NOOO CLUE about any of it. it's like someone saying an inside joke in front of you and not understanding why it's funny but thinking it's funny anyways. i love the genre, the music is great.! i just don't know any of the members names and i'm always mixing up groups 😭😭. i think the only members i know by name are all the newjeans girlies (bcs i really like their music!) jk and keeho because i see their videos all the time of them being goofy. so, if anyone is a kpop fan and wants to educate me, my listening ears are on 🤞🏿.

risky risky wiggy wiggy

summary: you acquire an adorable baby photo of tom- you put it in your phone case! 

wc: 770 words

before you read: title doesn’t really relate to the fic... (a silly title for a silly fic), not proofread, inspired by this movie i watched, gender neutral reader - i dont think any pronouns are used at all for reader , i’m still trying to get comfortable with writing Affection (i had to look away while writing some of this), if i missed anything lmk!! 

a/n: i can write about people that aren’t aaron?? now that’s a shocker...  

You went over to his house to hang out with him, but his mother called the both of you down to the living room. “I found some of Tom's old baby photos!” she says cheerily and hands you a photo album and walks off. Tom groans in embarrassment as you flip through them, pointing out the particularly humiliating ones. It wasn’t anything you hadn’t seen before, but his reactions never got old. 

“Look!” you say, laughing as you point to a picture of a younger Tom making a face while wearing a little tuxedo. He sighs and wraps an arm around you as he tries to get a closer look at it. “What were you even wearing the tuxedo for anyways?” You ask him, handing him the picture. 

“Probably a wedding of some sort. I was my family’s go-to ring bearer for years!” He says, flicking his hand towards you, as if he were showing you a ring. You laugh and he gives you a look. “What? It’s true!” 

“I’m not laughing at that! I’m laughing at you!” You say, covering your mouth with your hand to try and hide your laughter. 

“Sure you aren’t!” He says, about to tickle you. You grab his hands and start trying to get him away. You were cornered and you only had one way to escape. You started doing the thing that all little siblings do. You started kicking. He immediately got off of you and started laughing at you. 

“But seriously, that picture of you is definitely my favorite,” you say, calming down and turning to look at him. He was beaming as you said this.

—

After asking Tom’s mom, she let you keep the picture, claiming that she had many of him in suits, giving one away wouldn’t hurt - plus she trusted you to keep it safe. You slipped the little picture away into your phone case for safekeeping. You slip your phone into your pocket and get ready to head back to your house. You go to tell Tom that you’re leaving, but you decide against it and decide to just sleep over at his house.

You both argue over what movie to watch as you’re cuddled together under the very comfy blankets. “I think we should just flip a coin,” you say, pulling out your phone instead of hunting down a coin. He nods and immediately claims tails. You click on the little coin icon and let the machine do its thing. It lands on tails.

Tom’s busy scrolling on his own phone and you look at him until he looks back at you. “Was it heads or tails?”

“Tails,” you say, shrugging. You hand him the remote and put your phone down in your lap and try to bundle yourself up in the blankets. As he tries to find the movie he wanted to watch, you scoot closer to him and lean your head on his shoulder and he wraps his free arm around you. He looks at you and realizes that as you were bundling yourself up in the blankets, you somehow managed to steal all of them.

“Hey! Stop being a blanket thief!” He says, pouting and grabbing some of them. 

“I’m not!” You say, trying to defend yourself.

“Are too!” He says, sticking his tongue out at you. You playfully roll your eyes at him and hand some of them over which he accepts gratefully. While he untangles the blankets, he finds your phone and something about it catches his eye. He blushes as he realizes that you have his baby photo in your phone case. You notice him staring at your phone.

“Oh! So that’s where it went!” You say, about to grab it from him when he moves it away. He’s examining it further.

“How’d this get in here?” He asks, handing you back your phone. You give him a confused look and then he taps the picture in your phone case. Oh.

“Your mom let me keep it when I asked and I was gonna keep it here.” It was your turn to be flustered as he just held you closer. “Do you want it back? Because if you do, I can just give it back to you now-”

“No, no it’s fine! I want you to keep it anyways! That’s the best photo of me to ever exist!” He says proudly. You let out a laugh. 

“Why?” You ask, looking at him with stars in your eyes.

“Because it’s your favorite!” 

He was gonna be the death of you, but you gladly accepted that as you snuggled up closer to him. 

L.S. Dunes (MCR, Coheed, Thursday, Circa Survive) Dissect Their Debut Album Past Lives Track by Track: Exclusive

The supergroup's members offer insight into the LP's 11 tracks

Photo by Mark Beemer Words by Jon Hadusek

November 11, 2022

Supergroup L.S. Dunes have just dropped their highly anticipated debut album Past Lives. The LP’s release consummates a five-headed collaboration between like-minded musicians who are cut from a similar cloth: My Chemical Romance’s Frank Iero, Coheed and Cambria’s Travis Stever, Circa Survive’s Anthony Green, and Thursday’s Tim Payne and Tucker Rule.

With such a wealth of combined talent, it’s no surprise that the 11 songs on Past Lives are a tour-de-force of post-hardcore. The album is especially rewarding for those who are familiar with each band member’s past work. On each song, you can catch sonic idiosyncrasies and easter eggs that inevitably trigger a pang of nostalgia. For example, Iero’s catchy chord progressions will perk the ears the MCR faithful. Meanwhile, Anthony Green’s impassioned vocals make Past Lives mandatory listening for Circa Survive fans.

The collective consciousness tends to pigeonhole supergroups as lesser projects — a distraction from each member’s day job, half-baked collabs, etc. — but L.S. Dunes put in the time and work to make their debut album more substantial. Just take it from the band members themselves, who offered up a track-by-track breakdown of Past Lives exclusively for Heavy Consequence. Their remarks reveal just how much care and effort went into the songwriting and recording process.

Stream the entire Past Lives album and read the track-by-track breakdown from L.S. Dunes’ individual members below.

“2022”

“2022” is probably the most personal song that I’ve ever written in my life. Every time I get to the verses of that song, I get a lump in my throat like I said too much. I never want a song to hurt or worry anyone, but they also cannot be a place that I hide in. Working on yourself and getting better is a slow process. “2022” is a reflection on the patience that’s required of a person during the process of recovery, when you’re conditioned towards the hunt for immediate gratification. There are moments when you’re fighting for your life, moments when you don’t think you can keep going. In those moments, I always need to tell someone — because that support you get from people who believe in you can make a huge difference. — Anthony Green

“Antibodies”

“Antibodies” started as the first group of riffs that I sent in. It was also the first group of riffs that were sent around in general. After receiving a joint text from everyone, I decided to sit right down and work on a riff. I have a tuning that I have used on a few songs in the past; I tune the low E up to F. It makes for a really cool approach at playing the low E open while barring the rest of the strings. I went straight to that tuning. I wanted to send something unique but still catchy. I respect all the guys so much as musicians and wanted this to work, so mentally, I was like.. “You gotta send something good!” No pressure, right? As everyone added their parts to the song, it was clear we had a chemistry. Eventually, this would also be the first Past Lives song that Anthony added vocals to. Which blew our minds. And here we are. — Travis Stever

"Grey Veins"

I stumbled onto the intro bass line for “Grey Veins” one night, but I I was playing it in the upper register. It was this really quirky little riff and I actually thought it might be a bit too left of center to even bring to the band. I had already convinced myself that they’d hate it, but I figured I’d send it anyway just to see if it sparked any ideas.

I remember immediately after sending it in the group text, probably at like 3 a.m., everyone reacting to it with such excitement. We had all been at the edges of our seats waiting for ideas to be sent and everyone jumped on it immediately. Tucker added the initial verse beat, and then Frank came out of nowhere with this absolutely perfect verse/chorus progression and it actually blew my mind. Hearing Travis’ leads and verse melodies, then Anthony’s vocal ideas and lyrics really brought this little idea to such crazy places. It’s honestly still hard for me to wrap my head around. — Tim Payne

“Like Forever”

This was one of the first ideas I sent out to the band. Everything was still so new to all of us and we hadn’t really fallen into an actual writing process at that point, so I honestly wasn’t sure how the other guys would approach this. I had a loose structure, but this was really more of a collection of bass lines than anything else. Writing on bass can be tough, because I’ll hear certain drum beats, dynamic shifts and melodies in my head, but that doesn’t always translate to others. And if I’ve learned anything in life, it’s that verbalizing music ideas is literally impossible.

So, you just have to put things out there and have faith in the people you’re writing with. The craziest thing is that all of the drums, guitars, and vocals were a million times better than anything I had imagined! It was a huge moment in the band for me and really allowed me to let my guard down and just throw ideas out there, knowing and trusting that we somehow already had a collective voice even after only a few weeks. — Tim Payne

“Blender”

This was a riff that I had been kicking around a little while, never quite sure where it fit in with any project that I had going on. I could never quite finish it. I think when I don’t know where a song belongs, it’s hard for me to lace it all the way up. But when L.S. Dunes came into the picture, I brought it to the band and it just fit in so nicely. Anthony was never scared to sing over anything, which is such a rare and exciting quality to have in a singer. Then Tucker and Tim backed the riff so flawlessly that it started to take on a whole world. When I hear this song now, I always think of Tucker saying, “It feels like speeding down a desert highway at dusk,” and it transports me immediately. The finishing touch was Travis hitting all the perfect harmonies on those guitar lines. He really is a master at that. — Frank Iero

Photo by Consequence

“Past Lives”

I love this song. I love the lyrics. It’s one of my favorite drum-songs on the record because there’s basically no cymbal hits, besides hi-hats, until the end. The riffs on guitar and bass were so infectious to me that my job was to not step on them. It became very apparent, very quickly that I wanted to do that robotic, old-school, punk hi-hat to follow the strumming energy of the guitars. The verses are haunting and I wanted to come up with a beat that was just as jarring. I had been working on this pattern between the kick and floor tom with a sort of quirky hi-hat pattern that spoke to me right from the start because of the song’s frantic energy. I felt the bridge needed to be super sparse tom hits to give the listener, and myself, a much needed break to catch your breath. The end is my favorite part because it all hits the fan, hitting as hard as I can, like it’s the last song on earth. — Tucker Rule

“It Takes Time”

Easily, one of the coolest songs that I’ve ever been a part of. Writing this right now reminds me just how lucky I am to be a part of it. This was the last song I recorded. A lot of the song drum-wise is exactly the same, other than the “B” part of the verse and the bridge, as our first demos we did over a year and a half ago for it. The interplay between the drums and bass in the verse brings me an infinite amount of joy. I couldn’t be happier with how the bridge turned out. Will Yip (Producer) is also a ripping drummer. We worked very closely on coming up with a super cool beat for the bridge that hadn’t even been written yet musically. I trusted Will’s intuition and damn, was he spot on. Anthony’s vocal performance on this gives me chills. The dude is endlessly talented and I’m so grateful to walk the earth next to him and the rest of these amazing human beings. — Tucker Rule

“Bombsquad”

I heard that intro riff and knew the drum part had to be sparse to accentuate how damn cool that guitar part is. There’s a lot of space in the song, so I wanted to make sure the snare sounded massive. I used this solid steel 8×14 drum made by Greg Keplinger. There’s a stamp inside the drum that says “Not Fragile” and I think you can hear why on the intro.

Fast forward to Tim adding this colossal bass line that literally made my arm hair stick up. Anthony and Will Yip came with the bridge which is one of my favorite parts of the record vocally, as Anthony sounds possessed in the best way possible. Big drums, big riffs, and big love for this song! — Tucker Rule

“Grifter”

The group of riffs I sent to everyone for this one was all based on the verse portion. The rest of the stuff was all to favor that part. Will and Anthony did some really cool stuff with arranging the riffs to make what was once a bridge, a chorus. It really brought out unique qualities in the song. My verse part is a strange open D-riff. It’s going to be lot of fun live, as it’s challenging technically. I especially love the interplay of the bass and guitars in the verse. Above all of it, there are the catchy ear worm melodies that Frank and Anthony added to really draw you in. — Travis Stever

“Permanent Rebellion”

I love being in a studio making records. It’s the ultimate high for me. I remember we were doing pre-production in NJ over the summer before heading out to PA that fall to record with Will Yip and this was just a song that popped in my head while we were demoing and fine-tuning all the other stuff for the record. It popped in and wouldn’t leave and every time we had a free minute or a break that day, I would starting playing and working on this song. Tucker was the first to ask, “What is that?” To which my reply is always, “I have no idea,” hahaha. And so, maybe 30 minutes before the end of that day’s session, we all decided to not pack up and try and hash this song out. I know it can be stressful, but in my experience if a song comes up at the very last minute of a session, you always record it. I don’t know exactly why. Maybe it’s the universe giving you a gift. But for some reason it always ends up being a special song, if not the best one of the session. Something about the immediacy or the reckless abandon of having no time to overthink. You just go on instinct. And, as it turns out, “Permanent Rebellion” was the first single released for the record. — Frank Iero

“Sleep Cult”

Well if “Permanent Rebellion” was the last minute addition to the first day of pre-production, then “Sleep Cult” was the last minute addition to day two; the final day of pre-production. — Frank Iero

Our thanks to L.S. Dunes for providing us with an exclusive track-by-track of their new album. You can purchase Past Lives here.

diary141

2/2-3/2024

friday - saturday

i have sunday off, but i do work tomorrow.

somehow there's gonna be 17 birthday parties? fucked up and stupid.

i don't wanna talk about work too much, i hate doing that, but i'll say so far it's okay, it doesn't have to mean a lot as long as i don't make it mean a lot. i can let my mind go elsewhere.

today was really rough though, for other reasons, my gf and i got woken up by knocking on our neighbor's door, because her dog got out when she went to work, and thsi guy was like, you guys take the dog, wouldn't it be best, and then we had to, and my gf left, and i was here with this dog. i didn't mind it too much but it was so stressful, i couldn't go work on music or record because of it, i could only sit and read, and i finished wiseblood, but it made me think about how awful the world is, towards the middle of the book hazel motes is preaching, he says ""your conscience is a trick. it don't exist though you may think it does, and if you do think it does, you had best get it out in the open and kill it, because it's no more than your face in the mirror is or your shadow behind you. (...) if you don't hunt it down and kill it, it'll hunt you down and kill you." and then a lot of other stuff, hazel's desire to escape shame as a construct, to escape needing to be saved, and then to decide finally, to give himself over to penance entirely, paying for what but his existence, for having been in the first place, cursed with life. i was really overcome with this awful feeling, about how life should not be this bad, or how upsetting everything is lately, how i can't feel clean, i literally can't feel clean, i can't have that kind of peace, and there's all this stress and fear, and the world is just this bad, and i am cursed with life too, and i wish many things weren't how they are, and thoughts of penance and so on, it overwhelmed me, that life feels like punishment since the ending of last year basically, or december i guess. i cried very hard, the hardest in a very long time, maybe in years. i could not stop myself from wailing as i did it, and i can't even tell what hurt me so much. i thought about the dog, and if his owner had died, and how i was responsible for him now, and it was all so much, i am very weak i guess, but i kept crying for a while, longer than usual at least. 15 minutes maybe, during all of it, the dog was jumping at me, trying to cheer me up i guess, or help me not be in pain, is probably what he thought of it.

eventually before i had to leave, my gf came home, and she went to the office, and they let her bring the dog into the neighbor's place. this little dog gets out all the time, so it'll probably be something we deal with. it'll be really really irritating.

when i came home, something i thought about was how i don't have a key for the gate. i need to be let in. another reason this place won't feel like home. but i also thought, it's not like i need to be working actually, i can leave any time i want. it's a lower grade form of that cioran quote, about how knowing you can kill yourself any time you want makes you think, well i don't have to do it now, knowing is enough. it's also like his quote about how it's too late to kill yourself, because you've been already born. i think he's not that smart, but that stuff has stuck with me. that kind of thing is hard to shake, always, for me at least.

i quote it on the album i am working on in lyrics, but another similar quote is from tess of d'urbevilles by thomas hardy:

“Did you say the stars were worlds, Tess?" "Yes." "All like ours?" "I don't know, but I think so. They sometimes seem to be like the apples on our stubbard-tree. Most of them splendid and sound - a few blighted." "Which do we live on - a splendid one or a blighted one?" "A blighted one.”

i wonder if i've posted it before. i do think about it a lot. hardy is one of the authors i had to read in college that meant a lot to me, immediately. incredible author.

i guess what makes the quote special is that it singles us out, as uniquely awful, i don't know if i feel that's true or not. i guess not, there is no special emergency of earth, we're just in a regular tide, i guess what i've been thinking is it doesn't need to feel cursed, life, or it doesn't need to actually be cursed, the world could be not like this, if we weren't pitted against entropy, our blight is in our toiling against it, against time, everything else. the cybernetic hell and whatever.

there's points towards the end of wiseblood, of hazel's penance, his rituals of suffering, and the futility of them, not because he doesn't believe or something, but because he will never be rid of something, as deep as guts are, it's not shame, it's just guilt.

flannery's catholicism is really interesting, it makes me reflect on my upbringing, feeling haunted by it. she's certainly devout, where i am totally atheistic, at least i feel like i am. i guess i can't ever shake it entirely, i used to pray very seriously and fearfully, and there is a guilt at my center, about being, and doing things. every thing i did wrong was conferred unto me with lashes by my father, from his belt, most of what i did wrong, was things they did not understand. i think this is regular. but it's interesting to think about, that kind of ritual, beyond the discussions re: beltings on the ass or wherever creating sexual trauma in children, likely true in my experience, is that it leaves one with the feeling they need to pay physically, for wrongdoing. i should like to bleed for mistakes, sometimes, it seems like the only way to express something, but i don't think that's true.

crazy that this vid uses a man ray short for video footage. love this song though. fun way to cap off these ruminations. who says it's good to be alive, it ain't no good, it's a perpetual jive.

a coworker tonight asked if i smoke and drink, and i said no, i wondered if he thought i was like a religious freak, and i thought about clarifying, but i didn't, i wonder if i'll have to. one day. maybe.

also, that new silent hill game is so bad it's crazy, it's honestly a little unbelievable. can't wait for all the other awful things konami does.

thinking right now about this scene in jubilee, by derek jarman, where this older punk guy is talking to adam ant who just plays someone named kid, and quotes a richard hell song, saying he belongs to the blank generation, and adam ant is just kind of laughing. both of them end up dead, killed by cops, adam ant's character tried/briefly met success thru 'selling out' basically, strange movie, interestingly critical of punk, it's never wrong outright, or anything, i don't disagree with its observation of how punk failed into a kind of success, something defanged, or a way of defanging. so why do i still care so much about it. i dunno. it's been the kind of music i've listened to since i was younger, not the 70s stuff but everything i've liked is touched by it, in very obv ways.

obviously there's parts of it that managed to get out, do something else. interesting to think vivienne westwood was acknowledged by the queen positively though. i forget whatever she was made.

the defanging of the obvious expressions of punk is so tragic, though. there was this bar we lived close to, and now live farther from, that's like a punk place. i went crazy in there once and screamed i wanted to die and that everyone in there made me sick, and then i took a flash photo while leaving of people. when i said i wanted to die, people were like, yeahhhh. there was some loser with my gf and i and my friend, my friend and the loser both from the internet. i can't get too into that becuz that loser made me delete a piece of writing i did about my experience with them.

anyway, here's the photo i took then:

i think that guy is giving me the finger.

tomorrow, i will definitely do music tomorrow, and i'll be happy and stuff and whatever i think.

anyway i need to sleep soon so:

byebye!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

eleven months. (m) myg. two.

masterlist.

pairing: min yoongi x reader genre: fluff, slow burn!!!, eventual smut, warnings: brief non-descriptive mention of death, otherwise none word count: 7k author’s note: here’s some more backstory on both of them as well as more interaction beyond yoongi hunting down an album by the cure lmao. like i said before, i’m really soft for yoongi in this story so lmk what you think! (also..because i hate myself and love piling up wips, theres mention of oc having a previous love interest that’s actually part of another story that takes place in this universe that’s a prequel soooo...coming soon lol) taglist (open): @min-yus​ summary: it’s been years of yoongi living his routine life, accustomed to his pace of living, going with the flow and simply existing. until you come along. yoongi absolutely can not see the logic in the way you live, but he weirdly craves it. craves the feeling of not being afraid of not knowing what’s coming, being able to just let the cards fall wherever they land. and maybe you can help with that.

In the next coming weeks it becomes obvious that Yoongi is in fact a regular. His routine visits allow you to remember the usual days and times he’d pop in, so you knew if you’d be working on his chosen days. 

Somewhere in between his casual drop ins, the two of you had formed somewhat of a friendship— or the beginning stages of one at least. Yoongi liked your sense of humor, how open and friendly you were to anyone you encountered, always having something to say about anything. Conversation came easy to you, never running out of stories. It left Yoongi thinking you’ve definitely lived about ten lifetimes compared to him.

In turn, you liked how he let you steer the conversation any way you chose. Most people would probably watch on in horror at the way you’d go from talking about a specific song or band, and then switching to a story about how you chased a pickpocketer during your travels before moving on to talking about your roommate’s cat. None of it gave him whiplash though, seamlessly flowing into the next topic with a grin on his face, never feeling like he had to think too hard to keep it going. It worked best this way. Yoongi was observant by nature, a great listener above it all, so if you were the one doing most of the talking it was fine by him. 

Everyone at Rkive360 had taken notice that Yoongi’s usual five minute visits had turned into ten, and then twenty, until it became very clear he was lingering inside the store. No one told him anything, besides the fact that he was bestfriends with the owner and had immunity, all of you were fond of him. Taehyung enjoyed the sly remarks Yoongi would make, Sana just enjoyed ogling at him, Namjoon would never mind seeing him, and you would take any chance you could to attempt to wow him with your small knowledge of music. 

It was a nice distraction whenever he stopped by, always heading straight to the back where the vinyl was kept. Sometimes he had a specific album in mind, other times he was simply browsing, but he only ever bought one at a time. It was routine, maybe even a weird ritual of sorts if he really thought about it. 

On the days you knew he’d be coming you would spend a little extra time in the beginning of your shift picking out a few records to suggest to him if he didn’t have one in mind. Because of this, he had stopped his usual path to the bins and now came directly to you, the first stray off his usual routine. 

Today you’re standing behind the counter, ringing up a customer when he walks in, a smile on your face as you chat away. He patiently waits at the far corner, leaning back against it as his eyes roamed the interior of the store, taking note of the way Sana and Taehyung were trying and failing to build a giant display. It looks like a mess of parts, scattered around with no instruction manual in sight— definitely Taehyung’s idea to toss it judging by Sana’s look of frustration. 

He tears his gaze away from them beginning to argue when he hears you wish the customer a good day as they leave, pushing away from the counter and shuffling your way with a grin on his face. You smile back at the way his doughy cheeks push out, high points of them reflecting the light from above. 

“Any shirt facts of the day?”

That had also become another common occurrence. Whenever you decided to wear a band shirt, he somehow always had random facts about whoever it was. It didn’t matter if it was some obscure french band or a 90’s rapper, Yoongi knew something about everyone, like some walking encyclopedia of musical artists. So when you take a step away and spread your arms out, he sees your shirt of choice today is The Doors, and he scoffs. Too easy.

“The Doors were the first band to ever advertise a new album on a billboard.” He nods his head slowly, almost as if he’s telling you yes I know, amazing right?

A hum leaves your lips at his fun fact, slightly impressed by it. “Interesting. Like always, I did not know that.” You peek under the counter top at the selection of records you kept stowed away for him, safe from any undeserving customers. “Now, do you want to see my daily, hand picked selection just for you.”

This was his new favorite pastime, getting to see the random albums you’d group together for him, wanting to know what you thought was worthy for him to listen to. When he nods, rubbing his hands together in excitement, you haul up the stack and carefully spread them out across the top.

The genre of the day was R&B, he can tell that much as he sorts through the albums. You’re familiar with the way he clumps together certain records, marking them down as albums he already owns, until he gets to an orange colored cover. The words The Internet fill the top right corner along with Ego Death on the bottom left. This he had never heard before. He picks it up and flips it over, scanning the song names with interest.

His eyes raise up to yours with curiosity, the same sharp gaze that somehow still makes you nervous holds the obvious question being passed between you with no need for words: are they any good? And the way you nod your head immediately convinces him enough. “Alright, I’ll give them a shot.”

A small sense of pride fills your chest, a tiny victory whenever he decides to pick something from your stack, trusting whatever music knowledge you had somehow convinced him you have. “I promise you’ll love them.”

When you hand him his change and the brown paper bag, you immediately check the time and clock out, dipping back under the counter and grabbing your bag from its hidden spot.

“Are you off?” Yoongi finds himself asking, no longer used to leaving immediately after he purchased something. The usual fifteen minute conversation you two had was missing today, and he’s not too sure how he feels about that. 

“Yes I am, you were my last customer. The store will now be run by those two heathens. Here’s to hoping they don’t bite each others heads off while they finish building whatever the fuck that is.” Taehyung is now standing up, lazily holding up a part of the display as Sana tries to screw something together, angrily giving Taehyung commands but he only mimics her with a ridiculous face. And when she socks his thigh, her fist aiming a little too close to home, you let out a laugh.

Yoongi highly doubts that’s going to be possible, Namjoon would probably have to be the one left to finish building the display while also putting them on opposite sides of the store whenever he came in for the day. It was truly a shock that they had gone this long working together without an actual fist fight breaking out. If it came down to it, Yoongi had his money on Sana being able to whoop Tae’s ass. 

“Do you know any good take out spots nearby? I’m starving and I’m still new to the area so I’ll take any recommendations.” Your voice snaps him back, his eyes looking at you briefly as the question registers within him.

“Oh, yeah. There’s a place not too far from here that has pretty good jajangmyeon.”

“Hell yeah.” Your hands pat your belly softly, coming up to readjust your bag as you walk around the counter and head for the door, shouting out a goodbye to Taehyung and Sana as you leave the store. When you exit the shop, your hand holding the door open behind you, you glance back inside in confusion when you spot Yoongi still standing by the counter with wide eyes. “Well, aren’t you coming?”

Truth be told, he had been wanting to talk to you outside of work for a while but he was scared to ask, not wanting to make you feel obligated to say yes just because he was a regular at your place of employment. Something about you seemed familiar to him, and to be quite honest he just craved social intimacy. His job consumed him and coming into this record shop was the small escape he needed, you being there was just a newly added plus.

You’re on the same page he is, wanting to hang out with him just as much as he had, something about the way he seemed like a half open book interested you. Throughout all of your adventures you had forced yourself to come out of your shell, no longer afraid or bashful when it came to initiating friendships. If you wanted to get to know someone better, then you’d bite first. And you definitely wanted to get to know Yoongi better.

It takes him a moment to react, his gaze switching from you to look back over at your coworkers, seeing Sana sending you a curious glance. Yoongi was about to attempt to muster up the courage to ask you to hang out and you beat him to the punch, but after a second he grins at you with a nod. Of course he was coming.

The weather in Seoul is forgiving today, the usual cold of autumn being prevalent in the air without the need to bundle up, the slight wind not stinging your skin as it blows around you. This was probably your favorite season, comfortable enough for you to do whatever you want without feeling restricted by heavy layers or sticky from the heat. 

A soft smile is on your lips, hands shoved into the pockets of your baggy cardigan, and a small pep in your step as your eyes take in the world around you. That feeling you get when you visit a new town on vacation, how you’re just passing through for a brief moment in a place so many call home, it makes you realize how small you actually are. 

It’s a feeling you always longed for, to experience a new place and make it home, it's the main reason you always bounced around so much. Staring at all the shops around you, taking in all the people just going about their daily life, you’re content with your new choice of scenery. 

Too lost in your own head as you take in the shops and people around you, you snap out of it when Yoongi reaches out and clasps a hand on your shoulder, steering you to turn right when you keep walking straight. “Get your head out of the clouds.” 

He hears the snort you let out, allowing him to guide you the correct way. Slowly trailing away from the main road, the amount of people lessens, only a handful of stores line up around the alley you had turned into. When you spare a glance at Yoongi you can see the excitement on his face, speeding up his pace until he’s standing in front of the restaurant. It’s a small hole in the wall shop that didn’t even look like it served food from the outside, all black exterior with a red sign hung up on top showcasing their name, Ipum.

It’s charming, and the way Yoongi spreads his arm out puts a similar smile on your face. Only then does he pull open the door, allowing you to step in first before he follows. 

Once Yoongi steps inside he’s immediately greeted by the workers calling out his name in glee, bowing in response with a bashful smile as he approaches the small counter set up for take out orders, not needing to read the menu. You don’t realize he’s waiting for you as you take in the interior of the restaurant, the red dining tables surprisingly packed despite their lack of advertising outside. This place really must be as good as Yoongi promised.

“Anything specific you want?” he asks, finger pointing to the small menu in his hand in case you needed it. When you shake your head, letting him know he can order anything he wants, he does exactly that, placing two orders of jajangmyeon, along with fried dumplings and sweet and sour pork to complete it. It was his go to choices whenever he came, so he hopes you’ll enjoy it as much as he does. 

As you step to the side, backs pressed against the wall closest to the counter in order to keep the space open for the workers and patrons to walk comfortably in the small shop, you turn your head to glance at Yoongi again. “You come here often?”

The way the workers had spoken to him had made that glaringly obvious, but you wanted to hear it from him, wanted to know if he came here for comfort food or some other weird tradition like his ‘one-vinyl-a-day’ way of life. 

It was sort of a habit he had fallen into years ago. Having grown up in this city his whole life, he had stumbled upon this place his last year of high school. It had become a staple soon after, a place he would come to directly after classes were done to come stuff his face before heading home. Then it became a place his girlfriend and him frequented when the apartment they moved into turned out to be a mere block away. 

In a way, the owners of this shop had become like a second family. The amount of times they’ve seen Yoongi at his best and worst throughout the years, never once throwing judgment his way even if he came in beyond plastered back in the years he used to drink, never turning him away even if he cried into his noodles. 

He decides that’s a little too much to unpack right now, so he just nods in confirmation. “Yeah, I’ve been coming here for years. One taste of their noodles and you’ll be hooked too, trust me.”

Oh you trusted him, the amount of plates you’ve seen so far just made your mouth water once they passed by you and the smell of the food reached your nose. “We should’ve just sat down, I’m not gonna be able to wait until I get home to eat this.”

As you say this one of the workers approaches you two with a tied up plastic bag in his hand, the inside stuffed with takeout boxes and utensils for you to take. Yoongi grasps the bag with a smile and thanks him as he walks away. “Don’t worry, I live like a block away.”

He realizes how his words could be taken immediately, how he had assumed you two would innocently go back to his place to share a meal. You had invited him to eat but the location of where you would be doing so had not been discussed and the last thing he wanted was to come across as a sleaze.

His mouth was ready to back track completely, until he sees the way you dramatically place your hand over your chest, and he knows it's too late, “Oh damn, your place? Saucy, but I’m starving so I’ll do almost anything.”

You can see the way he relaxes when he notices you aren’t being serious, taking his words lightly the way he intended them. His eyes roll behind his lids, a lazy smile gracing his lips as he shoves your shoulder lightly to get you to start walking. 

“Is jajangmyeon all it takes?”

“Slow your roll, good jajangmyeon is all it takes. I’ve yet to have a taste.”

Yoongi smiles at your words, taking the lead when you step out of the shop and turn back down towards the main street. His apartment was on the next block over, a short walk that you didn’t mind, especially since he took it upon himself to point at random stores you passed to let you know the best places to get what.

He has a lot of love for this city, the memories it possesses spread out through his entire childhood and early adult years, lingering in each crack on the sidewalk. He often sits and wonders how different his life would be if his parents had decided to move to Busan instead of Seoul, or stayed in Daegu altogether. The thought of the timeline of his life being altered so drastically to the point of possibly not being able to be living this moment sends his mind into a flurry, so he's grateful you’ve reached his front door now as his mind settles.

“Oh my god who’s this?” You coo as you step into his apartment, crouching down towards the white stone floors to pet the fluffy gray cat that greeted you, enjoying the way it purred and rubbed against your knee.

“That's Yuri, the queen of the house.” He steps away from you, setting the plastic bag on top of the kitchen counter a few feet away, his hands pulling out the containers and setting them down. “Don’t give her too much attention or she’ll never let you leave.”

Yuri glances up at you, her bright green eyes peering up innocently at Yoongi’s words, almost as if she was pleading for you to keep petting her. It doesn’t take much convincing for you to scoop your hands under her and press her against your chest as you stand up, your fingers gently scratching the top of her head. Yoongi lets out a sigh when he sees his cat has succeeded in wrapping you around her finger.

“Sorry, she’s too cute to not cuddle with.”

She nuzzles into your chest, purring in appreciation when your fingers trail down onto her spine. Yoongi watches you as he pops open the lid of the container that holds the noodles. Yuri is his baby, yet every time a new person comes into his place she acts like he doesn’t exist— well not until he pops open the container holding the sweet and sour pork. That's when her head pops up, her green eyes sharpening when she spots the food, and Yoongi glares back at the fluffy traitor.

When Yuri's fluffy body shakes slightly as you laugh Yoongi glances back at you, breaking up the staring contest he had going with his cat. “She’s gonna betray your love right now for some pork.” 

You don’t doubt him, not with the way her paws start to push at your arms, attempting to stand up in your embrace until she’s hopping off from your arms and slowly walking towards Yoongi. She’s absolutely shameless as she rubs her body against his legs, and Yoongi can only look down at her before staring back up at you, gesturing out with his hands. “You see?”

The act of betrayal doesn’t sting, not when she’s as cute as she is. Instead you just chuckle, walking towards the stools Yoongi has by the oversized kitchen island, a breakfast bar set up at the end, the food spread out on top of it. He ignores Yuri for the time being, pulling out the stool beside yours and sliding into it. The both of you pull your chopsticks apart and get to eating instantly, swirling the noodles until they’re evenly coated in the sauce.

You try to ignore the way Yoongi blatantly stares at you as you bring up the first clump of noodles, waiting to see what your initial reaction would be to the food he held so near and dear to his heart. Yoongi knows this could go south so quickly, there is nothing worse than trying something new when you’re starving and having it absolutely suck. Sensing his nerves, you slurp the noodles up, and when the salty taste hits your tongue you hum, chewing them thoughtfully to make a show for Yoongi.

“Verdict?”

He waits patiently for you to swallow, sharp eyes analyzing your expression, seeing you lick your lips and grin at him. “You weren’t lying, definitely some of the best jajangmyeon I’ve had.”

In pure dramatics, he practically sags in his seat and raises a fist into the air in success, being able to properly enjoy his food now that he knew you approved of it. The two of you begin to eat in relative silence, the sound of munching and slurping filling up his kitchen space. 

As the minutes go by, the back and forth of your chopsticks plucking out a dumpling after he did, lands with you snatching the last one. An evil cackle leaving you as you pop it into your mouth and grin at him, cheeks puffed out slightly and he can’t find it in himself to be irked at you snatching the last dumpling when you looked like that.

The compromise of that is you leaving the remaining pieces of pork for him to enjoy, and when Yuri gracefully hops onto the counter you see why he had suggested that. He grasps a tiny piece of pork on his chopsticks and feeds her like a parent would a toddler, airplane noise and all until Yuri opens wide and gently clamps down on the meat.

“She’s spoiled because of you.”

He merely shrugs, a giant smile spreading across his face as he watches her with adoration as she chews the food. “I refuse to confirm or deny that.”

As you finish up the last of your food you just watch on as Yoongi alternates between feeding himself and Yuri until no more pork remains. Seeing the soft way he acts with his cat just warms you up, Yoongi had always seemed like a blunt person from the times you’ve seen him at the store, his sense of humor is one that could easily be taken as harsh or cold if you didn’t match it, but you’d never expect to see him this way. The tops of his cheeks push out as he smiles at his cat, cupping her face between his hands and rocking it back and forth before planting a kiss on her forehead.

She seems to understand that that's her cue to hop off the counter, knowing that snack time is now over as Yoongi starts to clean up the empty containers. When you reach to clean your own mess up he’s quick to slap your hands away, smirking when you retract them with a small wince, your fingers rubbing the back of your palm that he had swatted with a pair of chopsticks.

“Shoo.” He waves his arm in the direction of his couch, not giving you another glance and missing the way you pout at how he had dismissed you like he would his cat.

With a huff you turn on your heel, properly taking in his living room. From the small tidbits of half truthful information that Taehyung had provided you with, you knew Yoongi was somebody in the music industry. You had always assumed that when people said that it meant struggling soundcloud rapper or something of the sort, but from the look of his apartment alone it was very evident that Yoongi was not a struggling soundcloud rapper. 

The wall of his living room was lined with floor to ceiling windows, letting you catch a glimpse of the cityscape down below, the darkening horizon and slowly flickering street lights blending together. A dark grey couch was on the wall adjacent to that, directly facing the entertainment center he had set up, complete with a massive mounted television and soundbar, a collection of DVDs organized in the storage unit below it.

You walk closer to it, catching sight of the picture frames he had displayed along the top of it. They were all simple black frames, all differing in size, all of them having photos of Yoongi and his friends on them. The one in particular that had you smiling was a photo booth picture with Yoongi and Namjoon, they were accompanied by three other people, a boy with slightly red tinged hair and a bright smile, another boy with dark brown hair and a slight pout on his face from Namjoon squishing his cheeks, and a girl with light brown hair smiling widely as Yoongi gave her bunny ears.

Namjoon was a very smiley person, never needing a reason to be, but seeing Yoongi sporting a massive gummy smile had you realizing how nicely a smile suited him. It was clear that he held this group of people near to his heart considering they all occupied the remaining photos as well.

A couple of steps right beside that was where he had his prized possession, his record player that he had fully customized to get him the desired sound he was looking for. It was a sleek black, accents of silver shining off of it, resting pretty on a dark stained wooden stand. A few of his records were stored beneath it, but what really caught your eye was the eight by eight makeshift gallery wall that showcased his current favorite LP’s, each individually shelved to show the album art in all its glory.

“Should I give this a listen with you here?”

His question has you turning your head towards him, cutting your admiration of the album covers short. He stood a few feet away, his hands holding up the orange cover of the album he had bought today with your suggestion, and a small sense of nerves bubbles up in your stomach for some reason. You had always suggested music, confident in your choices when you were in the safety of the record store, but having to witness his first impression made you a little uneasy. What if he hated the band entirely, or worse, what if he pretended he didn’t hate them just to soothe your ego.

Is this what he felt like watching you take your first bite of food earlier?

“Sure,” you choke out, taking a giant step back from his record player, hearing him chuckle at your odd behavior.

As he lifts the cover up and slides the giant record out of its sleeve you decide to go sit on the couch, sinking into the plush material and welcoming Yuri into your lap when she jumps on as well.

With a few clicks, the low whirring is heard of the turntable beginning to spin. And when he eases the needle onto the record a small crackle sounds before Get Away starts to play. He fiddles with the volume slightly until satisfied, only then does he turn back around and join you on the couch.

His face is settled in thought, bobbing his head gently to the beat as he rests back against the couch, sinking into it with a groan until he’s fully comfortable, legs spread out with one arm resting casually on his lap and the other on the arm rest, fingers tapping along.

You watch on in silence, your fingers raking through Yuri’s fur until her purring calms your nerves and you’re sagging back. Before you know it your eyes shut as you listen along to the music, your belly is full and your limbs are sore from the unpacking and rearranging that had to be done at work so being able to sit here and shut your brain off while mellow music filled the room was what you needed.

Before long the A side is finished playing, Yoongi having to get up to flip it over until the B side plays all the way through, the ending voicemail of Palace/Curse playing until it fizzles out entirely, the room falling into silence once more.

Yuri had gotten comfortable herself, sprawled out across your lap with her head by your hip, but when Yoongi gets up with a stretch her head pops up, eyes narrowing at her owner until she senses no threat and lays back down.

“Verdict?” You repeat his earlier question, seeing him hunched over with his elbows resting on his knees, his lips pursed in thought.

“Honest opinion?”

“Brutally honest.”

He hums with a sly grin as he turns his head to face you. “They’re good. Kinda makes me feel nostalgic too for some reason. But as a whole, it's great music that calms you down.”

With the way you’re laying practically boneless on his couch you can attest to that, they were definitely a band you listened to to unwind. He catches the wide smile spreading across your face as he stands back up to properly store the record, your smile only getting bigger when you see him replace one of the displayed albums on the wall with the new one. 

“It's going on the wall of favorites,” he announces, sliding the previous record back into the storage underneath.

“I’m honored.”

He steps back from the wall with his hands on his hips, admiring how the orange of the album pops out against the others. Yoongi very rarely switched these albums out, but he had a feeling this wall would eventually become full of the random albums you’d recommend to him.

“Quick question,” he starts as he turns back to face you, taking in the sight of you and his cat cuddling together. “It’s been sitting at the back of my mind, and Taehyung has given me like three different answers.”

A small laugh leaves you as you raise your eyebrow at him in question. “Sure, what is it?”

“Where did you move from?”

You stretch your legs out in front of you, your toes just barely reaching the coffee table he has set up a bit away from the couch, Yuri mimicking your actions and stretching out as well. You were definitely gonna grow as attached to her as you were to your roommate’s cat.

“Like where was I last before this, or where am I actually from?”

He walks towards his fridge, still being able to see and hear you due to the open layout of his place. “Both I guess.” The door pops open and he reaches for a bottle of water.“You thirsty?”

“You have some wine, or some beer?”

Yoongi grunts at that, shaking his head slightly, “Sorry, I don’t drink anymore but I’ve got water and juice.”

You’re sitting up straighter now, voicing out that the water was fine. “Where I’m from is classified information, you’ll have to level up on our friendship for me to tell you that.” You accept the water he hands you, smiling at him as he sits back on the couch. He was fine with your secrecy, taking whatever you feel comfortable telling him. “But I was in Madrid before I came here.”

“Oh? Did you leave where you’re from to go live there?”

Your fingers capture Yuri’s paw, squishing her toe beans as she gently swats at your hair. “No, I was in Amsterdam before that, and Berlin before that as well to name a few. I’ve been bouncing around since I was 20, so about 6 years now.”

He has a look of interest on his face as he sips the water, leaning onto the couch sideways to face you. “Do you ever want to go back to those places?”

“Like visiting the place more than once?”

He nods, his eyes focusing on Yuri’s fluffy body, seeing her sitting back up to hop onto the ledge of the couch, rubbing her body against the back of your head before settling on the backrest of it and getting comfy.

“Hm, not sure. I can’t see myself wanting to flip back the pages of my life to reread a story I already know the outcome to.” With a sigh you shrug at him, your fingers now tracing the material of the couch. “Maybe in the future, years from now, I’ll crave a specific memory and want to go back, but it hasn’t happened yet.”

The amount of new cities and countries you’ve been lucky enough to call home for any amount of time held a special place inside of you, the memories and stories you had because of those experiences helped shape you into the person you are. Sure not all of them were movie-like experiences, some close calls happening at a few places that made you question whether you made the right choice living your life the way you did. But then you’d have moments that just felt right, and right now, sitting on this couch with Yoongi, this was one of those moments.

“So you don’t plan on staying here forever?”

“Well what do you mean by forever?”

He smiles, not thinking he would have to explain what forever meant to him. “For the rest of your life. Is there another version of forever Y/N?”

“Shut up,” you laugh. “It’s not likely, but who's to say. I never move somewhere with a time frame of how long I plan on staying.”

“How do you decide? Sorry if I’m prying but I just can’t imagine that moving somewhere new would be easy. Picturing having to leave friends behind would probably wound me.” 

That was true, that was definitely the hardest part of doing this— emotionally at least. The people you met and befriended were a factor in deciding how long you’d stay somewhere. After the initial week of exploring a new place, it gets lonely. You’ve been to places where even the roommates you’d stay with weren’t friendly, and you’d have to take it a step further and search for friendships elsewhere. It was the main reason you had learned to not be timid when it came to making the first move.

“It’s kind of a gut feeling. The longest place I’ve lived in was Paris for two years.” A smile spreads across your face as you recall the two years you spent in that city, how you probably would’ve left after a few weeks if you hadn’t ran into that cute boy right before the club you were in shut down for the night. That experience alone was one of the main reasons you made it a conscious decision to not fall in love, not wanting to experience the inevitable heartbreak that came with it. 

Paris was the first place you moved to, jumping head first into adventure and taking everything that came with it, including romance. Leaving friends behind had been hard, but leaving Park Jimin behind had been a different version of painful.

“Before this I was in Madrid for a month. I found myself getting comfortable too fast and when I get comfortable I get bored. When it's no longer new and exciting I don’t see the point of staying anymore.”

Yoongi absolutely can not see the logic in the way you live, the carefree aura radiating off of you, but he weirdly craves it. He craves the feeling of not being afraid of not knowing what's coming, being able to just let the cards fall wherever they land. His entire life had changed in the last few years and was now built off routine, bullet point to-do lists and deadlines he had to meet. The only adventure he experiences anymore is thanks to his friends, luring him out of his apartment to fulfil any of their spur of the moment ideas, but nothing comes close to this. 

He’s not able to understand how you can be suspended in freefall for the majority of your life, and instead of panicking about your lack of parachute, you’re admiring the view.

“Do you plan on staying here forever?”

That question makes him freeze a little, he had been prying into your life no problem but now that a question was directed at him, he felt himself growing uneasy. “I guess I did.”

“Did...why past tense?”

You see the way he hesitates, his mind is already playing through all the scenarios that can come because of this but he decides to just bite the bullet. “Love makes you think of forever. I pictured forever with my fiance.”

At the mention of a fiance your mind thinks of the girl in the photos with Yoongi, the girl with the bright smile and wide eyes.

Was Yoongi a married man?

He can spot the way you process his vague information, knowing he should elaborate before you think anything else, before your eyes move to his ring finger only to find it bare. “When you’re with someone for almost 8 years its normal to think of forever you know.”

The flashes of his relationship play in his mind, meeting his fiance in his last year of high school. How they had pulled each other out of their shells, becoming rather chaotic in their adventures over the years, turning into adults and supporting each other in every aspect of life.

The memory of Yoongi proposing to her still feels fresh in his mind, taking her to Jeju island since it was a place she had always wanted to visit, not being able to due to caring for her family.

“We were actually planning our wedding, having invitations sent out with everything nearly ready but she uh–“ he stops to breathe slightly, his eyes moving to stare at the picture frames, proving your assumption of the girl being his fiance right. “She got into an accident.”

He hadn’t specified if she died or not, but that faraway look in his eyes spelled it out for you. Forever didn’t have any sympathy for his situation, but he just shrugs it off, forcing himself to not speak further on it. There was more that tied in to the tragic passing of his fiance but he felt he had overshared enough already, not wanting to make you uncomfortable by unloading this information on you. The last thing he needed was to turn this nice day into a pity party with him being the center of attention. 

He’s just waiting for the routine apologetic words that would fall from your mouth—maybe you’d reach over and rub his arm like some people did, tell him how sad it was as if he didn’t already know. Some half assed attempt to make him feel better even though you were clearly blind sided by the topic. 

Yoongi didn’t want that, always hating the way people would stare at him like he was some charity case. This was why he rarely chose to stray from his circle of comfort, from the people that knew the baggage that came with him and accepted him, keeping his group as tight knit as possible in order to not pick at scabbed over wounds. 

When you sigh, he braces for it, mentally accepting that this might be what ends your new formed friendship before you could really creep through the cracks in the wall he built. But instead you reach forward and grasp Yuri once more, scooping her up and bringing her to your chest like a baby. “So Yuri wasn’t the only queen of the house, is that it?”

Yuri purrs in confirmation and Yoongi turns to stare at you again, blinking the wetness away from his eyes before he could even call them tears. You had a smile on your face as you stared at him, not that typical sympathetic smile people always sent his way, it was a genuine one, letting him know he was free to talk more on the subject if he needed to.

And for the first time Yoongi acknowledges that maybe he did need to. He was so used to bottling his emotions in, shutting himself off after her passing, pushing all of his friends and family away and locking himself at home as he mourned, submerging himself in his work to numb himself from feeling anything. Even now, his friends never pried, let him handle his feelings any way he wanted to. But Yoongi can’t act like his chest aches from keeping it all in, the pressure slowly releasing even with the minimal information he had given you. 

“Yeah,” he sighs out in relief, reaching out to pet Yuri. “Hani was the queen before Yuri got promoted.”

As you coo at his cat he feels himself sagging back onto the couch. The small dam of emotions he had inside finally released, and before you know it he’s spilling everything out, telling you tidbit stories of him and Hani, and somehow easing you into sharing similar stories of you and Jimin. 

The sun fully sets through the windows, neither of you noticing as you talk well into the night, and Yoongi found himself laughing and smiling at the mention of Hani for the first time in two years. You urge him on, watching on with interest while he talks about the day they had picked up Yuri from the shelter. 

His eyes are crinkled up in that endearing way you had seen more of today than in the past weeks of knowing him, and it fills you with warmth to know he’s allowing you to know about this part of his life. It felt like sacred information, uncharted territory from the way he had hesitated in the beginning, almost like he wasn’t sure if he could trust you with the precious memories he held tightly. All he needed was a gentle nudge and a genuine smile to slowly let you flip the pages of his brain, knowing you wouldn’t judge the bleeding ink and scratched out words that came with each story. 

As he stares at the way you smile at him, he comes to the realization that your sneaky ass must have already managed to slip past the cracks of the walls he built, infiltrating the tight knit circle he had for himself. He has to hold in a laugh when he recalls the way Taehyung had seriously suggested that you might be a spy sent here from another country. Maybe he was onto something, because he was refusing to accept that his willingness to overshare and stray from his norm was due to anything but your highly trained interrogation skills. 

You clearly had his cat fooled as well. When Yuri leans up and nuzzles her face against yours he sighs, knowing she had claimed you as her favorite solely based on the attention you gave her. You were good. Yoongi guesses he would have to keep you around now, just for the sake of his cat, nothing more. 

yandere!ateez as fanboys

Hongjoong: 

The moment he hears one song from your latest album, it immediately swept him off his feet from the ground and made the decision to stan you. You are his favorite soloist. The moment he hears your latest comeback album, he immediately listened to all your other songs and made his research about you that night. Of course, the caffeine boosting him. 

He made a lot of social media accounts just to follow you. Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, you name it. He would follow your every move and post. But is still didn’t feel the same. To Hongjoong, he felt like he was still missing a large chunk of your life and he didn’t want that. The next night, he pulled a couple of strings and ta dah! had access to your very personal information. And he felt so complete afterwards. 

To you, Hongjoong was just one of your few male fans that you adore. I mean, the guy makes covers of your songs. And part of you agreed that when he made his own remix of your songs, it would sound 10000% better than the original. However, you just didn’t noticed the subliminal messages and tones he inserted in his remixes. 

Seonghwa: 

Seonghwa was one of those rare male fansites you have. Being in a 7 member girl group called Starlight, you are the group’s visual, main dancer, lead vocalist, center and face of the group. Once your group made its debut, fame automatically found you. 

Endorsements here and there, landing yourself in various commercial films and even coming to be a guest of variety shows. Your popularity instantly swept off and in a blink of an eye, the whole of South Korea knew your name. And your name tasted delicious in HwaLight_Y/N. Seonghwa’s fansite name dedicated to you. He thought of a name that would connect him to you. Hwa meaning star, replacing the english word and thus the birth of the fansite name. 

With his good looks, he too became known amongst the fans. He was known as your handsome fansite master. And since he was one of the rare male fansites you have, you would immediately recognize him from afar. Smiling at his camera and waving at him. Much to Seonghwa’s delight, he felt like there was already a deep connection between you two. And he wanted more of that. 

He started coming to your unofficial group activities. Slippiing his way inside the venue just to be able to feel your presence a few feet from him. He started purchasing flight and hotel information from other “fans” and would purchase the seat closest to you or the room nearest yours. 

Didn’t noticed those red beaming lights hidden inside your hotel room when you’re changing clothes or taking a shower? Click click! Or you were dead asleep tired from rehearsals when someone barged into your room? Click click! Ever noticed how your favorite red lace underwear went missing only to come back with a stain? Click click! 

Yunho: 

At first, he wasn’t entirely dazzled by you. Yunho was just a regular idol manager who would follow you into your every activities and schedules. He needed the money, plus, companies like him for his tall and muscular physique. The kind of person that can ward off creepy or scary fans that tried to get close to you.

You, on the other hand, is an ex member of your former girl group but found fame as a solo artist. Your debut song swept the charts and immediately won every single music show chart. Topping music chart billboards in every country. Despite all the glitz and glamor that followed you, you felt lonely and desperate for human touch. 

It wasn’t supposed to be how Yunho, naked and in between your legs. How such alcohol can make you two do things that violates his contract with you. One night was all it takes for him to see a completely different side of you. And he wanted more of that. 

Yunho became more protective towards you. Becoming more aggressive to anyone who dares lay a hand on you. Even going as far as sleeping in one bed with you as he thinks “its completely necessary, who know, someone might be barging into your room in the middle of the night?”  You can never get away from him. Companies like him, remember? With his clean records, your company would do anything to keep him signed with you. 

Yeosang: 

Channel YNbyYS is a youtube channel run by Yeosang. It’s the platform wherein he posts his dance covers to your group’s songs. With a bit of his dancing elements and the original choreography of your group, the blend came out much nicer than what everyone expected. His heart leaped more at the idea of you endorsing a chicken brand. From that day forward, he became a regular of the certain chicken brand nearest to him. 

Yeosang may seem like a complete innocent and harmless fanboy. But do you ever what he is behind his dance covering youtube channel? Why, he is the second most influential person in your company. The son of your own CEO. He had his very own place within the company. And he uses it to the extent of getting closer to you. 

The gifts that came into your company? Those are ALL Yeosang’s gifts for you. From the dresses to the shoes. He shamelessly threw away other gifts’ that were for you because according to him “he is the only relevant and special person that can offer you gifts”. Anything else is directly to the bin. 

And you wonder how your “fans” know your taste in fashion. 

Mingi: 

Mingi, before being blacklisted by your company, was just a regular fanboy of your group. You were the group’s main rapper and the lyrics to your bars spoke volumes to him. He was just casually listening to your verses and mixtapes until one day, he realized that he wanted to be more than just your fanboy.

It started slowly when he would attend your group’s fansigns and even follow you towards the airport. But the bodyguards prevented him from coming anymore closer to you. And so he did the unthinkable. Knocking down a bodyguard that was shielding you and enveloping you in his arms. His heartbeat raced and he felt a second heartbeat between his pants. With you in his arms, he only realized how petite yet handful you are. Hands running all over your body, burying his nose in your hair inhaling that soft and sweet strawberry shampoo that you use. 

Despite being blacklisted, he never cared about going public and meeting you at your group or individual activities. Instead, he resorted to barging into your dorm. Whether you’re home or not. 

 San: 

You are your group’s maknae and visual. Dubbed as Korea’s IT Girl, your face can be found anywhere in Seoul. From commercial films to leading Korean dramas, releasing your own solo album and attending fashion weeks, you are always the talk of the town. Whenever your name comes up, its always met with praises. Of course, the people loves you! You are a crowd and fan favorite. 

And you had managed to capture the eyes and heart of San. Calling himself as your number 1 fan. He was never absent in any of your activities. Getting front row seats in your concerts, being present at your variety shows and even buying products that you endorse - soju, cosmetics, literally anything. 

To your fans, he is the biggest fanboy you ever had. And it was quite entertaining to watch him profess his love to you. You even chuckled a few of his pick up lines that he threw at you during your fansigns. When asked if you had anything memorable that a fan ever did to you, the answer would always be San. 

Behind closed doors, San kept a dirty secret. Remember how he always gets front row seats to your concerts? He hid a camera in his clothes to film your upskirt. Beating his meat every night to his own collection of your tight and revealing clothing. Remember how you would endorse anything? He’d buy it and imagine how ripping it off your body feels like. His greatest possession? Your black lingerie. Too bad, you’re never getting it back. 

Wooyoung: 

ForYN is a website account run by Wooyoung. He regularly updates his content - from posting your pictures that are uploaded today, to your daily activities, the products you use and a little sub website from his channel wherein he writes poems and graphical fanfiction of himself with you. But of course no one would ever read between the lines. The way how Wooyoung would write would be so poetical and endearing that it? doesn’t? have? any? hidden? meaning? 

He only came once to your fansign and gave you a pink teddybear. It wasn’t the best gift you owned but you liked it somehow. There was something about the teddybear that you didn’t know why you’re into it. Its just a plain gift but everytime you look at it, its as if you’re drawn to it. 

Maybe becuase you didn’t noticed how it has camera eyes? 

Wooyoung’s love for you deepened when he caught you humping on the pink teddybear. Cum splattering all over its face. It was just one gift, but it was everything to you. 

And Wooyoung’s working on the next entry for his fanfiction. 

Jongho: 

For today, you were having your own vlive. Doing what you called a YN mukbang. As the convenient food store you bought was placed on the table, you began to greet yours fans, asking them how they are feeling before digging in your food. Among the hundreds and thousands of viewers, Jongho was one of them. 

He was engrossed in two things: one, how adorable and beautiful you look despite just eating. Second, the rude comments that were popping up in your live video. Rude remarks of body shaming were what caught his attention. He took his time digging deeper into someone else’s username and IP address. Once he got a hold of their information, he would report those comments and head out. In his disguise while hunting the people who made disguisting remarks at you. No one should ever make such remarks to a goddess. 

clandestine (chapter 5)

PAIRING: Tom Holland x fem!Reader

SUMMARY: Y/N is an up and coming actress, married to a once hotshot actor, Harrison (Haz). What happens when her co-star, Tom, makes her realise that she is stuck in a loveless marriage. A marriage starts crumbling and a new romance stars brewing.

chapter 5: the rumour has it

A/N: i do not encourage cheating. i hope you guys like this chapter!! feedback is always appreciated. thanks for reading <3

warnings: drinking, cursing

word count: 1.6k

important: bold and italic are character thoughts

series masterlist   main masterlist   chapter 4   chapter 6

The video of Y/N and Tom singing ‘SOS’ broke the internet. It was trending for at least four days. The whole internet, already on the witch hunt to find evidence of a relationship, was being fed. The paparazzi were circling around like vultures. The threat of being outed made them hide in their caves.

Haz was coming to London in two days. Y/N was trying to rid the house of anything and everything that hinted that Tom had been staying with her. Between the paps, shooting, and Haz, she couldn’t find time to meet Tom and give him his things.

There were Polaroids scattered all over the house. While she was packing a box to parcel to Tom, she found a Polaroid on her glass coffee table next to her ‘vanilla sage’ candle from Bath and Body Works. In the photo, Y/N was lying on her stomach on the hardwood floor in her living room, a gin and tonic next to her. Tom was sitting on the floor with his right arm extended to take the photo. They were both smiling.

She remembered when he took that photo. It was the same day she found a vintage vinyl of Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong’s ‘on verve’, during her exploration of Camden market. They decided to have a listening party of that album on the floor. Tom found his new favourite song that day, ‘let’s call the whole thing off’. She smiled at the memory. Instead of putting it in the box, she went into her room to put it in her wallet where only she could find it.

Y/N noticed her phone vibrating next to her purse. It was Harrison.

“Bonjour mon amour”,

“Hi Haz, did you board the flight?”

“Just did; listen you don’t have to pick me up from the airport, I know you are busy at work”

“Fine. Text me when you land”

“Su-“, she hung up the phone.

I can’t believe I have to live with this man for a whole week.

Haz came in late at night, even though his flight was supposed to land at 5pm. Y/N was already sleeping. When she woke up around 8 next morning, she found, much to her surprise, Haz snoring next to her. Last night she made sure that there was a pillow and a blanket on the couch for him, a subtle way of saying ‘I don’t want you sleeping in the same bed with me’. Also because she thought he knew about the affair and wouldn’t want to sleep next to her.

God, I wish I had another bedroom

Y/N was sitting on the bar stool with her laptop on the kitchen island, going through her mail while drinking coffee. Haz had just woken up from his deep slumber, and found his way to the kitchen to fetch him some coffee.

“Good morning!” she said enthusiastically, without looking up from her laptop screen. She had thought it was a sleepy Tom, coming out of the bedroom to make himself tea.

“Morning”, Haz said as a reflex, rubbing his eyes. Y/N’s smile disappeared upon hearing the sound of his voice.

“Did you make breakfast?” Haz asked while pouring himself coffee into a mug Tom had gifted Y/N.

“I made myself breakfast when I woke up, three hours ago. Was I supposed to make breakfast for you too?” It was a rhetorical question. Y/N noticed the mug, it made her uneasy watching a man she doesn’t love drinking from a gift given by the man she did love.

“There’s eggs and bread in the fridge, help yourself”, she pointed at the refrigerator.

As Haz cracked open an egg on the pan, Y/N received an email from Greta.

“Good news, Netflix bought the distribution rights to Greta’s movie, she just sent me a mail”

“Oh”

Oh? Seriously, oh?

“They are planning the premier for this Friday, do you want to go with me?”

“I don’t think so, I don’t really like the people you work with” he was putting butter on cold bread.

There is nothing more tragic than love turning into hate. Tragedy had struck their marriage. The rest of the week, they only spoke when they absolutely had to. It was like living with a roommate, you share a bed with but cannot share your day with.

--

It was Friday, the day of the movie premiere. Y/N was excited to see Tom after a week without him, which felt like an eternity to her. She was wearing a silver colored floor length gown with heavily studded earrings. Her hair was up in a bun with two strands out, to shape her face.

Since it was Netflix, the event could afford to take place at the Royal Albert Hall. Y/N had only been there once, for an Arctic Monkeys concert. When she stepped out of the car, she was met by blinding lights of the cameras. She walked over to the whole cast on the red carpet. The only thing she could hear was the deafening noise of photographers screaming to look towards them and in between, tabloid journalists asking her questions about her life and rumours.

Y/N was still pretty new to walking red carpets because she had mostly worked on indie films that couldn’t afford a grand premiere as most of the money would go towards entering different festivals. Y/N was wearing a mask of pure joy on her face but Tom could see right through it. He could see how uncomfortable Y/N was feeling.

He walked towards her, “you look gorgeous darling” he whispered in her ears and for a second that mask she was wearing became real. They both posed together, but regretted it immediately. The whole media went on overdrive, seeing them together.

“Are you guys seeing each other?” a person from the left screamed.

“Y/N, did you leave Harrison?” someone from the right asked

The voices were coming from everywhere. All they could do now was walk off the carpet. Tom had arranged for Y/N to sit next to her during the screening. His hand was linked with Y/N’s the whole time. He could feel her shivering.

“Are you cold?” he asked her.

“Not really”, she took a long pause. “I am just nervous about my performance in the movie and I guess the questions really got to my head, it’s all making me very anxious”

“Don’t worry babe, everyone is going to love you in the movie, and those hunters out there are shell of a person, all they care about are these bullshit rumours. They don’t deserve a house in your thoughts”

“Shhhhhh” someone whispered from the row above theirs.

Y/N’s phone was vibrating, it was Harrison’s fourth call in fifteen minutes.

Why is he not getting the hint that I don’t want to talk to him

She ignored it.

A few minutes later, her phone rang again.

What if it’s serious?

She got up and went outside of the theatre to take the call.

“What is it, Haz? You know I’m busy right now”

“Umm, are you Y/N?” A man with a heavy, older voice said.

“Yes?” She was confused. “Who is this and how do you have my husband’s phone?”

“Your husband is trashed, ma’am. He passed out on my bar counter about half an hour ago. Your number was on his emergency contact list so I'm calling you to pick him up”

“I’ll be right there, can you tell me the address?”

“Yeah sure it’s 141 Albert Street, Spread Eagle”

Tom came out of the theatre.

“Is everything okay, Y/N?”

“I have to go pick up Haz, he’s splashed out on a bottle somewhere, bloody fool can’t even walk”, she said whilst texting her driver to pick her up.

“Do you want me to go with you?”

“No, I need to deal with this alone”

She walked out the back gate and got in a black Audi.

The paparazzi had noticed her early departure, so they started following her recklessly.

It was a corner pub, the bar was at full capacity. Y/N saw Haz with his head down on the counter, an almost empty tequila bottle next to him.

“Haz wake up, come on, we need to go, get up darling” Y/N was trying to shake him awake.

“O-oh Y/N, y-you’re he-ear”, he was slurring his words.

“Yeah now let’s go”

He started to get up, Y/N had her one hand on his back and the other on his forearm, to support him.

“Honey I th-think I’m going to puke”, he looked sick.

“Is there a restroom here?” She asked the bartender. He pointed towards the corner of the room, a dimly lit area.

“Thank you”. She helped Harrison to walk to the restroom.

The washroom felt like their marriage. They were cramped up in it. The whole room was pure white but also yellow, caused by the lack of cleaning. There were no windows and had only one white florescent light. It was suffocating. The room made her realise that she could not hide from the inevitable, anymore.

Has was on his knees, holding on to the toilet seat with his dear life, puking all the poison out. Y/N was standing near the sink, taking off her statement earrings. She could see a vulnerable Harrison in the reflection of the mirror.

“I want a divorce”, she whispered, loud enough to be heard in this stifle room.

@mysticapples17  @storybookholland

All Too Well

Spencer must go to him and Y/N’s once shared apartment to clean out his things and leave her life forever. While there he can’t help but look back on his actions, the ones that made him lose the love of his life forever

A/N: Hi!! This is my first fanfic ever published on here and I’m excited to share it with you all! It’s inspired by one of my favorite Taylor Swift songs All Too Well, but although I utilized some of the lyrical genius and imagery from it, the story is not the same as the story in the song. This is a very angsty fic, and there is not a happy ending. Although there are some cute fluffy elements, including a Reid’s purple scarf origin story, I would in no way call this happy. Additionally, because of a reason you may later realize, the content warnings are very vague. If anything even slightly mentioned in them may affect you, I advise you to maybe stay clear. On a lighter note, if anyone wants to request anything, whether it’s another song inspired fic or a general plot line you would like to see please do so!! Also sorry this is kinda short, I’m still learning but I’m really proud of this one :))

Pairing: Spencer Reid x Fem Reader

Type: Very Angsty, Not a Happy Ending, (Y/N and Spencer do not end up together)

Word Count: 2.4k

Content Warnings(try to ignore if you would prefer to stay surprised): slight cursing, discussions of death and gore, discussion of car crash

Things to Know: Italics and bold are flashback moments :) let me know what you think!

“But you keep my old scarf from that very first week 'Cause it reminds you of innocence And it smells like me You can't get rid of it 'Cause you remember it all too well”

Spencer was packing up his things, finally getting the chance to clear out and move from the apartment he and Y/N once shared.  Their relationship was rocky and unconventional but he loved her all the same. Even though he left her broken-hearted and destroyed his most cherished relationship. Even though Y/N’s parents now hated him because of what he did to her. Even though hope of repairing what they once had was long gone and there was nothing else he could do about it. Even though he had torn up the masterpiece they once had together. He still loved her so much.

But the magic was gone and so was she. 

Now Spencer was left with memories, and since the apartment they lived in was hers instead of his, filed entirely under hers and her parents name. In his excessive knowledge and wisdom, Spencer Reid struggled to understand how the kitchen where Y/N told him she loved him for the first time as he lit the candle on the collapsing confetti cake he had attempted to bake for her birthday was in no way legally tied to him. 

“Happy Birthday to you, happy birthday to you! Happy birthday to Y/N! Happy birthday to you!” Spencer sang as he lit the single pink birthday candle he found after rummaging through his desk drawers for longer than he cared to admit. He knew it was in there somewhere, but at the same time there was a whole lot in there. 

As he looked at her face, eyes welling up with tears as she took in the sad, homemade excuse for a birthday party Spencer had thrown together after they got back from a case hours before, he couldn’t help but feel he should have done more. He wanted to take her to New York, where they would’ve enjoyed fine dining and one of those incredibly detailed floral frosting cakes he knew Y/N was infatuated with. 

However, the case in Oregon ran long. They had only returned to their apartment 2 hours ago, hours past their 7pm dinner reservations. Although Y/N tried to hide her disappointment, you don’t need to be a profiler to know that someone wants to celebrate their own birthday. So although they had agreed to go to bed and play everything by ear tomorrow, the young genius had, what he would still argue to be, his most brilliant idea when he saw Y/N asleep once he got out of the shower.

It was still her birthday.

And Spencer had just under 2 hours to throw you a party. 

So sure, Y/N deserved more than a cake that was definitely not cool enough to frost, but was frosted anyway due to time constraints. And she definitely deserved more than present hastily wrapped in his printed out articles and newspaper clippings. Spencer wished that he had time to go buy new candles, instead of lighting a green sparkly number 7 because it was all he could find.

But it was almost midnight, and that meant he only had 18 minutes before it wasn’t Y/N’s birthday anymore.

So instead of dwelling on it, he headed to their bedroom, shook her awake and watched her roll over to face him. He watched the smile overtake her face as she said the stupid party hat he was wearing, made out of a pom pom and a wedding invitation.

“Hey birthday girl,” he said softly, “you do realize you’re sleeping through your party right?”

She looked so happy that night, even as she saw the way too messy kitchen and her birthday cake that was melting by the second. She laughed as Spencer fumbled with the lighter. 

And as he finished singing her eyes started releasing tears. 

“I’m sorry sweetheart, I wish we could’ve done more for the first birthday we get to spend together. “

“No, no, no” she said as she wiped her tears away, “It’s not that at all.”

She smiled and looked up at him “I just love you so goddamn much Spencer.”

Although at one point, all Spencer knew was logic and logically Y/N had never ever known him when she filed her paperwork, the genius still struggled to grasp the concept. That even before the ending of it all, you had no legal, definite connection to her at all. 

How was nothing about this place, his? 

  All that he knew was that he had today to pack all his shit and leave. All he knew is that Y/N’s father had made it very clear none of their family wanted to see him again. 

He wished he could talk to Y/N about it. However all of his calls went to voicemail immediately. 

Logically, Spencer knew why, he had completely fucked up. 

But still, he called every single day, as there was nothing his heart wished for more than to speak to Y/N again. To apologize, to beg for forgiveness he knew he didn’t deserve.

As the cold air from the open windows blew into the apartment, Spencer couldn’t help but feel he was leaving his home behind. Everything left of her was going to be here, and he wouldn’t get to experience any part of the life you and him had once shared together anymore.

But then he saw it. 

The royal purple scarf Y/N bought the day of their first date. 

“You like this color right?” she asked as they stopped by a booth at the street festival she had taken him to. Spencer was too distracted as he watched the other couples on dates, as they walked hand and hand down the streets. He sometimes wished he could forget things like the number of germs and bacteria that lived on her hands. He at least wished he could forget long enough to gather enough courage to hold Y/N’s hand as they walked down the sidewalk.

“Hmm?” he said, looking back at her, then the scarf she was now wearing. “Oh, yeah! I love that color, it um- looks great on you.”

She smiled, then turned to the weird old guy running the stand. “How much for the scarf?” she asked.

He looked at her, then looked at Spencer, “depends which one of you is paying.”

Before Spencer could say anything, let alone pull out his wallet, Y/N already had hers out. 

“Well, for a pretty lady like you, it’s 2 dollars,” the man said.

She handed him five and turned to Spencer. “You hear that? I’m so pretty I get 80% off! Wonder what you would’ve paid huh pretty boy? He would probably owe you money.” The man handed her her change and whispered something Spence couldn’t quite catch. 

“Gross,” Y/N said as they exited the booth, “he wrote his number on my change.”

Spencer chuckled, “Did you really just buy that scarf because I like the color of it?”

She smiled, “Don’t get so cocky now Einstein, I like purple too you know? And maybe if you’re lucky I’ll let you borrow it.”

At that moment Spencer felt just okay enough to wrap his arm around Y/N’s, and she felt just right enough to wrap the new scarf around them both. 

The one she left next to her front door, after making the last minute decision to leave it at home the night of their final outing.

No one would notice if he….. Right?

Sure maybe Y/N would but what would she do about it? Hunt him down just to get a scarf she paid less than five dollars for? Definitely not. 

He wrapped it around his neck and closed his eyes, even days later he could perfectly picture Y/N singing in his car, fascinated by the autumn leaves falling around her. He felt the wind in his hair, but instead of the cold, dreary air from the open apartment window, he swore he could remember the warm air from that October night. 

“Spencer I know you hate it but please, please, please. I’m so tired.”

“Sweetheart you’re not tired, you’re drunk. Of course I have to drive you home.”

“Oh, whatever.”

A phone call broke him away from his memories, it was Hotch. Spencer was angry, how effortlessly cruel of him to call him during such an emotional time. Hotch knew how much Spencer loved Y/N, the whole team did. 

So he didn’t pick up.

Instead he walked over to the coffee table they used to put their feet on when they binged watched Doctor Who together. Letting the ringtone play out in the background, Spencer picked up an old photo album Y/N’s parents must have brought out. Of course he remembered it, it was the same one they flipped through when he met Y/N’s parents for the first time. He didn’t realize she had brought it home with her.

His eyes welled up with tears as he flipped through the old school pictures, remembering how embarrassed Y/N was of her big glasses. He saw her old athlete pictures from when she used to play tee ball, and flipped through more pictures until he reached the end of your softball career, in college. 

He remembered how hard Y/N blushed when she showed him her childhood bedroom. Her twin sized bed was full of stuffed animals and her walls covered in boy band posters. 

“You know what Spencer? I don’t want to hear it. I loved and still love the BackStreet Boys and I am not ashamed of that.”

He laughed, “You know, before we started dating I always thought you were so cool and unattainable. I imagined that you had always been this chic, beautifully brilliant badass. It’s oddly comforting to know that you wore tortoiseshell glasses and had a fruitless infatuation with Nick Carter.”

She gasped, before tossing her tabby cat stuffed toy at him, “You’re about to get it!”

Once again he was called out of the memory by his phone. 

And once again he let it ring.

Spencer went into their shared bedroom, most of his things were already put into boxes for him. Honestly he was surprised that they hadn’t been set on fire or thrown away after what he did. 

Soon it was time for him to take his things down to his car.

Except it wasn’t even his car. It was Morgan’s.

“Spencer, you are the most gorgeous man I have ever seen in my entire life. I am infatuated with you, I want us to spend the rest of our lives together.”

“You sure that isn’t the alcohol talking Y/N”

“Look at me Spencer, no, no really look at me.”

He couldn’t imagine ever using his old car again after what had happened in it.

“You are my future.”

Not that he could use it again.

“You are my everything.”

It was pretty much destroyed, after that accident on that little town street.

“I want nothing more in my life, than for you to be in it.”

When he was so enamored by Y/N, so in love that he couldn’t take his eyes off her, that he ran a red light.

And the truck waiting to go didn’t stop either.

“SPENCER! SPENCER CAN YOU HEAR ME? I NEED YOU TO CALL 911!” she screamed, her voice filled with agony, her limbs mangled in a sea of crushed mental and snapped backwards by the emergency airbag she didn’t realize she was resting her feet on.

Spencer had already called 911. That was the sickest thing about it. Spencer was, physically, perfectly fine. Spencer would get to leave the hospital after just a few days. Spencer could’ve probably gotten out of the car if he tried to. But he stayed, he stayed with Y/N, as she wasn’t fine. As Spencer looked down on her broken body, and tried desperately to find just one piece of skin that wasn’t coated in blood, her blood, that is when he realized. That not only could Y/N not walk out of the hospital with him, but she probably wouldn’t even make it there.

So he sobbed, he struggled to breathe, not because of the ways Y/N did, but because he had caused all the reasons she couldn’t.

“Hey, Spencer, look at me.”

So he did, and he reached for her hands and held them so tightly, and wanted one last time to feel her squeeze back. And she did, just ever so softly. 

“Spencer, I meant everything I said to you. I want you to spend the rest of my life with me. Please.”

“I love you so much Y/N”

“I love you too.”

Spencer was drawn away from his memories once again as he got another phone call. 

But it wasn’t Hotch this time. It was Mr. Y/L/N, so he answered it. He owed him that.

“Are you out of her house yet? You’ve had hours. I want you gone Spencer.”

Spencer sighed, “I’m leaving now sir, I’m just putting the last of my things in the trunk and then I’ll be gone.”

“Good, I never want to see you again Spencer, you hear me?�� Mr. Y/L/N said. “And you better not have anything of hers either. All that stuff in your car better belong to you and you only. If Y/N paid for even a dime of it it better still be in that house.”

Spencer looked down at this scarf he was wearing, the one that still smelled like her perfume. The one that he couldn’t bring himself to take off because he reminded him of so much innocence and beauty.

“Yes sir, I didn’t take anything.”

“Good. And Spencer do me a favor.”

“Anything sir.”

“Go fuck yourself.” Mr. Y/L/N said, and then hung up. Spencer sighed, he expected that and fully deserved it.

How else should a father react when you kill his daughter?

“'Cause there we are again when I loved you so Back before you lost the one real thing you've ever known It was rare, I was there, I remember it all too well”

He’s Back

(Story Post)

Kent didn't seem to know what to do with the crying werewolf on his front, but he patted his back until he settled down. Nathan eventually pulled away and wiped his eyes. “I'm sorry… I don't know what came over me…” Dax decided to come out and make his entrance. “I thought you said you were going to punch him.” Kent’s entire demeanor changed and he was immediately on guard again, dipping to scoop up his rifle. “Who the fuck's that?” Nathan stepped back and held a hand out to his partner. “This is Dax.” “And who the fuck is Dax?” Kent said gruffly. “I'm his boyfriend,” Dax said, walking over and taking Nathan's hand. Kent huffed. “You really are one of those type, huh, Nate?”

“Nate?” Dax inquired. “He calls me that to antagonise me,” Nathan sighed. “I've told him a hundred times it's just Nathan. And put your damn rifle down, Kent.” Kent backed up to the porch to put his rifle down on the balcony. Then he just stood there and crossed his arms. “…So, did you have the kids?” Nathan crossed his arms too. “What if I did?” “Don't play games, dog breath. If I have children, I oughta know about it.” Nathan placed his hands on his hips. “I had my kids, yes.” “Where are they?” Kent demanded. “They're back home being babysat,” Nathan answered. Kent growled. “You came all the way out here and didn't even bring my fuckin’ kids?” “Well, I had Dawson’s kids, but he's dead,” Nathan said shrugging. “You damn mutt… You really want to go that way? You really want to say you had Dawson Grace's kids, the name that went down as the man executed for murdering four people?” Kent asked. “They're my fucking kids. I have a right to see them.” “Why the fuck should I bring them to you?” Nathan asked. “You literally don't exist to them. They're fine without you.” “So what, you've got this limp dick raisin’ my kids?” Kent growled, shoving a finger towards Dax. Dax pushed out a hip. “Nathan was right. You really are an asshole.” “Dax is there for me,” Nathan said. “He actually gives a shit. You've done nothing for me or my kids.” “Yeah, as if I had a fuckin' choice!” Kent scrunched his nose. “Don't you think I would've wanted to be there?” “You didn't even want me to have them!” Nathan said. “Yeah, when I was convinced I was gonna fry!” Kent said. “I didn't want to leave kids on this Earth with a fucked up legacy like mine!” “If you want to see my kids, you'll have to earn it!” Nathan stated. “You'll have to help me.” “Like shit. I don't have to do shit for you,” Kent stated. “Look at what you did to my fucking face.” He jabbed a finger at his own long scar. Nathan shook his head. “You'd be dead if it weren't for me.” “How the fuck do you reckon that?” Kent growled. “I told you APID could help you,” Nathan stated. “I told you my case workers would do something about your case, so long as you were really innocent. And they got this for you.” He motioned to the cottage. “Much better than that hell hole of a cave you had in the ravine.” “I liked my cabin,” Kent said stubbornly. “And if you hadn't come along, I would've still been there, alone, without the black suits bothering me all the time.” “But you'd still be a wanted man,” Nathan stated. “You'd get caught eventually and then the cover up wouldn't be a cover up. You'd be dead. But you're a free man now. They gave you a whole new life.” Kent grit his teeth. “I never asked for it. I was survivin’ on my own.” “Surviving's not necessarily living though,” Dax commented. “No one asked you, Dix,” Kent snapped. “It's Dax...” “Don't fuckin' care.” Nathan crossed his arms. “If you're going to keep being an asshole, we'll just leave and you'll never see your kids.” “I don't even know they really exist,” Kent said. “You could just be lyin’ to me.” “...Are you fucking kidding me?” Nathan grabbed Kent's shirt. “I wouldn't lie about the pain and labour I had to go through to bring those kids into this world. Is this a fucking lie?” He lifted his shirt, exposing his stretch marks and C-section scar. “Is this a fucking lie to you, Kent?” Kent paused and placed his hand on Nathan's stomach, feeling the scars that webbed across his skin. “You really were fuckin’ pregnant, huh? Man like you...” “Don't touch me!” Nathan pushed Kent's hand away and lowered his shirt. “I came here hoping you would help me. Do you think you could do that?” “Remains to be seen,” Kent said. “Do you at least have pictures of my kids?” “Yes, of course,” Nathan said. Kent sighed. “What do you need help with?” Nathan took a deep breath. “My transformation's started triggering during the day time, regardless of my wolf cycle,” he explained. “I become more of a half wolf, half man than the usual full wolf.” Kent nodded. “Ah.” “Does that ever happen to you?” Nathan asked. “What, this?” Kent immediately transformed, his height growing another foot, fur exploding out of his skin to cover him, bear ears and a big bear snout sprouting right out. The sheer added girth of him shredded his T-shirt and pushed Nathan back a step into Dax. They watched in shock and awe. Kent raised his head and let out a big bellowing bear call, making birds scatter from the trees. Then as fast as he'd turned bear, he was back to human, still a big bastard, but all trace of bear gone. “...You can control it?” Nathan asked once he found his thoughts. “Damn straight. If you're turning midday, it means you've got some control too,” Kent said. “Reckon you haven't figured it out yet.” “No, I haven't,” Nathan said. “Can you teach me to control it?” “Can you bring my damn kids?” Kent asked. Nathan nodded. “Next weekend.” Kent sighed. He eyed the APID agent still standing at the van, now lighting a cigarette. “Tell the black suit to fuck off and then come inside the house.” He waited at the door with Nathan, and Dax told their escort they’d be good on their own for now. Hanover got their overnight stuff out of the back before driving off. Kent held the front door of his cottage open for Nathan but promptly closed it in Dax's face. Nathan opened the door up again to let Dax in. On the inside, the cottage was surprisingly clean and spacious, open to a kitchen and living room, two rooms off the living room and a ladder up to a loft above. “Part of the deal is you stop acting like an asshole to Dax,” Nathan stated. “It's alright, Nathan,” Dax said. “He's just being the possessive ex.” “Ex?” Kent growled. “Are you fucked in the head? I'm not gay.” “The closet is deep with this one,” Dax remarked. “Let me guess, your parents told you God would send you to hell for liking boys.” “I don't believe in no fuckin' God,” Kent stated. “Where in the Bible did the bastard say ‘Thou shalt turn into a fuckin' bear and be hunted like a damn animal’? What fuckin' passage?” “The book of Daniel has some stuff...” Nathan muttered as he started looking around and picking stuff up. Dax blinked, turning to his boyfriend. “I didn't strike you as religious, Nathan.” “I'm not,” Nathan said as he fiddled with a little whittled wood fox. “Well, not really... I was the one whose parents told me I'd go to hell for being gay. They shoved religion in my face all the time.” “You never talked about this,” Dax said. “I don't like to talk about it,” Nathan said placing the fox down and picking up an owl figure. “It really changed my relationship with religion.” “Bunch of nonsense,” Kent stated. “Bible people really rub me the wrong way...” “So if it's not religious, why are you so scared to acknowledge your latent homosexuality?” Dax asked, taking a look at the wood fox as well. “There ain't nothin’ to acknowledge,” Kent said, taking the carving out of Dax's hands and putting it back on a shelf. “You can keep on as you are, I ain't gonna stop you. It just ain't natural, that's all. And it ain't me.” “We're not here to get hate-crimed, Dax. Show him your pictures,” Nathan sighed, placing the owl down again. “You take more than I do.” “Right, yes. One moment.” Dax pulled out his phone. “I made an album.” “Album?” Kent frowned and narrowed his eyes. “On your phone?” “Yeah, I don't think most people bother making them, but I like organising my memories,” Dax said before turning his phone towards Kent. The bear man took up the phone and squinted at it. He looked at the image that showed Nathan in the hospital with the twins bundled up in his arms. Their faces however were obscured in the photo by angle and all the swaddling. “Do you have a better one? I can't see them in this...” Kent huffed. “Yeah, just swipe through. There's a bunch,” Dax said. “Swipe?” Kent asked. Nathan nudged Dax's arm. “He lived under a literal rock for the last twenty years. He doesn't understand smartphones.” “Ohhh...” “Shut up, I have one of your damn smartphones the black suits gave me,” Kent said. “But do you know how to use it?” Nathan asked. Kent wrinkled his nose. “Just show me how to see the damn photos.” “You're going to have to learn to use it if you want contact,” Nathan said as Dax went to stand beside Kent and showed him how to swipe through the album. Once he got the hang of it, Kent started swiping on his own. Dax had taken what seemed to be hundreds of photos and they went up in chronological order from the day of the twins' birth all the way to a photo of Korsgaard holding them at his house just before the couple left. Kent didn't get that far, however. He was silent as he continued to look at each photo one by one. He would often pause at any photo that had both kids in it clearly and he would quickly skip over any picture with Dax in them. He was eventually transfixed on a photo of both kids holding hands while asleep on Nathan's chest. “Oh, that's a good one,” Dax commented. “They both fell into a food coma. Nathan, as a cis man, doesn't produce a lot of milk, so it's very rare that they’re fully satisfied once he's dry.” “Wait, what photo is that?” Nathan snatched up the phone. “Ugh, you had to pick one with my fucking tits out, what the fuck...” “What are their names?” Kent asked. Nathan sighed and picked a different picture before pointing to each child respectively. “Grace and Gabriel.” Kent blinked. “Grace Grace?” “Grace Cassidy, you selfish bastard,” Nathan said. “You really think I'd give them your surname?” “Kids get the father's surname. It's how it works,” Kent said. “Yeah, guess what? I'm their father,” Nathan stated. “What do you mean? You're the mother. You gave birth to them,” Kent said. “I... I literally don't have the patience right now to explain how wrong and insulting that is,” Nathan stated. “Not to mention, ‘Dawson Grace’ is dead, remember?” “So, Grace and Gabriel Rivera,” Kent stated. “I'm not changing my kids' names to their deadbeat dad's,” Nathan asserted. “Especially not a made up one.” “It was my mother's maiden name,” Kent growled. “Oh. Still.” Nathan shrugged and handed Dax back his phone. “Her name is Grace after my grandmother who raised me, not you.” “And Gabriel?” Kent asked. “I just like it,” Nathan said. “I might have trouble with religion, but I like biblical names.” Kent rolled his eyes. “Whatever, Nate.” “Stop.” Nathan balled his fist. “You saw the pictures. You better help me.” Kent turned away and went to the kitchen. “Tomorrow. It's gettin’ late.” “What? But wouldn't night time be better for the wolf and all that moon stuff?” Dax asked. “Yeah, if you want to go berserk and rip an arm off,” Kent said. “Best time to practice is when the wolf is the weakest. High noon, middle of your off weeks. Do you know where you are in the moon phases?” “Yeah, I keep track on my phone,” Nathan said. “You can do that?” Kent asked. “Yeah, there's an app for everything,” Nathan said. “App?” Kent asked. “Application,” Dax said. “Did you have a computer before going on the lam?” “No, not really.” “We're really at square one then, huh?” Dax sighed. “Well, I suppose we should call the agent to take us to our hotel.” “You're staying here,” Kent said. “There's a bed in the loft.” “No thanks, I like running water,” Nathan said. “I'm not asking,” Kent said. “If those damn black suits take another step on my property, I'll start shootin’.” “Incredibly illegal,” Nathan said. “Quick way to get your hunting license revoked. Not to mention, why do you need a hunting rifle? You're a literal bear.” “Hunting as the bear's real messy,” Kent said. “Not to mention, I don't want to be hunted. I got a few scars from that...” “Fair enough. Still not sleeping here,” Nathan said. “I have plumbing and power,” Kent stated. “I'm not used to using it much but it's there.” “But running water, though?” Dax asked. Kent turned on the kitchen tap and it ran clear. “Spring water.” “...Why do you want us to stay here so bad?” Nathan asked. “It's not like that. I just don't need you wasting my time getting back here tomorrow,” Kent stated. Nathan nudged Dax. “What do you think?” “I think he's lonely,” Dax muttered. Kent growled. “What?” “Can we see the loft?” Nathan asked. “Be my fuckin' guest.” Kent motioned to the ladder. “There's a mattress. Place was furnished when I got here.” “You're actually thinking about this?” Dax asked as Nathan started to climb the ladder. “Let's just see if it'll work for tonight,” Nathan said as he got up to the top. The mattress up in the loft looked to be of good quality, with fitted sheets, pillows and even a duvet folded up in the corner. “This is actually kind of nice...” Dax frowned and climbed up after him. “...We already booked the hotel.” “Call and see if we can cancel,” Nathan said. “Maybe it's just a fee.” Dax sighed and leaned over the railing of the loft. “Is there a good foot path around here?” “‘Round the lake,” Kent said. “Why?” “If I can get a good run in tomorrow morning, maybe it'll be worth it...” Dax sat on the bed and crossed his legs. The loft roof was so low there that his head brushed the ceiling. “What's for dinner?” Kent shrugged. “Venison.” “Oh dear...” “Correct.” Nathan sighed. “Dax's vegetarian.” “Then he can eat a tree,” Kent growled. “Come on, you had a garden back in the valley. You must have some greens,” Nathan said. Kent huffed and put his hands on his hips. “It's as cold as a witch's tit for too long up here. I'm working on it, but my garden's not even close to harvesting time.” Dax collapsed onto the futon. “And I suppose Uber Eats is out of the question?” “Uber what?” “I'm going to starve.” Kent checked his fridge. “Relax, you limp dick tree muncher. I went into town a couple days ago... I think I have some bread and butter... Oh, there's a jar of pickles and some mustard.” “...Can you do something with that, Dax?” Nathan asked. “There's plenty of berries I picked too,” Kent said. “I blend my own jams.” Dax sighed. “I can probably work something out... Maybe I can make a smoothie tomorrow for breakfast...” Nathan rubbed his shoulder. “When we have some time tomorrow, we'll get some food in town. For now, we can work with what's here.” “Easy for you to say. You can eat venison.” Kent, tall as he was, smacked the wood at the end of the loft floor. “Absolutely no fuckin' up there, got it?” “With your ugly mug around?” Nathan huffed. “Wouldn't dream of it.” “Hey, you're the one who busted it up in the first place,” Kent said. “I added character, but I’m not the one who added that nasty mullet,” Nathan said. “Fuck off... I’m going out for firewood.” Kent huffed and just walked off muttering ‘stupid dog’ under his breath as he put his hand through his hair. Dax sat up and watched until Kent went outside and the door closed behind him. Dax then put his hand on Nathan's shoulder. “He's really into you, huh?” “What?” Nathan shook his head. “He fucking hates me.” “No, he really doesn't. This whole interaction he's been trying to separate us. You didn't even see how he looked at photos of you with the kids. I bet you if I taught him how to delete photos, he would've removed any of them with me in it.” Nathan frowned. “You have nothing to worry about. He's not going to come out if that's true and I'm with you. I chose you.” “I know that. I'm not threatened, I'm just, well you know, I'm nosier than I am tall,” Dax chuckled. “He’s kept his eyes on you from the very second he spotted you until the moment he went out that door. If he ever made eye contact with me, it was only a passing glare. He's almost like another Wano, to be quite honest. I'm half waiting for him to declare a dual for your hand...” Nathan chuckled. “I don't think you have to worry about that. You're good.” “I mean, if you think about it,” Dax said lying back in the bed. “I almost feel sorry for him. The last time you met, you were single. He's been alone out here for months probably thinking about you and the kids. Must've been a slap to the face when I showed up.” Nathan patted Dax's leg. “If you're so obsessed with him, you can date him.” Dax smiled. “I won't lie. He's a lot more handsome than I expected from your descriptions. Not to mention, when he transformed right in front of you, tearing his shirt off, and then when shrunk down he was just shirtless and ripped... Come on.” “I’ll give you that. It was kinda hot...” Nathan admitted. “And pretty gay.” “Right? How old is he, anyway?” “Not sure.” Nathan thought about it.  “He must've been in his twenties back when he was accused and it's been twenty years.” “So, his forties. You like your men older, don't you Nate?” Dax teased. Nathan frowned and lightly punched Dax's leg. “Shut up. Reid said the same damn thing... It's not true.” “How old was Hugh?” Dax asked. “You said he had grey hair.” “Shut up!”

Another Job Is Done //Mandalorian x Reader

Here is my first ever Mandalorian Fic, written for @propertyofdindjarin

(small remark, I used ur name so this is kind of Mando x reader but also not)

I am a huge star wars nerd so im happy you preferred a mando fic

Have fun reading!

summary: Din had a bad experience while hunting down a quarry, leaving him with his feelings clear.

wordcount: 2985

warnings: canon typical violence, kind of a near death experience, a little bit of angst but lots of fluff

The ramp of the Razor Crest made a loud hissing noise when the hydraulics started to work on opening it. As the end of it reached the floor, the Mandalorian entered his ship. He seemed exhausted. He did not strut, as usual, his body language showed, this fight hadn’t been easy. He seemed like he even got hurt, more than usual. 

Mando grunted when he pulled the unconscious quarry up into his ship. He was in pain. This womprat he’d been hunting down was hard to catch and also a very good fighter. Well, not good enough. Din closed the ramp and hurled the quarry up into his carbonite chamber then he pressed the button to freeze him. Another job is done. Finally. 

He groaned quietly under his beskar helmet and let himself fall back against the wall. He wasn’t hurt badly but he was sore. He had been awake and going for a few days now, he needed food, water, and sleep. And maybe someone to hold onto. He was gone for a couple of long days and he was on edge. He liked being alone, but since he had the kid he realized how nice a little bit of company can be. He changed since he got the child that’s why this job was a little different. The job was a well-paying one. That was because the quarry was on a planet that was hard to get to. It was behind a big dangerous nebula. There were only a few people who were able to get to the other end alive and he was lucky that one of those people was willing to help him. His piloting was good but not good enough for the turbulence he might face in the nebula. Well for 50 percent of the bounty. That was a good deal. Even half of the money was enough for Din to buy food for him and his little friend, also to buy new fuel and new bullets for his pulse rifle since he was out of them.

The Mandalorian was too proud to admit it, he liked the pilot that was with him. She was a nice and beautiful young lady. She knew what she wanted and she got what she wanted. He remembers discussing the deal with her. She knew how to make a good deal, and she wasn’t intimidated by Din's appearance. Usually, people were acting different around him, some even being afraid of him. They heard the stories of Mandalore and its population. They heard of the strong beskar armor and Mandalorian combat skills. So Din usually gets what he wants. But that pilot...she wasn’t having it. 

“Look, I know you are an amazing hunter, but I’m just as good of a pilot, so that means we will split the bounty in half, no discussion needed,” she said while sipping away on her spotchka. Her eyes were challenging him, daring him to disagree with her.

“You will fly on my ship. And I will hunt down the quarry,” Din leaned forward looking straight into her eyes. “I don’t think 50/50 will work for me.”

She scoffed and shook her head. “My way or no way, Mando. You don’t know frag about that nebula. If you want to fly through it alone, do it. But lemme tell you even your beautiful beskar can’t save you. “

Din was a little angry at first but she then smiled at him, kind of mocking him but he was so lost in her beautiful face that he just sighed and jerked back as he caught himself staring. This helmet on his head was making his life easier.

The Mandalorian nodded and they shook hands. She wanted to invite him for a drink but he declined, as he always did. 

 Din sighed, back to his current situation. He and Rae had traveled a long time together, they got in some trouble with a few pirates and they had to shoot themselves out of it. They crashed on Teth and had to repair the Crest together, spending some nights sitting together and listening to the sounds coming from the jungle that was near, sharing some stories from their past. The child was always with them and the pilot got along with Din’s little friend. 

Even if this whole mission was kind of more than the Mandalorian signed up for, he enjoyed the company of the young pilot. When they finally arrived at the nebula Din realized why she wanted 50 percent of the money. She knew what she was doing, maneuvering the crest through the turbulences and clouds of gas. Maker, Din was lost, he had so many strong feelings about her and they all came crashing down on him while he was hunting down the quarry. He had tried to suppress his feelings for her. He didn’t even know what was going on. Stars, he never fell in love before, he was a loner. The youngling made him discover his soft side. At least under all that armor.

The quarry wasn’t easy to catch and Din nearly got into some bad trouble. His opponent nearly gained the upper hand at some point, leaving Din with an experience he can save into his album of “situations to avoid”. He had lost all his weapons except for his flame thrower and before he could even think of a way to get himself out of this situation, a strong cord had wrapped around his body leaving him unable to move his hands. He heard laugher, now knowing if it just was ringing in his ears from being hit so hard before, or if someone was laughing at him. The Mandalorian heard a vibroblade buzzing to life, he had opened his eyes to see his opponent, a nautolan, grinning, standing right in front of him.

“I’ve always wanted to kill a Mandalorian before.”

He stepped forward. Din tried to move but he realized, somehow the nautolan had wrapped up his whole body with cord, he couldn’t move his legs either, leaving him sitting on the floor and watching the nautolan stepping yet another step closer to him.

“I can even keep that amazing beskar to myself,” he murmured. He reached out with his hand, the blade touched the Mandalorians helmet with a metallic noise, ringing in Din’s ears. He was tense, still needed to collect himself, trying to seek his way out. He was a Mandalorian, he was raised his whole life with the knowledge that he will eventually die. It was nothing new to him, his whole life was living from day to day, not knowing how many of them are left for him. But right now he couldn’t accept that. There was this mission bigger than him and bigger than this quarry. The child. He needed the Mandalorians' help. He was his foundling, Din needed to come back to him. But there was even more. He had suddenly felt so lonely, kneeling on the floor, a vibroblade whirring right beside his head. The Beskar clad man was in love and nobody knew about it. He never had someone to kiss, to love. The pilot didn’t even know that Din was thinking about her, every damn minute, every day he woke up, hoping he would have the courage to tell her about his feelings for her. And he never did. 

The Mandalorian had snarled, this was not the end, he was not going to die like this. The adrenaline had shot up, into his system and Din had pushed his feet against the ground, falling forward with such force that he fell into his opponent. The nautolan had lost his balance and fell forward, the blade slipping out of his hand. Din caught it and cut himself loose, then he whirled around, jumped to his feet. He had kicked the green man right into his face with his boot, the nautolan had lost his consciousness immediately. 

That’s how he got the quarry back to his ship. Din was still trembling a little, after this experience, he was so happy to be back inside the Crest, back with his foundling and back with her. He groaned again and slipped down the wall, hitting the floor. His legs sprawled out, away from him he sat on the ground as a youngling would.

“Ni'm haryc”, he murmured to himself immediately feeling the exhaustion in his tired bones. 

***

You sat in the cockpit of the Crest, fiddling with your gloves and watching the child who was soundly asleep. You were nervous about the Mandalorian's return. He was acting differently around you since a few days ago and you were afraid that he was annoyed by you. His body language was always showing that he was nervous as if your company was something he was not used to and doesn't want to get used to. 

You sighed quietly and laid your beat-up gloves down. You really hoped that Mando was safe out there. You liked him more than you wanted to admit and him getting hurt on his daily adventures had you restless at night. Especially the last two days were hard. He was hunting down the quarry and you just had to wait for him. But hunting the quarry also meant flying back home and parting ways. You didn't want that to happen. You knew it was going to happen nevertheless but you felt the urge to kick something when you thought about leaving the Razor Crest and its amazing team. 

The Youngling was so cute and surprisingly good at keeping you company. You realized that you could even learn from him, in a way. 

And Mando, let's say it, you were into him. He was kind and polite, always trying to make your stay on the Crest comfortable. But you also liked his darker side that shot pirates and threw them off of his ship while it was in the air. He protected his family like he would protect his eyeball. 

You were ripped from your thoughts as you heard the hydraulic ramp slid down. Probably Mando, he was the only one besides you who had access to the Crests controls. Hopefully, it was him. You waited a few seconds. You heard steps and something hitting the wall. Then you heard the Carbonite chamber go off. Yep, it was Mando. He was back. 

"Kriff, finally," you whispered and got up from the pilot seat. The child was still asleep so you left him in his little pod. 

You slowly made your way down the ladder down to the cargo hold, as you reached the floor you saw the Mandalorian sitting on the floor, legs sprawled out like a child would seeming weak, exhausted, hurt. You were shocked at how weak he looked, you never saw him that way before. You looked at his muddy boots and his dirty armor, his cape was ripped apart and soaked in mud too. 

Mando looked like an injured Crayt Dragon, majestic but hurt, weak. Full of rage and fire but not able to use it anymore. He was panting his helmet leaned back against the wall, hands left weak beside his legs, his gloves also muddy. You started to panic. Is he okay?

“Are you okay, Mando?” you asked and made a step forward. Careful. 

He turned his head a little so his visor was facing you. 

“...No.” he pressed out. Even under that mud, his beskar was gleaming in the dim light of the Crests cargo hold. You were always kind of hypnotised by the way his armor reflected the lights. You knew that he knew it, he had caught you staring various times. But he had never mentioned it or called you out on it. It even seemed like he enjoyed it. You remember one time, as you were repairing his ship he caught you staring as he was welding some parts together and you were mesmerized at how beautiful the lightning bow was reflected by his beskar plates. He had turned around, looking at you stopping everything he was doing. 

You stared back right into his visor not being able to look away. He had tilted his head a little bit, so slowly as if he was grinning at you. You could only imagine but you knew he had a smug smirk going on under that damn helmet. You could just smirk back at him shrugging. 

He had chuckled, so softy, his shoulders shaking, just a little. Then he had turned back around and started welding again. 

“Kriff, Mando, what’s wrong, do you need help?” now really panicking as you got pulled back into reality.

“No,” he answered, again. 

Now you were just confused. What was wrong with him. He was acting weird and you didn’t know what to do. 

“What are you talking about…? I-” 

“Shhh.” he shushed you. “Don’t panic. I’m not hurt.” 

You relaxed a little, you weren’t very good at playing doctor and you knew that if Mando would get hurt bad, you wouldn’t be able to help him properly. Your shoulders dropped in relief.

“Maker, you were really scaring me. Don’t do that again Mando.” 

The Mandalorian chuckled. Him chuckling was very rare so you knew something was up. The last time you heard him chuckle was when he caught you staring.

“I am okay. I’m sorry for scaring you. I am kriffing sore.” he huffed, looking at his dirty boots and at the trail of mud he left on the floor. “I...I had a hard time. I- ...yeah.” he was stuttering. 

You looked at him questioningly. He still acted strangely.

You closed the small gap between the two of you and sat down in front of him with your legs crossed. His visor followed your movements. 

“You don’t seem okay to me, Mando.” you whispered looking at him,

You saw his shoulders rising, just a few millimeters, but far enough for you to know that you hit a nerve.

“I…” he paused again, slowly taking off his dirty gloves revealing his skin. You never saw him take anything off, this was the first time him showing you his skin. Oh boy, somethings coming.

He laid his gloves down between his legs, looking at them for a little too long as if he was still thinking, forming sentences in his head.

“Look, I had a hard time today. I nearly got into some...bad trouble and- “ he stopped and cleared his throat.

Your heart rate picked up on speed as he raised his head to look at you again. Your hands trembled a little but you realized he was too. He was nervous. 

“I just realized that if I died, I would die alone. Like, I mean I know the child would miss me but...I never had someone...special.” his helmet tiled down at his trembling hands again.

“Someone special?” your mouth was dry like kriffing Tattooine. Your heart was beating, you could even hear it, stars, Mando could probably hear it too.

“Yeah. I never thought about that stuff. I always liked being alone. But since….” he stopped again taking a deep breath. His voice was rough as he continued.

“...since I met...you, I realized how lonely I am.”

You didn’t know what to answer to that. You knew what he was trying to tell you but didn’t dare to help him out and say what you wanted to say. You were too nervous. You both sat in awkward silence for a few seconds which seemed endless.

“Look, I….you...you are special to me.” he gulped and looked up again. His voice was muffled, his vocoder having a hard time picking it up. But you heard him still.

“Mando...stars.” you felt your cheeks heat up. Hearing these words out of his mouth felt so strange. The Mandalorian, who was always short on words, telling you he had a crush on you. You didn’t know how to respond to that.

“I’m sorry.” he sighed and his gaze dropped again. “I shouldn’t have said that.” his shoulders dropped and he suddenly looked so small.

“No, no wait, Mando. I...you can’t imagine how...how. Oh well.” you never were good at feelings. “I am feeling the same...about you. It feels like you are my missing piece.”

As he looked up at you this time you could tell he gained his confidence back. 

“You know,” he started. “ You know, you were on my mind all the time as I was hunting down this womp rat.” he gestured to the frozen nautolan. “I couldn’t stop thinking about you.”

You felt your cheeks heat up even more. You must look like an idiot as you were smiling at him. All those times you were thinking about him you didn’t know he was thinking about you too.

He suddenly held out his hand. His bare hand. No dirty Mando-Gloves with holes that had been stitched up poorly. His bare skin.

“Please take my hand, cyare.” he murmured.

You were surprised by his nickname for you, probably mando’a. You slowly reached out and gently took his hand. His skin was warm and soft just like you imagined it. As your fingers intertwined with yours he slowly and gently pulled you closer to him. You followed his movements until you were sitting awkwardly between his sprawled-out legs, very very close to him. He smelled like gunpowder.

He cradled both of your cold hands in his warm ones, his hands were so big next to yours. 

“My name is Din.” he breathed and even if his eyes were covered you knew he was looking deep into yours. You were surprised that he had told you his name, since it’s sacred, and hidden, like his face. 

“That’s a beautiful name.” You smiled. 

He chuckled and cradled your face with one hand while pulling your other hand down to his cold breastplate. 

 “Thank you, senaar.” 

Evanescence’s Amy Lee shares her thoughts on working with Halestorm’s Lzzy Hale

“We love each other, and we get along”

Front-women Amy Lee and Lzzy Hale are no strangers to collaborating with each other, Amy Lee having guested on Halestorm’s ‘Reimagined’ EP on the emotional piano ballad ‘Break In.’

This time however, the duo are set to share the stage with one another on an autumn tour that’ll see two of the most hard-working and hard-rocking women in the metal industry perform alongside their respective bands.

Whilst being interviewed by Matt Pinfield on the last instalment of the “New and Approved” music series on 95.5 KLOS, Amy Lee delved into her friendship with the Pennsylvanian-based Lzzy Hale:

"It started with music. It worked out for us to go do some shows together. We hadn't met in person before signing up to do a tour together in 2012. And I remember we had some kind of joint press or meet-and-greet to do on that first day. And I went in there like, 'Hey,' before the fans came in. And we just clicked immediately. She's really humble and really down to earth. She doesn't take all the glory too seriously. She takes herself seriously and respects herself. She's just a really cool person.”

"We love each other, and we get along," Amy added. "We play hard and we work hard. So I'm very much looking forward to playing live music in general; but to be able to go back out for our first tour out with a whole group of people that we're friends with — the crew, the band, we love each other, all of us. So it's gonna be a really good time.”

Evanescence and Halestorm will be hitting the road on 5th November in the US, starting with a date in Portland, Oregon before making their way throughout the country.

Evanescence's career throughout the years:

1998: The band's inception

Singer and pianist Amy Lee and guitarist Ben Moody formed Evanescence in Arkansas back in 1995, after the pair met at a Christian youth camp. They chose the name Evanescence due to its meaning: "disappearance" or "fading away". The duo released their debut self-titled EP in 1998 and were later joined by friends John LeCompt, Rocky Gray and Will Boyd.

2003: Debut album 'Fallen'

After being signed by Wind-up Records in 2002, the band released their debut album 'Fallen' in 2003. To promote the album, Evanescence headlined the Nintendo Fusion tour in 2003. 'Fallen' spent a whopping 43 weeks in the Top 10 of the Billboard 200 and was certified 7× Platinum in the US after selling more than 17 million copies worldwide. The album included hit singles 'Bring Me to Life', 'My Immortal', 'Going Under' and 'Everybody's Fool'. Mega hit 'Bring Me to Life', featuring guest vocals from Paul McCoy from the band 12 Stones, was an international success, reaching Number 5 on the American Billboard Hot 100 and hitting the top spot in the UK Chart.

2004: Grammy Award wins

The phenomenal success of 'Fallen' saw Evanescence win not one but two Grammy Awards in 2004. Their hit single 'Bring Me To Life' won Best Hard Rock Performance and the band won the award for Best New Artist.

2006: Line-up change and follow-up record

After parting ways with both Will Boyd and Ben Moody, Evanescence and the success of their Grammy wins, Evanescence went back into the studio to record their follow-up album. After 18 months of writing and producing, the band released 'Open Door' in 2006. The album featured singles 'Call Me When Your Sober', 'Lithium', 'Weight Of The World' and 'Sweet Sacrifice' and debuted at Number 1 on the Billboard 200. The album and single 'Call Me When You're Sober' have since achieve 2x Platinum and Platinum status in the US respectively.

2007-2009: Another line-up change

In 2007, The band announced that guitarist John LeCompt and drummer Rocky Gray had left. The duo went on to join founding Evanescence member Ben Moody to create the band We Are the Fallen. Evanescence brought in two members of Dark New Day, drummer Will Hunt and guitarist Troy McLawhorn to act as their replacements. Two years, later frontwoman Amy Lee announced that the band were going back into the studio to start writing their third, self-titled album.

2011: Third album release and worldwide tour

Due to delays with their record label, Evanescence weren't able to release their third album until 2011, five years after 'Open Door'. Not that it mattered, because 'Evanescence' debuted at Number 1 on the Billboard 200 chart and Number 4 on the UK Albums Chart and took the band on a year-long worldwide tour to promote the album.

2012: Hiatus and Amy Lee's solo project

Evanescence announced that they would be going on a hiatus in 2012, with Amy announcing in NME: "I haven't been sitting down to write. I'm thinking we'll take a break first. I'm really not sure what I'll do next. At the end of any really long tour you need to get your head in order. I think at the end of the run we'll go on a break for a while and figure things out. "Taking long breaks is seen as a bad thing, but I don't think it's a bad thing. People have the idea that you have to keep putting stuff out while people remember you. But I'd rather make something that's awesome and then make people remember again. I hope it doesn't take five years, but I don't want to put a timeline on it either. We'll all be doing our own thing for a while. They're (my bandmates) very talented and they'll all be fine." Amy Lee went on to release solo album 'Aftermath' in 2014, a soundtrack for Mark Jackson's film War Story. She said of the project: "It's not what you'd expect; there's a lot of blending of sounds, a lot of ominous tones. I play a lot of keyboard, and a lot of Taurus pedal. There's a lot of low drones."

2015: Reunion with intimate shows

Three years after going on a break, Evanescence ended their hiatus by hosting a three-night show at intimate venues in Nashville, Dallas and LA in November 2015. This was just before the band hopped on a plane to Japan to perform at Ozzy Osbourne's iconic festival Ozzfest, alongside Korn and Ozzy himself.

2015-2016: Another line-up change

In 2015, Evanescence underwent yet another line-up change after long-time guitarist Terry Balsamo, who originally replaced Ben Moody, decided to leave the band. His replacement was the German singer and guitarist, Jen Majura from the band, Equilibrium. Evanescense continued to tour throughout 2016, but focused on playing hits from their previous albums like 'My Immortal' and 'Going Under'.

2017: 'Synthesis'

Fourth record 'Synthesis' was released in November 2017. As well as featuring new material such as 'Imperfection', the album included reworked versions of the band's older works such as 'My Heart Is Broken', 'Lacrymosa' and 'Bring Me To Life'. 'Synthesis' peaked at Number 1 on four of the Billboard charts, including US Top Alternative Albums, US Top Classical Albums, US Top Rock Albums and US Independent Albums.

2018: 'Synthesis Tour' features a live orchestra

To promote the album, the band embarked on the 'Synthesis Live Tour' in October 2017. This 60-date worldwide tour was different from any other tour they had done before because it featured a live orchestra. The tour was co-headlined by violinist Lindsay Stirling who also featured on the band's single 'Hi-Lo'.

2020: Brand new music

In 2020, Evanescence released four new singles, 'Wasted On You', 'The Game Is Over', 'Yeah Right' and 'Use My Voice', which all appear on the band's fifth album, 'The Bitter Truth'. First announced in 2018, it was meant to be released in 2020, but had to be delayed due to the pandemic. 'The Bitter Truth' is not only the band's first album in three years, but also their first album with all-new material since 'Evanescence'.

2021: 'The Bitter Truth' is finally released

Evanescence released the fifth single, 'Better Without You', in early March ahead of the release of 'The Bitter Truth', which finally saw the light of day on 26th March 2021. The band is also set to be joining fellow rockers, Within Temptation this autumn for the 'Worlds Collide' European tour, which was postponed due to the pandemic.

Ray Molina: Best Dad Ever

For the March 11th explosion of content thing. Just Violet being a fantom and doing my part for this!

Tw: mentioned death, mentioned abusive parents, mentioned panic attack.

So the boys can be seen and heard when directly touching Julie after the whole post-Orpheum glowy hug thing but Ray doesn’t know that just yet.

What he does know is that Julie’s mental health took a rapid turn for the better for seemingly no reason and then a couple weeks later he found out she joined a band without telling him.

He’s not stupid. He knows that’s probably because of the band, though he is a bit confused as to how she even met them.

He kinda figures it’s a kids and your internet tricks thing but there’s some flaws to this theory.

1) He asks Flynn what she knows about the boys only... it seems like she doesn’t know much of anything. That’s weird because he knows Julie tells her practically everything.

2) The boys have American accents despite Julie claiming they’re from Sweden.

3) Carlos is a terrible liar and on the rare occasion Julie actually talks about the boys he gets this weirdly conspiratorial look.

So anyway Ray doesn’t really believe it’s as simple as ‘I met these 3 Swedish boys on the internet’ but he trusts his daughter’s judgement and he leaves it alone.

Anyway he has other things to focus on.

Such as how Ray has literally never been able to keep track of his keys/phone/hats/camera parts/stuff and now it seems to just pop up whenever he’s looking for it.

Also he keeps feeling like there’s someone with him around the house more and more.

Like not a malicious presence like Victoria fears, and definitely not like Rose is around watching him, but like someone is there.

Sometimes it feels like there’s more than one presence around. None of them familiar but all of them friendly.

Oddly enough, whatever or whoever it is feels almost like Julie or Carlos. Young and excitable and like a verse of a happy song. He’s not sure why they’re around, but they definitely don’t feel dangerous, so Ray doesn’t feel threatened.

But some days a better comparison might be to Trevor back when Rose first introduced him. Raw and fragile and very, very sad.

Ray tries to put on happy music or a Disney cartoon or something on those days and he doesn’t quite know why or how but the energy usually gets more positive when he does that.

Anyway after a while of this (after the Orpheum performance) he starts noticing weird things that Carlos and Julie do now.

Carlos will just carry around a small whiteboard and a couple pens and he erases it whenever Ray comes into the room but before he does it almost looks like there’s two, three, or even four sets of handwriting on there.

And he walks in on Julie talking to herself like. All the time.

Carlos doesn’t ask for help on his math homework anymore. Julie makes this insanely good chicken recipe for dinner once and then clearly panics and lies when asked where she got it. Flynn makes a set of rainbow friendship bracelets one day while she’s hanging out at the Molina house but he doesn’t see Julie wearing the match to the one she keeps.

Plus Carrie starts hanging out at their house again?? Out of the blue?? And none of the girls have a good explanation for how they made up??

Then later Nick Danforth-Evans (who Julie used to talk about having a crush on but hasn’t in a while) starts hanging around too and the kid seems... well, Ray doesn’t want to throw the word ‘traumatized’ around, but he’s jumpy and guarded in a way that can only be described as a little bit traumatized.

So all 5 kids are clearly keeping some secret and Ray’s getting suspicious and worried.

He sits them down and asks what’s going on. Like is one of them having problems at home, or..?

The kids, simultaneously:

Julie: no, we’re just all in a play together!

Carlos: we’re fine we’re just ghost hunting!

Flynn: we’re exhibiting bisexual-pansexual-lesbian solidarity!

Carrie: Julie and the Phantoms and Dirty Candi are doing a collaboration album!

Nick: we all joined jazz band??

Ray’s calling bullshit at this point.

Then Julie and Nick both look up directly at the same spot, somewhere a couple feet above the arm of the couch, which is seemingly just empty air.

Whatever it is, it doesn’t seem like the other kids can see it but they all seem to be waiting for something and Ray is wondering if they’re sharing a hallucination??? Are they all on drugs??? Should he be worried???

Then Julie says to meet them in the studio in 30 minutes. Flynn, Carrie, and Nick go home to give the Molina family some alone time.

*cue music performance where Ray is introduced to the boys*

So anyway Julie and Carlos (with the help of the ghosts whenever one of them has something to say and grabs Julie’s hand) give him a clearly-sugarcoated version of the last few months.

Ghosts of Trevor’s dead bandmates help Julie reconnect with music, they form a band, they meet another ghost, other ghost accidentally gets them involved with evil magician ghost, Nick got possessed, Carrie figured it out and helped plot to get him un-possessed, evil magician ghost is still out there and they’re sticking together so he can’t get any of them in the future.

Despite how they say it like it’s no big deal, Ray now understands why the kids have been acting so weird because all these things sound scary and painful.

Also the more he thinks about it, the more he worries about the fact that he has three 17-year-old boys sleeping in his garage who died terribly of food poisoning.

They are children and they died incredibly painfully and then almost got enslaved and/or erased from existence.

Then one day Ray’s feeling one of those presences around the house again and he realizes it’s probably one of Julie’s ghost boys.

Ray: who’s there?

Whoever it is freaks out and leaves, and Ray takes notes for next time.

The next time he feels someone in the room, he has a notepad ready and he writes down “Luke, Alex, or Reggie?” from what he remembers from Julie’s introductions.

Immediately, there’s a spike of anxiety in the room.

Ray: it’s okay. You can stay and we don’t have to talk if you don’t want to. I’d like to know who it is I’m not talking to though.

There’s a few seconds of hesitation, and then the pen picks itself up and the name “Reggie” gets circled.

Ray: the bassist with the flannels, right?

Yeah, written in a teenage boy’s messy scrawl.

Ray: okay, do you want to watch a movie?

More hesitation, and Ray’s not sure what that’s about but he’s starting to suspect with the amount of fear still in the room, and there’s a good 20 seconds where Reggie doesn’t respond before I don’t know.

Ray: Moana or Tangled? Moana.

After that, he takes a page out of Carlos’s book and gets a small whiteboard with 3 pens that stick to it magnetically. Red for Reggie, blue for Luke, and pink for Alex.

Reggie has written conversations with him most, but Luke does sometimes too and Alex does least often but he’ll still request a movie occasionally.

All of them are wary around him and Ray doesn’t quite know what to do to earn their trust. But he asks questions about their preferences on things. He says they did good on their latest show. He remembers which movies are their favorites and introduces them to music he thinks are their styles.

Luke is a big fan of Fall Out Boy and Reggie fucking loves Taylor Swift.

Alex is less consistent but occasionally Ray will play a song and he’ll write something like This is a cool song.

He starts to be able to tell which energy is which even before they write who it is right around the time the boys start to be visible for longer and longer after playing.

They play a really good show and stay visible for like 2 full days and that’s the first (but not the last) time Ray really gets to get to know them.

He starts noticing after really good shows like that one how even more now that they can be seen, they’re all a little... off from how Nick and Carrie and Flynn act around him.

With Luke it’s mostly because he’s trying so hard to impress because *gasp* he and Julie are a thing but there’s still a little bit of tension that seems like it comes from something deeper than just being nervous around his girlfriend’s dad.

With Reggie it’s subtle caution. Like he’s happy to be hanging out with Ray but he’s constantly ready for something to go wrong. There’s a catch in his smile, a hesitation before he states an opinion, a practiced carefulness where he changes the subject at any sign of even mild frustration.

But with Alex... it’s mostly just avoidance. Like if he poofs in while visible and it just so happens that no one else is there, he’ll find an excuse to leave.

And Ray lets him, of course. He doesn’t want the kid to feel trapped. But all of the boys’ behavior bothers him.

On the rare occasion they spend more than 2 seconds together Alex is really quiet. He won’t admit if Ray guessed wrong about a song and he doesn’t like it even though his body language makes it clear he’s not vibing with it. Actually, his body language pretty much just spells I am very uncomfortable in every situation where Julie or Carlos went to the bathroom or someone went to grab a snack and they’re alone even for 5 minutes while he’s visible.

Ray’s not stupid. He knows three 17-year-olds don’t end up getting their instruments left to their only living bandmate’s new best friend’s family by having good relationships with their own families.

He doesn’t exactly want to bring it up, but he kind of knows.

Then one day he’s sitting with all 3 boys watching a movie while he fixes something on his camera and Julie and Carlos are at school and he messes up a little part that means he has to start over (don’t @ me I know nothing about cameras) and swears out of frustration louder than he meant to.

He reaches for the screwdriver on the coffee table and

And Reggie and Alex both flinch.

Ray hadn’t even noticed they were tracking his movements, but while Luke seems to just have moved his focus from the TV to his friends in concern, Alex and Reggie both look too tense to play it off.

He figures its as good a time as any to have a chat cause these boys aren’t his sons but they don’t have anyone else acting as a parent figure to them and he feels the need to take care of them. He pauses the movie.

Ray: Can we have a talk? About you boy’s families?

Naturally Luke jumps in to try to distract him immediately, telling a story about his dad taking him fishing once, but he stops when Ray asks him to stop.

Ray: That’s not what I’m talking about and I think you all know it.

The boys are all still silent. Luke looks 500% ready to deflect again. Reggie and Alex look more like they’re expecting to get yelled at or worse.

Ray: I just want to help. I’ll drop it if you want me to but I want you to know that I would never do something to hurt any of you intentionally. You can talk to me about anything if you need to.

He means to make it an option of ‘you can talk but you don’t have to if you don’t want to,’ but the boys clearly don’t take it as such with how Luke starts talking immediately.

Luke: I ran away when I was 17. My mom and dad didn’t want me to stay in Sunset Curve, I think they thought it was going to get me into drugs or something.

They have a short talk about parents having good intentions not equalling them being right to push Luke so hard they pushed him away and it’s okay to feel hurt by that and then press play on the movie again and Ray thinks he sees all 3 boys relax somewhat during that.

A couple weeks later Reggie comes in visible and hesitantly asks about watching this series he saw when Carlos was scrolling through Netflix once.

Mid-episode he blurts out

Reggie: I don’t want to look for my parents and I feel weird about that.

He rambles for a while about knowing he was lucky that his family had money and his mom and dad told him they loved him and stuff but also he remembers so many fights between them where he felt caught in the middle and it never ended well if he chose a side but there was no way to win because they’d both turn on him if he didn’t so it was just this constant balancing act to try to prevent fights in the first place.

Reggie: I felt like I was walking on a tightrope. Like, all the time. I tried so hard to keep them from getting mad at each other or at me. Only it never worked and it was always a question of when they were going to snap next and it was confusing cause one day we’d go to the zoo and everything would be fine and the next they’d yell at me and send me to bed without food.

He feels guilty for not wanting to put in the effort to find them because he’s pretty sure on some level they did love him but he doesn’t want to see them again.

And he doesn’t want to know if they even miss him at all because when he got older and the fighting got too intense he would sneak off to Luke’s or Bobby’s and no matter if he stayed away for an hour or a couple days they never seemed to notice he was gone.

Ray listens and a lot of things about Reggie start to make sense. How he’s so careful not to catch him in a bad mood. How he shuts down whenever anyone raises their voice. How he helps out so much in an effort to stay on Ray’s good side.

It’s a day and a half after the latest show so they can’t really hug but Ray does what he can to provide comfort and validate his feelings anyway because damn Reggie is a good kid and he didn’t deserve that.

Reggie and Luke get more comfortable with coming to him for meaningful chats, or even just to vent about whatever’s going on lately.

Eventually they seem to feel almost as comfortable with him as Julie and Carlos do so it kinda becomes a routine.

Like Julie will ask for cuddles when she’s sad about missing Rose or she’ll walk in and vent about Carrie and Flynn being so obvious about liking each other but somehow not realizing it’s mutual and she and Nick are 3rd wheeling and going insane.

Carlos will excitedly ramble about his latest baseball practice shenanigans for an hour but also sometimes ask for someone to watch old home movies or listen to old CDs from Rose and the Petal Pushers with him.

And that’s normal. That’s been Ray’s life since his kids started talking. But the thing is that it’s just as normal when

When Luke tells how he’s still angry about his music getting stolen because it feels like a part of him was taken away and he worked hard on those songs. Also one day he very shyly admits

Luke: I like Julie a lot.

Ray: I know, kiddo.

Luke: You’re not mad?

Ray: As long as you two make each other happy, no. I’m happy for you.

And it’s just as normal when Reggie talks about missing his little cousin Kelsi and wondering where she ended up only for them to look her up and find out she’s a major Broadway writer/director now oh my god— and also

Reggie: I think I like boys. Like boys are cute. But I know I’m not gay because girls are cute too and ugh it’s confusing it’s probably nothing I guess everybody goes through this.

Ray: Have you ever thought you might be bisexual?

Reggie: Bi-what-now?

Ray, already digging out his old flannels that he would have passed down to Julie except they’re too big for her: It’s okay to like both, kiddo.

All this is great of course. It’s great how Reggie and Luke aren’t afraid anymore and they feel validated and seen and listened to.

But months have passed and Ray notices how Alex remains separate. He still avoids Ray when he can and stays quiet and cautious when he can’t.

Like Ray still senses Alex around him sometimes but never right after a show when he’s visible. He doesn’t come to him with problems. He’ll stay and listen when Ray plays a song he thinks he’d like, but he still seems so cautious and Ray doesn’t know how to help.

He asks Luke one day while he’s introducing him to a Wicked bootleg if he’s done something specific to scare Alex away.

Luke gets this really dark look on his face and he just

Luke: Let’s just say that my parents didn’t do everything perfectly, but they’re saints compared to Alex’s.

Ray decides to drop it, but Luke wants to reassure him.

Luke: You haven’t done anything wrong. He’s just not very comfortable around most adults in general. It’s one thing when we’re invisible, but...

Ray: I just wish I could help.

Luke: You do help. But it took a while for Alex to trust me.

The conversation ends there because Luke starts getting really into Defying Gravity.

But then that night Julie comes in with a kind of out of character movie request so Ray thinks Luke talked to her.

Because Julie does not like most romcoms that aren’t musicals. She gets bored. But she requests Love, Simon anyway.

Ray kind of sees what she’s trying to do there because now that he’s thinking about it the boys haven’t really seen many things with queer rep. Especially not queer main characters.

And nobody’s really told him that Alex is gay but cmon he’s an elder bi. He has accurate gaydar so he can support his queer ducklings.

Despite how the boys all know being gay is more socially acceptable now (they found out about Nick’s dads and the girls gave them the ‘gay marriage is legal now’ talk) they still seem kind of baffled by how there’s an entire romcom centered around a gay boy and it did well.

From there Ray tries to find more movies and tv shows with canon queer representation.

And he keeps giving Alex space but also trying his best to show him that he’s not like his parents.

For a long time nothing changes beyond Luke and Reggie getting increasingly comfortable with him.

Well that’s not completely true actually cause Reggie starts tagging along to photo shoots and becomes Ray’s unofficial mostly invisible assistant.

Then the band plays an amazing show and the boys stay visible for a full week.

Around the middle of that week, Ray goes out to the garage to find Reggie and see if he wants to come on a photo shoot.

Reggie isn’t out there but Alex is.

And he’s crying. Hard.

He looks like he’s going to poof out when he sees Ray there but Ray’s already 100% ready to do exactly what he always does when he walks in on Julie or Carlos crying.

Ray: Alex. Hey, buddy, it’s okay. I’m here. It’s going to be okay.

Alex freezes and it breaks Ray’s heart how that kind of concern is clearly not what he’s expecting.

Ray: Are you okay with being touched?

Alex looks kind of like he’s in shock but he nods.

He clearly doesn’t really know what to do with it but he kind of melts into it when Ray hugs him and he just sobs on his shoulder.

When he’s stopped crying enough he starts rambling about how he’s been looking everywhere but he can’t find Willie.

At that point he’s basically having a panic attack so finding out what’s wrong takes a backseat compared to calming him down and Ray knows how to do that because he and Rose used to do that for Trevor all the time.

Ray: Alex, breathe. In for 4 counts, hold for 7, out for 8. Breathe with me.

It takes a couple minutes until Alex has calmed down enough, but once he does, Ray asks what’s wrong and what’s happening with Willie.

He only vaguely knows who Willie is from what he’s been told by the other kids but he knows he’s important to Alex.

So Alex takes a deep breath and explains that Caleb confronted him and basically said the boys had to join his house band or he would make sure he’d never see Willie again. And he doesn’t want to ask his family to sacrifice themselves for him but he doesn’t want to lose the boy he loves either.

Ray wants to throw hands but from what the kids have told him about Caleb, he has a better idea.

Ray: Here’s what we’re gonna do, buddy. Reggie said Caleb has this super catchy number, The Other Side of Hollywood?

Alex: Yeah?

Ray: How quickly do you think Luke and Julie could come up with an arrangement for you four to cover that and how desperate do you think Covington would be to make sure a video of that never gets published without crediting him?

Alex: :o

Spoiler alert: Julie and Luke, in collaboration with Carrie, can come up with an arrangement very quickly.

They do a private performance of it and film it and basically blackmail Caleb into letting Willie go.

Willie has an empty house that used to be his parents’ that he still considers his so he mostly crashes there if he needs to. Also he loves skating around so much that he never stays in one place for very long.

Julie can see him but she can’t make him visible so it’s a little odd but Ray gets an orange pen for him for the whiteboard and he finds skateboarding videos and stuff for when he visits.

They eventually figure out that he can be part of the magic by adding him to the band so they give him a tambourine and yay now Willie can be seen but that’s later.

The biggest immediate change to come out of all this is Alex.

He’s not afraid of Ray anymore for the most part (healing isn’t linear and he can’t help a few bad days) and he starts actually talking to him. Not about serious stuff but he’s talking. Mostly just rambling about how Willie makes him feel or how Luke and Reggie have been being annoying lately.

Then one day he comes in really nervous and says something about Reggie saying he talked to Ray about his parents.

And Ray confirms it and asks if there’s anything Alex needs to tell him.

Alex sits down and clearly he’s been holding this in for a long time and he just unloads how he came out to his parents because his youngest sister found his diary and he was scared she’d tell them. They didn’t react well and when he cried out of fear and frustration his father... gave him something to cry about.

His father did that a few more times, trying to ‘make him man up,’ and Alex never told his bandmates but he always knew they could see the bruises and that was why Bobby made it so clear his garage was open and his house was a safe place to run.

But Alex didn’t no matter how bad things got because he guessed some small part of him thought he deserved it but mostly it was about how his oldest sister dropped out of college and ghosted the family and Alex was the next-oldest so he felt responsible for protecting his younger sisters even if they both had learned behaviors from their parents and hated him.

Then that summer he found out his parents were planning on sending him away to some Christian camp where they’d ‘fix’ him.

Alex made it clear that he wouldn’t go and if they tried to make him he’d run away, but their ultimatum was that he couldn’t live under their roof if he was gay.

So he didn’t. And it was a situation somewhere between getting kicked out and running away, but he packed a bag and never went back.

He ran to Bobby’s house, he wrote a whole bunch of angry songs, and he tried not to think too much about how he understood why his older sister left and how he was doing the exact same thing to his younger sisters.

By the time he’s done explaining everything Ray’s trying not to cry but Alex is definitely already crying mostly out of anger.

Alex: I hated them all. I hated Molly for leaving me and I hated my mom for turning my little sisters against me and I hated my dad for hurting me and I even hated Anna and Josie for not standing by me and I just hated them all so much. I still do. And it is so stupid that I feel guilty for that because they were terrible to me and I was 16 and I didn’t deserve that but I do feel guilty for it because they’re my family and I hate them.

Ray doesn’t have much to say because damn this is heavy stuff but he assures him that after what he went through he has a right to hate his blood family.

Alex tells him awkwardly when he’s calmed down a bit that Luke is the only other person he’s ever told about all this, because after he ran away they dated for a few months before figuring out that they were better as friends.

Reggie and Bobby guessed parts of it and Julie probably has too but none of them have asked and Alex thinks he might tell Reggie and Julie someday if it ever comes up but he never did end up telling Bobby.

Ray assures him that he won’t tell anyone and also that he would never do that. He would never do anything to hurt Alex or the others on purpose.

He makes a silent promise that no one will ever hurt one of his kids like that again and if Caleb or anyone else ever tries, they will regret it.

But anyway on to happier matters.

Willie visits a lot and he’s a little skittish around Ray but he loosens up after he jokingly mentions one time that Willie and Alex are like the beginning of the Sk8ter Boy song.

Alex and Ray might be Denim Jacket Buddies but once Ray digs his old leather jacket out of the closet he becomes Leather Jacket Buddies with Reggie.

You’d think he has to tell Carlos and Reggie off the most for breaking things but he doesn’t. It’s Carlos and Luke.

Also Ray doesn’t consider himself an overprotective dad but Julie and Luke are not allowed to be alone in a room with the door closed.

Neither are Alex and Willie technically but it’s harder to enforce it when they’re both ghosts.

Lmao all the kids follow the rules anyway because they love Ray and he’s not being unreasonable.

He helps Julie in her plot to get Carrie and Flynn together and also he helps Nick plan how to make a move on that cute boy on his lacrosse team.

Because Nick loves his dads but they’re disaster gays. Neither of those men can properly flirt. They fell in love because of a baseball rivalry and Nick doesn’t trust their advice.

Pride month rolls around and Julie makes sure to book a big gig the day before the parade so the boys will be visible and tangible.

Trevor’s on tour and can’t get away and Flynn’s parents are working and Nick’s are busy too so Ray finds himself escorting this whole little gaggle of various queer ducklings to pride.

Carlos isn’t quite sure what he is yet so he’s just got a rainbow flag painted on his cheek and a shirt that says I love my bi sister on it.

Julie’s all decked out in the bi colors, complete with ribbons braided into her hair and a flag to use as a cape. She made the tutu herself and it took her hours but it turned out really good.

Luke’s got a tank top with the pan colors and a trans flag as a cape and also yknow face paint of course.

Reggie browsed thrift shops everywhere until he found a flannel in the bi colors and he’s got that along with pink purple and blue laces in his combat boots and what Ray is really hoping is temporary dye and not spray paint in his hair.

Alex has a rainbow shirt that matches Willie’s and matching bracelets with Flynn. Also he painted rainbow hearts on his cheeks and put a lot of effort into them and they look really symmetrical.

Willie’s of course matching shirts with Alex and also he has sparkly rainbow socks and a flag to use as a cape.

Carrie’s got a whole ensemble in the lesbian colors complete with a pride wig and also matching necklaces with Flynn.

Flynn’s matching colors with Carrie but more in her style with of course matching jewelry with the people closest to her. She’s got friendship bracelets corresponding to Alex and Julie.

Nick’s got a pan tshirt and a fedora with a ribbon in pink yellow and blue plus face paint cause all of them have face paint. Nothing too crazy.

Meanwhile Ray’s got a bi bandanna and one of those shirts that’s like Free Dad Hugs.

Plus everyone did each other’s nails with varying degrees of success the night before and Julie did Ray’s so they turned out good.

Nick’s lacrosse buddies and the rest of Dirty Candi are around somewhere but they didn’t ride in the same car so they’re not that relevant.

They party. Celebrate being alive. Idk I’ve never gotten to go to pride.

And afterwards they all go back to the Molina house and the couch isn’t really big enough for all of them but it’s okay it’s not like they know how to sit correctly anyway.

They all kind of pile together and cuddle and watch movies until Flynn and Nick’s parents can come pick them up.

And Ray just looks around and realizes that

Sure only 2 of them are his biologically

And 3 of the others have good parent(s) who are actively a part of their lives

The remaining 4 are technically dead

But he has 9 children and he’s totally fine with that.

Cause he’s Ray Molina: best dad ever.

Victoria’s head is going to explode when she finds out that not only is the Molina house really haunted, but he’s adopted the ghosts.

Circus {H.K}

Day 4 (IX)

"all eyes on me in the center of the ring just like a circus"

in which the first words Nari's soulmate says to her are "free britney"

or

in which two idols find their soulmates in each other after thirteen days of little comments without knowing who the other was

-a short story soulmate au-

©beomgyushighlights 2021

do not translate or repost without permission

(can also be found on wattpad and ao3 under the same username)

masterlist

The next day, something seems off about Nari. She's dancing fine and her singing is fine but every once in a while she'll wince as though she's in pain, alarming her fellow band mates. At first, it wasn't obvious but as they practice more and more the sounds become more and more frequent. "Nari? Are you okay?" Osamu asks. "I'm fine." She replies, continuing to practice despite the fact that everyone stopped for a break.

"Nari is your foot hurting again? You told me you'd stop dancing on it when it hurt." Yejun asks, reminding Nari of the promise she made to them. "I'm fine, I don't know why you guys keep asking." She replies, continuing to run through the dance. After Yejun brought up her ankle, Hyejin started paying more attention to her footwork.

   Due to Nari being made a trainee for the band while Osamu and Yejun were serving their time, Hyejin and Eun were the ones who watched her practice on her foot when it was at its worst. "Nari, stop before you make it worse." Hyejin tells her. "I'm fine!" She exclaims, her foot giving out as she finishes.

Osamu quickly catches her to ease her fall. "Have you not been wearing your brace after practice?" Eun asks. Nari is silent, her hands covering her face. "I'm taking her to the dorm, you guys order lunch for yourselves, we'll eat at the dorm and i'll be back in like fifteen to twenty five minutes." Osamu says, picking Nari up so she doesn't put weight on her ankle.

   "Hyunggggg!!!!!" Someone yells down the hall. "What!?" Someone else yells back. "We're resuming practice!" The first person yells back. Nari looks but she doesn't see anybody in the halls to give away her soulmate.

"No walking, your crutches are still in your closet so I'll grab them. I want you to keep weight off of it until tomorrow because management isn't going to be happy if they get word that you haven't been taking care of yourself like you promised you would when you joined, they've already given you a warning once." Osamu tells her.

She just nods, trying not to focus on the pain. "From now until we finish preparing for the release I want your brace on all day unless you're showering or sleeping and I want you off it as much as possible, no practicing through water breaks, no walking around the dorm because you're bored, none of that. If it gets worse, tell management and go to a doctor." He says. Nari nods again, committing all the rules to memory.

   Osamu makes her a sandwich and brings her her crutches and brace before he makes a sandwich for himself, saying bye and eating it while he's on his way out. Nari puts on music and just stares at the ceiling. A knock on the door gets her attention. She makes her way to the door, looking outside she sees a few familiar faces. She sighs, turning the lock and moving back.

"It's open." She says. The door opens and the boys walk in, greeting her and going to the living room. Jimin is the last to enter and he locks the door behind him. "I'm guessing Yejun sent you guys?" Nari asks, sitting on the couch and moving her crutches out of the way.

"Yeah, they didn't trust you to actually stay off your foot so they sent me over and when the maknae line heard they wanted to come with and Hobi came because he adores you and then Joon and Jin didn't want to be left alone so everyone came." Yoongi says. "Fun." She says. Airplane comes on and everyone vibes while Hobi sings along.

"What playlist is this?" Jungkook asks after the song finishes. "My liked songs, it's really long and I was planning on sitting there for a while." She says, the boys replying with nods, knowing about her hatred for silence. "Let's play some games!" Taehyung says, walking to the shelf in the living room.

"Why is there a Felix photo card up here?" He asks. "Thats where Hyejin put it! For easter we hid photo cards like they were easter eggs and I couldn't find Felix, thanks for that." Nari says. "Easter was months ago." Jimin says. "Yes, and we're still finding some, mostly ones that Eun hid because she couldn't remember where they were." She replies.

"Hobi, can you please get my photo card collection, it's the blue binder on the top shelf of the first bookcase, the left corner. The spine is labeled it says 'back off bitches' so it should be easy to find." She says. He nods and brings it back to her. She looks through it for the IN LIFE section. After a while of flipping she notices something.

"Uhh, Hobi can you bring me all the binders on the top two shelves and the black marker next to them?" She asks. Confused, Hobi nods and walks off, coming back with many binders. "I have to start labeling these..." Nari mumbles. On the blue ones she writes twice edition, continuing to label each binder with the proper band until she gets to Stray Kids.

She labels it and then flips to find where Felix belongs. "Okay, pass the Felix." She says. Taehyung hands her the Felix card and she places it back in its proper place. "Do you know how many more there still are left around?" Jin asks.

"Yes, we only used my photo cards because I have the most and I made everyone write who they took and which album it was from." Nari says, flipping to the back of the Stray Kids binder to find the paper.

   "All the butter Namjoons, Dark and Wild Jimin, IN LIFE Hyunjin, Twicetagram Momo, all of my Taehyung, Bang chan, Sana, and Jake, and BE Hobi and Yoongi." She answers. "How many does that total out to?" Jungkook asks.

"Too many, wanna have a scavenger hunt? Whoever finds the most photo cards gets a free hug?" She suggests, knowing that everyone loves her hugs but she rarely hugs people. The boys agree and she sends them off, asking that they refrain from the bedrooms as they've all been searched extremely well. Jin brings back peaches and cream Joon after five minutes. "Where was he?" She asks. "The cereal cabinet behind the chex." He answers, going off to find more.

She writes a one next to Jin's name. When the other members come home, the BTS boys are still searching for photo cards. "What is going on?" Yejun asks. "They're finding all my photo cards that we couldn't find." Nari says. "How many are left?" Osamu asks.

"Peaches and cream Taehyung, Dark and Wild Taehyung, Twicetagram Sana, NOEASY Bang Chan, IN LIFE Hyunjin, and BE yoongi." She answers. "Oh wow so they found a lot." Hyejin says. "Mhm, who hid one behind the chex in the cereal cabinet?" Nari asks. "Me..." Eun answers. "How did this even happen?" Yejun asks.

"Taehyung wanted to play a game but instead he found IN LIFE Felix on the top game shelf and he asked me why there was a Felix photo card up there and then I brought up how many where missing and so they went to find them and whoever finds the most by dinner gets a free hug." She says. "Well, how long has this been going on?" Osamu asks.

"Since about fifteen minutes after you left." She replies. Osamu left three and a half hours ago. "They've been doing this four three hours and fifteen minutes?" He asks. "Yeah, but they're having fun and they like to tease each other when they find a card." She says. "HA! I found the last Sana!" Jungkook brags, presenting the card in a very extra way to Nari.

"Thank you very much." She smiles. He smiles back and goes back to trying to find more. "Five more minutes then I'm ordering dinner for everyone!" Hyejin yells. "You guys can check my room if you want to, I couldn't see on top the shelves where my old song books are!" Eun says.

"Feel free the check mine too because I'm short and couldn't find any in my room so there's probably at least one in there." Nari adds. Immediately Hobi and Yoongi go into the two rooms. When the food gets back there's only one missing photo card left.

"Who's missing? I cant eat knowing there's only one left." Jungkook asks. "IN LIFE Hyunjin." She says. He nods and immediately goes to the fridge. He climbs onto the counter and looks on top of the fridge. "Is his sleeve holo?" Jungkook asks. "No, mine are always in plain sleeves." Nari replies. "Well someone's got a Hyunjin pc up here in a holo sleeve." He says.

"Okay, mine are plain, Yejun has stickers on his, Eun uses colored sleeves, Osamu and Hyejin, who has holo?" Nari asks. "Mine." Hyejin says. "How did it end up there?" She asks. Jungkook hands it to her before he continues looking for the missing Hyunjin card. After Jimin finishes he goes to help Jungkook.

"FOUND IT!" Jungkook yells. "Thank you!" Nari replies. He brings it to her on the couch where she hasn't moved. She puts him in his place in the IN LIFE section of the SKZ binder. She adds the number to Jungkook and counts them up. "Jungkook wins by one photo card." She says. He does a happy dance and claims his free hug. "Free hugs for all Bangtan boys because they found all my missing photo cards." Nari says, giving each boy a hug before giving Jungkook a second one.

"You won so you get two." She says. After Jungkook eats, the Bangtan boys go home. Nari showers and then lays down on her bed, feeling content knowing her photo cards are safe in their respective places.