#we all have different capacities and capabilities
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one of the biggest things I can advocate for (in academia, but also just in life) is to build credibility with yourself. It’s easy to fall into the habit of thinking of yourself as someone who does things last minute or who struggles to start tasks. people will tell you that you just need to build different habits, but I know for me at least the idea of ‘habit’ is sort of abstract and dehumanizing. Credibility is more like ‘I’ve done this before, so I know I can do it, and more importantly I trust myself to do it’. you set an assignment goal for the day and you meet it, and then you feel stronger setting one the next day. You establish a relationship with yourself that’s built on confidence and trust. That in turn starts to erode the barrier of insecurity and perfectionism and makes it easier to start and finish tasks. reframing the narrative as a process of building credibility makes it easier to celebrate each step and recognize how strong your relationship with yourself can become
#this is my experience so I know it won’t work for everyone#like all things there is no universal formula#we all have different capacities and capabilities#but I like sharing things that work for me in case they can also help someone else#studyblr#study motivation#study tips#university#academia#uni tips
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𝐚 𝐬𝐭𝐮𝐩𝐢𝐝 𝐡𝐨𝐩𝐞 | 𝐦𝐢𝐠𝐮𝐞𝐥 𝐨’𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚
miguel does everything he can to make you feel better after a civilian casualty steals your ‘sunshine’. —a fic featuring reluctantly adoring miguel and his sad spider-girl. pre across the spider-verse but contains spoilers. requested here. fem!reader, 4k
cw character death, violence, reactive depression
˚ʚ♡ɞ˚
"Miguel," you say, your voice grained by the communicator in his ear, "this universe is almost the same as mine, right?"
Miguel stares down at a Doc Ock variant you're staking out, lying in wait for the anomalistic antagonist to make his first move. He's trying desperately to maintain his focus but you have a nice voice, and you ask him with a confidence that betrays your total faith in him. You haven't considered that he might not know.
Well, Miguel does know. He's not sure he should start this discussion and distract you, but he has trouble saying no to you in any capacity, so he does.
"I don't know every difference, but yeah, they're the same. Same geography, world leaders, roughly the same fast food chains." He bites his lip. He's at work, more than work —you're attempting to save an entire dimension, here— and he shouldn't feed the conversation anymore. But he knows you'll be interested in this. "Donuts aren't a thing, here."
"What?"
"They have donuts, but they aren't called donuts, and they're nowhere near as popular."
"This is a very strange way to flirt," Lyla says, her flickering hazed by a golden aura as she changes rapidly between laying on her front, legs kicking, and her back, as though she's in a therapist's daybed. She floats across his vision lazily.
"That's because I'm not," Miguel says.
"What?" you ask.
"Nothing. Talking to Lyla."
"How come Lyla doesn't talk to me?" you ask sweetly.
Miguel can see you in the distance, your simple black suit like an ink splodge against the blue grey glass of the skyscraper you're standing on. Anchored with a web and your body tensed, you're perfectly parallel to the ground below, as though you're standing on the windows.
"It's not that I don't want to," Lyla promises. "Miggy won't let me."
"That is not true."
Projections cover Miguel's vision, powered by his favourite lying intelligence. Movements are mapped in a bright marigold yellow, though the net turns red to signify potential danger, chance percentages bouncing up and down. Doc Ock raises an arm and it turns an eye-straining red. He sits down on a park bench and his body turns yellow again. It's a smart program, but it can't account for everything.
"Something isn't right."
You hum appreciatively. "It feels weird, how he's acting. Like he's two separate people."
Doc Ock glitches hard, the air around him fractured by colours in varying depths, like a tangible, physical screen tone. They've been coming faster. He doesn't have much time before he begins to tear apart, and that tearing will prompt panic. Panic will prompt anger.
"What should we do?" you ask.
Miguel doesn't know. He regrets asking you to come with him, not that you aren't capable. When you first joined the Spider Society you'd hadn't been Spider-Girl in your own universe for very long, and you weren't particularly proactive. You were kind-hearted but lackadaisical, and after worming your way into his life, a flower budding between concrete slabs it shouldn't have the power to crack, (he seriously doesn't know how it happened, only that you'd been bringing him things, carefully wrapped foods and trinkets you'd made, your bad conversation, and suddenly you were worrying about him and doting on him in the strange way that you do, suddenly, he was doing the same), you decided you wanted to help. You've trained hard on Spider-led courses at the Society, improving your overall fitness, your stamina, your technique, to become the fighter you are now. You can hold your own well.
Miguel knows what motivated you. You want to look after him. You'd all but admitted to it. And that's why Miguel wishes he asked someone else to come with him, because you'll put yourself in harm's way as he would for you, to protect.
"Why did you want to know if this universe was the same?" he asks, the nano of his suit morphing over his hands, claws growing long and minaciously sharp.
"Oh! Because, I used to have these favourite cookies called Butter Leaves, but they stopped making them in my dimension 'cos of the Whey disease. Even when it was better, loads of companies couldn't come back…"
You give him the entire history. He already knows it. He tries to listen to you with the attention you deserve anyway, only he's weighed the options, and taking down Doc Ock feels much more important than listening to your cravings.
"They were really thin and they had this sweet coating brushed over the top. You'd like them, I think." Miguel drops the last hundred feet to the ground, ignoring the jarring heat in his ankles at such a landing without having rolled into it. "If they were a little softer and had some sugar they'd taste just like polvorones, Miguel."
"You could say that about lots of things," Miguel argues, tone measured as not to alert bystanders nearby of his presence.
"This doesn't feel like a good idea," Lyla says. Standing now, alert.
Miguel toggles the communicator so you can't hear him.
He wonders if you'd even notice him speaking over the intensity of your excitement, "I know it's not professional but maybe we could go and look? After we beat the bad guy. They're more than worth it, I swear," you say hopefully.
"It's fine," he says to Lyla, throwing out a hand, shins braced and ready to burst into a tackle.
"It feels off, you both said it."
"It always feels off. He's in the wrong dimension, his presence caused a shift. The wrongness is unavoidable, like the body–"
"Rejecting an organ transplant," Lyla says. "I know. You say it constantly."
"If you know, why are you asking?" he asks, deadpan.
"Good to know your girlfriend can ask questions and I can't. You're a trailblazer for equality, O'Hara."
Not my girlfriend, he thinks, but he isn't sure how true that is. Miguel realigns his eyesight, the holographic netting that pinpoints anomalistic stress a menacing red where it maps Doc Ock's limbs. The colours are abrasive against the yellow-green leaves fluttering in the breeze to the grass below, trees like arms stretched toward one another standing behind the simple brown bench where Doc Ock murmurs drunken-sounding ravings.
Miguel's fangs slice through gum and lock into place. He tries not to salivate. The paralysing agent produced gives him a numb tongue.
Miguel attempts to work quickly. Approach the target. Lock the target in. Incapacitate. He rears back and takes a deep breath.
"Wait! Behind! Behind you, Miguel, there's something behind you!"
He twists backward without hesitation and swings his arm around a cold neck. He squeezes hard, hears a metallic crunch similar to a mortar and pestle, but the person in his chokehold isn't a person, it's a robot.
"Octobots!" Lyla shouts.
"HELPFUL!" Miguel shouts back, grunting as a robotic arm curves around his back, and then a second, a third.
The hills of his muscles strain against white-lacquered steel, a sweat breaking at the back of his neck as he groans, desperate to stop the octobot from crushing his arms to a powder. He can practically hear the creaking of his humerus.
Around him, civilians scatter, screaming for their lives as a small horde of octobots descends on the park. Doc Ock doesn't react to the chaos. He sits there muttering to himself as people run past him and his octobots play cat and mouse. Miguel finally snaps the arms off the robot holding him with a pissed grunt, punching the carcass of machinery away from him while you tuck and roll from a dive to the ground. In an impressive show of your improvement and coordination, you throw out a web as you roll and hit Doc Ock square in the face, a second binding his chest to the bench. You spring to your feet, shooting at bots one after another. You must take down six by the time he's gathered his bearings.
"On your left," Lyla says. Miguel smashes a bot at the apex of its white body and she laughs. "Nice. Behind."
Miguel falls into the fight as though it's a well-practised dance. With the stress maps locked on, quick-thinking, and Lyla's pointed direction, Miguel can decapitate or incapacitate each bot swiftly as long as they don't get a hold on him like the first one managed.
You're like Lyla in that a good skirmish seems to set you off —you're giggling, cheering, enjoying yourself much more than you should be. "This is just like that video game," you say, leaping onto a moving octobot and shooting webbing at the joints, gumming them up until they can't move. "With the girl and her super powered puppy, you know that one?"
"Of course I don't know that one." Miguel brings his claws down into the aluminium shell of an octobot as it swipes your legs from under you and tears it in two. It cracks like a halved apple, the gore of its inside sparking and smoking as it hits the ground in tandem with you. Your head whacks hard into the concrete pathing beneath. He doesn't have time to help you.
The arm of a bot races forward like a stinger. This one must be the head of the hive, the Queen bee so to speak, far more complicated than the others in the plating of her ivory bodice and chain-mail like shielding on her arms.
Miguel swears under his breath and vaults at it.
He pulls your droid feed up in his display, watches you writhe from one side and the other as your pained moans play in his ear. You clamber onto wobbly footing as Miguel descends, the screeching cry of metal while it's shorn apart beneath his hands not half as loud as your useless gasping —you're winded, likely concussed.
"Civilian entering range," Lyla says.
"What? Where?"
Lyla has your drone's camera spin on the spot to show Miguel the civilian stupid enough to enter an active fight zone. They aren't stupid at all, it figures, but unaware. A man in activewear jogs the beaten path with headphones in, eyes to the ground. He stops for a moment to look at his sports watch, and like the octobot can tell, it shakes Miguel like a bothersome flea and surges for him.
You're closest.
"Y/N!" Miguel shouts, knowing it's too late before he so much as closes his mouth. You turn, your head braced in your hand, breathing hard with pain. Miguel would take it back if he could.
You can't save the civilian, but you can watch him die.
—
People look at him like he's a ghost, sometimes. Wide-eyed, horrified, they move aside in the halls. They treat him how he feels on his worst days, like someone who should've died a long time ago. Today, things are different.
No less than three Peter Parker' have stopped to stare at him unabashedly. Nearly all make the same jokes, Late for a date?
He'd honestly prefer feeling like a ghost. He can't deal with their derision and he doesn't want to, ignoring their looks and their judgement as he treks to the elevator that's gonna drop him outside of the medbay. The only person he wouldn't mind poking fun at him is you.
You aren't in the mood.
Miguel doesn't acknowledge your prone form at first. He walks to your bedside table to deposit the bouquet he'd chosen, peonies for good health and strength, swapping old for new, changing the water in your small shared sink. He may orchestrate the Spider Society, but Miguel's special privileges can't reduce the extreme turnover rate of the medbay. You have curtains to partition the room for privacy, and you got the bed by the window, and that's as much as he could get you. You deserve better.
Miguel opens the window to drown out the smell of antiseptic. He stands in front of it, his shadow stretching over your twisted hip. You're not sleeping, you're resting. Doctor's orders.
Miguel wishes you'd deign to rest in your own bed, or his, but you're a little too catatonic for a safe discharge either way.
He sighs quietly. You likely hear it with your enhanced senses and still you remain an impassive lump under your blue hospital blanket.
"Good morning," he says, instead of the thousand other things he wants to say, that he's too much of a coward to ask. "Let's get up."
He doesn't give you any choice about it. Starting slow, Miguel rounds the bed to meet your eyes through your sluggish blinking. Perhaps you'd been more asleep than he thought.
Gentle, Miguel peels down your blankets enough to push his hands under your armpits. He pulls you up into a sitting position, and it —it breaks his heart. He's a monolith, he's hurting, he has years and years of loss and grief behind him and it doesn't matter, it finds him again. His heart breaks at your limblessness and your willingness to be positioned like a paper doll.
Miguel arranges the sad pillow behind you and puts the remote for the adjustable bed frame in your hand. The last time you'd been here in the medbay after a training exercise fractured your ulna, you'd spent pretty much the entire time messing around with your bed, even as they crafted your cast. It made for messy work. Miguel must've told you to quit it fifty times.
Your fingers curl around the remote.
Miguel perches on the mattress on one knee to fix the protective style your hair is in. Nothing serious, just smoothing the tiniest of stray hairs and making sure it's still comfortable. He strokes your temple absentmindedly, checking you over one feature at a time. Tired eyes, nose tip looking parched, your lips chapped. Frowning, he sits properly, and he pulls your big hospital bag from the bedside table, his hand falling to your wrist to say, Hey, I'm here, and I'm not going far.
He finds your smaller bag of toiletries and necessities and unzips it. He tries not to think about the last time he had to take care of someone like this as he cleans your face with a wet wipe, two fingers wrapped in the wipe and petting at your skin carefully. He notices the life returning to you inchingly, his touch a tether you're pulling on, so he prolongs his actions. He smooths moisturiser over your face extra slowly. If you asked why, he could say it's cold, but you don't ask.
Your face shiny in the sunshine filtering in through the wide windows, you almost look like yourself again.
"Are you hungry?"
You shake your head. An almost imperceptible gesture.
"This is why you don't feel well," he says. "You're not eating enough."
"That's not why," you say.
He aches to hear your voice. I know, he thinks, but doesn't say.
"Eat something," he says.
You shake your head again. He managed to bring you back and squash you back down in less than a minute. He really doesn't like himself, at that moment. Often, but especially now. He's failing you. He failed you with the octobots and he's failing you now.
Miguel refuses to fail someone he cares about again.
He takes the remote for your bed and lifts the top section so you can sit back comfortably. He shakes the blankets out over you, and he puts away your things. Hopeful, Miguel places new pyjamas and underwear with your shower caddy at the end of the bed and pulls a strict pose, hands crossed over his chest.
"I need to go. Shower, eat breakfast when it comes. Please."
You give him a look that might mean Yes but probably doesn't mean anything, laying down as much as the bed allows and turning your face from him toward the flowers. Miguel leaves, stopping a ways away to look back, and watches through the gap of your curtains as you reach out to touch the flowers he'd brought. Your pinky finger is less than an inch from the petals when your movement stutters, your hand falling back to your chest with a soft thud. You close your eyes.
When Miguel returns, he's thankful to find you've done as he told you. Showered, changed, a discarded breakfast tray at your feet. You've attempted the oatmeal and left the toast to go cold, congealed butter white against golden yellow.
Miguel swaps the tray for his bags. He's hoping you might be tempted to look while he's gone. He knows before you would've known the entire contents of the open bag by the time he'd left the room, but he returns having taken your tray to the rack and is sorely disappointed.
That's fine, he decides. You don't have to look. He doesn't mind laying things out for you.
First port of call: extra pillows. He pulls the plastic wrapped 'hotel pillows' up onto your sheet and tears the plastic. They pop out. He didn't think for pillow cases, so he slides them behind your hospital pillow and pushes you down by the shoulders, not cruel but not particularly gentle —you actually laugh at his handling. He bites back a smile.
"What, you got me presents?" you ask as he dumps a blanket onto your lap. It's one of those soft, shiny fleece ones patterned with those characters you love so much, the girl and her super powered puppy.
You rub your hands over it appreciatively and spread it out over your legs. "What's that mean?" he asks, pointing at the Chinese characters, '超級汪汪!'.
"Chāojí wāngwāng!" you cheer, an impression missing the majority of your usual pep. "Super woof. It's his level five power up. He yaps and Joyce gets her HP back."
Miguel pretends to know, like he'd forgotten, and you're reminding him. "Ah."
You're watching now, interested. He puts his back between you and the bag and you whine weakly, "Miguel."
"What? You think these are for you?"
"Please, I want to see."
He gives in like a cheap tent, passing you a packet of pearly beads for your bracelet making, skeins of variegated thread that change colours, a packet of pencils with frogs on the lids, a plushie. You don't know how to react and Miguel doesn't know what to say. He honestly doesn't want to say anything, vulnerability stopped being his thing a while ago, but he clears his throat. "Do you know what I look like in the middle of Miniso? Picture it."
Miniso being a Chinese home goods store lined floor to ceiling with plushies.
You laugh weirdly. Miguel knows it's guilt holding you back.
"One last thing." He sits down on the bed next to you, hands big enough to cover the box in its entirety. "You were wrong, by the way. Extremely wrong, these don't taste a thing like polvorones."
He passes you the box. You take it into steady hands, smiling widely, your thumb brushing up against the black cursive font. A box of butter leaves from one of your sister dimensions.
"I don't know if they'll taste like they did. Are they the same ones?"
You nod, loosing a breath between parted lips. "Same ones."
"If you don't eat them all, I won't get them for you again."
"That's so mean," you murmur. Miguel would apologise if he thought you meant it.
"That's how it is. Eat your cookies. I'll come back later to make sure you actually ate dinner."
He stands. You immediately grab him, cookies dropped in favour of braceleting his wrist in your warm fingers.
You look up at him through your lashes, a frown dampening your pretty features. At least, in his eyes.
"Please don't go," you say. Your eyebrows pinch together. It's even more heartbreaking than your catatonia, this pleading loneliness, like you think he won't stay.
"You have to talk to me," Miguel says. He softens at your chastised wince, sitting back down again. "Did you want a hug?" he asks.
It's an apology to offer it, though he should've asked you this morning, or yesterday, even the day before. You'd been inconsolable when it happened. Miguel's never seen you that way. Your sunshine shattered, your shoulders shaking under his hands as he led you away from the scene, he didn't hug you like he wanted to. It wouldn't have made a difference at the time. You couldn't speak. You could barely walk.
Seeing something like that happen leaves a mark, even if you've seen it before.
You sweep aside your gifts and twist your legs to climb onto your knees. Miguel hadn't realised how much you wanted to be close to him until you're bordering his lap, your arms sliding over his shoulders, your pyjamas soft and smelling of antiseptic under his nose. A switch flicks at your nearness. He pulls you into his lap and sandwiches you there, chest to chest, thankful for his stature because it means he can encapsulate you effortlessly. He can hide you from the world for a short while.
You choke him half to death.
"It's okay," he says, your back curved into the length of his forearm, leaning forward so you can take the weight off. "You're okay."
"I don't– it's not me. I'm not worried about me."
"It's over," he says. "What's done is done." Which isn't to say it isn't tragic, or that it didn't leave a permanent mark on the world. But you're punishing yourself for a crime you didn't commit.
"It's all my fault," you whisper, your cheek pressing to his shoulder, face hidden in the juncture of his neck.
He tilts his head toward you. "It's my fault. I jumped in. I wanted it to be quick."
"I let him…"
"You had a grade ii concussion, you didn't let anyone do anything. I'm lucky you didn't pass out right there. I'm lucky you had the ability to defend yourself, because I left you defenceless."
"No, you didn't, it–" You rub your cheek against his shoulder. "It happened really fast, you were making sure that bot didn't get me because I was stupid enough to leave myself open–"
"Stop it."
It's harsh enough to stop you in your tracks. Miguel sighs hard, hair blowing away from his face.
He lays down backward, skewiff on your bed, and pulls you with him in a secure but gentle hold. You make a quiet 'oof' as you go down. Apologetic yet again, Miguel rubs a line up and down your back, fingertips between your shoulders, palm flattening as he reaches the small of your back, your shirt inching up. He's sure you look foolish to anyone watching, but for once, he's past embarrassment.
"I don't want to hear you blaming yourself. It's not your fault."
You've twisted on your side on the mattress rather than crush his pelvis, though your chest remains pressed to his. You twist a strand of his dark hair around your finger. "Why did you bring me all this stuff?" you ask softly.
"To make you feel better."
"But why… do you… want that? Why does it matter that much, that you'd waste time going to get me things?"
"Why do you think?" he asks.
Your lips ghost the column of his throat. "Mm… 'cos you're nicer than you let on."
"Wrong."
You laugh again. He's more grateful than he'd ever say aloud.
"Because you care about me too much."
Too much is right. He feels like he's at the stern of the universe's most important ship. The universes, plural. That ship is heading square for an iceberg, for the precipice of a gargantuan whirlpool, and there's nothing Miguel can do but hand out buckets and veer sharply to the left, hoping it will be enough, knowing deep down that it won't be if something doesn't give soon. And he's lived a life, two lives, before he even met you. He's tired. He doesn't want to lose anyone else, and he hoped he could do that by never caring again.
What a stupid hope.
"I just want you to feel like yourself again," he admits.
"I really wanted to save him."
"You can't save everyone."
He knows better than most.
"I know," you say, no tears left to cry, voice impossibly small.
Miguel wraps his arms around you and doesn't let go for a long, long time.
˚ʚ♡ɞ˚
thank you so much for reading, I really really hope you enjoyed! please think about reblogging if you liked it, I appreciate it <3
#miguel and spidergirl reader#miguel o’hara x reader#miguel o’hara x you#miguel o’hara x y/n#miguel o’hara x fem!reader#miguel o’hara#miguel o’hara fanfiction#miguel o’hara fanfic#miguel o’hara fic#miguel o’hara drabble#miguel o’hara scenario#miguel o’hara blurb#miguel o’hara oneshot#spider-man: across the spider-verse#spider-man: across the spider-verse spoilers#spider-man: across the spider-verse fanfiction#across the spider-verse spoilers#across the spider verse spoilers#across the spiderverse spoilers#spiderman across the spider-verse spoilers#miguel ohara x reader#miguel ohara x you#miguel ohara x y/n#miguel ohara x fem!reader#miguel ohara#miguel ohara fanfiction#miguel ohara fanfic#miguel ohara fic#miguel ohara drabble#miguel ohara scenario
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⋅ GENRES: strangers to lovers & summer romance; angst, fluff & smut
⋅ PAIRING: street racer!Heeseung x fem!reader
⋅ WORD COUNT: 26.8K
⋅ WARNINGS: illegal street racing (oh, really?!); mentions of alcohol, implied driving while drunk; a fight scene, mentions of blood and bruises; Heeseung is flirty and it’s a concerning warning; skinny dipping; unprotected sex multiple times
TRACK 01 OF TAKE MY HAND
Heeseung had never believed in love, at least not the real thing — not the capable of awakening his soul and bringing peace to his mind type of love.
It happened to other people, in other places, but not to him in the small county of Hongcheon. Yet, it did.
In the summer of his twenty-four years, you came into his life, and from the moment he saw you, he knew he was gone — heart on the flatline.
Lee Heeseung wasn’t the type of person to obey the speed limits. He maybe once was, but after so many years in the race, he had become too impatient for it.
He liked the speed. He liked how the sound of the engine muffled his heartbeats, the way the gear stick felt familiar against the palm of his hand, and above all — he liked how, even if for just a few moments, he was capable of being free from everything.
If someone ever dared to take the road up the hills, it wouldn’t be hard to find him there — beneath the scorching sun and leaving only the idea of the memory of his black BMW as he raced through.
And it hadn’t been different on that first afternoon of summer.
Heeseung stepped on the brakes, raising a trail of smoke as the car squealed through the asphalt before coming to a stop. It didn’t take long until Jake followed suit, pulling beside him with his showy Camaro. However, the breeze barely had time to heal from all the racing noises before Heeseung shot the car forward and back, causing Jake to laugh loudly. Both of them, connoisseurs of the street races, knew Heeseung was inciting another race, even though they had just finished one.
“We have to head back,” Jake shouted. “Or else we are going to be late and Jungwon is going to be mad — I don’t like it when Jungwon is mad.”
The clock of the BMW showed precisely half past six, and the town was right beneath them. If they followed the speed limits they would arrive just on time, but if they didn’t — the possibilities were infinite.
“To the town’s entrance then?” Heeseung asked, making Jake laugh once again.
“Just down the hill,” he agreed. “It's summer and the highways are going to be full.”
“Deal.”
Jake stepped on the gas pedal, making the Camaro wail with no previous warning. It was a glorious car — with its capacity, Heeseung always thought it was an almost equal competitor to his BMW M4, but Jake always messed up the shift from the fourth to the fifth gear. It doesn’t matter how many times he raced, Jake always lost the precious second between them, and Heeseung always used it to blow by.
Through the rearview mirror, Heeseung saw Jake laughing at the already lost competition, but he didn’t hold to it for too long. Between a turn and another, Hongcheon spread beyond him, the beautiful town embroiled in the middle of a steady chain of hills and a sparkling river. The sky was an ideal shade of orange above it all, with not a single cloud to shade the late sunset.
The summer of his twenty-four years was beginning, although Heeseung didn’t know what it truly meant — yet.
┈┈┈┈
When you agreed to join your family on their annual summer trips after years of fully dedicating yourself to the university. You surely didn’t expect your first night away would be so university-like.
Your parents had chosen Hongcheon as the destination, a stunning and peaceful county just one hour away from Seoul. With a rented house on the hill and a back garden the size of a park, you expected a lay-down vacation — full of ice teas and watching sunsets on the back porch. Perhaps it would have been if the county wasn’t as well Hayoung’s hometown, your cousin and friendly guide as she entitled herself while she pulled you out of the front doors and into the summer night.
By the time you arrived at the house of whoever her colleague and party hostess was, the place was already full to its end, the strum of a low bass blasting through the opened door, and the interior heavy with the smell of alcohol, cigarettes, and too many damp skins.
“Hayoung!” someone screamed above the loud music.
The stranger stopped before both of you, his lazy smile and unfocused eyes only advising he was already wavering between the states of soberness and drunkenness.
“Who’s that?” he asked, pointing at you with the tip of his beer.
“Y/N, my cousin.”
“Lovely, I didn’t know you had one,” he said. You furrowed your eyebrow at that, a perfect mirror of your cousin’s reaction. If there was something to say, you didn’t know what it could be, and neither did Hayoung as she preferred to change the topic.
“Have you seen Sunhae?”
“Rooftop with that Jungwon guy of hers and his friends.”
“Thanks,” she said, fingers already curling around your elbow and guiding you away.
Everything that happened from the front hall to the rooftop was forgotten before the next step was taken. People stopped Hayoung to greet her and asked who you were in confusion. You shouted your name at strangers, and they shouted theirs back, both ends pretending it would be something they would keep and remember for more than a couple of seconds. A woman pressed two bottles of soju into your palms, the only thing you would have truly appreciated in the meantime if they clearly hadn’t been opened and were already missing a few sips when she did. You preferred to abandon them somewhere within the stairs.
Hayoung opened the rooftop door, gesturing for you to go in first, and when you did, immediately Hongcheon’s summer shrouded you. The music became just an echo through your feet and the darkness of the interior was taken by string lights hanging on the wooden beans. You had to blink a few times to get used to it, and only then you saw Sunhae, that Jungwon guy of hers, and his friends — the four of them focused on a dartboard poorly placed in one of the beams.
Sunhae was the first one to notice you, running to your cousin and briefly hugging her before she turned to you.
“Hi, I am Sunhae,” she said, her tone so cheerful that it was difficult to not feel welcomed. “Hayoung’s roommate in the university dorms, but you probably know it.”
“I do,” you smiled. “I am Y/N.”
“Oh, I know,” Sunhae laughed. “But those guys probably don’t know you and you probably don’t know those guys.”
“The smallest black-haired one is Jungwon,” she started. However, she didn’t need to finish her sentence for you to know it — not only because the stranger at the front hall called Jungwon hers, but because as soon as her eyes landed on him, it glinted. The silliest yet most honest indication of being in love. “My boyfriend.”
“The silvered-haired one is—”
“I am Jake,” he said, turning to you and extending his hand. “Jungwon’s roommate in the university dorms.”
He seemed so eager to share his role in Jungwon’s life that you couldn’t help but laugh at it, soft and airy, allowing the sound to blend in with the breeze.
“Y/N,” you said, taking his hand and shaking it.
As you looked at the last of them, he was already watching you. And there’s no way it hadn’t been something crafted inside of your mind, but for a brief moment, time seemed to have stopped. Ranging a little bit so, many years later, when that night became just a memory of your youth days, you would still remember how despite the warm weather he wore a leather jacket, a plain black t-shirt, and a silver necklace that glinted almost as much as his eyes beneath the summer sky.
“I am Heeseung,” he said, moving his gaze at Jake for a brief second before he turned back to you, smiling. “I don’t think I have something special to state.”
His accent didn’t escape you. You had already noticed the difference between Seoul and Gangwon residents, the way people from the province rolled the vowels and cut the end of the phrases making it hastened, but if anything, it only made his voice warmer.
“It’s nice to meet you,” you said. Heeseung extended his hand at you. It was a little bit too late for the greeting but you took it anyway, allowing him to fold his fingers around yours.
“Are you good with darts?” he asked.
“Darts? I think I can make my way through it.”
“Great,” Heeseung said. “I don’t want to lose and Jake is terrible at it, so you are my new partner.”
When you didn’t oppose it, he used your connected hands to pull you to him, and suddenly he was so close and the air stuffy. He smelled like the summer nights, like the brisk breeze of the county, like peonies, but as well as the leather of his jacket, and something that you remembered from the day your father taught you how to drive, the smokey scent when you couldn’t pull the car up the hill and forced the engine to its maximum.
“Should we bet?” Sunhae suggested. “We always bet.”
“Drinks?”
“Boring,” she paused, just for a brief moment before her face lighted up as if she had been struck with a great idea. “The carnival always needs volunteers.”
“It doesn’t seem bad,” Hayoung said.
“To operate the tents, but the losing team should volunteer to wear the sheep costume and hand the flyers.”
You laughed at the absurd, and Heeseung’s eyes landed back on you again, his eyebrows lifted as amusement rushed through his face almost too fast to be noticed.
“Are you fine with this?” he asked.
“We aren’t going to lose, are we?” you asked instead, and his eyes glinted playfully at you.
“No.”
“So I am fine,”
“Do the honors, princess,” he said, extending one of the darts.
The nickname tingled through your body, making heat grow into your cheeks. Yet, Heeseung didn’t realize what he had said until a second later when your hand hung above the extended dart for a heartbeat more, but if anything, his smile widened.
Hayoung decided to be just a watcher together with Jake, making it you and Heeseung against Jungwon and Sunhae.
As the night went on and the party began to wind down on the floors below, you thought the bet had long been forgotten until Jake called everyone’s attention.
“Last round before we run out,” he announced. “Y/N has to score more than thirty points to have a direct win.”
“Excuse me? How much?” you demanded, making him laugh at your uneasiness.
“Thirty,” he repeated, enjoyment rushing through each pronounced letter. “or else you give an opportunity to Jungwon and Sunhae to win and Heeseung is wearing a sheep costume — not that I am hoping for it.”
You looked at Heeseung, uncertainties swaying your gaze. He hesitated only for a moment before he stepped behind you, one of his hands slightly resting on your waist as the other folded around your hand, positioning it.
“It’s her turn,” Jake protested.
“The dart is in her hand,” Heeseung replied with mischief.
Your head turned to him, drawing out a question. However, his breath brushed through your lips, the bitterness of the beer he had been drinking reaching through your tongue almost as if you were the one drinking it, and you allow it to slip and slide away, everything on you focusing on the small pressure of his fingertips on your skin.
“I am holding it for you,” he whispered, voice winding through your hair. Heeseung moved both of your hands, and you looked forward in time to see the dart sticking precisely at the center of the dartboard.
Jungwon screamed, abandoning the dart he wouldn’t have any opportunity to use on the table before he took Sunhae’s hand and rushed to the rooftop door. Jake laughed, following behind, and then you understood that it was their thing. Jake meant it when he said to run out. It was their way to leave and your chest ached to see this inner thing of theirs.
Hayoung stepped past you, a gentle smile traversing her lips before she as well rushed through the door, leaving it open for you and Heeseung.
There was a small pause, a small gap in time as he reached for the top of your head, threading his fingers through your hair as he gave a soft and quick pat.
“Thank you for saving me from the sheep costume,” he said, all mischief and teasing as he stepped back. You prepared yourself to hear him leaving too, the sound of his steps echoing together with the now turned-down music, but he didn’t walk away. Heeseung just stayed still, waiting for you to look at him so he could slightly tip his head at the door.
He led you downstairs, and when someone stumbled on you, he took your hand in his, pulling you close to him and shielding you from the party still going through the corridors until you are out into the warm summer night again. The stars hung so low in the sky, none of you really could tell if it was too late or too early.
“Can I drive you home?” he asked.
“With all due respect, I don’t trust drivers like you, Lee,” Hayoung interrupted. “And you have drunk too much, I am taking my cousin back home safely.”
“Fair,” Heeseung exhaled, looking at where your cousin stood. For an instant he faltered, his shoulders tightened as if he suddenly was carrying some weight. However, when he turned back to you, it was gone, he was smiling again. “Am I seeing you at the carnival?”
“Yes.”
His thumb brushed softly against the back of your hand before he let it go.
“Until then, princess.”
Hongcheon was unbelievably warmer than Seoul. The sun had long disappeared through the horizon, yet remnants of the summer heat still lingered in the breeze, caressing your skin with a certain overprotective tenderness as you stood in the middle of the carnival.
You immediately could tell the place had some story with the county. The food carts were old in a lovely way, the tint faded with the number of years of the sun setting on them.
Heeseung was the first one to notice you lagging behind, head turning to everything but the group. You had already collected your picture of Jungwon in sheep costume, but even as you did it, you seemed distracted.
His hand met your elbow, startling you for a second before you noticed it was him.
“Distract much?” he smiled. “Are you alright?”
You exhaled, and the Ferris wheel spilling its mechanical music together with the coin-toss machines stole the sound of it.
“Sunhae made fun of me when I said it.”
“Sunhae would make fun of the world’s end,” he said. “Tell me, what’s it?”
“I have never been to a carnival and my mouth is watering to taste those toffee apples.”
“Toffee apples?” Heeseung asked, but there was no judgment in his words. Although he kept his smile, he didn’t laugh like Sunhae, he didn’t murmur city people beneath his breath like Hayoung. Heeseung simply looked between you and the toffee apple cart, his eyebrow raised before he held his hand at you. “I would prefer you telling me you never had snow cones or corn hot dogs, but fine.”
“I have never tried those too,” you said, placing your hand in his.
“And never rode bumped cars or a carousel?”
“Never.”
“We should do it in the proper way then,” he said, slightly leaning into your direction. You brightened at it, and he knew even though it seemed like a silly program, there was nothing he should rather do tonight.
He guided you through the crowd, hand clasp against yours. The line for the toffee apples was small, but the bumper cars seemed enormous just like all the other attractions, and Heeseung started an ask game. You liked the way he did it. It was more that he genuinely wanted to know about you instead of the polite questions to prevent a conversation from ending. But only when you were on the top of the Ferris wheel, summer breeze musing your hair in a way only the county’s warmth could manage, did he break the question he wondered the most.
“You really never went to a carnival?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Why so? There aren’t any carnivals in Seoul?”
“There are,” you said. “There was one in the same avenue of my middle school actually, it’s just a thing of mine. My parents never had much time to do those types of things when I was younger, they were just starting their business, and because of—”
“Well, I never had real friends during this period, they always wanted something from me. They invited themselves to my house, but it was because of the things I had and not because of me.”
“So somehow I was always too lonely to go. Of course, I had other friends during high school and I do have friends in University, but things are different,” you explained. “So yes, I never went to a carnival.”
When you finished, Heeseung had been silent for so long that you thought he had zoned out — leaving you to talk to the furor of the place.
But you looked at him, and he was there — staring at you with the oddest expression someone had ever turned on you. The deliberately unnerving, otherworldly stare that lasted several more seconds than was comfortable for two strangers who aren’t really strangers anymore, and your cheeks grew warmer. You were not sure why you decided to tell him about your life like this, you had met him just a few days previously. But it was summer, the season when people do things they would never think of, it was late at night, the world so warm that it felt safe to let secrets be spilled in the wind, and Heeseung — he felt safe too.
He leaned in, and his eyes flickered beneath the night, mischief glinting as if he wanted to tell you the most beautiful thing he had ever known.
“It sucks,” he said, however, and you laughed at this, head thrown back, the sound so carefree and soft it was impossible for him to not smile back at you.
He reached for the bar behind your shoulders, coming so close you didn’t only hear the next words, but you felt them rushing through your skin.
“But if you ever decide to binge all the attractions of a carnival again, or if you feel like doing anything you couldn’t — I am here,” he said, reaching for the top of your head, his fingers threaded through your hair as he gave the same soft and quick pat he did on the night of the party.
┈┈┈┈
There was something special about the night, an unfathomable pleasure in even the tiniest things.
By the time Heeseung and you left the Ferris wheels, the crowd was still far from thinning and the night far from giving away. Laughter filled every single gush of breeze together with the summer heat.
The only place left was the coin-toss machine to binge all the carnival attractions, and Heeseung immediately guided you there, fingers twinned on yours, he didn’t seem to want to let you go, and you didn’t mind it.
“How does it work?” you asked, taking him to the machine which caught your attention. It didn’t have a claw like the conventional ones, and the prizes stood on shelves — all of them way more expensive than stuffed animals.
“You select the number of the prize you want,” Heeseung explained. “Then you use the hammer to hit this handle here.”
He had to speak loudly for you to hear him beneath the sounds of the machines, something he thought to be inconvenient, so he inclined his head, his lips just centimeters apart from your ear before he continued.
“Based on the strength you used it will give you a number, if it’s the same number as the prize you selected, you win.”
“Seems rigged,” you said, turning to look at him. “But I want to try.”
Heeseung stared down at you, amused eyes shining beneath the colorful lights from the toss-coin machines.
“Ok,” he exhaled. “What prize do you want?”
“The analog camera,” you said, a single finger prodding the smudged plexiglass.
Heeseung was fast on taking off a coin from the pocket of his jeans, tossing it inside the machine and allowing it to glow, the music turning even louder. You watched as he fumbled through the buttons, putting in the number for the analog camera.
“Do the honors, princess,” he said, handing you the hammer.
However, when you hit the handle the number landed far from the desired one. Your lips curled in discontentment, and although Heeseung thought your expression was the cutest thing he had seen during his twenty-four years of living, there was a certain urge in him to make it disappear.
“Let me try,” he said, taking his wallet from the back pocket of his jeans and putting a few of the spare coins he had in.
You handed him the hammer a second before the machine shone again, the mechanical music turning a bit louder to indicate it was ready for another failed try.
“Definitely rigged,” he exhaled. But again and again, Heeseung seized the wallet from the back pocket of his jeans, counted his coins, and inserted it in the machine. On the fourth time, he got tired of the whole process and simply asked you to hold the wallet for him.
Two couples waited behind and you smiled apologetically at them before you turned back at Heeseung.
“Heeseung, it’s ok — it’s forming a line.”
It was the first time you had ever said his name, and it caught him off guard. Not only because of your accent, but coming from your lips, it sounded soft and slow, almost as if you had stolen it and made it all yours.
“One more time,” he asked. “Just one more time.”
When he hit the handle again, you inclined yourself to his side, an innocent act for a better view of the changing numbers, but suddenly you were so close, and your perfume attained so strongly on his lungs that it felt more intimate than it. For a few seconds, Heeseung stayed still, unconsciously allowing his thoughts to slip away as he remained, once again, completely lost in the sense of you.
At the party, he thought you smelled like sunlight, like the spring flowers, and everything about warmth, but no, it was sweeter than that. Like sugar in the air, like a promise.
Your breath brushed through the exposed skin of his neck, leaving goosebumps on its wake and he barely noticed the numbers moving and reaching the exact digit for the analog camera.
“You did it.” you gasped, your hand reaching for his almost unconsciously. “Oh my, you did it.”
His gaze fell over you and he smiled — truly smiled. Heeseung grinned like a boy. The innocent act reflected through his eyes for a moment before he bent in and took the camera box and extended it for you.
“You should keep it,” you said. “It was all your perseverance.”
“It’s yours,” he replied. His delight was almost palpable.
“Come on,” one of the women behind said. “Take that box and give your boyfriend a thank you kiss.”
She had the same hasted accent as the Gangwon’s residents, and it took you a heartbeat longer to make sense of what she had said, but when you did, you immediately could feel the heat growing into your cheeks.
“He is not— he is not my—” you started, looking back at Heeseung, but he only held your gaze steadily. His eyes still sparkling with the echoes of his laugh and you let everything go with a single hitch of breath.
He reached for your hand again, the gesture already rushing through your skin with a familiarity that made your heart ache. He guided you away from the machines, yet the furor of the place was still high and wild, almost muffing his question when it finally came out.
“Can I kiss you?”
Heeseung didn’t seem the type of person to falter easily, but you could swear he was on the verge of it. He moved continuously through your silence, fingers tickling on yours, a shoulder twitched. He shook his head, just slightly, as if he was fixing his bangs, but it was just an attempt to hide the shyness in him.
You didn’t notice you had been holding your breath until a second later, when you felt your lungs loosening with the single word of confirmation you managed to utter.
You looked up at him and the carnival lights gilded your skin, holding you so preciously beneath the dark sky that Heeseung started to have second thoughts.
The moment seemed to take forever, it seemed to take no time at all. Your simple yes unfolded within the summer breeze slowly, blending together with the echoes of the night as he leaned in, reaching for you — his lips hovered just a few inches from yours as if he was checking if you would regret and move away. However, when you didn’t, he kissed you, his lips touching yours just for a second.
Heeseung pulled back, and the glittering carnival dazed both of you. Everything about the place invaded your senses for a quiet moment before he leaned in and kissed you again, this time with more feelings than thoughts. He slid a hand behind your neck, angling your head up and making your lips part for him.
Of course, you had been kissed before. However, never that way. Heeseung wanted to relish it, feeling you through each passing second of your connected lips. He did not want to let it go, memorizing you through each heartbeat as he just grazed his mouth against yours, catching his breath before he kissed you again and again.
You felt a laugh forming in the deep of your chest, but when it rolled out of your lips, preventing Heeseung from kissing you, he wasn’t annoyed at it. He just laughed back at you and you were so lost on him, and in the sound of it, that it took you a while to notice it was the very first time you were hearing him do such a thing.
“Can I drive you home?” he asked. “I promise I haven’t drank anything today.”
┈┈┈┈
The first time you had ever seen a BMW coupé had been during the summer of your first year in high school. Your father had thought it was a nice thing to take you and your mother to a car show, or perhaps he just wanted to go and pretended to genuinely think it was a nice plan. Anyway, you still remember how he followed the air around the car with the palm of his hands, the closed roof, and the fine lines of the only two doors of the gray BMW before turning to you.
“Should I buy it?” he had asked, making your mother grunt. It was a playboy’s car from her point of view, made for trouble and disorder.
And that was exactly Heeseung’s car.
The BMW M4 had been parked outside the carnival field, the street lamp sparkling through the black tint of the car. You manage to control your laugh for most of the way to your rented house, but when Heeseung stopped at a traffic light, the roar of the engine being the only audible thing through the night you couldn’t help but let it escape.
“What’s this?” Heeseung asked, slightly turning to look at you. The red light turned his hair copper, and maybe it had been because you are still high on sugar and him, maybe it had been because you had already shared too much with Heeseung, but you told him about that summer afternoon too.
“So you are telling me, your mother wouldn’t approve me?” he asked, a hint of tease in his tone. You doubted Heeseung worried about what your mother would think seeing him park the BMW in front of the house, yet still, your mind faltered.
“I-” you started.
But you were saved by a car coming beside the BMW. The sudden sound of tires squealing stormed through the once quiet street, but instead of pulling and staying still, the car kept shooting forward and falling back.
“What’s he doing?” you asked.
Heeseung didn’t reply to you, his hand had tensed above the gear stick, and he looked away, ahead to the road.
When the traffic lights turned green the other car blew by, a flash of white paint in the middle of the night.
“He wanted to incite a race,” Heeseung whispered. Your lips parted, not sure if it was for a genuine surprise or if your subconscious meant to say something, but Heeseung seemed unnerved and you let it slip and slide as he drove away.
┈┈┈┈
“Heeseung?” you called, in the same soft way, allowing it to echo through the interior of the BMW. He looked at you, just for a second taking in how your eyes were squinting as you looked through the lens at him before the analog camera flash came off.
“Do you know how to use it?”
“I hope so,” you said. “Imagine me using the whole film to find out I did it wrongly.”
Heeseung hummed at that, the sound coming so softly. He had parked in front of your rented house for minutes now, but you didn’t attempt to leave and he didn’t attempt to make you do.
“Thank you for tonight, and the camera,” you said.
Heeseung could feel the way the night was ending without a single promise of tomorrow. A full period instead of a break, and he disliked the thought.
“I want to see you again,” he whispered.
“I want you to see me again too.”
A laugh escaped from his lips, unintentionally too happy as he reached for his phone on the console and handed it to you. You took it without a second thought, typing away your number and when you handed it back to him, you leaned in, catching his bottom lips with yours. It wasn’t the same kiss he had given you in the carnival, lips touching just for a bare second — it was longer yet just teasing, before Heeseung could hold you, you had gone. You had slipped out of his reach and his car, rushing through the garden of the house and the front porch.
Heeseung couldn’t help but laugh at your doing, tilting his head at the window, he looked up at the sky. At Hongcheon there were never enough streetlights to obliterate the stars completely, and for the first time in a long while, his breath came easily beneath all of this.
Heeseung had been a stranger on that first night of summer. He had been a confidante at the carnival. However, you had no idea who he was on the streets.
This part of Hongcheon was endlessly flat in comparison to the rest of the county. Meanwhile where you have been taking residence was built in the middle of emerald hills, this place was spread out over flat and dried fields.
You were aware it was somewhere at the outskirts of the county, so you weren’t surprised when the modest avenue ended on a highway. What surprised you was that instead of the normal traffic, a line of cars had been parked on the sides, their noses pointing at the middle of the highway, headlights illuminating what the streetlights couldn’t.
People circulated everywhere — around the cars, above the cars. Their cheers seemed to pierce through the closed windows.
For some long seconds, you thought Sunhae had indicated the wrong turn and Hayoung would make her way back through the road. But instead, she kept going, finding a place to park in the long line.
A few meters ahead two cars loomed, their speeds being nowhere near the legal limits as they passed by you and drifted a few meters ahead, tires squealing and leaving angry marks on the asphalt.
“What—” You started with an exasperated slowness. “Is this?”
“An illegal race?” Sunhae replied.
“And what are we doing here?”
Hayoung and Sunhae exchanged a knowing look above the gearshift, and no one needed to be a genius to know they were silently talking with each other.
“We came to watch?” Sunhae said. It had been an affirmation, but the way her voice raised at the end subtly turned the period into a question mark.
You felt your body turning cold. It wasn’t like you had prepared yourself to watch a street race when you had woken up that morning. It wasn’t like you had prepared yourself to participate in something illegal when you entered Hayoung’s car that night. She had messaged you telling you to be ready at nine and that was simply what you had done. Pretty dress, high heels, and pins on your hair.
As if she thought about the same thing, your cousin met your gaze through the rearview mirror.
“I can take you home,” she said.
“It’s alright,” you whispered, and although it carried all your uncertainty, it was enough to make them both leave after a single harsh breath, gathering in front of the car’s hood.
“Jungwon— he casually races,” Sunhae said as you joined them. It was so loud outside that she had to incline herself to speak to you. “Jake too, so you know—”
Hayoung slapped her arm to shut her up. However, you had already seen him, or rather his car — the black BMW spun through the highway, raising a trail of smoke before it lushly parked along the cars at what you judged to be the starting line.
Your breath shuddered out of you. The breeze subtly echoed beneath all the noises as Heeseung climbed out of the car and joined Jake and Jungwon in the small circle of racers.
There was something unfamiliar about him — something ferocious, noisy, and unsettled. This wasn’t the Heeseung you had met at the party, much less the Heeseung who had led you through the carnival with his hand curled on yours. This was the Heeseung who fit the BMW, the leather jacket, and the mischievous grin. This was a Heeseung you weren’t sure you knew who he was.
Heeseung had been smiling at everyone, but he faltered when he spotted you. He had this inconvenient feeling that he had stopped in time. His surroundings kept going, blistering in the loud engines and cheers, but he was stuck on how you were there, suddenly seeing this tainted part of him.
He didn’t remember taking the decision to move. He only knew he did, giving one step in your direction before Jake held his arm.
“Later,” he said, like a reminder. And Heeseung forced himself to retract, to place his bet along with the rest of the racers, forcing himself to hear about the course he knew all too well. He forced himself to walk to his BMW and turn the key.
He eased his foot off the clutch, pressing down on the gas he managed to hold the car in check. The engine was alive beneath him, the sound quelling his heartbeats as he reached for the gear stick. He closed his eyes at the familiarity of the moment, but as soon as the darkness welcomed him, you were there again — burning like sunlight.
He turned his focus back to the streets in time to see the light switching, the red turning into green and without any prelude, the car burst from the starting line. The street lights flickered and flared above him.
Heeseung knew this place well enough to not need to think before exchanging the gears, he just kept in mind he needed to come back faster than ever.
┈┈┈┈
“I will take the awkward exchange of looks as a confirmation that Heeseung didn’t tell you about all of this,” Hayoung said, taking your attention from the highway ahead. The racing cars had already disappeared into the distance, leaving only the idea of the memory behind.
“He didn’t,” you admitted. “It’s not something you can say to someone you don’t know, right?”
“Well, I agree,” she said. “But you are my cousin, he knows me, and he has stuck on you since the party, he should have—”
“It’s alright,” you replied.
You knew Hayoung wasn’t the type of person to give up easily on a discussion, so the moment she opened her mouth to say something more, you turned away, taking in the furor of the place. The cheers had eased, for a great part, but everything was so loud still with the sound of those car’s engines.
“How long does it take?” you asked.
“Not much, they just take the next return and come back here.”
It didn’t take long at all.
The familiar BMW was the first one to pass the finish line. However, Heeseung didn’t slow, he didn’t even look back as he won the race. His car only came to a full stop once he was in front of you — the driver’s door being hardly pushed as the headlights kept flickering through the night.
“Please, let’s talk,” he said, his gaze meeting you as if there were no one else in his eyes sight.
Hayoung reached for you, squeezing your arms as if she was attempting to give you assurance.
“It’s fine,” you said, meeting her gaze. “Sunhae is probably staying with Jungwon, are you alright with driving back alone?”
“Of course,” she replied. “I came thinking it was how my night was ending,”
“Just fasten your seatbelt, and hold on tight, I still don’t trust them on a wheel.”
When you turned back at Heeseung, he had already walked toward you, causing you to bump into him. His hands immediately found your waist, preventing you from tripping. But even as you stood completely still, he continued holding you, his fingers coming up and down through the bodice of your dress.
“Princess,” he said. It almost didn’t sound like a call, but a plea. A longing where it was supposed to have just the tease you were already used to.
“Alright, let’s talk.”
Heeseung guided you to his car, one of his hands sliding to the small of your back as he opened the passenger door for you, waiting for you to slip in before he closed it with a soft slam.
The drive was surprisingly quiet. Heeseung hadn’t spoken the whole way back, he just stayed there — occasionally brushing his gaze towards you as if with a single moment he hadn’t checked on you, you would disappear without a trace. Only when you had reached the town did he speak, but it had been so soft it almost got lost in the breeze before you could even clasp them.
“Is it ok if I take you further into the hills?”
“Yes, of course.”
Heeseung drove into the hills, passing the entrance to your rented house without a second look and going further onto bendy roads that all of a sudden spread on an open field. The town shone beyond it all.
“A few years ago they were going to build a dozen houses like your rented one,” he said, stepping on the parking brake. “They prepared the field but for some reason, they gave up on it.”
“I come here with Jake and Jungwon a lot to — race.”
And that was it, the breaking word.
Heeseung slid his hands through the wheel, slowly bringing them into his lap before he decided to rest it above the gear stick.
“I am not used to telling people about it.”
“I can understand why, genuinely” you said. “So you don’t have to tell me anything that you aren’t comfortable with.”
“I wanted to,” he said. “At the party, I thought of asking if you wanted to go watch the race. At the carnival, I thought of telling you,”
“But you are so—” his gaze encountered you, taking in your whole being before he stopped, letting the words slip and slid away with a single hitch of breath. He couldn’t simply tell he thought you shone like a heart of gold. It was foolish, cringe even. So Heeseung stayed silent, turning back to the town and watching it spread beyond both of you, the interlocked pattern of colored lights.
It made a strange image of him, he seemed so grandiose mirroring all those lights that it somehow made him frail. And it suddenly occurred to you how Heeseung was good at only allowing people to see what he wanted them to. He wanted everyone to see him as confident, bright — ferocious during the races and you wondered what it meant that he allowed you to see through the fissures.
His shoulders tightened as if he suddenly was carrying some weight — whatever he was about to tell you, it was something he had been keeping for himself for years.
You reached for him, palm resting above the back of his hand on the gear stick.
“My parents studied their whole lives together,” Heeseung started, the words leaving his lips clumsy and strangely by the unused of being said. “They started dating during high school and my mother got pregnant not long after their graduation. But there was the thing — they are too young and my mother knew it.”
“Although she tried to endure it, someday she simply couldn’t anymore and left.”
You hadn’t noticed your grip above his hand had tightened until you felt Heeseung shifting beneath your touch, turning his palm to you and slowly interlacing your fingers.
“I am so sorry.”
“It’s alright, honestly,” he replied. “It’s not like I remember much of her — and I grew up well with my grandma and father.”
“A few years ago, my father got really sick — after his funeral, I took his car, it was such an old Toyota. I bet it was the first time it ever really raced,” he smiled, but there was an ache in it, a sadness that you could almost reach. He looked at you again, as defenseless he had ever been. “I found the street racing spot by accident. But they said I was good and I kept going.”
“First it was for freedom, but the money became a great necessity after a few months — my grandma couldn’t work, I had to give up on the university.”
“You did what you could,” you whispered. “It’s alright, Heeseung.”
The moment seemed to stretch, seconds feeling like minutes and when you lifted your interlaced hands to your lips, kissing the back of Heeseung’s hand, you didn’t know how long had passed.
“Do you want to race right now?”
“I do.”
“Take me somewhere?” you asked.
┈┈┈┈
When the BMW reached the town’s outskirts, Heeseung allowed the car to climb in speed, his hand curling familiarly around the gear stick. He never took his eyes off the road, and you saw on his face how much he loved it. The bright and long-acquainted happiness he had with the speed.
Your heart quelled every time Heeseung did a turn, and he reached out, letting go of the wheel and searching for you through the small inches in between.
“I am here,” he said. You pinch his fingers lightly because you knew — and it made the whole difference.
Heeseung only dropped down a few gears near the edges of the county, being caught on the invisible line separating the road from the beach.
You opened the window, allowing a gust of summer air to spread through the car as a laugh escaped from you, unhesitating and unselfconscious. The sky was impossibly clean tonight, making the sea an endless reflection of the stars.
You didn’t ask Heeseung to stop — you didn’t need to. The moment he looked at you, taking a glimpse of your sparkling eyes, and lips tugging with the echoes of your laughter, he just knew it was the right thing to do.
You leaped from the BMW before Heeseung had even turned the engine off, already barefoot and rushing through the white sand as his phone chimed at the console. His grandma probably, Jake or Jungwon, there was no one else, but the problem with having so few people in his life was that he had to pick up.
“Summer is indeed the best season,” Jake said at the other end of the line. “I got the money for you,”
“Do you have any idea how much you made tonight? I am blasted.”
“You said it last week when Daekho exposed how much he got,” Heeseung pointed out, a soft chuckle escaping from him.
“Trust me this time,” Jake said. “I am genuinely blasted. But talking about Daekho, he said he saw you a few nights ago, and you turned down a race — you never turn down a race.”
The sound of your laugh echoed through the night, causing Heeseung to raise his head to you and the view suddenly made him stop, phone still on his ear, mind in the middle of a phrase he would never say.
The moon was barely a quarter of what it could be, but it stood high and bright in the sky, bathing you as if you were something so precious that it decided to shine a little bit more just because of you.
You had walked into the sea, the water hitting your thighs, damping the hem of your dress. The camera he had won for you in the carnival was in your hands pointed at the satellite, and he wondered if you were taking it everywhere. It was something so simple, but it brought a warm sense inside of him.
As if you had felt his burning gaze over you, you turned to him, meeting his gaze through the windshield.
You were already painfully beautiful like this, but the moment you smiled at him — something stirred and moved inside of him.
“Hee?” Jake called by the other end of the line.
“It was on the night of the carnival, Y/N was with me,” he replied. “Jake, listen, I have to hang up, I will call you tomorrow.”
“Are you still with Y/N?”
“Yes.”
“Oh! Have fun, mate.”
Heeseung threw the phone back into the console, taking off his shoes, he followed you down the shore and into the sea, splashing farther into the water until his jeans were damped to his knees.
“Your jeans,” you gasped, but he only shook his head, he could care less about it.
“Are you carrying it everywhere?” he asked. He wasn’t looking at the camera, yet something incited that everything about his actions was about the small object now hanging by the security strip on your wrist.
“Yes.”
For a long and unsettled moment, Heeseung stared at you, his chest heaving with his deep breaths. He took one more step to reach you and suddenly, he was so close and the night so still. All you could feel was the calm rhythm of the sea beneath your feet, the soft hustle of his breath against your skin before a cold wind blew through, sweeping your hair out of the pins and to his cheeks, causing him to lift his hand, twisting the loosened lock between his fingertips before he brushed it behind your ear. It was a ridiculous thing to do. The wind kept blowing through and loosening it, but he didn’t mind doing it again and again. Until he decided to simply hold it, palm resting against your cheek as his fingers twined on your hair.
Heeseung called for you, and your skin tingled beneath the moonlight. No one ever said your name like he did — so slow and deliberate as if he wanted to taste the sound of each letter rolling through his tongue.
You couldn’t help but lean yourself into him, fingertips against his abdomen as you caught his bottom lip with yours. It wasn’t the first time you had given him this soft, teasing, and too-quick kiss. In fact, Heeseung already considered it something of yours, and he had scrutinized this so many times that his hand was fast on moving further into your hair, holding you still.
“I am not letting you slip away tonight,” he whispered.
“I would never,” you huffed. And Heeseung laughed at that, the sound blending with the summer breeze for a short moment before his lips slid over yours easily, perhaps too easily.
When he kissed you at the carnival, there was something of searching and discovering on it, but here — with his thumb caressing the sides of your neck, and your fingers slipping precisely to where his heart thrummed against his chest, it was all knowing. His tongue brushed against your lips, and you opened your mouth for him, letting him slide his tongue over yours. You could feel him groaning, his whole body reacting when you curled your fingers on his t-shirt.
You gasped for air, pulling away. But, Heeseung was still leaning in, eyes closed, lips parted as he followed you through the few inches you created.
“Princess,” he called. “I thought you were not slipping away.”
“Sorry,” you said. However, Heeseung just shook his head in reply, a mischievous grin spreading through his lips as he brought your face back to him, but instead of catching your lips again, he pestered you with quick kisses all over your face.
You laughed, not sure if it was because of his doings or the ticklish feeling of his lips smoothing your whole face. But even to your own ears, you sounded so happy — so happy beneath all of this.
As the night wore on, the temperature dropped and you shivered in the cold, immediately causing Heeseung to shrug his leather jacket off, draping around your shoulders and adjusting it the best way he could despite the difference of size.
It smelled like him. The strong scent of leather blended with car exhaustion, but also the sweet scent of peonies and the brisk breezes of summer nights.
“We should go back,” he said, looking up at the sky. The stars were already starting to low, weakly gleaming through his eyes. “It’s late anyway.”
┈┈┈┈
“The princess is back in her castle,” Heeseung said, making a chuckle escape from your lips.
However, instead of finding something to reply, you simply reached for your seatbelt, unfastening it a second before your hands curled at the sleeve of his jacket, starting to pull it away.
“It’s alright, give me back another day,” he said.
“Alright,” you whispered. “Thank you for driving me home again — I hope it isn’t out of the way for you.”
“I could lie and say you are worth the trouble just to sound like a nice guy,” Heeseung started, the corner of his lips tugging up. He was fighting a battle with a smile and almost losing it. “I live two streets down from here, a beige house with a brown roof and matching shutters.”
“It seems pretty much like most Hongcheon’s houses,” you replied, slightly leaning to his side of the car, and Heeseung reached for you promptly.
The porch lights were on, gently illuminating your face with little strips of gold. He traced each one of them with the tip of his fingers before he finally gave in and smiled. You were so beautiful, he could die all day and every night just to miss you.
“You are right, but there are remarkable things about it.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Heeseung echoed. “You will always hear a culinary program coming from the TV, it will be my grandma in the living room, and the place always smells like something just baked — it is also her.”
“Seems cozy.”
“Also, the garden is full of white flowers — really easy to find,” he continued. “But in any case, the number is two hundred fifteen.”
Just like the whole town, Heeseung’s house was a remnant from the eighties — with its pale walls, brown roof, and matching shutters, it blended in with all the other houses on the street. But as Heeseung described, the house sat in the middle of a garden, the white flowers accompanying you through the whole path from the sidewalk to the front porch.
The door opened at your first knock, quickly revealing an old lady. It wasn’t necessary to wonder about her — not only because you knew Heeseung lived with his grandmother, but because her appearance was uncannily like his. Although she carried some signs of age on her gray hair, the shiny doe-eyes peering through the curls were there, seeming to be a family thing.
“Good afternoon,” you started, a tentative smile tugging on your lips as you looked at her. “I am Y/N, Heeseung’s-”
“Heeseung!” His grandmother screamed, startling you. “Why there’s such a pretty girl asking for you at my front door?”
Heeseung appeared at the end of the corridor, eyebrows furrowed. He seemed as braced as anyone could be standing barefoot in washed jeans and a white tank top — until his eyes landed on you.
“Y/N,” he called, pronouncing your name with the same deliberate slowness he had on the previous night and making your skin tingle.
In your periphery, Heeseung’s grandmother drifted her gaze between both of you, taking in how Heeseung reached from across the corridor — with his expression smoothed, his eyes were allowed gleam beneath the sunlight and his lips to tug into a smile too genuine to be only politeness.
When he reached the door, she turned around, leaning to his side as if she was about to whisper a great secret to her grandson, but instead, her words were spoken loud enough for both of you to hear.
“Invite her inside,” she said, walking away and leaving both of you a little bit astonished.
“I just came to bring your jacket, I don’t want to bother you.”
“You would never,” he answered. His fingers curled around the door handle, opening it a little wider as he completely ignored how you had extended the jacket at him. But although his actions seemed confident, he slightly inclined his head, shaking it as if to fix his bangs, but you had already seen it enough to know, he was embarrassed.
You brought the jacket back to your chest, hugging it as you stepped inside. Immediately, the comfortable smell of chocolate surrounded the air. Heeseung wasn’t lying when he told you about the never stopping oven, just like he wasn’t lying about the culinary program always on the selected channel of the television. But you wished he had told you about everything else too, so at least, you wouldn’t be so surprised right now.
You had grown up with a meticulous amount of order. The houses you lived in were always spacious, squeaked clean, minimalist even, so you didn’t know how to react as soon as you caught sight of the inside.
It was tiny, even if taken in comparison to the row houses on the outskirts of the county, and was made even smaller with the amount of plants scattered through the corners.
Afternoon sunlight spilled from the back windows of the kitchen, batching everything until it reached the entrance corridor. You couldn’t tell if the warmth came solely from the sun or if it had something to do with the beige walls, the mismatched colorful furniture, and the small chaos only houses built with love are capable of possessing.
Everything felt so cozy and summer-made that you couldn’t imagine a better place to spend the season in.
“Princess,” he called, and you hummed, turning to look at him. However, Heeseung was already bending on a knee, fingers fumbling through the straps of your high heels and removing them, one at a time.
“Now you are ready to go.”
“Thank you.”
Heeseung stood up, bottling out the sunlight with his real height, casting you in the shadow. And if it wasn’t enough to make you coil, the way he reached for you, hands cupping the sides of your neck was.
“You are good at reading between the lines,” he said.
“Am I? Or had you been just insistent?” you asked, making a chuckle escape from Heeseung. It was a soft, almost not there thing, but you could feel it rushing through your cheeks, the hustle of his breaths warming your skin.
Heeseung leaned in, catching your lips with his. It wasn’t his intention to make it fast, but the moment his grip tightened on your skin trying to bring you closer to him, his grandma screamed again, demanding both of you to come to the kitchen.
┈┈┈┈
The kitchen felt fuller than ever — not that it was a difficult thing, just like the whole house, it was tiny, scarcely giving enough space to three people to walk through, but there was something about having you there that made it full in a different way.
You were polite enough to ask if his grandmother needed help, and his grandmother was amusing enough to allow you, leaving Heeseung to watch from the kitchen table as you learned how to prepare a chocolate tart with an unreasoning smile.
“When Heeseung was younger, chocolate tarts with strawberries were his favorite,” his grandmother told you. “He always asked how would he leave me if I am the only one who knows how to prepare it in the way he likes,”
“But now that I am teaching you, he may leave me and go with you.” she finished, causing Heeseung to choke on the air. However, you only laughed at it, head thrown back. The sun had started to set by that time, sprinkling through the windows in tones of orange and pink, but when it reached you — it was all gold.
He knew his grandmother had said something else, but it sounded a world apart from where he stood. You had looked at him, your laughter had turned into a soft smile and it suddenly made him comprehend why the kitchen felt fuller than ever.
You not only materially filled the place, but you also filled it with warmth and light.
“Hee?” his grandmother called. He hadn’t been paying attention to the conversation for some time now and before he could state it, the house phone rang, saving him from another embarrassment.
He stood up, walking out of the kitchen as you both were just making sense of the phone ringing.
“You and Y/N have mobile phones, you know it, right?” Jungwon asked at the other end of the line.
“What?”
“Y/N was supposed to meet Sunhae and Hayoung in the drive-in cinema, she hasn’t shown up and is not picking up the phone.”
“And how did you figure she is with me?” Heeseung asked, his eyebrows involuntarily furrowing in confusion.
“You didn’t pick up when I called too,” Jungwon sighed. “Just tell her that the girls are waiting inside.”
Jungwon hung up so softly, it took another second for Heeseung to notice he did and another one to let go of it.
“I didn’t realize the time,” you explained, as soon as he was back.
“I can drive you there,” Heeseung said.
“Do you need to leave?” his grandmother asked. “Already?”
“I am supposed to meet my cousin and her friend.”
“It is a shame that it was so fast, but it was lovely to meet you,” his grandmother said, taking your hands in hers. “Please — please, come back.”
Although the moment seemed to be crafted in the warmth of the summer sunset, there was something frantic about the way she was holding you. Heeseung’s grandmother squeezed your hands almost as if she didn’t want you to walk away from her house — almost as if she was afraid you were taking something important together with you. And it took you anew.
You looked at Heeseung in search of answers, but he just returned your gaze as confused as you.
“She surely will, grandma,” Heeseung said, a gentle smile playing at the corners of his lips. However, it only made her squeeze tighten on you, just for a brief second before she let you go.
┈┈┈┈
By the time Heeseung parked the BMW on the outskirts of the drive-in cinema, the movie had already started, Rachel McAdams dancing beneath the street lights with Ryan Gosling on the big screen. And even though you knew you were late, you stayed still, watching as the scene unfolded.
People had different favorite scenes of The Notebook, the kiss in the rain, perhaps the beach when they said the famous If you are a bird, I am a bird. However, for you, it always had been this one — the real beginning of everything.
Heeseung looked at you, but he didn’t say anything about you being late, and how your cousin was annoyed somewhere inside, if anything he reached for the space behind his seat, taking the same leather jacket you had left in one of his kitchen chairs a few hours previous, and put it on your lap.
“The temperature always drops during the night,” he explained.
“I just gave it back to you.”
“Give it back to me another day.”
You looked up at him, and he smiled. The words had left his lips effectively, even with a note of tease on it, but still carrying a real meaning, Heeseung wanted to see you again tomorrow. And because you wanted to see him again too, you nodded, slipping the jacket through your shoulders.
“Alright,” you agreed.
“Alright?” he echoed, leaning across the gearshift. Heeseung reached for you, his lips finding yours at the same time his fingertips pressed to the side of your neck. You tasted like chocolate and strawberries that night, the sweet delation you had been stealing the ingredients while preparing the tart, and he couldn’t help but smile.
If the whole afternoon hadn’t been homey enough, this — this kiss had been.
“I should go,” you whispered, drawing back, yet you were so close to him still, each word had been a brush against his lips.
“I know,” he replied, with a small sigh. Heeseung was reluctant to pull himself away, but he did, letting you slip from the BMW and walk into the cinema.
You tightened his jacket around your body, tugging the collar up to your mouth. His scent was already starting to fade in, giving space to yours, only when you snuggled your nose on, you could feel the odd combination that Heeseung was. All mischief and sweet, all substantial and soft.
A nearby car left the windows open, the radio connected to the big screen loud and allowing you to hear the exact moment Gena Rowlands asked James Garner:
“Did they fall in love?”
“Yes, they did,” he replied.
Saturday’s nights smelled like car exhaustion and burnt tires, like the leather of Heeseung’s jacket and his peony perfume when he brought you closer to him, lips against yours, fingers threading on your hair. Saturday’s nights were the break of the perfect serenity of Hongcheon, the whispers of the emerald hills turning into the loud sound of the racing cars beneath the street lights.
Heeseung had never missed a race, leaving you behind with Sunhae, Hayoung, and a kiss.
“Be my lucky charm once more, alright?” he always whispered, an amusing smile playing on his lips before you both broke into a laugh.
However, tonight he parked his BMW on the sides of the highway, joining the long line of watchers instead of racers. Heeseung didn’t say anything as he slipped through his door, leaving you to sit still, watching him walking to your side of the car in confusion — on any other night he would open the door for you, intertwine your finger, and take you to where Hayoung and Sunhae waited. But with all the unknown turns, he took you to the front of his car.
He sat on the hood, and it was necessary just an exchange of gazes for him to bring you to his lap. His arms came around your waist, coaxing you to come closer enough to feel his breaths rushing through your skin.
“Are you alright?” you asked. “You always race.”
“Jake and Jungwon had made a bet among themselves, they said I couldn’t join because I win way too much,” he said, leaning on you, his forehead meeting your temple. “Apparently, since I got my lucky charm, I am not letting them have the first place.”
You knew it was just a lie — a tease, Heeseung was one of the favorites before you had even stepped on Hongcheon, but you let him, brushing his nose down to your neck and tickling you with his breath.
A few meters behind, in the middle of the highway, the racers were already in their places, the engines roaring as they held the cars in check. Jungwon had his hand out, pointing at Jake through the opened windows as if to remind him of their secondary bet. If you focused enough, you could almost hear them laughing beneath the furor of the place.
“Did you meet them here?” you asked. “Jake and Jungwon?”
“No, we met at the university,” Heeseung said. “When I dropped out, I think they thought I was slipping away, so they started coming back during weekends to visit, and when I told them about the racing they decided to join,”
“Something for us three to do still.”
“They are good friends.”
“They are,” he agreed. His tone was calm, with the same warmth you were used to, but you could pinch the small longing it carried. Everything Heeseung had given away after his father’s death weighed on him still. You reached for him, fingers spreading beneath the collar of his jacket and t-shirt, finding his bare skin. He shivered at your touch, snuggling his nose a little deeper into you.
“I am very lucky,” Heeseung whispered. “About everyone I have in my life.”
“They are lucky to have you too.”
“Do you think so?”
“I am sure so,” you said, and you didn’t need to look at him to know he was smiling at it.
┈┈┈┈
Through the weeks you had watched the races, you had never seen Jake win, and perhaps that’s why his reaction had been so amusing to you.
His Camaro squealed through the asphalt, passing the finish line with a lush drift before he came to where you stood together with Heeseung, hurling his window open.
“Let’s go,” he shouted.
“Where?” Heeseung asked.
“Beneath a bridge? The bar? I don’t care!” Jake exclaimed, quickly stealing a laugh from you. “I won and Jungwon is paying for everything tonight!”
The Camaro wailed with no previous warning, disappearing through the highway in a flash and leaving no further choice aside from following him.
The bar made a home on the outskirts of Hongcheon, coming so close to the coast that even at night, you could see how sunlight and bracing breezes had worked on this part of the province.
It held no signs, no shining lights, and the facade had nothing but a worn-out red tint and a black door. It simply was called the bar because—
“What else do you call a bar without a name?” Heeseung asked, opening the door for you.
You knew it had to have a name, but instead of debating you allowed it to slip away with a single shake of your head before you stepped past him.
The interior was darker, blasting in some electronic music, and although there were just a few tables, this late at night people were already too high to prefer to sit still instead of being on the dance floor, leaving a bunch of options for you.
Hayoung sprawled herself on the nearest chair, immediately being followed by Sunhae and Jake.
“I am getting the drinks,” Jungwon announced. “Is everyone getting beer?”
“A coke,” Heeseung said. It didn’t require explanations, but he did anyway, shouting above the loud music. “I have to drive Y/N home.”
“OK, lover boy,” Jake laughed. “Why don’t you help Jungwon get everything?”
With his ears tingling, Heeseung was too embarrassed by the nickname and the situation to oppose, so he just turned around, following Jungwon through the furor of the place.
Jake waited until both of them were far, and completely out of sight before he stood up, just to claim the chair by your side.
“You bewitched him,” he said. “Have been ages since I last saw him like this.”
“Like this?” you echoed.
“I have known Heeseung for four years and something now, so I can tell after his father’s death, smiling and chuckling around — it simply wasn’t him,”
“Also not drinking because he has to drive?” Jake laughed, this time so loudly, you could swear it somehow echoed through the place. “He never once cared about it and by never I mean even before his father,”
“Believe me, Y/N, whatever spell you put on the man — you saved him.”
You blinked at Jake, not knowing what to say. And before you could think about it, Sunhae’s hand met yours from beneath the table, taking your attention.
“I love this song,” she said, dragging you through the crowd and into the dance floor. Everything happened so fast, a lost breath between what Jake had said, Sunhae’s hands clasped on yours, and Hayoung’s laugh because for once she wasn’t the one being forced to the dance.
Sunhae encouraged you too. However, your eyes kept traveling to the table, waiting for Heeseung to come back, to notice your absence and search for you.
You looked at each for seconds too long, his eyes lingering, hands caught in the middle of scattering the drinks through the table.
It was stupid honestly, how whenever he thought he was used to your beauty, you managed to surprise him, standing in a new light and taking him anew. You were bathed in the shine of the red and purple flashing from the fairy lights, eyes sparkling, lips a little bit parted with rescue words ready to slip through. However, you didn’t need to pronounce any of those. Heeseung was already walking towards you, acting as if there was no one else in his eyesight.
He only stopped behind you, hands finding your hips — bringing you close to his chest, aligning your bodies in all the right places. It wasn’t the rescue you were expecting, but you forgot about it the moment his laugh echoed through your body.
It’s not that you doubted Jake, but you couldn’t imagine a Heeseung that didn’t laugh like this. The sound was so perfect that it hurt you to imagine a period in which it never existed.
Heeseung seemed created for this joyful and unconditional happiness.
As he leaned on you, you could feel the ghost of his smile on your skin — his breath brushing through your shoulders before he found the base of your neck with a kiss. You tilted your head back, and Heeseung took the opportunity to trail you with kisses, reaching your earlobe with an exasperated slowness before he pinched the sensitive skin.
“Hey, princess.”
You turned around, pressing your fingertips against his chest. In the middle of the furor of the place, you still could feel the cadence of his heart, the way it hammered against your touch.
“What-” he started, but the rest of his question was cut off — taken by your lips on his. He gasped at your sudden action, yet it was muffed when your tongue slid against his. You were demanding in a way he couldn’t remember you ever being. Your fingers curled on his t-shirt, pulling him closer, and he allowed himself to grip your waist. Your dress was so thin, he could feel your skin beneath it, all warm and his as he ended the small inch you failed to.
He kissed you deeper, a little messier, and a small whine escaped from you.
“Go get a room in the name of lord,” someone screamed, so close it hadn’t left any doubt it was for you and Heeseung.
You both parted, lips swollen from kissing, sucking, and causing you to bury your face in his chest, but Heeseung only laughed — the same joyful and happy sound echoing through your body before he reached for the top of your head, tangling his fingers on your hair as he gave a soft pat.
“I think we can call it a night.”
┈┈┈┈
It was later than usual when you arrived at the rented house that night, far later than when your parents used to recoil to their room. But when you stepped inside, the lights of the back porch were still on, a faint echo of a conversation coming through the opened door — not only with the two known voices of your parents but with a third one.
“Grandma,” you smiled.
If you weren’t so happy, you would have stopped for a few seconds, taking note of Heeseung’s jacket still hanging on your shoulders and your still a bit swollen lips. You would have taken a moment to compose yourself. But you only rushed through the house, and the back porch, hugging the old lady.
“When did you arrive?” you asked.
“I am pretty sure the sun was still shining, but someone seems really busy this summer to care about answering her phone.”
“Sunghoon has been complaining about it,” your mother added. “Send him a message once in a while — the boy has been wondering about you.”
“I am sorry,” you said, more directed to what your grandmother said than to your mother.
“So please, enlight me,” your grandmother asked, hands traveling through the collar of Heeseung’s jacket, preventing it from slipping away before she pinched your cheeks. “Your parents were telling me, were you with Hayoung or the mysterious guy in the black BMW?”
You gasped, embarrassed and surprised Heeseung had been the topic of their conversation.
“This same car has dropped you here a lot through the last month,” your father pointed. “We were just wondering if we ever going to meet—”
“His name is Heeseung,” you said. “Lee Heeseung.”
“Right, why don’t you invite this Heeseung to lunch on Monday? Some of my friends are coming here.”
The house on the hill had been a dream for any Hongcheon resident. It used to be just an old and abandoned three-story construction until some businessman decided to buy it and renew it to make a summer rented house — then, it became too grandiose for the modest town. All made with white bricks and having Greek columns supporting the roof, it could be called a manor instead. And ever since the first moment, Heeseung wasn’t amused that your family was the one renting the place for the summer.
It fitted you, the class, the grandiose, the evergreen garden that bloomed flowers throughout the whole year. You were made to this, and he would be lying if he ever said it never scared him — he would be lying if he ever said it wasn’t scaring him now.
The driveway was full beneath the summer sun, your father’s black suburban leading a line of parked convertibles and worth-it sedans. Heeseung was glad that at least his BMW fit in the whole scenery because he wasn’t so sure of himself.
As he walked through the driveway, he noticed the front door hung open for anyone to come inside, but there was something about the idea of not having the small break between the knock and the door swinging open that made him anxious, tugging on the sleeves of his dark suit with frantic hands.
He stood there, unsure of what to do, but you came to him, rushing through the living room, white dress swirling dangerously around your thighs before you hugged him.
“You came,” you whispered, words threading through his hair.
Maybe it had been the summer heat, maybe it had been the sweetness of your perfume, and the way you had turned the full force of your joy into his direction. But instead of replying, he just stood still, lost in the sense of you.
Only when you stepped back, he reminded himself. You took sight of him, and your eyes flicked beneath the afternoon sun. You never have seen Heeseung wearing anything that wasn’t a combination of his jeans, shirts, and leather jacket, so the full view of him in a suit and a tie astonished you.
“Is it too much?” he whispered.
It was, it really was, but you were so happy he was there — so happy he cared that you let it all pass with a single shake of the head.
“They settled the lunch in the back garden,” you said. “I am just afraid you will get a heat stroke.”
Heeseung exhaled, a bit too harshly as he slightly inclined his head. But he didn’t need to finish his small rite, shaking his head and pretending to fix his bangs like he always did, you already knew he was embarrassed. So you didn’t say anything as you interrupted him, taking his hands in yours, and guiding him further into the living room. You didn’t say anything as you reached for his shoulders, rushing your hands beneath the heavy suit and removing it.
Heeseung was well aware the piece was cheap, probably the cheapest suit you have ever touched, but still, you folded it with so much care before you placed it over a nearby couch — with so much care, he couldn’t come into peace about what he was supposed to do with himself.
“Princess,” he called, not because he had something to say, but because he thought if he didn’t make something factual, he would fade between a touch and another.
The memories of Saturday were still too vivid and too triggering late at night, and to add something else seemed too much.
You hummed in reply, reaching for his tie, fingers curling on the dark material before you tugged him to your height. When he bent in, your breath brushed through his cheeks, warm, and teasingly.
However, despite the confidence of your actions, your cheeks were rosier than before, an adorable denounce you were a little bit embarrassed too, and that was it — you had broken the spell. Heeseung laughed at you, the pleasant sound echoing through the whole room at the same time the invisible weight he carried on his shoulders was lifted.
“You don’t need to worry about anything, you know?” you whispered. “I am here.”
“I know you are,” he whispered back, spreading his palms on your waist, fingers accidentally tangling on the laces of your dress as he brought you closer.
His nose brushed against yours, and your lips parted, just enough to taste the sweetness of the tea on his breath. Chamomile and honey, his grandmother’s favorite combination to calm any nerves down.
“Now, this is what I call a worth-it movie scene,” your grandma interrupted, making Heeseung step back. “Is this the infamous Lee Heeseung?”
“Yes, grandma,” you said, hurriedly. “This is Heeseung, my-”
You stopped, all at once, mind still stuck on him, and that one never once confirmed word. And perhaps you had been there for so long that your grandmother laughed out loudly, being followed by a more shy and reserved Heeseung.
“Don’t worry about explaining it to me, darling,” she said. “It might be hard to imagine, but I have been this age before.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Heeseung,” she continued.
“Pleasured to meet you too,” Heeseung replied, extending his hand at your grandmother. But she ignored it, preferring to instead, take him in a long and tight hug.
“Now hurry to the back garden! Her parents are asking about you already!”
┈┈┈┈
“I have a feeling your grandmother would love to meet my grandmother,” Heeseung whispered against your ear. And you laughed at that, soft and genuinely — allowing the sound to blend with the furor of the back garden.
Everything was happening there already. The air was smokey with the marinated meat left on the grill, encircled with the flowers growing on the bushes. Children laughed as they ran through the greenish grass, and adults scattered themselves on the long table, talking above their crystal cups with an enthusiasm that only came from too much happiness, too much alcohol, or both.
And as you took the last steps to the garden, your father approached, a glass of his favorite champagne already hanging in his left hand, as he held your mother’s with the other. He kept his hair slicked back, proudly showing the significantly graying hair at the sides, meanwhile, your mother kept simple but still too lined up. And even if Heeseung hadn’t asked about it, their attire gave away their successful work in business, suddenly making Heeseung more comfortable in his own attire. You had finished removing his tie and rolled his sleeves up, but he was still way too formal for his daily basics.
“It’s great to finally meet you,” your father said, extending his hand at Heeseung. “Y/N has been safekeeping you the whole summer.”
You weren’t sure if your father had said it intending to be funny or to call both of you out, but if anything Heeseung took your father’s hand, shaking it with the best smile he could.
“It’s great to meet you too sir.”
“Please, no sir — we are all family here,” your father said, and your mother smiled, extending her own hand to Heeseung.
“Y/N can guide you through, but feel free here, Heeseung,” your mother said.
A phone chimed in the middle of the conversation, and you immediately recognized it as your dad’s.
“Excuse me,” he asked, taking the device out of his pants back pocket.
“Sunghoon!” your father greeted. Heeseung could notice your switch of emotions, the way you stiffened as your smile disappeared with a hitch of breath. “Oh? Perhaps I overestimated the driveway?”
Another pause.
“Do you see a gate on the right side? I am going to open it up to you, park at the side — no, don’t worry.”
Your parents walked away and Heeseung reached for your hand, pinching you gently, but because he was too respectful he didn’t question the reason behind your reaction. Not even when a brown Range Rover came into view, and Sunghoon left the car like a gush of winter wind, greeting your parents and giving a fine bottle of wine like the old acquaintance he was. Not even when Sunghoon approached you, lips curling on a fond smile, eyes gleaming, not being able to hide the irrational happiness of simply seeing you.
You slipped from Heeseung’s touch, allowing Sunghoon to hug you, and when his arms involved your waist, bringing you tantalizing closer as his lips chased for your temple, something settled inside of Heeseung. Strong enough to make him dizzy, great enough to ache.
He had never considered himself a jealous person, but perhaps he simply never cared about something enough.
Sunghoon not only had the type of face girls in this county would make lines for, but he knew how to wear his money well. His car was impressive, a Range Rover velar with a customized mental brown tint that matched the tone of his silk button-down, and he made a strange image near you, almost too fitting. Almost too perfect.
“Hee, this is Park Sunghoon, son of my father’s business partner,” you said, drawing back. “Also my classmate at University and friend.”
“Lee Heeseung,” Heeseung said, his voice sounding pleasant enough as he extended his right hand at Sunghoon. However, he had stepped past you, pulling himself between you and Sunghoon and making it clear his true feelings.
Your palm met the back of his shoulders almost unconsciously, spreading your fingers and feeling the warmth of the sun beneath the cotton of his shirt.
Sunghoon straightened himself to his full height, but took Heeseung’s hand anyway, shaking it for a brief moment before he turned back to you.
“I have been calling,” Sunghoon said.
“I am sorry, I haven’t been much on the phone lately.”
“I know, your mother told me — what reminds me, I have something for you,” he said. “Please, wait a moment.”
“I-” you started, but Sunghoon was already walking back to his car, opening the door and reaching for something on the passenger seat. You barely had looked at Heeseung, noticing his clenched jaw before Sunghoon was back.
“I heard you have been obsessed with a disposable camera,” he said. “So I bought this while I was in Japan last week, I think something higher quality would be better.”
Sunghoon extended the box to you, and immediately, a gasp escaped from you. The box was completely black, except for the Fujifilm logo and the camera’s name, both of them shining in metallic beneath the afternoon sun. You never had searched much about cameras to be an expert, but you knew enough to comprehend, it was outstanding.
It easily outmatched the camera Heeseung had gotten you on the night of the carnival, and even so — even so, you still preferred Heeseung’s. You liked the analog camera — you liked the retro feeling it had. You liked how your grandma had laughed when you first appeared with it, telling you it looked so old, but this small sudden thought made you realize the reason you kept it safe with you wasn’t because of the item itself, but because of the memories you kept collecting with Heeseung throughout the month.
“Sunghoon, it’s really nice, and I appreciate the thought, but I can’t accept it.”
“Why?” he asked, frowning. Eyebrows brought together, the smile he carried just a second gone, everything on his face giving away he was faltering inside.
Sunghoon had always been unable to hide his emotions, ever since you knew him. Everything was always there, just a sight away.
“I-” you started, tongue almost rolling into the lie that it was too expensive, but what was a few billion won for him? What was a few billion won for your family? He was going to laugh as soon as you finished the phrase.
“I am already content with the camera Heeseung gave me.”
And that was it, you had broken both of them with a single phrase. Heeseung eased beneath your touch at the same time Sunghoon’s lips parted in an exclamation.
There was a small fraction of a second that you thought, Sunghoon was about to say something as he looked between you and Heeseung, but he let it all go, turning to the long table settled in the middle of the garden, and listening to your grandma summoning everyone to eat.
“I am going first,” he said. “I haven’t greeted your grandma and my parents.”
As Sunghoon walked away, Heeseung reached for you, fingers intertwining just to bring you close to his chest.
“You didn’t need to protect the camera so fiercely.”
“It wasn’t the camera,” you said, and he smiled down at you because he knew.
┈┈┈┈
At the table, everything seemed even more chaotic. Near the extremity, Sunghoon’s father was telling a terrible joke. You smiled, just politely, tightening your grip on Heeseung’s hand as you guided him farther. In the middle, people talked loudly about politics as if it was the most pleasant topic for a summer afternoon. Your head spun just by hearing the names.
You ended up sitting at the other extremity, across from one of your mother’s oldest friends, Mrs. Choi. She smiled easily and talked about her life even more easily. Everything there was to know about her, you have listened at least once, or perhaps twice, not that you considered her a bother. She was someone easy to be with, so when she turned her head at you and smiled, all you could do was smile back.
“Y/N!” she exclaimed. “Exactly the woman I was looking for.”
“Is that so?”
“My niece got into Seoul National University too, she is starting in autumn,” she said. “She is considering moving to the dorms, do you still live there?”
“Oh, no,” you replied. “The dorms are great, but I couldn’t adapt very well to the community kitchen and decided to move to a studio nearby.”
“Is it that bad?”
“No, I just dislike cooking with strangers passing by.”
Mrs. Choi laughed at it for a blissful moment before she turned to Heeseung.
“And you?” she asked. “Do you study with her in Seoul too?”
“No,” you promptly said. “Heeseung — he stays nearby.”
“Oh, and what are you going to do once the summer ends?” she asked. “You two are together, right?”
The question was crafted in mere curiosity, but all at once, you faltered as if you had been verbatim attacked. Your hands fell on the table, fingers too weak to do anything aside from staying there.
Heeseung knocked his knee against yours, a reassuring gesture that he was still with you.
“Seoul is just a couple of hours away,” he said. “Whenever she wants me to — if she wants me to, I would drive anywhere just to see her,”
“There’s no one else in this world like her.”
He spoke it easily behind a glass of iced tea, almost unwittingly, but the words ached within you so wonderfully simple and warm. You wished you could hold them in your palms, keep them between your fingers, just so you could press and feel them whenever you were faltering.
┈┈┈┈
Aside from Mrs. Choi telling for what you suspected to be the third time about her month-worth trip through Europe. Nothing happened between the main course and the dessert.
Heeseung’s hand had found comfort on your knee, the soft pressure of his thumb drawing tiny circles through your skin as the end of the afternoon approached, the sun lowering into the chain of hills, the sky turning into a vivid orange that only summer sunsets managed to. But only when Mrs. Choi excused herself, saying she wanted to catch the first stars, you allowed yourself to put your hand above Heeseung’s, leaning closer, your cheeks almost touching his so you could whisper.
He didn’t think it would make any difference at all. There were so many things happening still that no one would notice if you screamed at him, but he liked how your perfume was everything he could breathe, all sweet and flowery. He liked how you spoke so closely, almost giving him a taste of the strawberry cocktail you had tried.
“Take me somewhere?” you asked.
Heeseung looked at you. He intended to ask if it would be alright to simply leave like this. However, when your gazes encountered, remnants of sunlight reflected through your eyes, glistening the color with a goldish light that made you feel like part of the sky rather than a material thing and everything he could do was nod, using your already connected hands to pull you up and away, until you had reached his BMW.
He drove you further into the hills with the windows down, and the headlights only illuminating as far as the next turn. He reached for the same open field he had taken you on the night of the first race, but instead of stopping, he kept going, away and away — until you were so far from the town that all you could hear were the soft whispers of the night when he turned the engine off.
It wasn’t quiet, but silent. Something you never had experienced while living in the city.
“Look to the sky,” he asked. And you did, looking up through the window.
At Hongcheon there were never enough streetlights to obliterate the stars completely, you could always get a glimpse of them, but there, so up through the hills, the stars were so bright they almost formed a river, a stream of light against the dark.
“It’s beautiful,” you whispered.
“It really is.”
You turned to look at Heeseung, but he had his gaze already fixed on you, his eyes gleaming, lips curling on a fond smile. He had no embarrassment in letting you know he had been like this for the whole while. And when you reached for him on the gear stick, spreading your palm through the back of his hand, Heeseung promptly moved beneath your touch, turning his palm into yours and intertwining your fingers.
“What are you thinking?” you asked.
Heeseung didn’t reply — not right away, he allowed the question to hang within the seconds, blending with the summer breeze as his gaze lingered on your face a little too long to be incidental before wandering through the sky.
“The day we met, I was racing with Jake,” he said. “I remember looking down on Hongcheon and thinking about how summer was starting,”
“I just had this feeling that something was coming — something great.”
“Was it?” you asked. “Great?”
“Wonderful,” he whispered.
You leaned across the gearshift. And Heeseung let go of your intertwined hands to cup your face, his fingers preferring to thread through your hair instead, bringing you closer so his lips could graze yours, a new kind of kiss, parted lips that were barely there.
It was slow in a way you couldn’t remember it ever being — it was lazier in a way that only came with the acknowledgment of something none of you were going to name yet but knew was there.
Heeseung slid his seat all the way back, subtly pulling you to him. The BMW didn’t have the back seats, and it didn’t give much space. But you moved anyway, your knees straddling his hips, your palms pressed to his chest, the soft rhythm of his heartbeats against your touch.
His heart skipped a beat when you slid your hands down on his torso, feeling the warmth the sun had left on his skin before you curled two fingers on the first button of his shirt. But if anything, Heeseung just nodded at you.
You were aware he was watching you, burning you with affection and fondness as he accompanied every move you did to open button after button. Your fingers splayed over the just exposed skin of his chest, brushing through his whole extension until you reached to his neck, threading your fingers in the hair at his nape, and angling him to you. Heeseung shivered beneath your touch, a small growl escaping his lips.
“You are my downfall, but as well my saving, princess,” he whispered. “I hope you know it.”
You caught his bottom lip on yours, once, twice, enough times to feel brave enough to brush your tongue against it, but Heeseung was already on it, sliding his tongue against yours. He kissed you deeper, messier — needier. And if it wasn’t enough to make you whine, when he shifted beneath you, pressing the solid length of himself against you was.
Heeseung cursed when you grind against him, sliding his hands up to your thighs. He never had relished your sundresses as much as he did now, passing the hem of it with no ado, and pinching his fingers on your bare waist. He held you still, lips leaving yours just to find your neck, trailing down to your shoulders with an open mouth and making you shiver despite the heat wrapped around the car.
“If you keep going one more minute — I am gone,” he murmured.
“Hee, please.”
“Please what, princess?”
“I need you.” He chuckled at the way you had said it, all whine, soft and pure.
He pinched you again, just to make sure you were looking at him, but you were — you always had been, cheeks flushed, and eyes a bit too bright, almost making him forget what he was supposed to say.
“Are you sure?” he asked. “I need you to be sure.”
“I am.”
You could hear him swallowing beneath the silence of the night, reaching up on you — brushing his hands through your ribcage, drawing your dress up to your shoulder, and allowing it to fall somewhere over the console.
He barely gave it a moment before his fingertips ran for the clasps of your laced bra, opening it.
“I didn’t think our first time would be in the front seat of my car, but how can I say no to you?” he said, leaning on you. His forehead landed on your collarbone with a gentle thud, drawing the tip of his nose along the swell of your breasts as his hands found your hips, burying his fingers on your skin. “You are so pretty.”
“Did you think about it?” you asked.
He had heard your question, and understood it, but he also had heard the way your breath hitched in surprise because you never thought you had this effect on him, and instead of replying, he pulled one of your nipples into his mouth, sucking it to a solid point and making your back arch. The act alone was so pleasurable, a desperate sound escaped through your lips before you couldn’t even notice it.
Desire swirled through his eyes and he brought you close to him, rolling his hard length against your center as he moved to the other nipple, his tongue drawing a faint line into your chest.
Heeseung only drew back to savor your reactions, the way your eyes closed, your mouth parted as the most pretty sounds continued to escape through.
“Hee,” you whimpered. You have never heard your voice so desperate like this. You have never felt so desperate. And that was exactly what broke him, the way you called for him so softly and whimpered, so full of wish. He could give you anything even if you never asked.
You reached for his low abdomen, feeling his muscles tense and contract as you fumbled through the waist of his pants, but before you could do anything, Heeseung stopped you — his fingers curling around your wrists.
“I am here,” he said. “I promise I won’t tease you anymore, so let me take care of everything.”
The rest of the clothes were taken off laboriously, Heeseung sliding your panties through your ankles and allowing them to join the rest of your attire before he reached for the button of his pants, getting a little shuffling underneath you as he pushed it down to his tights together with his boxers.
He took himself in his hand, hard, long, and already pushing into you. His breath hitched at the feel of you, whispering your name, pronouncing it with the same deliberate slowness he always had and you couldn’t help but moan at the whole feel of him, fingers curling on his shoulders, head a bit thrown back.
There were silver stripes painted across your skin, the moon appearing behind the trees, invading through his opened window. And you were so pretty like this — so pretty, Heeseung had no second thoughts before meandering his arm around your waist, bringing you close to his chest as he pulled out to the tip and back into you.
It was slow at first, all about him discovering the new shape of you, but soon enough, it was confident, knowing. He knew exactly how to move, how to make you tighten around him, and his name to escape from your lips a little bit more frantic.
Your fingers spread through his neck, trying to angle him up to you, stifling all your whines against his tongue, but Heeseung only buried his face in the curve of your shoulders in response, his heavy breaths against your skin.
“I want to hear you,” he mumbled. “Please.”
Despite your shyness, you did as he asked, giving him all your noises, whimpers, and the soft, snuffled sounds, allowing them to blend with the summer night and the way he kept whispering for you to not stop.
“Heeseung, I-”
He moved, focusing on you, eyes encountering yours for the first time, all dazed and captivated, and he let out a gasp of breath as he leaned into you, forehead brushing your own.
“That’s ok, princess,” he whispered, pressing a little bit deeper, a little bit harder. “I am here, come for me.”
You clenched around him, thighs shaking as the knot in your stomach broke loose, just a few moments before he followed you.
Heeseung swallowed your last whine, catching your lips on his as he slipped out. His fingers smoothed your skin, thumbs drawing full circles as he sat you down on his thighs.
The car went quiet, scratched only by the soft rustle of the leaves outside and Heeseung’s heart slowly coming into peace beneath your fingertips.
“Yours,” he whispered.
You drew back, just a bit, hands slipping from his neck and spreading through his chest for support. The moonlight picked strands of his hair, reflected through his damp skin. You couldn’t make sense of what he had said.
“What?”
“Early — when you were introducing me to your grandmother, you didn’t know what to title me,” he explained. “I am yours, no titles required.”
“My Heeseung?” you asked, not being able to control the small smile forming on your lips.
“Yours,” he agreed.
August arrived in Hongcheon as it always did in Seoul. Although summer was still there, painting everything in vivid and full colors, rain clouds lingered in the sky, holding the heat during the day and causing the air to sting with the threat of a storm at the end of the night.
Only that at Hongcheon, the air also stung with the rumble of engines, the smell of car exhaustion, burnt tires, and worries on Saturday nights.
You pulled Heeseung’s jacket tight around your body, tugging the collar up to your mouth and purposely breathing on his peony perfume, allowing it to be the only thing in your lungs as you looked around. This part of the county was so flat, anywhere you looked the low canopy of dense gray clouds seemed to meet the asphalt, and the idea of Heeseung being caught in the rain made your heart falter.
You still remember when Heeseung raced you to the coast, the world was just a blur beyond the windows, the roads too slippy beneath the BMW’s tires. He didn’t need water in the middle of all of this to make it harder.
“They are coming back,” Sunhae announced.
You looked at the highway in time to see headlights breaking in between the asphalt and the clouds.
“Seems like lover boy is leading this week.”
“Damn, I bet on Daekho,” Hayoung cursed.
“You have a crush on him.”
“He is handsome? yes,” your cousin admitted. “Would I mind if the boys gave me his number? Definitely no, but no. I am not twelve to have a crush.”
Sunhae replied something, bringing out the most genuine laugh from both of them, but you were already a world apart, taking in the familiar sound of the BMW’s tires squealing through the asphalt, raising a trail of smoke just a few moments before Heeseung threw his door open, seizing to the roof to slip out faster.
You didn’t remember the decision of moving, only that you did. When Heeseung stepped in front of his headlights, you were already there, threading your fingers in the hair at his nape, bringing his forehead against yours at the same time his hands found the bodice of your dress beneath the thick material of his jacket, brushing his thumbs shamelessly through the curve of your breasts.
“I was worried,” you said.
“Why?”
“It’s going to rain soon.”
“I told you I would come back in one piece.” Heeseung laughed at you, all fond and appreciative before he pestered you with quick kisses all over your face, but when he chased for your lips, you froze beneath his touch, all at once, the wandering fingers in the middle of a brush, the small smile gone.
But only when he followed your eyesight did he notice the reason why.
Sunghoon approached across the highway, his brown Range Rover parked just behind. With all the furor of the racers arriving, and the people shouting, none of you noticed the Range Rover coming in the wrong way. It blended in the middle of all the other fancy cars, yet Sunghoon — Sunghoon could never blend in a place like this.
Heeseung thought the formal attire was a requirement both of them had created for your parent’s lunch, but looking at him there, at eleven o’clock on the night of a Saturday, he wondered if the man ever wore anything that wasn’t dress pants and silk button-downs.
“What a sight,” Sunghoon said. “I hope you both are enjoying the remaining weeks.”
“After all, what do you think’s going to happen by the end of summer, Heeseung?” he asked, but Heeseung didn’t reply.
“Well, let me tell you then. Y/N is going back to the city — back to the best university in the country while you will be here,” Sunghoon said, his hands gesturing to the surroundings with an unmistakable repulse. He didn’t need to finish his thoughts, the sentence had already been completed before he even spoke it, but still, Sunghoon seemed to relish his mind so much that he had to. “At this end of the world, earning your dirty money.”
“Shut up,” Heeseung hissed.
“What? Do you think she likes you?” Sunghoon laughed, head thrown back, but there was no humor in it. “C’mon Heeseung, we both know she is too good for you. It’s pity, and as soon as she is back in Seoul, she will forget this moment of charity,”
“So enjoy fucking her while you can.”
You felt Heeseung stiffening, his jaw clenching beneath your thumbs at the same time his hands slipped away.
“Hee,” you called, but it was too late. He had let you go, fleeing through the space between you and Sunghoon.
Heeseung grabbed Sunghoon’s button-down, twisting the thin material between his fists. He didn’t seem to think about the consequences of his actions — he simply did it, using his grip to push Sunghoon onto the Range Rover’s hood. The sound of the body hitting the brown-tinted metal was almost imperceptible amidst the sudden cheers.
“Not the car.” Sunghoon hissed.
“Not the car?” Heeseung echoed, mockery pushing through each pronounced letter. However, he seemed to concur, ripping Sunghoon from the car hood and allowing the latter to stumble back to his feet.
It happened too quickly for you to process. You didn’t even see who launched the opening blow; you only knew that it happened, getting them into a real fight.
Heeseung laughed in the middle of the chaos, something you always thought to be soft unfolding sharply within the night.
He stopped, pointing at his own face as if to encourage Sunghoon to throw another punch. But the moment Sunghoon did, he went down to the dirty asphalt, Heeseung above him.
“Heeseung!” you called again, more urgently. But he seemed to not have heard you — fist still ready and in the middle of another throw before Jake finally reached them.
“Stop it, you are ruining your damn face,” Jake said, hauling Heeseung up by his shoulders.
“Leave,” Heeseung hissed to Sunghoon. “Before I end you,”
“I have been wanting to do it already.”
Sunghoon stood up, touching his pinkie finger to his lips to check for blood. He had so many bruises on his cheek and hands that the lips seemed the least problem. However, you couldn’t feel sorry for him — not with how he straightened himself, adjusting his button-down and giving you an awful smile.
“You know it’s not over, right?” Sunghoon asked, finally turning to his car.
The Range Rover’s tire squealed as it bit into the asphalt, drifting through the highway. And only when the car disappeared from view, did Jake let go of Heeseung’s shoulders, allowing him to turn back to you, panting, and bleeding.
Despite his state, Heeseung couldn’t feel anything — think about anything. The place still had the smell of car exhaustion and burnt tires, and the air still sting with the upcoming storm, he could hear the commotion of the people around, but everything seemed so subtle that even when your perfume came to his senses, he couldn’t help but wonder if it was just his desperate mind searching for something to hold on in the middle of his numbness.
Yet, he felt your arms around his neck and your warmth against him was enough to pull the world back to its axes. He hugged you back, arms involving your waist, head leaning on your shoulder, the slope of his nose pressed to your neck. He could scent the dirtiness of the race on your skin, the smoke of the cars, and exhaustion, but beneath it, there was your sweet perfume.
“Hee,” you called. There was no reprehension in your tone, it brushed through his skin just like it always did — soft, and all yours. You weren’t sure if you wanted to say something more, it had just slipped through.
Heeseung drew back, just enough for his lips to trail your cheeks, kissing the tears you haven’t realized you had shed.
“I am sorry,” he whispered. “I am so sorry, princess.”
“Just let me take you out of here, hm?” you said.
Heeseung was surprised that you settled yourself on the driver’s seat of his BMW. But he said nothing as he followed you, taking the passenger seat instead. He said nothing when you stepped on the pedals, pulled the first gear, and drove away. Heeseung waited until you both are already far away from the street racing furor, and you a little bit more comfortable with the fourth gear.
“I didn’t know you could drive.”
“I got my driver’s license as soon as the law permitted, but it was because my dad wanted me to,” you said. “I don’t really enjoy it in the city, there are too much traffic, lights — people.”
He chuckled at your statement, it was a minuscule sound spreading through the night before he reached for your thigh, his palm resting warm and wide on your bare skin.
“You look stunning like this.”
“You are so flirty.”
“I am just telling you the truth,” he said. Your mouth parted, a small incredulous sound leaving your throat and Heeseung couldn’t help but laugh — not the sharp laugh he had released with Sunghoon, but the one you loved, the soft, beautiful, and capable of twitching your heart one.
He rested his head on the seat, but not for a single second he allowed his gaze to move away from you as you drove back to the town.
┈┈┈┈
By the time you reached the main avenue, everything had become so silent, it was easy to think you and Heeseung were the only people left in the world. All the stores had closed for the day, turning their signs off and leaving only the 24 hour convenience store to cast an artificial light among the street lamps.
“I will stop to get something to clean you,” you said.
“You don’t need to, princess,” he replied. But you had already parked in the shade of the walkway outside the glass door, reaching blindly for the space behind the seats in search of your purse.
“Don’t move,” you told him. Yet still, Heeseung did, fingers coming into the encounter the sides of your neck, thumbs caressing your skin, and subtly turning you to his side in an attempt to make you stay.
“You really don’t need to,” he whispered.
The sky was dark with dense clouds. The only source of light was the fluorescent lamps from the convenience store, and with him trying to pull you against him, making you shadow this small sort of light, it was difficult to see his face, but there was something about the way he had said it, so frail, and wheedling.
“Let me take care of you,” you asked. “Please.”
And that was it, even if he never told you, there was this thing inside of him — this inability to simply say no when it was you to receive this small rejection. Heeseung would do anything you asked, in a single heartbeat.
So he waited in the warmth of the BMW, watching as you slipped through the convenience store’s door, his leather jacket still hanging tightly around your shoulders as you scanned the aisles. He felt himself ache just looking at you, chest too tight to breathe, eyes all soft, and when you came back, opening the passenger door, everything he did was slid the seat all the way back, allowing you to climb to his lap, knees around his hips as he reached for you almost unconsciously, hands resting at your waist, thumbs drawing slow circles through the thin material of your dress as you scattered your new purchases through the small space between both of you. A bottle of antiseptic, two packages of cotton, and a bunch of bandages, Heeseung was sure you had bought the whole first aid session from the convenience store.
But before he could joke about it, you turned the car’s light on, and beneath this sudden clarity, you frowned, eyebrows up, lips pressing into a thin line. The wounds were worse than it seemed, there was a cut over his eyebrows, bleeding as a darker bruise spread over his left cheek. You reached for them, the tip of your fingers wandering through his skin as if you could erase them with your bare touch.
“I am sorry, Hee,” you whispered.
“Why are you asking me sorry? I was the one fighting.”
“If it wasn’t because of me, Sunghoon wasn’t going to be there.”
He winced when you touched the cotton on him, gripping hard on your waist. The antiseptic burnt through his cuts.
“What are you to him?” Heeseung asked, so low that if you weren’t paying enough attention to him, it would have slid and slipped away within a moment. “I know you told me he is your father’s business partner’s son, and you both study together, but why does he-”
He stopped, all of a sudden, his eyes preferring to focus on the windshield instead of you.
“Sorry, I trust you, it’s just — he is right, you know? You are too good for me, and I am afraid of how many men you have wrapped around your finger.”
“Heeseung, don’t-”
“I am talking about how you treat me,” he said. “Princess, you never get angry. You didn’t get angry when you found out about the racing — you are not angry right now. I don’t know what you are made of, but surely it’s too good for me.”
“I do get angry,” you whispered. “I am so angry with myself right now. I just wish I could make you understand that you are everything to me, Heeseung. I just wish I could find the right thing to say, the right thing to do, but it seems like the more I try the more I hurt you. I-”
You let go of his face, catching his hand instead, his knuckles were an angry red, with blood dried, and settling in the lines of his skin. You brushed cotton soaked in antiseptic across this new area, hoping he wouldn’t notice the tears coming once again with your head turned down.
But he did. Heeseung was always watching you too attentively.
“I am sorry, princess.”
Heeseung hugged you, his arms embracing your waist as he brought you as close as he could, resting his head on your shoulders, his nose pressed to your neck. He could scent the dirtiness of the race on your skin still, the smoke of the cars, and exhaustion, but beneath it, there was your sweet perfume. There was always your sweet perfume.
“I am so sorry,” he whispered.
Heeseung hasn’t cried — not even once, being it for his mother or for his father. However, when you pulled him tight against your shoulders, fingertips too warm against the sides of his neck, he found himself sobbing like he couldn’t remember ever doing. The forgotten feeling of the tears running down his face slowly becoming familiar once again.
“You don’t have to,” you whispered. “You never have to feel sorry for me.”
You angled Heeseung’s face to you, resting your forehead against his, cleaning his tears with the soft pads of your thumbs. He took the opportunity to catch your bottom lip, pinching it between his a few times before it turned into a real kiss, but you drew back, wrinkling your nose.
“You are tasting like antiseptic,” you said.
He laughed, throwing his head back and closing his eyes for a long moment before he straightened himself back, brushing a stray lock behind your ear.
“You always do,” Heeseung whispered. “Say the right thing, do the right thing.”
“You do too,” you confessed. “What you said to Mrs. Choi — driving to Seoul whenever I want you to, it—”
“Was the simple truth,” he completed. “It takes just an hour to arrive there, and considering I am following the speed limits, what you know I only do when you are in the car.”
“I can come and go twelve times a day, you know?”
It was your turn to shy away, focusing on the collar of his t-shirt instead, playing with the kneaded material with the tip of your fingers.
“You spoil me too much.”
“I can handle a spoiled little princess,” he said.
“Can you?”
“Definitely.”
Heeseung slid his hands to your neck, his thumbs pressing gently into your skin as he tipped your head, angling you so you had to look at him, take in his gleaming eyes for a quiet second before he kissed you, and this time you didn’t draw back, even with the taste of antiseptic and blood when you brushed your tongue through his bottom lip, earning a groan as he parted his mouth for you.
Outside the car, a rumble of thunder echoed through the halted avenue, immediately bringing the awaited storm, the heavy raindrops tapping the BMW windows, but if anything you curled your fingers on Heeseung’s t-shirt, bringing him as close as you could.
The cadence of his heart matched with yours. And it was so easy to believe you both were the only ones remaining in the world — so easy.
┈┈┈┈
The storm didn’t cease as Heeseung drove you to the rented house, pounding harshly on the windshields as thunder kept breaking through the sky.
His hand seemed to hitch above the gear stick, ready to pull the engine a little bit harder, simply because he knew he could do it — Heeseung had perfect control over the BMW, but you seemed uneasy with the harshness of the storm, and he laughed, reaching for you instead, resting his palm between your tights through the rest of the drive.
Heeseung usually parked on the street, headlights illuminating the garden’s patch for you as he watched you walk away, his leather jacket on your shoulders, high heels hitting the rocks, but tonight, he passed through the gates, stepping on the brakes only when your door was just one jump away from the stairs.
“Is it your father?” he asked, taking your attention to one of the rocking chairs on the porch. As if he had listened to Heeseung, your father stood up, as intimidating as someone could be in a blue-striped pajama, and hair down.
“I should greet him,” Heeseung mumbled, and you nodded, although you thought it wasn’t the best night. You had done your best to clean him, however, the metallic scent of blood was still surrounding the air, quietly yet effortlessly being a constant reminder of the early incident.
The clock on the BMW showed precisely one in the morning, you had never arrived so late, and you tried to convince yourself that was the reason why your father had decided to wait outside for the first time during the whole summer. You tried to convince yourself that if Heeseung remained a few steps behind, your father wouldn’t notice the bandage on his eyebrow, and the darkening bruise on his left cheek.
But there was already something different in your father, something fierce and overprotective. The moment you stepped closer, his hand rested on your shoulder, subtly pulling you away from Heeseung.
“Give his jacket back,” your father demanded.
“What?” you asked, not because you didn’t understand, but because the harshness with which he had said it surprised you.
“You heard me.”
You looked back at Heeseung, mirroring his perplexed expression. He had extended his hand at your father, but it had been ignored by the latter, and Heeseung used his still extended hand to reach for his jacket instead.
There was a moment of silence between you, the only sound coming was from the rumble of thunders, but it wasn’t the cause of the changeless in the air, making it halted and heavy enough to be felt, thick with a tension you weren’t used to.
“I am sorry for bringing Y/N late, sir,” Heeseung started. He had stopped a bit farther away, the rain plugging on his hair, running through his shoulders, and soaking his t-shirt. “We—”
“You should go back home, Heeseung,” your father cut. “As you said it is late, and I need to have a serious talk with my daughter.”
“I will call you later, Hee,” you promised.
Heeseung nodded at you, stepping behind at the same time your father guided you through the door.
The clarity of the interior of the rented house took you anew, making you blink several times before you could take the form of your mother sitting on the couch, a first kit aid settled on her lap, and a bunch of cotton as dirty as the ones you left on Heeseung’s car discarded on the table in front of her.
There was no real indication of Sunghoon’s passage through the house, but it wouldn’t take a genius to know it was all his doing.
And although you could feel your body cooling, you weren’t surprised when your father finally broke the question.
“Has Heeseung ever raced with you in the car?”
You felt a little lurch at that. The idea of lying seemed to attempt you. It would be so easy to simply say no — so easy to let that night be buried as a secret between you and Heeseung. However, you had allowed the question to hang in for too long, and when you noticed, it was already too late to do so.
In the middle of your silence, your mother released a tortuous sound, closing her hand above her chest as if something inside of her hurt — and perhaps, it did. Her tears streamed silently beneath the night’s light.
“I asked him to do it,” you finally said. “Please, let me explain, Heeseung-”
“Stop it right now!” your father burst, a single hand coming harshly against the nearest wall. Your father never had screamed at you, not even once. And the sudden ferocity in his voice tore the small thread keeping you from breaking.
“Sunghoon appeared here, bleeding because your boyfriend — a street racer,” he continued, pronouncing street racer with the same repugnance as he would say bandit. “beat him, and not only this, Y/N, you go to his races!”
“What if the police appeared? All the years you dedicated yourself to get into a good university, to stay at the top of your classes — the future you have been working so hard for, all of suddenly thrown in the trash because of a guy?”
“I don’t know who you are anymore, but you surely are not the daughter I raised.”
The living room fell silent at this and only then you noticed how fast your heart was beating. It hummed against your ears, so loud you couldn’t even think.
Your father turned to the stairs, leaving you behind without a second or uncertain glance. He had already declared everything he wanted, be it with words or not. Your mother remained, but if she was going to say something, she let it all go with a single shake of head before she trailed helplessly after him.
You didn’t follow them up the stairs, but instead, you stood still, staring so long into the walls that when you finally reached for your phone, it took a while for your vision to focus.
“Princess?” Heeseung called. Your heart tethered itself, just his voice was enough to make you stop trembling. “I was waiting for you.”
You breathed in, perhaps so harshly that it made him stop at the other end of the line. You weren’t sure how long had it been since your father shoved Heeseung away from the front porch, you only knew it had been long ago, perhaps a lifetime ago, yet — he was still waiting for you.
Heeseung would always wait for you.
“I am sorry,” you whispered, because you were — because you weren’t sure what else you could tell him. “I am so sorry.”
“Sunghoon told your parents about the racing, didn’t he?” he asked. His question didn’t carry the madness or annoyance it could be expected if made just a few hours earlier. Instead, he sounded pitiful.
Heeseung knew his secret would someday come between both of you. He knew it from the moment he had first seen you at the party. You were French dresses, high heels, golden pins on the hair and champagne on the weekends. You had the world at your feet, meanwhile, he barely had a place for himself.
“He did,” you admitted.
He closed his eyes to calm his pulse, and before he could doubt the wisdom of saying it, he did.
“Maybe we should take a break from seeing each other,” he whispered.
“Hee-”
“Just for a few, princess,” Heeseung said. “It will do no good infuriating your father more.”
“I don’t want it to be just a summer thing, you and me,” he continued. “I will do anything to prove my worth to your father, but for now I think we should slow down a bit.”
“You are worth it.”
“I am glad you think like this,” he said, a pinch of a smile in his voice. “Let’s keep calling, alright?”
“Alright.”
Heeseung was the one to call you the next night.
It was precisely at the same hours you had called him, almost as if he had programmed it because he knew it would be safer for you.
You made your way out of bed, walking to the window seat just to curl yourself there in the middle of all the pillows.
“Princess,” he called as soon as you picked up. “Have you looked at the moon tonight?”
With a tethered heart, you turned to the windows, following the moonlight through the clouds above before you exhaled, stuck by the quiet beauty.
“Not until now, it’s beautiful,” you said. Your voice sounded muffed into the pillow.
“Bad hour?” Heeseung asked. “We can hang up.”
“No, please — keep talking, I want to hear you.”
“So suddenly,” he laughed. “What do you want to hear about?”
“Anything, I just want to hear you.”
“Have I ever told you what I studied at university?” he asked. Although you knew Heeseung had been a university student for a few semesters, the question took you anew, you never have stopped to think about what would have been his major. And perhaps because he noticed the reticent on you, he continued without your answer. “Architecture.”
“Really?”
“Why do you sound so surprised?” he laughed.
“I didn’t!”
“You did.”
“I just never stopped to think about your major,” you admitted. “How was it? The university?”
“Glorious and terrible days,” Heeseung said, making you laugh. The sound surprised you, making you press your fingertips against your lips. There was no better way to sum up university life.
“Did you used to live in the dorms?”
“Yes, with Jungwon and Jake,” Heeseung said. You could hear a subtle longing in his voice.
“It seems interesting.”
“It was a mess — we once set off the fire alarm, and the whole building had to evacuate at two in the morning.”
“No.”
“Yes,” he said. “It seemed like a great idea to cook inside the room back then.”
Hours passed this way. Heeseung told stories of his old dorms, and their uncomfortable beds, his university, and its old mismatching buildings. He perfectly surrounded how much he wished he had stayed there, and only gave brief pauses to hear your laugh, the soft hitches of your breaths at the other end of the line.
Heeseung suddenly fell silent, only the ruffle of his sheets being heard.
“How is Seoul?”
“Beautiful and lonely.”
“Do you miss it? Even if it’s lonely?”
“No,” you said. The speed the words have left your lips surprised you, but still, you continued. “I wish I could stay here. Would you build me a dream house here?”
“I never got my architect license,” Heeseung said. “But if you tell me about your dream house, I can find you something.”
“I want to live in the hills.”
“Should I buy your summer house then?”
“I dislike big houses.”
“So do I,” Heeseung said, immediately pressing his lips in regret. It sounded like it was his dream house too. You could almost picture him — the way his head would bend down before he shook his head in an attempt to cover his shyness. Your lips curved with the image.
“Heeseung?” you called. He only hummed in reply.
“Do you prefer a single-story house or a two-story house?”
“Two-story, especially on the hill — you must enjoy the whole view.”
“With a front porch and a balcony on the second floor?”
“I like the idea.”
“It’s settled then,” you said. “Please, find me my dream house — don’t forget the garage for your BMW, I will also be bringing my Jeep.”
You had hung up so softly, it took him several seconds to notice you did.
It had already been a week when you waited for the house to turn into nothing but the summer breezes coming from the forgotten opened windows before you leaped off the bed, moving as quietly as you could to the front porch.
Beyond the garden, Hongcheon was so calm that you were afraid your whispers would unfold too loudly through the night. However, you sat down on the stairs still, your bare feet brushing through the warm grass as you unlocked your phone, reaching for the single contact you could possibly want.
It rang just a single time before Heeseung picked it up.
“Princess,” he said. You could swear he was smiling at the other end of the line.
“Take me somewhere?”
┈┈┈┈
Heeseung parked his BMW a little bit farther than the conventional, the headlights turned off. He didn’t wait for you to come to the car, the moment he pressed the parking brake, his door was opened and he rushed to you, his warmth involving your waist in a familiarity that made you ache. He swirled you, just once — pulling you out of the ground as his nose buried at the side of your neck, inhaling every little detail he could before he put you back on your feet and drew an inch away, just enough to encounter your gaze beneath the goldish street lights.
His bruises had gotten older, and lighter, already turning into a greenish tone and therefore making it more difficult to look at. But still, you reach for it, the tip of your fingers softly pressuring against his sensitive skin.
Heeseung leaned his forehead against yours. And all of sudden you could scent him, the summer he carried beneath his skin together with peonies. There was no scent of car exhaustion tonight, nor the scent of his leather jacket as he only wore a gray t-shirt and his washed jeans, but it was still very much your Heeseung.
“I missed you,” you said, voice nothing more than a soft whisper.
“I missed you too.”
┈┈┈┈
Heeseung drove you through the dense wood outside of the town, going down on a patch not meant to be passed through, but he seemed to know where he was going, and it was enough for you to adjust comfortably on the seat, bare feet up, legs clutched to your chest. Your dress slipped down on your thigh and gathered in the crease of your hips, showing off way too much but if anything Heeseung’s hand left the gear stick to rest on it, fingers spreading on your bare skin.
The clock on the dash told you the sun was closer to its rising than its setting, yet still, you could feel the warmth of the day brushing through the open windows of the BMW. Everything outside smelled like the moistness of the late summer.
“Where are you taking me?” you asked.
“It’s a secret.” Heeseung replied with a broad smile.
He dropped down a few gears just several minutes after, parking the BMW. The headlights only lit rocks, and only when you slipped out of the car you saw the swimming hole, pooled in the moonlight.
Heeseung stepped forward, kicking off his shoes first, and then pulling his t-shirt and jeans, allowing everything to fall with a dull sound on the ground.
“What are you doing?”
“Taking a night swim,” he said, a split second before he jumped in.
Heeseung submerged, his skin sparkling beneath the moonlight glow and the BMW’s headlights, all the drops catching the silver lights as he threw his head back in a laugh.
“Aren’t you coming, princess?”
You could feel Heeseung’s eyes burning your skin, watching you attentively as you slid the straps of your dress away, allowing the thin material to fall.
He said nothing as his gaze traveled down on you, accompanying each of your moves as you reached for the back of your bra and unclasped it. He just stood there, taking the angle of your shoulders, the swell of your breasts. Heeseung was cataloging every inch of you and checking if he hadn’t let anything escape at the first time with adoration.
As you sat on the rocks, feet reaching the water, the cold made it difficult for you to breathe. But before you had a chance to give a better consideration, you snuck in.
“You are crazy, Lee Heeseung,” you gasped.
He laughed at you, allowing the sound to resonate within the night once again as he ended the few inches between you, coming so close you could lift your hand and touch his damp locks, brushing it away from his forehead with no effort despite the height difference.
“But you love me,” Heeseung whispered, taking you anew. The words had left his lips so softly that if you weren’t paying close attention to him, you would believe it was just another passing breeze through your skin.
“Yes,” you whispered back. “I do love you.”
It was a strange thing. Over the past months, he had seen it in your eyes, tasted through your lips, and felt it through every one of your touches. Yet, the impact of how you wordly confirmed you loved him, lanced through his body.
He looked at you like you were a dream to him, and perhaps you were. You could hear the slight tremor in his breath when he exhaled. And the words that came later ached within you.
“I love you too — I love you so much.”
Your hands found the back of his neck, bringing his forehead against yours at the same time he grabbed your thighs, pulling it around his hips. The familiar pressure of his fingertips drawing patterns through your skin before he hitched you higher, your upper body floating above the water.
For such a dark place, there was a great deal of illumination and you could take sight of yourself. Your hair clung to your body, dribbling at the curves and emphasizing the swell of your breasts. The view just seemed to enchant Heeseung even more, his doe-eyes sparkled beneath the moonlight, shining like stars before he went down on you, trailing your stomach with soft kisses.
He whispered your name. The almost never said word grating over your skin.
“I can’t get enough of you,” he said. “I never can get enough of you.”
The headlights of the BMW went off, and Heeseung straightened you back to him, shivers spreading through your skin as his hands slid through you, tracing the slick ridge of your spine before finding the sides of your neck in the dim light.
You were unsettling, skin sparkling in the moonlight glow, and the moment you met his gaze, Heeseung felt completely dazed. His thumb pressed against your lips, just enough for you to part them for him, and allow your tongue to slip through the tip of your finger.
“What are you doing to me?” he groaned. But he was soft and gentle with it, a hint of a laugh when he kissed you.
Heeseung seemed so happy tonight, all crafted on the unconditional gaiety he deserved. And you weren’t willing to let the night end. You weren’t willing to let go of him — not now, not in a few.
Your fingers curled on the hair at his nape, pulling him closer, trying to end a distance that didn’t exist anymore. You could feel Heeseung entirely. From the way he shivered beneath your touch, to the way his breath hitched when you slipped down, mouth running through his throat.
“I want to stay with you.”
“Then stay with me,” he whispered. “For as long as you want.”
┈┈┈┈
Heeseung’s house was as lovely as you remembered — even now, when he closed the door behind you, cutting the only direct source of light, the house was radiant as if it had its own sun.
He stepped past you, reaching his hand out behind. At first, he just pinched your fingertips, but as he guided you through the stairs, he laced his fingers on yours, pulling you closer to him and guiding you through the corridor. He was skilled in finding the most silent places on the wooden floor, allowing your breaths to be the loudest thing resonating through the whole place.
The second-story was tinier than the first one, just a narrow corridor with three doors. Heeseung brought you to the nearest one, turning the light on, you blinked at a blue-tiled bathroom.
“You can go in first,” he told you, walking up to the shower, he turned the knobs and checked the temperature for you. “I will find you some clothes and — everything.”
You barely could nod before he stepped out of the bathroom, closing the door behind him.
Heeseung left you alone to shower, giving you enough time to fill the whole space with a sweet-smelling soap and when he did come back, he didn’t look at you, being deeply focused on the task of leaving the clothes at the sink.
“Hee,” you called. He raised his head at you, meeting your gaze through the fogged glass at the same time you tilted your head to the space in front of you in an unspoken invitation.
Even with the distance you could notice how his breath got caught, a moment of hesitation passing before he reached for the collar of his t-shirt, discharging it and then, his jeans, stripping it down together with his underwear. But all of a sudden, you understood why he was acting like this.
Both of the times you had been together, it was beneath the moonlight, hidden within the night. There was something unduly intimate about the fluorescent lamp above you. It illuminated every sinewy line of his body as he came to a stop in front of you. And it took every ounce of you to reach for the shampoo instead of him.
“Let me-” you started. However, Heeseung had kneeled in front of you, with no second thoughts, he just did it — meeting your gaze through his eyelashes, water pearling on the end for a second before he closed his eyes.
You threaded your fingers through his hair, and he threw his head a bit back, his palms spreading through your hips for support. He honestly didn’t know what to do with himself there. Heeseung couldn’t remember a time someone touched him so gently before you, not because you thought he was breakable, but because you thought he deserved this.
He allowed you to rinse his hair, only standing up when you subtly tap his hands. And then, he let you smooth over his bare skin, starting with his shoulders, and rubbing down to his chest, he groaned when you reached for his low abdomen, fingertips hovering dangerously close to his aching length.
“Princess,” he called. However, his words left his lips with no warning.
“You are hard.”
Heeseung chuckled at your statement, leaning on you, his lips met your ears, scattering shivers through your body despite the warm water.
“I have been struggling with it ever since you took your dress off in the swimming hole,” he confessed.
“Then I should take care of it,” you said, reaching for him, hand wrapping around his length. He cursed when you rolled your thumb through his tip, but he allowed you to stroke him at your pace nonetheless, edging him until his breaths were heavier, shorter, gasping as the only thing passing through his lips was your name, all wishful.
His head dropped forward, burying his nose against your shoulders, and you had to ask him to move, to look at you, to allow you to kiss him tantalizingly sweet, and nothing like the way you kept touching him. Nothing like the whine you accidentally let escape.
Heeseung drew away, all of a sudden before he grabbed your thighs, lifting you easily — perhaps too easily, and making your legs fold around his waist.
“You have been taking too much care of me, let me take care of you too,” he asked.
The bathroom felt smaller, brighter, and softer as you nodded, allowing Heeseung to push himself into you, calling your name, pronouncing each letter with an unreasonable fondness, and turning it into a mutter singing through his pulses.
His moves were careless this time, gone on all your teasing, but he still managed to make you tighten around him, fingers curling on the hair of his nape as your mouth parted against his.
Heeseung swallowed your noises, pressed kisses on your lips as he felt you shaking, spread his palms on the back of your thigh to hold you through your high, and helped you stand when you felt too weak to.
He turned the knobs, letting the bathroom fall silent before he wrapped you both in towels, his hands never letting you go as he guided you to sit between his legs at the toilet before he started rubbing your hair.
“Sorry, I don’t have a hair dryer,” he said.
“It’s better this way,” you admitted, your voice almost sounding purred as you inclined your head back. Heeseung chuckled at your actions, but if anything, his fingers worked slower, rubbing your hair with gentleness until it seemed dried enough to let you slip into the oversized t-shirt he had brought you.
You weren’t sure what time it was, but when he opened the door to his room. The world outside seemed vivid in comparison, a mist of light blue and purple coming through his opened windows.
Heeseung climbed to his bed first, subtly tapping the space at his side in an invitation, and when you followed, he pulled you against him, fitting your body to his — tangling you as much as he could into the circle of his warmth.
“Can you say it again?” he whispered. “What did you say in the swimming hole?”
“That I love you?”
“Yes.”
“Heeseung, I love you,” you said, leaning into him, your forehead on his shoulder, fingertips pressing against the exact place above his heart, feeling the cadence of his whole being as he exhaled, reaching for you too — curling his fingers above yours.
“I love you too, princess.”
The room fell silent, just the soft hustle of his thumbs brushing the inner curve of your wrist, slowly and carefully, causing you to close your eyes. And for the first time, you fell asleep to Heeseung’s beating heart.
You woke up to the summer sunlight filtering through the still-opened windows of Heeseung’s room, the morning glow reflecting through the wind bell and dappling the room in a dozen of colors.
Heeseung was still asleep, the calm rise and fall of his chest beneath your fingertips. He held your hand exactly where you had left it above his heart last night, fingers curled around yours still. You didn’t want to slip away, not yet. But your sore throat hurt and the only cup of water visible had been dried by summer heat.
He stirred when you slipped away from his touch, but he didn’t wake up. His face remains calm, the dark curls of his hair shadowing his eyes as you left the room.
When you approached the kitchen, you heard the soft hustle of dishes echoing, drawers opening and shutting as a secure sign his grandmother was awake. And suddenly you were conscious of your current situation.
Heeseung had gotten you an oversized t-shirt, leaving barely anything of your thighs to see. Yet, the idea of her finding you in nothing but her grandson’s t-shirt as the first thing in the morning seemed somehow worse than coming in a mini and tight dress. But she only turned around to your presence, a smile spreading through her lips before she reached from across the tiny kitchen, taking your hands in a familiar squeeze.
“My dear,” she breathed out. “I had no idea you were here! Are you hungry? I have just prepared a few sandwiches and iced tea.”
“No- I don’t want to bother.”
“Just make me company for a few, I have to leave soon anyway — book club.”
“Oh, seems interesting.”
“Not at all, just a bunch of old women talking about romance books, but I should leave the house once in a while, you know? Not to mold,” she said, making you laugh.
Heeseung’s grandmother poured two cups of iced tea, handing one to you without any further speaking before she sat on one of the kitchen’s chairs, and gestured for you to do the same.
It was relaxed at first, all about her talking of her early years in this small county as the sun kept coming up, but then, she became stiff, approaching the moment Heeseung’s father died.
“It was a tragedy for me, of course. But it ruined Heeseung — I thought I had lost both of my son and grandson that night. You should’ve seen him a few years ago, you wouldn’t even recognize him — he was so lonely and gloomy, even with Jake and Jungwon nearby.”
“But you appeared here — right here,” she continued, pointing at the front door. “I haven’t seen him smile like that in months.”
“I know he is involved in something I wouldn’t be proud of — but he is a good person.”
“He is,” you whispered, not because she needed confirmation, but because it was good to say it out loud. “Heeseung is the greatest person I have ever met.”
┈┈┈┈
When you got back to Heeseung’s room, the morning sun had already given in, allowing the afternoon light to bathe his room entirely.
Heeseung had rolled in his sleep, his back now turned to the place where you had been and the sun perfectly angled upon him. The waves of his dark hair glinted in errant streaks of gold and his skin seemed warm.
You climbed the bed, wrapping your arms around his waist. He still had the sweet scent of the shampoo you both had used late at night, but you could swear there was something brighter on it, something like a change. You spread your fingers above his heart, feeling the cadence of his being.
Only when you had soothed, Heeseung reached for you too, his hand resting right above yours, intertwining your fingers together and letting you know he was awake.
“Where did you go?” he asked, his voice horse from sleep.
You had listened to his question, but you didn’t immediately reply, allowing another moment to hang as you came even closer against his sun-warmed skin, kissing his shoulders.
“I was talking to your grandma.”
“Somehow, it worries me.”
“Why?”
“Wasn’t she exposing me or something?”
“Yes,” you smiled. “People have something to tell me about your past.”
“Exactly — what if they tell you something that makes you want to leave me?” Heeseung asked, although there was a hint of entertainment in his voice, your answer was solemn.
“I doubt it can happen.”
Heeseung rolled to you, blinking with the sudden clarity. His eyes gleamed beneath the morning light. The brown dark mesmerizing turning hazel before he reached for you — fingertips tracing your face with a delicacy you imagined people devoted only to precious things.
His lips found yours easily, just like they always did. His hands spread across your cheeks, fingers brushing and tangling through your hair as he brought you closer as if he believed his existence lay in the acknowledgment of you — on how your heartbeats resonated together, how naturally your hands curled around his shoulders, and the sensations your bare fingertips are capable of drawing on his skin.
His tongue slid against your bottom lip, softly yet demanding, and you obliged immediately, letting him press his tongue over yours in a way that made your body filled with warmth.
You sighed into him, and Heeseung moved swiftly through the bed, hovering above you, his hands promptly leaving your face just to find the crook of your knee, lifting it to his hips before he leaned in, kissing the pulse on your neck. His lips moved tenderly against your skin, pinching as his hands found the hem of your — his shirt, working it up to your thighs, your waist. He paused only to slip it over your head.
His hands splayed through your waist, holding you still.
“Tell me what you want me to do,” Heeseung said. “I will do it.”
You grazed on him, eyes dazed as your fingertips found his lips in a silent and almost unconscious wish. Heeseung smiled as he glided away from your touch. Because he understood you just too well — because he was willing to do anything you asked him to.
“Y/N, my princess,” he confided. “My love.”
“Don’t get me wrong, I loved having you in my car, and the shower, but having you here — all pretty on my bed, I will take my time with you.”
His fingers dug at the crook of your knee, lifting your leg to his shoulder as he finished moving into the space between your legs. He traced a path of kisses over the inner of your thighs, greedy, pushy, and purposely avoiding the place where you needed him the most. He had said he was going to take his time with you, and apparently, he meant to be true to his words.
You whined at his actions, and he chuckled, giving one final kiss before he allowed his tongue to run between your lips, from the bottom all the way to the top. It was warm soft licks, before he gave your clit an attention that made your legs shake.
Your fingers tangled in his hair, nails scratching lightly against his scalp, just enough pressure to make him shiver beneath your touch. Heeseung deepened and you knew even with your eyes closed that he was giving you his sweet smile.
You made a lousy sound, clapping a hand over your mouth to stifle it before Heeseung reached for you, intertwining your fingers, bringing it far from your lips and down into the mattress.
“Don’t,” he whispered. “I want to hear you.”
He moved onto his knees, hair mussed from your fingers, lips rosy, and you would have felt embarrassed if he wasn’t looking at you like there was no one else in this world for him, but he was, and you reached for him, pushing at the waistband of his sweatpants, removing the only thing preventing you from feeling him fully.
His sweatpants hit his bedroom floor with a soft and ignorable thud before his lips were on you again, tongue pressing against yours, tasting like you still.
You folded your legs around his waist, thighs clenching around him, squeezing him almost unconsciously as he crowded into you, one forearm on the pillow by your head, holding himself over you as he pushed into you.
He hissed, looking down between your bodies, eyes glazed as he watched how you fit together. You sobbed when he clutched at you tighter, fingers spreading through your waist as his hips stuttered with impatience and greed.
“Am I hurting you?”
You shook your head frantically, fingers spreading at his neck, angling his forehead against yours, pressing kisses to his jaw, cheeks, and lips, mumbling how it was alright as you felt yourself coiling tighter and tighter, and Heeseung’s rhythm becoming languid.
He came when you did, as defenseless and relinquished as he could be, pulling away almost as if it broke him to let you go.
Heeseung lay by your side, and when you turned to him the sun dazed you. He shielded your eyes, resting his fingertips lightly by the side of your temples as you moved closer to him.
This time around, none of you bothered about clothes, cuddling as the rhythm of your hearts slowly came in pace with the whole summer.
“I never have and won’t ever love anyone the way I love you,” he whispered, breath threading into your hair like a secret.
“When I have to drive you back — let me try talking with your parents.”
┈┈┈┈
The house on the hill seemed as imposing as it did a few weeks ago, the three-story construction shadowing both of you from the golden sun as you walked through the driveway. Heeseung said nothing as you stopped on the front porch, he said nothing as you turned to him, reaching to his neck, threading your fingers in the hair at his nape, and angling him down to you.
He let you smooth him, brushing your nose against his, catching his bottom lip between yours in the taunting kiss he knew never in million times grow tired of.
“I am here,” you whispered, so softly, he almost didn’t hear it beneath the sound of his throbbing heart.
“I don’t want to lose you,” he said, and it took all of your strength not to wilt as you brushed the pads of your thumbs along his cheekbones. Heeseung always spoke his confessions easily, almost unconsciously, leaving the words to scatter and ache within you all alone.
“You won’t,” you said. “You won’t ever lose me.”
“Of course, I consider a lot of what my parents tell me, but Heeseung,” you paused, allowing his name to scatter through the breeze, all soft, and yours. “No one can carry my life for me, at the end of the day, I want to be with you, and I will be.”
“There’s no one else in this world like you,” you whispered. It was a phrase stolen from him, yet, it seemed effective. Heeseung tried to prevent his happiness from materializing through his smile because he knew he would look like the fool he was for you. Yet, you could see his happiness in his eyes. The tiny dazzle they had as Heeseung reached for your waist, drawing you impossibly closer to him.
“I am ready,” he said.
You opened the door slowly, and your parents together with your grandmother were revealed to be in the living room. A deck of cards being quickly forgotten at the center table as your father stood up from one of the couches.
The afternoon light turned everything dazing.
“Me and Heeseung — we would like to talk with you,” you said.
There was a small pause, a small gap in time when no one moved, no one breathed. But then, your grandmother reached out, enclosing her hands on yours and Heeseung’s wrists, dragging both of you to the couch too.
“We should listen to what the youth has to say,” she smiled.
Heeseung would be lying if later on he said he remembered perfectly how the moment unfolded. He remembered you had taken his hand on yours, caressing the back of his hand. He remembered your father had sat back on the couch, running his hand through his hair. He remembered your mother nodding in encouragement. However, he had no memory of how he did start talking, how the story of his life simply was spread beneath the passing minutes.
Yet it did and when he finished he noticed everyone was listening to him, not letting the moment escape like him.
“How old were you?” your father asked. “When all of this happened?”
“Twenty-one.”
“It’s too young,” the man sighed, looking at your mother. They were silently talking, and Heeseung had this impression that he had encountered something too intimate — too unique of people who loved each other so he turned to you instead.
You had your gaze already fixed on him, eyes gleaming, lips curling on a smile.
“Do you love her?” your mother asked. You stopped all of a sudden, surprised by the sudden question, but Heeseung didn’t falter for even a second before he replied.
“Yes, I do.”
“Then that’s what matters,” she said. “I have been telling Y/N’s father, we surely do not approve your way of earning life, but it’s on both of you. I raised her wanting the best, and by the best, I mean her happiness — if you can guarantee me that. I don’t mind the rest.”
“And as long as you don’t race with her in the car,” your father added.
“I won’t, sir.”
“Please, no sir — we are all family here.”
By the time Heeseung’s BMW reached the invisible line dividing the road from the shore, the sun had dipped to touch the horizon, the last sunset of the summer illuminating the ocean with straps of gold.
Your parents already had taken the road back to Seoul. Meanwhile Hayoung, Sunhae, that Jungwon guy of hers, and well, Jake were getting ready to take the opposite turn and go further into the small county — back to the university’s dorms, and its routine.
However, despite the gloomy sensation of the end, it seemed unbelievably peaceful, and vast.
You didn’t wait for Heeseung to turn the engine off, you leaped from the BMW the moment he parked, already barefoot and rushing through the sand as your laugh echoed through the cooling breeze.
Heeseung followed you, slowly, taking in how the water was hitting your thighs, damping the hem of your dress. He wasn’t surprised when you turned to him, the camera he had won for you at the carnival in your hands.
It seemed a lifetime since you both had been there, it seemed like no time at all.
“It’s the last one in this film,” you informed him, eyes squinting as you looked through the lens at him. “Do it prettily.”
You gave him no time, the flash came off, confusing him for a second before he saw you still grinning as you brought the camera away from your face, and he took the last step to reach you, palms spreading through your thighs, lifting you to his waist.
“You seem too happy to someone who’s going back to Seoul to start another university semester,” he said.
“My boyfriend is going with me, so of course I am happy.”
“Is he?” Heeseung asked.
“Yes, going to spend whole weeks with me.”
“Seems like he spoils you a lot.”
“He does,” you confirmed. “He says from the moment he saw me he was gone, willing to do anything I asked for.”
He laughed, throwing his head back, allowing the sun to bathe his skin, his mussed hair, beams of light simply not being able to not reach for him. He was all crafted on the unconditional gaiety he deserved as he closed his eyes for a long moment before he straightened himself back to you.
Your fingers spread through the sides of his neck, scattering shivers through his spine.
Heeseung had never believed in love, at least not the real thing, not the capable of awakening his soul and bringing peace to his mind type of love.
It happened to other people, in other places, but not to him in the small county of Hongcheon. Yet, it did.
As you leaned on him, forehead resting against his, lips brushing in a tantalizing kiss, he knew, that’s exactly what you had given to him, and he hoped he could give it back to you forever.
#enhypen#enhypen scenarios#enhypen drabbles#enhypen imagines#enhypen oneshots#enhypen smut#enhypen angst#enhypen fluff#enhypen fanfiction#enhypen fic#lee heeseung smut#heeseung fluff#enha#lee heeseung#heeseung x reader#enhypen x reader#yumi’s bibliotheca!
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Okay so there's this dp x dc tumblr post about the JL finding the Ghost King's family tree or something and lots of misunderstandings happening but I can't find it anymore and would be grateful if someone would send it to me... Anyhow I was inspired by it and this is the result!
Also on ao3 if you wanna check it out there!
The Family Tree
"So you're telling me this is just a family tree?", Green Lantern asked with a frown on his face.
Bruce could see Constantine's eyes twitching at that question. As always, leave it to Hal Jordan to annoy people.
"This isn't just anything", the sorcerer said with narrowed eyes. "It's a Class-X magical artifact. If this thing is used as a focus for a ritual, the magnitude of magical energy would rise by at least 80 factors. For those of you non-magical or unfamiliar with magic, that's fucking huge."
Beside him Zatanna nodded, her gaze still fixed on the ancient manuscript. She hadn't taken her eyes off the scroll for more than a minute since she got to the Watch Tower and first saw it spread out on the containment room table. Constantine was the same. Captain Marvel was not present, working along with Superman, Hawkgirl, and Aquaman on a case, but his reactions have always been dissimilar from his magical colleagues, so his case might be anywhere between staying the hell away from it to trying to inhale it.
It was clear to Bruce that Zatanna coveted it, but was sensible and cautious enough to stay away from it. Constantine had no sense so he was a tossup. From where he was standing between Wonder Woman and Martian Manhunter, the Gotham vigilante resolved to keep an eye on the two magicians. They most likely won't try to steal the artifact, considering the heavy dose of 'not messing with that thing' overshadowing the desire to possess it, but the scroll itself might be enchanted to encourage covetous feelings on those nearby. It wouldn't be the first time. Better safe than sorry.
It was Diana that stepped up towards the two JL Dark members to seek more clarification. As both a Demigod and as someone familiar with magic, she was usually the one taking point on such issues.
She gestured to the scroll innocently sitting inside the runic circle the two mages had constructed around it. "You have told us that the artifact is not destructive, that it is merely a record, and that the information it contains is not a spell, or a runic arrangement, or a magic circle. You have also told us that the strange energy readings coming from it are mostly due to the material it's made out of than any catastrophic sorcery enchanted into it. You have at last decoded it as a record of a family tree. Yet it is dangerous, a Class-X relic as you've said. Given all this information, I suppose the correct question to ask here is this: why is a family tree capable of raising magical energy output by 80 factors?"
The two magicians looked at each other. Zatanna finally pried her eyes away from the scroll and faced the room.
"Magic is a force that simultaneously has laws but at the same time adheres to none. It's confusing to explain but for the time being just keep that in mind."
She walked to the center of the room, followed by Constantine, visibly trying to collect her words. Bruce prepared himself for a complicated explanation and activated another one of the batsuit's recorders. He felt the urge to sigh, for a supposed unchained force, Magic was needlessly complex at times, and practically incomprehensible to non-magicals.
At the front, Zatanna took a deep breath and began.
"As you know there are multiple dimensions. But magical dimensions come under a different category. Depending on the overall magical potential of a particular magical dimension, we call it the World State Stable Thaumaturgical Output Capacity, we can classify these dimensions in grades and levels, as either higher or lower, with relation to each other. These levels are dependent on a multitude of variables like space, time, gravity, Events, Proximity, etc and as such are non-linear, and unfixed. That's the first thing."
Bruce could practically see the capitals on the last two. Looks like they would need to hold another meeting to clarify a lot of these concepts. Seeing the dawning of lost expressions on some of the members however, Bruce mentally amended that to many future meetings.
Zatanna continued. "Magical objects from higher dimensions become stronger in lower ones. The inverse is also true. This is all in relation to the Overture and the same polarity orientation of course but we don't need to get into that now-"
On the contrary Bruce thought they really needed more explanation on all of that.
"-In simple terms, a child's toy from a higher dimension could become the focus for an apocalyptic ritual in a much lower dimension, while an apocalyptic artifact from a lower dimension might as well be paperweight in a sufficiently higher one. There are ways around it, but if those methods are not implemented, then this is how it generally goes. The larger the level difference, the higher the power."
Now that wasn't concerning at all. Bruce really needed to update his contingency plans regarding magic.
Constantine continued from where Zatanna left off, looking like he'd rather be anywhere but here.
"The second thing is that when it comes to magic, things that are indefinable or unquantifiable become definable and quantifiable. Stuff like love, hate, happiness, despair, fate, necessity, authority? All measurable. Not always needed of course, But definitely possible and frequently used in a variety of magical fields."
The sorcerer leaned against a nearby chair. "One such thing is Significance. The magic contained in true names for instance is mostly based on significance. A true name is significant to you, its a doorway to your soul, and therefore it holds power. Significance is also what we call a positive, additive factor in magic. In the absence of interfering variables, significance as a quantity is directly proportional to magical output. In other words-"
"-the more significant an object or an event, the higher the magical energy output, and consequently higher the magical power", J'onn finished. He looked towards the scroll. "The information recorded on it, the family tree as you've said, valuable in significance, most likely in terms of whose family it's a record of. In addition, the artifact is from a higher dimension with relation to ours, and that has a cumulative effect."
"Yeah exactly", said Constantine with a raised eyebrow. "Which means that if that hypothetical toy Zatanna mentioned? If that happened to be important enough, like a first toy, or a cherished gift or something like that, its significance increases, its potential increases, and in the right hands, or in the wrong hands really, that potential could be harnessed at a lower level."
There was a bout of thoughtful silence as they absorbed all of the information.
But Bruce felt as if he had been quiet enough and took the chance to ask a question of his own. "You mentioned something called the Overture, and polarity orientation. What do they mean?"
Constantine just sighed. "For fuck's sake Batsy those things aren't really important to the discussion..."
Bruce just stared.
..."Fine", the mage said in defeat. "There are many names for it, the Overture, Exordium, Legerdomain, Nascence...but the most accepted two are the Beforebirth, and the Womb. It's not a something as much as it's a someplace, but then again it's not really a place either. Simply put it's the birthplace of Magic, where it all began and all that. It can't be accessed without the Key and that's been lost for a long time. It's actually a mission for many magicals to find it you know? A holy quest for a lot of them. Some of them are straight up crazy though."
Bruce field that information safely away. Figure out a plan to combat fanatic magicians trying to find the birthplace of magic for sinister reasons. "And polarity?"
"Well", Zatanna began, "its how magic is classified according to the nature of...magic? Or rather the essence? It's hard to put in mundane terms...Anyhow broadly speaking there are two main polarities, the Obverse, and the Reverse."
For a moment, she struggled with the explanation before brightening, seemingly having found an idea.
"Picture a number line, but like on the y-axis! Zero is the Overture, Obverse dimensions are the positive number side, and Reverse dimensions are the negative numbers! The higher up the obverse dimension, the larger its magical output! Similarly, the lower down the reverse dimension, the higher its magical output."
Bruce had hardly parsed through that when their resident speedster spoke up.
"Guys", the red clad hero said, "I feel like we missed the obvious follow up question after Ollie over here...like I feel like this is important, but where exactly is the scroll from?"
As one everyone turned towards the artifact.
Constantine grimaced and Zatanna winced. They looked at each other as if asking who wanted to bite the bullet. Finally it looked as if Constantine lost. The sorcerer cursed under his breath.
"Well which dimension is the scroll from?", asked Wonder Woman.
Constantine took what looked like a fortifying breath.
"It's from the Infinite Realms."
Silence.
"What?", the Green Lantern asked intelligently.
"It's from the Infinite Realms. As in Infinite. As in end of the figurative fucking line, number line whatever!"
Everyone stared at the magicians as understanding slowly dawned.
There was what was essentially a magical nuke in the Watch Tower.
"Now", began Martian Manhunter, "this is unfortunate".
#The scroll belonged to a necromancer dude#Big fan of the Ghost King and made a family tree for his faves#Even somehow managed to show Danny and get his seal of approval#Which is a big deal obviously#Then he kicked the bucket and somehow this thing gets found by the JL during a mission#Sorry for the lore dump#Its kinds overkill for what was supposed to be humorous premise#apologies#DP X DC#dp x dc#Bruce Wayne#Batman#Diana Prince#Wonder Woman#J'onn J'onzz#Martian Manhunter#Hal Jordan#Green Lantern#Oliver Queen#Green Arrow#Justice League#John Constantine#Zatanna Zatara#Justice League Dark#DC#DC Comics#Danny Phantom#Barry Allen#The Flash#forgot him lol
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I've been thinking about how Ed starts directly killing people in s2e8. I've seen a lot of worry that this is tragic, that it's Ed falling back into a life he hates with more vigor, and I don't think it's meant to be understood that way at all.
I think it's a triumph.
One thing we absolutely have to understand: there has never been a time on the show when Ed wasn't killing people. That's true for all characters; this is a show about pirates. Even in s1, Ed was leading successful raids and ordering racists skinned. In a realistic sense, nothing has changed.
The difference is in how Ed does not need to construct intricate ways to distance himself from it anymore.
We know that Ed's first time killing was his abusive dad, an event that deeply traumatized him, and it left him thinking himself an absolute monster. His own capacity for violence disgusts and terrifies him, and even though he's been very successful in a very violent career, he needed to distance himself from killing people ("the fire killed those guys, not me") to avoid confronting this part of himself. He believes that the part of himself that is so capable of violence is irredeemable, a monster, unworthy of love.
Even at the start of the season, when Ed is in a self-destructive spiral, it's debateable if he's directly killing anyone. If Lucius had died, he'd probably have said the sea did it, not him. The guy we see him shoot during the raid sequence already had a knife through his chest - it's a step up, and surely meant to be understood as self-harm more than anything else, but that's still a mercy kill, if anything.
Compare to the finale of season 2. These are direct kills, there is no way to argue that Ed is not responsible. It is not debateable that Ed killed all those British officers.
A lot of the worry I've seen around this concern how Ed is going back to what he's good at (as Pop-Pop told him to), and there's an asusmption that that is killing people/violence. But that's not true, is it? Ed's never been good at killing people, his hangups around directly killing are a known character trait. So...what is Ed good at?
Think about how the scene plays out. Ed sees the Republic burning; he can only assume Stede is either captured, wounded, or dead. He's horrified and dazed, his ears ring - he kills the two British soldiers who happen upon him, he decided to fish up his Blackbeard outfit.
What is Ed actually good at? He's a good pirate, a good captain. He's good at keeping his crew safe, he's good at keeping Stede safe. He has to think he's either going to be embarking on a mission to get revenge or to save his boyfriend.
At first, I was very hesitant about the idea of Ed having to go back to piracy, which he says he hates. But what he was actually trying to do was drown Blackbeard, the part of himself he sees as so unworthy of love. He needed to see that Blackbeard is part of him, that he's not a monster or unloveable, that Blackbeard can help him save his friends and his boyfriend.
It's not a coincidencethat the show goes out of its way to make Ed's killing people in this episode as morally easy to accept as possible. The British officers we see are all racist and mean and unpleasant - like, damn, singing 'we shall never be slaves' while making Black characters serve them? Gross! They got what was coming to them! This is the 'racists deserve to die' show, after all.
And Ed uses this violence as a tool for love, to get him back to his boyfriend, to give them a triumphic reunion. I don't think it's a coincidence that this is when Ed tells Stede he loves him, either - he's come one step closer to accepting he's worthy of love, he's more ready to acknowledge what they have.
Ed doesn't have to feel bad about killing those officers. The show doesn't ask him to. He gets to retire while still wearing his Blackbeard outfit - Blackbeard gets to retire, not be drowned with a canonball in the ocean. And we're left with Ed, still with a lot of growing to do and a lot of self-discovery left, but he's closer to realizing that he's not a monster and that he's so deserving of love.
#ofmd#ofmd s2 spoilers#our flag means death#this show. gddamn. got me feeling shrimp emotions#also like. unrelated to the meta. but it was also really hot.
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drunken nights.
when they get a bit too wasted...
characters; cyno, scaramouche, tighnari, kazuha, nilou, shenhe
; gn! reader, alcohol/drinking, established relationship, slight nsw themes of scara's hehe, this is so unnecessarily long
if you somehow manage to get this man to drink away his burdens, CYNO would be the goofy type of drunk. usually, he'd keep his jokes to himself, waiting for an opportunity to insert them in a conversation. but when he's utterly besotted, that boundary completely disappears into thin air. think of it as a barn of chickens, once his mental capacity is impaired due to drinking, all those chickens escape, about to enforce chaos. you and your friends now have to listen to his horrible jokes throughout the entire night, even if they have no correlation to the topic of the conversation whatsoever. it also doesn't help a bit that he contagiously cackles at all of his jokes. his soar laughing fills the entire table with a sense of melancholy. even after you both get home, he's still cracking horrible jokes whilst you're trying to shove water down his throat.
“hey, hey, [name], do you know why I love you so dearly?” you stay quiet, minding your own business until he suddenly wraps his arms around you—earning a small yelp as he breaths down your ear. “because you're perfect.” “cyno...that's not even funny...” you struggle to surpress the incoming blush. “it's not a joke, you walnut...”
if SCARAMOUCHE ever entertains the thought of getting drunk to momentarily forget his burdens, he'd probably only want to do it alone with you. which is why you're both now in his inazuman-styled bedroom, cups of sake in each other's hands as you both quietly talk just about anything, throwing in some insults here and there because we know how he is. i see him becoming almost becoming a completely different person when drunk. he's more chill, and is definitely a lot more talkative than when he's sober. “i saw a cat today, it reminded me of you.” you lean onto his shoulder, feeling the headache already. “was it mean to you?” he throws a slight glare. “bingo. it was cute though. much like you.” he doesn't have the heart to get mad at the moment. not because he's drunk or anything, but because of how grazing hot your skin is against his. both of your kimonos are loosened due to the growing heat of the room.
he catches a glimpse of your bare shoulders and collarbone, a canvas ready for him to paint with...ahem. suddenly feeling a carnal desire burn inside him, he quickly shifts his position, looking more carefully at your flushed face, dilated eyes as you breath heavily. “kuni, is it just me or is it getting warmer—” you're unable to finish talking as he crashes his lips onto yours. good night ;)
TIGHNARI would be too refined and busy for such activities, so i will use his status as a researcher to my advantage. he's come across a wide variety of plants, but one of your favourite discoveries of his would be that one particular mushroom that enacts alcoholic symptoms upon a living being that consumes it. you both come across it during an expedition, and unsurprisingly—he wants to see its capabilities, ordering you to record it's effects, and to bring him back to ghandarva ville if it turns out serious. he chews on it, slightly grimacing at the taste before he says he feels nothing. making sure to take a sample, you both trudge home just in case it has delayed effects. his guess was right it seems, much to his dismay. you remind yourself to record the effects as he had instructed, but...he's so cute! you can't help but coo at his flushed state, clinging onto your waist as he babbles about nonsense.
“okay, tighnari...i have to write your paper, let go of me for a bit...!” you freeze when he slightly growls in annoyance, tightening his grip on you. his tail wags when you start rubbing his ears, “no...forget it for now...it's just some alcoholic shroom anyways...” “it could turn out more serious, you know?” “don't care...just stay close to me.” he says that, but the very next morning—he's now scolding you for getting distracted from your objective. you had it coming.
we've all seen it. the legendary drunk KAZUHA during the golden archipelago event. he's canonly a slurring mess when drunk, much contrary to his usual poetic self. he leans onto your shoulder, hugging your arm as he coos at how “beauti'fuuul” you are. you can hear venti snicker in the background, earning him a glare from you. he raises his hands in defense and winks, "ehe, he's really intoxicated, isn't he? not just by the beverage, but by you as well." "how romantic!” xinyan cheers. deliberately returning your gaze towards your drunked lover. “kazu, it's time to go home. stand up for me will you?” you attempt to pull him up, but you're surprised to see that he immediately shoots up from his seat, swaying a bit from his dizziness. “hehe, anything'fo my super amaziiiing luvwer...” it reliefs you to know that he still recognises you despite not being fully rational at the moment. arriving at the inn you both rented a night for, you clean him up before plopping down on the bed, exhaustion taking over your sense as he suddenly crawls over you.
“kazu, you need to sleep early. we have a trip tomorrow...” he pays no mind to what you said, leaving butterfly kisses on your neck as you tremble under his hold. this is escalating a bit too fast, you think as you slightly lean back. “mm, i'll sleep, dun' worry...” he hums, muttering an apology onto your neck before snoozing off. what a handful.
as a renowned dancer in sumeru, NILOU is often invited to many parties or celebrations. after dancing for her audience, she'd of course get invited by people to their tables, in hopes of getting to compliment her for the amazing performance. she never drinks alcohol though, choosing to drink juice to maintain her composure and image. except for that one time you were getting forced to drink, but obviously didn't want to so she drank a cup in your stead, earning howls of laughter from your fellow buddies. “how bold of you.” you tease her, causing her to blush. “it's just—you seemed uncomfortable so...” “you're lightweight though. will you be alright? sorry in advance if this gets you in trouble with your manager.” ahhh. :D she completely forgot about that part. raising a brow at the way her expression freezes, you giggle at her usual airhead self. “don't worry. i'll explain it to them in person.” you hold her hand as she starts to sway, her eyes staring to close from the headache that's already growing. that cup of sake was probably a bit too much for what she can handle.
as she's currently freed from her subconscious need of containing her image, she's now smiling like an idiot as she leans onto you, hugging your waist as she nuzzles her face onto your neck. her thoughts are eventually blurred as she starts doze off, only thinking about the way you smell very nice.
someone who you'd never expect to be a fun drinking buddy would be SHENHE. the line that her red seal creates between her soul and her emotions are blurred when she gets intoxicated. choosing to get drunk with you would mean she's intentionally dropping her guard around you, wanting you to see a more vulnerable side of hers. "i often wondered if me having an adeptus's diet would affect how alcohol would take effect in my body. turns out, no...this drink is a dangerous weapon.” you snort at the seriousness in her tone, “yes, very dangerous indeed.” she perks up all of sudden. “your laugh just now.” you blink at her statement. what was wrong with your laugh? you tilt your head, beckoning her to continue. “it was very...cute...? is that how you use that word?” “you only found it cute just now?” you say with a false expression of hurt. “i never thought you to be so cruel with me shenhe...” she tilts her head much like you did earlier. “i've always thought it was 'cute'. i have to constantly tell you?”
you slightly pout, “yes. you do. i want affirmation from you too, you know.” and with that, she suddenly stands up, leaving her cup at her side of the table as she makes her way towards you, abruptly leaning down as she awkwardly cradles your face with her hand. you can smell the alcohol from her lips as your breath hitches. “[name], you're cute.” the words come out more stiff than she intended, but you still found it heartwarming nonetheless.
#tighnari x reader#cyno x reader#scaramouche x reader#kazuha x reader#nilou x reader#shenhe x reader#genshin impact x reader#genshin impact imagines#genshin impact headcanons#genshin x reader#har❗fiction
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Why Alastor is good aroace rep after all, written by an aroace
Hello all! I just want to start off this post by saying that I'm one person who definitely doesn't speak for all aroaces, but I wanted to make a post on this anyway, and maybe some folk would be interested in hearing out another perspective?
I'm not really caught up on everything that's been said over the course of HH's creation - only more recent interviews, since I'm pretty new to the fandom. Apologies if I've missed anything, but also I do not have the time to keep up with all the out-of-canon-material backstory unfortunately. I'm working with what we've got here.
So here's the thing:
Alastor is cruel, he's narcissistic, he doesn't care about anyone except himself, he's a serial killer and a monster.
(That's the argument I've heard - please tell me if that's not really what people are going for lol, in which case I've totally misunderstood?)
The issue with aroace rep when it paints asexual people with those traits is that it aims to dehumanizes them. Sex and love are essential to the human experience, right? So why wouldn't someone be interested? Because they're self-absorbed, and cold, and detached. They don't have the capacity to love others enough to feel romance.
And sure, Alastor is a killer, and a schemer, and prideful, and a monster by hell's standards. But no matter how above it all and stylish and in control and provocative he wants to be, he's a very human character, and his aroace-ness never serves to add to his alienation. You could even say that it makes him seem even more personable.
That's what I think is the key difference.
why he's human
Alastor's whole persona is about control, and he basically straight-up says this. He's controlling what his enemies know, what his public image is like. His goal is to be the Radio Demon -- overlord of Hell, charismatic, Machiavellian, and undefeatable. He's not. Despite that smile plastered over his face (a powerful tool, huh) he's so expressive for someone who's constantly pretending.
You see his exasperation with the Egg Bois and with Charlie's ranting; his nervousness in front of Zestial; his frustration with Lucifer and the petty lengths he goes to to piss off the ruler of Hell.
You see his desperation, making that deal with Charlie. He's surprised by the idea of being vulnerable in front of an enemy like Adam, and so close to danger. He drops the radio filter and the affect out of fear, and runs on broadcast TV to let out panic and anger and bitterness in his hideout, where no one else can see him.
He has a smile that tells us he's genuinely happy to see someone; it's a little wider than his default. You see it with Mimzy's greeting, you see it with Rosie. Rosie, especially, serves to make Alastor more human to the audience. More on this later, but for now, I'm just saying that you can see that he at least seems to respect her greatly. Whatever bond they have, we know that he trusts her to touch him, to share history with him, and with support that he trusts no one else for.
He pretends, but he can't pretend it all away. Loads of these emotions aren't even advantageous for him to show. It isn't necessarily how the typical asexual psychopath acts; he's not emotionless or only capable of anger or brutality.
He's so full of emotion that it leaks through, despite all that he does to avoid it. He's not inhuman and aloof, not really - he's so, so human, even when he tries not to be because he thinks that'll be what keeps him above all the rest. In control, and free from his chains.
(If anyone wants to see images about all this, I'll make a separate post - just let me know.)
(I also have another post, talking about why Alastor is at least a little attached to the hotel's residents too, shown via conversation with Niffty. In what way? different question.)
how the aroace part contributes to that
Now, to be fair, we don't hear much about his aroaceness in canon. It's just not relevant a lot of the time.
In the pilot, Angel's proposition ruffles his feathers so much that Alastor blanks for a moment. It's a joke, sure, but that ace panic face is a pretty popular Alastor moment in the fandom - Alastor, thrown off-balance by a sex joke of all things, after so many years in Hell that he should probably be used to this.
It's a moment that makes him more approachable; his aroaceness shows him unprepared for something someone else does for one of the only real moments in the whole episode.
And the other part: the ace in the hole statement.
Rosie apparently knows Alastor so well that she read that he's aroace. That tells us about their relationship; namely, that it is long-standing and genuine enough that she gleaned a piece of real information from him. It's a casual fact that she knows about him before he even figured it out himself. It lends legitimacy to their bond - this bond that shows us a more comfortable and warm side of Alastor that we don't often see.
If their relationship is purely business, isn't this something pretty frivolous and personal? It's not like he has anything to gain by telling her about his life, but she learned about it somehow. How close are they? That's where it adds a layer of complexity and personality to his character..
thoughts on representation
Overall, Alastor's an interesting character who has a level of depth and care and personality (outside of cruelty) that asexual psychopath tropes lack. Again, the moments where he's being represented as disinterested in sex or romance don't make him seem detached. Again, they don't say "look how hostile toward relationships his behaviour is - how separate he is from our humanity". That's what bad villain ace rep is. That's not what the show's doing.
Also: I'm not saying that we need to lower our standards or anything, but even if you think it's not the best rep, I feel like we should be supporting HH's efforts here. I know that on Tumblr we have a pretty queer-friendly space going, which is honestly an understatement lol but
Aces are incredibly underrepresented in fiction. There's a whole Wikipedia page about asexual characters in media, and it's short as all hell, and even if you consider what's on there you see quite a number of one-off characters who are never mentioned again.
In terms of real life business - before the DSM updated their definition of hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD) in 2013, identifying as asexual wasn't even a recognized thing. If you talked to a clinician about your lack of sexual desire, you could be diagnosed with a disorder. Only in the 5th edition do we now have a little exclusion footnote about it.
The concept of asexuality hasn't been explored nearly as much as other queer identities in our scientific research. We get crumbs in terms of mainstream representation and understanding. House M.D. has an episode where House "disproves" us because he's just so smart.
Alastor isn't going to be perfect representation. There's no such thing as perfect representation, and from the moment he was conceptualized, you could see how people would take him poorly. Still, I think he's a net positive.
He isn't a side character or a token ace - he's a core part of the show, whose personality and character motivations we can reasonably presume are going to be explored much more deeply in upcoming season(s). He's loved by the fandom. Right now, given what we know, I trust Vivziepop to write the aroace representation he deserves, because with the way I've heard the cast/directing/etc. talk about him, they're trying to do the aroace community justice, so I wish people would let up just a little on the whole "Alastor is bad rep".
Let's give him a chance, all right?
#hazbin hotel#aroace alastor#alastor analysis#hazbin alastor#hazbin hotel spoilers#asexual#asexuality#hazbin alastor meta#hazbin hotel alastor#hazbin#alastor#hazbin meta#hazbin analysis
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The fairy/walrus thing is actually kind of an incredible testament to the truth behind Brandon Sanderson’s first law of magic.
For those that don’t know, popular fantasy author Brandon Sanderson has become quite renowned for how he implements magic in his stories and he decided to write three different essays on the rules he follows and why they work the way they do in storytelling. He calls them his “laws of magic” and the first one is: An author’s ability to solve conflict with magic is directly proportional to how well the reader understands said magic.
Basically, in general for good fantasy writing, you can do anything you want with magic and it will almost always alway be accepted by the reader as long as you set up beforehand what the magic is capable of. Or if you didn’t do that it has to be something the reader discovers with the characters (I mean this generally of course I’m sure there’s always exceptions).
Both the walrus and the fairy scenario imply to the reader (of the poll) some form of magic was employed. The reason a fairy sounds more plausible at that point is because the general cultural consensus in people’s minds is that fairies are already magic and it’s not far of a stretch to believe that a fairy would employ the thing it’s universally known for in order to show up at people’s houses.
However with the other scenario, a walrus knocking at your door. Implies that a walrus is employing some form of magic. But the problem with that is that we already KNOW what a walrus is capable of. A walrus has RULES. When the only rule a fairy has to follow in order to knock on someone’s door is “be magic” a walrus has to first break all the rules we already have about it before “be magic” is even an allowed concept. Before a walrus can be magic it has to take a journey of some length from its aquatic origins, have a specific destination in mind(outside of their regular behavior patterns), and have the capacity to knock. All forms of magic that walrus’ are not known for employing.
Like if the walrus scenario was a book someone was reading and at the very beginning the author described a world in which there was a secret society of walrus’ who have there own politics and methods of travel and cultural nuances, and then went on to describe one of THOSE walrus’ appearing on the reader’s doorstep then the reader would left with a much smaller sense of disbelief more comparable to that of a fairy showing up on their doorstep.
Anyway this wasn’t to say that there was a wrong or right answer to the poll I just think peoples brains are neat and I love how something like a silly little poll can highlight such a big truth in how people communicate to each other and take in information.
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Chapter 105.5 Thoughts: Control, Manipulation and Partnership
Or, how Chuuya is actually the most qualified character to land a victory over Dostoevsky.
I just want to preface this with: I think Chuuya has woken from the brainwashing. We can't see his eyes, he's holding his hat again, and look at the progression of his face and expression from the last few chapters with him (these are in order btw from left to right).
I'm not completely sure how he did this, but I chalk a lot of it up to sheer stubborn determination on Chuuya's part, mostly because it's funny and he was clearly fighting back before Dazai's speech. However, I find it likely the speech did contain some kind of code - others have pointed out how "Goodbye!" might be a reference to the original author's last unfinished book and we know skk's codenames for things generally are based off their real counterparts' works so, maybe he'd already broken out of it, maybe there was something in there that gave him the final push - who knows at this point honestly? Either way, it means Chuuya had the capacity to break out of the vampire curse on his own and that's incredibly funny to me for many reasons but mostly:
Fyodor: "Bold of you to assume Chuuya's ability can't overcome flooding."
Dazai: "Bold of you to assume Chuuya's personality can't overcome brainwashing."
But really, this highlights something interesting here, both in what Chuuya's role is ultimately intended to be in this arc, and in the way Fyodor and Dazai manipulate and value others in very different ways.
I've said it before but it bears repeating: we already know that Fyodor is an excellent long-term planner, while Dazai is effectively able to counter him because Dazai shifts into thinking like his opponent. They're foil characters for a reason; they're both highly intelligent, manipulative, and willing to play the long game for the sake of winning against their opponent.
Thing is, I also stand by the idea that personality-wise, they're not similar at all - and that has serious implications for the people they are connected with. The build-up to the prison escape arc really highlights this. Some examples:
Chapter 46: Fyodor believes that all people are sinful and foolish and that his goal is to remove sin. Dazai believes that all people are sinful and foolish but asks what's so wrong with that.
Chapter 64: They decide to have a "super-happy chit-chat" about their problems. Dazai's solution to Fyodor's issue with his lazy subordinates is to get them to think lazing around is a bad thing so they will put in effort of their own. Fyodor's solution to Dazai being unable to woo the waitress is to isolate her from her job, house and family so that she can only rely on Dazai.
Chapter 77: Fyodor believes god is perfection and harmony, and thus that the people capable of change are the superior ones with most control. Dazai believes god is the accidental and illogical and believes it is the ordinary people who fight and live in that uncertainty who create the greatest change.
So, what's happening here? Fyodor's manipulation is shown to be very exacting and direct. He leaves no room for error and regards people on a hierarchy - God above all, himself as a servant of God's will, and the sinful and foolish humans he has little regard for. Dazai's manipulation involves manipulation of the situation, and is often indirect. It involves people coming to the conclusion he intends for them to on their own. And from his later dialogue with Sigma, we see he doesn't regard the world in that same kind of hierarchy.
Now, look at the way Fyodor picks an item and Dazai picks a person when starting the game. Look at the way Fyodor refers to Chuuya respectfully but brainwashes him entirely and mocks Dazai for not being worthy of "using" his ability. Look at the way Dazai is a complete ass to Chuuya but ultimately lets him make his own choices (begging people to take note of that moment in Stormbringer where Dazai cuts himself off to correct his referring to Corruption as Arahabaki's true power to Chuuya's true power).
So, the actual strength Dazai has over Dostoevsky then, is not really his strength at all, it's the strength of others and their choice and willpower to act in the way they believe is best. It's the only means of getting a leg up on Dostoevsky, otherwise they will continue to go around and around in circles forever.
And Chuuya is the best candidate for finally throwing Fyodor off his game.
Firstly, let's just establish something: no matter how mad he is at Dazai, he's not going to side with Fyodor, not willingly. Fyodor threatened the Mafia in the Cannibalism arc by attacking Mori, first of all. I doubt he's forgiven him for that. Secondly, Fyodor embodies everything Chuuya can't stand about Dazai, at the very least, younger Dazai - the manipulation, the lack of consideration and connection with others, the callousness and lack of regard for life.
Well, perhaps he's not quite as irritating. +1 point for Dostoevsky I guess?
But lastly, it is more advantageous for Chuuya at this point to help fight against Fyodor, especially since most of the Mafia has been vampirized by his organization. Helping the Agency stop the terrorist plot will help the Mafia by extension by undoing that. And we know from Stormbringer that no matter how much Chuuya is personally hurt, he considers taking out the threat to his people a higher priority. Always.
(You could make the argument that he was told whatever Teruko told Atsushi and decided to join, but not only do I find this wildly out of character, but if that was the case then there would've been no reason to brainwash him.)
That said, I don't think this was preemptive "Dazai's master plan #3057", and in fact, I stand by the idea that Dazai had no idea Chuuya was going to be in the prison. It is very, very important to me that for the rest of this arc, no matter what Chuuya does, that his actions are his own. Not Fyodor's, not Dazai's, but his. And not just because I hate that he's being controlled right now and that freedom of choice has always been important for Chuuya.
But because it makes narrative sense.
The vampires are a bit silly, yes, but they represent the way Fyodor and Fukuchi think - humanity will commit atrocities. They cannot be trusted to make their own decisions. They want to make a world that is free by... mind-controlling people so their plans work without a hitch. In short, they choose, on behalf of others, to sacrifice human autonomy for peace. So, if we are going to turn this arc around, we need to have characters breaking out of that control and thinking for themselves, in spite of the uncertainty of the outcome.
We already see this with Atsushi in the last chapter! He finally takes initiative and makes that choice to leave the room when he doesn't exactly know what the right thing to do is. And this is also why I don't think Teruko is wholly convinced by the DoA either - she lets him go. She gives him the freedom to choose what he does with that information.
Another one of the focus characters here is Sigma. Sigma is a guy who has no past, whose humanity is questioned, who keeps being used by organizations for his valuable ability, who has no home but desperately wants one... oh wait. Remind you of anyone's younger self? This could go one of two ways: Chuuya fails to assert his autonomy, leaving Sigma to learn from that failure, or, Chuuya succeeds in asserting his autonomy, leaving Sigma to learn from his success.
I think it, by necessity, has to be the latter. Sigma's at a tipping point right now, and I think seeing someone try to assert their freedom only to fail would damage him greatly. And I think it's a waste of Chuuya's character honestly.
Chuuya needs to assert his autonomy in this arc. Not just for thematic reasons but because I can think of no one else who can effectively break the "super-genius stalemate".
I keep hearing "Dazai knows Chuuya" in response to Fyodor calling their bond shallow, and that is absolutely true! But Chuuya also knows Dazai. Incredibly well. Odasaku knew Dazai's soul, but Chuuya knows Dazai's mind, knows his strategies and ways of thinking without even needing words. What's more, Chuuya has thrown off Dazai before and done what he didn't expect him to.
Which is nifty, because Dazai and Fyodor think a lot alike. Chuuya is in a unique position to thwart Dostoevsky because he may actually be able to predict him to a degree. Chuuya can absolutely land a victory against him, and it's excellent because it would be completely unexpected to Fyodor, who apparently thinks Chuuya's strength lies only in what his ability has to offer and not much else.
But listen. This also can't be skk's plan. I need Chuuya to sideline both of them. Both for the sweet, sweet catharsis of putting those two idiot geniuses in their places and also because I need Dazai to have screwed up. He wasn't wrong about people making their own choices in uncertainty. People need to assert their autonomy to create change. Dazai can't be wrong in this regard.
But with going ahead with the trap to drown Fyodor despite also having to drown Chuuya when he promised not to let him get killed... this needs to have been a mistake, otherwise the value of Dazai's emotional speech to him is diminished.
I want Dazai to try to laugh it off. I want him to say he always knew Chuuya would escape and then for Chuuya to deck him because "no, the fuck you didn't".
I really think Dazai hoped Chuuya would make it. Do remember that Chuuya was one of the first reasons young Dazai decided to try giving life a chance. The fact that he flashbacked to all his key memories with Chuuya says a lot. But his survival was no guarantee and it seemed very unlikely.
So, Chuuya is faced with the fact that Dazai nearly sacrificed him to kill Dostoevsky and save his new Agency friends.
And I hope he finally gets mad. I hope he finally expresses hurt on his own behalf for once. I hope they are forced to break their status quo that they have carefully maintained by not talking about anything ever. I hope they are pushed to uncomfortable places and that it is Chuuya who finally spurs this development.
Let Chuuya break the stalemate between Dazai and Dostoevsky. Let him shatter the status quo that him and Dazai have kept going for year after year.
Autonomous action in the face of uncertainty is necessary for change.
#am i assigning too much narrative importance in the main manga to chuuya? perhaps#will i stop? no#unfortunately this meta doesn't include gogol which is an oversight because he absolutely has to play a role as well#i'm just not quite sure what yet. same as chuuya i suppose#either gogol asserts his autonomy or he... fails. yeah. either he gets dostoevsky killed or... he fails.#i just don't know where he fits in with everyone else is the thing#listen though. it is significant that gogol decided not to play his dying role in the doa's plan though.#gogol is the free spirit of the doa and yet he's closer to sigma and bram in terms of how he is more controlled than controller#anyways sorry this is so long. just my two cents on the matter#bsd#bsd spoilers#bsd chapter 105.5#bsd chuuya#bsd fyodor#bsd dazai#bsd sigma#bsd meta#i don't even know if this makes sense anymore. here.#storyrambles
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Rant about Eywa theories
Eywa is one of the most interesting concepts in the Avatar universe, imo. The concept of an interplanetary consciousness that every native organism can "interface" with is so cool. One thing that really fascinates me about Eywa is how she goes about "protecting only the balance of life" as Neytiri explained to Jake. As of Avatar 1, Eywa did not react to the human threat mining and destroying the forest for several years, nor the genocide/abduction of the Sarentu clan, even though Eywa would've been aware of what was happening when the Na'vi shared their memories with her soul trees. She only reacted to the threat AFTER she was exposed to human memories of the destruction of earth when Jake interfaced with her via his avatar body, and then again when she interfaced with Grace’s human body. The reaction was similar to an immune response within a body attacking a foreign virus, with native fauna mobilizing to attack anything that registered as alien. One interesting thing of note about the immune response is that the animals were not physically connected to Eywa when they attacked, which means Eywa can somehow send commands to organisms “wirelessly.” This phenomena could also explain how the atokirina conveniently show up to stop Neytiri from killing Jake. Anyway, the immune response won the final battle of A1, in A2 we saw the immune response can't protect Pandora in its entirety. The recoms could get past the immune response undetected, and Bridgehead and the whaling ships didn't face an immune response at all.
Another interesting thing about Eywa we learned from the original script for Avatar 2, is that she is confirmed to have caused Grace’s pregnancy. Norm describes Kiri’s birth as “parthenogenesis,” which is a biological process in which an egg produces viable offspring without sperm from a male. (idk if the script needs a spoiler warning, so I'm putting one just to be safe) Based on the fact that Jake describes the pregnancy as “a mystery,” we can assume parthenogenetic birth isn’t something normal to the Na’vi’s alien reproductive cycle. On earth, parthenogenesis is only found in invertebrates and some plants. Assuming that Na’vi reproduction is somewhat similar to earth animal reproduction (which I think we can safely do since the Sully children clearly have inherited different traits from their parents, implying that they get half of their DNA from each parent just like on earth, but they are aliens so I could be completely wrong here), Grace would’ve had gametes inside of her avatar’s reproductive system, which are cells that only contain half of the genetic material to produce a viable offspring. A complex, multicellular organism like a Na’vi couldn’t exist without a full set of genes, so in order to produce a zygote (a new cell with a full set of genes that can grow into an embryo), the other half of the genetic material must’ve come from somewhere else, and the only place it could’ve come from is Eywa herself. This means that Eywa, to some capacity, can create or at least copy and reproduce genetic material. Since Kiri is so similar to Grace, it’s possible the other half of her genes are just a complete copy of Grace.
From all this we can conclude some things about Eywa.
We know she is not:
All powerful
All knowing
A “god” in the traditional sense
We know she is capable of:
Storing memories, including memories of the deceased from the last time they connected with her
Making decisions to react to threats based on those memories
Interfacing with an alien’s nervous system
Commanding fauna
Sending signals to organisms without physical contact
Creating/changing genetic material
What is still unclear is how Eywa’s consciousness works. Is she:
A sentient individual?
A hive mind of the deceased Na’vi?
An amalgamation of consciousness built from memories?
Something akin to a biological artificial intelligence?
Now that we’ve established the things that are confirmed about Eywa, I want to get into some speculation about what else she might be capable of. Note that from this point on I’m being purely SPECULATIVE and I’m not saying any of this is for sure possible in canon, I’m just coming up with hypotheses based on info we already have. After the end of Avatar 2, it looks like Jake and the Na’vi are planning to make their stand against the RDA, but if they want any hope of winning against the RDA’s superior technology, they’re going to need a combination of a Na’vi war force and divine intervention, just like in Avatar 1. The question is, how will Eywa help them? The one form of defense we’ve seen from her is the immune response, but that can only go so far. It can be fooled by avatars and recoms, and it is not strong enough to attack a heavily fortified base like Bridgehead. Eywa is going to have to step up her game, and I’ve created three theories on how she might do that.
📢potential spoiler warning for the last theory!📢
Theory 1: The 880 Virus
Project 880 is a screenplay James Cameron wrote in 1995 that eventually morphed into the Avatar we know and love today. One element in 880 that never made it to Avatar was the counter-viruses. For every earth virus the RDA brought with them to Pandora, Eywa created a counter-virus that would stop it, protecting both native organisms and the humans from getting sick from the viruses ever again. The RDA was even planning to create vaccines using the counter-viruses and sell them back on earth. At the end of Project 880 when the RDA is forced to retreat, Jake tells them that if they ever come back, Eywa will unleash a deadly virus that will wipe out any human that dares set foot on Pandora again. Even though Project 880 is not canon, I could see James Cameron revisiting his old idea to help the protagonists shake off the RDA forever. The problem is they’d need to find a way to protect the friendly humans like Spider and Norm.
Theory 2: Avatar Kiri
Between the parthenogenetic birth and Kiri’s ability to control vines (seen in The High Ground comic) and anemones (seen in Avatar 2), the movies are clearly setting up for there to be something special about her. In both the comic scene where she controlled plants and the movie scene where she controlled the anemones, the characters around her expressed confusion that she could do so, from which we can assume those are not normal abilities of a Na’vi. Since Kiri is also established to have a deep connection to Eywa, it is possible she is meant to act as an “avatar.” In the original context of the word, an avatar is a manifestation of a deity in mortal form, so Kiri would act as an avatar for Eywa. Since Kiri is a person and not a… whatever Eywa is, she can make her own decisions and react quickly to problems without having to absorb memories first. There’s no more information to speculate about what other abilities Kiri may develop in the future, so unfortunately, there’s not much else to discuss here that we can base on any evidence.
Theory 3: If you can’t beat em, join em
📢Here’s where we’re getting into potential spoiler territory.📢 In the BTS footage for Avatar 2, there were some scripts accidentally shown which described some very interesting scenes: Spider, breathing without a mask, and Kiri confessing to Mo’at that she caused it to happen. There was also some concept art shown in Las Vegas that depicted Spider with a neural queue plugged into the underwater spirit tree with Kiri. Full disclaimer, it’s entirely possible these are scrapped ideas and will not be seen in the Avatar franchise, but for the sake of this hypothesis, let’s assume they’re legit. I’ve seen a lot of people asking the question of HOW would this happen, but I haven’t seen anybody asking an equally important question: WHY? I’m very interested in the HOW and maybe I’ll make a discussion post on it later, but for my hypothesis let’s just talk about the WHY. Even though Kiri claimed responsibility for it, I don’t think this is something she could do without the help of Eywa, since Na’vi aren’t established to have the ability to radically alter other organisms. So why would Eywa want to give a human kid the ability to breathe the Pandoran air? Sure, he’s Kiri’s friend, but Eywa has never intervened to save an individual’s life just because people cared about them before (otherwise we’d still have Neteyam RIP). As Neytiri said, “The Great Mother protects the balance of life.” Eywa did not intervene to stop the destructive mining or protect the Sarentu, she only intervened AFTER Grace’s memories showed her that the RDA could potentially cause planet-wide destruction like on earth. So if she gave Spider this life-saving ability, there must be a bigger reason for it other than just Kiri wanting him to survive. My hypothesis is that Eywa has realized what a massive threat the humans pose to Pandora, and that her immune system response is insufficient to protect her biosphere. Her solution is to behave like a virus and weaponize the humans against themselves. When a virus infects a healthy organism, it “hacks” into healthy cells and reprograms them to attack uninfected cells and produce more viruses. Eywa will “hack” Spider’s biology the same way she “hacked” into Grace’s nervous system to interface with her, and will “reprogram” him to breathe the air and have a neural queue. Spider is already loyal to the Na’vi, so she doesn’t need to do anything further to him, but what if she repeated the process with other humans? Any human who gained a neural queue would be able to experience tsaheylu and the connection between all living things. Humans who are already loyal to Eywa would be able to fight back better with their new abilities, and it would give Eywa more access to more memories to gain a better understanding of the enemy. Humans who are loyal to the RDA would be more inclined to switch sides after experiencing Eywa’s consciousness, much like Jake did. I’m aware this final theory is a bit more out there than the others, but it spawned from me trying to answer the question of WHY would Spider get the ability to breathe the air and I felt like there had to be a bigger reason than just Kiri wanting to save him. Unlike Kiri, there’s not some special significance about Spider (other than his connection to Quaritch, but I don’t think Eywa would care about that) that would make him vital to the fight against the RDA, so I thought, what if he’s not special, he just happened to be the first piece of a much larger plan? And the result is this theory.
What do you think of my theories and do you guys have any of your own to share?
TLDR: Eywa is really cool, and in the future I think she could possibly defeat the RDA by unleashing a deadly virus, giving Kiri special powers, or "converting" Spider and other humans.
#avatar#atwow#avatar the way of water#eywa#project 880#atwow kiri#avatar kiri#kiri sully#spider socorro#avatar spider
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"So," Ed says while the crew gets the ship ready for Lucius and Pete's matelotage ceremony, shyly swaying his shoulder as he leans towards Stede in what is rapidly becoming Stede's favorite bit of Ed body language. "Zheng's offer."
And Stede hears the question he isn't asking. Hears the plea this time, too. This time he isn't drunk and coming off the high of being worshipped for killing a man to protect his loved ones. The renewed threat on their lives and watching Ed sob brokenly while Izzy died in his arms have sobered him up fast, instilled a new understanding of the way Ed views piracy in him and rearranged his priorities one more time. He thought he had this right when he left Barbados. No matter, he'll keep learning as he goes, keep listening and trying his best to do right by himself and by Ed.
"You wanted to become a fisherman." Ed winces. Stede doesn't hold a drop of resentment towards him, understands how easy it is to panic when faced with something as immense as what they share while the burdens of their pasts still plague them.
"I think I wasn't as well suited to fishing as a I thought," Ed says, ruefully.
"Nonsense. You're great at fishing." He beams at him, knows that Ed is capable of excelling at anything he sets his mind to. But it doesn't have to be fishing, it can be anything they choose. There's a whole world of possibilities open before them now. "What if we explored a different avenue?" he suggests.
Ed's eyes open wide, excited. Stede knows he's on the right track, the way his heart settles in his chest at the look in Ed's eyes tells him he can't go wrong if he follows this instinct for the rest of his days.
"Yeah? Like what?" He sounds impatient to get started.
"I remember you expressing an interest in becoming a restauranter once?"
"Eh, the food industry might be a tad too much work. We'd have to catch the food first, then cook it and serve all the customers..." he looks bashful, like there's something on the tip of his tongue that he's hesitant to speak out loud. "What if-?"
"Yes?" Stede asks, quiet and a little breathless with anticipation. His blood is thrumming, he wants to take this leap with Ed with every fiber of his being, is leagues more eager for this than he was when he first commissioned a ship and set off to sea.
"What about an inn?"
The memory flashes through his mind of Ed gifting a couple of kids on the Republic a bag of gold and a pair of knives, and claiming they weren't pirates but inn owners afterwards. How long has he been thinking about this? How long has this been a dream of his?
"Sounds fun." He smiles, radiant. He's thrilled to join Ed on their next adventure, inn ownership or fishing or bar and grill management. He would go anywhere with him.
"Yeah?" Ed sounds exhilarated too.
"Yes."
And there isn't an ounce of hesitancy in his voice this time around. He knows himself at last, knows the bottomless capacity for loving Ed his heart possesses, doesn't intend to ever let him go again.
Ed leans forward as if he intends to kiss him and Stede's heart starts beating faster, always greedy for Ed. But Ed stops, pauses halfway to Stede and looks doubtful all of a sudden.
"What about this?"
"This?"
"The ship. The crew. Piracy." Stede thinks he means the last one most of all. And god, what a fool he was to almost lose this to a fantasy. What he set out for a lifetime ago wasn't piracy, it was a dream of freedom and a place where he could be himself. He's never more himself than when he's standing next to Ed, looking the future in the eye together. This is his home, where his body and soul belong forever. The ship will continue to house their family and carry them safely across the sea, and they'll come back to visit as much as they want to. He can't wait to see what they get up to, either.
"You're the only adventure I need, Ed."
And Ed melts into his arms and kisses him sweetly.
#blackbonnet#gentlebeard#ofmd#our flag means death#ofmd fic#ofmd spoilers#here have this drabble as a treat because I'm drowing in feelings#my fic
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Tried the Damsel route today.
This shot and the sequence leading up to it is probably one of the most disturbing things in the whole game. It's to existential horror what the Prisoner sawing her own head off was to physical horror. If anything, the Prisoner's autodecapatation is now less horrifying, in retrospect, because at least she got to keep her personality and free will throughout the process.
But, also...even in the routes where we don't mean to hurt her, where we do everything in our power to avoid physically hurting her...we still hurt her.
Even if we came in here with the very best of intentions and tried to "do the right thing," we still hurt her by our thoughts and desires hollowing her out until she was reduced to...this.
Going through the "happy" version of the ending didn't feel so triumphant, after that. Not just because the ending wasn't quite as satisfying from a narrative standpoint without any sort of conflict to struggle against, but because the whole time it felt like she was following a script. Apart from the vague impulse to leave that all Princesses possessed, she'd been hollowed out of everything that had made her...well, her, before Chapter II. She didn't panic when the door shut, she didn't stop smiling when we suggested she might end the world or have to cut off her arm a second time. The only thing we noticed about her in Chapter I was her lack of response to pain and her sweet smiles, and our fantasies hollowed her out until she became nothing but that.
Can we say she was "happy" if she lacked the capacity to be anything but "happy" with our choices for her? Can you call that love? Or is it something that's even lonelier than outright being alone?
Honestly, it was a relief when the Shifting Mound took her. Seeing her made so shallow felt incredibly cruel, given who she was before she was flattened, and what she would've been capable of if we had done literally anything else. At that point, "You molded her to love you" and "She has served her purpose" felt like both an observation and an accusation.
But, given that my time with the Damsel was paired with Shifty's third vessel dialogue...it got me thinking about what She wants.
She says She doesn't want anything, that She's governed by the whims of whatever force is shaping Her at the moment, but...is She really happy, having who She is be subject to the whims of who's perceiving Her? Is She okay with not being able to hold a shape She's discovered she likes as soon as someone else perceives Her to be something different? Would She ever want to take a break from...all that? After all, She's drawn to us. The Long Quiet. The god of eternity and order. On a certain level, She craves stability.
Is her "gift" to us what She's secretly wanted all along? The power to choose Her own fate, Her own identity, and the power to change it if She doesn't like the path She's on? And what does that say about our gifts? Do we yearn for the completion we offer her through the vessels, given that we keep shattering to pieces every time we go back into the breach and start the loop again? Is this some kind of wacky flipped-upside-down Gift of the Magi situation where each of us gives the other what they yearn for but lack due to our being permanently separated into two beings against our will?
#long post#slay the princess#slay the princess spoilers#stp spoilers#the damsel#the shifting mound#existential horror#i mean tony didn't exactly specify that *we* were the only one having an existential crisis here#just that SOMA was an influence#new perspectives run
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Look, I'll say it one last time:
I knew discussing Tamlin in canon would upset people and that my interpretation may differ from others, but the thing is that I believe that Tamlin did a great job ruling until ACOMAF even if he didn't want it. Would he have been able to do half as good a job without Lucien? Absolutely not. Please don't come and try to dispute this with me because it's simply factual.
Y'all, Tamlin already recovered from his family's abuse and lesser education to become a ruler. He already had to embrace power even when he didn't want it. It didn't end well. What he needs now is time to think about himself for once. When was the last time anyone took care of him? Oh...right. Literally never. The closest thing we get is Lucien, and it's obvious that Tamlin keeps him at a little bit of a distance because of his position and because he believes he's protecting Lucien from his own darkness.
I don't think it's wrong of me to want the same thing Tamlin wants, which is simply...a fucking break. Some peace. A nice home to himself. No more burdens crushing his mind.
And I have no idea which court Lucien will be taking over, but I do know that Lucien will become a High Lord/King in some capacity. It has been planned since fucking book 1, before anyone says this is just SJM's retcons. Originally, he was supposed to take over Autumn; now I'm uncertain which court it will be. Personally, I'm all for High King Lucien but I will stay calm. Lucien loves the grind. Ruling is something he would actually enjoy rather than a burden to accept with Tamlin.
It's not about capability. It's about character arcs and the desires of each characters. I am not sure why everyone wants Lucien to be shunted to the side because he's very obviously going to be a main and honestly, Tamlin's story will most likely be a side arc in Lucien's story.
Before anyone calls me biased, we're all going to be fucking biased. But this is the last thing I'll be saying on this matter.
Keep calm and love Lucien.
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Everything We Know About Who Pyro Is/Was:
Obviously Pyro remains an enigma and I'm not going to pretend I have much in the way of definitive proof, however there ARE aspects of their background we can reasonably assume based on the skills and behaviours Pyro displays.
First and foremost, we need to understand the extent of the disconnect between their consciousness and reality. Most folks understand it as mainly auditory and visual hallucination, however if you look at side-by-side moments in Meet The Pyro, you'll realize that there's a clear disconnect between Pyro's physical stance:
What Pyro believes they are doing with their body and what their body is actually doing can be entirely disconnected. Furthermore, if you listen closely to Pyro's more comprehensible dialogue, you'll notice that what they say lines up more with what they're actually doing, and not what they THINK they're doing:
Put together, this implies Pyro possesses not just a disconnect from reality, but also a full-blown division of personality. There's Conscious Pyro, who is the bundle of joy frolicking through Pyroland, and then there's Unconscious Pyro, who is the maniacal murderer actively interacting with reality.
Both of these personalities seem to play a factor in Pyro's behaviour. While Conscious Pyro clearly seems to possess a degree of control over how they act in Pyroland, the fact that all those actions also happen to be very effective methods of murder in the real world says that Unconscious Pyro is steering these decisions.
Now, these two are not ALWAYS so disconnected or extreme. When not actively burning things, Pyro's perceived reality seems to line up more closely with what's actually happening from a visual, auditory, and physical standpoint:
Conscious Pyro's whimsy and Unconscious Pyro's murderousness both seem to drastically tone down in these circumstances, however both never fully go away. Pyro is ALWAYS capable of extreme violence/destruction:
Speaking of extreme violence, Conscious Pyro DOES share Unconscious Pyro's capacity and willingness to cause harm. This implies that the difference between the personalities' behaviour is more-so the result of their perceived environments, not demeanour.
To summarize, Pyro's disconnect from reality becomes more powerful when in the presence of fire/destruction, and this causes a divergence in Pyro's perceived and presented personalities.
Moving on to in-game lore, it is stated that Pyro built/improvised the majority of their weapons (mainly out of stuff found in a garage.) This is immediately clear if you look at the individual components of their flamethrower:
The primary exception to this is their shotgun, which is a standard weapon they nonetheless operate with a trained familiarity:
Building a flamethrower is no easy feat. Besides being extremely complicated and dangerous, all information regarding flamethrower construction and schematics are strictly controlled by the U.S. government.
Therefore I'd say it isn't much of a leap to suggest that Pyro's ability to construct and operate improvised military-grade incendiary weaponry must have been the result of formal training.
This is further supported by the fact that their flame-retardant suit is not equipment provided by Mann Co, as they continue to wear it even after being fired. All this together implies that before becoming a mercenary, Pyro had a job that provided them with both the knowledge and tools of an incendiary specialist. This more-or-less confirms that Pyro was not ALWAYS so insane, as at some point they were considered stable enough to be trusted with such a dangerous job.
Since Pyro seemingly hasn't taken the suit off since that job, it can be deduced that whatever triggered or inflicted the madness they now suffer from must have occurred during their service. It would also explain why all of Pyro's incendiary weapons are homemade while their suit is standard-issue. After being fired they obviously weren't allowed to keep any weaponry, meaning they had to construct their own.
There are a lot of ways to interpret all of this, but my personal theory is that Pyro was at one point part of some Cold War experiment. One that sought to disconnect soldiers from the reality of their actions during combat, while ALSO allowing them to operate with brutal efficiency. Considering this was the era of the Vietnam War, a way to make soldiers not feel guilty or resentful while being ordered to commit atrocities would have been an invaluable tool for the USA's military. Pyro being a highly trained candidate for such an experiment is the only explanation I can think of for how they could be simultaneously highly trained in incendiary weaponry AND be too blatantly insane to ever justify such training.
This would ALSO explain why Pyro is both so frighteningly dangerous and unstable, yet still somehow employable as a mercenary. While extreme, they remain capable of understanding and following instructions from superiors. Even if said instructions have to be delivered in a slightly different manner:
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Ok, so let's talk about "misandry."
(Heads up that I use terrible US foreign policy as an example of underlying gender ideology, Death to America of course)
1) if we're working within a social justice, privilege-oppression type framework, there is no systemic oppression of men as men, or trans men as trans men (beyond transphobia). Within these privilege oppression frameworks treating misandry or transandrophobia as a real thing is gonna have disastrous consequences.
2) But we need to be abandoning the identity politics social justice orthodoxy as fast as we can. Occupying a position of privilege within the discourse is dehumanizing and hellish, it has a terrible track record with transmisogyny (not a coincidence), and trying to map gendered power just by looking at identity groups means you miss a ton of what's happening within the groups, and in less straight forward ways.
3) a huge part of the gender binary is between camab ppl as (instrumental) subjects and cafab ppl as (responsive, feeling) objects. And this is fucked all around.
To pick one of the more egregious examples, US military directives make heavy use of the category of "military aged males." People outside this category are (theoretically) assumed to be non combatants while "military aged males" in ~warzones~ are basically valid targets by default. https://tinyurl.com/4skt53tx
This category also faces extra exclusion from refugee and asylum status: https://tinyurl.com/4txsmepy
We could explain this as a symptom of misogyny. That women should also be recognized as being capable of enacting violence and treated equally. This is the most straight forward application of orthodox gender theory and likely the worst.
Or we could say that there's something about the intersection of being Arab/Muslim/young/read as male that leads to a unique oppression.
But it's not like it's just this intersection. If we look at prison populations, or who gets hit by police violence, or weaponized accusations of Sexual Assault the logic is actually fairly consistent here, if a little messy to talk about.
Ppl seen as men are seen as capable of wielding power and this leads to benefits if they're seen as basically good. If they're seen as crazy, dangerous, evil, hostile, or at risk of being any of these, being seen as capable of violence makes shit way worse. Lots of intersections push you further towards being viewed as a threat.
(A pretty good bite sized model of transmisogyny is that it misgenders us as men + we get negative respect since we rejected masculinity + it frames us as crazy/dangerous).
Ppl seen as women are going to be seen as less competent, in need of guidance, control and protection by default. But it comes with certain (conditional) protections. Violence against women certainly happens, but the fact that it's a special protected category says a lot. (There's a lot to say about how much these protections are worth, who they really apply to and when they disappear and what happens then, but it's very clear that they exist and that they mean something).
4) so am I arguing for the existence of misandry? Absolutely not*. Gender is just a fucked up system of division and control all around. Privilege frameworks suggest that women are going to experience the same shit as men they share identities with + misogyny + possible extra intersectional oppression. And while this approach is sometimes helpful, I think a better default framework is that gender is just a way to create more social categories for a more complicated system of control with common threads like the subject-object binary that can play to different ways in different contexts.
The whole thing needs to be dismantled and we need to see ppl across gender categories as whole human beings with a meaningful interiority, the capacity for violence, etc. And if we recognize that gender is a complicated system of control, it follows naturally that our gender discourse shouldn't all ask men to sit down / shut up / listen.
5) the issue with transandrophobia BS is that it really wants to exceptionalize the trans masc experience. "It's fucked up that I'm being seen as suspect and capable of violence like terrible cis men, I'm obviously one of the good ones." And as they fight for the best of both worlds ("I should be respected like a man but still seen as incapable of chauvinism") it pushed naturally for trans fems to get the worst of both worlds.
6) returning to feminist "man-hating" there's a lot i oppose for being essentialist or doubling down on subject-object binary. Beyond that, a lot of it is just mean. And like, ppl can be jaded and mean sometimes. But a lot of social justice feminist dogma was ppl developing a bristly defensiveness from constant harassment and trolling. Ppl defending this as an understandable response, and then that shifting into codifying and valorizing it. And I just think it's a miserable way to live and it's miserable to be on the receiving end of it.
I think some grace and understanding for ppl being jaded and bristly is rly helpful but I'm done with valorizing it.
7) all of this said, basic feminist takes about men having lots of pressure and motivations to be chauvinist still apply. And they certainly apply to trans men. But there's a difference between having social expectations that you be a chauvinist and bowing to that pressure. And lots of men are chill and nice! Yes even cishet men!
It's easy to want to draw a hard line where you're "one of the good ones" and are categorically separated from the possibility of being sexist (ontologically incapable of violence, even?) and that goes really poorly.
(most of my beef with transandrophobia is that it's doing this + exceptionalizing trans masc experience in a way that fucks over trans fems).
But I'm not gonna ask ppl to constantly self flagellate or be hyper vigilant to make sure they don't slip up. Sin frameworks are miserable and it's not like being interpersonally shitty in a way that lines up with oppressive systems actually has consequences that much worse than just being an asshole.
So much of the more aggressive side of social justice just feels like ways to treat enemies, not your friends or ppl you want to be in community with.
I'm glad we've been moving on from it.
*editing a footnote since this has already come up a couples times / this post seems to be leaving my immediate circles: by saying misandry isn't real I mean: there isn't a systemic oppression of men as men that parallels misogyny. Gendered oppression isn't a "both sides" situation. When "egalitarian" or mra types brought "misandry" into the discourse this is what they were pushing for.
While I object to the idea that all men evenly oppress all women, patriarchy absolutely has men at the top. It's a complex and multi-directional system of power but there is an overall gendered slant to it. My framework here is still a feminist framework.
#writing#long post#not coming out of the closet#coates#transmisogny#gender theory#misandry#transandrophobia#i use men some places and ppl seen as men others none of it is super straight forward gender as it applies to trans ppl is complicated sry
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Look you can’t dismiss Zukka as a crackship when they, overall, had more positive interactions with each other than many other fanon Zuko or Sokka ships that are taken more seriously because they’re het.
Like okay, you’ve got
the episode 1 armor parallel
Sokka saying “if there’s one thing I know about Zuko, it’s that he never gives up”
Zuko’s time at Western Air Temple where Sokka’s the only one who’s helping him to his room and even smiling at him.
Then we get TWO WHOLE EPISODES(TWO) of Zuko and Sokka working together extremely well and the narrative itself showing how they complement and support each other positively.
Need I talk about the tent scene, yes its funny but also Sokka felt comfortable enough with Zuko at that point that he talked about his mom with Zuko.
The SWORDBENDING KAI
the fact that Zuko, Sokka and Suki become a little sub-trio during Ember Islands
the Search comic where they’re the only ones awake and they’re talking about family.
every zukka shipper knows this one, *ahem* “The prince and the fool, is that all you were, or were to one another?”
If we’re talking on Zutara terms, Zukka is equally as valid. Like yeah it’s funny as a dynamic but also, it’s not like this is completely out of nowhere. There’s stuff in there that backs up the ship rather well.
I think overall, Sokka saw Zuko as more of a person? The crystal caves thing put Zuko on Katara’s shit list, rightfully so, but it’s because Katara’s an idealist and sees the best in people. Unfortunately it goes the other way, she’s a lot more black and white about people than Sokka. Like if it were Sokka in the crystal caves and Zuko had pulled the mom story, Sokka would empathize but he’s not going to trust Zuko in any capacity or see him too differently unless he showed results.
Like he knows to some extent Zuko’s capable of good and even says that just being capable of good isn’t enough. He needs to show it. Zuko betraying them in the Ba Sing Se definitely would’ve pissed him off but like, to some extent, he’d have seen it coming. Sokka’s always been more nuanced on the morality thing than Katara and Aang. Which is why I think he more quickly was willing to give Zuko a chance at the Western Air Temple. Zuko was acting on his ability for good. Sokka being a skeptic actually helped them a lot(oh, Jet my boy).
Anyways Zukka rights
#zukka#zuko x sokka#fanon ships can be not serious and all but i get miffed when people act like zukka is some utter joke#coming here after weeks#but i'm gonna get killed for this#but uhhhhhhhhh zukka has more backing than jin and zuko#I'M NOT SAYING DON'T SHIP those two but#they got one episode and heterosexuality of the early 2000s demand for a love interest#IF that whole thing wasn't a thing i'm p sure jin and zuko wouldn't be a thing like at all#if sokka were a girl and boiling rock happened he'd be considered a love inerest for zuko#or vice versa if zuko was a girl and boiling rock happened everyone would expect them to end up together#but because they're both GUYS it's like 'hahah crackship'
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