liminalism

(bea) i write sometimes.

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sfw

✧ Genshin Impact ✧

✧ Attack on Titan ✧

✧ Harry Potter ✧

note: written for academic exercises and
strictly before the author's transphobia came into light.

✧ Tomorrow x Together (txt) ✧

✧ nct ✧

✧ Seventeen ✧

nsfw

works rated E (explicit). relevant warnings and tags will be listed.

✧ non-rpf fandoms ✧

✧ rpf fandoms ✧

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writing samples (non-rpf)

excerpts lifted only from SFW works unless otherwise stated

attack on titan

(eren / armin)

(word count: ~300)

Eren curls up on himself, small and wretched, like a millipede that’s been kicked out the front door, terrified of being squashed underfoot but helpless against the rest of the giant world anyway.“And I don’t want you to forget about me either. I want you, I want you and Mikasa to be happy, I really do, but I want you to think of me every single day, when I die.” He squeezes his eyes shut tight.“I don’t want to die,” he confesses brokenly. “I want to be with Mikasa. I want to be with you. ”Like this, Eren looks so young. So weighed down. Nothing like his Titan form, any of them. No matter how much he tries to fight, no matter how much he thrashes about and defends himself, there is no escaping the slow, inevitable death of being downtrodden and crushed. Like this, Armin imagines Eren as a tiny insect, a new species of ant; loomed over and peered at like some sort of sick new discovery, forced to hold up weights that far exceed its own and only just barely managing, only to be disposed of once deemed to be too troublesome to keep, or once it no longer serves any purpose. In the end, pests are pests, no matter how fascinating, nothing but vermin to be exterminated.Armin thinks he and all the rest of them aren’t any better. They’re all scattered on the field, only twitching bits and dismembered pieces, and he falls to his knees beside his oldest and dearest friend. The anger gushes out of him like toxic black sludge, leaving nothing but an empty and ailing hollowness in the cavern of his chest.“Don’t give up,” he says, mouth numb with a sudden gripping despair. “We’ll find another way—”“No,” Eren says. He still hasn’t moved from his position. Armin yearns to save him. “I’m sure none of them wanted to die, either, so how… how could I ever be forgiven?”

— excerpt from “in you everything sank”

genshin impact

(venti & diluc)

(word count: ~300)

Once, memorably, he had gone to wake Venti up. The bard had ostensibly fallen asleep, and Diluc had wanted nothing more than to go home. Something about the way Venti had been slumped over, however, had Diluc freezing in his tracks, an icy sort of terror spreading through his veins — Venti was completely immobile. No breath; no movement of air moving through his lungs; no sign of life. It made absolutely no sense — was he not the God of Wind? Why, then, would he be completely devoid of breath? — but in that one terrible, irrational moment, Diluc had been truly convinced his Archon was dead.He had grabbed Venti’s shoulder in panic, shaken him firmly, Bard, wake up —— and nary a second later, the boy emits a truly indescribable noise: a twinkling sort of squeak, if Diluc were to be pressed on the matter, the sound of windchimes when one swings open a door too quickly and rattles the contraption hanging on it; or perhaps, the noise of an angry and ferocious frog —— and the matter had been resolved. The bard lives. There is air coursing through his body, breath inhaled and exhaled.Venti had pouted, disturbed slumber on his eyelashes, and looked at Diluc in askance.“Anything the matter, Master Bartender?”“...No,” Diluc grunted. He’d had no desire to put voice into his petty concern, that the Anemo Archon didn’t seem to breathe whilst asleep. “It’s closing time.”Venti had stared at him for a handful more seconds before ultimately deeming the entire conversation inconsequential, and instead sat up from his barstool, sinking into a stretch that was highly reminiscent of the cats that pepper the city streets.“Best be off, then!”Venti had lifted his beret in farewell, all but fairly dancing out of the bar.

— excerpt from “Plausible Deniability”

stardew valley

(sebastian / player)

SFW excerpt lifted from an NSFW piece

(word count: ~250)

This is what you tell Sebastian now, as you trace patterns into the skin of his arm. He wasn't wearing any of his signature hoodies, just a loose black shirt he goes to sleep in, and he was wearing loose pajama bottoms. Paired with the light flush on his cheeks and the nervous look in his eyes, you privately thought he looked utterly adorable.“But I’ll ask you again, Seb. Are you sure? A hundred percent, fully committed, sure?”He smiles at you. “I married you. I’m sure.”Your heart seizes in your chest and you can't help but lean forward and wrap your arms around his neck. You touch your forehead to his and try to sound normal.“Can I kiss you?”He settles his arms around your waist, pulling you in, close so you have no choice but uncross your legs and place them on either side of his hips.“I’m saying it now. You can keep asking, but my answer for tonight will always be yes.”You laugh, your breaths mingling in the air between you. It's so hot, all of a sudden. “Okay,” you breathe, before finally, finally, you press your lips to his.His lips are soft, plush, a little dry but that's nothing a few kitten licks from you won't fix. That's for a few kisses from now, though; for now, you want to savor the moment. You press harder, wanting to be as close to him as possible, and he sighs and opens up for you, tilting so you can slot your lips together better.

— excerpt from “like real people do”

genshin impact

(venti & bennett)

(word count: ~1,600)

Owing to the fact that Sister Vind doesn’t really have the most conventional duties when it came to being a nun of the Church of Barbatos, it didn’t occur to Bennett that she would know him enough to be able to give him a very thorough scolding about his lack of self-preservation skills, but here he is.“Why would you attempt to go directly to the monsters, child? You know the tower is overrun with them, and you are on your own! You can’t possibly fight an entire camp alone!”Evidently, a sheepish smile and a heartfelt apology would not suffice, but Bennett has to try. “I’m sorry, Sister, I’m sorry! I was only trying to gather Valberries for a commission!”“Oh, you foolish boy, are you so eager to throw your life away? Is this what being in the Adventurer’s Guild has taught you?”“I really am sorry, Sister, I —”This, of course, is when Bennett’s beautiful, wondrous, omnipresent horrible terrible bad luck decides to strike again. They had not been far enough away. One of the hilichurls, lured to the considerably loud talking-to Bennett had been on the receiving end of, hd spotted them, and before either of them could do anything about it, the creature had already turned tail and shrieked a piercing alert to the rest of its camp.“No…”The roar of a mitachurl was one sound Bennett would never forget for the rest of his life.Which, Archons willing, would be long and rewarding… if he managed to live through this first.“Sister, try and get some help! There’s usually a Knight who patrols by the foot of the mountain, near the waypoint — if not, just go all the way to the City!”“But — Bennett — Oh, Lord Barbatos, help us — ”“Don’t worry!” He grins at her and throws in a confident thumbs up. “I’ll be fine! The Adventurer’s Guild taught me well!”Bennett summons his trusty sword and turns to face the horde of monsters. Alright.First things first — he has to make his way to higher ground. In order to do that, he has to at least make his way to the base of the tower from where the monsters were camping, and in order to achieve that, he has to evade as much of the hilichurl attacks as he can, and defend against those that he couldn’t.A quick survey tells him he is facing one of the more formidable mobs — there are, of course, the melee hilichurls, swinging at him with their torches and their fists; there are shooters on each level of the tower, Electro and Pyro energy crackling on the docked arrows of their crossbows, but they will be easy to evade once he reaches the structure’s base; there is a samachurl, waving its staff menacingly as it charges up its perversion of a Hydro-blessed rainstorm; and there is the mitachurl, easily the largest and deadliest Bennett has faced. It wields its axe as easily as if it weighs nothing more than a dry stick, and it is angry.The mitachurl leads the charge, roaring in fury, and Bennett has to keep all the monsters in mind as he hacks his way to his goal, jumping and sprinting and twisting in mid-air to avoid the attacks. He knocks a hilichurl out of the way, slashing at it to incapacitate and flinging its discarded torch at the samachurl that snickers and prances just out of reach. The flaming torch hits its target, successfully toppling the creature even as the fire fizzles and dies out, but before Bennett could even feel any fleeting sort of triumph, a deafening roar almost blasts his eardrums in and he freezes, stunned, for a single crucial second —“Duck!”Some sort of pressure knocks him down, hard, and Bennett is forced to catch himself on his hands and knees in order to avoid toppling over. Just in time, too, as an instant later, he hears the whoosh of the mitachurl’s Pyro-infused axe whistle above where his neck had just been.“Up up up! You’re almost there!”Bennett scrambles to his feet, rushing forward and wasting no time — he infuses his own sword with Pyro and swings as hard as he can, successfully managing to topple over the hilichurls that were still standing by the tower. Little bursts of wind now came to his aid; they would fwoosh into existence, controlled flares of pure Anemo energy, and knock the shooters from their spots on the wooden platforms, toppling them to the ground. Bennett could hear arrows flying past him, but even as he turned to look, he couldn’t see the person shooting them very clearly. All he could conclude was that whoever it was, they had an Anemo vision.Had Sister Vind already managed to call for help? That was fortunate; maybe today wasn’t so unlucky, after all. Unless this person was a civilian, in which case — Bennett would have to work even harder to protect them. Archons above, he hopes this wasn’t the case!“Dear adventurer, close your eyes!”Huh?Abruptly, there was a rush of wind, so strong it almost sucked him into its gales. Bennett manages to brace himself against the force of it, but only barely — through slitted eyes, he could see pure elemental energy, wild and powerful and wholly unlike anything Bennett has ever witnessed. It pulled at everything around him: all the hilichurls, their weapons, their horns, their masks and scrolls and arrows. Bennett watches as one torch, still alight with Pyro, flies into the vortex and lights his entire line of vision on fire a mere second later. It incinerates the grass, the scattered wooden crates, the very air in his lungs. He watches as the mitachurl gets trapped in the sheer, unstoppable force of it. The massive creature collapses to its knees, struggling for breath, and for a single moment, one eternal second, Bennett feels the true power of the wind and what it means to wield it.He watches as the vortex dies down, and the being responsible for it ambles casually into view.“Whew! I almost didn’t have enough energy for that one! Good thing you had your sword, huh?”Bennett stares at the person before him, surprised that he recognizes him. It’s the bard, Venti, the one Big Brother Kaeya likes to playfully complain about whenever he encounters him in daylight instead of in the taverns. Something about drinking him under the table.“M-mister Bard? Are you okay?”Venti giggles, flouncing up to him. “Aren’t you adorable? I should be asking you that! I’m perfectly fine, fit as a fiddle, flourishing like a silk flower in full bloom! And you?”Bennett supposes this was yet another near-death experience he can store comfortably under his belt, so he takes a moment to take stock of himself, give Venti a sunny grin, and offer a thumbs-up.“Never been better! I thought I was a goner, honestly, but thanks to you, me and Sister Vind can walk away unscathed!”Venti giggles once again, rubbing at his neck in faux-embarrassment. “Aw, dear Bennett, you’re truly kind! Now, let’s go find our good Sister and head back to the City so we can patch you up —”THWACK.Bennett hears a distant scream, but all he can focus on is the image of Venti falling to his knees, almost in slow motion, as the figure of the mitachurl looms behind him. Bennett freezes once again, the icy cold fingers of true, unadulterated panic taking him into its dreadful grip. He takes in the scene before him: the mitachurl, horribly injured, likely one single blow away from defeat; his savior, Venti, a civilian, collapsed to the ground; the samachurl, which Bennett had neglected to finish off, which he had failed to notice had been too far away to be drawn into that terrible vortex of Anemo. It dances in perverse triumph, having successfully healed its mitachurl companion enough in order for it to deal one final, lethal blow to anyone caught unawares, and now Venti lies motionless on the scorched grass, blood pooling underneath his —An arrow flies from Venti’s bow, and a familiar burst of Anemo topples the samachurl over once again. The mitachurl fades away into black dust, leaving behind its horn and mask, and the samachurl is defeated for good, its scrolls splashing in the tiny puddle of water its enchantments leave behind.Venti sighs in what sounds like mild annoyance. He stands with his hands on his hips, like he had just overcome the world’s most troublesome inconvenience ever, and Bennett struggles to comprehend what his eyes are telling him.There is no blood on him.There is no sign of injury, no sign of any mortal wound, no bruise or scratch or even tear on his clothes.Venti appears to be in perfect health, and if Bennett’s heart wasn’t still beating at a speed that leaves him dizzy and trembling, he might have even believed it.“Oof.” The bard, incomprehensibly, sounds sheepish. “I tried to aim so I could catch them all, but clearly I missed! Sorry about that!”“I — you —” Bennett swallows past the lump in his throat. “You got… hit.”“Oh! Did I?”“You — and you’re not… injured?”“…I should be, shouldn’t I.”(On the way back to the city, Bennett makes eye contact with Sister Vind. It was she that he had heard scream when the fateful blow landed on the bard. The two of them know what they saw.)

— excerpt from “Plausible Deniability”

harry potter

(sirius / remus)

note: written for an academic exercise and
strictly before the author's transphobia came into light.

(word count: ~280)

V. May/June 1993Remus is running. He can hear Hermione screaming upstairs, he’s running as fast as he can, he’s here, he’s here, he’s alive…He bursts into the room, quickly taking in the situation – Harry, Hermione, Ron, his leg mangled and the scent of his blood staining the air. The boy is clutching at both his leg and his rat, and that leg is certainly something to look at, but at this very moment Remus couldn’t care less, because there, lying crumpled and bleeding on the floor in front of Harry, was Sirius Black.He clamps down on his emotions and quickly disarms everyone in the room. The sight of Peter’s name on the Map is still seared into his mind’s eye.“Where is he, Sirius?” His voice doesn’t break. Sirius’s face is blank as he raises a finger to point at the rat in Ron’s hand.What? “But then… why hasn’t he shown himself before now?” Think, think, think… “Unless —” Ah. “Unless he was the one… unless you switched…” Don’t falter, don’t break. “…without telling me?”Something in Sirius’s emotionless eyes splinters at the question, and Remus supposes, in a vague, indistinct sort of manner, that he was unable to get the slight bitterness completely out of his voice. Sirius nods.A pause, and then suddenly – Remus has no memory of moving – the only thing that matters now is that Sirius is in his arms. The body he is holding feels nothing like he remembers, too thin, abused and malnourished and filthy, but Sirius is clutching him back, stuttering breaths and incoherent phrases sounding in his ears, and Remus holds him like he’s never letting go.It’s the first time in twelve years Remus has ever felt truly alive.

— excerpt from “Temporal Cartography”

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writing samples (rpf)

excerpts lifted only from SFW works unless otherwise stated

tomorrow x together

(hueningkai / taehyun)

(word count: ~480)

In a flash, Kai leans over Taehyun’s lap, snatches the squid he’d been staring at particularly hard with his chopsticks before it rolled too far away, and throws it in his mouth.“MMM, THIS IS DELICIOUS,” he says, shrill and muffled as he chews enthusiastically, like Taehyun isn’t curled up beside him in a ball of pain and Beomgyu isn’t staring at him in horror at having eaten something that had rolled on the floor where they sweat for approximately 30 hours a day, 9 days a week.“Don’t worry, hyung, that was on the floor for less than three seconds, duh,” Kai assures him in between chews.“I think I’m going to die in less than three seconds,” Taehyun wheezes, still hunched around his side.Kai quickly swallows the squid and then coos in concern, bending over to check on his friend. “Oh no, Tyun-ah, sorry, I didn’t mean to hit so hard.”Taehyun groans, finally able to sit back up. “How,” he grits out, hand clutching tightly at his side, “did you even get to be that strong? You don’t even work out.”Kai puffs his chest out. “I’m still a growing boy, and sometimes I don’t know my own strength,” he declares, and then deflates a bit. “My dad told me that over the phone when I told him I grew a couple more centimeters since the last time we were measured.”“And he’s right.”“You don’t have to agree so quickly!”“You almost just killed me with your steel elbows —”“Don’t be so dramatic!”“I was keeled over, Kai, struggling for breath —”“So you admit I make you breathless?”“No? That is so far away from the point I’ve been trying to make — how’d you even get there — the mental gymnastics —”“Breathe, Taehyun-ah, look, I’ve stolen your breath away again.”“Are all your pick-up lines centered around breathing, your game is atrocious, Kai Kamal Huening —”“Oh, so we’re doing full names now? You know, Kang Taehyun-ssi, you start using really big words when you get riled up —”“Who says you’ve riled me up, you delusional, presumptuous, aggravating —”“The food’s getting cold, guys,” Beomgyu remarks mildly from where he’s wiping the spilled squid dish with tissue paper. “Just to let you know.”The two maknaes spring apart from where they’d unconsciously started leaning into each other’s spaces, looking for all the world like they’d forgotten Beomgyu was in the room, let alone notice that he’d already made his way over to them and started cleaning their mess.There’s a beat, and then — “Wah, of course, thank you, Beomgyu-hyung, can I help you with that?” Kai offers sweetly.“Don’t worry about it,” Beomgyu snorts. Taehyun is busy looking around for his phone, avoiding both their eyes, and Beomgyu reaches behind him to hand it over when it buzzes in his hand, the screen lighting up.

— excerpt from “paint me in trust (this night just can’t end)”

tomorrow x together

(yeonjun/beomgyu)

SFW excerpt lifted from an NSFW piece

(word count: ~420)

“Hyung. Hyung, Yeonjun, hyung, stop for a moment.”Yeonjun snaps his mouth shut. What is happening?“Hyung,” Beomgyu says, low and serious. Yeonjun only now notices that Beomgyu had made his way back on the bed, is kneeling in front of him, and that the other boy is fully clothed while he still only has his shirt on. He shivers at the look in Beomgyu’s eyes, and his mind is both sluggish, unable to process anything, and going at a hundred miles a minute.“Answer me with a yes or no, okay?” Beomgyu pauses, lets the meaning of his words sink in. Yeonjun is helpless against Beomgyu when he’s like this. He nods.“Do you want me to leave?”The world stops, freezes, crashes and breaks apart and then reforms itself back again, all in one singular moment.Yeonjun, honest, raw, vulnerable Yeonjun – what choice does he have in the face of someone who can shatter worlds and bring them back together like that? Beomgyu is looking at him, brows furrowed and eyes intense, ablaze.Yeonjun shakes his head. No.Please don’t leave me.Something in Beomgyu’s face blooms.In the next moment, Yeonjun is being hugged and kissed so furiously he falls back to the bed with the force of it. Above him, Beomgyu giggles, breathless as nothing short of what looks like pure, unadulterated joy lights him up.“Beomgyu…?” Yeonjun’s hands have automatically moved to their place on Beomgyu’s waist, and as the younger boy leans down to smother his face again with kisses, Yeonjun feels almost like an idiot, even as his arms move to wrap around Beomgyu’s neck and back and loosely hug the other boy against him.“Make it really clear to me, Choi Yeonjun, use your words,” Beomgyu tells him, eyes alight, face resplendent. “Did you fall in love with me?”The question jolts Yeonjun back into control of his body, his senses. Oh.“Yes.” It comes out as a croak, and he clears his throat and tries again. “Yes. I did.”Beomgyu laughs. It’s the best sound in the world, Yeonjun decides then and there. Better than anything he’d ever heard from the other boy before, even the whispers of his own name under the sheets. The sound lights him up, electrifies him, spreads through his chest out, out throughout his body, to his face and his stomach and the tips of his fingers and toes. He needs to hear it again.“Choi Beomgyu, I’m in love with you.”“Wow,” Beomgyu giggles again. “We’ve been idiots.”

— excerpt from “be still, my foolish heart”

nct dream

(jaemin / renjun)

(word count: ~400)

Do you believe in the supernatural?When Jaemin was in grade four, slambooks of all themes and types took his school by storm. Little personalized journals for friends to answer, usually three pages per person, with spaces for personal information and questions and fill-in-the-blanks that were designed for the writer to leave their mark in the journal owner’s memories. Jaemin himself wasn’t really one of the more popular kids, opting to stay with the safe group of friends he’d made within his class, but of course everybody wanted theirs to be filled up with answers, so Jaemin still ended up answering a few.Kuya Mark, one of his busmates, had entrusted his own spooky-themed slambook to little wide-eyed Jaemin, with instructions to answer it first himself and then spread it to his other classmates.Jaemin, who couldn’t quite believe he was being given such an important task by someone so well-known around the school, could only nod.“Do it discreetly, Jaemin,” his Kuya had emphasized. “I’m not sure if the teachers think slambooks are some harmful gimmick but still, better safe than sorry!”Jaemin, eager to do as his Kuya asked, set to work on answering the page meant for him. Do you believe in the supernatural? Do you believe in ghosts? Would you rather meet a kapre, a duwende, or a manananggal? He’d tapped his mechanical pencil against his lips, deep in thought, weighing which answer Kuya Mark would appreciate more. Coming to the conclusion that Kuya Mark would rather know the truth (he was cool like that, Jaemin thinks), Jaemin had scritched “yes” to both of the questions, and “duwende” for the multiple choice.As a fourth-grader who prided himself on being logical, he’d rather meet something smaller than him, a tiny being he could ward off with a simple “tabi-tabi po” and appease with choc-nut, than encounter a creature that could potentially kidnap him or force him to smoke, or a creepy disembodied woman with claws and wings and her entrails trailing after her in the night sky.For some reason, in his twenties and staring up at the moonlit silhouette of a winged half-body as it loomed over him, poised for action with sharp claw-like nails glinting in the darkness of his room, this little childhood anecdote is the first thing that springs to Jaemin’s mind.He’d always thought there was something weird with his roommate, Huang Renjun.

— excerpt from “the manananggal in p. valenzuela street”

tomorrow x together

(soobin/beomgyu)

(word count: ~920)

“MOAs, I love you! Bye-bye!”Beomgyu keeps the smile on his face for a few more extra seconds just to be safe, and then once it was sure the stream had properly cut off, starts to peels off the ribbon he’d use to tie his hair up into the apple sprout hairstyle. He isn’t given a minute of quiet to himself, though, since the moment the others see he’d ended his birthday livestream, they start barging into the artist lounge again, excitement evident in their eyes.“Happy birthday again, oppa,” Kai teases, laughing loudly when Beomgyu only rolls his eyes.“You’re so weird,” Taehyun shoots at his friend, to which Kai only flutters his eyes charmingly.“Ignore them, Beomgyu-yah,” Yeonjun says good-naturedly. He’d stripped off his ridiculous fuzzy jacket, bleached-blond hair freed from the cap and hood combination the moment he and the others had stepped out of the frame. “Oh, hey, can I have some of the icing from the cake later?”“Later?” Beomgyu swivels up to face Yeonjun in confusion. “Why not now?”Yeonjun laughs, bonking him gently on the head. “Did you forget? We’re going out for dinner tonight, company’s treat!”“Oh, right,” Beomgyu mutters. The dinner slipped out of his mind, especially since he already received so much food from last night. He turns towards Soobin expectantly, the only one who hasn’t spoken yet, but their leader only flashes him a close-lipped smile and immediately busies himself with his phone, flopping on the couch.For a split second, Beomgyu is confused. This is the nth time he’d been weirdly brushed off by Soobin, which is just utterly bewildering to him, since, well, he knows what’s wrong, but he had apologized, Soobin had accepted, and he’d thought that was the end of it.Beomgyu knows why Soobin is slightly upset with him. He had, despite what he and Soobin had talked about last night, forgotten to wear the bracelet to work today. Honestly, it was highly uncharacteristic of him to forget the damn thing, he took care of his friends’ gifts well, and Soobin’s especially, but he’d thought that, after being separated by hours of individual vocal practice and him holding his birthday broadcast, he would finally be let off the hook. Besides, Beomgyu had already apologized! And Soobin had accepted, told him so point-blank to his face.So he nibbles on his lip and frets; there’s no way to get back to the dorm to swipe the item in question off his desk, it’s too much of a hassle and would derail everyone's plans… With a sigh, he resigns to cozy up to Soobin even more and show he was sorry through actions too, now that they were technically off work.Beomgyu snaps himself out of his own funky mood and resolves to start now.“Soobin!” he calls out instead, watching Soobin’s head snap up and his eyebrows furrow when the lack of honorific registers. “–hyung,” he tacks on, mouth curving into a smirk.Soobin’s expression flattens even more. “Yes, Beomgyu-yah?” There’s none of the overly sweet, wheedling tone that typically laced his voice whenever they bickered like this, which makes something in Beomgyu’s chest drop. He’s really going about this wrong, huh. Against his better judgment, defensiveness curls around Beomgyu’s throat. It actually stings.No matter. If there’s one thing he’s good at, it’s annoying people into paying attention to him.Beomgyu holds up the ribbon he’d slipped from his hair, the one Yeonjun had tied around his neck earlier.“Come here,” still purposefully drawing out the end of his sentence before finishing it in polite speech. Well, Soobin can’t flat-out refuse a request from the birthday boy, can he? Beomgyu grins in success when, sure enough, Soobin rolls his eyes but gets up and makes his way towards the table anyway.“What do you want,” he says, monotone.“Tie my hair up? Give me a proper apple hairstyle, please.” Beomgyu reaches his hand out, where the ribbon is entangled around his fingers. He doesn’t know what he’s doing, honestly. He just doesn’t want Soobin to ignore him again, not today when it’s his birthday.(Not ever.)Soobin looks like he’s restraining himself from rolling his eyes again, but takes the ribbon anyway, his fingers snatching away from Beomgyu’s hand as quickly as possible. Beomgyu holds back a frown at that; part of him held the thing out like that because he wants Soobin to slip their fingers together. But anyway, he’s still getting what he asked for.Soobin moves behind him and wordlessly gathers a bunch of his hair. It’s quiet, Beomgyu hadn’t noticed but the maknaes have made themselves scarce, and Yeonjun is sprawled on the couch Soobin himself had abandoned just a few minutes prior, engrossed with something on his phone.In this moment, it’s just him and Soobin, him holding as still as possible, Soobin and his long fingers deftly carding through his hair, gently fixing and re-fixing the bunch he has gathered to make for the neatest, bounciest little apple sprout. It’s so silly, is the thing. Beomgyu doesn’t even know why he asked for this, but he also doesn’t know why Soobin agreed, so he figures it’s quits.He has to admit, though, that having Soobin’s fingers in his hair feels… nice. Makes him feel nice, being prettied up like this, even if it’s silly.(Even if, or because, it ends up feeling really intimate, and if Beomgyu quietly relishes in having Soobin’s attention on him like this, it’s not like he’d admit it to anyone.)

— excerpt from “paint me in trust (this night just can’t end)”

tomorrow x together

(yeonjun/taehyun)

(word count: ~1,500)

Taehyun thinks about being six years old, playing by himself near the slides, and hearing only a sharp cry of warning before something heavy and warm collided with him and knocked him over. He remembers a panicky voice asking him frantically if he was okay, and he remembers being so shocked he had burst into tears. He remembers gentle hands covered in dirt, moving over his body to check if he had been injured, and a high-pitched voice hushing him in an effort to calm him down. “Are you okay?” the voice asks, urgent, and Taehyun remembers looking up into a face pinched with concern.He remembers nodding, sobs easing into small hiccups, and the boy before him sighing in relief as he continues to brush him off.“I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to, please don’t tell my parents,” the boy had begged. Taehyun only recalls nodding again, even as his older sister finally notices her little brother had been knocked over by a boy much bigger than him. He thinks he remembers his sister giving him a once-over of her own, even as the other boy stands awkwardly to the side, waiting to see if he will be reprimanded by the older girl or not. Taehyun’s noona lets the boy off once she sees his little brother is fine, but not without giving a stern warning herself, which the boy accepts as graciously as a kid in grade school can. Then he’s jogging off, deep brown hair shining in the afternoon sun, rejoining the group of other older kids and shooting one more look at Taehyun just in time to see him squat down with his home-brought toys, ready to play by himself once again.Later, the older boy will jog back to Taehyun’s corner. “I’m Yeonjun. I’m sorry for a while ago. Wanna come play with us? Call me hyung!”Taehyun thinks about how he weighed the pros and cons of making friends with a bunch of older kids. He remembers looking up into the boy’s – Yeonjun’s – face, friendly and open and genuinely apologetic, hair all messy from enjoying himself, and he remembers nodding for the third time that day.They had been inseparable ever since.Taehyun remembers more –– tripping on a pebble and falling on rough cement during after-school playtime, scraping his knee. It hurt, and the skin was scratched up pretty badly, and it was his first time seeing so much blood and grime mixed into his wound, and he knew if it wasn’t cleaned then his wound would get infected and his knee would maybe even have to be am-pu-ta-ted and he tried to get up but he couldn’t extend his leg properly and –He looks around. He has to get help if he couldn’t do anything himself. He sees someone on the other side of the playground, going in high arcs on the far-side swing.“Hyung! Yeonjun-hyung!”Yeonjun digs his heels in the soil on the downward swing, skidding to a stop, and he’s shooting off the seat in the next breath, sprinting towards where Taehyun is, sat on the ground and curled up defensively around his leg.“Let me see, Taehyun-ah,” he murmurs, dropping to his knees beside the little kid.Taehyun moves his hands away and Yeonjun’s eyes go wide.“Is it bad?” Taehyun whispers. “Am I gonna hafta get it amputated?”That snaps Yeonjun out of his frown, and he huffs a little laugh, eyes crinkling. “No, I don’t think so, Taehyun-ah. No leg-chopping! We have to wash it off, though, so it won’t get-”“Infected,” Taehyun cuts him off, nodding decisively.“You’re pretty smart, huh?”Taehyun gives him a proud look. “That’s what my mom and dad tell me too.”Yeonjun ruffles his hair, then gets up and looks around. There aren’t any adults in the vicinity, and some of the kids are peeking curiously in their direction, so they both know it’s up to him. “Can you stand?”“I think so…”Biting his lip, Taehyun tries to get up without jostling his knee too much, but Yeonjun sees him struggling with the effort and props him up from under his shoulders instead. “Careful, careful! Hold your foot up, yup, that’s good…”“Should I hold it up?”“That’s right,” Yeonjun chirps. Taehyun looks up at the older boy. He seems so self-assured, and Taehyun notices that even with his knee throbbing painfully, the urge to cry and panic is gone. “See those faucets by the other side of the park? We’ll wash your knee off there!”The distance seems impossibly far for Taehyun’s little six-year-old legs. Yeonjun glances down at him thoughtfully, and he lowers himself so his back is facing the other kid. “Can you hop on?”Taehyun clambers on with determination, and by this time they’ve attracted the full attention of the other kids around the playground.“Soobin-ah! Can you take Taehyunie’s things with us?” Yeonjun directs this at the boy he had been competing in the swings with, scrawny and shy but unwilling to back down from the older boy’s challenge. “I’ll treat you to ice cream later!”“You don’t gotta,” Soobin mutters, but he looks happy to do as he’s told anyway. He peers curiously at Taehyun, and then at Taehyun’s injury, but doesn’t make any other move to interact.Yeonjun hitches Taehyun up more securely into place and they quickly cross the park. Thankfully, there’s some soap in the bolted-down dispenser by the faucets, so Taehyun puts on his bravest face ever and only partially makes use of Yeonjun’s hand as something to squeeze. His eyes sting, but he doesn’t cry, and Yeonjun makes quick work of washing the dirt and grime away. The other kids have all drifted away by now, back to their own circles.“What time will you get picked up, do you know?”Taehyun shakes his head, but it should be soon. His sister gets picked up around this time, and usually he would be at home to wait, but his mother had an errand to run that she couldn’t bring Taehyun to and she didn’t want him to be left alone in the house for too long so she had left him at the neighborhood park where there tended to be other kids accompanied by their guardians, with strict instructions to be careful.Oh, no. I’m gonna be in trouble. Without permission, his eyes well up again.“Taehyunie? Oh no, don’t cry! I’ll wait with you until you get picked up, don’t worry! I’m almost ten now, so my grandma lets me stay out until sunset! Don’t cry, hyung is sorry…”Sniffling, Taehyun whispers, “My mama will get mad… She told me to be careful…”“Nooo, hyung will tell her it was an accident! And we cleaned you up all good! You didn’t even cry! You were really brave, if that happened to me I would cry, my grandma calls me a crybaby all the time.”Taehyun gets the sense that the older kid was trying to distract him, and it was working. “Okay, hyung. Thank you.”Yeonjun grins, bright and all of a sudden. “That’s the first time you called me hyung!”Taehyun stares at him for a second, eyes wide, and then shakes his head. “No, it isn’t. I called you hyung earlier, when I fell.”“Oh, that’s true… Whatever, both times are special! I’ve told you to call me hyung before but you never did and I thought you hated me!”“That’s not true either…”“No take-backsies, okay? I’m your hyung forever. I don’t have any younger siblings at home, only older cousins, so you’re my first dongsaeng! Come look for me in school, okay? If anybody bullies you I’ll take them down for you!”Which was funny, Taehyun thinks, as looking back he’s the one who took up defensive sports, but the offer stood regardless.He never forgot the way Yeonjun looked when he realized he’d been accepted as someone’s hyung. The delight in his eyes, the huge smile that spread all over his face at a simple word. Hyung, hyung, hyung.He liked to be dependable, Taehyun’s Yeonjun-hyung.(They’d kissed, once, when Yeonjun was a high school senior, poised to graduate and take flight, the first of the five of them. Just to see. Well, their pretense was that Yeonjun had joked that he didn’t want to go off into the real world without having had any practice with kissing, and Taehyun, lump in his throat, heart trying to beat its way out of his chest, had offered, carefully, jokingly, to help him out. What shocked them both was that Yeonjun had agreed. It was short and awkward, and they’d both been surprisingly raw for a few days following it.They never brought it up again, and soon afterwards Yeonjun just started kissing other people too. Taehyun never talked about it to anyone, and just kept the memory of the kiss close to his heart.)

— excerpt from “hydrangea love”

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