Then You'll Go To The Offie. And You'll Buy A Couple More Bottles. And Maybe Some Cigarettes. And Then

Then you'll go to the offie. And you'll buy a couple more bottles. And maybe some cigarettes. And then you'll smoke them in here, which you'll regret, 'cause you'll never quite get the smell out. And Tilly'll call you later. And Sylvie. But you won't want to sound sad or pissed, so you don't pick up. Which means tomorrow you'll have to call them both and say you fell asleep early. And your dad, because they'll have called him too. But they won't believe you. And you'll feel guilty and hungover and just… shit. All day. And it'll go on like that. Until it doesn't. Cause one day, it won't. One Day (2024)

random motivation monologue cause i drank my bloom early today

it baffles me how we are willing to wake up at 4 AM, with little-to-no sleep the night prior and burn ourselves out for our bosses everyday but we can't wake ourselves up with the same dedication when it comes to working on our personal projects.

talk about a double-standard!

show up for yourself! be your own boss, darn it! you high eminence!

the world will be such a better place once you start showing up as your best self and stop letting people and things trample over your light.

i don't know who needs to hear this but I see you. I see you trying your best. Your breakthrough is coming. It's right around the corner. Keep at it! Keep being your best self. Drink your water, go on your mental health walks, reflect on experiences, do something kind for someone today, prioritize time blocks for your projects (if you don't do it, no one will do it for you)

you have something unique to share with the world. write that book. publish that blog. create that graphic. finish your drawing.

INK 'N' PETALS | THE RAVEN

Solana's reserved a musty room at a local motel and waits as she was originally instructed. The room is pungent of cigarettes. Both the bed sheets and the carpet are plagued by irregularly-shaped stains she dares not attempt to identify. Even so, it's not the room's critical state of hygiene that has her pacing back and forth, nibbling her fingernails.

Mentally, she's reciting some sort of prayer - not that she's ever been instructed as to how to do a proper one. It's more pleading than prayer, than reverence, she'd say. Begging for everything to go as planned, to go smoothly; no hurdles, no set-backs, no losses. All at no cost, of course, like a favor from the heavens. They are known for their grace, are they not?

A little too easily, and quickly, her prayers are answered with a sequence of taps on the door.

Her pacing stops. She draws in a breath and waits out for another tap, to verify she'd not imagined it.

Peering through the peep-hole on the room door, a raven head of curls comes into view, bent to gaze at the ground. The knocker has a pale arm propped against the solid door.

Solana unhooks the chain from the door, twists the lock and the knob, swinging it open to meet Yoongi.

Her gaze rakes his complexion - no wounds - then skitters down to the duffel bag in his clutch, stuffed beyond its limit.

Hurriedly, Yoongi transfers its weight into her hold.

She staggers because of its weight, employ the efforts of her other hand at hoisting it up.

Yoongi's dark eyes steadily bore into hers, as if it's the last good look he'll get of her. As though he's snapping a mental picture in the hopes of preserving what will easily be lost in a matter of minutes.

In a swift motion, he brushes his warm lips with her forehead, and gently squeezes her cheek with his hand.

She barely mutters a hurried greeting, or inquiry as to what's in the duffel bag, when he beats her to it.

"No time for questions, Ana." His cheeks are flushed the way a runner's are after jogging a number of miles, nostrils flaring. Every other second, he glances over his shoulder, chest heaving. "You just have to trust me."

"Blindly," she affirms with a nod.

Stammering for a breath, he proceeds, "Alright, there's a train that leaves at 7 AM. Minstowe East station. Ticket is in the bag. You hop on. You avoid contact with strangers. You keep running." He pauses, gaze dancing between hers, allows the instructions sink in.

"Whatever you do," he continues, "you don't look back. Hear me?" He licks the sweat collecting at the bow of his upper lip.

Solana nods.

Anxiously, he shits his weight off the doorframe, onto his sore legs that threaten to buckle beneath him, then leans back onto the frame. He presses his forehead against hers one last time. "Ana, this is it. A chance at a new life. Promise me you won't look back."

Solana stalls, slow to acclimate, unable to conjure even half as much determine courage as him.

She rolls her bottom lip inward into a fine line.

Around Yoongi, for the years she'd known him, she'd never been strong. Rather, she'd always crumble, bear herself vulnerable, because at some point early in their journey she'd learned he was worthy of her trust. He'd never done, or would ever do, anything to hurt her.

Tears collect on her lash-line.

"What about you? What will happen to you, Yoongs?"

"Don't worry. There's at least seven lives left in here." He gently claps her cheek. "Promise?" Lifts his weight off the frame, decidedly this time, like ripping a band-aid and committing to tolerating the discomfort; or pulling a decayed tooth by slamming a door with a string attached to its handle.

Apprehensively, she responds "I promise," knowing that's the only thing he's waiting for to disappear. Part of her wants to object, just so he'd stay.

Yoongi's frame dwindles in size as he jogs across the vacant parking lot, into the mist of dawn.

Before he's completely out of sight, she calls one last time "Hey, Yoongs?"

He slows but doesn't turn. Can't bear to look back at her. Doesn't want the last view of her to be that of tears.

"Thank you..."

Conversation dwindles into a tranquil cadence; the kind that rises out from the comfort of each others' quiet presence; the kind that wraps about two figures as they partake in their individual projects while in each others' constant company - one writing away on their laptop, the other reading the last 50 pages of a book.

“I missed you, Yoongs,” she hums and nuzzles her nose into his neck for added comfort. Even with being able to hold him flush against her, and feeling his chest rise with a rhythmic breath, Solana finds it hard to believe. Through the dim night, she blinks at the sight of him, the silhouette of his relaxed face, as though it is a mirage that could vanish with a gush of wind. “I thought I’d never see you again. Had mentally prepared myself to live that version of reality.”

The latter presses his lips into her temple, extinguishing any doubt about his presence. "Can't get rid of me that easily, Sol."

She smiles at the certainty in that statement. As reliable as a law. Yoongi would always be there. Always. Like a moon to its planet, or a planet to its sun, unified in orbit, though at times imperceivable.

“I did something bad,” her voice trembles unsteady, thinking back to their parting, the things she'd wanted to confess to him back then but felt robbed by the urgency of the conditions they'd found themselves in. Her grip tightens around the fabric of his tee shirt, clings to it like a lifeline on the side of a hill.

Solana knows that nothing she could confess would drive Yoongi to abandoning her. Her hold on him is desperate, though. A fearful child clinging to its comfort plush to wait out the deceiving night.

“I know,” he hums, “we all do at some point.” He wraps a sturdy hand around her head laying her cheek over his chest, presses his cheek over her crown and holds her safe. “It’s what you do from there on that matters.”

“Was running the right thing?”

“Sometimes it is,” he responds. “You are safe, that’s all what matters. You did the right thing fleeing. Sometimes fear can surprise you. It can be powerful like that. Protective.”

Her soft voice comes out as a mumble over his creased shirt, “I don’t want to live the rest of my life on the run. So scared - I’m so fucking scared of what will happen when it catches up to me-”

“-it won’t,” his tone is firm, voice stable, unlike hers. She clings to it like the gospel truth. Lets it wash her clean of her sins. Steps into a new life with firm believe in those two words. “You won’t have to keep running. You don’t have to.”

“What do you mean?” She tenses, grip over his shirt loosening. Starts to withdraw, considering the dreadful possibility flying through her mind that this could be a trap; that the one who knew all of her intimacies could betray her.

Solana he rises to her elbows, untethered hair billowing over his chest like thick stage curtains.

“It’s over,” he adds. “War is won.”

He cups her chin, the whispers soft, “Stop. Running.” Draws his thumb along the sharp lines of her jaw. Risks getting sliced open. She's worth the shed of a tear or drop of blood, he thinks. No one else he'd take a bullet for.

It's frightening, the overwhelming sense of protection that has flourished through the years. He doesn't fight it though.

There is a blotchy raven tattoo on the dorsal side of his pasty hand. Solana often would call it "the melted raven who flew too close to the sun" given its appearance.

“It’s what I came to tell you.”

"How about you? Will you stop running, too?"

"Honey, I’m a track star."

Solana erupts into a guffaw, head thrashing.

Laughter contagious like the flu, Yoongi finds himself caught in a fit of chuckles, cheeks burning sore, abdomen flexing without relent. It has been so long since he has felt that sort of happy - the kind you preemptively feel sorry about losing. The kind you feel you don’t deserve. The kind that makes you suspicious that life is only dangling it in front of you to snap it out of your grasp as soon as you start getting your hopes up. The kind that feels too good to be true, your hands quaking as you hold it, fearful you might drop it.

Her slap to his chest begs a genuine response.

They sit in silence, wherein he is pensive, nibbling on his lower lip while gazing up through the condensed glass ceiling. The moonglow halos him angelically.

She could watch him forever, the way you'd watch a relative peacefully sleep, so adoringly caught up you neglect the passage of time. The way its unspeakably comforting to watch the ones you love rest in safety.

He takes an inhale, conclusive, mind settled on the words he has chosen. Then holds it in apprehension. In fear that echoes that pre-emptive sadness that shades everything a shade of blue in its wake. Happiness is so close, it grazes his fingertips, and yet he knows on some deep, primal level that a graze is all he’ll ever be allotted. Fears it so much that it is practically a fact.

Still, he takes the leap. A graze being worth it enough. He musters the courage to voice, “I don’t know. Do you think this sob town, with its organic juice shops and yoga centers, is ready to accept me?"

To which she responds by linking her arms around his torso and bringing both their bodies collapsing over the sheets sprawled over the floor. “I’ll convert you into my flower boy. We will have to do something about that persistent brooding face of yours, though.” Her hand travels up to cup his cheek in the dark. "Can’t have you scaring away potential customers.”

Yoongi responds, "So far your only customer is Lico, and I’d say she likes me - or my lap, at least."

They fall asleep in each others' arms.

Yoongi's taken up an affinity towards clementines ever since Ana brought home a net of them with the intent of propagating.

The bearing of fruit would take two-to-three years, at minimum, if the propagate were to survive through to fruition, so Ana had explained. Yoongi isn't really the patient-type. He's been living in survival mode much too long, living in the tomorrow instead of the now. Hasn't known anything else, because when you are born into a burning home, you expect to see the rest of the world up in flames, or something like that.

It's a warm Saturday morning. Yoongi and Ana weave through a market strip, the former, clutching two nets of clementines in his left grip.

An effervescing chuckle responds to the sight of him - his stoic figure, clad in shades of black, neck craned amidst the pop-up stalls, turning over items on the display tables, carefully reading the ingredients on the back of items. Ana recognizes she's successfully converted him into a farmer's market boy. A flower boy, with his rose-like thorns. Her flower boy, as she'd originally promised.

Despite holding the item in proximity, he squints his eyes into half-moons, always plagued by poor vision. He has a recipe in mind he wants to cook tonight.

Ana's light touch grazes the surface of different farming books stacked over a display table.

She's got one split to the table of contents, skimming the ink with pensively pinched brows when a hand encircles her cheek, clasps her mouth with suction.

Her heart rate quickens, pounding against her sternum.

And despite standing there paralyzed by fear, her hands start sweating, ready to take any measure that would ensure survival. A swing behind her head, perhaps? A quick swivel and a knee to the groin? A bite to the delicate flesh pressed to her lips?

When her eyes flutter down to gauge just how much space and freedom she has to proceed with the third option, blotchy black ink in the lose figure of a raven taking flight comes into view.

Instantly, her tense shoulders relax, and she sinks back against Yoongi's torso. Feeling inexplicable relieved.

Peaking over her shoulder at his furrowed countenance, she attempts to voice her questions with incoherent mumbles. Her flighty eyes round and gauging the ripple of thoughts on his gradient of micro-expressions.

His hand relaxes and slides from your mouth to rest on your shoulder. He lifts his other hand to press a pale finger to his lips.

Ana quips a brow but obliges, nonetheless. The fear in Yoongi's ebony eyes is jarringly palpable. She dares not underestimate it.

Again, her heart rate quickens, ears and cheeks flushing hot this time. Even with the erratic rhythm of her heart circulating, a dizzy spell befalls her.

Yoongi's strong hold anchors her weight but, in the process of cradling her unsteady body, the net of clementines tears against the jagged edge of the table.

A flurry of orange unfolds, spilling abundantly over the ground, all thumping and loud and indefinitely rolling in tangential directions. Beckoning attention. Impossible to ignore.

"Fuck," Yoongi breathes against her temple, dotted in summer sweat.

He links his calloused hand with hers and takes flight, in a nature entirely practiced and his own.

Ana doesn't stall to ask what, or who, exactly they are running from. She'd started suspecting as soon as she met the familiar hue of fear on his face, the focused squint of his eyes, the flare of his nostrils in response to adrenaline.

They are prey on the run from the same predator that has chased them to the edges of the forest.

If either of them get caught this time, chances are there won't be any hope reuniting from thereon. The effects would be grave and permanent. That's all she needs to know to match her strides with Yoongi's.

So much for a safe haven.

₊˚♬ Slow Dancing in a Burning Room - John Mayer

Mist hovers the street and in the faint orange of early morning it's as if the heavens have collapsed. A rendition of a fragmented sky collecting at her feet.

In an attempt to preserve heat and subdue a shiver, Solana hugs the hoodie Jeongguk had lent her, after having stripped her of her own appropriately-sized garments and scattered them across his bedroom floor the night prior.

She leaps off the elevated side-walk, onto the faded pavement markings of a pedestrian crossing.

Hopping onto the opposing side-walk, she cranes her head, squints her eyes to peer through the fogged windows of her store.

No lights are on. Stagnant shadows are cast over the front desk and the few flower arrangements she'd managed to set out last night before Jeongguk greedily claimed her attention.

A crisp whistle tears through the silent streets, its echo rising over her head.

She hops to face the street, back turned to her dormant shop.

The tattoo parlor across also sleeps, its neon sign shut off. She lifts her gaze to the windows of the floor above the parlor. A figure leans over the windosill, smiling, toothy, dimpled at the corners, eyes twinkling like those morning stars that refuse to be put out by the radiance of the sun.

Blushing, Solana's nervous gaze rakes his slept-in look - tussled curls, wrinkle tee. Even here, a street away, she can still feel the warmth of his skin on hers.

He motions with his hands for her to step into her store. Doesn't allow himself to hop in for a shower until he's sure she's inside, safe.

Despite her arrival, indicated by the jingle of a bell above the swinging door, the store continues to sleep undisturbed. No one comes running to greet her. She quickly assumes Yoongi's still asleep; that he'd stayed up far later than he'd realized working on his prose only to miss his rise alarm - if he'd even remembered to set one.

His absence, however, is far less questionable than that of a familiar furry tail wrapping around ankles.

Solana coos "Lico?" a number of times, starting at a whisper, rising to a song-like tune.

"Hun?" She bends to seek the tri-colored creature in the spaces beneath furniture. Opens and closes door worried she might have locked him somewhere yesterday without noticing.

Her pulse starts to quicken, thumbing muffled in her ears, such that she doesn't hear the storefront door open.

Having scoured the upstairs kitchen and found no trace of the kitty, her feet clap down the stairs.

"I can't find Lico, Yoongs." She braces her unsteady weight by clasping the railing of the stairs and looks towards the entrance. Fixes her gaze at the back of Yoongi's raven head, wishing for him to turn with Lico in his hold.

With hunched shoulders and a square build, Yoongi works on the number of locks of the door, turning them with a symphony of clicks. Any other day, she would have instantly read him as a red flag, as someone who is hiding something, but today, she can only frantically cry for the stray kitty she'd developed an affinity for.

Yoongi doesn't have to turn to imagine the way horror has stretched her face, widened her eyes, drooped her lips into a frown. He's seen fear in her too many times in their shared life to not have the scarring image seared into memory.

Something in his chest squeezes tightly. A sharp pain piercing him, leaving him staggering for a steady breath. He'd promised to never see that look again; to never have her subjected to fearsome conditions again.

More and more, it seems like every effort at keeping her safe is met with exceeding danger. He can't keep up. The promises falling hollow.

In a voice barely above a whisper, he informs her Lico was involved in a hit-and-run right outside the shop. Tells her he just returned from the animal hospital. "There's not much they could do..."

"What?" Solana's steps thud heavy in approach, behind him. Her quaking hand anchors itself to the sleeve of his shirt. He continues to face the door. Hasn't moved a step since he arrived. Can't bear to look at her.

"You were supposed to be watching him," her voice quivers, on the precipe of shattering. She needs him to tell her it's a cruel joke. She needs him to turn around and have the kitty sleeping soundly in his hold how it so often does.

"I was," he admits. Clears his throat, a heavy lump materializing there, making words hard to form. "I was watching him-"

"-then, what happened?" She angrily tugs at his sleeve, forcing him to turn and face her. Her destroyed gaze demands an explanation, some sort of justification, though none could suffice. Not even from the lips of Yoongi, who she blindly trusts with her life.

An angry red clouds his right eye, so angry that his eyelid is swollen shut. Crusted blood stripes his brow above the assault.

Instictively, Solana stumbles back, mouth handing slack and vacant of words. She rakes her look across him, scans the rest of his body for signs of injury. An abrasion on his lower lip.

Knuckles of his hands a similar shade as his eye, only the flesh is worn and eroded down.

Slowly, she draws near, lifting a hand to gently cup his cheek. "Wh-who did this to you?" Some part of her already knows the answer to that, still, she wants to hear it from his lips. The same lips that would assure her everything would be alright at the end of the day. The lips that always knew the right response.

"I shouldn't have ever come, Ana." Yoongi shatters into a fragile boy she'd never met. Tears stream down his cheeks, mingling with blood, sweat, dirt. In the ten years of calling Yoongi a friend - family - she'd never once seen him shed a single tear, and she'd seen him do horrible things just as many times as she'd seen horrible things being done to him.

"They know."

She pulls him into the tightest embrace her trembling hands can secure, cradles his head over her chest despite his stature.

Her voice barely above a whisper against his temple, "They know?"

Ana's cried so much this night that her cheeks now feel tight and crusted with her tears, frozen into a painful frown. Her hands are clasped over Yoongi's chest, tight, as if he might disappear otherwise. His heart drums lightly but consistently beneath her palm.

"I'm sorry, Sol," his voice cracks, though it's been hours since he arrived and delivered the news. Hours of trying to sit in the grief over the hardwood floor and numb himself to it long enough to regain composure. "I'm sorry for what happened to Lico..." Tears wet the inner sides of her forearms, his cheeks nustled against them. "I'm sorry I guided them here and now it's all ruined."

Ana nuzzles her nose into the crown of his raven head. Inhales his scent. Mumbles into his hair, "You're not ok, Yoongs." It shatters her voice the way it shatters her heart that she failed to protect either of them.

"Please," she begs, "come with me. Let's leave, just us two, like always. We'll change our names, our appearances. We'll keep on the run until we find another safe place to land. You're not safe. I can't lose you, too."

"Ana, I'm so tired...so tired of running..."

They sit in silence. Streaks of warm sunlight pour in through the drawn blinds of the store; Ana had shut them shortly after his arrival, just as she'd twisted the sign to display "Closed." Later today, she'd send out apologies instead of her regular newsletter; offer compensation for the inconvenience in the form of discounts and BOGO offers.

The curtains aren't long enough to touch the ground, so a slight sliver above the ground offers them vantage through the glass of the front door. Shoes march across the side-walk, some march up to the store door and halt before turning away with muffled conversation.

Though it's broad daylight, they haven't been able to turn away from the door. Danger obeys no laws, and would surely neglect the "Closed" sign to collect its debt.

If it had arrived to assault Yoongi last night, what's to say it wouldn't show up whenever, unannounced. It knows their location now. There's no hiding.

"I hate that history's repeating itself," Yoongi remarks in a drained tone, just barely above a whisper, "but you have to leave, Solana. I tried so hard against it. I really did."

"Why won't you come with me?" Her hands grip the collar of his shirt. "It's not a matter of 'can't' because you can. You simply won't. Why?"

"I'll stay and lure them off your trail. It's best this way." "What if they hurt you?"

He doesn't respond. He can't imagine anything hurting more than now.

"You know that Jeon kid," he says, neglecting the subject is only a number of years younger, not an entire decade. He persists to call him that from his youthful appearance. Kid looks like he's never grieved a day in his life. "I think it's time you come clean with him. You've started a life here, ana. Started to cultivate some sense of happiness. You deserve that. Don't give it up."

Ana shakes her head and though Yoongi's not facing her, he can feel her body shake with objection. With fear.

"He doesn't know what I did," her tone's solid, no longer quaking now. Slices firmly through the silence. "Doesn't know me, not the real me, the ugly me I try so hard to shove down, to bury."

Yoongi folds forward, warmth departing from your chest. Swivels in his seat to face her.

She averts his knowing gaze, eyes growing glossy in the faint light.

"I'm scared he won't want me when he finds out." Her lips tremble. "Scared whatever that's growing between us is so fragile that it could end in an instant, with a single confession." Shutting her eyes to tame her emotions, a string of glass-like tears descends her cheek.

Yoongi cups Solana's cheek and wipes the stray tear with his thumb. "It's impossible to not want you."

⊹❤️‍🔥₊ what are your thoughts on solana x yoongi dynamic? you likey? (i am kind of obsessed with them, tbh)

⊹❤️‍🔥₊ i swear this is supposed to be a fic where jeongguk's endgame (yoongi has other plans, apparently)

⊹❤️‍🔥₊ this post will be expanding indefinitely as I concoct scenes involving solana x yoongi so make sure to check back frequently and save the post for future reference :)

⊹❤️‍🔥₊ this is also cross-posted up on my ao3 profile. to access, click here

narcissus this, narcissus that! he's so egotistic. so self-absorbed, blah blah blah

but like, slow down to actually think about the symbolism of the myth. of the mirror he so persistently holds up to every action, every gesture and facial expression. I think it reveals an awful lot about the human nature, past the self-absorption.

for starters, consider that homo sapiens are one of the few creatures with self-awareness - as in they can peer into a mirror and recognize what they see as a reflection of the self. whereas, other creatures perceive the image as some other being.

perhaps narcissus only represents that transition from our animalistic ancestors to this higher functioning existence of self-awareness, of consciousness - that extends to encompass the benefits and the punishments of it.

as a human, it's awful to be so self-aware at times. but sometimes it can be a gift.

idk. u get me? i just think it's awfully poetic? misrepresented myth, honestly.

anyways, im going to bed or whatever.

maybe i'll just lie in bed staring at the dim ceiling contemplating my existence and its meaning - something i probably wouldn't preoccupy myself with if I were a creature without self-awareness.

-penned by j. m. medna (2024)

Boy Next Door WIP

After the competition, they go together to a celebratory dinner. Hwayoung’s gushing about how cool he looked, trying to mimic all of the moves she recalls from memory. Jungkook’s blushing beneath his bangs, but also quite horrified at your attempts to recreate his choreography. it’s all light and fun.

she gets him a gold fish that night. a spontaneous purchase after seeing him gawk through the window of the pet shop. he’d been curious towards the creature, shimmering under the stores light, but also so lonely in the large tank. she buys it for him, calls it good luck, carrier of good fortune.

[48/547] — until we meet again, jungkook ♡