ethereal ( adj. ) - extremely delicate in a way that seems to perfect for this world

˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳❥ now playing ; ninja archer by luke cyrus

JOON THOUGHT CUE WAS A
LITTLE TOO JUDGEMENTAL
ABOUT LOVE LIVES

Especially because Cue certainly didn't have one.

At least, as far as Joon assumed anyway. He supposed that Cue could possibly have some secret lover, but he seriously doubted it. The man was about as affectionate and fun-loving as a venus fly-trap. Still, he couldn't sit there and lie and say that he wasn't hot as fuck, but still.

Besides, Cue had said that his bibimbap wasn't the best, he'd said, pretty good. Which was still something Joon considered an achievement, but he hadn't even cracked a smile. Not once. And Park Ye-Joon knew for a fact that his family made excellent bibimbap. The immortal's excuse was merely that he'd tried a lot of different recipes, and he was sure Joon would get better with time.

First of all, it's rude to assume that Joon wasn't already the best. Second of all, it still was emotionally damaging.

Cue hadn't really seemed to be affected much by that, he'd only looked onwards blankly.

Well, whatever. One of these days, Joon was going to make Cue smile, or at least look semi-cheerful. It was one of his life-goals, actually.

Absently, his chopping slowed as the door swung open, and Joon looked up from where he was bent over the counter, hurrying to finish slicing the mushrooms for the food, to see Cordelia peaking through. Her scowl seemed to have been temporarily replaced by an almost blank stare. She looked nervous, at best. Terrified, at worst. Shaking his head, he turned his attention back to the food. Of course, it was only his luck to be in charge of dinner the day they had a new arrival. Maybe Cordelia would be nicer about his food.

Considering her previous interactions with the others, he seriously doubted it.

At least he could count on Echo, and probably Freddie and Amir. They loved his cooking, or at least they pretended they did. Either way, it helped ease the horrible torture that Cue put him through when he took the first bite.

Amir was sitting at one of the bar stools, beside Freddie as they faced the Bay window, where Echo was telling them some story. Occasionally, her wing twitched, and a brief glimpse of pain darted over her face, but it was quickly replaced with that warm smile she always seemed to have.

The one that never failed to light up the room.

Joon smiled to himself, shaking the thoughts from his head again as Cordelia took a seat next to Cue. Brave. Cue seemed unreactive, which wasn't surprising, but Cordelia crossed her arms over her chest once again, scanning the room. Anastasia had taken her own seat near the bay window of the kitchen, eyebrows furrowed, and Echo sitting in front of her as she wrapped her wing like something precious. Occasionally, some kind of mutter came out in a language he didn't recognize, but Anastasia pressed onward with it, being gentle, despite Echo's descriptive storytelling. She's a fantastic storyteller, articulate, and poetic, and beautifully-voiced. She'd probably make a fantastic author. Joon hardly saw Asia be gentle with anything but Echo. And Asia seemed not to mind listening to her either. Echo had a voice that you could only describe as soothing. Soft, and sweet, and gentle - like she wanted to hug you with words.

It was outrageously characteristic.

Something that was also outrageously characteristic, not by echo, but by him – getting distracted. Although, Echo probably did too. Regardless, it was a very bad idea to let his thoughts wander too far while holding a knife.

Unfortunately for him, Joon had wandered a little to far, and the knife slipped in his palm, darting down into the side of his finger, and drawing out a buried, "fuck". Quickly, he dropped the knife, scowling as strings of pain ran down the side of his finger, crimson pooling at the base of his other hand. Great. Not only did he cut his finger, he got blood on the Shitake Mushrooms, which as you can imagine, is the perfect way to begin the evening.

The others looked up immediately, Freddie turning to him, "Joon?"

Muttering a curse in Korean, Joon shook his head, "It's fine – just a small cut, I wasn't paying attention."

Anastasia answered with a huffy kind of laugh, "I'm sorry, I didn't realize you could pay attention, Park."

"Oh, yes, haha, you're the funniest person I've ever met, Asia." Rolling his eyes, he ignored the stinging feeling of the thin cut that now ran down his finger. It wasn't deep, fortunately, but sometimes the smallest cuts hurt the most.

Asia looked up, just barely from Echo's wing with a raised eyebrow, and Echo swatted at her arm gently, "Asia! Can't you see Joon is in just the most horrifying pain." Sweet sarcasm laced her voice too, but she giggled to herself anyway, standing up and going over to him, "Go, go – you get it bandaged, I'll do the mushrooms."

Warmth burrowed deep into his soul, but he scrunched up his nose skeptically anyway. "You're just gonna sabotage my dinner, when we have new people – I'm not mad Echo, really, just disappointed." Pseudo disappointment cascaded over his face, and Echo's answer was another one of her glowy giggles as she picked the knife from where Joon had dropped it, just traversing over to the sink to set it in cleaner, and gather a new one.

"Is it working?"

"You're horrible."

Echo laughed again, turning to face him as she took the cutting board of bloodied mushrooms to dispose of, ridding of the ones that had spatterings of quickly drying liquid on them. "You're worse. I would never sabotage you."

"Yeah?" Joon didn't bother hiding his grin then, the pain a distant, numbed feeling now with the distraction of Echo before him. Snatching the new knife away from her with his uninjured hand, he leaned a little bit closer. "Trying to get on my good side then." His smirk, characteristically made its entrance, and he could practically feel the collective groan that some of the others gave.

Echo however, was classically undeterred, watching him. She answered with innocent blinking, and a small precious smile of her own as she took the knife from him, "Maybe I am, Joon." Then her eyes sparkled once more, and she playfully shoved him. "Go! Go, you'll get blood all over the new mushrooms, and then your bibimbap won't taste nearly as good."

Still laughing to himself, only softly, he shook his head, turning and going to do as she obeyed, headed towards the bathroom. The conversations of the kitchen briefly turned muffled and distant for a moment as that pain returned. It was a small sting, mostly irritating as Joon turned his attention to rifling through the counter, quick to locate the band-aids. He sat on the ground as he applied it, pushing the cardboard container back in its place with something that caught his eye.

A loose panel, in the back of the bathroom cabinet.

Odd.

Hesitantly, Joon reached for it, pressing the slate out of the way, and peering into a small cubbyhole of sorts. It was empty, but there was a dust imprint, like something had been removed recently. There was nothing else there, only the smell of something old, and cobwebs.

He was quickly shaken from his thoughts as a voice, Amir's, called him back. Quickly, he scrambled to cover the paneling, opening the door, and beginning to jog back to the kitchen. Just in time of course to hear Cassian's whining about never getting around to eat. Echo was just finishing the mushrooms, mincing them as her newly bandanaged wing twitched from the new sensation.

Putting the secret cubby in the back of his mind, he quickly took over, preparing the individual bowls for each of them. The smell of food, the smell of home, was quick to brush over the air, mingling with the underlying scent of petrichor from the onslaught of rain they were now receiving. Warm hues contrast sharply with the raging outside beyond them as Joon set the bowls in front of his friends, finding it difficult to misplace the nostalgic smile that was quick to rush over his face.

Momentarily distracted from his earlier findings, he sat down to eat as well, and silence brimmed the room. Beside him, Echo let out a satisfactory humm with the first bite, and a rush of pride ran down his spine. Joon turned to face her, surely about to comment something flirtatious, or witty, or both, when she turned too, meeting his eyes for a brief second. They lit up, and her smile went from soft, to ecstatically content. "This is delicious Joon, thank you."

Another sharp rush of both pride and nostalgia – and something sweeter too. Something euphoric. Finding himself at a loss of words, something that surely doesn't happen often, he nodded. "Yeah.." Joon's voice came out less confident than he wanted it too, so he boasted his chest, nodding firmly as he went to take a bite of his own food. "Yeah, no problem."

His words turned to a mumble as he shoved a bite into his mouth, maybe a little embarrassed that he'd just been knocked speechless. He caught Anastasia's eye on the way down, who'd raised her eyebrow sharply out of him, surely about to spout some bullshit teasing if not for Cordelia, who spoke at last.

Her voice wasn't quite gravely, but it was noticeably tired. She'd turned to Cue, a black braid hanging over her shoulder, distressed, but still in place. "So. You have wings."

Cue, unamused as always, merely turned the page in his book. "Yes."

"Can I see them?"

There was a pause, and he saw Cue's hand still over the book for a moment, the page, before marking it and setting it down. His broad form shifted in his seat, a little taller now as he turned to face her. "Why?"

"They're wings. Of course I want to see them." Her voice was incredilous, as if it was Cue who was the stupid one to be assuming she didn't want to see them. "You don't see wings every day Cue, at least I don't."

Anastasia's grumble was clear, "None of us should be seeing wings on a human, any day."

Once again, her comments were ignored by Cue, who was now looking at Cordelia with that natural intensity that might make Joon wilt. Not visibly of course, but on one or more occasions when Cue was scolding him for his positioning during training, it seemed to have a more deliberate effect.

Cordelia seemed unphased.

Joon resisted the urge to mention that their personalities were just meant for each other.

Instead, she crossed arms over her dark red leather jacket, waiting expectantly for an answer. Surely, it would be a no. None of them had outright asked about seeing Cue's wings. One, it seemed rude to do so, and two, Echo had claimed about how much it hurts. Which did seem to deter him and the others from wanting wings themselves. He wondered-

"Sure."

What.

Joon's head snapped up, looking towards Cue. He didn't appear to be the only one surprised by this affirmative answer. Even Echo had an eyebrow raised, and Cordelia seemed surprised she'd gotten an answer in the first place. Cue's gaze was still blank, looking around the table. "What?"

There was a pause of silence once again, and Cassian just scoffed, "Just like that?"

Cue only blinked, getting up, and raising an arm to stretch it over his head again, shoving hands in his pockets once more. "All you had to do was ask." Turning on a heel, he pushed open the door of the covered porch, and cool air began filtering in. "None of you did."

Joon opened his mouth to argue, but no argument came. That, he supposed, was fair. None of them had asked. At least not directly anyway, although he refused to believe Cue was dense enough to not pick up on what they were hinting at.

He'd probably just held out on them to watch them squirm about how to trick him into showing off his wings.

Regardless, Joon huffily followed the others as they quickly filtered out to the porch, the sound of rain muffling anything else that might have surrounded them. The air was cool, but not so much that it crisped the air. They shifted about, spreading out so that they all might be able to see, although comfortability gnawed at Joon's insides, and he glanced at Freddie, who was now standing beside him, lowering his voice, "So..we just like..watch?"

Freddie opened his mouth, but Cue was the one who answered, that bastard. "You can just watch."

He turned, and Cue's hand reached over as his back faced them, pulling off his shirt. Joon glanced to the side just in time to see Amir's jaw drop a little, but it shut right back up after Freddie nudged him, and Joon huffed a short laugh. Cue was muscular alright. Jagged scars ran down between his shoulder blades - and parallel to the spine, were angry splotches of rapidly healing pink skin. Cue, of course, took a moment to fold up his shirt, rolling out his shoulders once more - Joon prayed it wasn't to showcase to them all what he really had going on under all those tight shirts, but if he was being honest, if Joon himself was that muscular, he'd probably forgo a shirt all together.

Cue set his shirt aside, and only shifted on his feet, back facing them. Then took a few steps into the rain. For a moment, Anastasia frowned, opening her mouth, but Echo quickly gripped her arm, shaking her head at her, as if to silently communicate, leave him. Cue came to a stop in the rain, water dripping down fine-tuned muscles as he shook his hair out uselessly. Distantly, he heard a muted curse, and then Cue reached up to run a hand through his hair, quickly putting it up and out of his face, before his arms dropped back down to his sides. Joon watched as his fingers twitched briefly, and saw his body tense for a breath of a second.

But he heard the sound before he saw the wings.

It was a horrible kind of tearing sound, the kind you hear when something is being eaten, and flesh is ripped from flesh. Then the popping of bond displacement, spine rearrangement like Echo had mentioned before just briefly.

At first, Joon hadn't known why Cue had stepped away from them, practically into the rapidly chilling rain that had begun its downpour on the beaches and shores of Elysian. He knew now.

Blood had splattered out from where the sound had originated from, and as if in an instant, skin snapped apart, and manifested twin wings. White, and weathered. Not only from age, but from the countless things they'd so clearly seen. Numerous scars, both faint and prominent, ran up and down them, nearing the bridge of where the joints of the wings would be. They were different than echo's were. Echo's seemed to have more figure, curling and curving, like angel wings would – but Cue's were sporadic, wide and loose, and they looked terribly heavy, especially with the water now rushing down to meet them. They were something like the wings of a pegasus, frayed at the edges rather than tightly wound.

Cue shook out his wings once, briefly, before they vanished again, leaving seeping holes of a mess in his skin. Blood pooled at the base of his feet, and an ugly metallic scent set an undertone of the rain. Cue turned to face them once again, and he remained unphased – just like Echo always said.

Quietly, he picked up his shirt, unfolding it before pulling it back over his head. The wetness of skin instantly outlining his frame. Joon's gaze however flicked over to Echo, who looked solemn for only a moment before she took the arm of Freddie once again, a typical thing for the both of them. "Let's..finish dinner, then?"

Cue nodded, a short thing. "Yes, but-" a pause "Not you, Cordelia."

Cordelia seemed to be subdued, her eyes something unreadable as she tilted her head. Her voice quieter now, but still portraying a kind of emptiness Joon couldn't quite place. "Why?"

"Don't you want to see your house?"

꘎♡━━━━━♡꘎

ophelia !!

fifth chapter done !

I literally got like a burst of
creativity, and I was like, YES

also !! i got to nearly 3k
words this chapter  ! so yayyyy

i hope you all enjoyed it !

i hope school is going super well for
you all!! (still) , and i'm always happy
to hear life updates from you all

also , i really do mean it
we have the best cast -
love you all !!

please don't forget to finish the opinions and love interests of your characters !!

and as for the question for today !

[ what is your characters favorite tv show? movie? book? podcasts do they have a particular reason why they like these kinds of shows/books/podcasts -- you can have multiple answers ! ]

answers ˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳❥