harkae

I write fics https://kaehdci-writing.carrd.co/

[harkae]

I wrote some fanfiction for Callie Hart's Brimstone to celebrate my two favourite boys: Tal and the Hazrax.

Summary: Taladaius has borne his loneliness in silence. The Keeper of Silence is the only one who understands.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/76650106

[harkae]

Swing the Spinning Step

genre - fluff, humour

pairing - Seungcheol (S.Coups) x y/n [reader]

warnings - none

tags - romance, meet cute, coffee shop AU

The whole cup of coffee flew sideways off the table and [y/n] couldn’t hold in her laugh. It was physical comedy, something written in a sitcom, not even funny in parody but hilarious in real life, the way the barista’s immaculately shaped behind had knocked the full cup off the table. It crashed to the floor, spraying his feet with milky coffee when he spun around to try to save it, and thankfully he seemed to have taken the brunt of it. The customer’s face was scarlet. The barista was wide-eyed in shock. Neither of them seemed in any way amused by the way [y/n] was cackling at the whole thing.

“I’m sorry,” she said. She stood up and walked over to the counter, where the other barista had paused in the act of making coffee and was just staring, but he too looked on the edge of hysterics. [y/n] asked him for a cloth. Then she had to ask a second time. She walked it over to the mute, well-proportioned barista covered in coffee and retook her seat next to the spilled drink.

“I’m so sorry,” the barista said to the stone-faced customer whose coffee he’d upended. “My colleague can make you-”

“Another,” the customer huffed. "To go." She stood up with as much grace as a banquette would allow her. [y/n] managed to regain her composure and watched along with the barista as the customer waddled over to the counter and demanded a new coffee. When she left, the barista set to cleaning up his mess.

The rest of the cafe went back to their conversations. Nobody was paying him any more attention. But still, he looked mortified, the tips of his ears burning.

“It was mostly her fault,” [y/n] said conspiratorially. It had been. The customer had pushed her coffee right to the edge of the table so she could rummage in her bag. The barista, passing by with a tray of empty cups, simply hadn’t seen the changed position of the handle, the way it overhung the edge of the table, and had backed right into it. [y/n] didn’t add that spending less time on his glutes might have been a remedy for the situation, though, because to do so would be to admit that she’d been checking him out from the moment she walked in. The barista was at work. He was beautiful but openly gawking at him wasn't exactly polite.

“It’s my fault,” he said automatically. [y/n] felt bad. Of course he had to say that. She was, after all, a customer.

“Can I help?”

“No, thank you, no,” he said, putting his hand up and meeting her eyes for a split second. He had lovely eyes, and the longest lashes she’d ever seen on a man. This close, they were all she could see. Indeed, she wondered how he could see at all. Suddenly self-conscious, aware that she was probably making him uncomfortable, [y/n] downed the rest of her kind-of-scalding coffee and got up. At the counter, the other barista looked her up and down.

“Did you get hit too?” he asked sardonically. His lack of formality was endearing rather than charming. [y/n] liked him immediately. And at least he had a sense of humour about what had happened. Then again, it wasn’t his ass that had knocked a whole cup onto the floor.

“No, I just want to pay,” she said. She cast a quick glance back at the barista who was still cleaning, still blushing, still beautiful and definitely not hers to oogle. When she turned back around, the other barista had raised an eyebrow at her. He leaned back and filled an empty paper cup with filter coffee and handed it over along with her card receipt.

“I didn’t get hit...” [y/n] started, but he wasn’t listening. He was writing something on one of the post-its they used to scribble people’s names incorrectly on. He fixed it to her coffee cup and smiled broadly as she picked it up. [y/n] didn’t dare to look until she was out of the cafe and several yards down the street.

Then she looked.

It said: His name is Seungcheol. He works the late shift.

Seungcheol. That had been the name she'd partially made out on the beautiful barista’s name-tag. [y/n] blushed. Was she so obvious? And why was his colleague telling her his schedule? What did it matter to her if he worked the late shift? She took the post-it off the coffee and held it, reading it again and again. Then there was a tap on her shoulder.

[y/n] spun and the coffee in her cup soared out from under the insecurely-fixed lid in an arc, right across Seungcheol’s chest.

[y/n] stared at the stain spreading across the white t-shirt.

Seungcheol stared at the stain spreading across the white t-shirt.

Both of them spoke at once.

“I'm so sorry-”

“Jeonghan needs to turn up the temperature on the filter-”

Then they stopped and there was a second or two of silence before they both started to laugh.

Then Seungcheol, some of the light back in his lovely eyes, held up her scarf. “You left this on your seat,” he said. His voice was lovely. A hint of a vocal fade, and a cadence to his accent that might have been southern.

[y/n] took the scarf. The post-it fluttered out of her hand and Seungcheol caught it before it could hit the ground.

[y/n] couldn’t stop him. It was too late.

Seungcheol read the post-it and shook his head. He didn’t seem angry, though. He seemed… fond? Amused, maybe. Then his eyes met hers and she couldn’t look away.

“[y/n],” she blurted out her own name.

“Seungcheol,” he said unnecessarily, and waved the post it. Then he handed it back. “The late shift ends at nine-thirty,” he said. And then, with an exaggerated wink that knocked another laugh out of [y/n], he turned and went back to the cafe.

She watched him go.

“Nine-thirty,” she said to herself. And checked her watch.

[For kimari_xo. Happy holidays, buddy xx]

[suilamhainsposts]

If you want to read a fabulous Elucien AU then this is it! My disgustingly talented friend @harkae wrote it. Elain has an excellent personality ☺️ top tier writing!

Excellent yearning, angst and some references to sex!

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

[harkae]

Enemies, All Too Familiar

Azriel x Eris

punk bank AU, secret romance, angst

Chaptered, complete (ch2-7 on ao3)

Chapter One

The muted thump in time to his foot pedal made the floor shake around him. Azriel tapped the pedal a few more times, establishing a rhythm before he settled his shoulders and opened his eyes. Both hands out, he waited for the rhythm to take him before he beat another layer on top of it. He could hear it clear enough through his headphones, but he couldn’t hear anything else. Cassian must have been playing something because he was hunched over his bass, as there was an occasional shudder from the floor beneath Azriel that wasn’t coming from him, from his arms and his legs and the thump-thump of his heart that was just a byproduct of being here, in this venue. He shut his eyes and focused on his footwork again, bass drum and cymbal. Thump, tish, thump, tish. Something was off. He opened his eyes again, but immediately lost his rhythm.

Cassian was staring at him. He stopped beating the bass drum and pulled his headphones off. The empty venue was unpleasantly echo-y without them.

“What?”

“I was asking you to shut the fuck up for a second,” Cassian said with no bite. He nodded to the floor in front of the stage, where Feyre stood with her arms folded and a sour expression. That wasn’t unusual. Feyre was pretty, but she could stand to treat the world less like she was punishing it all for not being her own house, to not treat everybody else like they were beneath her because they weren’t her sainted husband.

“Where’s Rhys?” he asked.

Feyre’s eyes flashed. “Weren’t you listening?”

“No,” said Azriel. Cassian echoed him. Feyre looked beseechingly at Morrigan, who looked like she had been listening but also a bit like she wished she hadn’t.

“I can’t do anything about it,” Mor said. Azriel frowned at her. She sounded upset. He fought the instinct to get up, to walk over there, to ask her what was wrong and who he needed to beat the shit out of to make her feel better. He fought it and won. He was winning more and more these days. Cassian didn’t have the years of emotional baggage he had, though, and he crossed the stage to her side.

“You don’t have to do anything,” he said. “Rhys will deal with him.”

So Cassian had been listening. Azriel felt left out. “What’s going on?” he asked, addressing Cassian and not Feyre who would just ask him if he was listening again. “I thought we had sound check.”

“Asshole is being an asshole,” Cassian told him. “Rhys is up in the office.”

Azriel’s stomach, already knotted since the moment he’d stepped foot in this place, lurched. “Why?”

Feyre had climbed up onto the low stage and was reading something on her phone. “Eris wants more buy-in from the band, or he won’t let you play,” he said. “I told him to go straight to hell and he told me,” she fashioned her fingers into air-quotes, “he ‘couldn’t deal with emotional females.’ What a fucking incel,” she said, rolling her eyes again. “Anyway, I can’t deal with sanctimonious scenesters, so I left Rhys to set him straight.”

Azriel’s ears were ringing, and only a little bit from his chronic tinnitus. Sanctimonious scenester? “He wants more money because it’s us?”

Cassian swore loudly and at length into the microphone over Mor’s keyboard. His words rang through the room, forcing Feyre to swat at his arm.

“One fucking record,” Mor muttered darkly. Azriel exchanged a tight smile with her. “We made one fucking record with that label, and they’ll punish us forever for it.” He mouthed the words he wanted to ask, that he wanted to express with the hug he wouldn’t give her because she’d think she was hurting him by hugging him back. Are you okay? “Yeah,” she said out loud.

Azriel stood. “I’ll go,” he said. “Rhys will only make things worse.”

Morrigan actually guffawed at that. “The second time you met Eris you broke his nose.”

“And his ribs,” Cassian nodded.

“That time was in a mosh pit,” Azriel muttered, setting his sticks down where nobody would slip on them. “I’ll be back in a few minutes. Get warmed up.”

“Bullshit. He broke Eris’s nose in my apartment,” Morrigan told Feyre, her voice ringing through the still-on mic in answer to an unheard question as Azriel let himself out the backstage door and into the service stairs. He could hear raised voices from halfway up and sighed heavily.

When he reached the top of the stairs, he followed the voices to Eris’s half-open office door. Harsh desk-lamp light spilled out of it and into the black-painted corridor, the stark contrast only doing bad things to Azriel’s mounting sense of trepidation. This place was not the place for this, for facing Eris. He was on the backfoot here and he hated being on the backfoot with Eris. Eris thought nothing of pushing when he had an advantage. When he reached the door, Azriel knocked softly. He stood outside but didn’t get an invitation. He doubted he’d been heard. Apart from the raised voices, Cassian’s bass had picked up again. And somebody was sitting at his drums, padding at his bass pedal. Azriel gritted his teeth. He didn’t like people touching his stuff.

“You’ll take in at least two hundred more covers tonight because of us, Eris.”

“Two hundred covers and not a single bar receipt. Have you seen my parking lot, Rhys? It’s full of teenagers caning cans of Red Stripe. The cops will-” Eris cool, deep voice was cut off by the bleet of a landline and he swore, his vocabulary not unlike Cassian’s. Not for the first time, Azriel thought Eris and Cassian might get along if they didn’t fucking hate each other. “Hello?”

Azriel took this as his cue and slipped into the office. The desk-lamp was the first thing that he saw, the bulb blowing his retinas to shit so he had to blink the afterglow out before he could make out Rhys, a vague shadow in the corner. Eris was behind the lamp, a cream-coloured handset pressed to his ear. Azriel didn’t look at him.

“They need you for soundcheck,” he said to Rhys.

“I’ll be down in a minute,” Rhys said.

“Now,” Azriel said. He put some force into the word, if not some volume. Eris, clearly on the phone to the police, was turned away from them. Rhys looked like he was going to protest but then he took in Azriel’s stance, his unblinking glare. “I’ll deal with this,” Azriel promised.

Rhys nodded. He smirked as he patted him on the shoulder. “Give him hell, Az,” he said, “Don’t break anything too vital,” and left. Azriel sighed. He had so many responses to that and none he could vocalise. On the other side of his desk, Eris was giving the cops chapter and verse on his indemnity and the security on site, but he turned around when Rhys shut the door behind him, leaving him alone with Azriel. He went very still. So did Azriel.

“You have a good night,” he said into the receiver, and then he dropped the phone in the cradle in front of him. Cautiously, he got to his feet. Azriel could barely see him. He reached out and moved the lamp, pointing it at the ceiling and leaving him in the shadows with Eris. He could make him out now, lean form wrapped in a skinny t-shirt that looked black in this light but was probably red or green or some other muted colour that would offset his flame-red hair. Even in this light his freckles stood out stark against his milk-pale skin. Azriel couldn’t read his expression at all.

“Do you all share a wardrobe?” Eris asked, moving finally, gesturing to Azriel’s black t-shirt, almost identical to Rhys’s but undoubtedly far, far less expensive, and about twice the amount of fabric Cassian was wearing across his expansive chest right now. Admittedly, Morrigan was wearing a shirt she’d borrowed from him, but Azriel ignored the jibe.

“What the fuck are you doing?” he asked.

Eris raised his eyebrows. “I’m trying to run a business,” he said coolly. Whatever momentary unmasking had occurred when he’d turned to find Azriel in his office was gone. He was the venue owner now, the hustler who’d spent the last half hour arguing with Rhys over what could only be a fraction of what he stood to make tonight, even after the cause took its cut.

“Your business will survive a few hyperactive teenagers who’ll only drink water,” Azriel said. “What are you really doing? This is a benefit show. For a cause you actually care about.” He didn’t add what was left unspoken there, that Eris cared about precious little else. He cared about The Mountain though. He’d spent most of his youth there, just like everybody else. Well, except for Azriel. And Cassian. But The Mountain was such a foundational place for their scene, an arts space and venue and youth centre and sometimes shelter, Azriel was just as invested as everybody else in keeping it from demolition. 

“I care about having the cops on the phone,” Eris said sardonically. He stepped out from behind the desk and settled himself on the edge, arms folded but facing Azriel with a challenge in his green eyes. Azriel couldn’t even see his eyes in this light, but they were green. Like the forests in the real mountains, the ones he’d endured before he came here.

“Every single one of our fans pays a door charge-”

“Your fans,” Eris mocked. “Sorry rockstar. I didn’t realise I was talking to an idol.”

Azriel sighed. Talking to Eris was like talking to some kind of evil forest creature, one that would talk you into a bog. “Why are you doing this?” he asked again.

Eris grinned. “Because I can, Az. What savvy businessman could resist the opportunity to make some purse on the faded jewels of the northern scene? What do you want from me?” He shrugged, spread his arms in a yawn or a shrug, but nothing genuine. His long fingers left spindly shadows on the ceiling like the branches of trees that had lost their leaves.

“We want to be treated like everybody else,” Azriel said, knowing he’d said the wrong thing as soon as he’d said it.

“Everybody else didn’t get a special on CourtFM. Everybody else didn’t open for-”

“I won’t apologise for selling records, Eris. We have to make a living somehow.”

Eris pushed off the desk then, squaring up to Azriel. This close Azriel could see the kink in his nose where he’d broken it the night he’d called Morrigan a corporate sellout whore in front of all of her friends. Azriel had only met him once before that, but he hadn’t hesitated. He’d called him out and Eris had taken up the challenge. Neither of them were particularly good at backing down. 

“You live so nicely,” Eris said, voice like silk and just as slippery. “So, what’s another hundred off your door cut? Pay it forward. It’s a benefit after all.”

Azriel felt his jaw clench. “A hundred?”

“Just a hundred,” Eris said. “You pay what everybody else pays, and a little extra on top. Then you can play your shitty sellout trash on my stage.” Eris’s eyes flashed. “Make sure you play the one about the first date. I love that one. So romantic. So radio friendl-”

Azriel caught the front of Eris’s t-shrit and pushed him against the desk. Eris shut up, eyes wide. Maybe he looked a little paler, or maybe that was a bloom of red crawling up his neck, Azriel couldn’t tell because he’d locked eyes with him and wasn’t looking away.

“A hundred on top of our door take,” he said, “and every penny of it goes to the benefit.” He meant it. He’d pay it himself if the others refused. Eris had a point; they’d bring in more people tonight than the other three bands combined. “But if you tell anybody about that,” he went on, voice dropping so he could barely hear himself over the sounds of Illyria warming up downstairs, “I’ll tell everybody you’re creaming cash off the top of a benefit take whether it’s true or not. I’ll your brother you’re robbing the benefit he’s been killing himself to organise. I’ll tell the Terrasen kids, and Hunt and his guys, and they’ll all pull their sets tonight, and we’ll do the benefit somewhere else. How does that sound? Do you still think you can take six hundred covers at the door if Tamlin and his acoustic guitar are the only thing you have to offer?”

Eris, to be fair to him, didn’t even flinch. “Azriel, please,” he said. “The extra hundred was always going straight to the benefit. What do you take me for? I even talked it over with Lucien.” Eris smirked and Azriel blinked.

“Why didn’t you tell Rhys that?” he asked through gritted teeth.

“He didn’t ask,” Eris said. “He assumed the worst. He really doesn’t like me.”

Azriel’s knuckles tightened in the shirt. “I don’t like you,” he said.

“Keep telling yourself that, Az.” Eris tipped his chin, lips centimetres from Azriel’s. “If you really believed it, I doubt you’d even be here tonight.” 

Azriel’s grip loosened, his hands splaying, and then he was gripping Eris around the waist, crowding him against the desk, forcing him up onto it until he was standing between his legs. This close, the pine and resin scent of his skin was dizzying. Azriel could never work it out, if Eris wore some sort of cologne he’d never encountered before or if this was just Eris, the olfactory upshot of being a sanctimonious environmentalist. Whatever it was, it drove Azriel wild. 

“Please,” he said, lips hovering over Eris’s. “Please shut the fuck up now.” Then he caught his lips in his own, forceful and familiar, a burning intensity behind the kiss that never banked no matter how much they did this, no matter that there’d been nobody else for Azriel for months now, not since he’d discovered that nothing and nobody else compared. He pushed his tongue against the seam of Eris’s lips and felt them part, felt the tiny moan at the back of the other man’s throat like the vibration of his drums. 

His drums.

Somebody was playing his fucking drums. And he recognised the beat. 

He pulled himself off of Eris’s lips. “That fucking Danaan guy is playing my drums again,” he said. He tried to disengage, but Eris had locked his legs around him. “Let go, babe, I have to go murder somebody.” 

Eris, arms around his neck, forced Azriel to face him again, leaned in and purred against his lips. “I love when you’re all fired up like this.” 

Azriel almost let himself sink into it. He almost let himself have it, since he wasn’t going to get any more tonight. The band would insist on hanging out after the show, probably with the other bands and some of the fans they knew. Rhys and Feyre would have another one of their tedious after parties at their tediously perfect townhouse, and there was maybe a better chance of hell freezing over than that they would ask Eris to come. There was less chance of him turning up of his own accord, and even if he did, then they might have to explain themselves, explain this to everybody else. And there was no explaining this. There was no way any of them could understand. 

So, this was all Azriel was getting tonight. He gave into it for just one more minute. He gave in to the taste of Eris’s tongue in his mouth, and the silk-smoothness of the skin under his t-shirt, of the hard insistent press of him against Azriel’s leather pants. And then Ruhn Danaan crashed his high hat loud enough to hear through two walls and a stairwell, and Azriel tore himself away from his boyfriend and dove for the door.

“Let me know if you want to see me later,” Eris said, before he could disappear. Azriel let himself look back once. He didn’t know how to say it, that he always wanted to see Eris. That he couldn’t later, because his friends hated Eris and he couldn’t even blame them for it.

“Sure,” was all he said instead, and then he ran for the stairs. 

Complete fic on ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/56976637/

[harkae]

Complete!

[harkae]

Enemies, All Too Familiar

Azriel x Eris, azris

punk bank AU, secret romance, angst

Chaptered, complete (ch2-7 on ao3)

Chapter One

The muted thump in time to his foot pedal made the floor shake around him. Azriel tapped the pedal a few more times, establishing a rhythm before he settled his shoulders and opened his eyes. Both hands out, he waited for the rhythm to take him before he beat another layer on top of it. He could hear it clear enough through his headphones, but he couldn’t hear anything else. Cassian must have been playing something because he was hunched over his bass, as there was an occasional shudder from the floor beneath Azriel that wasn’t coming from him, from his arms and his legs and the thump-thump of his heart that was just a byproduct of being here, in this venue. He shut his eyes and focused on his footwork again, bass drum and cymbal. Thump, tish, thump, tish. Something was off. He opened his eyes again, but immediately lost his rhythm.

Cassian was staring at him. He stopped beating the bass drum and pulled his headphones off. The empty venue was unpleasantly echo-y without them.

“What?”

“I was asking you to shut the fuck up for a second,” Cassian said with no bite. He nodded to the floor in front of the stage, where Feyre stood with her arms folded and a sour expression. That wasn’t unusual. Feyre was pretty, but she could stand to treat the world less like she was punishing it all for not being her own house, to not treat everybody else like they were beneath her because they weren’t her sainted husband.

“Where’s Rhys?” he asked.

Feyre’s eyes flashed. “Weren’t you listening?”

“No,” said Azriel. Cassian echoed him. Feyre looked beseechingly at Morrigan, who looked like she had been listening but also a bit like she wished she hadn’t.

“I can’t do anything about it,” Mor said. Azriel frowned at her. She sounded upset. He fought the instinct to get up, to walk over there, to ask her what was wrong and who he needed to beat the shit out of to make her feel better. He fought it and won. He was winning more and more these days. Cassian didn’t have the years of emotional baggage he had, though, and he crossed the stage to her side.

“You don’t have to do anything,” he said. “Rhys will deal with him.”

So Cassian had been listening. Azriel felt left out. “What’s going on?” he asked, addressing Cassian and not Feyre who would just ask him if he was listening again. “I thought we had sound check.”

“Asshole is being an asshole,” Cassian told him. “Rhys is up in the office.”

Azriel’s stomach, already knotted since the moment he’d stepped foot in this place, lurched. “Why?”

Feyre had climbed up onto the low stage and was reading something on her phone. “Eris wants more buy-in from the band, or he won’t let you play,” he said. “I told him to go straight to hell and he told me,” she fashioned her fingers into air-quotes, “he ‘couldn’t deal with emotional females.’ What a fucking incel,” she said, rolling her eyes again. “Anyway, I can’t deal with sanctimonious scenesters, so I left Rhys to set him straight.”

Azriel’s ears were ringing, and only a little bit from his chronic tinnitus. Sanctimonious scenester? “He wants more money because it’s us?”

Cassian swore loudly and at length into the microphone over Mor’s keyboard. His words rang through the room, forcing Feyre to swat at his arm.

“One fucking record,” Mor muttered darkly. Azriel exchanged a tight smile with her. “We made one fucking record with that label, and they’ll punish us forever for it.” He mouthed the words he wanted to ask, that he wanted to express with the hug he wouldn’t give her because she’d think she was hurting him by hugging him back. Are you okay? “Yeah,” she said out loud.

Azriel stood. “I’ll go,” he said. “Rhys will only make things worse.”

Morrigan actually guffawed at that. “The second time you met Eris you broke his nose.”

“And his ribs,” Cassian nodded.

“That time was in a mosh pit,” Azriel muttered, setting his sticks down where nobody would slip on them. “I’ll be back in a few minutes. Get warmed up.”

“Bullshit. He broke Eris’s nose in my apartment,” Morrigan told Feyre, her voice ringing through the still-on mic in answer to an unheard question as Azriel let himself out the backstage door and into the service stairs. He could hear raised voices from halfway up and sighed heavily.

When he reached the top of the stairs, he followed the voices to Eris’s half-open office door. Harsh desk-lamp light spilled out of it and into the black-painted corridor, the stark contrast only doing bad things to Azriel’s mounting sense of trepidation. This place was not the place for this, for facing Eris. He was on the backfoot here and he hated being on the backfoot with Eris. Eris thought nothing of pushing when he had an advantage. When he reached the door, Azriel knocked softly. He stood outside but didn’t get an invitation. He doubted he’d been heard. Apart from the raised voices, Cassian’s bass had picked up again. And somebody was sitting at his drums, padding at his bass pedal. Azriel gritted his teeth. He didn’t like people touching his stuff.

“You’ll take in at least two hundred more covers tonight because of us, Eris.”

“Two hundred covers and not a single bar receipt. Have you seen my parking lot, Rhys? It’s full of teenagers caning cans of Red Stripe. The cops will-” Eris cool, deep voice was cut off by the bleet of a landline and he swore, his vocabulary not unlike Cassian’s. Not for the first time, Azriel thought Eris and Cassian might get along if they didn’t fucking hate each other. “Hello?”

Azriel took this as his cue and slipped into the office. The desk-lamp was the first thing that he saw, the bulb blowing his retinas to shit so he had to blink the afterglow out before he could make out Rhys, a vague shadow in the corner. Eris was behind the lamp, a cream-coloured handset pressed to his ear. Azriel didn’t look at him.

“They need you for soundcheck,” he said to Rhys.

“I’ll be down in a minute,” Rhys said.

“Now,” Azriel said. He put some force into the word, if not some volume. Eris, clearly on the phone to the police, was turned away from them. Rhys looked like he was going to protest but then he took in Azriel’s stance, his unblinking glare. “I’ll deal with this,” Azriel promised.

Rhys nodded. He smirked as he patted him on the shoulder. “Give him hell, Az,” he said, “Don’t break anything too vital,” and left. Azriel sighed. He had so many responses to that and none he could vocalise. On the other side of his desk, Eris was giving the cops chapter and verse on his indemnity and the security on site, but he turned around when Rhys shut the door behind him, leaving him alone with Azriel. He went very still. So did Azriel.

“You have a good night,” he said into the receiver, and then he dropped the phone in the cradle in front of him. Cautiously, he got to his feet. Azriel could barely see him. He reached out and moved the lamp, pointing it at the ceiling and leaving him in the shadows with Eris. He could make him out now, lean form wrapped in a skinny t-shirt that looked black in this light but was probably red or green or some other muted colour that would offset his flame-red hair. Even in this light his freckles stood out stark against his milk-pale skin. Azriel couldn’t read his expression at all.

“Do you all share a wardrobe?” Eris asked, moving finally, gesturing to Azriel’s black t-shirt, almost identical to Rhys’s but undoubtedly far, far less expensive, and about twice the amount of fabric Cassian was wearing across his expansive chest right now. Admittedly, Morrigan was wearing a shirt she’d borrowed from him, but Azriel ignored the jibe.

“What the fuck are you doing?” he asked.

Eris raised his eyebrows. “I’m trying to run a business,” he said coolly. Whatever momentary unmasking had occurred when he’d turned to find Azriel in his office was gone. He was the venue owner now, the hustler who’d spent the last half hour arguing with Rhys over what could only be a fraction of what he stood to make tonight, even after the cause took its cut.

“Your business will survive a few hyperactive teenagers who’ll only drink water,” Azriel said. “What are you really doing? This is a benefit show. For a cause you actually care about.” He didn’t add what was left unspoken there, that Eris cared about precious little else. He cared about The Mountain though. He’d spent most of his youth there, just like everybody else. Well, except for Azriel. And Cassian. But The Mountain was such a foundational place for their scene, an arts space and venue and youth centre and sometimes shelter, Azriel was just as invested as everybody else in keeping it from demolition. 

“I care about having the cops on the phone,” Eris said sardonically. He stepped out from behind the desk and settled himself on the edge, arms folded but facing Azriel with a challenge in his green eyes. Azriel couldn’t even see his eyes in this light, but they were green. Like the forests in the real mountains, the ones he’d endured before he came here.

“Every single one of our fans pays a door charge-”

“Your fans,” Eris mocked. “Sorry rockstar. I didn’t realise I was talking to an idol.”

Azriel sighed. Talking to Eris was like talking to some kind of evil forest creature, one that would talk you into a bog. “Why are you doing this?” he asked again.

Eris grinned. “Because I can, Az. What savvy businessman could resist the opportunity to make some purse on the faded jewels of the northern scene? What do you want from me?” He shrugged, spread his arms in a yawn or a shrug, but nothing genuine. His long fingers left spindly shadows on the ceiling like the branches of trees that had lost their leaves.

“We want to be treated like everybody else,” Azriel said, knowing he’d said the wrong thing as soon as he’d said it.

“Everybody else didn’t get a special on CourtFM. Everybody else didn’t open for-”

“I won’t apologise for selling records, Eris. We have to make a living somehow.”

Eris pushed off the desk then, squaring up to Azriel. This close Azriel could see the kink in his nose where he’d broken it the night he’d called Morrigan a corporate sellout whore in front of all of her friends. Azriel had only met him once before that, but he hadn’t hesitated. He’d called him out and Eris had taken up the challenge. Neither of them were particularly good at backing down. 

“You live so nicely,” Eris said, voice like silk and just as slippery. “So, what’s another hundred off your door cut? Pay it forward. It’s a benefit after all.”

Azriel felt his jaw clench. “A hundred?”

“Just a hundred,” Eris said. “You pay what everybody else pays, and a little extra on top. Then you can play your shitty sellout trash on my stage.” Eris’s eyes flashed. “Make sure you play the one about the first date. I love that one. So romantic. So radio friendl-”

Azriel caught the front of Eris’s t-shrit and pushed him against the desk. Eris shut up, eyes wide. Maybe he looked a little paler, or maybe that was a bloom of red crawling up his neck, Azriel couldn’t tell because he’d locked eyes with him and wasn’t looking away.

“A hundred on top of our door take,” he said, “and every penny of it goes to the benefit.” He meant it. He’d pay it himself if the others refused. Eris had a point; they’d bring in more people tonight than the other three bands combined. “But if you tell anybody about that,” he went on, voice dropping so he could barely hear himself over the sounds of Illyria warming up downstairs, “I’ll tell everybody you’re creaming cash off the top of a benefit take whether it’s true or not. I’ll your brother you’re robbing the benefit he’s been killing himself to organise. I’ll tell the Terrasen kids, and Hunt and his guys, and they’ll all pull their sets tonight, and we’ll do the benefit somewhere else. How does that sound? Do you still think you can take six hundred covers at the door if Tamlin and his acoustic guitar are the only thing you have to offer?”

Eris, to be fair to him, didn’t even flinch. “Azriel, please,” he said. “The extra hundred was always going straight to the benefit. What do you take me for? I even talked it over with Lucien.” Eris smirked and Azriel blinked.

“Why didn’t you tell Rhys that?” he asked through gritted teeth.

“He didn’t ask,” Eris said. “He assumed the worst. He really doesn’t like me.”

Azriel’s knuckles tightened in the shirt. “I don’t like you,” he said.

“Keep telling yourself that, Az.” Eris tipped his chin, lips centimetres from Azriel’s. “If you really believed it, I doubt you’d even be here tonight.” 

Azriel’s grip loosened, his hands splaying, and then he was gripping Eris around the waist, crowding him against the desk, forcing him up onto it until he was standing between his legs. This close, the pine and resin scent of his skin was dizzying. Azriel could never work it out, if Eris wore some sort of cologne he’d never encountered before or if this was just Eris, the olfactory upshot of being a sanctimonious environmentalist. Whatever it was, it drove Azriel wild. 

“Please,” he said, lips hovering over Eris’s. “Please shut the fuck up now.” Then he caught his lips in his own, forceful and familiar, a burning intensity behind the kiss that never banked no matter how much they did this, no matter that there’d been nobody else for Azriel for months now, not since he’d discovered that nothing and nobody else compared. He pushed his tongue against the seam of Eris’s lips and felt them part, felt the tiny moan at the back of the other man’s throat like the vibration of his drums. 

His drums.

Somebody was playing his fucking drums. And he recognised the beat. 

He pulled himself off of Eris’s lips. “That fucking Danaan guy is playing my drums again,” he said. He tried to disengage, but Eris had locked his legs around him. “Let go, babe, I have to go murder somebody.” 

Eris, arms around his neck, forced Azriel to face him again, leaned in and purred against his lips. “I love when you’re all fired up like this.” 

Azriel almost let himself sink into it. He almost let himself have it, since he wasn’t going to get any more tonight. The band would insist on hanging out after the show, probably with the other bands and some of the fans they knew. Rhys and Feyre would have another one of their tedious after parties at their tediously perfect townhouse, and there was maybe a better chance of hell freezing over than that they would ask Eris to come. There was less chance of him turning up of his own accord, and even if he did, then they might have to explain themselves, explain this to everybody else. And there was no explaining this. There was no way any of them could understand. 

So, this was all Azriel was getting tonight. He gave into it for just one more minute. He gave in to the taste of Eris’s tongue in his mouth, and the silk-smoothness of the skin under his t-shirt, of the hard insistent press of him against Azriel’s leather pants. And then Ruhn Danaan crashed his high hat loud enough to hear through two walls and a stairwell, and Azriel tore himself away from his boyfriend and dove for the door.

“Let me know if you want to see me later,” Eris said, before he could disappear. Azriel let himself look back once. He didn’t know how to say it, that he always wanted to see Eris. That he couldn’t later, because his friends hated Eris and he couldn’t even blame them for it.

“Sure,” was all he said instead, and then he ran for the stairs. 

Complete fic on ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/56976637/

[harkae]

A full list of users of Snoopy's Palace immediately following the party (from View Only Permitted by kaehdci); includes some very minor spoilers for Chapter 5.

Divided according to three ncity subunits. Table of other users divided according to group.

Full fic text here:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/56242600/

[harkae]

His Choices

M-Rating

Ithan Holstrom x Tharion Ketos

angst, friends to lovers, open ending

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

[teddyhoneybear]

Lucien and Elain take shelter in an inn after a long and cold journey across the continents. There's one problem though: only one bed...

[harkae]

It's Okay To Do This, Right?

Drabble

G-Rating

canon-comp, dotae, mutual pining

The alert appeared on his phone while Taeyong was still trying to work out the key move in front of the bank of mirrors. He didn’t hear the alert, so he didn’t even see it until later. He was left alone for a few minutes. Sitting on the floor with a bottle of water, he scrolled his alerts. There was a message from Doyoung.

A coupon: three chocolates, with a barcode he could redeem from the convenience store. 

Happy Valentine's Day, Doyoung wrote. And that was it. 

Taeyong’s mouth twitched in a smile and he felt himself blush. Thankfully there was nobody else around to see him. 

Taeyong’s fingers lingered over the letters, but he hesitated. Should he return the sentiment? He had never done so before… but Doyoung had never sent him a coupon for chocolates before. Doyoung had never sent him anything on Valentine’s Day before. Then, it was Jaehyun’s birthday and they were often with the group. 

What did it mean? 

Taeyong climbed to his feet. He made for the door, stopping to pick up his hat. 

There was a convenience store near the subway station under the building. It was the middle of the day on a Wednesday, and he had a reasonable chance of getting down there and back without anybody noticing him (especially if he covered his hair). He would exchange the coupon for the chocolate, and pick up something for Doyoung, for when he saw him again. Some white chocolate, maybe. He could send Doyoung a picture of it. You need to come over to collect it, he would write. Maybe Doyoung would turn up at his apartment in the next few days. Maybe they could share a meal and talk a little bit. Maybe they could sit quietly and not talk at all. Maybe… maybe- Taeyong smiled to himself, a little thrill running through him at the thought of simply being in the same room with Doyoung, the two of them together alone. 

He put his earphones in, and turned on a song he liked lately. 

A song that reminded him of Doyoung.

He ran into his manager at the door.

“Hyung, I’m going downstairs,” he said.

His manager didn’t answer. He was reading something on his phone and chuckling.

“Hyung?”

The manager looked up. He held his phone out. “Have you seen this? The seniors are going crazy.” He shook his head as Taeyong read the headline.

Idol buys 100 coupons for chocolate and posts them to fan SNS, over a picture of Doyoung in that pretty dark-grey suit from a couple of years ago. Taeyong’s eyes lingered on the picture, before the headline sunk in.

“He bought 100 coupons for the fans?” 

“He’s crazy,” the manager was still chuckling. Then he looked Taeyong over. “Where did you say you were going?” 

Taeyong hesitated. Then slipped his phone into his pocket. He was one of 100; he was 101, the afterthought of a kind, funny gesture that would make the fans smile and further cement Doyoung’s image as the thoughtful, considerate, steadfast boyfriend-type. 

Taeyong wished he didn’t already hold that image in his head.

“Nowhere,” he said, turning back into the practice room. 

~~~

The table wasn’t hard enough. Doyoung thudded his forehead into it again and then looked up at his phone screen. The little 1 hadn’t moved; the message was unread. 

What had he been thinking? Was he out of his mind? It was Valentines Day, why had he chosen this day of all days to make a gesture. 

He was insane, he figured. 

The first Valentine's Day in years when he wasn’t working, or already in the room with Taeyong at some point. And he had absolutely no sense of self-control. No chill. 

He’d woken up and drank his coffee and then he bought a cheap coupon and sent it to Taeyong in the misguided notion that he was being funny. 

Here is a Valentine's Day gift, hyung. I’m terribly cute, hyung. Laugh at it, and laugh at me, and then I’ll know you thought of me; the subtext ran on and on. The actual text said barely anything, a title more than a sentiment, leaving a coupon for three chocolates to speak for themselves.

It was a pathetic attempt. 

And the minutes ticked by. Then the hour, and another, and Taeyong didn’t respond. 

So Doyoung did the only thing any sane person would do, and he panicked. 

“You bought one hundred coupons for the fans?” Jungwoo’s eyes were huge when Doyoung told him later.

“I thought it was funny,” Doyoung shrugged. Taeyong had seen the coupon by then. He still  hadn’t replied. 

“Why didn’t you send one to me?” Jungwoo schooled his features in a mock expression of hurt. 

Doyoung nudged him. “You’re not a fan,” he said. Then he could have kicked himself again. Three chocolates for every member of the group would have set him back far less than a hundred for the fans. Why hadn’t he thought of that before? His smokescreen was, once again, so elaborate as to be ridiculous. 

“Lucky fans,” Jungwoo said, shaking his head. “They’re going to feel so special when one of the codes works.” 

Doyoung didn’t respond. Special; to make him feel special. That had been the plan. 

It was a different table, but he felt the familiar thud as his forehead made muted contact with wood once again.  

[harkae]

My Hands Up

genre - fluff, comfort

pairing - Mingyu X y/n [reader]

warnings - none, genfic

It had only been a week, but the cafe had embraced Christmas in a big way since y/n was last in. The cafe wasn’t just decorated, it was decorated. There had only been a tree the week before. y/n approached the counter, and smiled at Jia, the regular barista who knew her order because it never changed. She joined the line nonetheless and paid for her coffee when she was asked, then stood off to the side to wait. 

“You’re early,” Jia called to her, over the bang and swish of the coffee machine. 

“I wanted to stake out the tree,” y/n called back. Her eyes darted to the corner, to where the cafe’s annual charity gift exchange tree was all set up, waiting for regular patrons to arrive. Tiny gifts wrapped in colourful paper hung from the top tiers, and a few larger items were tucked under the lowest branches. The gift exchange was based on a raffle, on the lucky number that Jia had stuck to her steaming cup of coffee three weeks ago when y/n paid the ₩5000 participation fee on top of the cost of her normal latte. She had dropped off her own contribution last week, and by then the tree was already half full. Somebody else would get her number and take her gift from the tree, and nobody would ever know who gave them what. 

y/n waited, impatiently bouncing on the balls of her feet and looking around at the other patrons. Regulars who couldn’t wait until later milled about, and y/n even recognised a few of them. Since moving to this part of Seoul she had become something of a regular here herself. There were the pair of office workers who came mid-morning during the week when y/n was normally here, and the handsome patron who was friends with the owner; the woman and her quiet kid who set up at the table in the corner on Fridays with a book apiece were both reading in their regular spot, and there was also the new guy who the barista had introduced as ‘our christmas tree doner’ when y/n happened to be standing next to him in the line the week before. She had seen him a few times, selling trees on the square near the cafe. He wasn’t local, she had never seen him around before, but he had made himself a regular in a few short weeks nonetheless. He chuckled now when one of the old men who worked for the city walked in and remarked that the tree was ‘the most sorry excuse for a Christmas tree’ he had ever seen. 

y/n laughed too.

“It was a donation,” Jia told the old man. “We gave it a good home here.” She didn’t add that nobody else was likely to buy it. It was a ragged, wizened thing, too tall and sparsely branched to be the kind of cosy, fat tree most people wanted if they shelled out for a real one. It had taken on a kind of a chic minimalism in the cafe, festooned with lights and crepe-paper garlands, and now covered with small hanging presents and crackers. y/n thought it looked dignified, even. She snapped a picture of it, mere moments before it would be stripped. When she lowered her camera, her eyes met the Christmas tree seller’s and they exchanged a conspiratorial smile. 

y/n looked away quickly. He was kind of striking, the Christmas tree man, and not just because he was taller than anybody else in the room. She had been noticing him around more and more, especially since Jia told her that he donated the tree. There was something nice about that, his willingness to get involved in things that he didn’t even need to. 

“Five minutes!” Jia called. y/n shuffled towards the tree, her mug in hand. She sipped from it and forced herself not to look at her ticket. She didn’t want to fixate on what number she had until the event started. For now, she just surveyed the tree, and looked for her own contribution. She found it, about halfway up. She had folded her gift into a cracker and covered it with purple iridescent paper. It was small and light enough that the cafe had tied a string around it and hung it from one of the higher branches. She saw the number 92 stamped on a sticker on the side. Looking around, she wondered which of the patrons had her number; were they even here yet? Maybe they would come later, or maybe her number was too high; she had brought her gift in late, after all. Maybe they didn’t sell 92 tickets. She felt an unexpected stab of panic, but pushed it away. Somebody would take her gift, even if it was just Jia. 

The novelty bell that they kept on the counter and never used dinged twice, and all of the attention in the now-crowded cafe turned to the counter. Jia was there, standing next to a tall woman wearing an apron that had just been hastily cleared of flour. y/n recognised her as Euna, whose name the cafe bore. y/n had seen her a few times coming in and out of the kitchen. When she spoke, she had a deep, sonorous voice, and it carried through the room.

She thanked the patrons for participating in the charity event, and announced how much they had managed to fundraise. Contributions - that is, the cost of a ticket - were voluntary, and some people had been very generous. There was a scattered applause, and then she announced what everybody had been waiting for. 

“Come to the tree,” she called out, “and hand your ticket to Jia. She will give you your gift.” 

Immediately, an excited line began to form by the tree. The reading woman and her literate child made their way to the front, and stood alongside the city worker. y/n quickly realised that her plan to surreptitiously watch her gift and find out who received it was not going to work. Too polite to push her way to the front, she found herself at the back, her view obscured by the giant christmas tree seller and the office workers who were a lot taller than they looked. By the time y/n made it to the tree, most of the gifts were gone, and hers along with them. She looked around but couldn’t see anybody with the familiar purple paper or the cracker it had encased. There was a steady stream of people leaving now, and she felt a mild pang of disappointment at not getting to see a reaction to her handiwork. 

“What number?” Jia asked. 

y/n handed it over. “Seventeen,” she said. 

Jia smiled at the number but before y/n could ask her what she was smiling about, she reached back and took a bauble off the tree. From a soft pink ribbon hung a carefully assembled four-pointed star. Jia handed it over carefully, and with a final secret smile her attention was taken by the last few people behind y/n. 

y/n carried the bauble over to a table by the window and sat down, inspecting it. It was hand-made, four photographs curved around cardboard and sealed behind perspex that was precisely, albeit visibly, glued in place. It was a careful job, lovingly done. y/n turned her attention to the photographs. One was the palace in the snow, taken in the evening before the light was gone; there was one of the bridges over the river, all festooned with lights; and a scene in the park of children playing in the snow. The final photograph was of the tree, the sparse one in the cafe, taken some time in the last few days with the presents hung from it and the lights on. It was a lovely thing, the photographs beautifully taken and carefully chosen to be both a general christmas decoration and a reminder of just this event. 

y/n’s fingers caught on something sticking out of the centre of the star. She reached in and drew out a piece of paper, folded into the same shape. Unfurling it, she saw that it was a handwritten recipe. She laughed when she read it; The Perfect Hangover Ramen, it was titled. What a gift. 

“I forgot to add the minced garlic,” a soft voice said above her. y/n looked up, and found the christmas tree seller standing over her, looking down at the recipe. 

She had never actually seen him up close like this; when she had stood next to or near him previously she had always been too shy to crane her neck up the way it would be necessary to and actually look. She was sitting down now and his considerable height was dizzying. He smiled at her shyly, and she could see that his canine teeth were more prominent than most peoples. It gave him kind of a goofy look that didn’t match his otherwise striking features. She realised that he was standing there, holding a pen, looking at her expectantly and she was just- just staring. 

He raised his eyebrows. “May I?” 

y/n started, and stood up quickly, almost knocking into him. “Oh, yeah sure,” she said. She handed over the recipe. He had made this recipe? He had made the star too, then. She watched him as he smoothed out the recipe and added the extra ingredient in neat, blocky handwriting. When he was done he refolded the sheet and tucked it carefully back into the star. When he held it out to her, she noticed that his cheeks were a little flushed.

“Sorry,” he said, an apologetic note in his voice despite his shy smile. y/n had never heard him speak before, either. He had a nice voice, singsongy and shy and not matching his tall-dark-mysterious vibe at all. 

“For what?” she asked, voice cracking unexpectedly. 

He was still holding the star, and y/n took it carefully in both of her hands. 

“This isn’t a great gift,” he said. “I wanted to make something, but I’ve been really busy.”

“It’s perfect,” y/n said, and then snapped her mouth shut. Why was her voice so breathy? She cleared her throat, and then gestured at the tree, now bare but for the lights. “The gifts were supposed to be personal and meaningful,” she said. “This is personal.” She held the star up to her eyes and spun it, a smile tugging at her lips as it reflected the lights from the tree. “It’s meaningful.” The recipe started to slip out the bottom, so y/n put her hand over the base to keep it in there. “And a hangover cure is invaluable.”

When she looked up she found the Christmas tree seller smiling down at her still. He really was very tall. He didn’t look this tall out in the square. Or slouching against the counter waiting for his coffee. Maybe that was why; he seemed to tend to slouch. y/n found herself itching to push his shoulders back for him, to see how tall he could be. He made her feel tiny in any case. y/n blushed and looked away, picking up her empty coffee cup to give her something to do. This reaction was uncharacteristic. She didn’t normally react this way to people. She decided that it must be the sense of occasion, and the fact that he had startled her. Yes, that was it. He had startled her.

“I should get going,” she said. She walked her empty cup to the counter and then turned back towards the door.

“Ah,” the man said, stepping backwards in the same direction and leaning out to open it for her. He stumbled a little on his own feet and the little step he clearly didn’t see there, but righted himself quickly with a grin. “Sorry,” he said. He held the door open, and y/n walked out. 

She turned to bid him goodnight but he was already stepping out behind her, pulling the door shut and then he fell in next to her, and then they were walking.

Together.

Across the square. 

It was cold and a light dusting of snow was falling lazily from the sky. 

y/n scrambled around for something, anything at all, to say but then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a very familiar-looking pair of mittens. He turned them over in his giant hands and then pushed one inside the left mitten tentatively, like he was afraid of ripping it. y/n stopped, staring at his hands and he stopped too. He had managed to get three fingers into the glove before he realised that this was not going to work. y/n was mortified.

“Oh no,” she whispered, and he looked up at her curiously. y/n glanced back at the cafe and saw Jia at the window, watching them and smiling, a mischievous look on her face. She waved merrily and then went back to work. What? 

“What’s wrong?” The Christmas tree seller had taken off the mitten and folded it carefully with its twin. y/n looked at the mittens for a long moment.

“I used myself as a model,” she said, not realising she was speaking quietly until he leaned down into her space to hear her. 

“Hmm?”

She shut her eyes. “I used myself as a model for the mittens when I was making them. I didn’t think- ah. See?” she held up her own gloveless hands, smaller than his by some way. The man looked at them in confusion for a moment and then a dazzling smile broke across his face. Was he always this handsome? 

“You made these?” He held up the mittens and inspected them carefully in the light from the streetlamp above them.

y/n nodded mutely, embarrassed. She hadn’t even considered that her giftee wouldn’t be able to wear them. But he didn’t seem to mind. Then, he did something unbelievable. He took her normal-sized hands in his giant ones and carefully put the mittens on her. Then he folded both of her hands in his and squeezed for a second before letting go. 

“They’re a perfect fit,” he said with a smile. “You should keep your hands warm.”

y/n blinked up at him in panic. “But your present!”

The man bit his lip and seemed to hesitate for a second before he asked, again, “You made them, right?”

“Yes,” y/n said. “So-” wait. Wait. 

“Can you make me another pair? Maybe you can use my hands as a model this time.” 

It was such a line. It was a line, it was cheesy and presumptuous, but then- but then she didn’t mind. She was staring at him again. She had let him take her hands and she had let him leave the cafe with her and there was nothing at all in her behaviour thus far that might suggest to him that this wasn’t welcome attention. And it was welcome. Wasn’t it?

Yes. 

“I… I don’t even know your name,” she finally said. 

She thought he might be blushing, but they had walked on, away from the streetlamp and were just outside the ring of light from the big christmas tree in the square now. 

“I don’t know yours either,” he said. Then, “I’m Mingyu.” 

“y/n,” y/n said. 

“y/n,” Mingyu repeated with a small smile. “That’s nice.” Across the square, somebody called out to him and Mingyu looked up, a tiny frown creasing his perfect brow. y/n took the opportunity to study his profile. She had never allowed herself to look like this before, but now she didn’t know how she missed it. Him. She couldn’t look away if she tried.

“Do you have to go back to work?” she guessed. 

Mingyu nodded, then looked down at her. He reached out and took her mitten-encased hands again, inspecting the pattern worked into the back. The tips of her fingers pressed into her palms through the wool. “What about my gift?” he asked. 

y/n couldn’t say no. Physically, she didn’t think she was capable of it. 

“I’ll have to take some measurements,” y/n said. “And then it could take a few hours. You’ll have to sit there, so I can- so I can check the size.” 

But Mingyu just smiled softly, looking at where he was holding her hands. “I can do that,” he said. Then his eyes flickered up to the cafe behind her. “Tomorrow morning, at Euna’s? You usually get your coffee around ten, right?”  

y/n’s eyes widened. 

He smiled to himself, looking down at her hands. “I see you there, most mornings. Ah.” 

Then, incredibly, Mingyu let go of her hands, and raised one of his own to wave to somebody behind her. y/n glanced over her shoulder and saw that it was Jia again, back at the window, grinning at them through the condensation. 

“Right,” y/n said shakily. “I get coffee there. Most mornings. Yes.” 

Stop talking, she told herself. 

“Then, let’s meet there tomorrow,” Mingyu said. With a final dazzling smile he walked off in the direction of the little forest of Christmas trees that stood off to the side of the square. y/n watched him go, her face hot and her heart full. 

She realised that she wanted a hot chocolate to accompany her. She made a mental note to tip the barista generously. 

[harkae]

A fanzine for the band Neoculture from my ongoing ao3 fic, "Everything I Know About Breaking Hearts"

Do not reproduce. This is a work of creative fiction.

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

[harkae]

Sharks and Seamonsters

A short story about the night before the surfing JCC

genre - fluff, comfort

pairing - Taeyong & Doyoung, Taeyong x Doyoung (hinted)

warnings - none, genfic

There was a knock at his door. Doyoung was already in bed and took his time detangling himself from the sheets. When he opened the door, Taeyong was standing there with two cans of beer. 

“Can I come in?” he asked. His eyes looked huge tonight; something was up. 

Doyoung stood back and Taeyong padded inside, taking one look at the unmade bed and turning with an unsure shake of his head. 

“I was awake, hyung, it’s okay,” Doyoung assured him. He climbed onto the bed, kicking the sheets back into place and Taeyong joined him, sitting cross-legged and handing over one of the cans. He was chewing his lip and Doyoung knew him well enough to wait.

“Are you coming tomorrow?” Taeyong asked eventually, opening his can. 

“No,” Doyoung said. “Why?”

Taeyong shrugged. “I think… I don’t think I’ll go,” he said. 

Johnny’s surfing lesson. It was all they had talked about over dinner, Johnny roping Taeil and Jaehyun in with his enthusiasm, and Taeyong had been bright-eyed about it at the time. 

“Why not?” Doyoung took a sip of his beer while Taeyong gulped his. He would be drunk soon if he kept drinking like that. Taeyong fiddled nervously with the tab. 

“You’re going to think it’s stupid.”

“I won’t,” Doyoung assured him with no confidence whatsoever, but at least his dead-pan tone made Taeyong laugh. 

“You will,” he said. “It’s stupid.”

“What is it? What are you worried about?”

Taeyong thought about it for a few seconds, and then looked up, eyes huge. “Sharks, or sea monsters. There could be anything in the ocean,” he said. Doyoung couldn’t help it; Taeyong could be fucking cute sometimes. He bit back a smile. Taeyong buried his face in his hands. “It is stupid.”

Doyoung shifted forward on the bed, put his hand on Taeyong’s shoulder, and schooled his features into seriousness. 

“Hyung,” he said. “Look at me.” Taeyong blinked up at him through his fingers. 

“Why do you think I’m not going?” Doyoung said in as serious a tone as he could muster. Taeyong regarded him steadily for a few seconds.

“Sharks and sea monsters?” he sounded hopeful.

“Sharks and sea monsters,” Doyoung nodding solemnly. He wasn’t going because he knew that he would be terrible at surfing, but if it helped Taeyong to think that he wasn’t alone, then so be it. “You should ask the instructor about it before you start. He’ll know.” 

Taeyong was looking at him so earnestly now that Doyoung almost felt bad.

“He will, won’t he?”

“Yes, hyung,” Doyoung squeezed his shoulder and Taeyoung patted his hand and took a more measured sip from his beer. 

“Doie,” he said, when Doyoung had scooted back to rest against the headboard, wondering if he was going to get to sleep tonight.

“Hmm?”

“Can we watch the shark documentary again?” Taeyong was already reaching for Doyoung’s iPad, and making himself comfortable under the duvet. Doyoung sighed.

“Sure, hyung. Let’s do that.” 

****

OG posted on twt under my handle @ kaed2e