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When Aster Flores and her young son go on the run from her abusive husband, the last thing she is expecting is to find love. In her search for home, she and her son find so much more than they were looking for.
Bookmarked by RealClever
29 Jun 2026
Bookmarker's Notes
The longer Aster spent with Ellie, the more she got to understand why Ellie and Paul were close friends.
They both had the same brand of good on them.
While Paul was loud, and boisterous, and emphatically happy; Ellie was more quiet about her happiness, and reserved to not be so bold. Paul was the life of the party, Ellie was the home you went too after the party was done and you needed that peace.
Despite their differences though, the good shone through on both of them, all of the qualities that Aster loved on Paul, like his kindness, and his sweetness, and his adoration of Tommy… Aster saw the same in the way Ellie looked at her and her son.
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Paul isn't good with words.
And even though words don’t always work for him, (they just… they just don’t go together sometimes. Logically, you say the words and the words mean what they mean. But sometimes people talk and they mean more than their words and it’s like he’s stuck doing addition while everyone else is doing multiplication.) there is more than one way to talk.
Bookmarked by RealClever
29 Jun 2026
Bookmarker's Notes
The second time Paul interacts with Mr. Chu, Ellie isn’t there to translate for him, but that’s fine. Mr. Chu shows him how to make dumplings, and they spend the afternoon together talking with spoons and rolling pins and knives. His dumplings come out wonky and a little sadly shaped, (though one looks like a dinosaur so he did something right) but Mr. Chu smiles and says something in Chinese so Paul smiles back and gives him a big hug.
(Even if you don’t speak the same language, hugs are usually good things. But Paul knows he and Mr. Chu do speak something of the same language here, so he knows that Mr. Chu knows that he meant to say thank you.)
This sets off a series of cooking days with Mr. Chu. Sometimes Ellie’s there, hovering in the background and grinning bemusedly at them, but sometimes she isn’t, and it’s just the two of them in the kitchen, speaking the language they both share.
Paul learns how to make buns stuffed with red bean paste and soup that is way too spicy for him. (Though he’ll never admit it in front of Ellie) He teaches Mr. Chu how to make sausage tacos, and Mr. Chu treats the entire process with a serious gaze and careful intent, which makes Paul’s chest kind of warm and happy. This is respect, he knows. Embodied not in a word that sometimes fails him but in an action that he will always know.
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After her mother's death, fourteen year old Ellie Chu joins her engineer father on the ocean liner where he works. There, she meets Aster Flores, a child girl with a streak of paint on her cheek and a piece of red string connecting her pinky to Ellie's.
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Ten years later, Squahamish gathers. But more importantly, Paul brings Ellie home.
Bookmarked by RealClever
28 Jun 2026
Bookmarker's Notes
“Did you have fun at the reunion last night?” Ellie found herself asking after a long moment of just listening to the dawn birdsong. “We lost you after a bit.”
“Yeah.” Paul grinned into his coffee. “It was fun to catch up with everyone. It’s weird how easy it is to lose touch with people. Even the ones who’re like, a street away.”
“It’s a choice, isn’t it?” Ellie shrugged as she swirled her drink in the mug. “ You can’t stay in your corner of the Forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes. ”
Paul snorted. “Winnie the Pooh? Really?”
Ellie grinned. “No one knows friendship better than the expert himself.” Ellie pushed off the wall and finished off the rest of her drink. “Thanks for the coffee. And company.”
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A snapshot of Aster and Ellie’s relationship over the years.
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After the events of the movie, Ellie Chu and Aster Flores have a plan to meet up again in a few years. Fortunately for them, life has other plans, and the two find themselves being brought back together again so much sooner than they ever expected.
Bookmarked by RealClever
24 Jun 2026
Bookmarker's Notes
“Dear Aster Flores, a good man once told me, that love is shown by the efforts you make towards someone else. That the more you love them, the more effort you put into them.” Ellie smiles at Paul for a moment before turning back towards Aster.
“While I can agree with that, I also know, that loving you… takes no effort at all. I love you in the morning, when I first see you, and during the day, when I think of you. I love you at night, when I get to come home to you. I loved you without even trying, I loved you while actively trying not too because my friend was in love with you.” Aster laughs softly at the memory.
“Loving you takes no effort, it’s just something that comes naturally to me, and I know that it will always come naturally to me, even if we fight, even if we yell, even when we don’t want to talk to each other. I will still love you, no effort needed.”
Aster lets out another soft laugh, that turns into a bit of a happy sob as she squeezes Ellie’s hands tightly. “How do I follow that?” She teases, their friends and family laughing in the background.
“Dear Ellie Chu, I am in love with you. I think I knew it, long before the letters. I was scared to admit the truth, but here goes. You are my breath while underwater. You are my light in the dark. You are the song I can’t stop singing.” Ellie blushes softly.
“You understand me, when nobody else can. I’ll stay by your side, even when scared. Because you make me not scared anymore. And I stand here today, to make sure you know, that no matter what we have to face, we do it together. Our story is far from over.”
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Aster Flores’s first semester of college in Portland is spent two ways: yearning, and figuring herself out.
— —
She clicks the silver button of her yellow pen and sets it on the paper to paper to write. As she starts, the pen glides over the paper with ease, like it’s whole creation was meant to write this letter.
Dear Ellie,
Bookmarked by RealClever
23 Jun 2026
Bookmarker's Notes
Who needs to beat around the bush anymore? I’m in love with you. I’ve been in love with you since that first letter where you knocked off that quote from the French movie.
I hope you don’t mind if I steal some words too.
Pablo Neruda once wrote, “I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close.”
And I finally get it. That feeling of whiplash, of connectedness. That feeling you get when the last puzzle piece fits perfectly into the frame.
That feeling of finally achieving the bold stroke.
I love you, Ellie Chu. And if you find yourself in Squahamish this summer, I want you to know I’ll be waiting for you, at our spot, with my radio and some godforsaken taco sausages.
You’re my bold stroke, Ellie. You’re the focal point of the whole painting.
And when you get this, if you ever bother reading it, I just want you to know that falling in love with you was the scariest thing I have ever done. And I’m so grateful for that.
With all my love,
Aster.
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"Do you really want to go to college without at least knowing what touching another person is like?"
Bookmarked by RealClever
23 Jun 2026
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never love anyone who treats you like you're ordinary by circulareasoning
Fandoms: The Half of It (2020)
02 May 2020
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Summary
They’re out in nature right now, “cell service doesn’t work out here,” Aster had said with a teasing smile, like she’d deliberately taken them away from Squahamish so they can be alone, away from friends and family and other prying eyes, like they can be in their own little world, half-naked in a hot spring—
Wait, what.
The hot spring scene, but different. (And by different, I mean gayer.)
Bookmarked by RealClever
22 Jun 2026
Bookmarker's Notes
Church is where Ellie sees Aster for the first time, her soothing voice reading out passages, her pretty face just visible over the pulpit. She’s the pastor’s daughter, which is not the reason why Ellie falls in love with her, because she’s a stereotype in many ways but not in the weird heathen, forbidden nun-wanting way, but it’s certainly one of the reasons why Ellie knows Aster will never return her feelings.
Ellie falls in love one day on the school track, waiting by the bleachers for one of her buyers to meet her to make an exchange. Aster is sitting on one of the middle benches, wind ruffling her hair while she reads a book, The Remains of the Day. She looks up, and she must spot Ellie because she smiles and waves, and Ellie doesn’t believe in God, but Aster’s face was glowing, halo atop her head and white wings spread behind her.
Not an angel; those don’t exist. Aster. Her star.
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“She’s back, you know, for the summer. She’ll probably be there.”
He doesn’t say who, but he doesn’t need to.
Ellie thinks back to the last time she’d seen Aster Flores. How she’d held her face in her hands; pressed her lips to hers; made a promise she might now be too scared to keep.
Bookmarked by RealClever
22 Jun 2026
Bookmarker's Notes
Somewhere, the back of her mind registers that her white shirt is almost see-through now, clinging to wet skin. Aster seems to notice this too, as her gaze drops low, then moves slowly, deliberately, back up. Brown eyes so piercing that it makes Ellie feel compelled to spill all her secrets.
So, she does.
“I think… I think you’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever met. And I don’t mean just your looks, though it should be illegal to be this pretty.” Once Ellie starts talking, it’s as if a dam has broken. “Honestly, I would listen to you talk about Sartre, Camus, Arendt or Socrates all day. I could live in an ocean of your thoughts. Sometimes, when I’m reading a book, I come across a particular sentence or idea, and my first instinct is that I want to send it to you because I want to know what you think about it.”
Aster blinks, but Ellie is on a roll now.
“I love seeing the art that you create. I love how your eyes look right into mine, like right now. I love the way your laugh busts out like you can’t help yourself, the way you move your hands a lot when you’re nervous, little moments that remind me you’re not perfect. All those times we were in that choir room, every time you sang, you made me want to believe in God, or at least, angels.”
Ellie reaches the end of her speech when it feels like all the air has been knocked out of her lungs, and in its place, regret comes rushing in. Aster is still staring at her, slightly slack-jawed.
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get myself together, spend you all of my money by amillionsmiles
Fandoms: The Half of It (2020)
12 May 2020
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Summary
“You’d think going to college out of town would have knocked us both down a peg, but instead we ended up pretty pretentious.”
or: Ellie, Aster, and an apartment full of things.
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zuhazana shared a post!
tagged: @jenaissante
COMMENTS:
jenaissante: wait omg i kinda love my top
yunjinluvr: @jenaissante that's very rude jen!! she's your bandmate and her name is kazuha! | ❤️LIKED BY @zuhazana
Now wait a second.
;; the consequences of being chronically offline
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Summary
Yunjin traces her thumb across Kazuha’s pouty bottom lip, watching it all.
“It’s really warm tonight,” she whispers. “You know I run warm in my sleep, Zuha-ya…”
Kazuha very nearly whimpers, her manners long gone now that Yunjin was spending the night.
;; shinez fluffy thinkpiece, because someone needs to talk abt the fact that they share underwear and i guess it's gonna be me
Bookmarked by RealClever
14 Jun 2026
Bookmarker's Notes
But then, if you think about it, a person who fears rejection is most probably good. Craving acceptance and community is human, and humanity is inherently good. For the most part. And then the other part—the one that isn’t—would never hold the true capacity to question whether or not they are evil. So, if you are asking yourself Am I a good person?, the answer is most likely yes. Because only a good person would wonder in the first place.
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"As it turned out, Ellie could finish her paper in the span of two hours, given the right stimulus.
(what she couldn’t quite tell was what kind of panic the right stimulus was – the last-minute panic type or the gay panic type)"
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in which ellie is trying very hard to keep things within a contained logical enviroinment and not fall for the cute girl, and aster is just meticulous about the color palettes in her paitings.
Bookmarked by RealClever
12 Jun 2026
Bookmarker's Notes
She was jumpy. She was nervous. It was trauma, flat out, undeniable. She kept expecting someone to spawn from behind a tree and call her a slur, to which she’d react by being angrily relieved, because a slur was not physical violence, at least. She was not ashamed of who she was, not ashamed of the otherness she showed through the shape of her eyes and the color of her skin, not ashamed of the otherness she carried in her heart.
The problem was that she had a convoluted relationship with fear. The problem was, it was vital that she proved to herself that she was not afraid, even when she was. Ellie knew all that, rationally. But she also had a tendency to let her own feelings slip by unnoticed, until they sucker punched her with risky, irresistible impulses.
And yet Ellie was also a firm believer in the hedonistic principle of avoiding suffering, so hide herself she did, worried that one extra little thing would be the final offense that would push the so-called good citizen from yelling insults in a ‘joking’ tone to actually harming her. It was so very tiring, existing in that constant state of alarm, in that constant inner conflict between making herself invisible because it was easier or speaking up because it was the right thing and she was not scared –
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hold on to the memories (they will hold on to you) by dwoht
Fandoms: The Half of It (2020)
03 May 2020
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Summary
The last thing Ellie remembers is the echo of a breathless, "I'll see you in a couple of years." It was just an idea. It wasn't a promise. She never thought it would actually happen.
Bookmarked by RealClever
11 Jun 2026
Bookmarker's Notes
Aster bites her bottom lip once, then twice, and then shakes her head. It does nothing to ease the tension, and when their gazes finally lock into each other, there’s something in Aster’s eyes. It reminds her of how she imagines she looks, and she just has time to think that she wishes she’d done it first before Aster’s mouth is on hers.
Aster’s lips are just as soft as they were two years ago, only this time she tastes like vanilla ice cream from the cones they’d eaten earlier that day, bittersweet relief, and being found.
She tastes like gospel music in a hot spring, a full moon looking down on the winding roads of Washington, and the subtle art of something new. She tastes like heartbreak, frustration, and regret. She tastes like searching, yearning, longing, and discovering. She tastes like a slow build in a busy city. She tastes like Aster. She tastes like home.
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i don't wanna live without you (how did you know it?) by pyresque
Fandoms: The Half of It (2020)
05 May 2020
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Summary
Maybe it’s a sign from someone, how your thoughts still manage to run parallel to hers even after all this time apart. How you’d managed to go so long with an Aster Flores-sized hole in your life, you don’t even know, but now you can’t bring yourself to imagine it without her again.
or, when Ellie and Aster reunite a few years later, Ellie notices something pretty damn adorable.
Bookmarked by RealClever
10 Jun 2026
Bookmarker's Notes
“… Did you really just quote Harry Potter to me? J.K. Rowling? Really, Aster?”
“Which book, Ellie?” Aster grins, and she reaches to grab your wrist.
You roll your eyes and pretend to bite at her hand before answering.
“Goblet of Fire, you normie,” you tease, using your free hand to tickle her stomach, and Aster shrieks, swatting you away. “Okay, this is my last one for you.”
“Lay it on me,” Aster says confidently, sitting back up.
“ ‘I see now that the circumstances of one's birth are irrelevant. It is what you do with the gift of life that determines who you are.’ ”
And oh, it’s so, so satisfying to see the way Aster’s brow pinches in confusion, and through the minute of silence that passes by, you can see the gears churning furiously, working overtime to try and identify the source of the quote.
Finally, Aster sighs, her shoulders slumping as she shakes her head.
“Alright, I've got no clue. Who said that one?”
“Mewtwo in Pokémon: The First Movie.”
You’re pretty sure everyone in Central Park hears the way your laughter rings out, swirls up, up, up into the blue sky above, after Aster’s shocked expression gets replaced with a mischievous one and she tackles you to the ground, vigorously showering you with tickles in a punishment that truth be told, you probably deserve.
You’re grinning the entire time.
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Summary
It turns out that of all the things that are easy to leave, Squahamish isn’t one of them.
*
Aster Flores isn’t either.
Bookmarked by RealClever
10 Jun 2026
Bookmarker's Notes
“Home can be many places, Ellie Chu. It can be here, in Squahamish. But it can also be a 4th floor walkup in Hell’s Kitchen if we want it to be.” Aster looks back at the print in her book. “Home is where the heart is, you know. My mother has that on a decorative cutting board, hanging up on the wall in the kitchen.”
“I know the one,” she says lightly.
Aster glares at her playfully. “Well, we are made up of all the hearts of the people we love. Yours is your dad. Paul. Me,” she adds shyly, voice trailing off. “And those places are always going to feel like home.”
She opens her mouth to tell Aster: No one has felt like home the way they feel like home. Squahamish is her home because these people are her home. She knows they could be anywhere in the world and she would still feel like her home is a face she’s known her entire life, a laugh that makes her entire body shake, and a love that feels like it lights her body up from the inside out.
But she feels her face flush as her mouth holds back the words and she shakes her head slightly, catching the way Aster looks back down at her book, proud of herself. It makes Ellie want to throw Paul’s pitch down and pulls Aster up and closer.
She can do that. She can kiss Aster like they’re in the middle of an abandoned street. She can kiss Aster like they’re in a crowded church full of people. She won’t. Some things will always be Aster’s alone. But if she wanted to carefully pull Aster’s book out of her hands, gently place a bookmark between the pages and close it, curl a finger under Aster’s chin, and lean forward - she could.
She doesn’t need to. Aster’s hand drops to her ankle, fingertips dancing out the melody of the song she made Ellie play for her, and it feels like lips against hers. Aster hums the tune and Ellie imagines the brush of Aster’s tongue against her bottom lip.
Home is where one starts from, she thinks. T.S. Eliot .
It doesn’t tell her where home goes.
But if she has to guess, she thinks she might already know the answer.
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Summary
"Courage is a love affair with the unknown" - Osho.
One year later, Ellie Chu and Aster Flores return to Squahamish. Do they still know each other? Can they get past the awkwardness and become something great?
(The answer is yes because duh. Did you see that chemistry?)
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aster's family never moved out of sacramento, so ellie and aster didn't meet until college. aka a "whatever's on your soulmate's skin is also on your skin" au combined with the angst that comes with being roommates.
soulmates + roommates + (eventually sort of) fake dating au
- Language:
- English
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- 24,518
- Chapters:
- 15/15
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- 214
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- 1,212
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Bookmarked by RealClever
08 Jun 2026
Bookmarker's Notes
Still smiling, unable to properly kiss with the intensity of their happiness, finally able to hold each other without all the complications between them.
Simply staring tenderly, Ellie said suddenly, “Do you ever wonder what fireworks feel like?”
Fondly annoyed, Aster replied, flirtatious, “Kiss me again and you’ll find out.”
Ellie smiles excitedly, the most genuine one Aster’s ever seen, “That’s what I mean! People say with the right person you’ll feel fireworks, but fireworks are mostly just gunpowder.”
Aster leaned back, bodies still connected, humoring her, “So how would you describe the way this feels then?”
Ellie, having apparently become an instant cliché, said, “Like I’m home.”
And there was no way Aster couldn’t kiss Ellie again after that.
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Summary
She heads South. Ellie heads East. They’re just two people on a perpendicular line who may never come back around to meet again.
Aster tries to be okay with that.
- Language:
- English
- Words:
- 11,226
- Chapters:
- 4/4
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- 145
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- 1,908
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Bookmarked by RealClever
08 Jun 2026
Bookmarker's Notes
Ellie hums as she responds to an email, and Aster finds herself pulled from her work. She can’t help but stare at Ellie and the little world that they’ve created, marveling at the ease in which they seem to fit together.
Even though it’s Aster’s apartment, there’s enough of Ellie wedged in the corners that it’s nearly indiscernible trying to pull them apart: Ellie’s collection of books shoved in the corner of the shelf, her water bottle stacked on the kitchen island, her jacket strewn over the back of the couch, her favorite knit blanket laying over the ottoman. Even now, Ellie is wearing an old shirt of Aster’s, a soft and worn pink one from her college. Aster’s pretty sure that she even has a few Grinnell hoodies of Ellie’s stashed away somewhere.
“What’re you staring at, Flores?” Ellie’s voice breaks her silent reverie. “You’ve got a stupid smile on your face.”
“Nothing,” Aster says, shaking her head, but her smile only grows bigger. “Just thinking about how much I love you.”
It’s the first time she’s said, and it feels right in a way that few things do in her life.
Ellie is stunned into silence, looking like the scared seventeen-year-old she was so long ago, and it only makes Aster laugh.
I’m going to love you forever, Ellie Chu, Aster thinks to herself. Just try to stop me.