#just because the show doesn’t take as much time to explore these issues with other characters doesn’t mean the same dynamic doesn’t apply
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the performative accusation that shipping zutara (and occasionally this criticism is levied at jinko/zukka) is colonialist apologism has been addressed in some excellent posts, explaining the inaccuracies and problematic implications of this logic far better than i ever could - like this post and this one and this one and this one and this one.
and i know this topic has been talked about to death, but if you could indulge my contribution for a moment, i just find it interesting how this sentiment results from the cognitive dissonance of atla fans being unable to reconcile with the idea of their favorite show's political beliefs not lining up with their own.
atla is a largely philosophical children's show that at its core deals with themes of love, redemption, and destiny vs. free-will. atla examines these themes through an anti-colonalist, anti-imperalist lens that deconstructs the idea of racial divisiveness and the idea that people of different ethnicities are inherently different. this is message is pretty explicitly stated by guru pathik:
Guru Pathik: "The greatest illusion of this world is the illusion of separation. Things you think are separate and different are actually one and the same."
Aang: "Like the four nations?"
Guru Pathik: "Yes. We are all one people. But we live as if divided."
and also by uncle iroh:
"It is important to draw wisdom from many different places. If you take it from only one place, it becomes rigid and stale. Understanding others, the other elements and the other nations will help you become whole."
this theme is developed across three full seasons, with the crux of this message culminating in zuko's friendships with the gaang - despite coming from different nationalities and different backgrounds, they have all had their own experiences being hurt by the fire nation and work together to take down the oppressive fire nation government. the question of destiny vs. free will is also explored through zuko's character - despite starting off as an antagonist, he develops into a symbolic representation of how the fire nation's oppression hurts its own citizens. he unlearns the fire nation's imperialist propaganda while simultaneously unlearning his father's abuse. rather than following misguided beliefs of what he thought his destiny was as the heir to the throne, instead he forges his own path.
thus, to claim that zuko can never form a deep and meaningful relationship with any of the gaang because of his nationality goes unequivocally against the themes of the show. and a major part of this is because these are fictional characters being used to analyze different theoretical questions within the show and in some cases, are used as symbolic representations of different philosophical ideas - their friendships and their character arcs serve a purpose within the text that cannot be easily transcribed onto real-life dynamics between people.
it's illogical to criticize fans who are choosing to understand atla at the level of the themes that are presented by the text - who are interested in exploring similar philosophical questions brought up by the show through the context of relationships.
if you don't like the themes of forgiveness and redemption that atla explores, your criticism should be aimed at the writing of the show itself rather than other fans. because you are giving far more thought to the "implications" of a close friendship or romantic relationship between someone from an imperalist nation and someone from an oppressed nation than the writers ever did. (and if you fall in this camp of people, i would hope you wouldn't be reblogging fanart of zuko and the gaang together while simultaneously claiming zuko could can never escape the sins of his ancestors and can never form a deep relationship based on trust and intimacy with katara or sokka or jin - because that would just be hypocritical).
and as a side note, people seem to apply this flawed logic to zutara far more than other ships solely because the show spends the most time exploring the complicated nature of fire nation imperalism in the interactions between zuko and katara in the latter half of b3. this is because they've been juxtapositioned against each other and paralleled with aang since the beginning of the show in ways that toph, sokka, and suki are not, who have mostly been used to examine different themes. there simply isn't enough time to explore these complicated themes with all the other characters, even if they theoretically exist in zuko’s dynamics with these characters, so the writers focus the most on zuko's relationships with katara and aang, and these relationships are given far more narrative weight, so have more content to criticize. but zuko and katara also canonically become friends by the end of the show. if you want to discount the existence of their friendship, claiming that it will always be tainted by the fire nation's oppression regardless of what is shown in the text, then you also have to discount zuko's friendships with aang, suki, toph, and sokka - because even if this isn't shown as a permanent barrier to their friendships in the show, it’s also not shown as a permanent barrier to his friendship with katara. if your logic is solely based on the idea that a person's identity in a relationship as a colonizer or a victim is fixed and unchanging regardless of character development, this would apply to zuko's friendships with everyone else as well.
#zuko#katara#zutara#i have seen people say that the zutara dynamic makes them personally uncomfortable and that's fine - to each their own!#but it's hypocritical to only dislike zuko's relationship with katara while simultaneously exalting his friendships w aang or toph or sokka#just because the show doesn’t take as much time to explore these issues with other characters doesn’t mean the same dynamic doesn’t apply#my post#my meta
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potential • z. chenle
pairing. zhong chenle x fem! reader
genre. rich kids au, childhood friends au, friends with benefits au. angst, fluff, suggestive.
word count. 20k (20.079)
warnings. alcohol consumption, swearing, mentions of sexual activity, sexual innuendos, a heavy make out session or two, use of lyrics from ariana grande and sarah close and masking them as my own words
a/n. why do we call it a rich kid chenle au when he's a rich kid irl. anyways for the fact that this was one of the most spontaneous fics ive ever written it sure did take a lot of time to execute. took a lot of inspo for the lifestyle from the sky castle kdrama so if its not accurate dont @ me bc ive never been rich LMAO
playlist. in my head – ariana grande ; successful – ariana grande ; nonsense – sabrina carpenter ; supermodel – måneskin ; that's what i like – bruno mars
You saw his potential without seeing credentials. And maybe that's the issue.
August 28, 2020 – somewhere in the Bali sea, 1:27 AM
The music is loud. The weather is humid.
Wrapping up the summer before your senior year, dancing around in the bar of the cruise ship in the middle of the ocean, one last stop before your 28-day cruise around Southeast Asia is over, the loud music from the bar rings in your ears as you dance around, a glass of expensive Mendis coconut Brandy swirling in your hold. The taste of the alcohol on your tongue burns, not quite used to the burning sensation in your mouth– this is one of the first times you’re drinking, since your parents were always big on prestige and acting classy. Your parents went to sleep, though– excited to explore Benoa tomorrow, to immerse themselves in nature and explore Bali’s temples and heritage. You, on the other hand, took this as an opportunity to party– accompanied by none other than your parents’ friend’s son, who grew into the position of your childhood best friend solely because his and your family have always been close, choosing to spend vacations together; a relationship that was mostly fueled by the immediate closeness of you two during the summer breaks and ski trips to Swiss Alps every January.
And while you’re no stranger to pearls, charity events in your parents’ mansion in Hong Kong, golf courses in Miami and fashion shows in Milan, growing up in the world of designer bags and prestigious titles, you feel quite stranded in the middle of the sweaty teenagers, all of them with the same social status as you, drinking expensive alcohol and swinging your hips to the EDM music playing through the speakers. It almost feels like this is the first time you’re able to enjoy yourself without anyone’s supervision, screaming at the top of your lungs into Zhong Chenle’s face as he laughs at you on the dance floor, and truth be told, you could care less about the pictures you’re going to take for your Instagram tomorrow, showing everyone just how good you’re doing and how much fun you’re having on your lengthy cruises around the continent, because somehow, even though the bar is clothed in gold and you feel a bit like in The great Gatsby, this feels like the least pressuring part of the whole trip.
“We should go to parties more often!” you scream into Chenle’s ear, taking a sip of your Brandy as you twirl yourself around him, the straps of your sparkly spaghetti-strap tiny top falling off your shoulders in a moment of carelessness, your thoughts somewhere completely else. You may be 19 years old and insanely wealthy, but that still doesn’t mean you are experienced in the art of partying– quite the opposite, actually, having to always seem cultivated and presenting yourself in a way that would suggest that your family is high on prestige and recognition– so to finally be surrounded by people your age, dancing along to the music and jumping up as you all chant the lyrics to Barbie girl by Aqua (how ironic) feels quite ecstatic.
“Like our parents would let us,” Chenle rolls his eyes, lips almost pressed against the shell of your ear as he makes sure to get close enough for you to hear him.
Sighing at his argument– knowing he’s absolutely right, but also hating the fact that he had to ruin your mood by stating it out loud– you shake your head as you down the last bits of your drink, putting the heavy glass onto the tray of a waiter that’s passing by to gather the rest of the empty ones scattered across the shiny tables in the corner of the room. Your brain is starting to get a little fuzzy and you can’t help the giggling escaping out of your throat whenever your eyes meet Chenle’s, the flush on the boy’s cheeks hinting at the fact that he’s not any better at handling his alcohol than you, having just as much experience in heavy drinking and partying as you do.
You’re only 19 years old and you don’t know a lot about the world. After all, you were brought up in a family that always did everything for you– you never had to move a single finger. You never even had to clean your room, because your parents had people that would come by every morning while you were in school, just so you could arrive home to a tidy place when you were done with your lectures. You went to a private school, so you were always surrounded by people with a status similar to yours. You spoke about your tutoring classes that cost more than groceries for a middle-class family a week, you talked about your trips abroad, and if you had time, you even went shopping with your classmates after school before your driver picked you up and drove you back into the suburbs; your neighborhood guarded by a gate, the asphalt behind it so much smoother than it is in the rest of the town.
You never got to experience partying like this– only gaping with an open mouth when you saw those scenes in the movies you watched on Netflix in your own private movie room. And if you’re being totally honest, you never imagined enjoying such a thing. You never had the experience, so you didn’t really yearn for it, but now that you’re here, surrounded by loud music, experiencing the weird emotional feeling that comes with being in a crowd screaming in joy at the same time first-hand on your own skin, you don’t think you’ll be able to go back to how you were before.
This is not how rich kids party. At least not when their parents are around.
“You’re gonna be hungover tomorrow morning,” Chenle mutters into your ear when your eyes light up at the sight of more alcohol, contemplating on getting another drink, just because.
“And you’re not?” you tease him, pointing to his glossy eyes and lazy walk, his legs tangling with each other every few seconds from the haze he’s been put in just by having a few drinks. The sight is quite funny– the ever-so composed millionaire son is now a troubled mess in your eyes; one wrong step and he could ruin the image his family has spent years to build up, but it doesn’t seem like either of you care, tripping over your feet and lounging at each other in the middle of the dance floor.
Feeling like you’re playing a dangerous game, hanging off his neck and swaying your hips to the rhythmic beat, you gape into his blown-out eyes and desperately try to get your brain straight. The more you drank and the more you spent time in Chenle’s close proximity, the less you were able to control your emotions and the weird thoughts in your brain that have been slowly eating up all your notions for quite some time now. Gaping at his plump lips and feeling his palms burning at your hips, his fingers ever-so-slightly hovering above the curve of your ass, you’re finding it hard to concentrate on the music or on the words spilling off his tongue, his voice never shutting up even in the loud bar. You always told him he talks too much, but he doesn’t seem to mind– he seems to actually take much pride in his annoying tendencies, talking your ear off on multiple occasions even when you tell him he should probably stay quiet for at least a minute, so your brain could recharge.
Truth be told, you listen to him most of the time anyway. He always talks and you always listen, rolling your eyes at the snarky parts and giggling at the jokes; so the fact that you suddenly can’t focus and just desperately want him to shut the fuck up must be the effect of all the alcohol you’ve been drinking tonight.
And your next step might as well be the main consequence of the coconut Brandy as well– because even though you’ve been dreaming of his plump lips on yours for quite some time now, you’ve never actually dared to act up on the desire. But your intention to make him go quiet seems to be working when the train of words stammering out of his mouth is cut off, a surprised noise trailing out of his throat when you kiss him on the dance floor; and to your surprise, he doesn’t seem to mind your weird sign of protest to his endless talking– quite the opposite, really, as he lets you take the lead and taste the mix of alcohol in the Long Island cocktails he’s been drinking the whole night off his tongue, your hands mindlessly trailing up to thread themselves into his hair.
This is not your first time kissing a boy– you once pecked Song Eunseok on the lips when the two of you sneaked out of class one day in 9th grade– but you never once kissed anyone with such passion and desire before. You’re not sure where you got all the courage from and you’re also not sure where you learned all of this– but it must be working, with how heavily Chenle’s breathing when you finally let go of his lips and he rests his forehead against yours. In no time, he’s chasing you down again, drunk not only on the alcohol now as he tilts his head to get closer, one hand resting on the side of your neck, just a few inches below your jaw, keeping you in place.
“You should learn how to shut up,” you mumble against his lips, breathing heavy as you break away from him again and open your eyes to meet your gaze with his. The music is still loud in your ears, but you swear you hear a static noise somewhere in your brain, a tingle in your fingertips making you feel like you’re about to have an out-of-body experience. Your drunken brain is not allowing you to ponder about your actions that much, not letting you think and contemplate the fact that you just made out with your childhood best friend on one of the most expensive cruise ships, drinking alcohol you weren’t supposed to spend so much money on, and maybe that’s a good thing– because there’s nothing stopping you in having the time of your life, no overthinking making you doubt your next steps and no feeling of shame or regret making the whole experience bitter as you dance pressed against your companion, letting him press short, yet daring kisses to your lips as time passes.
“I think I’m good,” he snickers, when the music suddenly cuts out, an announcer telling you that the bar closes at 2 AM and that this song is the last for the night.
Sighing in disappointment– because who even knows when the next time you’ll have this opportunity will come– you let Chenle lead you out of the bar, his hand glued around your exposed waist. Your walk is a little loop-sided and you two almost smash into the glass door (doesn’t matter that it’s automatic and it quite literally opened in front of your figures). Soon enough, you’re met with the golden interior of the cruise walls again, the design a little vintage, yet still luxurious, reminding you of the movie Titanic. Tripping over the doorsteps, hands getting caught on the red, velvety curtains hung around, you giggle at every word that comes out of Chenle’s mouth, bodies slowly, but surely getting closer and closer to your suite bedrooms. You’re quite sure your parents could hear you talking outside in the hall, but you choose to not ponder on what they would think of you if they saw you in this state too much, instead making yourself believe that they’re long asleep and won’t be woken up by your voices resonating through the quiet space.
“So I guess this is where we say goodnight?” you mumble, hanging off Chenle’s neck. His breath smells of the vodka-tequila mix when he hovers over you, bodies off-balance pressed against the cold wall just outside of your bedroom. Flashing you a grin, face looking close to a cheshire cat, he nudges your nose with his, a quiet hum landing to your ear, not heard by anyone.
“Or we could stay up a little longer.”
Squirming under his touch, his lips softly, yet still a little uncoordinatedly landing on yours, you waste no time in unlocking the door to your room– even though you have a bit of trouble with finding the key in your small purse, even surprised you haven’t lost the bag somewhere in the middle of the night– letting your childhood friend in to your space at the suggestion, your clothed bodies falling to the soft cushions of the water bed.
You’re only 19 and don��t know much about the world when you messily undress yourself under your friend’s eyes, blinded by the glints in his deep chocolate orbs when he looks at you from above and attacks your neck with kisses. And you usually don’t regret much, considering yourself a responsible individual, always rethinking everything and making sure it’s the right choice, but when you look back at this day now, you don’t really know if sleeping with Zhong Chenle on a cruise around Southeast Asia was the brightest idea of yours, considering the mental turmoil it’s gonna cause you on the way.
Well, at least you can say you lost your virginity somewhere in the middle of the Bali sea, and at least that’s something to boost your ego with, am I right…?
July 12, 2007 – Tokyo DisneySea, 2:21 PM
If anyone asked you for your favorite childhood memory, you wouldn’t have a hard time picking one. Sure, one would think you have too many pleasant memories to choose from, so realistically, you should take more time to pick and weigh the value of each one, contemplating if the trip to Rome was a happier memory than the summer you spent in Los Angeles when you were 10, but you are 100%, completely in tune with the fact that if anyone ever asked you this very question, the words falling off their tongue with interest and enthusiasm, no judgment and no hidden intentions behind their question, you’d have an answer ready with a smile on your face.
You don’t hold much emotion to your past memories. You’ve been on more vacations than you can both count and remember growing up, and so even though you do think the pictures you took in Italy came out good and your skin glistens prettily in the warm sun, even though you do think you experienced a lot of fun while going to the Target for the first time with your nanny– the woman your mum hired just because your parents were too busy with their business meetings the whole time you walked the streets of Los Angeles with the new woman you were supposed to trust with your life at the ripe age of 10– you wouldn’t say any of those memories are as close to your heart as the trip you took to Japan with the Zhong family when you were 6, the summer before attending first grade.
This was the year you and Chenle watched the Pirates of the Caribbean together for the first time, and even though it wasn’t in the initial plan, you two spent hours and hours and hours of the flight persuading your parents to take you to Tokyo Disneyland, because you heard from his cousin Yizhuo that you could meet Jack Sparrow if you went. While your plan didn’t exactly work and the two of you didn’t get to go to the large theme park– because your parents were busy, mostly traveling because of business and so they didn’t have the time to arrange it, the amount of sulking you two did when you arrived to the rented house in the expensive part of Tokyo to the teenager that was supposed to watch you two for the time being was enough for him to take you two on a short train ride to the twin of the famous theme park– the Tokyo DisneySea.
The 15-minute train ride you three took to the theme park was your first, and also last time you ever rode such a mean of transport. All you were used to were expensive sports cars and limousines– you never imagined that people took such transport even every single day, at times. You and Chenle were so immersed in the journey that it was hard for your babysitter to get you out of the train, your small, excited bodies almost tripping over your own little feet as the raven-haired boy dragged you through the streets of Maihama station.
You could see the towers of the park and you could smell the salt from the sea even from a distance. The whole atmosphere felt magical, giggles often erupting out of your throat as Yuta– the boy your parents hired to watch over you for the day– bought a bubble blower from one of the stands and blew out bubbles you two chased around and tried to pop before they got to the ground. There were no expensive cars in sight, no people dressed in suits and designer shoes– well, except from the two of you, but you couldn’t quite grasp the idea of how much your attire cost at that age yet– and you felt truly, insanely happy. The adults that always watched you when your parents went to business meetings were stern and serious, never letting you have much fun, but today was different, and you find yourself wondering why your parents even let you be babysat by a reckless teenager in the first place. He was 16 at the time– 10 years older than the both of you– and when you look back at the day now, you think it was the time pressure that brought your parents into hiring him. You bet they paid him a lot of money, hell, you bet they even lended him a credit card he could use to entertain you two for the whole afternoon, and even though you found him using it a few times, you didn’t think he spent just as much as all your previous babysitters did.
Not that you knew the value of money back then, after all. Maybe the fact that you couldn’t tell how much money everything was worth back then is what truly made the whole day so carefree and happy for you.
You were children of wealthy Chinese business owners. You always had everything they saw in your eyes– you didn’t even have to say it out loud and it was held up to you on a silver platter. This day, though, you didn’t even have to use that much money– if you truly compare it to other vacations your families have been to– and you can’t help but think it’s ironic how despite this fact, this day is still your favorite childhood memory.
The Tokyo DisneySea was catered to a more mature audience– even serving alcohol in the premises, a thing no other Disneyland does– but even though you were just 6 and couldn’t drink and there was no Jack Sparrow waiting for you in the streets of the theme park, you and Chenle had a blast. Maybe it was a good decision on Yuta’s part to take you to the DisneySea instead; it catered to your Pirates of the Caribbean needs perfectly despite it not being the initial theme. The ships and wooden coasts and harbors were enough for your imagination to create stories about pirates in your head, the three of you attending various rides and screaming at the top of your lungs together over the course of the afternoon.
“Wanna go to the Tower of Terror?” Yuta asked you, his toothy grin on full display as he dragged you two to the scary ride when you finally got to the American Waterfront.
The teenager was wearing a black muscle top with L’arc en ciel written on it– you found out only a few years later that it was a japanese rock band– and with his long, black hair falling to his forehead, he looked just like the person that would enjoy scary rides and horror movies. You, however– you weren’t prepared to get scared by green ghosts and eerie music. Not at 6 years old anyways, although you doubt you’d do better on this day.
If there’s one thing you need to know about Zhong Chenle, it’s the fact that he’s a lover of horror. And Korean dramas. But mostly horror– a few years later, when you were both the age Nakamoto Yuta was when he brought you to the Tokyo DisneySea, your friend came to a Halloween party dressed like the clown from IT and managed to jump-scare you every moment he physically got. There was no surprise in the small boy liking the idea of attending the scary ride, and no matter how hard you tried and protested, there was no use in you saying no. Because the two of them wanted to go, and you, quoting Yuta, ‘couldn’t just stay alone outside’, so you were pretty much forced into the darkness of the Tower of Terror, your small body pressed against Chenle and Yuta’s– you refused to sit anywhere but sandwiched between the two in the middle of the cart– shutting your eyes close when the scary music started playing and you could feel the anxiety forming in the pit of your stomach.
You trembled the whole time, panic resting in your beating heart, and somewhere along the way, you found yourself clinging to Chenle’s small hand, squishing it so hard he screamed at you in the dim lightning of the ride. You didn’t let go, though– that’s what he gets for dragging you along– fracturing his bones wasn’t in your concerns, if it made you feel more secure and safe.
The fond memory of the day ends with the moment the scary ride is over and you finally get out of the darkness– with Yuta having to carry your out of terror half-paralyzed body from the cart. To this day, you still don’t have a clear outlook on why this day is your favorite childhood memory, but you think it might be the mix of Chenle’s excited laughter as he scared you every two seconds after the ride, the apologetic hug he enveloped you in after you almost burst to tears the third time, the taste of the sausage Yuta bought you two for dinner, the taxi ride to the rented house you had to take in a rush before your parents got back from their business meeting, and the melodic voice of your best friend when he sang you the opening theme to the Pirates of the Caribbean before you two fell asleep on the same bed in your hotel room.
Either way, despite the terror, you don’t think you’ve ever had this much fun ever again.
When you peed the bed that night, your parents decided to never hire a teenager to look after the two of you again. From that moment alone, there was less horror, but also less fun.
May 5, 2019 – tennis courts in Jinqiao, Shanghai, 4:17 PM
One would think that growing up with Zhong Chenle would put him into a position of your almost-brother. And while you did agree with the statement on most days– like when he laughed so hard that snot came out of his nose and almost fell into your lunch plate when you were 15, or when he shot you with his paintball gun so hard you had a bruise on your knee for three weeks when you were 17– you think you’re starting to slowly outgrow this phase.
Zhong Chenle is no longer a brotherly figure to you when you two pick up tennis at the ripe age of 18.
It wasn’t either of your ideas, of course. Tennis is not a sport a teenager just suddenly picks up one day because they’re interested– at least not when you’re incredibly wealthy and can pretty much afford any other hobby in the entire world. No, it was the idea of Chenle’s mother– because, quoting, ‘the kids barely go out these days, they might as well pick up a sport!’ – and with the copycat tendencies of your dear mum, you were dragged along into it as well. And so now, during the finals season, on top of that, you two have to go play tennis on one of the private tennis courts your families rent for three hours a day every Friday afternoon instead of studying or focusing on getting your stress out of your body doing other, much more enjoyable things.
“You know, you look a little too excited for someone who hates playing tennis,” Renjun– the neighborhood kid (your parents being business partners for quite some time now made you and the short boy become friends somewhere along the way)– states, snickering as he lays on one of the benches on the side, his own tennis racket thrown carelessly on the ground as he watches the two of you running around the court, playing.
“I only do it because I’m bored,” Chenle mutters under his nose, sending the little yellow ball over the net with much force, making you run to the other side of the court.
“And I only do it because I need to prove to him that he’s not the best at everything he tries,” you add, sending the ball back to your friend.
“Just say you want to impress him and go,” Yizhuo– Chenle’s cousin from his mother’s side– teases you from the bench, sitting next to Renjun. Her remark doesn’t go unnoticed by you as you send the yellow ball her way after her cousin passes it towards your side of the court again, aiming precisely for her forehead but missing, earning yourself a terrified yelp out of the girl when she scootches closer to the boy next to her.
“That’s totally not what’s going on, but sure,” you roll your eyes at her when she throws the ball back, but you don’t feel interested in continuing the game anymore. Tiredly walking closer to the two sitting at the little shaded bench, wiping the sweat off your forehead, you try hard to not think of the snarky remark that was sent your way.
Is it really that obvious? Because sure, you’ve always found Zhong Chenle to be your brother figure over the years of growing up– but there’s something about the humid air of the tennis court and his competitiveness that have you eyeing him when he takes a sip from his water bottle or when he adjusts the hairband sitting on his damp forehead. He wears shorts that reveal his calves very nicely, and when you play 2 on 2, you find yourself focusing less and less on the game– earning yourself a frustrated yell from Ning Yizhuo herself as she plays along your side– and more and more on the Gucci tennis shoes adorning his feet as you scan the boy up and down, his figure growing taller and taller each passing day captivating you in a sense you’ve never quite experienced before.
“I can’t believe my mum dragged you all into this shit,” Chenle giggles when he sits next to Renjun on the bench, following you to the shade. There’s only 20 minutes left in the time your parents rented the court for and you figure that you can spend that time recharging your energy instead of playing the boring game.
“Not me,” Yizhuo says, “she made my mother feel bad about not signing me up for any sports. You know, your mum’s pretty persuasive, especially when it comes to looking good in front of everyone. If it wasn’t for my mum, I wouldn’t be doing this shit,” she complains, shrugging as she adjusts her ponytail that’s always sitting neatly on the crown of her head.
“I love the fact that Renjun here is the least athletic out of all of us, but he is the only one here willingly,” you snicker, earning yourself a chant of amused laughs at the spoken truth. Now, nobody forced Huang Renjun to come play tennis with you every Friday– but the fact that he doesn’t have many friends in the neighborhood was what made him come along, too bored on his own and with nothing to put his attention to. He doesn’t like playing much, but everything’s better than sitting alone at home, am I right?
The three of you gossip about everything and nothing– the new family in the neighborhood, especially, because Renjun saw their son last Sunday and found his outfit absolutely atrocious (“You’d think people with money would at least know how to dress well, but no. That’s not the case with that Wen Junhui guy.”). The time passes by quickly, and when the timer on Chenle’s phone goes off, signaling that the three mandatory hours at the tennis court are finally over, you all stand up and walk over to the gate, shoes dragging along the sandy surface of the ground with much tiredness. At least you’re getting some cardio in…
“Is your driver coming to pick you up?” Chenle asks as you pay goodbye to your friends, both of them getting into expensive cars waiting for them at the parking lot. Turning to him, you hum in agreement, suddenly shy under his gaze. It’s not even summer yet, but the May sun is already harsh on the skin, getting redness to spread along his cheeks, only further sculpting his handsome bone structure you’ve grown so familiar with over the years.
“What about you?”
“Told my mum I’ll walk home instead. It’s not like it’s only a 20 minute walk anyway,” he mutters, rolling his eyes at the irony of you having to drive home despite living only a few meters away from him, in the same wealthy neighborhood. You grew up together, in the same mowed lawns, in the same green labyrinths of your families’ villas, in the same high ceilings and golden accents on the interior of your houses. After watching him from the corner of your eye, you start to wonder about what changed between the two of you that made you so weak to him now, that you’re both 18. Did he change? Was it the fact that you were now both adults? You don’t think that’s the case– because even though you were 18, there were no more responsibilities waiting for you than they were the years before.
“My driver can take you,” you say, kicking the rocks below your feet, “well, unless you want to walk home alone instead,” you add, noting his previous sentence.
You see him take a sip out of his water bottle, shrugging at your suggestion. Chenle’s not a fan of inefficiency, no matter the fact that you can afford anything you could ever want. It’s a quality of him you find quite strange some days, but you don’t ponder on it too much.
You’ve known each other since you were in diapers. And after replaying all the memories you have with the boy in your head, you think that your 18 year old self isn’t so stupid for falling for him. See– you’ve got to know a lot of men over the course of your life. Many tried to get with you barely before you even grew into an adult, seeing the vision of money and the social status you could give them. Some, on the other hand, never gave you back the attention you were giving them. All relationships you had in your life were blinded by the imaginary price tag you always carried around with yourself, and so everything always stayed surface-level and plain. No wonder you fell for Chenle– no matter how long it took you to get to this part of your friendship– he’s the only one that ever showed you his true self, he’s the only one that ever trusted you enough to go deeper in conversations with you and treated you like a real human being. You know him well and he knows you well; he’s like a book you always find yourself rereading, excited to find that your favorite characters always stayed the same. At the end of the day, you think you were always meant to fall for Chenle.
Standing under the blazing sun, you wait for your driver to get to the tennis courts. You wait for 10 minutes, then 15– and when you get a little too overheated, Chenle offers you his water bottle and mumbles something about being on time. When the time passes 45 minutes after your driver’s supposed arrival, your friend turns to you with a glint in his eye, a grin sitting on his annoyingly handsome face.
“Wanna walk home with me instead?”
And the truth is, you don’t find yourself disagreeing. And you also don’t find yourself hating the walk up the hills of the neighborhood– no matter how tiring it was to your already exhausted limbs– and you don’t find yourself complaining about the lack of AC or the vehicle driving your ass home to your, admittedly, too big of a house. Chenle entertains you with his talks– because he always talks too much for his own good– and when you stop paying attention to him and lose track of where you’re going, he drags you back to the sidewalk by your hand and your fingers stay interlocked when he teases you about the fact that you almost got ran over by a white Cadillac.
“Listen, there’s this song I think you’ll like,” he hums when you’re 5 minutes away from your house, pulling out his phone out of his back pocket and opening up the Spotify app. He plays you a song by Ariana Grande, singing along to the lyrics of the chorus. His voice goes thin when he tries to mimic the singer’s voice, dragging along the english sentences of ‘it feels so good to be this young and have this fun and be successful, i’m so successful!’, irony seeping from his tone. Your hands are still intertwined as he swings them back and forth and you don’t even really care about the subtle implication of the lyrics he’s singing– because it’s Chenle, and despite being just as wealthy as you, he’s no stranger to calling you a snob.
When you’re 18 and walking back from your weekly tennis endeavors, you can’t help but feel the fluttering in your heart when your friend twirls you around in your driveway, your white tennis skirt childishly fulfilling your unsaid dreams of becoming a ballerina, before he walks to his house standing on the opposite side of the road.
You don’t even care that your poor driver got fired by your mother right after she realized he forgot to pick you up from the tennis court as much.
October 17, 2020 – a charity evening, Shanghai, 9:11 PM
Your whole life so far has been guided in the aura of money. When you were little, you didn’t realize it as much– your young, undeveloped brain couldn’t phantom the fact that your annual trips to Italy and summer vacations at yachts and in the Paris DisneyLand weren’t a normal occurrence to everyone. You couldn’t understand the value of money, and you think that maybe, you never truly will. Because you were born fortunate, never having to worry about a single thing, always living in wealth and with gold around your neck.
The closest you are to understanding just how much money your family truly has is at the charity evenings you are forced to attend. Walking around, mostly bored– because truly, you didn’t have much of an idea just how much money you’re sending to the unfortunate parts of Africa and what the whole thing even has to do with you, when the money wasn’t really yours in the first place– you try to at least look through the flier your family made for the event, reading through the carefully crafted sentences, feeling at least a little sorry for everyone that doesn’t get to live the way you do.
“Isn’t it funny how this is the only way our families can present themselves in a good light?” Chenle mumbles when he reads over your shoulder, a dry chuckle leaving his lips.
Turning around to look at your companion, you furrow your brows at his snarky comment. “What do you mean?”
“Well, we give to charity so people don’t hate us as much,” Chenle shrugs, taking a sip from the champagne poured in a tall glass you’re pretty sure your mother spent hours and hours picking out when renting this place, just so everything could be perfect.
“It’s just jealousy,” you say as you walk side-by-side with the boy, the expensive fabric of his white button-down hugging his body in all the right places, leaving you light-headed when you let yourself indulge in your thoughts for too long and stare at the curves of his forearms. It’s been a few months since you slept with your childhood friend– and while you must admit that you regretted it a little when you woke up in the morning, with a hangover and sore limbs, you also didn’t regret it as much as to turn the offer down when it was next brought to you. And the next time, and the next…
“You think?” Chenle asks, and his interest in your answer seems genuine.
“Yeah,” you nod, shrugging to yourself, “we have more money than any of them ever will, so it’s only natural for people to feel jealous and talk spiteful things about us.”
Chenle hums at your answer, licking his lips before he looks you dead in the eye, the smallest glint of irony shining from behind the dark orbs, making you shrink under his gaze. “It’s not like it’s hard work anyway,” Chenle mutters, “if it wasn’t all stolen money, at least the charity work wouldn’t feel as fake.”
You stop in your tracks at the comment, furrowing your brows. “Stolen money?”
The boy next to you snickers at your clueless eyes. It’s no wonder you never really cared about the source of your family’s wealth– you were born to it, so you never had a reason to doubt it. And truth be told, you never really complained either. You don’t think anyone in your place would, really. You just accepted it the way it is, and you never asked any questions. For all you know, your parents are hard working business owners– you bet their money is well deserved for the amount of effort they put in– so to hear that it’s stolen money, from someone who is in a similar position as you, on top of that, you can’t believe your ears.
“I mean, they’re business owners. Let’s not act like both yours and my parents don’t meddle with the taxes at least a bit, sweetheart,” he chuckles, shaking his head in disbelief, “if I were all those people outside of it, I’d hate myself too.”
His words do little to comfort you. They do quite the opposite, really, and even though Zhong Chenle has no proof to show you of the fact that your parents might have at least a bit of dirty money on their hands, you can’t say you don’t trust a word that comes out of his mouth. You start to wonder if you’re that gullible– and who is the one lying straight to your eyes now, if it’s your friend or your parents– and you start to believe that you’d trust everything Chenle tells you, because that’s just the relationship you have with him. He could do anything and you’d follow him to the end of the world. It takes years to build that bond, and so even know, although you have the urge to scream at him for talking such things about the ones that brought you to this world– this perfect, shiny world– you find yourself holding back, the bubble around you bursting in a second, although you spent 19 years of your life living in the fake glory and bejeweled experience. Opening your mouth to ask him more about the matter– to get yourself out of the confusion you’ve been put in with just a few sentences uttered out of his always too-honest mouth, you turn to the boy when a man with a camera approaches the two of you, asking to take a picture of you.
And you comply, because what else are you supposed to do? This is how you’ve been raised. You smile for the pictures, you grin when you find yourself in the magazines, you nod when people recognise your name, you greet people with a polite nod, because you never know when someone wants to make business with your parents and you wouldn’t want to ruin good opportunities for them, would you?
With Chenle’s arm around your waist, your body instinctively leaning into his touch, you smile for yet another picture for the portfolio. Sometimes you feel like a princess– with everything it takes; both the royal responsibilities and the special treatment. More often than not, you find yourself enjoying the spotlight.
“Now they have proof that we were here,” Chenle mumbles into your ear, his lips gently brushing the smooth skin, “wanna get out of here? This party doesn’t look as enjoyable as the last one we went to,” the boy references the time you spent together at the cruise ship, with both the screaming on the dancefloor, and also the aftermath in your room, making heat puddle in your cheeks as you swat his hand away before it gets too low on your back in front of everyone in the room.
“I have to give a speech, but… maybe later?” you look at him, innocently batting your eyelashes at him, when the boy shrugs and takes a step back, downing the last drops of champagne from the expensive looking glass.
“I’ll be waiting back home,” Chenle says, “I bet our parents will stay until this all ends, so we have plenty of time for ourselves when you decide you’re tired of the gala.”
He disappears out of your sight the moment after, putting the empty glass onto a tray of one of the waiters carefully walking across the room, his back escaping out the front door. If you squint hard enough through the glass, you could see him getting into one of the sports cars he got from his parents for his 18th birthday– the vehicle driving off in the hands of his driver for the night, since he just had a glass of alcohol– and leaving you alone in the world of faux and feathers, fulfilling the responsibilities given to you by your mother. And for the first time– not only because you hate giving public speeches– you so desperately want to follow him, getting out before midnight like Cinderella, never attending another one of these evenings ever again.
You don’t, though. You’re an obedient daughter.
And when you call him up from the entryway a few minutes after midnight, his rough hands welcoming you to his bedroom by undressing the thousand-dollar Tiffany dress you wore to the event– being the aftermath of his previous words or not, you start to think how ironic it is that your attire for the evening cost more than than the monthly rent of the people you were giving to in your speech.
After a while, your words turn bitter.
March 23, 2020 – South Cape Owners Club, Namhae-gun, Gyeongsangnam-do, South Korea, 1:17 PM
“Did you really have to choose the most boring thing to do for your birthday?” Chenle mutters under his nose when all of your parents stride forward to get another hole in one, beads of sweat appearing on your foreheads as you stand directly under the midday sun.
“This wasn’t my idea, okay?” Renjun huffs, carrying his golf equipment with him, the silly-looking golf gloves tugged right off his hands when his parents are no longer in sight. “All I wanted was to visit my grandma, but they decided we needed to do something special for my birthday, and when I couldn’t tell them anything I’d like to do, they dragged everyone to play golf.”
“I was thinking more like… clubbing and then crashing at your grandma’s place overnight, but okay…” Yizhuo snickers, watching as all of your parents joyfully talk between themselves, their conversation rarely leaving business matters as they play golf with as much enthusiasm as one can have while focusing on this boring sport. You don’t really know who made this game and why they made it– you can imagine seventy thousand different ways you’d love to spend your afternoon doing instead, more than a half of them supposedly more mundane than the sport itself; but you still know you’d enjoy even sitting down and getting ice cream better than having to pretend you’re interested in, what Chenle called, rich-people-only sport.
“Maybe I can sneak a bottle up into my room later, but I’m not promising anything,” Renjun shrugs, sighing to himself as he takes out his phone from his back pocket and shakes his head at the sight of the time appearing on his screen. You’ve been at the golf course since 10 AM, and with how interested in the game your parents seem to be, you’re not leaving any time soon either.
Not really engaged in the conversation– because Chenle once told you you complain too much (you truly thought he was the one doing so, but you believe pretty much everything that comes out of the man’s mouth, because he’s mostly right about things) and you think you’ve done your fair share of complaining on your way to the golf course in the first place– you look around, trying to find a thing that could occupy your attention instead. Finding anything fun to do while playing golf may just be the hardest thing to do, but when you notice your companion Chenle missing and his figure appears striding towards your small group in a golf cart, the vehicle going full speed (even the barely 40 km/h looks like it could kill when he seems to not give a single damn about running you over), and suddenly, your mind is occupied enough.
Screeching when the golf cart barely misses your figure, you jump to the side and watch Chenle laugh from the driver’s seat. His malicious instincts barely ever leave his body and the operation of a golf cart is seemingly bringing out the worst in him– thank god he barely drives anymore– and you can’t help but laugh at his little stunt when the cart comes to a sharp halt and he waves you three over with a motion of his hand.
“Hop on, motherfuckers, we have places to be!” he says, all of you following his footsteps and jumping into the small vehicle– you in the passenger seat, next to Chenle, and Renjun and Yizhuo taking the two seats on the back. Once you’re all in, the engine grunts with the speed Chenle’s intending to get to in the weak thing, the atmosphere shifts into one with much more fun and adrenaline– because you know you’re not supposed to ride the carts (not this fast anyway) and when your parents find out, you’re gonna get in a lot of trouble. No, you’re not going to get grounded– you’re not a kid anymore– but the silent treatment and nagging from them about being well-raised and respectable members of society is enough to leave you scared of their anger for the rest of your lives.
“Slow down, I’m gonna fall out!” you scream when Chenle takes a sharp turn, the golf cart almost toppling over on the green grass.
“I got you, don’t worry,” he notes, one of his hands loosely falling to your thigh to keep you in place, your skin heating up even more from his touch now, enjoying the hold but also fearing the eyes of your friends from the backseat. Your earlier terror is quickly erased with another sharp turn the driver takes– having much more things to worry about now, surviving being one of them– and when he zooms past the group of middle-aged people standing a few meters ahead of you, you already know you’re in big trouble.
Now you’re gonna get scolded for abducting a golf cart. When it wasn’t even your idea in the first place.
Well, that’s something to worry about later.
Chenle drives with the cart all over the golf course, the vehicle providing you enough entertainment for the next few minutes until you get tired of the ride. Looking over at him on your side, gaping a little at the view of your childhood friend driving the cart with only one hand, the other one still securely glazing your thigh, you almost choke out with how attractive the strange sight is to your eyes. Forcing yourself to focus on the road– and thank god, because if you didn’t hold to the side of the cart now, you’d surely fall out despite Chenle’s reassuring words and his hold on your leg– when the man cuts through a small hill in the golf course, the vehicle jumping up and falling back down making you scream in terror mixed with just a bit of excitement.
“Fucking hell, at least warn us before!” Renjun screams from the back, followed by Yizhuo’s amused laughter. You can only imagine Renjun’s almost fallen out, and even though the mental image looks hilarious, you really don’t need him to get hurt today, because he wouldn’t shut up about it for the next 8 working days. And it’s his birthday, after all– you wouldn’t wanna ruin it by having too much fun.
And so, with a last giggle escaping the boy’s throat, Chenle brings the golf cart to a halt, the vehicle stopping far enough from your parents to not get scolded immediately for making so much ruckus at the golf cart, the four of you enjoying the silence, still recovering from the wild ride. Smiling fondly to yourself and gaping at the boy next to you again, you suddenly grow appreciative of him. If it wasn’t for his wild nature, you would still be sulking somewhere on the golf course, pretending to enjoy living your snobby life alongside your parents. You bet even Renjun himself will find this moment captured in his brain as a core birthday memory, and the more you stare at Chenle’s side profile, the more you want to hold his face in your hands and thank him.
“Ew,” you hear Yizhuo’s voice from behind you, bringing you out of your thoughts. Looking back to see what she’s referring to, you watch her gaze landing on Chenle’s hand playing with the flesh on your thigh, heat suddenly rising to your cheeks in being caught in the exact position you feared a little while ago.
“What–” Chenle snaps his head back at his cousin, while you quickly shrug his palm off your skin, but it’s too late now– you’ve been caught in the act and now you can’t do anything to erase Ning Yizhuo’s memory.
“You know, I thought you two were cousins at first. Like, from your dad’s side, I mean,” Yizhuo sighs, shaking her head in disbelief at the two of you, her comment not doing much to ease the situation either. Chenle seems to be confused at her words, his face scrunching up as he glares at the girl.
“We’re not,” you note, clearing your throat and looking at her with a glare, mentally praying for her to drop the topic.
“Yeah, thank god,” Chenle adds, and you should’ve expected him to make the situation even worse– it’s Zhong Chenle, after all– but his next words shock you and leave you gasping, mentally killing him right here and in this moment, “that would make a lot of things weird.”
“Ew,” Yizhuo repeats, and suddenly, that perks up Renjun’s attention– the boy previously facing the other side of the golf course and not paying you three much care– as he looks around and watches you with confusion in his features.
“What are you talking about?”
“That they are–” the girl takes it upon herself to explain her findings, but she’s quickly cut off by a sound of a middle-aged woman screaming through the place, her small figure striding towards the golf cart.
“Zhong Chenle, what do you think you’re doing?!”
And with that scolding tone, the previous topic is dropped. Thank god.
June 12, 2020 – Zhong Chenle’s room, Shanghai, 11:21 PM
A hand stroking through his hair, smoothing back the bangs and revealing his forehead in the dim blue of the neon light in his room, you lay on your side next to your friend Chenle, a blanket carelessly thrown over your half-naked middles to shield you from the breeze. You hum a song under your breath as you play with his locks, the black disappearing between your fingers like sand, eyes carefully watching his tired expression.
If you thought hard enough, you could see the little boy you first met at your parent’s conference room when you were 3 materialize in front of your eyes. His cheeks were chubby and he was short, waddling behind you almost a head less than your size, and his voice was thin as he asked you for your name. From that moment on, you knew you were supposed to stick together– and while your parents were the first relative to bring you two together, you didn’t mind always being glued to each other’s hips.
When you look closer at him now, it’s hard to see that boy in him. Harder than you expected, if you’re being totally honest. Don’t get me wrong, you can still see in his features– even though his cheekbones are more prominent now and his jaw is more chiseled, lips plumper and his figure built more firmly than when he was a little boy– but there’s something about his demeanor that completely changed over time. He seems less enthusiastic, and while one would think that it’s just him growing into being a more laid-back and relaxed person– he’s not a kid anymore, after all– you think there’s something more to it, you just can’t quite put your finger to it.
Seeing him close his eyes every once in a while, lids falling under the weight of his tiredness and the comfort your gentle strokes through his scalp give him, you feel your heart clench with all the care you’re currently putting into the boy, and all that you’ve been putting into him throughout your growing up. After so many years– after getting so close and intimate with him– you don’t think you’d be able to let the boy go, and just the sheer image of ever losing him or leaving him behind leaves you trembling with anxiety.
And so, despite being afraid of ruining the calm atmosphere that comes after making love to him, you speak up with a weak voice, contrasting to what you’re logically supposed to feel after getting to know the news this morning– just because you have to know.
“Lele?” you mumble, hearing him let out a hum, his voice sounding as if he’s half-asleep, but you know he’s listening to you. “What are your plans… after you graduate?” you ask. The day of graduation is coming faster and faster towards you, the years you’ve spent at high school finally fulfilled after all the effort you put in on your finals.
“Dunno,” he replies, eyes barely opened as his arm that’s been previously laid on the mattress in between your two bodies moves to your hip, fingers drumming over the soft skin, “why?”
“Just wondering…” you speak, voice barely louder than a whisper. The boy stays silent– his eyes once again closing on themselves as you continue to play with his hair. One would think he’s fallen asleep, not awake enough to have this conversation, and you would even believe the fact and let the conversation go, thinking you’d find another time to dwell on this topic, but then, as a surprise, his voice startles you from your deep thoughts when he curiously inquires you, the hand on your hip steadying.
“What about you?”
Taking a deep breath in and out, a smile battling to take over your lips, you lick your lips in the heartbeat that comes before your answer. Swallowing your nerves– because even though you should’ve told him the moment you got the news this morning, you’re somehow stressed out about the action of doing so– you open your mouth and finally break the rules to him.
“I… I got to Yale,” you say, on your toes. The joy and relief you felt this morning when you saw the email appear on your phone screen is daring to creep into the way you speak to Chenle right now, but you’re keeping it in. Not letting yourself scream and shout the accomplishment from the rooftops, you look at the boy, not a change appearing on his face at hearing your announcement. “I got into their business program,” you add anxiously, waiting for him to say something– anything– to your news.
As your friend, he’s supposed to be happy for you, isn’t he? He’s supposed to hug you now and squeeze you and tell you how you’ve done a good job and that he’s proud of you and that he’s cheering you on in your dream. None of it comes, though, as he only hums and nods at your sentences, not even bothering to open his eyes to look at you when you oh so excitedly talk to him about your life goals.
Something inside of you breaks just the tiniest bit, your mood falling as you anxiously chew on the inside of your cheek.
“Are you not gonna say anything?” you demand, halting your movements through his raven locks, averting your touch and looking at him curiously.
You watch him as he finally opens his eyes and looks at you with an empty look, licking his lips before humming again and asking you in a tone of voice that barely meets interest or excitement. “So you’re gonna be a businesswomen like your mum when you get your degree?” he asks, nodding to himself.
“Yeah,” you answer, clearing your throat. You’re a little confused at his weird stance towards the topic, but you battle out a tight-lipped smile. “I’m hoping for it.”
He hums again, the noise seemingly enough for him to consider it a valid conversation holder, a deadpan: “Good,” leaving his lips after a second, making you furrow your brows in confusion and utter disappointment. This is not the way you imagined the conversation to go– this is not how you wanted it to go at all.
Heaving out a sigh, you tug your arm to yourself, contemplating on speaking up– knowing you’re just gonna make everything worse if you do– but doing so anyway. “That’s all you’re gonna say?”
“I mean, what else is there to say?”
Looking at him in disbelief, your face scrunching up in various different emotions, all mixing into one– disappointment being the dominant feel, you think, you scoff at him. This is not Zhong Chenle as you know him, and sure, he hasn’t been the most overly-excited, cheerful individual these past few months, but you still think you deserve at least a bit of praise for the achievement of getting into one of the hardest universities to get to in the world, no?
“I don’t know, you could… congratulate me, I guess…? Tell me I did a good job, I dunno… would be nice,” you mutter, snickering once more to prove your irritation with the man.
“Oh,” he says, looking genuinely surprised, taken-aback, even, “well, congrats on the legacy admission, I guess,” he says, nonchalant, as if his words aren’t a dagger to your heart each second that passes, your blood pressure rising as the reality downs on you that he’s being serious and that this is not a sick joke.
“The legacy admission?” you repeat, eyes big and shocked, your whole body moving an inch away from him on the bed without you realizing.
“Yeah,” he shrugs, not a bit caring about breaking you from the inside, the humiliation slowly creeping from the tips of your fingertips to the depths of your soul.
“So you’re saying I went through the whole admission process and put in so much effort only for you to say that I got in because of stupid legacy?” you chirp, gazing at him with sharp eyes, blood boiling from the impact of his words. “What legacy are you even talking about?”
“Don’t act like you’re not a nepo baby,” he snickers, rolling his eyes.
Gasping at his words, baffled at the unexpected reaction, you stand up on the bed and stare at him with sharp eyes. At a loss for words, you stutter a little when you speak up again and utter out the next words, hoping to hit him where it hurts. “Like you’re not?”
“Never said I’m not,” he shrugs, “don’t have a problem with admitting I am.”
“So you’re saying I only got to university because of my parents,” you get out, glossy eyes scanning his peaceful figure, “so you’re saying I’m not smart enough to get into Yale?”
“That’s not what I said–”
“But you implied.”
“You only hear what you want to hear,” Chenle sighs, as if he was tired of your antics, which only makes you more furious at the whole interaction.
“No, Chenle–” you stutter, his name rolling off your tongue as if it was meant to stop him with hurting you even more for discrediting your efforts, yet, you can’t find any more words to say to him as you stare at this limb body laying on the soft mattress of his king sized bed, shaking your head in disbelief.
Standing up from the bed and scattering around the room for your clothes, ignoring the way putting them on in front of him makes you feel like you’ve been stripped away from all your dignity, you hurriedly come to the door of his bedroom, almost forgetting your phone that you gather on your way out from the messy desk in the right corner of the room.
“Where are you going?” he asks monotonously, watching you move through the place.
“Home,” you bark out, running your hand through your hair as you walk back to the door, ignoring the hot tears pricking your eyes at the feeling of your whole entire world collapsing in on you when he mourns from the bed.
“Don’t be mad, it’s not like I said anything bad…”
“Goodnight,” you snap, not bothering to look back at him as you escape his house in the middle of the night, running through the street to your house much earlier than you anticipated, wiping at your cheeks with angry palms.
This is the first time he disappointed you, and you can’t tell if that felt worse, or if it was the excitement slowly and painfully stripping off your bones, making you feel like you’re running around without your flesh, completely see-through for everyone around.
June 27, 2020 – IFC Mall, Shanghai, 4:33 PM
“Do you think this makes my ass look extra hot?” Yizhuo asks, gaze shifting from you to Chenle to Renjun, the four of you currently in one of the designer shops at the mall. Leaning on the wall, arms crossed on your chest and chewing on the inside of your cheek, you shrug, not a word escaping your mouth.
“I’m your cousin, I’m not looking at your ass like that,” Chenle mutters under his nose, sighing as he takes a seat on one of the expensive looking sofas situated in the changing room, resting his head against the neck rest and closing his eyes in what seems to be tiredness or annoyance– either of, or both mixed in, equal parts.
“Oh come on, I need to know!”
“It does look super hot, Yizhuo, now can you–”
“So you are staring at my butt!” Yizhuo excitedly yelps, pointing a sharp finger towards Renjun, a bright grin settling onto her lips when the accused boy stutters, cheeks reddening at her comment.
“You literally asked us to, for fuck’s sake!”
“You could’ve refused, just like Chenle did,” she shrugs, smiling to herself in victory. If anyone was listening to your conversation right now, they would surely have a lot of questions you wouldn’t be able to respond to. Hell, even you’re confused half of the time you hang out with Ning Yizhuo– what the hell is going on in her head?
“He’s your family, of course he refused,” Renjun mutters, shaking his head as he drags a hand through his hair in despair.
“Whatever you say, Renjunie,” she chirps, closing the curtain behind her and changing back into the pants she wore when she got to the store in one swift motion, leaving the boy puzzled with her next words as she walks up to the counter, “I’m only buying those because you think I look super hot in them, just so you know.”
Paying for her things and escaping the store, the rest of you tagging along, you notice the boy aimlessly trying to forget about the whole situation, and his prayers were listened to, after all, since Yizhuo seems to drop the topic after teasing him so much, turning to you instead. Walking alongside with you, leaving the two boys a few steps ahead, she nudges you with her elbow, raising up her brow in question.
“What’s up with you? You haven’t even tried anything on,” she notes, “and we both know you’ve been eyeing that new LV collection, so there must be something bothering you.”
Sighing, hating that the girl knows you so well– that, or you’re being awfully obvious– you roll your eyes in annoyance and try to shrug the topic off. “It’s nothing, I’m fine.”
“Well, that’s obviously a lie. Is it something with Chenle? You two are usually all over each other, so–”
“It’s not about Chenle,” you snap, cutting the poor girl off, “so drop it.”
“Did he say something stupid? I know my cousin, come on. I can slap some sense into him, sweetheart, just let me know–”
“Please let it be,” you insist, tone of voice almost a little too sharp for your own liking, but it seemingly does its job as your friend only shrugs and takes a sip out of the coffee you all bought when getting to the mall, catching up to the men a few steps in front of you, talking about basketball.
“Well, if you need to talk to anyone about it, you know where to find me,” she says, and joins the discourse with her cousin and the boy she’s been teasing for whatever reason for the last few weeks instead, leaving you to trail behind them like a lost puppy, deep in your thoughts.
It’s been a few weeks since you last talked to Chenle. He tried reaching out to you a few times, sending you texts to ask what you’re doing that day to see if you wanna hang out. It seemed that at first, he didn’t really understand that he upset you. After you continued to ignore him even on graduation day, only greeting him and sparing him a few words, he seemed to get the memo as he let you deal with your emotions by yourself instead. You were never given an apology– and truthfully, knowing Chenle, you didn’t even expect to get one in the first place. But still, it’s been bugging you and you couldn’t get his words out of your brain, because you know you can’t do anything about them– if this is the image he has of you, the opinion he created, you don’t think you can talk it out with him in the first place.
“Everything okay back there?” Chenle asks, looking behind at you. His eyes are big and honest, and you find yourself nodding to his caring question. Sparing him a word seems like too much effort right now, and so when he offers you a tight-lipped smile, you don’t have enough energy to reciprocate it.
“Princess Yizhuo here has sore feet, so we are calling it a day. You wanted anything from the mall? I can stay behind with you and go get it,” he continues, his words jabbing into you only reminding you more of the days you spent ignoring him. Realistically, he should be mad at you for it– maybe you even wanted that to happen so he would ignore you instead, giving you the silent treatment, but this is your childhood friend Zhong Chenle we’re talking about. He talks too much in situations where he should shut up instead, and that’s exactly what’s happening in this very moment as well.
“I’m good,” you note, shrugging as you throw the empty coffee cup into one of the bins on your way, your small group now escaping the mall and getting to the parking lot.
Walking towards Chenle’s Zenvo TS1 parked in the corner of the parking lot, you hear the chatter of the group resonating in your ears, not really engaging in the conversation yourself, but choosing to listen to feel included anyway. It’s not their fault that you’re not in the mood, and frankly, you’re glad they even invited you to the outing in the first place. Everything’s better than being left out in your books, even if it means forcing yourself into social interaction.
“My driver should be here any minute,” Yizhuo smiles, waving at Renjun currently getting into his Porsche Cayenne that he got after you all arrived from his birthday trip to Korea. Watching the boy drive off– while listening to Chenle bitching about his driving (he does have a point though, the poor boy almost crashed into a pole on his way out) – you feel a nudge to your elbow, making you turn to your friend.
“Wanna get back with me, neighbor?” he asks, eyebrows raised in question.
In any other circumstance, you wouldn’t miss a heartbeat before answering. But now, you ponder on the question for a bit– you got to the mall with Yizhuo, having hanged out with her at her place before– but now that she’s getting a drive home, there was no use in you tagging along with her, since you live quite far from her house. Getting a drive home from Chenle is the most logical solution, after all, and that’s why you find yourself nodding.
Jumping to the passenger’s seat, waving at Yizhuo still waiting for her driver to get there– it should take only about 5 more minutes, with the speed her driver can get to when called– you silently gaze out of the window on your way back, not sparing the boy next to you a glance. He seems to not mind, carefully taking turns and waiting at the stop signs and red lights on his way to your neighborhood, humming along under his breath to the songs on the radio instead to fill the silence. You spend the ride chewing on your cheek, nerves eating you up from inside just at the sheer fact of being in his close proximity again, yet still being so painfully hurt at the feelings he expressed the last time you hung out one-on-one.
His car smoothly gets to the parts of the town that feel more rich– houses growing bigger in size, the gates taller in the sky and the lawns mowed more carefully, with more fancy bushes in the yards and pure-blood dogs running around in front of the gates. After a few minutes, your neighborhood appears in front of your eyes, his car driving past your house and into the Zhong property instead, making you furrow your brows in confusion and annoyance.
“You could’ve just stopped in front of my house so I could get out, you know,” you hum, sighing when he turns the engine off.
“I was thinking we could hang out over at ours for a sec,” he shrugs, turning his face to you with a hopeful glint in his eye, which you dismiss with an annoyed huff and a roll of your eyes, reaching towards the door handle to get out and walk over to your house instead.
“Come on, Y/N,” he calls for you, “are you still mad?”
“No,” you snicker, shrugging as you move towards the front gates, his figure quickly catching up to you as he grabs your wrist, halting you in your movements.
“I’m sorry. Let me make it out to you?” he mumbles, looking at you with eyes big and deep like honey, and suddenly, you’re a putty under his touch– just like always, you cave in– as you sigh, following him inside. You don’t miss the victorious pep in his step as he leads you inside, his hand still in contact with your arm, only letting go when you get to his room and he leads you to sit on his bed.
“Wanna play something?” he asks, thrusting a PS5 controller into your hands, not really leaving you much room for disapproval. Grunting and rolling your eyes at him, you watch as he opens up It takes two, your characters running around the split screen trying to figure out the way around.
The silence between the two of you is cruciating, suffocating, even, as neither of you have enough courage to open up the topic again. Tugging at your bottom lip, biting off the dry skin up to the point it bleeds, you sigh and turn to the boy again, putting the controller down. “Is this your way of making it up to me?” you ask.
Cocking his head to you, he shrugs. “I mean, I had a different idea, but that’s up for a discussion…” he mutters, the suggestion of his words making you roll your eyes at him, in disbelief of the fact that he still has the audacity to tease when he knows you’re clearly upset with him.
“Okay, I’m… really sorry, okay?” he says when he registers your mood, sighing to himself and running a hand through his hair. “I kinda fucked up, and I realise that. I didn’t mean to imply that you’re stupid, or anything– come on, I always cheated off you on exams, after all– so, I just- it came off wrong, is what I’m tryna say,” he concludes, looking at you hopefully, his face seemingly in tune with the words coming out of his mouth.
Humming, you shrug, not really knowing what to say. The apology settles a little in you, noting that at least he acknowledged that he fucked up, and so you pick up the controller again and avert your gaze from him. Seeing as his character refuses to move, you look at him from the corner of your eye, raising your brows in question.
“So you forgive me?” he asks, licking his lips in nerves– the action making your eyes travel down to the plump rosiness, involuntarily following his action. His glistening mouth has your gaze wandering around his body, eyes focusing on things you’ve been purposefully ignoring the whole day– the way his forearms show off in his short-sleeved shirt, the way his hair is parted in a way that shows his forehead in the most strangely attractive ways, and also the ever-so casual demeanor of the male. Chuckling to yourself, you shrug, taunting him.
“I dunno,” you mumble, “how can you make it up to me?”
And again, Chenle gets the hint– he’s not stupid, after all.
Slowly lounging himself towards you, making you drop the controller to his sheets, you close your eyes in expectancy of his touch, already so used to the rhythm of his lips against yours. His hand holds your jaw in place, firm kisses pressed to your yearning mouth, you try to remember the way his touch feels– just in case you have to give it up soon again– a selfish action of your body as you thread your fingers through his hair.
Lips ghosting over yours, he snickers against them as he speaks. “You taste of blood,” he notes.
“Shut up,” you mutter, taking matters into your own hands as you lock yourself to him again, pressing shaky, hurried kisses to his lips.
He finds a better place to attach them to, though, as he gently pushes you towards his mattress into a lying position, traveling towards your jaw and your neck. His touch never stays long enough to leave a mark– at least not in places visible for everyone to see, saving you a lot of explaining to your parents and your friends– but the kisses still leave you breathless and yearning for more, hands traveling down his back and humming in pleasure.
“Missed this,” he speaks against your skin, breathless, “so much.”
“Missed my body or me?” you ask, a hint of bitterness on your tongue.
“A bit of both,” he smirks, gently sucking on the skin of your collarbone, leaving you to squirm under the feathery touch. Hands traveling up under your shirt, his fingers trailing across your belly and the curve of your hip, you’re left shivering under the contrast of the heated atmosphere and his stone-cold hands, giggling when he presses an unusually sweet kiss to your cheek in between the more risky ones.
“And which one did you miss more?” you tease, locking eyes with him as he hovers over your body, plopped up by an arm on either side of your head.
His eyes glimmer as he stares you down, cocking his head to the side. “I miss when you didn’t talk,” he says, leaning down again and taking your breath away with a kiss, a displeased grunt meeting his lips as you disapprove of his snarky comment.
In the sheer second where you two break away for air, his hands undress your top, leaving you under him just in your underwear, a position you two have found yourselves in a number of times before. Still, it leaves you shy away under his hungry eyes, only relaxing again when his raven locks tickle the underside of your jaw, lips attaching to every inch of your now exposed body, not afraid of bruising the skin you always keep covered, out of everyone’s eyes. Sometimes, you yearn for him to plant a lovebite to your jaw, to the juncture of your shoulder and your neck, wanting to show them off to everyone and claim the boy as yours– you know you don’t have that power, though, when Zhong Chenle will never be yours and the bruises of desire are always hidden away from everyone, like a dirty little secret; much like what you two have going on in the first place anyway.
“You know,” he mutters against your skin, in between the kisses that have now grown lazier, “I was starting to get a little crazy when you ignored me. That was a first,” he says.
Snickering, hands once again finding their place in his locks, you shrug. “Was the first time you deserved it.”
“Does my opinion really matter to you that much?” he asks, chuckling as he presses another kiss to your skin, to a place a few inches below your collarbone.
“We’ve been friends forever,” you say, “‘course it does.”
“Well, then you should’ve known that as your friend,” he huffs, lips pressed against your skin, “‘m not looking down on you.”
Humming, you let him work his magic as his lazy kisses inch closer to the fabric of your bra, his other hand playing with the fabric of it, twirling the little bow in between your breasts in his fingers as he leans on one of his plopped-up hands, looking at you from the side.
“Guess I was just more curious about what you wanted to do after school, y’know,” you say, the conversation flowing despite his hands all over you, “before you called me a nepo baby, of course.”
He chuckles at your remark, rolling his eyes at you as his finger trails up your side, your skin growing goosebumps under his touch. “Dunno yet. Why do you care?”
“Wanted to see how far we’re gonna be,” you say, the moment suddenly growing more intimate. The relationship you two have was never inclusive– you two had sex sometimes, sure, but you never once told each other this was more than that. You two were just mere fuck buddies, childhood friends that found sexual attraction in each other somewhere along the way, and while that was enough for you for a while, you found yourself growing anxious of the fact that he was never going to be fully yours. And with the growing anxiety– the smallest remainder of your worries that overtake you in the middle of the night sometimes– your throat closes up on itself when you choke out the next words. “Wanted to see how much time we have left together.”
His hand settles on your hip, his eyes bearing into yours with a newly found heaviness in them. Furrowing his brows, he licks his lips in nerves before speaking up. “Well, I’ll always be your neighbor, so you can find me when you come back. Unless we move, y’know…” he jokes, an airy laugh coming out his lungs that doesn’t meet the expected intention of easing the situation.
You chuckle– but there’s not a hint of lightheartedness in the gesture, quite the opposite, really– as you avert your gaze from him, your head lollying to the side when you try to hide your slowly, but surely growing red eyes. “That’s not what I meant.”
The hand on your hip squeezes the skin under it, his figure now fully hovering over you again, eyes desperately wanting to meet yours. A finger gently pressed to your chin makes you turn your head back forward, his worried gaze bearing into you, and for a moment, you two only stare into each other’s eyes, frozen in time.
And again, Zhong Chenle isn’t stupid.
But for a second, he acts like he is.
“What are you talking about?” he chuckles. “You’re scaring me.”
And when you don’t give him an answer, but instead chew on the inside of your cheek– another place to bleed after you bite down too hard from the nerves crushing you from the inside– he seems to finally get the hint, an airy laugh full of disbelief meeting your ears. Having figured it out, still, he speaks it into existence– as if he needed a confirmation; 8 words tormentingly escaping from between his swollen lips.
“You don’t have feelings for me, do you?”
Sniffling, you shut your eyes close at the question, your silence a clear answer to your childhood friend as he peels himself off you, the feeling of cold air on your exposed skin like a painful slap to reality. You stay like that for some time, mentally counting seconds, each hammer of your heart in your chest like a threat to your existence. Finally, the silence is broken by a determined, yet a little weak sentence coming out of Chenle’s mouth.
“I think you have to leave.”
Numb, you follow the orders.
July 25, 2020 – Ning Yizhuo’s room, Shanghai, 6:11 PM
“So I was right all along?” Yizhuo snickers, eating from the bowl of almonds she has settled in the free space between her lap and her crossed legs, staring at you with the hydrating sheet mask on her face. You heave out a sigh at her comment, rolling your eyes as you fall back into her soft mattress, shaking your head in disbelief.
“That’s all you got from this conversation?”
“Almost,” she mumbles, but nudges you with her foot right after, “I’m joking. I was listening, I’m just… shocked that I was actually right and that you were fucking my cousin all along.”
“Yeah, well, that’s not happening anymore, so you don’t have to be disturbed,” you grunt, wondering why you actually told the girl in the first place, regretting the decision perhaps the most right now. Yes, she did bug you for the last few weeks about the reasoning behind your attitude, and the fact that you refused all the invitations to hang out with your friends in fear of seeing Chenle were starting to get a bit suspicious, so you figured you can’t hide it anymore and that Yizhuo was bound to find out either way sooner or later. And still, you think you needed a bit of girl advice too.
“‘m not disturbed,” she mumbles, voice suddenly considerate, “I just- the whole situation is all kinds of weird and fucked up right now.”
“Tell me about it,” you chuckle, the bitter taste on your tongue never leaving despite trying to drown your sorrow down in sweets. “I fucked it up, Yizhuo.”
“Now, that’s just not true,” she sighs, putting the bowl of almonds to her coffee table and laying next to you, reaching for your hand and swinging it around in failed acts of encouragement and affection. “It’s not your fault he freaked out and made it weird.”
“I made it weird!” you mourn, breaking away from her grasp and dragging your hands through your hair in frustration, the feelings bundling in your stomach making you feel like acid is just bound to shoot out of the crevices of your insides, throwing up from the stress and despair. “I’m moving across the world the next month and I won’t see any of you for a long time, since Jun is moving to Korea and you’re gonna work in your parent’s company as well as going to uni here, and instead of spending the last moments of summer break together, I fucked it up and made everything weird and awkward just because I had to fall in love with my childhood best friend. While we’d been fucking. Isn’t that fucking great?” you huff, closing your eyes shut with the tears threatening to fall down your cheeks at your own words falling from between your lips.
“We are spending time together right now, though,” Yizhuo tries to cheer you up, her pout heard in her tone.
“There are millions of different ways you’d love to spend your time with me instead of moping because of your cousin,” you note, sighing, “and I don’t even fucking know what he’s gonna do after summer break, and now, I won’t get to know.”
Yizhuo grows quiet next to you, suggesting the thickening atmosphere. Turning on your side to see your friend with her eyes glued to your figure, you chew on the inside of your cheek. She sighs, preparing herself for the mental tangent she’s gonna bring you on, and reaches over to smooth down your messy hair.
“You know, Chenle never really liked… this life,” she says, shrugging, “he hates shopping, he hates hearing about investing, he hated traveling so much when you and your family didn’t tag along… At every family reunion, he just hid away in his room and never got out, because he found the whole situation snobby and fake and all those adjectives I’ve never really thought about calling my own relatives. He… he…” she licks her lips, trying to come up with the right words to say, “he sees the world around us with different eyes, and I don’t think he’s happy with it. So don’t- don’t be mad at him for not really… going anywhere with it, okay?”
Furrowing your brows at her, you shake your head in confusion. This is perhaps the first time you really realized Chenle’s view on things– it’s not like you haven’t heard his annoyed rants about all the prestige and over-the-top lifestyle you all have, but that’s all you thought it was. Annoyance– because at the end of the day, your life is comfortable. You wouldn’t want it any other way. If money moves the world around, you were the one walking through every hallway, all opportunities opened up in front of your eyes; and you don’t think you’d enjoy your life more if you had a bit less money. Chenle, on the other hand, seems to be quite the opposite. His joy is not determined by money, and for the first time in your life, it seems like you’re getting what he’s been talking about your whole life, the words you heard but never truly listened to. It was right in front of you the whole time, but you never saw it, and now that your eyes have been opened, you find it hard to deal with the revelation.
“But what is he going to do?” you gurgle out, confused.
“I don’t think he knows either,” Yizhuo shrugs, “he’s… figuring out things, I suppose.”
Chuckling, you shut your eyes in despair, thinking for a bit, but still failing to grasp the situation. “I don’t get it. He- he could have everything, but he’s just… throwing everything away? He could move across the world, he could start his own company, he could buy a house or work or study, but he just won’t,” you ramble, “I don’t get it.”
“That’s what I’ve been saying,” Yizhuo shrugs, “but he sees it a different way.”
Laying flat on your back, eyes glued to the ceiling, your friend clears her throat and awkwardly shuffles around her sheets. “And at the end of the day, even though you’ve been friends for forever, I think you’re just in love with the version of him that you’ve created in your head. The version that you’re trying, but cannot fix,” she notes, pausing for a moment before proceeding, “the only person you can fix is yourself.”
And maybe, Yizhuo’s right. Maybe you fell in love with the Chenle in his sports car, Chenle in the golf cart with his designer clothes on, Chenle on the cruise ship sipping on expensive alcohol. Maybe you fell in love with the version that has the whole world in the palm of his hand, the version of him that goes to Yale with you and rents out a luxurious apartment in the middle of the city, kissing you behind the tall windows, watching over the busy streets– the version in your dreams, the version you wanted to achieve.
But what about the version of him that walked you to your house after tennis class? What about the version of him that cuddled you in his sheets, the version of him that fell asleep soundly when you played with his hair, cradled your fingers through his scalp? What about the version of him that scared you in the dark, because he knew you get creeped out too easily, the version of him that ate cheap sausage with you in Japan, the version of him that studied with you and brought you to your bed when you fell asleep at the table? What about the version of him that cried to Disney movies with you, the version of him that danced with you to the tunes of One Direction in your room when you were sixteen, the version of him that threw rocks on your window in the moonlight the night you turned seventeen, wanting to be the first one to wish you happy birthday before slipping inside of your room in the middle of the night, only to fall asleep seconds later, huddling your sheets?
Did you make that up? Was that not him in the first place?
And maybe, there is a discrepancy between the dream you’ve made up in your head with him, the idea of you two staying together, trying to fix the view he has on the world you two live in, but at the end of the day, none of it was a lie.
And maybe, Yizhuo’s right; you should change the way you view things to match Chenle’s better, because at the end of the day, maybe you’re the one too blinded by the gold and silver around your neck to see the real issue here.
August 2, 2020 – Lehai Villas, Baicheng, China, 10:15 PM
When you finally see Zhong Chenle after the night he kicked you out of his bedroom, both of you are a mess.
You’re a mess in the more subtle sense. Your dress is neat, the jewelry on your neck was carefully picked out days before, the heels enveloping your feet are one of the most comfortable ones for you to walk in, since you prepared yourself for being on your feet the whole evening. Your makeup is fixed on your face, earrings dangling off your ears and your purse matches the outfit perfectly; your hair in a fancy updo that you even drove to a hairdresser for, all so that you could look flawless for another one of your parent’s gatherings. Their business partner’s son is turning 21, and while it doesn’t look like that big of a deal, they are celebrating the fact that Mark Lee is now one of the shareholders of their company– and in your world, this is the most moving moment of the child’s life.
You’re a mess in the more subtle sense– you keep looking around, restless, not really paying attention to anything anyone is saying. Aimlessly humming and picking at the skin of your cuticles, you try hard to both catch a glance of your friend, and to also avoid him at all costs. The reality that Zhong Chenle is a mess too hits you only when you finally see him– his tie loose on his neck, a grunt escaping his throat that you can hear from all the way to where you are, his walking a little wobbly and his hair messy as he runs his hand through the sprayed-down locks, his composure disheveled and so obviously out of the place.
And you want to stay away, you really do– to let him deal with his own things by himself, to pretend you weren’t cautiously looking for him all evening– but when he picks up another glass of alcohol from one of the tables and downs it in one go, cheeks getting rosier by the minute, you wonder how far you can let him go until he gets into trouble with his parents; and suddenly, you’re on your feet, just like you expected, dragging your figure closer to the one you’ve been trying to avoid.
“Don’t you think you’ve drunk enough?” you mumble when you appear behind him, his shoulders slouching at the tone of your voice. When he looks around and catches your eyes, he snickers to himself, shrugging, before he makes a face full of disgust at your remark.
“We’re celebrating, aren’t we?” he says, “Mark Lee’s a big man now, taking all the responsibility for a company that’s so great, and he loves the job so much,” he continues, over-exaggerating every word, “and we’re here to celebrate his birthday! Have you… seen the motherfucker anywhere, by the way? Would wanna congratulate him on… the thing…” he trails off, dramatically scratching his head as he speaks the last words.
“Chenle–”
“Right! We are celebrating a guy we don’t even know, or seen the whole evening, but that’s so great, because at least we have all this alcohol–”
“Okay, you’re getting out of here,” you snap, shaking your head at his antics and digging your nails into his forearm, dragging the boy out of the crowded place before he throws a tantrum. With how his voice was getting louder and louder, a few figures turned to watch your exchange, and you can’t imagine the turmoil this will take on him once his parents find out– it’s better to get him out of there before he messes up even more badly.
His feet stumbling on the stairs outside, he mutters something under his breath as you drag his half-limp, half-stubborn body through the enormous land. The gardens are full of fairy lights and adults talking to each other in hushed whispers, laughter erupting out of their put-together figures every now and then, and you take some time before you finally manage to find a silent corner in one of the carefully mowed gardens, Chenle’s complains silencing after a while, admitting his fate.
Carelessly throwing his body towards one of the benches, the lighting dim in the corner, you watch as he takes a seat and looks at you with defeated eyes, the emptiness behind his gaze breaking you on so many levels you didn’t even think you could master; Zhong Chenle is a mess– has been a mess for a while now, and you didn’t notice– you didn’t do anything about it until now.
“What happened to you?!” you yelp out, voice betraying you somewhere towards the end of the sentence, sounding more desperate than you intended. Eyes scanning over his slouching body, you notice him playing with his fingers in his lap, an action of calming himself down that he’s picked up after you slapped his hands every time he tried to bite on his nails growing up, and you take a few steps around the place, running your fingers through your carefully styled hair.
“Don’t scold me like my mother,” Chenle grunts, rolling his eyes at your composure.
“No, Chenle, because I don’t get it,” you shake your head, looking him dead in the sparkless eyes, “I do not get it.”
When he offers you no explanation, rather just gazing your whole body up and down, eyes half-lidded, you presume he’s a bit out of it– the alcohol truly hitting his system now, making you result in a little tangent of yourself, because you presume everything’s better than his parent’s scolding, and maybe he just needs someone to wake him back to reality. “What happened, Chenle? What the actual fuck is going on lately? You don’t speak to anyone about it, you don’t tell me, out of all people–” a snicker leaves his lips to this, making you huff in frustration, “you don’t tell anyone how you’re feeling, and it’s eating you up from the inside, and believe me when I say, Chenle, it’s pretty damn heartbreaking to watch.”
Looking at him, you’re offered nothing but silence. His cheeks are rosy and puffed up from the alcohol, his frame is small– opposed to the power stance he usually takes– and you don’t think you’re getting a conversation from him any time soon. Ready to give up, you shake your head at him and scoff. “Okay, fine. You don’t have to talk to me, since you have an issue with the fact that I care about you more than I should,” you snap, agreeing to be petty with him, if this was how he was gonna play.
“I don’t talk to any of you, because you wouldn’t understand,” he says, voice almost a bit annoyed, tongue dipped in bitterness.
“We grew up together, Chenle. Our lives are pretty much the same, why the fuck would you think that I, out of all people, wouldn’t understand?”
“See, that’s the thing,” Chenle catches you off guard, charming in with an argument barely before you are able to finish the sentence, “our lives are pretty much the same, yet you love it. You fucking love it, all of you do– you love waking up in your little fancy bedrooms, doing great at school because if you don’t, your parents are going to threaten you with disowning you– and what else do you have if not your parents wealth that you coincidentally, also despise at the same time? You go shopping to your favorite mall with your equally wealthy friends, because you’re not allowed to befriend people that are lower class– that would just look fucking embarrassing in front of your parents’ contacts, wouldn’t it? You go to charity events and birthday celebrations of a guy you’ve never seen in your whole life before, just because someone told you to– and don’t you dare tell them you won’t go, because how the fuck are they gonna look all pretty in front of their business partners if their only son doesn’t attend a celebration of someone inheriting a share from their parents’ company– a thing you’re supposed to do as soon as you turn 20, if you don’t attend university they picked out for you instead. You go on fancy holidays and take pictures in front of all the attractions, and it doesn’t even feel special anymore, because you do this every month– and the only time you ever felt alive was when you were drunk and making out with someone that you shouldn’t even think about in that way in the first place, because it’s your parents’ friends’ daughter, and at the end of the day, they would just love the fact that we were together, because that could strengthen the business bond they have– the only reason why they’re friends in the first place, and I’m so fed up, I hate it, I despise it–” he stops to take a breath, his eyes getting glossy,
and suddenly, you’re helpless, you’re falling apart– because the issue is so much bigger than you anticipated and you don’t know how to do anything about it.
“And I don’t fucking feel real, Y/N, I don’t, and I don’t think I ever have, because I just wake up in the mornings and then somewhere along the way, I realise I’m alive and I laugh, because how could all of this be real? How could the money be real? How could anything be real, and– and it’s so confusing, because I should be grateful, but I’m not, because I can’t even fully grasp it,” he breathes, tears now streaking down his cheeks.
It feels like the whole world stopped for a moment; it feels like you are in a movie and someone pressed pause. You stare at him, you blink, and you pray for something to send you strength to deal with this, to tell you what to do or how to comfort him– because this must have felt so alone, and you can’t stand the image of Chenle ever being lonely.
Opening your mouth and closing it, you gasp for air. No words feel suitable for this kind of conversation, and so you just chime towards him– despite all your best assumptions– and hold him. Because at the end of the day, what helps more to ground someone back to earth than human touch?
Pads of your thumbs wipe at the teardrops strolling down his cheeks, every contact with the salty liquid hurting you, cutting through your skin like razor blades– because Chenle never cries, he never feels like something is worth indulging in enough to bring him to tears– and when he catches his trembling bottom lip in his teeth, you break; pulling him towards you and threading your fingers through his hair, the action once lullying him to sleep now used like a broken mantra– please be okay, please relax, please let me hold you until you’re glued back together again.
“I dunno what to do,” he shrugs, his head resting on your stomach, voice burrowing itself into the fabric of your expensive dress, “dunno where to go. ‘Cause Jun’s leaving, and Yizhuo’s gonna be busy with everything, and– and you’re moving across the fucking ocean, and I’m just– I turned everything down, because–” he says, voice breaking, and you shush him with a pat on his back, touch growing more affectionate.
“It’s okay,” you hum, “I got you,” you say; words he once told you at the golf cart, looking after you, or in the hotel room back in Japan when you were 6 and falling asleep, still scared of ghosts appearing in your bedroom– and you believed them, you always did, because Chenle was always there when you needed him– so you only pray he finds comfort in the sincere phrases, because what more is there to offer him?
His breathing grows steadier as you continue to play with his messy hair, his hands gently allowing themselves to wrap around your thighs, your standing figure shelved between his legs, and he laughs to himself, the whole situation kind of ironic to him now. “I don’t even know why I’m crying. ‘m kinda numb, you know, so it doesn’t even really hurt in the first place,” he says, and you wish you found the same humor in it than he did– or at least the bitter sense of soothing yourself with irony– but you can’t. Looking down at his body, latched to you like a lifeline, you wonder how you could ever leave him there alone, to deal with the burden by himself. How could you ever move so far away from him?
“My parents wanted me to go with you,” he starts, the sentence sparking up something inside of you, but he doesn’t pull away and meet your eyes when he continues, foreshadowing a sad ending to your hope, “they said I should study business at Yale as well, that it’s a great opportunity.”
You don���t reply to him, choosing not to push him. After a sigh, he continues. “And I didn’t get in, because, naturally, I was too stupid for it in the first place– no, I was–” he says when you gently slap the back of his head at the comment, “but then they paid the dean and suddenly I was allowed to go. Can you believe that?” he snickers bitterly, shaking his head in disbelief. “Bad mouthed you for a thing I despised in myself, when you were the one that got in fair and square in the first place.”
“‘s okay,” you mumble, compassion dripping off your words.
“And I turned it down, ‘cause I hated the fact that they did that. I was okay with studying the fucking business program, even though I despised it, I was okay with moving across the world, because at least you’d be there, y’know, but I couldn’t bear the fact that they did that to get me in. I think I was too ashamed, too embarrassed, because they had to pay for me to get there, but– I don’t know…” he trails off, and you sigh, shaking your head in disbelief.
“It’s okay to take opportunities that are presented to you, Lele,” you mumble, “I know you hate it, but you can’t change who you’re born to. The best you could do is to not waste all of this,” you say, trying to find a source of light in the deep abyss of his thoughts.
You try hard to solve the problem– to offer him a solution that could work, that could let him forget about the pain for at least a second– to wake him up from whatever deep thinking that got him into this mess. You try hard to solve the problem– but you don’t know how to deal with it. All you know is that you’re trying to pick up the patterns; you’d fit in his skin if you could, you’d crawl in and fix everything– but at the end of the day, as Yizhuo said, the only person you can fix is yourself.
“Bought,” he says, fixing your mistake, “opportunities that were bought for me. I couldn’t do it,” he says.
Huffing, indulging in a spare second of your own pain– a spare second of the despair eating you up from the insides, the helplessness you’ve been feeling ever since you were forcefully kicked out of Zhong Chenle’s life– and you didn’t even tell him you loved him in the first place before he got stuck in the fire of the woods; before you two started acting like it didn’t matter and always ended up in feuds– you mumble a comment, voice barely louder than a whisper, but he can hear it because of the closeness of your bodies in the few stray raindrops that come over you two once the clock strikes midnight.
“We could’ve lived together, you and me,” you say, “us against the whole world,” you comment– a childlike yearning spilling out of your lips, “we could’ve gone to Yale together and you’d figure something out along the way. Maybe– maybe you’d find a purpose if you moved, we could–”
“Y/N,” he shushes you, uttering out your name, finally breaking away from you as he looks up and gazes into the swimming pools of your eyes, shaking his head with a faint smile, “‘s okay. It wouldn’t have fixed anything anyway, it– it wouldn’t have helped.”
“But–”
“You can move, Y/N, but at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter, ‘cause you’re taking yourself with you.”
August 20, 2020 – the backyard of your childhood house, Shanghai, 11:11 PM
You were never really that good at science– sure, your parents demanded you get good grades in every subject and your private school put quite the pressure on your education, but even though you always managed to pull satisfactory marks in exams, your understanding of the logistics sometimes lacked; you were much better at humanities or business-related courses, hearing enough at family dinners to find out your way through the lectures and apply the facts into examples from real life.
So, if anyone asked you how many stars there were in the universe, you wouldn’t be too confident in your answer. You wouldn’t know how to apply the Milky Way as your model– since it was said that it has around 100 billion stars alone– and multiply the part by the amount of galaxies in the universe– approximately 2 trillion– to get a number somewhere close to 200 billion trillion, also called 200 sextillion.
You wouldn’t know how to do any of that, or how to even count this amount without a calculator, so you’d take a more liberal arts approach– literary, even– and say, that on August 20, 2020, at 11:11 sharp in your backyard, gazing on to the deep, dark sky and wishing for a star to fall so you could propose a selfish wish that could change everything, there’s still not more stars there than in Zhong Chenle’s eyes when your gazes meet after your friends leave for the evening, leaving you with your neighbor completely alone.
And it’s strange, seeing him like this– maybe because you didn’t even realize how used to the dull and emotionless Chenle you’ve been all this time– but it warms something inside of your heart as you take a hesitant step towards him, the first one out of the whole evening, and take a seat next to him in the corner of your terrace, sighing to yourself.
“You actually came,” you note, seeing as he turns to you and furrows his eyebrows at you in confusion.
“Should I not have? I mean, by the text you sent me, it seemed like you wanted me here, but if I misread the situation, I can go…” he snickers, teasing you just the slightest as he nudges you to your side.
You hum, shaking your head in disapproval. “No,” you say, “I just… I dunno.”
“Expected me to ignore you?”
“Kinda,” you admit, snickering.
“Damn,” he giggles, “that’s fair, though. Considering the previous events, and all.”
Rolling your eyes at his composure, finally getting used to the old Chenle– the one that teases you over the smallest things, the one who doesn’t let his emotions show in his face– you watch him as he takes a seat on one of the rattan sofas and you follow him, body slouching next to his, feeling his head gently rest on your shoulder in the mere moment of silence between your two figures.
“Wouldn’t let you leave without seeing you for the last time,” he says, voice quiet and vulnerable, “god knows when I’ll see you again.”
“Chenle–”
“Just because you don’t want to talk about it doesn’t mean it’s not real,” he snickers, already knowing where your words are going– you’re going to try to stop him, tell him you don’t want to think about it right now, on the last evening at your house for the near future.
“I’d rather not think about that, y’know,” you huff, frustrated. The anxieties of leaving everything behind are clenching on your insides right now, holding you back from moving freely and with enthusiasm, and you wonder– if you knew how this would feel all those months ago– if you knew how terrifying and painful the whole process could be, would you still apply to Yale? Would you still want to go?
“Okay,” he dotes, tone of voice casual, like it’s not a big deal.
“Okay? Just like that?” you snicker, surprised at how easily he gave the topic up.
“Yeah. Don’t wanna make you sadder.”
Sitting in silence, you realize there’s so many words you’d like to say to him. You’d like to tell him just how much you’re gonna miss him and how you regret ruining the last few months you two had together, and how you’re sorry your feelings scared him to the point where he felt like he had no one to confide in. You’d like to tell him how you built a future with him in your brain, carefully placed him into your reality, only for him to break away from your grasp and go his own way, and how much it hurts, but how you’re always going to support him in whatever he chooses, because you care for him more than your little heart could take. You’d like to tell him how you’re gonna call him every day to check up on him, how you’re gonna send letters and press a secret kiss to each sheet of expensive paper you’ll get downtown, wishing he could feel the essence with the growing distance between you two. You’d like to ask him to visit you often– he’s gonna have more time on his hands, and god knows money’s not the issue. You’d like to selfishly tell him you find it hard to deal with the distance, and how you wish he wouldn’t find somebody else while you’re gone, and how you so dearly hope that somewhere in there, your feelings are silently reciprocated, but hidden away in fear of everything falling apart once again.
But instead, you don’t say anything. You tend to wait for him to speak up first– he’s always had a problem with talking too much in the first place, after all.
And he does– you can still predict his next moves. You know him that well.
“I’m gonna miss you, though,” he sighs, catching you off guard by saying something from the list of your silenced words, “don’t think that I won’t. Or that the way I’ll miss you is different than the way you’re gonna miss me,” he speaks, tone of voice laced in honesty and sincerity, his words heavy with the essence of what he’s never going to say out loud– or so you think.
“In what way?”
“I’m not gonna miss you like a friend misses a friend,” he says, “and I don’t mean the sex,” he snickers, brightening the mood with his comment.
Rolling his eyes at him, you feel him lift his head up from your shoulder, forcing you to look at him and meet his starry eyes again– the damn starry eyes that always make you spill the truth, because god knows you cannot lie to him– and you find yourself scanning his features, the structure of his bones you fear you’re gonna forget when you’re away, so desperately wanting to lock your lips with his for one last time, because when you come back one day, you may not have the right or chance to do so anymore.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” he asks, not a hint of teasing in his voice.
“You know why, Chenle.”
“Can you say it out loud?” he demands, and you shake your head– maybe it's best if the words are left unsaid. Doesn’t matter if they’re hanging in the air, for everyone to read.
“Why?”
“You know how I feel about you,” you snicker, “don’t make me say it out loud.”
Because even if you told him you loved him, it wouldn’t change anything. It wouldn’t make it all better, it wouldn’t make it all good– no matter how hard you wish that it would.
“Okay,” he nods, agreeing too fast again– and with that, he smiles, the gesture so soft and sudden, and there you are– you’ve got a caving heart in your open arms, and Chenle takes it, carelessly choking out the hushed confession, “I’m in love with you. If you don’t say it, I’m gonna, because… you deserve to know.”
Heart sinking into your stomach, you watch him, frozen in your place, for a while. Your eyes carefully scan every curve of his face– the curve of his lips, the curve of his cheeks, the hood of his eyes, his brows, the thousand stolen galaxies in his orbs and mouth glistening like honey, inviting you in. Snickering under your breath, you choose to not give in to the temptation.
“You’re only saying that because I’m leaving tomorrow,” you say, shaking your head.
“Maybe,” he agrees.
And you know that– you know that if you weren’t leaving, he wouldn’t tell you that he loves you. He wouldn’t allow himself to be this vulnerable, he wouldn’t tell you how he feels about you, because he had all this time– all those months and weeks spent with you in his bed, and you know his touches weren’t just shallow desire– and he never once said anything. He didn’t do anything about it, and now that there is nothing more to do about it, nothing that could change the trajectory of either of your lives, he chooses to speak it to the universe; because it doesn’t change anything, it can’t possibly do so– and so he doesn’t have to fear the consequences, he doesn’t have to fear the attachment that comes with such confession.
And for a minute, you think it’s selfish. You think it’s laughable, ironic, even, but you accept it.
His hand reaches for yours, interlocking your fingers with his when he launches you forward into him, arms gently enveloping your body when your head settles itself to the curve of his shoulder. You stay like this for a while, in his hold again, breathing in his scent and trying to remember it for weeks and months before you’re able to smell it again, letting out a nosy question out of your lips– and truly, you don’t know why you do so, when you know the answer to it already anyway. Maybe you just want to hear it again.
“So… you do have feelings for me too, after all?”
He stays quiet for a while, before he softly laughs into your hair. “Yeah,” he nods, “but it doesn’t matter, ‘cause you’re leaving for Yale tomorrow, aren’t you?”
And he’s right– you are. Thinking for a while, feeling him place a shy peck to the crown of your head– the only kiss you two allow yourselves at this point of time– you come to the conclusion that even though you love him, care for him like you’ve never cared for another before, you wouldn’t change a thing about your plan– wouldn’t change the trajectory of your whole life, wouldn't stay in Shanghai, wouldn’t drop out of university, wouldn’t stop everything because of him, because in a way, you strangely have it all figured out.
And he doesn’t.
And you pray that one day, he’ll find the purpose in all the potential he holds in his hands.
#nct dream#chenle#nct#nct x reader#chenle x reader#chenle angst#chenle fluff#chenle oneshot#chenle fic#chenle imagine#chenle fanfic#chenle best friends to lovers#chenle au#nct dream fluff#nct dream angst#nct dream x reader#nct fluff#nct angst
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Hi!! Could you write something angsty with Hozier? He seems like a very calm man so it would be v interesting to explore that side of him
Thank you :)🩷 have a lovely day
Hey babes, I know I was gone for a hot minute. But I’m back, with another hot and ready suggestion. It’s actually not hot at all rip.
Also with answering requests that I’m currently very behind on— sorry btw— I have a fic brewing for Andrew’s birthday tomorrow, yay!
Little fic under the cut (~400 words)
“Baby, I’m sorry. Next time-”
“Next time what, Andrew? I’m so tired of waiting for you, waiting and waiting. Half the time you never even show up. I can’t wait for you another time. I’m not even sure it’s worth giving you another chance.”
The words spill into the air faster than you can think of what you’re saying. Tone filled with an aching pain and loneliness. It strikes Andrew full in the face. A panicked sense of defensiveness fills him in response. A sickening fire that burns in his gut.
“I’m trying! But I’m busy, okay? I can’t always be there every time I’m wanted.”
His voice struggles to stay at a reasonable level. Becoming louder than he would’ve liked. He pushes his hair out of his face. Roughly pulling at the strands between his fingers.
“You’re always busy! And this wasn’t just wanted Andrew, I needed you.”
“You knew what you were getting into when we started dating, before that even!’
He retorts, turning away from you. Partly because he can’t bear to see the tears gathering in your eyes. He stares at the wall. Studying each crack in the paint to compose himself. He didn’t want this discussion to turn into an argument. Fuck, he didn’t want this to be an issue with you at all. Deep down he knows you’re right. It’s his fault. There’s too many promises he’s made and hasn’t kept.
“Maybe we just— shouldn’t see each other for a while.”
Your voice cracks making the torturous suggestion that devastates him. Nothing good ever comes of such an idea. Terror tears at his heartstrings. Pulls at his throat. He knows he needs to make this right, right now. Else he’ll never see you again. You’ll break up with him over the phone. Because doing it in person hurts too much. He wouldn’t be able to say goodbye properly.
Finally swallowing that God awful thing called pride. Andrew turns back around. His devastation deepened at the tears that hang on the edge of your waterline. Glistening in the dim light of the room.
“Please, no, baby. We– We can’t do that. I–”
Words struggle over his tongue, his throat hoarser than he realized.
“I’m sorry, you’re right. You always are. But please, please don’t leave. I need you, more than anything. I’ll do whatever it takes to make it up to you.”
He doesn’t care if he’s begging, pleading for it. He’ll force all the pride he’s been clinging onto and fall at your feet. But after this, could you ever take him back?
-Thad💚
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Papa Crewel
a drabble In which Yuu/Mc realizes Crewel has become their father figure.
Summer vacation is fast approaching and Yuu is...still there. It’s not surprising but also very upsetting. But right now the most pressing issue is how they will spend the summer. Because with the school being closed for the next few months, Yuu is kinda screwed and will likely be stuck as a grounds keeper for Crowley just so they have a place to stay. Luckily for them, the rest of the staff won’t let that happen. They all debate on who should act as Yuus guardian over the summer. Trein initially offers. He’s a father himself and raised two girls, what's one more child for a couple months? Crewel immediately shoots it down, and says he will gladly take Yuu in. He says it would be best for them to go with who they would be most comfortable with, and as their homeroom teacher they know him best. But truthfully Crewel has grown rather fond of Yuu over the school year. To simply pass them off on someone else felt wrong. Besides, a summer with old Trein? His pup would be bored out of their skull and he can’t have that. Other staff members offered up their homes, but Crewel refused to back down on the matter, and it was decided Yuu would be sent to live with him.
On the last day of school, after everyone had gone, Yuu and Grim packed whatever few belonging they had into the back of Crewels car before bidding campus farewell for the time being. The drive isn't very long, and they are soon pulling up to the surprisingly large house. A few excited dogs run up to greet them, and Yuu thinks this may not be so bad. Crewel shows them to their room. Grim makes himself comfortable on the bed as Crewel explains the house rules. Which isn't much, mostly the usual clean up after your self, if you're going out let him know, etc. For such a strict professor, he’s oddly lax as a guardian. As the next couple weeks pass, things are...normal. Yuu sleeps in a bit, plays with the dogs, maybe walk around with Grim to explore the neighborhood, is always back in time to help Crewel make dinner. This is the most stability Yuu has had in almost a year and it feels surreal. They keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, but it never comes. Instead of Overblots and magical misshaps, they get lake visits and shopping trips.
Their room is comfortable. The first week there Crewel helped them unpack and even offered to take them to get a few things to make it more to their liking. Like picking out bedsheets, curtains, maybe some posters. Yuu doesn't want to take advantage of their teachers' generosity, but Crewel won’t take no for an answer, and soon the room feels almost like Yuu had lived there the whole time. Even the dogs have taken to napping at the foot of the bed with Grim as if it's always been this way. Among the things Crewel got for Yuu was a new phone. He said the one Crowely gave them was no better than a cheap brick, and that they needed something that wasn’t going to give out on them anytime soon. Especially in an emergency. Yuu realized Crewel was serious when they and Grim got lost on one of their outings. They ventured farther into town and got completely lost. Every Turn seemed to make it worse and the streetlights had already come on. Not knowing what else to do, Yuu called Crewel who picked up after a couple rings.
“Hello, Pup, having fun out there?”
“Um…Crewel? I need help.”
His voice got very serious at hearing how worried they sounded. “What’s wrong?”
“Grim and I got lost in town and I have no clue how to get back to the house.”
“Do you know the street name you're on?”
“Um…White Avenue. And there's a cafe nearby called the Red Rose.”
“Alright, I’ll be there in about ten minutes. Just stay put.”
And true to his word, Crewel pulls up in his car soon after, asking if they're okay. Yuu felt an overwhelming sense of relief. They had gotten so used to dealing with everything themselves, that something as simple as being picked up when they're lost was refreshing.
As the summer went on Crewel continued to look after Yuu. From getting their back to school supplies. Taking them on day trips to visit friends. Even scolding them to stay in bed and drink their medicine when they got a nasty cold after getting caught in the rain. One night as they were video chatting with Deuce and Ace, Crewel came into the room and reminded them not to be up too late since they had a ton of errands to run tomorrow and said goodnight.
“He sounds like your dad.” Ace joked.
“Papa Crewel!” Grim agreed, knowing better than the boys that that wasn’t much of an exaggeration.
Yuu only rolled their eyes. “He’s just being responsible and looking after me.”
“Like a parent would.” Deuce said.
“Are you going to change your last name when Crewel adopts you?” Ace continued to tease. Yuu let him have his fun, but the thought of their professor being like their dad stuck in their head long after the call ended.
An old friend of Crewels was having a baby, and Yuu had tagged along with him to the shower. Everyone was nice to them, people were laughing as the new mother opened gifts. Parents were sharing stories and had their children running about. Yet Yuu had never felt so…alone. In school they had their peers and friends, there was hardly a chance to be lonely. But here everyone was so familiar with one another, family and life long friends. Yuu felt that familiar sense of hollowness they felt over winter break. They missed their friends and family back home. They tried not to dwell on the very real possibility they would never see them again. When it was finally time to leave, Crewel noted how silent Yuu was on the drive back.
Yuu can’t sleep that night. Not wanting to disturb Grim or the dogs, they slowly slip out of bed and wander the halls of the large house. Eventually they sat in the dark of the living room. Hugging a furry pillow, Yuu started to cry. All the loneliness and homesickness that had built up finally came bursting out in muffled sobs. They didn’t know how long they sat in the dark until a familiar voice interrupted.
“Pup? What’s wrong?”
Crewel sat next to them wondering if Yuu had hurt themselves or something. Instead they threw their arms around him and kept crying, the sound no longer muffled by the pillow. Through their sniffling, he managed to figure out what was wrong and hugged them back. Telling them that it would be alright. They weren’t alone. They had him, Grim, and all their friends.
As Crewel continued to comfort them, they realized Ace wasn’t really joking. Crewel had become a father to them in every way that mattered.
#twisted wonderland#twisted wonderland mc#twisted wonderland yuu#twst yuu#professor crewel#twst crewel#divus crewel#crewel x reader#crewel is the superior surrogate father and i stand by this#i love the cruella man#this is pure stream of conciousness rather than actual fic#but i do not have it in me rn to make another draft
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I’d love your thoughts on gales relationship w his father in any of ur modern AUs + how John reacts to/fits into it!!
Thank you so much ❤️ Great question! I will describe their relationship in the high school AU, because the others are not yet defined in my head.
In the HS AU:
Gale's dad is often drunk or at a bar in the evening and gets home in the middle of the night
If he’s drunk at home, he keeps Gale up, if he gets home at night, he wakes him up by being too loud
So Gale has sleep problems. Because of this, he sleeps at Bucky’s as often as possible, which usually means every weekend and sometimes during the week too
When Gale’s dad has a bad night gambling, he gets verbally aggressive, berates Gale and his mom, blames them for bad luck etc. Bucky told Gale to call him even during the night if this happens. Gale never does, but the thought that he could feels really comforting to him.
Gale's dad isn’t overtly homophobic and he doesn’t threaten Gale for being gay. But all Gale's life, he has been saying stuff about what a real man should look like and how he should behave. The older Gale gets, the more he disagrees with the man’s ideas. This is why he grows out his hair.
A few times, Gale’s dad hit him when drunk. Bucky helped hide the bruises with his mom's make-up.
Gale asks his mom to get a divorce multiple times, but she's always torn about it and if she tells Gale's dad she's going through with it, the man sobers up for a while and acts all nice and decent to keep them.
When he starts drinking again after a nice period, Gale goes to Bucky and just lies in complete, silent defeat in his embrace.
He tells Bucky he’s moving out as soon as possible and will never go back.
None of their friends know about all this, they just know he fights with his parents and spends a lot of time hanging out at Bucky’s place.
He goes to the school psychologist every week, and Bucky always waits for him, often kicking a soccer ball around in the schoolyard. If Gale had a session that shook him / left him drained, he sits on a bench and Bucky shows him tricks with the ball and plays around until Gale smiles again.
Gale's parents almost never attend school events / swim meets / competitions.
Gale's mom is so caught up in her own struggles that she uses him as a crutch too in dealing with his dad. Gale is used to taking this responsibility on his shoulders but as he gets older, and especially after meeting Bucky's mom, he realizes that this is not how it should be and he grows resentful. It’s perhaps unfair but he resents her more than his dad and then feels guilty for it.
Gale loves Bucky's mom and she loves him too. One day, when he has a crisis, she tells her that she'll always be there for him, even if he and Bucky break up.
Bucky's mom is a single parent and is away a lot due to work (which feeds into one of Bucky's problems, but that's a different story). But she's laidback about a lot of things and doesn’t try to hold Bucky back from exploring, so it's not really an issue when they start having sex. There’s none of that bullshit "open door policy".
Gale categorically refuses to take Bucky home with him. They've been dating for like two years or something already when he lets Bucky enter the house with him for the first time.
By the time this happens, Bucky is taller than Gale's dad. He’s gangly but he’s not intimidated by the man. Him being all protective actually makes Gale feel a mix of affection and arousal.
There’s definitely an altercation between Bucky and Gale's dad at one point, possibly close to graduation, but Bucky disengages when he realizes that it makes Gale upset.
Bucky helps Gale learn how to relax and enjoy things. Gale reassures Bucky that Gale is someone he can always count on and who won't abandon him.
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The Ride or Die Drama Couples List
So the other night I got a little sassy on main because some of the girlies were complaining that King the Land is focusing more on the couple moments (aka relationship development) between Gu Won and Sa Rang and doesn’t have enough plot. Which is a very typical fandom complaint about romcoms that I absolutely hate, because in a good romance the relationship is the plot, people! It’s bizarre attitudes like this that get us random murder plots spliced into every other romcom for the ratings, and I am begging y’all to stop the madness.
Ahem. Anyway, that post seemed to resonate with some folks and get them discussing other dramas, and so inevitably @troubled-mind wandered into my notes and said gee Shan, it seems like maybe you should make a list of dramas that show us couples in a relationship and explore how they make it work and ultimately stay together. And I’ve warned y’all before, if you make a stray comment in my direction there will be a list coming your way. So here I am again, doing the absolute most.
Today I present to you a list of my favorite dramas that show you not only how the couple gets together, but also how they stay together. Criteria:
The couple doesn’t have to be together when the drama starts, but they do have to actually begin their romantic relationship no later than halfway through the drama’s run so that we have substantial time with them as a couple
The relationship development between the couple is a primary plot driver (so no dramas where there’s a great long term couple just hanging out in the background)
The relationship story may include some physical separation or even a temporary breakup, but not the betrayal kind–these are the sort that actually force an unaddressed issue to the surface and ultimately bring the couple even closer
Happy endings only, these pairs are sticking together
Ride or Die Drama Couples
Bad Buddy - Pat and Pran
(Thailand, YouTube)
This is tumblr so do I really need to tell y’all about Pat and Pran? There is a reason we all lost our minds over this show and it’s because we got to be in this relationship with them so intensely and see them fight to stay together despite it all. Their ending is bittersweet because of their families, but the show leaves us no doubt that they both think the other is worth it and they will always stick it out together.
Dark Blue Kiss - Pete and Kao
(Thailand, YouTube)
Shout out to the OGs! Pete and Kao originally got together in the Kiss series (you can watch it, but you really don’t have to, fam) and Dark Blue Kiss brings them back three years into their long-term relationship to give us a peek into their struggles with the closet and the toll it takes on both of them individually as well as the strain it puts on their relationship.
Flower of Evil - Hee Sung and Ji Won
(S Korea, Netflix or Viki)
Hee Sung and Ji Won are already married (with an adorable daughter) when this drama begins, and the backstory of their relationship is unspooled alongside the larger mystery at the heart of the show. One of the most fascinating and heart wrenching love stories I have ever seen, centered on a character who is so emotionally damaged that he genuinely believes he is incapable of love even as love pours out of him. Damn, I’m gonna make myself cry into my oatmeal.
It’s Okay, That’s Love - Jae Yeol and Hae Soo
(S Korea, Viki)
Speaking of crying, lord. Ahhhhhhh. Let me pull myself together. It’s Okay, That’s Love is a healing drama about two people who fall in love and support each other through serious mental health challenges. I don’t really want to say much more than that. Bring tissues, besties!
La Pluie - Patts and Saengtai
(Thailand, iQIYI)
My beloved! This Thai drama is about a pair of soulmates–or are they–who find each other and try to make their relationship work. That’s it, that’s the show. In this drama, the relationship truly is the plot, despite some of the fantasy elements being used to highlight its themes. La Pluie is about the importance of choice and a rebuke of romantic fantasies that fate and destiny will handle your love life for you. I and many others have written about it extensively, so if you decide to watch, you can go nuts on meta.
Lighter & Princess - Li Xun and Zhu Yun
(China, Viki)
I really love this show. This is a long format drama so there will be longer stretches where the couple still has not officially gotten together, but the relationship between them is the heart of the entire show, and we get the distinct pleasure of watching them fall in love twice, and the second time figure out how to make it stick. Such a treat.
One Spring Night - Ji Ho and Jung In
(S Korea, Netflix)
Oh how I love this quiet little drama about two people who fall for each other while one is still in a relationship with someone else, and figure out how to untangle the mess they’re in. We get to see them not only fall in love, but figure out how to become a unit who can withstand the harsh judgment coming their way and become a family on their own terms. Bonus adorable child alert!
Tomorrow With You - So Joon and Ma Rin
(S Korea, Viki)
This time travel melodrama is one of those that I started with no expectations and then sat up part way through and said what gave you the right to be this good! This is another one where the relationship begins for dubious reasons, but the suspect motives are quickly taken over by genuine feeling. We really get to live with the relationship in this one and the message is all about treasuring the life and time we have together.
The Rebel Princess - Awu (Wang Xuan) and Xiao Qi
(China, Viki)
I think the phrase Ride or Die was actually invented for them. Talk about a power couple. Once these two get to know each other (this is a historical so as per usual, their marriage wasn’t actually their choice but rather the result of some asshole’s machinations in a quest for power, joke’s on them though) they are in, baby, and their devotion and loyalty never wavers. This is a historical epic in war time, so the couple will be physically separated multiple times, but it only makes them stronger and each of their reunions sweeter. Their relationship is the heart of the show and the throughline in their chaotic lives.
What Did You Eat Yesterday? - Shiro and Kenji
(Japan, the ether)
Saving the best for last because this right here is the GOAT in this category. It sits at the top of my all-time favorite dramas list and I love it passionately. Because y’all? This drama is explicitly about a middle-aged couple learning how to be together in a long-term relationship. That is the entire plot. And it’s fantastic. Stop reading this and go watch it!
Honorable Mentions
Yumi’s Cells - Yu Mi and Goo Wong
(S Korea, Viki)
This one is not on the list proper because (gasp) the couple doesn’t end up together. I know, I’m still sad about it, too, even though I went into this drama fully aware of the concept (a season about each of Yu Mi’s major relationships). But man. Yu Mi and Goo Wong just have that something, you know? Even knowing they don’t stick it out, it’s a delight to watch them fall in love and settle into a relationship together. Technically there is a second season featuring Yu Mi’s next relationship (Babi? I don’t know her), but I don’t want to recommend it and you can’t make me.
I must also give a shout out to the bl season 2s that exist expressly for the purpose of showing how the characters settle into a relationship after the first season get together:
Gameboys 2 (Philippines, Gaga) - Cairo and Gavreel
Minato’s Laundromat 2 (Japan, Gaga)- Shin and Minato
SOTUS S and Our Skyy (Thailand, YouTube) - Kongpob and Arthit
Still 2gether (Thailand, YouTube) - Tine and Sarawat
Utsukushii Kare 2 (Japan, Gaga) - Hira and Kiyoi
And because this is my post and I make the rules, I am also doing some honorable mentions of the friends to lovers slow burns where technically they are not together until the final arc of the story but let’s be serious they are together the whole time and just don’t realize it yet so you know exactly what their relationship is going to look like:
Fight for My Way (S Korea, Viki) - Dong Man and Ae Ra
Happiness (S Korea, Viki) - Sae Bom and Yi Hyun
Hospital Playlist 1 and 2 (S Korea, Viki) - Song Hwa and Ik Jun
My Only 12% (Thailand, iQIYI) - Seeiw and Cake
My Ride (Thailand, Gaga or YouTube) - Mork and Tawan
Romance is a Bonus Book (S Korea, Netflix) - Dan Yi and Eun Ho
Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok-Joo (S Korea, Viki) - Joon Hyeong and Bok Joo
Whoops you woke the beast @troubled-mind. @rocketturtle4 @neuroticbookworm @chickenstrangers here are more for your mile long rec lists. :)))
#bad buddy#dark blue kiss#flower of evil#it's okay that's love#la pluie#lighter and princess#one spring night#tomorrow with you#the rebel princess#what did you eat yesterday?#yumi’s cells#shan recommends#drama recs
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As someone with autism, Satan with an autistic MC would be so wholesome and perfect...
Satan who makes sure a MC always has a jacket and a spare pair of plastic gloves handy to help them with their sensory issues.
Satan who takes over some of autistic MC’s chores, cleaning the dirty dishes and dealing with leftovers so that MC doesn’t freak out when they have to touch it.
Satan who never leaves MC’s side at large gatherings lest they get overstimulated and run off again. The last time that happened it took everyone so long to find them. Luckily, MC was alright. They were tucked away in a small room in the castle to hide.
Satan who is perfectly alright with sitting silently in your room while the two of you work on your own things. Maayyybeee he wouldn’t mind it if you wanted to scoot closer to him.
DOESN’T LET DIFFERENT FOODS TOUCH ON YOUR PLATE!! WILL START A RIOT IF HE FINDS THAT ANYONE HAS LET FOODS TOUCH ON YOUR PLATE!!
…ahem
Satan who doesn’t find MC’s tendency to disappear without a trace frustrating. He knows they like to go ‘exploring’ alone, wandering off for a short while before returning to his side per usual. Maybe when you grow close enough you’ll take him on a little journey.
Satan who admires you and your love for certain things. No matter how trivial they may seem, he knows that those are the things that make up the world for you. He’ll gladly listen to you talk about your interests for hours.
Satan who takes your relationship as slow as you may need. Sexual intimacy doesn’t equal love to him. He’s okay with you touching him and not the other way around if that’s what you feel comfortable with.
Satan who seems to be the only one who understands MC’s reluctance to physical touch. He avoids touching MC whenever possible. He shows his affection for MC in other ways.
Taking them to a quiet cat café.
Taking them to a new pop up event for their favorite anime.
Hell, he even downloaded Mononoke Land so that when they went on walks together he could catch spirits alongside them. (He’s their only added friend on the game so he makes sure to send them gifts daily.)
When MC shyly hugs him for the first time he thinks he might combust on the spot— it’s such a special occasion for him!
You think you’re a burden and nuisance because you’re so different, yet to Satan, that’s what makes you so perfect. It’s what makes him love you so much.
(p.s,,, if it wouldn’t bother you I could be 💚anon or bitchass autistic anon! I don’t know if you label your anons or not. :) )
((also don’t feel pressured to respond or look at this ask! I just thought you might like it.))
This is so, so lovely and I really enjoyed reading all of your thoughts. And nobody has asked to be a tagged Anon before! Of course you can be 💚 Anon!
I feel like I don't have very much to say in response, because you've already put everything into words so wonderfully. I'm not autistic myself, but I know that there's some overlap with ADHD (my own diagnosis) when it comes to certain habits or behaviours, and I do some of the things that you've described so I feel like I can relate to a certain extent.
I do think that all of the OM boys would be supportive of an autistic partner (or any of the personal struggles that their partner might have, be they mental or physical) but I do also believe that Satan would be one of the best at intuitively knowing exactly what his partner wants and needs without having to ask for anything to be explained or spelled out for him.
Whether you HC Satan as autistic or not, he does have a lot of his own habits and behaviours that are somewhat similar, and he's good at figuring things out on his own even from very small or subtle hints.
If he sees you carefully separating the different foods on your plate (something many of his brothers would be too loud or rowdy during mealtimes to notice right away) he would make sure to keep your food clearly separated the next time it was his turn to make dinner, and would make sure to separate your food every time in the future as well.
If he notices the way you gently (or not-so-gently) pull away from physical contact, he will always be sure to refrain from touching you without your explicit permission; something that his other brothers (like Mammon, Asmo, or Beel, for example) might take longer to figure out, since they're just so used to hugging you or putting an arm around you without even thinking about it. Satan isn't the biggest fan of all the touchy-feely stuff either (we often see him yelling at his brothers not to touch him in the games) so he knows how you feel, and he doesn't want to intrude on your personal space.
He loves that you always listen to him whenever he has something to say, especially when he starts gushing at length about the current book he's reading or about the cat he saw on his way from from RAD that day. Nobody else really bothers to pay him any attention when he starts rambling like that - Levi is really the only one who can relate, but Levi also has trouble keeping himself from interrupting and going into his own long spiels. And Satan loves listening to you when you tell him all about your own hyperfixations in turn. It doesn't matter what you're rambling about, Satan is hanging on to every word.
Satan is a very meticulous person who would take his time to deeply and carefully consider all of the best ways he could support you and make you feel comfortable, without making you feel patronised or condescend to. He'd never want to make you feel like a child he was taking care of, because you are both perfectly equal in his eyes. He knows what it feels like to be seen as less than, thanks to many years of hinself only ever being seen as his rage. He never wants you to feel like just a diagnosis or just a disability. Like his Wrath, your autism is a part of you, but it is not all of you. It is not your entire identity or all that you are.
He loves you so, so much ♡
#obey me#obey me nightbringer#omswd#obey me satan#satan#satan obey me#💚 Anon#obey me headcanons#obey me hc#satan x reader#x reader#reader insert#obey me x reader
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i need someone to write a fic exploring dazai’s inability to come in terms with the fact that *gaSP* people love and care for him and also how he would react (atsushi in particular, my son)
because as much as i love him fainting and/or staring wide eyed
imagine dazai not understanding why atsushi is constantly trying to help him/be there for him etc
and at first its like well atsushi is just the kind of person to do that like he’s atsushi
but the more it happens the more he cant understand it
because dazai’s smart but he’s never been able to get why people could/would genuinely want him around and care for him
and he starts feeling defensive, trying to find a reason - why would someone like atsushi care about someone like dazai
and he’d lash out telling atsushi that atsushi is only using dazai to prove to himself that he deserves to live because of his childhood not because he cares about dazai
imagine the angst of atsushi hearing that from one of the people he considers his family
because atsushi’s issues have issues - yes - but the agency are the first people who he loves and is loved by
and yes atsushi does have the need to save people to prove that he’s worth living, dont get me wrong
but this one time - with the person who was the first person to show him kindness, he’s just trying to be there for him, like family
imagine the the angst
imagine atsushi’s spiral into wondering how he’d fucked up - that little voice in the back of his head wondering if all that he was and all that he did was just a reaction to his childhood - who would he be if he hadn’t been abused - and did dazai only view atsushi for the things that he’d gone through
imagine dazai’s guilt, the split second after he says it and atsushi’s face crumbles
imagine dazai not understanding still that atsushi cares for him but knowing that he’d fucked up
imagine the awkward air between them because atsushi wont approach dazai, not when he’s convinced he’s fucked up so badly
and dazai doesn’t know how to apologize nor does he really realize how much he cares for atsushi until then - because the fear of atsushi hating him has stirred up
because that’s what dazai does, he takes good people, rips them apart and ruins them
and now he thinks hes permanently ruined his relationship-he-cannot-identity with atsushi
(obviously this whole thing would be fixed if they sat down and talked it out and maybe not fixed completely but theyd get a better understanding of each other but this is dazai and atsushi)
anyway atsushi thinks he’s awful and is and will only be his past and that he’s overstepped and dazai hates him - dazai thinks that he’s not human he’s only been tricking everyone ; including atsushi and that him snapping at atsushi proves it and he still doesn’t realize that atsushi genuinely just really likes him and thinks that he’s tricked atsushi into doing so and also now they aren’t talking and dazai doesn’t know how to apologize
#love the brother dynamic of these two#atsushi nakajima#bungou stray dogs atsushi#bsd atsushi#Dazai Osamu#bsd dazai#bungou stray dogs dazai#dazai and atsushi#bungou stray dogs#bungo stray dogs#bungou sd#bsd#bsd au#bungo stray dogs au#dazai#dazai headcanons#atsushi headcanons#the ada#the armed detective agency#armed detective agency#ada as family
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A Little Patience (Jim Hopper x f! reader)
Characters: Jim Hopper x fem! reader
Word count: 1.2k
Warnings: Smut! briefly mentioned self-esteem issues, unprotected sex, oral sex, multiple orgasms
Summary: reader has problems achieving the big O; luckily Hopper is more than glad to help
“Thanks for dinner, Jim,” you said, holding hands with him as he walked you to your front door. Awkward silence hung in the air as you unlocked the door, him looking at you with something like excitement, anticipation. “Umm, want to come in?” you asked nervously. “Sure,” he replied, following you inside. This was what you had been both looking forward to, and also wanting to avoid. You had been on several dates, and so far, he had been a perfect gentleman, only doing what you allowed and not asking for anything else. Perfectly patient, but that would only last for so long. You could tell that he was understandably wanting more .
You really couldn’t blame him; you wanted it too. There was just one small issue you needed to discuss first, and you were dreading it with every fiber of your being.
Sitting next to you on the couch, he leaned in and kissed you. The scent of him filled your lungs, heady and masculine. Before it could go much farther, though, you pull back, sighing. “Hop, I need to talk to you about something.”
“That doesn’t sound good. Is everything okay?” he asked, concern in his eyes. Taking a deep breath, you decide to just get it over with. “I feel like this could really get serious between us, and before it does, I think I should tell you something. I have issues I guess you could say when it comes to sex. I…..I don’t know quite how to say this - I have a lot of problems climaxing. It’s always been that way, I don’t know why,” you blurted out, fighting the instinct to run and hide, heat flaming in your cheeks.
Maybe it was a result of the incredibly low self-esteem you had suffered from since childhood, maybe you just hadn’t found the right person to help get you there, or maybe you just couldn’t get out of your own head during sex. No matter the cause, it always ended the same way. Whoever you were with took it as an affront, like you weren’t attracted enough to them. Your last relationship ended because of it, and you really wanted to avoid that this time. Hopper was different than any other man you had dated.
Of course, you enjoyed sex, you just very rarely experienced the kind of toe curling, soul searing desire you always read about, that seemed to come so easily to everyone else.
He sat quietly for a minute, and you had to make yourself look at him. “Please say something,” you begged, dying to know what he was thinking. “Darlin’, that might be the saddest thing I’ve ever heard,”. What?? You didn’t know what you were expecting him to say, but that definitely wasn’t it. “What do you mean by that?” you asked, mildly insulted, arms crossing over your chest.
“I mean it’s truly a shame that no man has cared enough about your pleasure to help you with that. You deserve better,” he said, putting a hand gently on your thigh. Okay, that’s a good answer you thought to yourself. He moved even closer to you, brushing his other hand softly across your cheek. You shivered from his touch, goosebumps grazing your arms. Kissing his way across your jawline, his facial hair scuffing against your skin, he said one sentence that unraveled you entirely. “Let me show you just how good sex can feel,” he whispered, his voice dripping with lust.
Your mind reeling from his words, you led him by the hand to your bedroom. Clothes, both his and yours, went flying across the room to land in a heap on the floor. You laid back on the bed and he hovered over you, kissing you softly before moving lower. He landed on your breasts, his mouth searching, sucking, biting. Taking his time, his strong hands roamed your body, exploring, finding all the places that made you moan.
His hand ran up your leg, settling on your aching center. Gently parting you, he put first one, then another finger inside. He somehow knew exactly how to work them exactly like you liked it, and you could already feel the pressure building inside you. He kept curling his fingers in you while lavishing one of your nipples and you wanted nothing more than to feel that ever-elusive release, but as fast as the feeling had overcome you, you felt it slip out of your grasp.
Tears of frustration pricked the corners of your eyes. Jim must have felt your body tense from your anger, and he lowered his face between your legs. “Focus on me and what I’m doing,” he said as he began licking your slick heat. “Just let go.”
So…..you did. You let go of all your anxiety, all of the negative thoughts that always plagued you during sex, all of the worry that something was wrong with you and just zeroed in on the man that was eagerly eating you out. Surrendering to the feeling of his tongue slowly swirling, your back arched and you moaned loudly, which seemed to spur him on. He was a man on a mission.
Sitting up enough to be able to watch him, the look of total lust blown determination on his face was enough to make you feel that familiar tightening, the coil inside you that was threatening to snap. Tangling your hands in his hair, you yelled his name as he latched onto your clit and sucked. You gasped audibly as your climax took you by surprise, wave after wave of blissful pleasure surging through you.
Once your thighs stopped shaking, Hop looked up at you, a ridiculously cocky grin on his face. You reached for him, wanting to touch his rock-hard dick, to please him also. “Not this time, tonight is about you,” he said as he aligned himself between your thighs. He entered you slowly, the delicious feeling of him stretching you out and filling you made you roll your eyes back in delight. He took his time, his thrusts hitting just the right places and making you see stars.
Suddenly he pulled out of you, and you were ready to scream obscenities for the emptiness you felt, but before you could speak, he had flipped you over onto your stomach and was bottomed out inside you again. Grasping your hips, he showed no mercy with his frenetic thrusting. Your moans and cries only made him go deeper and harder. Your face buried in the pillow, the only thought running through your head was how does this feel so damn good.
It was then that he began to hit that spot , the one that you could never seem to get on your own. He snaked a hand around your front, rubbing circles on your already sensitive clit. A second orgasm hit you, your pussy clamping down around him as he continued pumping into you while you rode it out.
He came with one final groan, and you felt the heat from his release deep inside. Every one of your nerve endings felt alive, electric, and you never wanted to lose that feeling. He pulled out slowly and sank onto the bed beside you, that same cocky grin on his face. “What’s that look for?” you asked, already knowing the answer. “I told you darlin’, you just hadn’t found the right man for the job,” he replied, kissing you on the forehead. Laughing, you laid against him, your entire body more relaxed than it had been in years. “I think I have now though.”
#jim hopper smut#jim hopper x fem!reader#jim hopper x you#jim hopper x reader#jim hopper oneshot#david harbour#stranger things smut
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I woke up this morning and had the unfortunate experience of seeing one of those “acotar hot takes” on my fyp (which is 98% of the time just Bat Boy propaganda, but I digress), anyways one of the slides said something like “Elain shouldn’t not choose Azriel just so she doesn’t hurt “sweet baby boy Lucien”” and I just want to talk about that for a sec…
1. Elain already didn’t choose Azriel. She returned his gift. That was SJM using literary devices to tell the readers, “she rejected his gift, she rejected him, the door is closed” if you don’t like or “agree” with that, well that’s not really anyone’s problem but your own.
2. The absolute disrespect towards Lucien to talk about him as if he’s some fragile, docile little child who couldn’t handle Elain rejecting him is beyond me. It’s actually funny because the only one who has treated anyone like a fragile docile child is AZRIEL TO ELAIN!!! I like Azriel don’t get me wrong, but the bonus chapter really just showed everyone that HE is the one not in control of his emotions (which is great setup for his soon to come book 🤭😉). Lucien has been nothing but patient, caring, understanding, and kind towards Elain and her feelings, whereas Azriel pouted and got pissed when Rhys told him he needs to stay away from another man’s mate, which is a totally reasonable thing to say on Rhys’ part and it’s actually crazy that people think Rhys was in the wrong. Again if you disagree, I literally do not care.
3. Which leads me to my third point, let’s say for one second, the door to E/riel wasn’t slammed shut, let’s say she kept the necklace or whatever else E/riels like to pretend happened. Elain should still reject Azriel and, believe it or not, it has nothing to do with Lucien!!! Azriel has explicitly stated (through his internal monologue, so we as the readers know this as fact) that he has literally not thought about anything more than “the fantasies he pleasured himself to” about Elain. In case any wandering e/riels stumble upon this post, this means that he has only thought about Elain in a sexual context and nothing else (NOT in a romantic OR loving way 😨😨😨). Azriel continuously undermines Elain (“there is an innate darkness to the dread trove that Elain should not be exposed to”), Azriel is still not over Mor (again we know this), Azriel told her to her face, that kissing her would be a mistake, Azriel does not credit her for killing Hybern, Azriel doesn’t understand her!!! And these are all just the things he’s said, either to Elain or other people, there are so many more reasons we could draw just from his thoughts and behaviors towards Elain.
I want to make it very clear that I very much like Elain, Azriel, Lucien, and Gwyn as characters. I genuinely enjoy reading about them and I’m very excited for all of their books, anything I post is not me shitting on ANY of them at all. But I won’t pretend these characters don’t have flaws. Azriel is a deeply flawed character which will undoubtedly be explored in his book. Elain has many issues that she needs to work out, which will be explored in her book. There is nothing wrong with acknowledging that these characters are not perfect and I in no way mean to make it seem like I dislike ANY of them, because I don’t.
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I just read a bunch of Owl House Criticism and have to say… a lot does make sense. I still rate the show very high and honestly I blame the pacing for a lot of the issues we DO have with the show. I also think people are taking this way more seriously then they should and some do the complaints feel nitpicky.
One thing a lot of people brought up is Luz’s character and how the first episode showed her casual dismissal of others and their safety occurs. Then there was a few comments on how Vee is right to call her out on running away and other things.
I don’t fully disagree. Luz fucked up big time her first episode where she brought live animals and fireworks to school. It’s just… no. I don’t deny people should have punished her for it. I vote that the Shakespeare play and the cheerleading thing aren’t worth punishment though. Because both are honestly just quirky kid things. She wanted to be cool so she did something she liked to try and impress others. They thought it was creepy and reacted to it. Good reasons for her to be kind of shoved aside by some people. The spiders and snakes though? Yikes.
But to just call her a bad character puts a nasty taste in my mouth because I think she is one that is a good character and whom I think would have been fun to explore. It’s just… she’s kind of a concept that was tried but fell flat.
I think the summer camp thing was handled badly and I would have liked to be explained why they never tried to talk to her about what a reasonable amount of creativity is in her school work. If it turns out they had attempted to do so multiple times but she never listened: the camp is probably a better idea then not. More so given her actions could have gotten her arrested. Honeslty leaning on that idea would have been interesting. Luz being told she had to go to camp or face probation or something would have been an interesting hook.
My friend said she felt therapy would have been better and yeah that’s a good point: but what if they did try and it didn’t work? What if they felt a camp was less expensive ? (Which it probably was.)
I would have liked more evidence that Luz was an outcast. I saw a lot of criticism on this because if you just look at the show face value: Luz does seem like she’s whining about a lot of stuff. Her mom turned out to be like her and only wanted her to not get bullied as Camila did in school. She could have made friends at camp. There’s just so much there that does make Luz seem like a bad person for being upset. And honestly it would be interesting to explore that to, to really pick apart the dramatic ‘me against the world’ mindset of teenagers who see themselves as outcasts. But the show is supposed to be about weirdos and found family.
So: I would actually nix Camila being a nerd. Manny was the nerdy one who loved fantasy, encouraging it in Luz. I would have had him be the one who was more open about Luz’s everything while Camila was more wary and put off. Sure, she could still laugh at the snake skin incident, but I would want her to be less accepting of the other stuff. I said that the first episode reminded me of my mom when I got my diagnosis of autism and she didn’t understand it. I would want to lean in.
Manny and Luz should have been canonly neurodivergent. Camila is neurotypical and she constantly compared her two family members because Manny could mask very well. Luz couldn’t. But I would have Camila struggle to understand that her daughter’s own brand of autism/ADHD is vastly different then her husband’s because it’s so common. I can’t tell you how many time people are like: oh you’re lying about being this cause you don’t act like BLANK.
Camila and Luz then have a conflict which makes it more understandable why Luz is willing to lie to her mother about not being at camp. Because Camila is set up to not understand Luz and possibly she would be pushing her daughter to act ‘normal’ because she doesn’t understand. Again this is inspired by my mom. I have vivid memories of her worrying about appearances and how others think of us, with her pushing me towards things I didn’t like. Some of it was out of concern for me, but there was a huge lack of understanding that drove a wedge between us for a while.
I would then have the idea that Luz is bullied be obvious. Luz would reference it or recall incidents. And I would have them be unpleasent. Being ditched by so called ‘friends’, name calling and mocking. Maybe having her things stolen or random crap dumped in her locker. I would have her be the outcast from the start. I would also address her being a POC person in a small town. Luz could have met Masha or the other two kids: I want a reason why she didn’t connect.
I grew up with almost no friends but people generally didn’t hate me. I got bullied a bit but most of the time I was ignored and happy about it. When I was a kid I was very particular and drove people off due to this. When I made friends I was with other weirdos: some of whom were alone because they were just… I can only call them very weird and slightly disturbing. One of whom was a girl who’d flip on a dime if she liked you or not.
Masha in canon is goth and is there to be the ‘cool goth kid’. I would have had them be dismissive of Liz’s fondness for the Azura series and possibly the type to mock her for liking a ‘gushy girly book’ because take it from this enby: a lot of us go through the phase of shunning anything feminine and romantic to be ‘cool’. I would have a reason why two people who could have totally been friends weren’t.
Luz would be an outcast among outcasts. Just that shade of different.
I want her to have suffered in school. I want her to have to explain that it’s true no one understood her. I want her to be able to look Vee in the face to go: you know nothing. Because Vee only sees a surface and not the full sum of it. Vee who isn’t into Azura and thus gets Masha being: oh you matured cool. I want to hang now. Who goes to Camila who is thankful her baby seems able to mask now.
I want Camila to be able to mistake Vee for her own kid because ‘oh god yes she’s finally normal’. And I want Luz to point this out. I want Luz to point out to Vee the other kids said camp was prison. And that ‘you might have liked it for some reason but can you say I would have? Masha thinks I’m a freak for liking Azura. They told me I was a loser for it.’
I want there to have been a damn good reason more then we got for WHY Luz stayed in the isles.
Not to say I don’t want Luz to feel bad about lying or anything. I just want the whole outcast thing to be more apparent. Luz feeling awful about lying and about resenting her mom who does love her versus the fact she never felt safe in the human realm is an idea worth exploring!!
#the owl house#owl house rewrite#luz noceda#camila noceda#vee the basilisk#toh critical#I guess#more ‘I still liked the show it’s just that this would have been interesting’
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I think what’s interesting about Neku as a protag is that while I’ve seen some people talk about how he’s one of the deeper/most complex characters in the franchise, I’d argue that he’s actually one of the most straightforward characters in the TWEWY duology-and I don’t think that’s a bad thing. That’s not to suggest that he doesn’t have depth, far from it. His trauma and the way that he goes about in trying to dissociate from others while still genuinely loving them deep down, even if he says otherwise, is genuinely interesting to see in action, especially in how he approaches his relationships. But compared to the others, I don’t find him as fascinating to explore in comparison to, say, Shoka, Joshua, Sho, Kanon, Motoi, Shiba, Mr. H, or even Rindo as a protag, even if his reappearance in NEO as well as how he tries to keep his trauma/emotions under wraps is still interesting to see in action.
That said, he’s still one of my faves for how much he embodies TWEWY’s themes in general, his development just being great to see in action, and the impact he has on the people around him in various ways. In a series where a lot of the characters like to hide parts about themselves and how those affect the relationships around them, Neku in the first game is blunt to a tee, almost to a fault, and confrontational, which makes him the perfect receptacle for the themes/lessons the game imparts on him. We're privy to almost every single one of his thoughts, feelings, and emotions throughout the game, to the point that it almost becomes a first-person narration at times. He hates lying and it shows because when the characters have doubts about themselves, he’s the perfect guy for the job of setting them straight instead of trying to dart around the issue, getting them to look at themselves and try to press forward anyway.
This is also part of what makes Rindo such an effective foil to him as a protagonist. Like I said in another post, while Rindo SEEMS more socially well-adjusted compared to Neku on a surface-level, once you look into his actions and mindset, you can see that he's also quite the dysfunctional mess. Whereas Neku is blunt, brutally honest, and incredibly confrontational, Rindo is much more passive, self-contradictory, and incredibly insecure about himself and the people around him, which feeds into how he puts people at arm's length, including his supposed best friend. The kid can't even tackle a simple-ass puzzle without needing to consult his online friend first or ask them about their identity because he's afraid of rocking the boat. Whereas Neku is alone AWAY from the crowd, Rindo is alone IN the crowd.
This also extends to their inner thoughts, where Neku will let us, the player, view into his mind and have him lay out exactly what he's feeling, the conclusions he comes to, and be confident enough in what he's feeling to then express himself in exactly that manner (with some exceptions such as some of his interactions with Joshua, which is justified because he doesn't want to risk anything happening to Shiki if their partnership goes south so he tries to keep what he says in check, even if it internally kills him inside, and even then he still spills out how PISSED he is with Joshua towards the end.)
Meanwhile, in NEO, while we do play as Rindo and get the majority of the story through his perspective, we don’t get to see his inner thoughts/turmoil as much as Neku’s…because he DOESN’T want to recognize his issues, instead trying to rely on everyone else to solve his problems for him so that they can take the fallout in case something goes wrong and a lot of it shows through his actions/outspoken dialogue instead. Nagi’s Dive and Haz’s conversation with him are some of the only times someone directly calls him out on his flaws within the main story but when you pay attention to how he acts, his flaws pop up quite a bit. For example, how he claims that An0ther's quote of "never miss your chance to make a friend" is one of his favorite quotes yet he balks at the idea of recruiting other potential team members as well as grimace at the concept of the first game's Reaper's Game.
So we have a guy who’s constantly internally struggling with himself while putting on a cold/blunt persona because he doesn’t want to get hurt and recognizing that maybe he’s wrong on a point and letting us in on how he's feeling a vast majority of the time in his head versus a guy who constantly bitches and moans internally while passively going along with everything in spite of himself, constantly self-contradicting/being hypocritical without recognizing himself as such until he gets a much needed wake-up call later and I think that’s really interesting.
#the world ends with you#twewy#neo twewy#ntwewy#neku sakuraba#rindo kanade#analysis post#character analysis
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I’m respectfully about to lose my mind at some of the fandom rn with the way buddie shippers are being treated… It’s like no one understands the whole point of shipping a couple is to want them to be together, so duh if something happens that could potentially lead to that pairing they’re going to get excited and theorize? Yes it’s absolutely important for Buck to explore his sexuality outside of buddie but the way people are trying to say that buddie shippers are homophobic for wanting endgame buddie….. when buddie is literally a queer ship? it doesn’t make any sense to me as a queer person myself because it’s like- y’all do realize that buck dating eddie would in fact mean that he is still bisexual, and that people have wanted thst for years, so A) why are we shocked and appalled at buddie shippers for being happy that they are one step closer to endgame buddie, B) why are we calling people homophobic or biphobic when they are quite literally shipping two men together, C) why are we all acting as if buddie endgame hasn’t been simmering just under the surface for YEARS and that if they were going to give us buddie, then thag means buck and eddie would both have to come oit as queer…
I’ve seen so many prominent blogs in the community who have made posts like “buck’s bisexuality has nothing to do with buddie and you are a horrible human for even insinuating that” and so many people are agreeing??? And not to mention the fact that now these same people are trying to villainize and trash on Eddie when in all honesty Buck’s behavior in 7x04 was NOT okay- physically harming someone because they’re not giving you attention is never okay (and i’m saying this as someone whi ADORES Buck, he still needs to be held accountable.)
It just reads very icky to me that so many people are screaming “bi pride” but then spewing all of this vitriol over a ship that would fit within Buck’s bisexuality…
It worries me that the writers are going to see this negativity from people and they’re going to just completely back-burner Eddie’s character in favor of Buck and it disappoints me because even outside of buddie, a major tv show portraying a repressed gay poc with religious and family trauma would be EQUALLY as powerful as Bi Buck is……
but i guess that’s just people only caring about the queer storylines when it’s about a white man since these are also the people acting like Hen and Karen or Michael and David haven’t been there the whole time
but that’s just me i guess….
I’m bullet pointing not to be curt by the way just because I prefer addressing part by part🫶
1. Agreed like this fandom was relatively peaceful then BAM it fully shifted overnight like in the words of Taylor swift THIS IS WHY WE CANT HAVE NICE THINGS
2. Yesss exactly like I’m very much a dont yuck someone else’s yum type of person so like even ships I don’t like I’ll be like okay respect 🫡 enjoy your fandom space love that for you AS LONG AS THEYRE RESPECTFUL TOO and I’m not gonna lie to you I see the primary source of negativity and stuff in the fandom be people who legit never watched anything other than the bucktommy related content (which I kinda have a whole other rant about but I don’t wanna give you miles and miles to read in one ask)
3. Yes to that 100% - buddie is a queer ship the cognitive dissonance it takes to call someone homophobic for shipping them is honestly fascinating atp, Buck is bi canonically now and y’all do realise that who he’s with or if he’s single even doesn’t take away from that right??? Like the rep is THERE and will always be THERE
4. You worded it a bit weird but I got what you meant (I hope) so anyone who didn’t may require a little clarification, the sentiment of bucks bisexuality being separate from buddie I think is 1000% correct and I agree wholeheartedly that a persons sexuality and their journey shouldn’t be just about their love interests but about themselves as a person, the issue people are taking is that 1. The people saying this are saying it on every buddie post even when the same blogs posting it have 177283 posts talking about buck as an individual and as a bisexual man outside of buddie and bucktommy, so it’s sort of become a weaponised statement if that makes sense 2. The buddie shippers are the ones who have been advocating so hard for the show to give us canon bi buck like that’s just fact no one can deny so to the og fans who’ve been here for YEARS (I’ve only started like 2023 ish so I’m not counting myself there) this must be such a total slap in the face to be receiving so much hate now
5. Oh yeah the Eddie bashers can personally come fight me
6. If I’m 100% honest I choose to interpret the basketball injury as being mostly accidental like I think he got too into it and forgot himself and his own force for a second rather than intentionally hurt Eddie, like it so happens in sports, I think it’s like just the after guilt that made him question himself and his motives, idk that may just be me denying canon because it just felt too out of character for me to believe
7. I think the fake bi pride stuff also irks me BAD like some of these people are looking for very surface level superficial representation and if you don’t push for more and more substantial and meaningful representation then you’re gonna get constant variations of the same exact thing and these are also the same people ignoring every other queer character in 911 which is just🙃
8. Idk how much the writers take fandom into account but I constantly say like if they were to listen to fandom they’d go the route they know people wanted for years
9. YES about Eddie’s character like I made a whole post about gay and comphet Eddie and how meaningful it would be because it’s just so so unique and unprecedented
10.HAHSKDK THE CROSSED OUT PART IS WHAT I JUST SAID BUT I DIDNT READ IT GAJSKDKFM
#thanks anon!#can’t remember if I left you long but flowers for you too💐💐💐#eddie diaz#911 abc#911 fox#evan buck buckley#911onfox#911 spoilers#buddie#buckley diaz family#evan buckley#911
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Oh my gosh I did an accidental genius thing AGAIN. I titled this piece, feeling Blue, cuz it’s blue, and cuz it’s sad, and cuz you feel Blue’s emotions
I wanna explore Blue’s character more, or the character that I gave him. His anger issues and reclusiveness really resonated with me obviously and I’ve just been thinking about this issue long term. He’s very lonely, he doesn’t have any friends outside his family, and the one friend that Link had is scared of him because he’s so aggressive and rude. Blue is more recluse and enjoys his time alone, but at times he does feel very lonely. His brothers have other friends they hang out with and his father is always so busy. He’s convinced himself that everyone hates him, especially his father. He and Blue butt heads a lot, Blue is hot headed and Leon is trying to get used to raising 4 sons instead of 1. There would be tension. A lot of stuff happens and Blue runs away. Leon goes after him since he’s an unstable teenager and being a teenager is the worst, and they start to understand each other a bit. Here’s the accidental genius part:
Everyone thinks that Green takes after Leon. He’s a natural leader, chivalrous, and polite. And no doubt all the colors take after Leon in some way. But Blue is really the one who’s more like Leon. Though he’s changed due to age and experience, Leon also is recluse. He’s hotheaded and struggles connecting with people. When he was a kid, around Blue’s age, it was horrible for him. He was just as angry as Blue, just as socially awkward, and just as lonely. As Leon has gotten older, he’s gotten much better of course. More patient and calm, and he’s able to talk to people. He even is the first knight, leading on the others in the kingdom. Yet carrying a casual conversation with the knights is difficult for him. He doesn’t have super close friends. Just like Blue. They connect in that sense that, yeah, it’s hard. It’s hard connecting with people. Especially when you highly value your alone time. The accidental genius was that I made Leon’s clothes blue. I was trying to figure out what to even make them, but making them blue visually showed how similar they truly are.
Idk, typing this out sounds kinda stupid now but that’s just what I’ve been thinking about. Again they’re not exactly the same, but Leon was a lot like Blue when he was younger. Deep down he has the same struggles, it’s just harder to see.
#legend of zelda#legend of zelda four swords#four swords#four swords manga#I wanna make this into a fic but I SUCK at writing#smiles rambles#cuz I ramble a lot#why can’t I do smart stuff on purpose
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About Theo and Eloise:
In my humble opinion:
Theo’s use as a character is to encourage Eloise to look past the surface of people. Of course he’s there to introduce her to romantic attraction, but in a very specific way, and it’s to start developing a sense of what she might like in a partner. Just because someone is perfect for you superficially does not mean they actually are, and for a character like Eloise patience and discernment are going to be very important for her storyline.
🛑 If you really really love Theo or Theloise and think they should be endgame, please stop now… 🛑
We got foreshadowing of this when Violet tries to hook Eloise up with that ton guy at the Hearts and Flowers ball. Violet picks him out for Eloise because she says he shares her rebelliousness. And that guy is rebellious and is looking for someone different, just like Violet says. But his personality is all wrong for Eloise and it crashes and burns pretty much immediately.
Theo is said to be “perfect” for Eloise. And on the surface, he might seem so. He’s a radical. He’s political. But those are his interests. Not his personality.
So let’s really look at his personality. Theo is one of the most condescending and patronizing people Eloise comes across. When he first meets her, he talks down to her, making assumptions of her based on her gender and class. Their initial banter is the stuff of meet cutes, which glosses over WHY they were bantering back and forth like that in the first place- he immediately underestimated her intelligence upon seeing her.
It’s debatable why she accepted it from him vs the other guy, but I think the biggest issue is that unlike the guy Eloise danced with at the ball, Eloise has a reason to keep talking to him despite him showing the same attitude that left her running from the ballroom floor. She needed him for something, so it was worth continuing to engage, and engaging with him for longer allows her crush to grow.
Eloise is going to be a character who needs time to really fall in love. And so she is going to need to develop the capacity for more patience for other people than her character currently has. She’s often impulsive and makes snap decisions, but Theo forces her out of that by being a character she has to work with. Which is a great thing! Through Theo, Eloise gets to explore more of her interests, which is not nothing! Credit where credit is due, she’s obviously going to want that in a partner, and I would hope any relationship they write for her would have that as an element to it. It’s valuable for her to learn that that’s possible as she starts to develop her sense of taste in men.
But he’s also not the ONE yet, which is also valuable for her.
When Eloise doesn’t kiss Theo he blows up at her. He lashes out and accuses her of being just like every other lady. Going back to the foreshadowing from the Hearts and Flowers ball, there’s some irony here- there, Eloise gets offended because the man implies that she’s Not Like Other Girls. Here, that is used against her. Theo thinks Eloise should act a certain way because she’s rebellious, but when he dismisses her as a prude, he once again reveals the superficiality of his politics when it comes to praxis.
At the time I watched S2, I hadn’t yet read the books, but I’ve read them since, and this is very similar to a scene from TSPWL, where Eloise is trying to discuss something serious with Phillip, who is trying to kiss her instead. We don’t know yet whether that scene will make it to the show or not, since show Phillip seems to have a somewhat different storyline from the books, but it was a deliberate choice to use that as a reason for Theo to lash out at Eloise in the show, and I think it’s actually about Eloise’s growth. In the similar scene in the book, she calls Phillip out for this behavior while in the show Eloise just cries. Somewhere between age 18 and 28, she won’t take it, even from men she likes, which is, frankly pretty realistic. Even the most radical feminists sometimes take BS from the “radical” first boyfriends they date as teenagers. Eloise has a realistic mix of strength and vulnerability, and Theo hit a vulnerable spot for her. She’s a feminist, but she has very little real world experience with relationships between men and women outside of her brothers, and Theo is a valuable storyline to create that experience, so that when she is ready (hopefully 10 years on, I’m team time jump Eloise), she’ll have the combination of patience and discernment necessary to find and keep the right person for her.
When it comes to Sir Phillip specifically, Eloise is interested in his words first. They write letters back and forth, they never meet in person before Phillip proposes, so we know physical attraction has nothing to do with it. When she runs off to meet him she’s partially there to assess his personality. See how he actually acts. And he’s not perfect. But even as flawed characters they ultimately compliment rather than clash. In the books we know she had been courted before and turns down multiple proposals, so she had enough experiences with men to know where she stands. Eloise was never going to settle for the first man who liked her, or even the first man she thought she might like, and in fact, so many happily married women have that story of “wow, if I had married the guy I was with at 18 it would be a disaster.” Eloise is getting that with Theo.
Because imagine Theo and Eloise long term. Imagine their verbal sparring when they’re fully on Theo’s turf, with Eloise as his wife. His condescension would get old so fast with Theo always having the upper hand. Eloise likes the buzz and mental stimulation of their banter, but ultimately she’s a woman who likes to be right, and likes to feel like she’s being heard and respected. Theo likes the novelty of a woman like Eloise, but prefers when he’s in the teachable position- giving her books to read, taking her to rallies, etc- and not when her needs don’t line up with his desires.
I won’t claim to know how they’re going to do Phillip in the show for Eloise’s season, other than what we all know the changes they’ve already made to his backstory with Marina and the twins. But I do think counting him out already by claiming Theo is “perfect” for Eloise is a pretty shallow read on what’s been seen and what’s still possible for her.
#philoise#anti-theloise#anti-Theo#eloise x phillip#eloise bridgerton#anti theloise#anti Theo#phillip crane#TSPWL#to sir phillip with love#Philoise Bridgerton
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I like ur takes and I just wanted to share some stuff from another side. I watched spop as I was in my teen years, incredibly sheltered, queer, and lashing out because I was also dealing with abusive family dynamics. So… yeah I shipped it. I idealized it. And I heavily identified with Catra. But unlike with Zuko(who I also identify with) Catra didn’t change.
Every time she’d travel to a new part of the world I thought omg her moment is coming! Escape!! But she’d just get into a slap fight with Adora and then go back to the Horde. It was so strange it felt like every other character was in a story progression show and Catra was the villain of an episodic show until s5
And s5 was…. Weird. I don’t understand how Catra has a change of heart by getting more hurt by Horde Prime. She was getting hurt the whole series??? I still cried and was elated at the series finale but only bc I wanted an Adora who’d forgive me and love me and say I wasn’t bad. And I think a lot of people are like that.
Everything about the way Catra is framed points to her redemption even in the first episode… but it just makes me feel insulted now. To me as a survivor… it’s like they waved a magic wand and killed off the abuser and gave Catra a gf and that was supposed to fix it. It doesn’t work like that. My abuser died and it made things WORSE for a while (I think it would especially damage someone like Adora since Shadow Weaver “sacrificed” herself and therefore can’t be bad ever) . And I’m not looking for hyper realism in a Princess cartoon but at the time I watched it I couldn’t have really used yknow ?? Some guidance??? Something that wasn’t a fantasy lala ending that once the initial high wore off left me feeling confused and hollow. There is nothing in spop that teaches you how to get that kind of happy ending. Especially if you’re Catra who just says I love you and is suddenly resurrecting ponytail Jesus. To the me who identified with her, it was mostly about wanting to FEEL redeemed through her. FEELING strong and badass and GOOD and like things would be okay even if I was never a princess type. The actual result was feeling like I would never attain a happy ending of any sort because Catra’s didn’t feel real and her “arc” had no footsteps to follow in. How do you make a kids show and not teach good lessons??? Idk the show bad no matter who you identified with was my whole point.
At least I had/have zuko.
Also shipping zuko x sokka x suki is based I do too lmao.
first off, i'm so sorry about all the trauma you went through. i hope you are healing now, and thank you for sharing your story.
secondly, i think this is what a lot of fans felt. i can understand that people relate to catra. hell, even i relate to her a little. i know what it's like to be considered useless and weak, and to desperately want validation from a parent. i get it. when i say i dislike catra, it's not because she's a traumatized child or even because she adopted many of the toxic habits that shadow weaver portrayed. it's that she faced no consequences for any of this.
as much as spop tried to be mature, in the end, it was really childish. s5 got rid of all the complexity and just went "everyone deserves forgiveness", ignoring all of the glaring issues it had yet to solve. the protagonists forgave catra because the writers wanted them to, not because that's how it would have went down in real life.
most spop critics aren't heartless monsters who despise abuse victims, they are people who relate to either catra or adora. and they just want to see a better representation of abuse victims.
it would have been much more fulfilling and satisfying to have catra and adora take some time explore themselves and heal from their trauma, separated from each other. this kind of relationship is harmful for both of them. as long as adora is with catra, she'll continue blaming herself and putting pressure on herself, feeling as if she was responsible for everyone's problems. and as long as catra stays with adora, she'll continue deflecting her issues and being envious of adora. they needed time away from each other, but spop chose to invalidate trauma instead.
it's a pity that spop was one of the very few representation we had, at the time it came out, so people genuinely believe that c//a is a healthy ship, because they don't have many other examples to compare it to. i'm glad there are more and more queer shows coming out lately, and most of them seem to portray healthy relationships.
#btw ponytail jesus made me cACKLE#we should all be grateful for zuko#best redemption arc fr#spop critical#spop#spop salt#spop discourse#spop criticism#anti catradora#she ra#anti catra#abuse tw#tw abuse#tw trauma
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