hyvneluv

[hyvneluv]

I Dare You

Hwang Hyunjin x Fem!Reader

➺ Genre: Smut, 1% plot 99% disgusting

➺Summary: Eat a sex chocolate before the party he said. It'll be fun he said.

➺ Word Count: 3.8k

➺🩶A/N: This is like a beginner piss kink fic lol it's filthy but if piss fics aren't usually your thing then this one is calm enough for you to dip your toe in the water. It's just subtle enough for those who like calm scenes (At least it is in my opinion. I could've made this WAY more intense 😭) + reader is depicted as chubby/plus size and is a POC ♡ I hope that you enjoy!

➺ Warnings: Piss , Squirting, Fingering, Oral (M receiving), Use of an Aphrodisiac, Car sex (Please be safe, don't nut and drive), Appearance by + mentions of Changbin [I think that's all] - Again, this is a piss kink fic. It's subtle but there is piss.

➺Request: Yes - No

✧Masterlist✧

It was a dare, a stupid dare that you’re currently regretting as you down your fourth glass of champagne. The burn of your heels pressing into the balls of your feet could hardly compare to the ache you felt between your legs. You stood at the bar, lips pulled into a thin line as the sound of some slowed R&B song swirled through the air. You wanted to dance and have a good time with the rest of your friends but you just couldn’t, not like this. As you took in the moving bodies in the middle of the room your eyes landed on his, your friend. The one who started all of this.

To be fair you should’ve known better than to listen to Hyunjin, he’s always up to something. You knew when he handed you that damned chocolate that it was a bad idea. “It’ll be fun, come on, I dare you. It’ll only make you a little horny.” 

You knew better, you knew that taking a damn aphrodisiac before a party was a messy move. Especially since you’re here with Hyunjin. Your friends are always teasing the two of you, asking why you’re so close or why he’s always over at your place and spending the night. They blame all of Hyunjin’s unexplained hickies on you. It’s to the point where everyone that knows the two of you thinks that you’re fucking. And they’re right, you are. 

“Is he allowed to do that?” Changbin sneaking up next to you pulls your attention away from Hyunjin, basically dry humping some girl on the dance floor. The smirk on his face said it all, he’s trying to get you worked up. Contrary to what everyone else might think you're not the jealous type, neither of you are. You’re more than happy to share.

“You mean is my friend allowed to dance with girls?” You steal a glance back towards Hyunjin, he’s so close to her. Is he going to kiss her? Will you be able to contain yourself if he does? You press your thighs together at the thought of it. “Of course he is.”

“When will you two admit that you’re dating?” The smirk on Changbin’s face as he stares down at you, drink in his hand and that damned black shirt stretched over his chest and biceps just right makes you feel something that you never have towards him. Of course he’s hot, you always thought that but right now the thought of having him bend you over this bar and fuck you dumb in the middle of this party is all that is looping through your head. 

“If we were dating.” You turn to him, stepping so close that your chest is practically pressed against his. “This would be a problem.” The glass in your hand is quickly forgotten on the bar as you ghost your fingers up Changbin’s arm and rub over his strong shoulder. “But it’s not, look.”

He breaks your gaze for a second, glancing over to Hyunjin who’s way too busy swapping spit with the pretty black haired girl to notice you trying to seduce his friend. 

“So you’re not dating him?” His glassy eyes search yours, you’re both clearly tipsy. 

“Nope.” The feeling of Changbin’s hand on your waist makes you moan involuntarily. You need something, anything, to take the edge off. Every little touch makes you feel like you could come undone. He leans in and ghosts his lips against your neck. You gasp and your lips part, your eyes rolling back in your head and your body arching into him. How can something this small make you feel so hot?

“How drunk are you? You’re so sensitive.” The breath of his whisper sends chills down your spine. 

“I’m not drunk.” Changbin pulls back enough to meet your gaze.

“What are you then? I touched you and you moaned.”  You blush and look away. Your bold attitude has abandoned you tonight. 

 "I'm just really turned on." He smirks and pulls back completely, leaving you wanting more. His gaze shifts over to Hyunjin quickly before meeting your pleading eyes again.

“You want help taking care of that?”  His dark eyes twinkle in the ambient party lighting and you can’t help but to feel needy for him or anyone else at this point. It’s a surprise that your arousal isn’t dripping down your legs. A nod and a not so subtle lip bite is all that you offer him before he cups your face and pulls you closer. You close your eyes as he leans in.

“I need to hear you say yes.” The brush of his lips against yours as he whispers against your lips pulls another whimper from you. 

“Yes, please help me, Binnie. Please.” His lips are pressing to yours in an instant. Hungry and sweet just how you needed him to be. You melt into his touch, sighing into the kiss and pressing your thighs together with all of the force that you have in you. His lips are so soft, how would they feel sucking on your - wait, who’s pressing into your back? A large hand glides up your thigh and over the curve of your hip, squeezing the fabric of your tight skirt as it rides up a bit. You could recognize his touch any day, it never fails to light your whole body on fire. 

“So horny you had to beg my friend to fuck you?” How long has Hyunjin been there? How much did he hear? Do you even care? You push back into him, grinding against his hard bulge. “Do I need to take you home?”

A whine escapes you as Changbin pulls away from you, a smile on his plump glossy lips as he looks between you two. “So you are dating.” You grab Changbin’s wrist as he tries to move his hand from your waist. You want more, you need it so badly. So desperately. 

“She’s not my girlfriend.” Hyunjin shakes his head, wrapping his other arm around your waist and splaying his fingers over your stomach. “But she is mine.”

“I knew it.” Changbin picks up his drink from the bar, shaking his head at the two of you. 

“It looks like you’re taken care of.” He nods towards Hyunjin who smiles at him and mutters a quick good-bye to his friend. He doesn’t care if Changbin kissed you because he’s the one who will be balls deep in your cunt soon. You frown watching Changbin walk away but the feeling of Hyunjin’s lips on your neck makes the world around you fade away. He hasn’t even done anything to you and you can already feel the fucked out fog setting in.

“Let’s get out of here, yeah?”

You usually didn’t mind going to parties that were a bit further from your apartment but right now you hated it. Every second that passed with Hyunjin’s hand rubbing at your thigh made you want to explode. He wasn’t doing any better, he kept shifting in the driver's seat, gripping the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles turned white. He’s just as desperate and needy as you, he just seems to be handling it better.

“How was it?” His voice snapped you out of your dirty daydream. How long have you been staring out of the window?

“What?”

“Kissing Changbin.” His eyes stay on the road and his voice is calm despite the uncomfortable strain of his cock against his jeans.

“It was good, really good.” All he offers is a smirk as he shifts again. Did he think it was hot? Did he enjoy seeing you kiss his friend? “How about that girl? How was she?”

“Eh, she really likes using tongue. I only like doing that with you.” 

Before you can stop yourself your mind is wandering to the moment right before the party when you and Hyunjin both started feeling the effects of the chocolate. His hands were in your hair and yours were up his shirt as your tongues explored each other's mouths in the front seat of the car. You were on top of him, straddling his growing erection and grinding your dripping core against the rough denim of his jeans. You both almost decided to leave the party, you were seconds away from turning right around and going home so he can fuck you senseless but when you asked him he gave you that devious smile. “What? Are you scared you’ll be too horny for the party? I dared you remember? You can do it, come on.” 

“Hyunjin.” You spread your legs a bit in your seat. The cool air hitting the wet spot on your panties sent a shiver through you. You feel so antsy and needy, desire is crawling wildly under your skin and you can’t take another second of it. You need him. “Jinnie, will you please touch me?” 

He stole a quick glance your way. Hissing through clenched teeth when he noticed the wet spot on your gray panties. “Baby, I’m driving.” His hand stayed on your thigh, it squeezed the soft flesh much harsher than he meant to but you enjoyed every second of it. You hiked your skirt up your thighs until it slipped over the curve of your ass, resting around your waist and leaving your wet cotton panties exposed. 

“Jinnie look ‘m so wet for you, please.” You’ve never felt as desperate as you do right now. Your nipples are pebbled underneath your shirt, your clit is swollen and the only thought in your head is having Hyunjin on you. You want him. His fingers, his mouth, his cock. Any and all of him. “I can’t wait, I need you, look what you did to me.”

You hook your finger into the gusset of your panties and lift it up and over just as Hyunjin glances over at your core. The sight before him could’ve made him swerve off of the road if he didn’t have any self control. You’re soaked, strings of sticky arousal are connecting your panties to your pussy and all he wants to do is lick up every drop of that sweet slick from your folds. 

“Fuck.” His hand moves from your thigh to rub over his aching erection. “I did that to you, angel? You’re soaked for me? Want my cock to fuck you dumb?” He bites his lip, a moan falling from his parted lips as he nearly misses his turn.

“Move your panties a bit more, let me feel you.” If there were an award for keeping your cool while driving as horny as a pornstar, Hyunjin would definitely win it. His driving is smooth, he’s barely missing a single sign, and his eyes are trained on the road while his pointer and middle finger circle soft figure eights over your erect clit. “Want my fingers in this pussy?”

He trails down and teases your entrance, just barely giving you the tip of his finger. Your head falls back against the seat and Hyunjin thanks his lucky stars that he’s approaching a traffic light. When he stops and looks over at you, he thinks that you couldn’t be more beautiful. Your eyebrows are pinched together and your pretty eyes are glistening with tears that threaten to fall from your puffy lids. Your lipstick is smudged ever so slightly while your bottom lip is caught firm between your teeth. Your arms are hooked under your knees to give him better access to your sopping cunt. A true masterpiece.

“Beg me to fill you with my fingers, baby. You have until the light changes.” 

“Please let me feel your fingers, Hyunjin. I’ll be so good for you, I’ve been so good. I’ll suck your cock when we get home, I promise. Please, please, please Jinnie. I n-need you, I need you to fuck my pussy open. I need to be stretched for you. This pussy is yours and I need you to fuck it. I w-want it. I-I’ll be so good for you I’ll -” A smile spreads wide across his face as he listens to you babble and beg so mindlessly. You trip over almost every word as your pussy clenches around nothing. He couldn’t help but to chuckle, not the cute kind that brings you comfort. No, this was the dark one, the one that means that he’s going to ruin you once he gets the chance.

“Light changed.” His fingers breach your entrance at the same time that his foot lets up on the brake. “Such a good little pornstar. Begging for my fingers in the car.”

“F-fuck, fuck fuckfuck oh my - my fuck.” Nothing makes sense in your head, you’re not even sure what you’re saying. Are you breathing? Once his long fingers curled into your g-spot the mist in your brain turned into a blinding dark fog. It feels so good, he feels so good. His fingers fuck into you at just the right pace, you can feel your arousal running down your inner thigh as he brings you closer to the edge. Your brows pinch together as another feeling sneaks up on you. An aching pressure that you were barely aware of before but can not seem to ignore now. “Hyun-Hyunjin wait I- gotta, gotta pee.” 

You meant to use the bathroom before the two of you left but Hyunjin rushed you out of the party so quickly that you forgot. “Go ahead, make a mess for me.”

The two of you were no stranger to water sports but you’ve never done such a thing in his car. “Are you-” You cut yourself off with a moan and Hyunjin nods, already knowing what you’re going to ask, he’s more than sure. 

“Make a mess for me, angel. I want your piss on my leather seats. Can you do that for me? Squirt and piss all over my car.” What left your lips was barely a moan, it was more like a desperate cry as he abused your sweet spot. “Come on, baby. Show me how good it feels.” 

You’re way too concentrated on the pleasure burning through you to notice that the car just stopped. Hyunjin found a relatively dark and empty lot to stop in so he could enjoy the show. If there’s one thing that he loves it’s when you two get messy. He’s the happiest when you're squirting all over his cock or pissing while you ride his thigh or his face. 

He keeps a steady pace while his thumb flicks over your swollen clit, milking everything you have to offer from you. His free hand rubbed over his clothed cock as he watched you with dark low lidded eyes. He wants nothing more than to fuck his fist to the sight of you but he choses to build himself up instead. He wants to bust inside of you, filling you to the brim with his sticky seed. 

“C-cumming I’m - I’m cumming i’m cumming.” He curls his fingers into you, milking your fluttering walls as a rush of arousal squirts from your swollen cunt. He pulls his fingers out, rubbing his four fingers over your cunt and making a mess of your fluids. 

“Piss all over me, baby. That’s it.” The pressure in your bladder lets up as you let go. A mixture of squirt and piss coated the windshield and radio in front of you as Hyunjin rubbed at your pussy. “Gimme another one.” 

His fingers are plugging your hole again before you can protest. “Jin- Jinnie so good ‘s so g-good.” If you were watching yourself from the outside looking in you wouldn’t be able to recognize the babbling mess in the passenger seat as yourself. You’ve been needy before but you’ve never been this fucked out and foggy. What the hell was in that chocolate? “Cum, cum, gonna- fuck.”

You’re squirting all over his hand again, your moans and cries fill the car and Hyunjin is absolutely positive that you’d have a full audience if there were anyone nearby with the way that you’re screaming for him. “That’s my fucking pornstar right there, look at this fucking mess baby. You’re soaked in your own cum and piss. So nasty for me.” He watches in delight as you tremble and moan, your body shaking as you come down from your high.

“More, more please please please. Let me have your cock. I wan’ suck it, let me please.” He smirks as you beg for him, your body trembling against the damp leather of the seat and your mouth wide open in pleasure. 

“If you touch me I’ll fucking bust.” You unbuckle your seatbelt hastily. Climbing up to your knees with the grace of a baby deer against the soaked seat. “You just can’t wait huh? Need to taste my cum?”

You nod, fucked out and frantic as you lean over the middle console and fumble with his belt buckle. He leans back, one hand tracing your spine lightly while the other rests behind his head. He loves watching you be dumb and needy for him, he doesn't get to see it often so he came up with the dare to get what he wanted. He knew what the chocolate would do to you, he’s taken it before and he knows how bad it can get. When he showed it to you and you said that you’d try it someday he got excited. He was curious if it could get him his desired outcome. He wanted to know if it’ll make you his brainless slut, looks like it worked. 

“Come on, angel gotta get my cock in your mouth.” You whine at his teasing, licking your lips and fumbling with frustration until you finally free his rock hard dick from his jeans, no boxers underneath for easy access of course. You hum at the sight of it, immediately licking up the pre-cum leaking from the angry tip. “Shit.”

The hand that was once behind his head grabs a handful of your hair and he tries his best to contain himself. He didn’t want to let his guard down yet, he’s been waiting until you get home but your pretty warm mouth wrapped around his cock just might make him as needy as you are. “Baby, baby, baby you’re gonna make me nut. I’m gonna cum down that pretty tight throat, fuck.”

You take all of him, allowing his tip to abuse the back of your throat as you moan around him. “Oh, I want to be that deep in your fucking cunt. You gonna let me? Gonna let me ruin that pussy when we get to your place?” He’s practically fucking your throat now as his hips thrust up involuntarily. He can’t help but chase the pleasure. You feel so good and he’s five times more sensitive than he usually is. 

“Swallow around that cock, swallow my dick. Yes, fuck yes just like that, that’s my girl.” The moment that your throat contracts around him he can feel himself tipping over the edge. With his head thrown back, a death grip in your hair and his eyes shut tight he slurs dirty promises into the air while shooting ropes of cum down your throat.

“Swallow it, take all my fucking cum. Oh shit, baby swallow every drop of my fucking seed. You’re such a slut letting me - fuck - letting me make a mess in this tiny throat. Fucking hell I’m so addicted to you.” You swirl your tongue around his shaft and tip as you lift up off of him. A single string of spit connects you to his cock but it’s swiftly broken when Hyunjin grabs your chin and pulls you in for a kiss. Your tongues explore each other's mouths as you swallow each other’s moans. 

 Your hand wraps around Hyunjin’s cock, still hard as a rock, milking a deep moan from him as he pulls away from your swollen lips, you watch Hyunjin's eyes roll back in pleasure. He runs his hands through your hair, as he pants and stares into your eyes. He’s just as cloudy and fucked out as you are now. All that’s going through his head is you. He needs to feel you, to fuck you dumb until you fall apart on his cock and soak the mattress with your cum.

“S-stop, baby.” His words barely make it past his clenched teeth but even if they did you wouldn’t have listened. “Stop.” This time the hiss in his voice catches your attention. He grabs your wrist, ripping you away from his cock.

“I need to get you home.” His dark eyes bore into yours. The intense lustful energy swirling around the two of you and fogging the windows makes you feel dizzy as you  listen to him. “Sit.”

You obey immediately, sitting back in your wet seat and shivering at the cool damp feeling. Hyunjin fixes himself but he doesn’t allow you to do the same. “You were just pumping my cock like a desperate slut, so sit there like a messy whore for me, okay? Keep that pretty pussy on display.”

A cock drunk smile pulls at your lips as you fasten your seat belt and settle into your seat. It doesn’t take long for Hyunjin to pull off, driving at the exact speed limit in hopes that he can get home quick and safe. You’re not too far from your apartment, it hasn’t been more than ten minutes since your last orgasm but it feels like it’s been forever since you’ve felt his hands on you. He’s noticed you shifting in your seat and rubbing your hands up and down your thighs, desperate for any type of attention. A smile adorns his flushed features as he gets closer to your place. 

“Angel, I know what can keep you busy.” His eyes stay on the road but yours immediately fly over to him, scanning his features as you listen closely. 

“Touch yourself and tell me everything that you wanted Changbin to do to you. Tell me all the dirty thoughts you had when he had his hands on my girl.” You push your thighs together, squirming in your seat. You had completely forgotten about your kiss with Changbin and how desperate you were to feel his hands on you and have him inside of you. 

“Hyunjin I don’t know if I can handle that, I just want you, baby.” He clicks his tongue, shaking his head slightly. 

“I won’t touch you anymore unless you do it.” You whine, throwing a tantrum against your seat. Hyunjin’s hand grabs your thigh, squeezing the flesh harshly and warning you to stop. With a smile on his face he glances over at you. You’re only four blocks away from your apartment.

“Come on, baby. I dare you.”

[hyvneluv]

Our names are kinda similar =)) twins

Omg Ur Right hahahaah hello twin

[hyvneluv]

serpent hybrid hyunjin 2 🌱🐍

his venom doesn't have the effects to kill you, instead you find your body craving for him...and his eggs

@seo--changbin gave me brainrot

reblogging > liking

part 1

-contains mature themes (idk wtf possessed me while thinking of breeding and monster cocks aaaa)

its been a while since changbin's come over to your apartment. the rabbit hybrid had grown buffer. stronger, with his muscles quite literally bulging from his armsleeves.

hyunjin and him being the best of friends. an unusual friendship between a serpent and his prey.

lithe and tall versus buff and small.

you couldn't help but ogle at bin's wide upper body, sipping on some tea while you listened to their conversation.

it only lasts for a few minutes, and you stare at hyunjin. taking in the sight of your boyfriend. his scales shining under the light. the newly grown scales on his collarbones giving him a sleeker appearance.

you gulped, watching his long slender tail swish around mindlessly on the floor. eyes wandering to the way he sat on the couch.

legs parted and maybe...just maybe you could see the outline of his length. well his 'lengths'. mentally slapping yourself as you tried to look away.

"hyun...need your help" you say, already going to the kitchen. smiling at changbin. hearing hyunjin saunter into the other room without even questioning why you were calling him there.

"you look too handsome. kiss me."

grabbing his collar, pulling him down to kiss you. a surprised noise leaving him but he laughs. giving you a firm kiss.

"should we buy some pizza for dinn-"

you cut him off, with another kiss. looping your arms around his neck to jump on him. he holds you up, groaning at the sudden eagerness.

firmly squeezing your thighs. pulling away to press a palm over your mouth.

"whats up with you?" he cocks an eyebrow. truly confused with your behaviour.

you bring your hands up to touch his lips. poking his canines. they had grown longer, much sharper.

"not now. later." he lets out. and you feel your mind shut off with how sternly he warns you. whining into his neck.

its only when bin leaves that you realise why you're feeling so desperate.

were you ovulating?

was it just him being hot?

a part of you wondered if it was because he playfully bit you in the morning?

"come here." hyunjin calls out after an hour. finding you sprawled out on the bed with no thoughts in your brain.

standing at the edge of the bed, with his hands on his hips.

"i think you made me horny..." you mumble, staring at the ceiling. lower abdomen burning with want.

he hisses softly.

"this is not normal horny...this is horny on another level..."

glancing at him and you close your thighs. panties soaked. every part of your body screaming for him.

"is it cause i bit you?" hyunjin asks.

his tail wrapping around your ankle casually. and he pulls you closer to him. the display of strength leaving you breathless.

"you're a black mamba. shouldn't i die if you inject me with venom?" you whisper, unconciously spreading your legs apart.

watching as his eyes go down to your panties. the shirt you had on was his.

"so you're saying my venom is actually a 'fuck me please' aphrosidiac ?" hyunjin lets out, letting his finger prod over your panties. feeling how wet you were getting.

"hyun....give it to me"

"give what to you, baby?"

"give me it all"

"what all do you mean, sweetheart?"

"your babies...your e-eggs"

and hyunjin chokes on his spit. the grip his tail has on your leg tightens. watching you with a sharp gaze. tongue peeking out every few seconds . tasting the air.

"god, whats wrong with you" and he pulls you closer.

using the tip of his tail to push your panties to the side. hissing at how you're practically dripping. a mess between your thighs.

"h-hyunjinnn"

"mh?" tail slipping and sliding against your slit. bumping into your clit. chuckling at the way your legs close around it. but he continues poking at your cunt.

"hyunjin!" you whine, awkwardly trying to grind onto his appendage. gasping when he forces your legs apart.

the same musky smell filling the room. his tongue growing longer, fangs peeking through.

"fuck. my heat's creeping up on me" he groans, dropping his head down to exhale heavily. his scales appearing more bolder.

"your smell...you smell fucking delicious" and you whimper. watching as he tastes the air, eyes closing.

"are you gonna eat me mister snake?" you tease nervously. squeaking at the expression he makes.

obviously turned on with you acting so hopeless.

a predator and his prey.

.

.

.

writhing at the mere slide of his girth against your insides. bumps on his length hooking onto your walls.

forcing him to thrust into you with short movements. gripping your thighs with clawed fingers. leaving his marks on your body.

"yeah? i don't usually fuck my prey before eating them whole" the serpent grunts.

a long hiss slipping past his lips. throwing his head back at the feeling of your cunt pulling him in. squeezing his dicks and coating them with arousal.

"h-hyun" you cry, body overheating with how much you wanted. this wasn't enough. you needed to feel him in your cervix.

this wasn't how you'd act. was it really his venom?

"shhh~" as he sits on his haunches. fucking into you harder. his pupils turning into pretty slits. taking in the sight of your body reacting so well to him.

shivering when he places a claw on your breastbone. gently sliding it down to where your uterus would be. and he draws slow circles over the skin.

"want me here, don't you~" and you nod aggressively, not expecting him to slide his finger lower.

placing the pad of his calloused finger over your clit gently. his thrusts having you slide up on the bed and back down.

"you'll take my eggs like a good mate would, won't you, my precious.."

gathering your slick and pinching at your swollen bundle of nerves.

grinning lazily when you let out a little scream. squirming at his tortorous teasing. cooeing as you beg for him.

hands flying down to weakly hold onto his wrist. but he's strong and only flicks your clit meanly.

.

.

.

to say its a weird sensation is an understatement. his hand intertwined with yours, calming you down as one of his dick throbs.

stuffed so deep inside you that when you feel the first egg, its another sensation of fullness.

filling you with more cum while he pumps another into you. maybe soft shelled eggs weren't that bad.

the third egg, however makes you whine at the stretch. a tinge of discomfort.

gasping at how his tail seems to have a mind of its own. wrapping around your ankle and quite literally spreading your legs apart. hooking your left leg over his shoulder.

"m'here. f-fuck taking me so well" hyunjin praises. pressing down on your lower abdomen. revellling in the way you keep it in.

"no venom for you next time" he chuckles, and you breath heavily. overwhelmed with everything. body buzzing with pure pleasure and satisfaction.

"m-more" you tease. laughing at how his eyes widen. going back to normal.

"MORE?!"

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

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plz i love snakie hyunnie so much. its an obsession at this point. soft serpent hyunnie drabble coming soon hopefullyyyy

[hyvneluv]

Update… Amsterdam and Paris and London secured ✨❣️

Ticketing tmr how we feeling

[hyvneluv]

Ticketing tmr how we feeling

[hyvneluv]

Drowned

siren!hyunjin x afab!reader

warnings: swearing, violence, mentions of drinking, descriptions of drowning, unprotected sex (do not), monster cock, fingering (f and m receiving), oral (f receiving), creampie

genre: pirate/siren AU, found family trope, fluff, monster (?) smut, a little bit of angst

word count: 8.2k

author's note: started thinking about merman hyunjin, wanted to write a little something, it got out of hand. voilá. seriously, this is the longest thing i've ever written so i'd really appreciate to hear what you think! please let me know if there's any mistakes or if i overlooked something <3 happy reading 💙

masterlist

divider by @firefly-graphics

For as long as you lived, the sea was your home. The salty wind in your hair, the water splashing against the sides of your parent’s ship and freedom in your heart. Never have you wanted for more, the crew and everything else that was on board was always enough.

Sure, every now and then you had to get rough with other pirates or relieve some rich folk of their valuables but regardless of that, you wouldn’t change your life for the world. You never had a worry on your mind except maybe what’s for dinner that day, enjoying a nice sunbath on the deck, messing with some of the lower standing crew members that were close to your heart or going fishing with your mother whenever you were docked on some harbor.

Today was no different. Maybe a little different, since your father had tasked you with checking out one of the local rich men’s houses. Your boots carried you to the wealthy district where you earned your share of people eyeing you with disdain but you didn’t mind, smiling toothily at them and waving which just left them perplexed by your friendliness.

You whistled lowly at the sight of the mansion, gold decorations shimmering on the façade, lush greenery surrounding the entire building.

Kind of impressive.

The fence was hopped easily and you found your way into the mansion. No one was home so you figured there was no point in trying to stay low. You scanned through most of the main rooms, snatching up anything that looked valuable enough to you. With your pockets and bag full, you strolled over to what seemed to be a room where whoever lived here kept all of their valuable paintings and other art finds.

You stood in front of one particularly impressive artwork. While others would surely admire the stroke pattern, the colors used or the fascinating woodwork on the frame, you simply ascertained that the painting was small enough to carry out and still be able to run with. So you grinned to yourself as you removed the painting from the wall and leisurely made your way out of the house again.

Your steps are hurried as you make your way back to the ship, signaling for the crew to get ready to leave the harbor.

“Halt! She’s a thief!”

Oh well. Took them long enough.

You broke out in a sprint, painting secured beneath your arm. Your father was already barking out orders, readying the ship to take off as soon as they can, while some of the local police is hot on your trail.

You giggled as you climbed onboard right as the ship began its movement towards the horizon. With big motions you waved to the people left behind, all of them fuming for having lost the race against you.

-

The island was no longer to be seen, your parents were proud and your little family had plenty of stuff to sell for the next dock. You couldn’t be happier.

To reward yourself for your hard work today, you decided to lounge about in the sun. The waves rocked you until you fell fast asleep.

So deeply asleep that you didn’t wake up when the outlook yelled about another ship approaching yours.

So deeply asleep that you only woke up when the first canonball tore through the flimsy wood of the ship you called home.

Your heart was beating erratically as you struggled to make sense of your surroundings, everyone onboard in a panicked hurry. Some men running around trying to fight off the opponents that were starting to invade your space, the others below deck firing back with whatever they had, some others trying to keep the rising water out of the ship, refusing to let it sink just like that.

You grabbed your own sword and jumped to your father’s side.

“Seems like you angered the wrong gentlemen this time around!” – he laughed as his sword clashed with another.

“It was your stupid idea!” – you countered, equally finding amusement in the familiar situation and laughing.

The fight seemed to be on your side for a moment, countless stuck-up lawmen falling into the harsh waters while your side held their numbers up. But not everything always goes the way you want it to, one misstep and everything can fall apart quickly. So when the blade slashed through your side, you sucked in a breath and stumbled backwards against the railing, a man twice your size giving you the last push you needed to tip over, the cold water enveloping your whole body.

You struggled to keep your head above the waters, gasping for air but breathing in more water than anything sustainable. Your body bumped into those of others that had met the same fate as you, making the entire process of trying to stay alive harder than it needed to be. The side of your torso ached with every movement and soon enough, the strength left your limbs as you slowly but surely sunk deeper into the depths of the sea, unaware of someone that observed your descent with curious eyes.

The first thing you notice when you come to your senses again is that you feel incredibly warm.

The second thing you notice is a pair of curious eyes staring down at you.

“Oh” – he moves out of your sight before you can properly take the rest of his appearance in but one thing is abundantly clear to you: pupils should not be shaped like his, nor should eyes be as yellow as his.

You sit upright as soon as you can, wincing at the sharp pain in your side. The pain is all but forgotten when you take in the otherworldly creature sitting timidly at the edge of a stone not far from you.

He is nervously picking at his fingers while gazing at you, the space between each finger connected by a thin membrane akin to some sea creatures you know. There are tiny little scales scattered around his skin that shimmer in various shades in the light, ranging from the deepest onyx, powdery sky blue, brilliant gold and pearl white. The most alarming thing about his body is the very obvious fish tail where his legs should be, decorated in the same colors as the rest of his scales with smaller, elegantly shaped fins on the sides of it. It seemed to be longer than whatever the stories made you picture in your mind. When your gaze wanders back up his body, taking note of how the scales fade into normal skin and just being scattered here and there, you notice the gills on each side of his neck, fluttering softly with each breath he takes. His impressively broad back had another line of fins across his spine. Finally settling your gaze on his face, framed by luscious black locks, you can see he has another set of large fins on the side of his head, probably protecting his ears. His eyes shine a shimmery yellow with a fitting cat-like pupil that’s slightly dilated as he’s taking your form in. A slight blush covers his cheeks, the miniscule fins along his cheekbones fluttering.

He is the most beautiful thing you have ever seen in your life.

When he opens his plush lips to say something, you can see his teeth are a set of fangs, his canines larger and sharper than the others which seem kind of blunt in comparison.

“Do you feel pain?” – his voice comes out shyly, an underlying trill accompanying the sound.

Suddenly, you remember you are supposed to be in pain, immediately clutching the side that was slashed during the fight but finding it neatly bandaged with algae and scraps of cloth. He must have taken care of you while you were unconscious.

Surprisingly, all that’s left is a dull pain that pulsates along your heartbeat, nothing too bad. As you tell him this, he seems pleased, a proud little smile on his lips.

“You are a pirate, yes?”

“Yeah. We got attacked and then…” – you trail off and look around.

You’re clearly on some shore but it doesn’t seem like any civilisation is nearby, the air devoid of any sounds that indicate humans are nearby, just the soft crashing of the waves, the wind in the trees and the calls of animals. There isn’t any harbor, no boats in sight, the beautiful creature sitting beside you the only sign of intelligent life.

A sigh leaves your lips, already wracking your brain for any ideas on how to get back to the mainland or contact your family. For a second earlier, you thought that you found your end as you stared into the creature’s eyes. So sure were you that what you saw in front of you must have been one of the legendary sirens that your mother always told you about. Creatures that lure in pirates and sailors alike with their beautiful appearance and mesmerising voices, only to drag them into the depths of the sea, killing them.

Whatever was in front of you, curiously holding up the painting that you stole, big eyes roaming over the faded paint, couldn’t be a man-killing siren for he was far too soft and gentle to be anything like those legends said he would be.

It was honestly kind of cute watching him take in the ruined painting, completely captivated by the swirling colors, his tail gently splashing in the water in quiet excitement.

He seemed to be no threat, so you let your guard down easily beside him.

“Do you have a name?” – you ask him finally, breaking his concentration on the painting, yet he doesn’t look away from it.

“Hyunjin.”

“Well, thank you, Hyunjin. For saving me. I’m y/n.”

The tips of his ear fins flick at your admission, yet he makes no move to look at you. His fingers, with claws retracted, gently glide over the messy colors and though the original painting is near unrecognisable, far too damaged by the tides to make anything out, Hyunjin seems to find a certain beauty in the destroyed artwork.

“Do you know who made this?” – he asks and there’s that trill in his voice again that makes you think his vocal chords must work differently to yours.

“Nope. Stole it from some rich guy, he didn’t really indicate the artist anywhere. I doubt he cared.”

Hyunjin frowns at that, finally putting the painting to the side and turning to you.

“What are you going to do now? I understand that this island is less than ideal for a human but I had to get you back on land as soon as possible. You would have died.”

“I know where my family was headed and if they survived that encounter, they’ll still sail towards Port Vement. I just have to figure out a way to get there” – you let your body fall back into the sand.

Hyunjin hums and even then, the little trill you’re slowly getting obsessed with accompanies the sound. You want to hear it again. You wonder if it would be there if he sang.

“I’ll help you. I’m the reason you’re in this situation, after all.”

-

The days passed in a slog. You were mainly concerned about finding a way off of the island while staying alive, the wound you nursed on your side healing too slow for your liking.

Hyunjin had been fantastic at keeping you company and ensuring you actually survived and stayed sane. He caught fish for you with his bare hands, showing it off proudly by raising his arm in the air and giving you a toothy grin from his place in the water as you watched him, your adoration growing for him with every fish caught.

You ate together and meal times were one of the few times where you had to realise, that Hyunjin was after all part animal with the way he tore into the fish, his fangs easily making short work of the seadweller.

When you were busy building a makeshift raft out of the driftwood that you found around the shore, he’d sunbathe on one of the nearby stones, his scales glistening and shimmering in the light. Your desire to touch them grew every time you stole a glance at the sleepy siren.

Sometimes, the two of you would just lay together, exhausted from the day. Hyunjin liked it when you told him stories of your adventures around the world but it seemed that he found particular joy in the stories that focused on your little pirate family.

You would tell him of Marnie, the bear-like man in charge of the kitchen, who you swear was the softest guy you had ever known. Everything he touched turned into a delicacy and his passion for good ingredients and cooking got even you excited to try your hand at making a dish, only to end up burning your hand and the meal tasting like it had gone bad a week ago, thus swiftly ending your career as a kitchen helper.

You would tell him of Val, the outlook who loves reading more than anything ever since your mother taught him. He keeps a little box full of books he procures from the towns you visit. Val doesn’t talk much but he’s generally good company and loves telling you about the plots of his novels.

You would tell him of Arlen, a tall scary-looking guy who was in charge of keeping all of your weapons sharp and battle-ready. Despite looking so fierce and battleworn, Arlen was quite the romantic, swooning here and there over the beauty of the world.

You would tell him of Marlo, who was with you ever since you were born for he was your father’s childhood friend. Marlo lies and talks a lot of bullshit all day long but that made him the greatest storyteller on board because he could exaggerate the hell out of the tales he told.

And finally, you would tell him of your parents, who fell in love when your father was just a scrawny lad robbing a bar blind with his crew of misfits. He swept her off her feet and promised her a future full of wealth and a lifetime of love in their little family.

It was a fair exchange, because Hyunjin, after a few days of only you entrusting stories to him, started telling you of his own life.

He was born in an alcove to two very loving parents when the weather just started changing, the water slowly warming up with each day passing, the sun more happy to be out and about. He was the only one of his clutch that survived, so he didn’t have any brothers or sisters.

When he was just a little fish, his parents got caught up in some kind of conflict between a group of sirens and, in order to protect their only son, gave their lives so he could swim away.

You noticed his voice came out strained, so you silently took his hand into yours in an effort to comfort him. It was your first time initiating touch with him and he accepted it gratefully, continuing on with his story.

“I was alone for quite a while, but my parents taught me well”, he said, “until I met a bunch of other sirens, all male, which was weird, since all the other sirens I had met during my life always had females with them for one reason or another. They were weird for that but what was even weirder is that… I stuck with them for a while and they started feeling like home.”

You nodded along to his words, your thumb caressing the back of his hand in comforting motions.

“You had your own little family, hm?”, you whisper and he nods.

“What happened to them?”, you ask cautiously, not wanting to push him too far in case he wasn’t ready to share that part of the story with you yet. His gills fluttered as he took in a shaky breath, his ear fins flapping nervously as his eyes find yours.

“There was a storm and we got seperated. I don’t know where they are.”

Hyunjin doesn’t share any more stories that night.

-

A few days into your new castaway life, you figure you should change or at least clean the bandages for your wound so it doesn’t get infected. Even after diligently checking through the supplies you gathered in your time here, there isn’t an awful lot of cloth amongst it.

You sigh and look down at your clothes, already mourning the fabric.

You trudge over to where Hyunjin was lounging about. In a way, you envy him for not having to wear proper clothing. Most of what he was wearing consisted of various seashells, fishing lines and other sea artefacts that he, or one of his friends, assembled to resemble necklaces, bracelets and decorations for his tail.

If he was human, he would be quite fashionable, you think.

“Hyunjin”, you whine and he cracks open one eye to look up at you.

“Can you use your claws to cut off some fabric from my clothes for new bandages?”

He mutters a quiet ‘sure’ and sits up, making grabby hands with his sharpened nails at you. You giggle at his antics and offer him your pantleg and he gently cuts off enough fabric to dress your wound with.

The next part is kind of awkward because last time you were unconscious and the situation was quite literally life-or-death. You both sit there awkwardly, Hyunjin still with the fabric in hand, not sure how and where to move. What was acceptable? Would you let him take care of you again now that you were fully conscious?

You were the first to break the awkward tension by lifting your shirt up.

“Help me, again?” – you choke out and Hyunjin feels like jumping into the water and swimming away as far as he can. He trills something, no words coming out of him, just cute little noises, his ear fins flicking nervously.

He scoots closer to you, the base of his tail settling against your knees and despite his scales looking so scratchy, it’s a smooth, silky feel against your skin.

The old bandages and algae are taken off with ease and Hyunjin curiously eyes your wound, checking if it needs to be cleaned or any other special care. Meanwhile you feel like dying, his careful eyes roaming over your middle feels weirdly intimate and you want to burst into a million pieces at his attention.

It’s not every day that you get the full attention of a man as beautiful as him. Even rarer that someone you feel attracted to genuinely wants to take care of you. Something stirs in your heart when Hyunjin’s fingers gently trace the outline of your wound, careful to not keep them too close.

“Is this okay?” – he asks when you slightly jump at his touch and you nod back at him in a daze.

He starts bandaging you up gently, occasionally letting his gaze flit up to your face, silently checking whether you were still okay with what was happening. His own neck starts gaining color when he notices how flustered you are by his ministrations and he quickly finishes up, making sure the bandage wasn’t too tight but still snug.

“Done” – he trills and quickly retracts his hands back to his own body.

On one hand you’re glad it’s over and you can let your body relax again, on the other, you wish he would have kept his hands on you just a little longer.

-

You’re finally able to complete a safe enough raft when Hyunjin finds the last piece of driftwood that seems stable enough to hold you. While you pack all the things you had gathered for a longer journey on sea, Hyunjin tests the durability of the raft by swimming a few paces out into the ocean and hops onto it.

It seems to pass his tests and he gives you a thumbs up before bringing it back.

“And you’re absolutely sure you can swim and pull this at the same time?” – you ask from your place on the raft for the nth time that day, the anxiety gnawing at your core that you’re tasking Hyunjin with something that would end up hurting him.

“Trust me a litte, I’ll be fine!” – he grins and it’s that smile you started to love so much, one where his eyes crinkle a little and remind you of the shape of the moon on some nights. It’s a smile that usually only comes out when he’s genuine, cackling about something he finds extremely funny or something you said to him makes him so happy he can’t hold himself back.

“Alright, fish boy, let’s go, then.”

And oh boy, he’s faster than you thought, pulling you two through the tides as if you weighed nothing to him. Maybe you didn’t. Maybe sirens were extremely strong and he simply never showcased it to you as he did with so many things.

You hold onto dear life and try to navigate him towards where you think was Port Vement.

Amidst the waves rocking your little raft, the excitement and anxiety at the thought of seeing your family again rises within your heart.

What if they never survived that attack?

What if something else happened to them and they never made it to the Port?

What if they never came to Port Vement in the first place?

Such thoughts had plagued your mind ever since you started planning to go after them, only momentarily silenced whenever Hyunjin piped up with something he wanted to ask you about ever curiously or whenever the siren popped into your field of vision, effectively ripping you out of your spiral.

It’s a moment of clarity, your chest constricting at the realisation that in these few days together, you really grew attached to your unlikely acquaintance. A realisation that forces a small part of your brain to wish that you could just stay with him instead of returning to your family. Because a returnal would mean that you would have to say goodbye to him and maybe never see him again, your worlds too different to be allowed to collide for too long.

You don’t talk a lot during your travels and when night eventually falls, Hyunjin is far too tired to keep up with idle conversations. His tail is gently curled around the raft as he rests his body on the wood beside you, slumbering peacefully as the waves rock you two in a soft but steady rhythm. Your hand finds its way into the soft tresses of his hair, your fingers carding through his locks in an effort to comfort and thank him for his efforts during the day.

That fall off your ship could have easily ended in your death. A deep cut in your side, the bloodloss and the strong tides would have killed you right then and there, slowly draining your strength until there was none left.

If Hyunjin didn’t decide to help you out of the kindness of his heart, that would have been it. He didn’t need to help you or stay by your side to ensure that you had food and were safe. Probably shouldn’t have helped you if he wanted to keep himself safe.

But he did anyway. And for that you were incredibly grateful, yet you didn’t have a proper chance to show him that and it made you feel guilty. So all you could do for the moment was ensure that he was healthy and offer him all the comfort he needed.

Surprisingly, the journey was more boring than you expected. There were no storms, no complications, barely any ships nearby that could’ve been trouble for a stray girl and her equally stray siren.

When you see Port Vement in the distance, you let out a yell that scares Hyunjin so much he momentarily stops swimming to look back at you in horror.

“Port Vement, Hyunjin! We made it! You did it!!” – you excitedly celebrate and crawl forward on your raft to take him into your arms tightly. Hyunjin startles at your sudden touch but relaxes into your hold, his webbed fingers coming up to pat your back.

“I promise you, I’m gonna buy you as much food as you want, whatever you want, I’ll make it possible! There’s not enough ways in the world to thank you” – you sob into his shoulder, suddenly emotional over the whole ordeal.

He really doesn’t like it that you’re crying but having you in his arms feels so right, so comforting to his heart that he physically feels his feelings for you click into place, finally slotting into the spaces where they belonged.

“Let’s get you out of the water, then” – he trills shyly and you sniff as you settle back onto the raft so Hyunjin can pull you the last few meters.

With shaky legs you finally stand on solid ground again.

Port Vement had always been something of a safe haven for your family so it felt good to be back somewhere familiar. You tell Hyunjin you’re gonna check out the docks to see if your family’s ship is there and he promises you he’ll stay nearby watching over you in case something happened.

Your mind races as you hurry to the docks, all the questions bubbling up again that spike your anxiety. The uneven road makes you trip and bump into people passing you by but you don’t much care for their complaints as you make your way down the streets. Your heart is beating fast inside your ribs, almost painfully so, making you feel like you’re drowning again.

Everything comes to a halt around you as all your fears slip clean off your shoulders when you take in the glory that is your family’s ship. You want to break down and cry now that you finally know they’re here and safe but you knock some sense into yourself as you wrack your brain for possible locations they could’ve fled to in this town.

There were several shops and fishermen around trying to sell their wares but you doubt you’d find one of them there, especially with the sun setting already. Then your eyes stop at a shield hanging from one of the big wooden doors around you.

A tavern.

Bingo.

You break out into a sprint again, ripping the door open and startling several of the guests. Ignoring all of their complaints is easy when your eyes zero in on one table in the far back where your father is cackling obnoxiously loud, probably about some lame joke Marlo made.

“Dad!” – you yell and hurry over to their table. When they notice you, everyone’s eyes turn as big as saucers and the table almost topples over with the force of everyone suddenly standing up, trying to get to you first.

This time you really cry when the first pair of arms encircles you, soon to be followed by countless more, the lot of you just ending up in a big cuddle pile.

“You don’t know how much I missed you” – you cry and everyone shares your sentiment.

“We thought you died!”

“How did you survive that?!”

“Where have you been this entire time?!”

“How did you get to this island?!”

You answer all of their questions throughout the evening and in-between beers. For a moment, you think whether to tell them about Hyunjin’s existence or to obscure it to keep him safe in case someone else was listening in on your conversation. You settle on whispering it to your parents while the others are busy getting shitfaced. You’re your parents are surprised would be an understatement and they don’t believe you at first, thinking you might have taken a hit to your head or that you started to hallucinate in your absence.

Your insistence on the truthfulness of your story makes them eventually back down and give in.

“I don’t want to do anything he doesn’t want to, so I don’t know if you’ll ever meet him but… I just wanted you to know that my survival was thanks to a kind soul” – you mumble to them and your own statement makes you suddenly go rigid.

In your revery and celebration you totally forgot that Hyunjin was waiting for you.

You excuse yourself hastily, only your parents knowing the real reason why you would suddenly leave, and run outside to where you had last seen him. New anxieties swirl in your head. What if he left? What if that was it and you never got to say a proper goodbye to him? Thank him for what he’s done?

The coast was entirely clear so you called out to him in the dark.

“Hyunjin?”

Silence.

“Hyunjin? I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you wait for so long!”

The waves softly crash against the shores.

“My parents know about you, I hope that was fine? They’re very grateful, just like I am!”

The sounds of drunken hollering from the town reach your ears but thankfully they’re quiet, too far away to be a concern.

“Please don’t tell me you left…” – your voice gets quieter with each time you call out to him.

That’s when you spot something in the water. Two glowing orbs watching you from beneath the water. A relieved sigh escapes your lungs and your eyes sting, marking the fourth time you want to cry today.

You carefully step to the edge of the water and crouch down to place your hand into the sea. There’s a few moments before the yellow glow starts gliding through the water towards you and something suddenly takes your hand into theirs.

Hyunjin’s head peeks out of the water and you can see him pout.

“I thought you left me for good” – he mumbles into the water and despite his overly dramatic pout, you know he means it.

“I really am sorry… I got carried away after seeing my family again but I should have at least given you a sign or something instead of letting you wait without knowing what’s going on” – you caress his cheek, letting your thumb graze over the miniscule fins protruding from his cheekbones and Hyunjin lets out a soft trill.

“I was scared” – he doesn’t look you in the eyes anymore after his admission and your heart breaks.

“Don’t leave me, you’re all I have” – he sounds so broken, so different from the boy that kept giggling over the dumbest things you told him.

“Hyunjin…”

The water splashes around him when he pushes his body up on the stone, tail flailing behind him. When his hands find purchase on your shoulders, his retracted nails digging into your flesh, you half think he is going to live up to the siren stereotypes and drag you into the depths, but instead, his plush lips crash into yours haphazardly.

For a moment you’re taken aback, the force of the kiss so sudden, but your heart swells when your mind finally catches up to what was happening, your lips starting to move against his.

He tastes salty and a bit fishy, you can feel his fangs when you push your lips against his. Hyunjin is in a constant battle with himself of wanting to savor this and wanting to rush to the next part. His body wins and he timidly licks your lips, requesting you to open your mouth for him.

As you two kiss, pouring every amount of yearning and love into it, your arms circle around his small waist, pulling him further against your body. A pleased trill escapes his lips and you smile against him, licking excitedly into his mouth. You notice his tongue is different from yours, forked at the end and longer overall. Your tongue catches a few times on the many little fangs in his mouth but you don’t mind. Right now, you’re on cloud nine.

“The feelings I have in my chest are too big to put into words” – he says breathlessly when you part, foreheads touching.

“Can you show them to me?”

Hyunjin nearly sobs at your question, his mind pushing him to do a million things at the same time. How does one put their love into actions properly? How could he possibly show you how much you grew to mean to him within the days you spent together with just one action?

The rest of his tail lifts out of the water and envelops you, his arms pushing you to rest your head against his chest as he cradles you.

“My mother used to hold me like this” – he begins quietly, his heart thumping loudly against your ear.

“She said that as long as her heart was beating in her chest and I could hear it like this, I wouldn’t have to worry about anything. And even long after the beating of her heart faded out, I could remember it and be sure that for as long as she lived, her heart was beating for me” – he hugs you tighter against his chest, his cheek resting atop your head.

The two of you stay like this for a while, just breathing with each other, feeling each other’s skin. You give little kisses to his chest, finally getting to touch his scales like you wanted to the moment you met him.

“I know it’s not a replacement for what you lost, but for the time being until we find your friends again, if you wanted to, I could probably convince the others to take you with us, you know.”

“You would?”

“Of course I would, you dummy”, you giggle and poke his side and he lets out a trill again, much to your joy.

“My parents already know about you and even though a part of them probably thinks their daughter has lost it, they would accept you without thought. You saved me and showed me more kindness than another human might in a situation like this, you’re probably already part of the crew in their heads.”

Hyunjin sobs and hugs you even tighter to his body, his tail wrapping protectively around your legs.

In the quiet of the night, you two whisper about better tomorrows and a future filled with love to each other.

You don’t return to your family until morning.

-

The introduction between Hyunjin and your family went as well as you could have hoped. While most of them were weary at first, scared, that he was going to turn on them and do siren things to them, they accepted him after seeing that he was equally as shy about meeting them. Plus, they couldn’t argue with you for long when you kept insisting that he was the only reason you were alive right now.

The crew went about loading and repairing the ship from the damages it endured during the battle, meaning that you weren’t going to leave this place for a few days at least. Hyunjin curiously watched the hustle and bustle from a short distance away, not wanting to be in the way or risking getting seen by locals who didn’t know about him.

Your father approaches you on the last day of repairs, asking you to check out a new little addition to the pirate ship, one that has you gasping in happiness.

They decided to add a small, silly lift and a bunch of nets that were sturdy enough to hold Hyunjin on the side of the ship. That way, he could either use the lift with the help of someone on board or climb his way on deck using the nets. With an addition like this you were absolutely sure that Hyunjin was now part of the family and with an excited skip in your step you run to tell him about it.

He seems just as excited about it, his ear fins flickering happily and a huge grin on his face. Just one issue.

“Do you…uhm, have a bucket of water or something for me to sit in? I’m going to dry out otherwise.”

You scratch your head in thought. You kind of forgot that he needs water to survive, never having seen him outside of it for long.

“We got that covered, lad!”, Marnie yells, scaring both of you, as he unloads the last ingredients for the kitchen on deck.

“Near the spot where our dear y/n always sunbathes we put up a big tub already filled with salty sea water for ye!”

Hyunjin’s eyes glitter in joy and he claps his hands together excitedly.

“y/n! Help me up! I’ve always wanted to see what it’s like to be on a big ship like this!”

You chuckle and run on board towards the lift, and with little trouble you get the siren on board. A little more physical effort from both of you is needed to get Hyunjin across the deck and into the tub but when his cute little fish butt hits the water the two of you let out a pleased sigh.

“This is great!” – he trills excitedly, not knowing where to look first.

As Hyunjin takes in all the sights and the difference in height, you take the opportunity to observe the rest of the ship, a sense of calm settling in your chest at the thought of having both your family back and Hyunjin by your side.

-

Travelling with a siren by your side proves to be quite advantageous. The fishing takes half the time with Hyunjin speeding through the nearby waters and snatching up any fish big and beautiful enough to be considered meal-worthy by Marnie while your father desperately tries to do it the old-fashioned way only to lose to the siren every time.

To make up for every defeat, Hyunjin’s second job as a pirate is scouting ahead of your ship to make sure you’re not running into any law enforcement or other pirates that could prove dangerous.

He seems to love being needed for specific tasks.

The next time the opportunity arises for your crew to steal from a rich guy, Arlen casually takes a painting off the wall to offer it to Hyunjin later. He tries to brush it off as not a big deal, yet he can’t escape getting pulled into a big hug as Hyunjin thanks him wholeheartedly.

Arlen would never admit it to anyone but he teared up a bit at the genuine excitement bubbling off the siren just because he gave him a little gift.

The others soon also realised Hyunjin’s love for art so it escalated into something of a tradition for any crewmember to always bring back something from the world of art for their new fish buddy.

-

Today was one of the boring days, the entire crew on land for their business endeavors. The ship wasn’t docked as usual, a short distance away from land so they had to use the row boats to get to their destination. That left Hyunjin and you alone on the boat, lounging about in the sun. He let one arm lazily dangle outside of his tub to hold your hand with.

You suddenly realise that with the entire crew gone, probably until the next day, you could finally get some much needed kisses in. Ever since you took off from Port Vement, Hyunjin and you had to abstain from too much physical contact since you didn’t want to scare your parents with both bringing a real siren to the crew and explaining that he might be their new son-in-law.

Hyunjin cracks his eyes open when he feels your hand caressing his cheek. Without warning, you press a kiss to his lips and he feels like bursting at the seams, after being deprived of your loving touch for so long. It was just the start of your relationship and he immediately had to hold himself back from all the physical affections he wanted to give you. It was kind of unfair.

All the more reason for him to meet your kiss with as much fervor as he could muster. The miniscule fins on his cheekbones tickle you when you deepen the kiss, your tongue gliding over his forked one. Your heart beats erratically at your chest at you finally being able to kiss him again, your desperation transferring over to your movements being overly eager, accidentally knocking your teeth together but Hyunjin doesn’t seem to mind. On the contrary, it seems to spur him on even more, his hand finding its place on your waist, squeezing your flesh rhythmically.

You decide to be bold and lift your body in the tub, your legs on each side of his tail. Hyunjin looks up at you with an open mouth and big, glazed over eyes, clearly startled.

“Your clothes…”

“Forget about them, Hyune.”

And you descend back on him, your lips clashing with his. Your fingertips graze his ear fins and he lets out a high trill at the back of his throat. They must be sensitive. You store that knowledge in the back of your head for later.

Hyunjin is restless, unsure of where he’s allowed to touch, if he’s supposed to just trust his instincts, let his body do whatever it wanted. You were clearly just doing whatever came to your mind, grinding your core into his tail and letting out small whimpers against his lips that drove him crazy. He needed to know, so he gently pushes you away from him.

“Are you sure?”

You look at him dazed and it seems to take a second before his question registers in your head.

“More than sure. Do whatever feels right, Hyune.”

That about does it for him. His body presses into yours as he attaches his lips on your neck, sucking and peppering it with kisses. Your hands glide over the many fins along his spine, lightly scratching at the base of them and earning another trill from him. Your shirt is discarded haphazardly and thrown somewhere nearby the tub, leaving you bare in front of him. His curious eyes roam hungrily over your chest, a hand coming up to cup your breast experimentally.

“Where can I touch you?” – you breathe against him and Hyunjin suddenly grows shy. A red blush starts to creep up on his neck but he takes one of your hands into his regardless and places it on a specific part on the front of his tail.

“You… you know my ear fins are sensitive and the top of my body works similar to a human’s but, uhm… this is, you know…” – he stammers as you press your fingers into his scales gently. A small slit runs horizontally up his tail between his scales and in a burst of curiosity, you press your fingers inside, causing Hyunjin to throw his head back against the tub and let out a long moan.

“I see” – you tell him and continue to lightly press your fingers against his slippery walls. Your ministrations have him writhing and squirming underneath you, letting out small wanton moans mixed with trills.

Something soon pushes your fingers away and you take a moment to look at the mess Hyunjin had become while you were busy playing with him. He already looked so fucked out, his eyes glossy and glazed over, his hair falling around him messily like a crown, his chest heaving as he looked up at you.

He still was the prettiest thing you ever saw.

“y/n… please…” – he tugs at your pants and you realise you’re still completely dressed from the waist down. You hastily step out of the tub to get rid of the last few offending garments, bearing yourself entirely to him. As you step back in, you see what was pushing against your fingers just a moment ago.

That makes everything a little easier to figure out, as two cocks, similar in color to his tail, protrude from the slit, one a little bit larger than the other. But before you can touch him again, he urges you to sit on the edge of the wooden tub, eager to get his mouth on you. His forked tongue delves between your folds, experimentally licking up and down before focusing its attack entirely on your clit as he suckles.

Your hand tangles itself into his luscious hair, keeping him in place. The effort was kind of in vain because Hyunjin would rather die than part from you at this moment, greedily licking up your juices just to hear more of those melodic moans spilling from your lips. Just as much as you grew obsessed with his fascinating voice and trills, he grew to love your voice the same way.

Carefully, with retracted claws, one of his long fingers prods at your entrance before slipping in until the membrane stopped it from going any further.

“You’re doing so well…” – you praise him and earn a trill, your hands starting to massage his ear fins to give some of the pleasure back.

His ministrations soon bring you to your first climax and leave both of you panting and wanting for more.

Hyunjin eases you back into the tub to hover over his crotch. He gently takes the bigger one of his cocks into his hand, hissing at the contact after going for so long with no touches, and angles it towards your entrance for you to sink down on.

You both moan as you sink down to the hilt, his smaller cock nestling directly against your clit. Time stands seemingly still as you get used to the unusual stretch.

“You okay?” – Hyunjin whispers and soothingly rubs your lower back, his cold hands soothing against your burning flesh. You nod at him, letting your body fall against his, chest against chest, your arms circling around his waist as your face buries itself into his neck.

“Can you move?”

Hyunjin trills and obeys your command without thought, moving his hips in slow motions, his cock dragging deliciously against your walls. The extra stimulation from his smaller cock against your front makes you whine into his neck which you pepper with kisses, his gills fluttering at the caress of your lips.

“You feel so good…” – Hyunjin all but whimpers, his hands finding purchase on your hips to move you against him. You hug his chest tighter as you feel your orgasm build up a second time.

“Can I…uhm-“

“Do whatever you want, Hyune. Please.”

You feel him kiss the crown of your head and his strong tail bracing itself against the wooden tub before his pace gets rougher and faster, water beginning to slosh out at the sides. The drag of his two cocks against you is too much for you, your cunt clenching around him as you come with a strained moan into his chest.

“Ah… I love you, y/n. I love you, I really do. Where do I-“

“Inside.”

“Really?”

“I want all of you, Hyunjin.”

You lift up and take his face between your hands to look at him as his hips stutter into you in an uneven rhythm until you feel his cum filling you up. That trill accompanies his voice even as he comes. He looks beautiful, his eyes full of adoration, his lips slightly apart as he comes down from his high slowly.

You two hold onto each other, just basking in eachother’s closeness for a while before his cock slips out of you, retracting back into his slit now that it’s all over and no longer needed.

“I love you, too, by the way.”

And Hyunjin couldn’t be happier, his ear fins flapping happily as he nuzzles his face further into your hair.

-

You do eventually tell your parents about the relationship between you and Hyunjin and although they seem extremely hesitant at first, they figure they can’t really do anything to stop you from pursuing him with the way he’s bonded to you.

The crew eventually returns to Port Vement to stay there for a few days and Hyunjin and you find yourselves on the same part of the shore where your relationship started taking a turn.

You both lounge about beneath the stars, you tucked carefully into his chest. Originally you were scared that Hyunjin and your world were too different for this to go well but you found that despite him being a sea dweller and kind of a menace sometimes, that the two of you are a better fit than you expected.

When you want to tell him another story from your childhood for old time’s sake, you find him already fast asleep in the sand next to you. You smile and kiss the corner of his mouth before settling back against his chest.

Whatever battles lie ahead, you’re sure Hyunjin would pull you from the depths again and again and anyone daring to attack him for what he was would face your entire crews wrath.

As long as your hearts beat, they beat for eachother, you’re sure of that.

-

taglist: @jeonginsleftcheek

[hyvneluv]

*𝑻𝒘𝒐 𝑰𝒔 𝑩𝒆𝒕𝒕𝒆𝒓 𝑻𝒉𝒂𝒏 𝑶𝒏𝒆*

Pairing: Snake!Hybrid Hyunjin x Reader (Fem)

Genre: Smut

Warnings: Snakes! Mentions of Blood/Stitches, Fork/Split tongue, Oral(F), Unprotected Sex, Creampie, Biting, Two Dicks (kinda double P), Sorry for any mistakes or Missing warnings!

A/N: My animal knowledge really shows here😂

Series Master List

-🖤

It was rare to see snake hybrids. A lot of them hid in fear of how others treated them. Humans were mean creatures, especially to things they fear. They knew that all too well, so seeing a snake hybrid brought into your adoption center was strange. His scales were flakey, eyes stuck with shed. You could tell whoever had him didn’t treat him well.

No one wanted to be near him most of your colleagues staying away some even squealing. However you weren’t scared, did you like snakes? Not particularly, but you knew he needed help. When you approached him in the little container he was in he hissed. You quickly shushed him picking him up to take him to the sink area. You had run him a small bath, just some water for him to soak in. “I can’t believe you’re touching that thing” someone streaked at your side.

“It deserves the same amount of love and compassion as any others here” you retort looking down at him. You cleaned him up helping the stuck shed off before putting him back with a heating lamp.

“Y/n will you take it home?” Your manager had asked.

“Why don’t you want it here?” You glared.

“Listen, most of us don’t like them. He’s probably not gonna get adopted and we also aren’t equipped to take care of him properly. You at least seem to know what you’re doing.” They rambled.

You looked back down at the snake who was now curled up by your hand. “Fine, I’ll take it home, however.” You said with a small pause. “He’s mine as soon as we leave and I want the next few days off to take care of him and help him settle.” You stated.

“Of course-“ your manager started to say before you interrupted him.

“Paid” you said sternly.

With a sigh knowing he wasn’t gonna win he agreed just wanting that thing out of the building.

You put him in your spare room, getting the necessary stuff for his set up. You watched as he explored smiling to yourself. “Listen, I know you understand me. So whenever if ever you wanna become human. This room is yours. You have free roam where ever. You’ll be safe here, and taken care of” you kept talking.

He laid under the heating lamp listening carefully. If he could laugh he would. He’s heard that before. Knowing damn well his last owner started off with “love” but quickly forgot about him. He never got comfortable enough to turn so what made you think he would here he wondered.

As days went on you grew fonder of him, seeing some of his goofy personality shine through. His scales looked a lot healthier, a beautiful dark shade with glints of goldish color in them. They matched his beautiful piercing gold eyes. He hissed at you a lot however never making any attempt at striking. After shifts at work you’d pick him up out of his tank, laying him on the couch as you watched tv. It was one of these nights that it changed.

You had done your normal taking him out laying him on the couch with a heating pad beside if he got to cold. He stayed there as you cooked dinner only to be startled from his sleep by a crashing sound. He could smell blood in the air his fork tongue flickering at the scent. “Fuck!” He heard you yell from the kitchen with a bit of rustling. He was scared something had happened that someone broke in. In his panic turning ‘human’. He ran into the kitchen only to see you on the floor holding your hand that was gushing blood.

“What the hell happened?” He said making you jump. He looked at you realizing he was ‘human’.

“You turned?” You said almost excitedly.

He couldn’t help but let out a nervous laugh “that shouldn’t be the focus right now, you’re literally bleeding” he said before grabbing a clean towel to wrap it around your hand.

You watched him looking over his features. He had a sharp jawline, slim but muscular physique, those gold eyes even prettier. When he started talking your eyes found themselves on his pillowy lips. You could see the small peak of fangs and to your surprise his tongue was split. You were just in awe taking him in not even realizing he was talking to you. Not until he lifted your head with his warm hand. “Hello? Are you listening? You probably need stitches” he said looking at you were furrowed brows.

You only nodded eyes still scanning over him. You grabbed your phone off the counter with your other hand calling your neighbor. He came over taking you to the hospital and you did in deed need stitches.

Your snake hybrid cleaned up the mess. He finished making the dinner you were working on before it happened and sat there. Waiting. Agonizingly waiting. When you came through the door he smiled sighing in relief. “Hey! Thanks for cleaning and- wait you finished dinner?” You said surprised.

“Yeah, how’s the hands?” He said.

“Ah well it’s not bleeding anymore” you said with a laugh.

“I can’t believe you cut yourself that deep, what were you doing? Dancing with the knife?” He teased.

“No this was all just a scheme to see if you’d come to my rescue” you teased back making him roll his eyes. “Since I can properly ask you now though, what’s your name?” You asked siting down at the counter.

“Hyunjin.” He said.

“Good now I can stop calling you snakey” you said laughing.

After that moment Hyunjin didn’t turn back for the most part. Sometimes you’d fined him curled up under his heating lamp, other times he’d be curled up on the couch under lots of blankets. Your routine continued coming home, cooking, sitting on the couch with him just watching tv. Now though, he talked back. He got into the habit of curling up against you when you came home. Your body’s heat always feeling so nice to him.

You came home today more exhausted than normal though. A fight braking out between some hybrids at work. You being in the middle of it when it happened. Today honestly wasn’t as normal as you thought. All the hybrids were acting weird around you. A lot more possessive and clingy. When you walked through the door thinking about it more you realized hyunjin hadn’t came out from his tank.

“Hyune, are you ok?” You asked leaning down over the tank. When he didn’t budge you picked him up like normal his skin scales feeling warm. He hissed at you baring his fangs. “Are you mad at me?” You said softly, making him stop. He slithered up your arm before slithering down your leg. He made his way to the bed before turning back to his human like form.

There was a moment of silence before he spoke. “I’m not mad at you. Ugh” he groaned. “Do you realize you’re ovulating?” He said with a loud groan.

“Am I? Is that why everyone’s been so weird today?” You questioned.

“Probably- god I don’t know how you went to work with all of them. You’re supposed to be mine” he said the end of his sentence trialing off.

“I am yours” you said quickly with out realizing your own words impact.

“Yeah?” He said looking up at you. Those gold eyes had a hint of something in them. “Then let me make you mine.” He said before grabbing your arm pulling you to him.

He didn’t give you anytime to protest before kissing you, his lips warm softer than you’d imagine. His kiss was hungry tongue quickly making its way into your mouth. His hands came down pulling your bottoms down quickly in one swift motion. He was moving so fast, his motions only driven by need. The need to have you all his, a primal need. His sharp fangs grazed your bottom lip as he moved down your neck. It was almost like he was a little vampire with those fangs. He kissed down your body, pulling your thighs up to him.

He licked his lips looking at your dripping cunt “she’s calling me” he said with a smirk before diving into your core. His fork tongue feeling way different from anything you’d ever had before. Both the muscles moving on their own as they lapped at your folds. His fingers came up to graze against your slick before pushing them into you. He curled them hitting a sensitive spot. The moan you let out only drove him to keep doing it. To hear it again and again. Your hands found their way to his long soft locks.

“Fuck Hyune” you moaned out.

“Feel good? Gonna cum on my tongue?” He said with a devilish smile.

You nodded making that smile only grow. He picked up his speed fingers finding another even more sensitive spot. With his pace and tongue lapping at your clit your high crashed quickly over you. Walls tightening around his fingers. He licked a long strip up eyes staining into yours. He wanted to keep going, wanted to keep tasting you all over him but he needed to be inside you. Fuck your smell alone was gonna make him nut in his pants.

He stood up pulling down his pants revealing his two curvy cocks. With shock, eyes widen you blurted out “you have two?!”

He couldn’t help but laugh “yeah, you didn’t know? Thought you read up on me” he said. He took your hand wrapping it around the bigger one “this one’s the main one, and th- this one” he stuttered as your hand grazed the smaller one “this one is super sensitive like your clit” he said.

You nodded staring intently at his cocks. He leaned you back pressing his body against your kissing you deeply. He slowly pushed himself into you, the smaller cock rubbing against your clit. He let out a hiss of pleasure before his mind went. He started pounding into you mercilessly. His smacking against yours. The sounds of moans and skin smacking filling the air with the scent of sex. He had his head buried in the crook of your neck his long fangs grazing so gently at it. “I shouldn’t even let you leave smelling this good, all of them got their gross scent on you.” He hissed. “I’m gonna make sure they know you’re taken.”

His thrusts continued fast before he gripped at your legs pressing them against your chest before drilling into you. The new angel letting him hit at your cervix. “Hyunjin!” You screamed hands coming up to touch his chest. He pulled out fully before pushing hard back into you however he felt bigger. You felt more pressure in your core like somehow his cock grew a size. The pornagraphic sound he let out made your eyes snap open looking down you realized why he felt bigger. His smaller cock has slipped in, your cunt sucking both of them so greedily.

“Sh-shit I- I- fuck!” His head rolled back not being able to even speak at the pleasure. The warmth overtaking his smaller cock making it twitch in over stimulation. He snapped his hips back one more time both cocks pushing deep inside of you before you were Cumming. Cumming harder than you have ever before. His body shook at the feeling. Your walls tightening more and more around him. He gripped at your hips harshly digging his nails into you. He cried out as his release finally spilled out painting your walls white.

When you stared to squirm a bit trying to adjust yourself, the movement pushing him deeper into you making him whimper. “D-don’t move” he pleaded. You realized his smaller cock was still hard. You smirked up at him before moving away only to push back on him. He gasped almost like the wind was knocked out of him. His hands tried to stop your movement but one more push back his smaller cock was cumming.

He had the most intense orgasm, his body shook body falling to the side of you. He tried regaining his breath “I’ve- I’ve never- with my smaller” his words coming out choppy but you knew what he meant.

You pushed some of his hair back kissing him softly. “M’sorry for- I should have asked” he said still out of breath.

“It’s ok hyune honestly after today kinda needed it” you said with a smile.

“Gl-glad I could help.” He said nuzzling his head into your neck. His breathing was still heavy as you stroked his back.

﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌

💙 If you’d like to read more of my stuff you can find it Here: Master List . Thank you for reading and if requests are open or you just wanna talk feel free to send me something🩵

Taglist: @satosugu4l @do-you-remember-summer-127 @xines16 @minh0scat @troublemaker02 @tr-mha-fan @lunearta @velvetmoonlght @minghaosimp @ldysmfrst @felixleftchickennugget @jehhskz @babigriin @kkamismom12 @jeonginsleftcheek

[hyvneluv]

serpent hybrid hyunjin 🌱🐍🌱

hyunjin never acted like this. you had never seen him behave so much like a serpent. was he experiencing an unusual kind of heat? did snakes do that...well u just gotta find out

i love this concept so much ill scream-

reblogging > liking

-contains mature themes (two dicks and a split tongue ahhh)

snake hybrids weren't exactly judged well in society. stereotypical beliefs calling them mean slithery liars who manipulate people.

they were just misjudged. misunderstood hybrids who needed affection too. maybe the energy exhuded made them look tough and deadly but deep down they were sweeter than even bunny hybrids.

thats why your boyfriend, hyunjin is always by your side.

theres nothing quite different about snake hybrids. except for the patches of scales on different parts of their body.

however some had no scales, instead just forked tongues. hyunjin was no exception. patient and mind numbingly soft at all times. snuggling into you every now and then.

thats why when you step into the house,you aren't expecting the strong whiff of a certain peculiar smell. its musky and fills the whole apartment.

you don't even know what you're smelling until you're embraced by him. his body warm, reeking of musk. intoxicating your senses.

"hyun-" you let out hurriedly, dropping your bag on the ground in shock. his face buried in your neck. hands running all over your body.

practically pushing you against the door, slipping his left hand between your legs while his right hand grabbed your backside. gasping at the way you seem to float off the ground. he's picking you up quicker than you can even process.

"what's going on? baby?" you say, trying to wriggle out of his firm hold. he's stronger than before and he continues holding you off the ground.

hyunjin hisses.

he fucking hisses.

and your eyes widen. thats only the second time he's ever hissed at you. once during an argument and right now. did that mean he was angry?

"heat." is all he says, huffing as he slams the bedroom door open. throwing you on the bed. not caring at the funny way, you bounced on the soft mattress.

"what do you mean? I thought snakes..don't get heats..."

you questioned. watching as he paced around the room, trying to control himself.

taking off his hoodie. arms out on display. shining with a thin layer of sweat. his hair soaked.

"fuck i don't know...i was washing our clothes and i got the smell of your shirt..."

he mumbles, and your eyes go down to where theres a prominent bulge in his pants. a wet patch staining the material.

"and its like my senses went wild. all I was thinking of was you. fucking you over and over again..." hyunjin slurs, his forked tongue peeking out.

"jinnie...your tongue"

you whisper. intrigued at how his tongue slipped past his lips every few seconds. he had never done that before.

"i can't control it-" he covers his mouth, gazing at you with needy eyes.

were his eyes always so sharp, you wondered.

"its okay baby, breathe" you reassure, opening your arms for him to come to you. and he does. resting his head on your shoulder, his weight pressing you down into the bed.

leaning into kiss him innocently when all of a sudden, his hands are on either side of your face, pulling you in for a needy kiss.

brain shutting off at the feeling of his forked tongue licking into your mouth. forcing you to be submissive because you knew you wouldn't win this battle.

.

🌱

.

"j-jinnie" squirming under him.

his hands pinning your lower half down. head buried between your legs. your toes curling everytime he maneuvered his tongue to simultaneously flick at your sensitive clit and slip between your swollen lips.

"shhh"

u don't know if he's shushing you or hissing at you.

because the next thing you feel is his fork like tongue pushing all over your folds. fingers digging into your hips with strength that had your cunt throbbing.

whining at the loss as he lifts his head up. teasingly using the tips of his wet muscle to prod at your bundle of nerves. face contorting in pleasure at your taste. breath heavy on your warmth.

"breed." he blurts out, surprising himself. your mouth opening in shock when his nails dig into your waist.

his nails had grown longer, into claws and the once hardly noticeable scales on his forearms became visible. gradient shade of black and grey.

"hyun! h-hyunjin, baby b-bab-"

writhing higher into the mattress as he pushed your legs further apart.

nestling his split tongue over your swollen pussy. teasingly managing to place your clit in the Y of his wet muscle.

had his tongue grown longer because you could feel him so deep...

.

.

"h-hyun?" you whisper, gripping his arm to relax your body for him. scales textured and rough under your calloused palm.

"m'right here, baby" hyunjin cooes. placing a hand flat on your lower stomach. eyes fixed on where he was prepping you.

with both his dicks. rubbing the tip over your folds while the other pressed into your entrance. leaking more and more slick that mixed with your own arousal.

"almost in, my love" nudging the first one in with extreme care. your fingers grasping at him. his jaw hanging open as he pushed in, groaning when he slid halfway in.

spreading your thighs so he could start to push his second dick in. the sensation and stretch making you cry in a mix of pain and pleasure.

snake hybrids had two features that only a person who they were close to, would find out about. a forked long tongue means their dicks are the same as well.

hyunjin was not particularly big. actually he was slightly above average considering snake hybrids had longer lengths and lesser girths.

hyunjin had thicker girths and the length of both his dicks were just perfect. neither too big nor too small.

but right now, he felt bigger.

he felt longer. he felt hot.

thats why when he pushes both of them past your entrance, you let out a muffled scream. eyes rolling back at the fullness. quite literally stuffed like this, for the first time.

"f-fuck gonna take me all in"

lowering himself to look down at you. his arms on either side of your head. placing his larger hands on your face. lips brushing against your open mouth.

"thats my precious girl~" and your pussy spasms around him.

getting him soaked because the way the word 'precious' rolled off his tongue, could make you cum on the spot. rolling his s's and a few other alphabets in a serpent like way. something he'd usually never do.

a firm thrust that has your hands flying up to hold onto him. clawing at his back while he buried himself deeper into your cunt. stretching you out with every rough movement.

the scales on his back were larger and travelled down his spine. groaning as you scratched down his back, hard enough to leave red imprints.

"gonna take my cum like a good mate, yes~" hyunjin hisses, watching you so closely. letting his tongue run over your front teeth, all the way down to your bottom lip.

you nod at his statement. wrapping your legs around his waist. pulling him closer. not caring if his patterns of uneven scales scratched you here and there.

plush lips kissing you with such intensity. his nose pressing into your cheek. pushing you deeper into the pillow. trailing a hand down to where your chest touched his. grabbing a handful of flesh and squeezing hard enough to make you arch your back.

taking the opportunity to thrust in deeper. your bottom half nearly lifted off the bed with his strength.

pads of his fingers pinching and pulling at your sensitive nubs. hooking your leg higher so he could change the angle. filling you up with warmth. it makes your eyes struggle to stay open.

this was nowhere near over...

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

hiss hiss need more snake hyunjin ideas FUVKKKKK

[hyvneluv]

The last sentence hit hard this is so ndjendoiwencioe2ncoiecj2ioecjewjciowdjcoij

#hyvneluvrecs

Orange

hyunjin x reader. childhood friends to lovers. implied soulmates. hyune's pov.

this is the prequel & sequel to you're in the wind, i'm in the water. you need to read the prev fic first to understand how hyunjin and mc confessed to one another!!

this is very self indulgent but it's also my bd gift so i get a pass hehe also a tribute to one of my fav love languages which is peeling an orange for someone :')

based on Chemtrails Over the Country Club by Lana Del Rey,, so highly recommend listening to it while reading :)) feedback is appreciated as always <333

i'm on the run with you my sweet love

The beige sand warms the soles of your feet as you and Hyunjin run along the shore. His parents sit by a towel, watching you with idle curiosity as you’re propelled forth by the brisk winds; and a sense of feedom only found in the tender hearts of children.

Hyunjin doesn’t know where you’re taking him. He didn’t question you when you entwined your fingers with his before running away, your footprints etched upon the sandy canvas. His sole attention was on your clammy hand, tightly clasping his.

Hyunjin didn’t yet understand what it meant to crave the hand of someone in yours, for it to feel natural for fingers to hold one another. He was only seven. What does one really know at this age?

But he knew that he was drawn to grand things. The beauty of fireworks as they unfold in the sky, dazzling colors rivaling the hues of sunsets. To the towering sunflowers his mother takes him to see, so tall their petals almost seem to be reaching for the sun’s embrace. To the full moon and the way it hangs close to earth, as if yearning to enter our horizon, to sink into the soil and rest.

But in that moment, as he watched your gleeful smile, the blush tinting your cheeks as you tugged him along, a different amazement grew within his soul. It was quiet, it was soft, it didn't overwhelm his seven-years-old heart. It was enough.

You finally stop by a rock, settling in the sand with your hair fanning around you like a halo. Hyunjin hovers over you, his tentative gaze tracing your features, trying to pinpoint what had made that peculiar feeling pour over his body, like candle wax finally meeting its destined mold.

He doesn't find an answer, only your kind smile as you tap the place near you. You were giddy, as if you had run far when his parents remained mere meters away.

Hyunjin had noticed this urge in you to flee, to wander, always. He didn't know what it means. He thought that perhaps you didn't know either. He wondered if you'd ever run away from him. The question burned the tip of his tongue.

"Will we always run together?" Hyunjin suddenly asks, kneeling to meet your eyes.

"If you want to," you shrug. "Will you run away with me when we're older?"

"Where to?" he asks, a note of apprehension coloring his tone.

"I don't know. We'll know later."

"Okay."

"You pinky promise?"

"I do," Hyunjin entwines his pinky with yours, before leaning down to press a chaste kiss on your thumb pad. He avoids your eyes as a dusty blush cascades on his cheeks, akin to the fading pink of a sunken sunset. You giggle, reciprocating the kiss before pressing your thumbs together.

"Sealed forever," you grin, eyes disappearing into moon crescents. Your contagious happiness mirrors instantly on Hyunjin's face, his nose scrunching up in delight.

He wants to keep this smile on your face, he thinks, this intricate joy that dawns upon your features, brightening up your face, making your pinky in his feel lighter, warmer.

So, he takes out an orange from his pocket.

"Where did you get this?" you chuckle, eyes widening in delight as if presented with the world's most treasured jewel.

"A vendor gave it to me," he shrugs, handing it to you.

Your thumb punctures the tangerine's thick skin, making the fruit’s juice drip down your hands. You attempt to peel it but the skin breaks instantly, falling into the sand.

"Here, let me," Hyunjin offers, taking the orange from your hands, peeling it for you.

A strange warmth slowly spreads through his being, akin to tree roots anchoring onto the soil, to the unfurling of petals on the first day of spring. It feels good, for some reason, to do this mundane task for you.

This newfound feeling only solidifies when you smile brightly at him, breaking the fruit into two halves and handing one part to Hyunjin.

You no longer look like you want to run. You look content here, simply sharing an orange with him.

Hyunjin suddenly wants to buy you a whole crate of tangerines. Maybe even a farm of it- just trees upon trees that he can plant for you. He chases the thought away, he's only seven, he doesn't have money, where would he even store the oranges?

Hyunjin didn't have the answer to this question, nor the million ones swirling in his mind. But he knew your smile, the kindness in your eyes, the lingering scent of oranges on his fingers, even after washing his hands. And the word that sat heavy on his soul, from that night forth.

Hyunjin knew he loved you when he was seven years old.

there is nothing wrong contemplating God; under the chemtrails over the country club

"Found you," Hyunjin whispers, reclining on the rooftop near you.

"Wasn't hiding from you," you respond just as softly, your gaze fixed on the turquoise sky overhead. Your words cause Hyunjin's heart to swell within his chest, growing, expanding, pushing against his ribs, yearning to escape and splatter at your feet.

His emotions were always so grand- his happiness consuming his entire being, the sadness, the loneliness rattling his bones with an invincible cold. Then the love for you, not in dependence, the way the planets orbit around the sun. But with choice, because he wants to, craves being near.

"What are you doing?" he asks after a while, his voice slightly hoarse.

"Watching the chemtrails," you point out a tiny plane leaving a white trail in the sky.

"It looks so far away," he whispers in wonder, and you hum with a melancholic expression. Hyunjin curls his hand into a fist, resisting the urge to smooth the delicate frown etched on your brows.

"Didn't you like your birthday celebration?" he finally asks. He knows the answer before you quietly say, 'yes.' You were never one for the chic attire, the fine china and polished silverware reflecting the guests fake smiles. You only ever came to the country club for Hyunjin.

"I just... these people are here for me, supposedly. And yet, I feel so invisible downstairs. I bet no one even noticed my absence."

"I did," he replies instantly, contradicting you vehemently, wanting to dispel the shadows that cloud your mind. "And... I brought you an orange," he adds, a small smile tugging at the corners of his lips. It grows when you beam at him, the chemtrails momentarily forgotten.

"Did you?"

"Mm, here," he swiftly peels the fruit for you, instinctively breaking it into two halves.

"I'm sixteen and I don't know how to peel a tangerine because of you," you giggle, biting into one part eagerly. Water dribbles down the side of your mouth, and Hyunjin delicately wipes it away, his hand cradling your jaw gently.

His heart beats wildly, drowning out the country club's orchestra. He's never been this close to you, noses nearly bumping into one another.

"Don't learn how to," he whispers, licking his lips nervously. He hopes you can't feel the tremor in his hand as it slides down your cheek.

"Why?"

"Then you won't need me anymore," he says honestly, and your eyes widen at his words. Say it, his heart pleads, I can't contain this love anymore. Hyunjin shakes his head, silencing his own thoughts. He'll make room for it; his heart will expand, even if it means bursting at the seams. He can't face your rejection.

"Can I ask you something?" you say after a while, still as close to him.

"Anything."

"Do you ever feel like you don't belong anywhere? You have friends and family, but you feel like..."

"Nobody's son?" he suggests.

"Yeah, nobody's daughter."

"Maybe we're not meant to belong to anyone else but ourselves."

"Isn't that sad?" you ask, bringing an orange wedge to Hyunjin's mouth. "What if I don't always have myself?"

"Well, you'll always have me."

"Do you promise me?" you ask eagerly, eyes wide, tone almost desperate.

"I promise." The fog dissipates, light spilling over your face once again.

"Even though you're so sought after?" you giggle.

"I'm not!"

"You are! Everybody wanted to talk to you downstairs. You're always the man of the hour," you wink, lying down on the floor once again.

"Really? I didn't notice," he says, settling next to you.

"Mm, you never notice anything," you sigh, resting your cheek atop his shoulder.

It's quiet again, save for the tranquil sound of your breaths. Your eyes are trained on the sky, following the path of each plane.

"They look really tiny."

"Maybe we're the small ones," you muse.

Hyunjin doesn't agree. Not when his love for you feels almost ancient, drawn from the depths of the very first fountain of love. It has stayed with him for nine years, intermingled with the very molecules of his being. You can't be small when what he feels for you is grander than the world.

"Maybe we are," he says as he slides an arm underneath your back, pulling you closer to his chest.

"Hyune," you call out softly.

"Mm?" he hums in reply.

"What do you think you're made for?"

I'm here to love you, he wants to say, achingly, fully, on your grand days and your small ones. To fall apart at the altar of your soul and to rise anew, by you, for you. To be yours.

"I'm here to peel you oranges." He whispers instead, his confession, for now.

"And I'm here to eat them, then."

we laugh about nothing as the summer gets cool; it's beautiful how this deep normality settles down over me

"Did you know you have a straight trail of moles on your back?" Hyunjin whispers, his cool breath akin to a gentle zephyr.

"It starts here," he bestows a tender kiss beneath your shoulder blade, as if marking the start of a constellation. "Then you have another one here," his lips brush against your skin, coaxing forth delicate goosebumps, like ripples on a moonlit pond. "And here," he trails down your spine, his mouth weaving a trail only he can see. "And a final one here," he lingers longer near the last mole, lips meeting your lower back delicately, akin to the tender graze of a feather.

If you had told Hyunjin that he would freely kiss your moles, hands trailing down your skin scented with chlorine and vanilla, he would have thought you were insane. But now he has you, because you want him too, against all odds. Hyunjin wasn't alone in his love; every emotion in your soul mirrored his own. Two sides of the same coin. Two halves of the same tangerine.

"And then... it wraps around your stomach," he flips you around until you face him, giddy giggles escaping your lips. "You see it? It goes right here, another straight line," he whispers in wonder, tracing over the moles on your skin as if in worship. There is so much he longs to articulate, words yearning to spill from his mouth. He realizes he can say them now, drape them over your body like a blanket knitted with love.

"Someone plucked stars and arranged them on your skin. You're a galaxy on your own, you know that right? So beautiful," he whispers, eyes wide in adulation, raking over each feature of yours, so much they're seared behind his eyelids. The only sight he sees when he goes to sleep.

"So are you," you smile, hands gently cradling his cheeks. Hands that held him at age seven, then eight, ten, thirteen, and twenty. Hands that dried his tears, patted his back, and played with his hair. Hands that are much more sacred than his own.

"No, you don't understand," he hovers over you, gently smoothing down your hair. "You're so beautiful, so much it dizzies me, consumes me. You consume me, entirely, and I-" He sucks in a deep breath as you smile lovingly, reassuringly.

"I know," you say. "I feel it too."

"I can't believe this is real," he shakes his head, thumb tracing your lower lip gently. "I didn't even plan on confessing when i brought you to this pool. And yet... it feels natural for us to be this way."

You nod, grinning. "Like we belong to one another."

"I told you I'd stay," his eyes soften, capturing you with the same tenderness as always, savoring every part of you.

"You always keep your promises," you smile, hand sliding down the nape of his neck, smoothing a stubborn tuft of hair.

Normal, that's the elusive term he was looking for. It is normal for him to hold you, to kiss you, to look into your eyes and find love swimming in your irises. It is the way it's supposed to be between you. He couldn't ever think of another outcome.

His eyes trail down to your arm, where two moles match perfectly with his, down to the placement, the space separating them both.

"Is this where we kissed each other the most in our past lives?" he trails off, knuckles brushing against your arm gently. You mirror his touch.

"So you believe we're soulmates?"

"Mm, I've always known."

"And why didn't you tell me?" you grin, tilting your head to the side.

"I peeled you tangerines."

His words seem to ignite something within you, memories of each time he peeled you oranges flooding back. Every birthday, each time you were sad, every time the fruit was near.

You stand up, straddling Hyunjin's lap, and then you kiss his eye mole, then the one on his cheek, trailing down his jaw mole, his neck, his arms.

"What are you doing?" he giggles, warm hands on your lower back.

"Making sure those moles show up in our next life too."

And at your words, Hyunjin swore that the citrusy scent of tangerines suddenly wafted in the air.

washing my hair, doing the laundry, late night TV i want you only

Your legs are comfortably propped on top of Hyunjin's, matching pairs of beige pajamas seamlessly merging into one another. The sweet scent of shampoo lingers in the air—a fragrance Hyunjin carefully massaged into your hair twenty minutes ago, his fingers still as gentle as they grazed your scalp, now at the age of twenty-six.

Nearly two decades later, Hyunjin still knows that he loves you. It is a different one from the love he felt at seven—a metamorphosis akin to the moon's phases, from crescent to full, distinct yet continuous. It clung to his being, melted into the very essence of his soul.

"Just how many white shirts do you own?" you giggle, folding another pair of Hyunjin's clothing, the melody of your laughter still rattling the insides of his heart. He smiles sheepishly, planting a tender kiss on your forehead before responding, "You wear half of them with me."

"Your clothes are mine. You agreed on this when you proposed to me," you state matter-of-factly.

"And what else did I agree on?" he smiles, placing two pairs of matching socks in the basket—yours and his.

"That you'd kiss me instead of doing the laundry," you say mischievously, and he chuckles, tilting his head back. The clothes are momentarily forgotten as he lowers your body onto the couch, one hand cradling your head.

"You know I can't say no to you," he smiles, left dimple appearing as it always does when you're near.

"I know," you grin, pulling him down by the hem of his pajamas, your lips meeting his.

Hyunjin still kisses you with the same quiet passion, slowly, as if rediscovering you all over again. His hand cradles your jaw, thumb caressing your cheek gently, as his lips find yours again and again—rosy, plump, seeking solace in your familiar warmth.

He's always been drawn to mysteries, grand things, and overwhelming emotions that defy comprehension. Things he'd never fully know, things he'd never be bored of. Yet, with you, it's different; he knows you, he's learned you, and he loves you more every day—purposefully, by choice, because he can't fathom a reality where he doesn't.

His lips press upon yours one last time before he pulls you onto his lap, burying his head in the crook of your neck. "You smell nice," he whispers.

"I smell like you."

"I know," he smiles, a gentle breeze escaping his lips and caressing your skin.

He closes his eyes, savoring the quietness, the domesticity of the scene—the folded laundry on the table, the background hum of the TV, the meal you'll cook later, waltzing under the fridge's light. You, the one love of his life—the small love and the grand one, the first love and the last one. The embodiment of it all.

Your arms drape around his shoulders as you relax in his hold, your breaths syncing into a tranquil rhythm. He's built himself a home in the ridges of your collarbones, a place for him to rest in the crook of your shoulder blade. Both of you are okay, both of you are safe.

"Do you remember when we were seven? We traveled together for the first time," you speak after a while, a weighty emotion enveloping your voice.

"I do."

"You promised me we'd run away when we grow older."

"I did."

"I don't want to run anymore. I'm content with you, right here," you whisper, and the words feel like sunflowers blooming in Hyunjin's chest. "I was so scared of growing up, of never feeling like I belong. To myself, to anyone. But I do, with you."

"Always," he pulls away, bringing your hand to his mouth, leaving sweet kisses on your ring finger.

"Thank you, my Hyune," you say, tears gathering in your eyes like morning dewdrops on leaves. "Thank you for peeling my oranges."

Your nose brushes against his, his thumb drawing circles on your palm.

"Thank you for pretending you don't know how to."

[hyvneluv]

Ate once again

resentment | by design chapter two

pairing: hyunjin x reader ; chan x reader | wc: 23.4k | genre: adult romance | warnings: heavy angst ; heartbreak ; themes of mental health struggles ; themes of grief ; complicated feelings ; explicit sexual content. reader discretion is advised. this series contains heavy themes that could be upsetting to some. if you're concerned it might be an issue for you, please read the unabridged list of warnings, which also contains nsfw warnings. this work is for adult audiences since it contains mature themes and explicit sexual content.

Hope takes such a long time to die. But it dies.  Hyunjin’s story goes like this. He fell in love and then he fell in despair. And when he reached the bottom of it all, he had to climb back up. And he did. Only, nothing was ever the same after.

Resentment can only exist in a place where there was once love.

To be more accurate, love is often still very much present as resentment sneaks in, as it permeates one’s skin and makes a home out of their body. Grudges don’t arise out of pure hatred—at least not in Hyunjin’s eyes. They come from a place of love, the same way disappointment does. You can’t ever be disappointed at somebody you dislike, or somebody you’re indifferent to. No, resentment is much like a flower and love is the garden. The first bloom appears and you wonder why. Because you don’t remember planting those seeds. Yet it grows, furtively, but anchoring itself in the soil with strong roots. And then it turns out the flowers are poisonous and invasive, and they’ve killed all the other ones.

Hyunjin knew resentment intimately. It started at a young age when he began showing interest and skill in painting. He must have been no more than seven or eight, visiting his grandparents’ cottage house away from the city. Hyunjin wasn’t particularly fond of summer vacation because he was an only child and his parents kept him busy during the summer, so he couldn’t see his friends very often. 

But he liked the cottage house. That particular day was especially sunny but not too warm, so the grown-ups had decided to spend the afternoon outside, sitting around the patio table under a large parasol with a variety of snacks and drinks before them. A retro music radio station was playing American oldies from a small radio cassette player and the air smelled like freshly cut grass. 

Hyunjin was sitting at the table too, only he wasn’t a part of the conversation. And truth be told, he didn’t understand most of it anyway. He was keeping himself busy with paints and brushes that his grandfather always kept around. He had some that nobody was allowed to touch, not even his son, but Hyunjin was welcome to help himself in the leftovers or spares. Mind you, there was nothing suboptimal about those leftovers because everything was of professional quality. Only, if his grandfather decided he no longer wanted a certain shade of blue in his palette, then it ended up in the leftover basket.

“Look at him go!” his grandfather had said at one point. It had even taken Hyunjin a few seconds to realize he was speaking about him but not to him. “Hell, Dhako. Seems like your boy is bound to be the next big thing in the family. He’s even better than you were two or three years older than that!” 

Resentment. What an ugly, awful feeling. It smells foul and tastes even worse, and Hyunjin had been choking on it since childhood. 

He wouldn’t say that his father hated him, no, hence the resentment, the grudge. Hyunjin wasn’t yet aware of it at the time. His mind was too young to comprehend the intricacies of the situation. He just felt like he wasn’t good enough for his dad who kept berating and diminishing him. Later—much later—Hyunjin would come to understand that it was what made him into the man he was today. He couldn’t know for sure, but would he have developed his artistic abilities to that extent if he hadn’t been animated with the vivid desire to please his father, which prompted him to try hard and harder so he could improve?

Or maybe this was a delusion, an attempt at making peace with it.

Hyunjin’s childhood was in every possible way rather unconventional. Both of his parents were artists, just like his grandfather had been, and his father before him. His mom taught art to children with disabilities and his father worked as a curator at a museum. It meant that Hyunjin was often at the museum growing up. In a way, it’s the museum that raised him. His mother loved him very dearly but was too attached to her job, and his father didn’t care enough about him to participate significantly in his education. It was the wooden floors and warm lighting of the museum that were his home—the museum was close to his school and his mother often worked in the evenings, as she gave art workshops in hospitals. 

So Hyunjin would sit in his father’s office quietly and do his homework or read a book. When he was a little older, Hyunjin was allowed to walk in the museum if he was accompanied by someone, and there was always someone who wanted to show him around anyway. The employees were all so nice to him, and it was only later—again, much later—that Hyunjin realized they had noticed the gaps in the love his father had, or rather, didn’t have for him, and were trying to compensate for it.

Then his father got another job, one that required traveling. His mother was opposed to it and they fought a lot but Hyunjin pretended not to hear it. He would stay in his room, light up his desk with a small flashlight held between two books, and paint while his father called his wife names, and vice versa. Hyunjin didn’t know this at the time and neither did his mother, but for many years, his father became an art forgery specialist. He traveled all over the world, sponsored by a network of other, bigger criminals, to help create forgeries and even to falsely authenticate fake paintings as real. 

Hyunjin was well into his teenage years when he found out, and he found out when his father was beaten up almost to death, in America, for selling a fake Cézanne to the wrong people. He almost died. He was supposed to die, his corpse left out in the open to send a message to the other forgers in his network, yet he pulled through. Since he had been living under various fabricated identities, he was able to return to Korea and be Naro’s descendant again. From then on, their family always had a lot of money but his mother kept working anyway. His father did not work, not that Hyunjin could tell, although he’d say he had ‘meetings’ and ‘stuff’ to do. 

Looking at Death right in the eyes did not change Hwang Dhako. It did not make him softer, or kinder. It did not make him appreciate the little things in life. It did not make him love his son more. It did not make him resent his son less.

All the while, Hyunjin painted. When he still lived at home, his father would barge into his room just to criticize whatever he was working on. If Hyunjin was doing watercolors, he’d tell him he didn’t know how to use them yet, that he should stick to something simpler, less volatile, like acrylic. If Hyunjin did acrylic, he would then tell him that it was for children, that he could do better than that, and that ‘real men paint with oil’. Or whatever the fuck. 

And when Hyunjin painted with oil? Then he did not know how to mix his pigments correctly. He did not know how to blend colors. His work was bland. His work was too colorful. The lines were too harsh. There was not enough contrast. The theme was boring. Or impossible to understand. Maybe he should do something else. Not everyone is meant to be an artist, but then Hyunjin wouldn’t be a good fit to be a curator, professor, or historian either. 

The worst part is that Dhako would utter these things and make it sound like he said it out of genuine concern. He would say these things as though he was a master teaching his pupil. He would say these things like he cared, like they came from a place of love. But the love had been tainted and resentment had taken over.

Hyunjin had assumed that his father’s resentment would be the worst he would ever have to endure. Only, he was wrong about that. And about so many other things.

Hyunjin met Dara when he ran out of space in his apartment and decided to rent a studio so he could keep working in a comfortable setting. 

This came after his multiple attempts at attending university. He tried in Seoul first before choosing to relocate to Italy, where he assumed an immersion among some of the world’s most famous masterpieces would help him major. When that didn’t work, he went to Paris with the same hopes. That worked a little better, only, instead of graduating in one subject, he jumped from one major to the other, unable to decide what he liked most. Or what was most realistic for him. For a long while, he did not mind—he even enjoyed it, figuring he was opening doors for himself even though he wasn’t actively honing just one skill at a time. 

Art history, photography, visual and studio arts, creative writing, and even a little bit of animation. He liked all of it, of course. Happiness had never been Hyunjin’s default state but that period of his life had been when he was closest to it. In the sense of contentment, fulfillment, and how easy it was to go through his days. Being away from home and his father was a big part of it, but he was curious by nature, and he felt good in an environment where he was learning. 

For a couple of years, things were good. He got good grades in most of his classes and participated actively during lectures, although at the end of the day, none of it mattered since he never lingered anywhere for long. Still, it earned him the good graces of professors and students alike, boosting his confidence, and broadening his horizons.

Until Paris. In Paris, Hyunjin studied Impressionism a good amount, finding himself fascinated by it. He carefully researched Monet’s chaotically deliberate brushstrokes and Renoir’s lifelike lighting. He tried to replicate Sisley’s incredible contrasts and Morisot’s rich textures. He spent a lot of time in museums, which, to him, still felt like home. It did not matter which museum it was—they all reminded him of his childhood and the afternoons spent among masterpieces, evading his father and taking in the sights.

Melancholy permeated these memories and yet, Hyunjin was fond of them nonetheless. Maybe because there was so much beauty among the darkness. Maybe because despite his father’s resentment, Hyunjin had never stopped painting. He had never stopped creating. Maybe because by then, he had realized that his devotion to painting came from the void left by his father, and his need, as a boy and then a teenager, to fill it with something beautiful. A need that was most definitely more a habit, a self-defense mechanism, than it was anything else. Still. 

He was at home in museum exhibit rooms, with their high ceilings and worn-out floors and whispers. He liked to listen to what people said. Many of them were, of course, commenting on the art in their vicinity. It did not matter to him whether they had never been in a museum before or if they were the art director themselves. To Hyunjin, there was no distinction—art ought to be appreciated by anybody who needed it. To him, art was home, in a way that was more intimate, more intrinsic, than museums. He believed that art could and should become part of every living person. Everybody should be exposed to it in some kind of way—he was persuaded it could make the world a better place. 

So he listened to them. The people. The Karens who didn’t get it. The old men who smelled like cigarettes and pretended to understand all of it. The other students. The average museum-goers, the experimented ones, the painters, the sculptors, the little children who held their mother’s hand and looked at the art with fascination despite being intimidated by it. 

In a way, this became Hyunjin’s school, and it was on those days that he learned the most. At least it felt like it. Often, he would sketch them in the notebook he kept on himself at all times. To remember what they said. To remember what they thought of the colors and the composition of this or that painting. It fed his soul in a way nothing had before, and Hyunjin came close to some sort of epiphany during that time—close enough that he could feel its warmth on his fingertips, but too far for him to even know what it was he was reaching out for. A young man, arm outstretched, trying to seize the sun and keep it in his grasp, but blinded by it. He was close, so close, to discovering something bright and beautiful. 

And then he ended up in Florian Auclair’s class. Florian, by all means, did not look like an asshole. He was younger than most professors and had been given a class almost immediately after earning his PhD. He was a tall man, although not quite as tall as Hyunjin, with a quiet, monotone voice that made it hard to stay awake during his class. He had built his course with other professors of the department and it was intended to be innovative—it was neither a theoretical course nor a practical one. Or rather, it was both at once, and more. The syllabus included visits to specific museums or even locations in the city, and Hyunjin had been looking forward to it since day one. In fact, he was so excited when Auclair was explaining his syllabus and giving details that Hyunjin took notes. For a brief instant then, he thought, maybe, that was it. Maybe he could be a professor like this. He hadn’t considered it before because he couldn’t decide whether he wanted to teach art history, art theory, or practical courses. But this brand new course offered him a vision of what education could be, and, for a brief instant, gave him some sort of peace regarding his mother, too.

She had always been so devoted to it. The teaching of art. In a way that was more addiction than devotion perhaps—like she couldn’t help it. Couldn’t help staying late at work to paint with palliative patients. Even though it meant leaving her son behind. Even though it meant leaving her son to be raised by a museum, its employees, its changing collections. It was not because she did not love him. 

Later—much later—Hyunjin realized it all came from a lack of love for herself. It was the only way her mind allowed her to feel a sense of reward, of purpose. She wasn’t a bad mother. She was a pretty good one. Motherhood just was not her purpose in life. 

Hyunjin didn’t resent her for it, but he resented the whole concept of being an art teacher. In any way. Which was paradoxical considering the amount of art classes he had been taking. He resented it because he understood—at least now he did. When he stood in a corner of an exhibition room and heard somebody ponder out loud to their companion, about a piece, an art movement, anything, he had to work very hard to resist joining the conversation. And he resisted because it would be out of place to interrupt two strangers to art-splain them, exposing himself as some sort of museum stalker all the while. 

But god, did it feel good to share his passion. His knowledge. He had been raised into it, into art, brushstrokes and blending and themes and pigments. They were a part of him, of his soul—he was nothing without art. And the dopamine rush it gave him to share this with others simply could not be described with words. It cost him a lot—especially in his social life. So it truly was around that time that he began understanding his mother, and his resentment for teaching receded, like an ocean at low tide, leaving the sand damp and smooth behind, ready to be molded into something else again. 

Florian Auclair was a brilliant painter. He shared some of his work with his students in that first class, also explaining everything he hoped he would teach them and how they could all learn together. They would meet artists and curators and more, if he was able to book everyone he wished. 

When Auclair dismissed the class, Hyunjin stayed behind, as did a few others. They stood at the front of the vast lecture hall, sitting on the desks or leaning on the blackboard. Just four of them and Auclair, who answered their questions and discussed certain points that had been brought forward during his presentation. At first, Hyunjin listened, mostly, as he figured others might have the same interrogations as he did. Mostly, he was interested in how their work would be graded and wished to learn more about the paper they’d have to write at the end of the semester so that he could begin his research immediately. The conversation was lighthearted. Florian Auclair was fluent in both French and English and Italian as well, apparently. He gave everyone the information they needed.

And then Hyunjin asked him about the paper. Auclair seemed a bit reluctant to drop too much information about it so early—it would give him and the others currently present an advantage that others wouldn’t have—but he still mentioned that they would be required to investigate and research one art movement of their choice. It was a huge relief to Hyunjin who already knew exactly what he intended to write about. When he thanked Auclair, the other students did the same, all of them shaking their professor’s hand one by one—a short, polite gesture during which Florian asked for their name. 

Almost as though life required a dramatic effect, Hyunjin was last. His hand was still squeezing Auclair’s when he said those two little words. “Hwang Hyunjin.” Auclair let go of his hand, his chin lifting a few inches as he gave him an appraising look, his facial expression turning stiff and cold.

Hyunjin wasn’t an idiot—he was well aware that Auclair knew exactly who he was, only, he did not let it show to the others. He looked like he was trying to play it cool with Hyunjin as well, not acknowledging anything, and everybody went on their way. 

The week after, Auclair’s class would take place not in the lecture hall but at the Musée d’Orsay, where everybody would be required to choose one painting and sketch it with as much detail as they could. A few weeks from now, they would travel to the South of France to visit another museum in Montpellier. There, they would have to find a second painting from a different art movement and sketch this one as well. 

Then would come the actual assignment, which was to swap the art movement and style of the two paintings and sketch both once again. Ultimately, they would pick one and turn it into a proper painting using the medium of their choice. The assignment was exciting and Hyunjin just couldn’t wait—he knew way before he made it to the museum which two paintings he would be using for the assignment.

Orsay was full of Monet’s paintings—he appreciated his unique and recognizable style, so he wanted to explore it further. As for the second painting, Hyunjin would study Alexandre Cabanel’s work since he liked his moody and evocative pieces. The task was daunting as both painters had drastically different approaches and styles, but the challenge only made it better and more enticing. 

The light was just right when Hyunjin sat down to sketch Monet’s Nymphéas Bleus. Another student was with him, having picked the same painting. She was nice and she was pretty, too. They chatted as they sketched and it took Hyunjin a solid hour before he awkwardly asked her if she wanted to have coffee with him after class. She blushed violently and accepted before excusing herself for just a few seconds, asking him if he could keep an eye on her stuff, which he did gladly. 

That was when Auclair walked by him and looked at his sketch with an expression dangerously close to disdain. Hyunjin was used to it because his father had made him this way, but he couldn’t deny that it hurt nonetheless, especially coming from a professor. Here. In Paris. Just a few feet away from a piece by one of his favorite painters, which he was sketching.

“Is there a problem, Monsieur?” he asked, taking a deep breath as his mood swayed between furious and devastated. 

Auclair shrugged. “Not really. No issue here, just a little lackluster, don’t you think?” 

Lackluster. Hyunjin put down his pencil, standing up. “I’m not done sketching it, Monsieur,” he replied, speaking slowly, warmth spreading at the nape of his neck. 

The professor blinked, tilting his head just a little. “I hope you know you won’t be getting any favors just because of your family name—not in my class, non.” 

There it was. It wasn’t the first time a situation such as this one happened in Hyunjin’s life—his ancestry had haunted him during his entire academic career. Either he was getting it too easy as teachers and sports coaches tried to get noticed by his parents, especially his father, or they were making him work twice as hard, as though he had to prove he was worthy of his name, that he was someone beyond it.

“I hope you know I wasn’t expecting any favors, Monsieur Auclair,” Hyunjin retorted, mimicking perfectly the professor’s displeased tone. 

“I thought you might choose Cornelia’s Colors for this assignment,” Auclair went on, completely ignoring Hyunjin’s response. “Wouldn’t it be fitting?” 

Hyunjin swallowed a grunt. He had visited the museum the first week he moved here, seeing Naro’s vibrant and famous painting of the pink bird for the second time in his life. He didn’t even remember the first as he was just a small child, on vacation with his parents. 

“I don’t think it would be fitting, no.” He paused—just for a second. “It is a beautiful piece, though.”

“Of course. Stunning. Your—what, great grandfather? Great, great, great grandfather? It was a long time ago, wasn’t it?—sure was a master of pigments.” 

The cold and cordial tone of the conversation made Hyunjin want to punch Auclair in the face. “He was,” he admitted. “My grandfather still has some of the books that were in his library, about color theory and even chemistry. He truly wanted to mix the most beautiful colors.” At that time, Hyunjin couldn’t know it yet, but his grandfather would pass away that year, and he would inherit all those precious volumes as well as his grandad’s beloved painting supplies. To his only son, he left money. Nothing of sentimental value. And for that, Hyunjin’s father would resent him. A lot. 

Auclair pressed his tongue into his cheek, a cloud passing in his already dark eyes. “I heard a lot about you, Hwang. Some say you are a prodigy. Others say you’re reaping a legacy that isn’t yours to benefit from. I’m looking forward to finding out which one it is.”

Through gritted teeth, Hyunjin retorted, “I’m neither of these things. I’m just a guy who paints. I paint because I was born into a family of artists. That’s it.”

“Yeah, I have to give you that one, Hwang. You are just a guy who paints.” And then he walked away. 

Hyunjin stood, dazed, for a few moments, lost in his thoughts. Part of him wanted to fuck off, leave this museum and this city, and return home. Because Auclair was wrong. Because Auclair was right. All his life, Hyunjin had only been that—Hwang Naro’s descendant. He was pretty sure it was the only reason he got into this school in the first place. 

It felt like they—as in, a general they—were expecting something of him, only he didn’t know what it was. And maybe they didn’t even know it themselves. But everybody was just expecting. Waiting in anticipation. Hoping he would turn out to be something more. To be something at all. Something broke inside of him that day, as shame overtook him in the middle of one of the world’s most famous museums. 

It was just a name. It just so happened that Naro had a son, who had a son, who also had a son, and then that son had a son, who he named Dhako, and Dhako had a son who he named Hyunjin. Somehow, the name had persisted this way, through a long line of only sons. It meant nothing. One of these people could have been a daughter and then the chain would have been broken if she had married and taken her husband’s name. 

It was stupid. Ridiculous. And frankly, it was a little backward and macho. 

It was that day that Hyunjin realized, for the first time, that not only was he expected to somehow live up to the name, but he was also expected to continue the bloodline. He was Naro’s last descendant. 

“Hyunjin?” He jumped when the girl addressed him after coming back. Her cheeks had returned to their normal color, but she was staring at him with a frown. “Are you alright?” The girl’s name was Romane, and she looked like she was genuinely concerned.

“Yes, yes, I’m fine.” He said it out of habit, but happiness had never really been a familiar thing to him. It was a foreign concept. Something he knew existed but couldn’t comprehend. “I just…” 

He let his sentence trail off and become nothing and walked away, out of this particular room. He knew where his feet were taking him. His mind was blank, much like a canvas before it was claimed by an artist and they did something to it.

It took only a few minutes before he found himself standing in front of Cornelia’s Colors. It was in a smaller room, adjacent to another exposition hall that was a lot more crowded because it had a Van Gogh—Starry Night—in it. No, not that one. That one, the one that everybody knows, came after and was not currently a part of Orsay’s collection. Starry Night Over the Rhone is similar in composition and color, but less chaotic. Vincent’s soul, Hyunjin presumed, was a little more whole when he painted that one. A sublime work with lifelike lights and beautiful contrasts. 

Anyway. Hyunjin was almost alone in the room as he faced the pink bird, which was shaded with blue and black, flying in a vibrant sky. He wanted to touch it, feel the oil under his fingertips, study the expert brushstrokes. He wanted to become this bird and be beautiful too. He wanted to be something like that. He wanted to go home.

He wanted to start over. Not just college, which, arguably, he had started over a few times already. He wanted to go back to when he was just a child. Innocent. Young enough that he didn’t even know what his family name was. Young enough that he could run to his mother when he was upset and she would pick him up and sing him a lullaby. 

Young enough that his father didn’t resent him.

If he was given the opportunity to go back and change something, then he would only change one thing—he would never, not even once, pick up a paintbrush. In this life, he was made of art. It was all that he had. All that he was. It meant that he couldn’t give it up. Or rather, he knew that it would kill him when he would, in fact, give up. 

Hyunjin took a few steps back, observing the painting from afar, observing the people who were looking at it. There was an old man who didn’t linger for very long. And then, from the next room where Starry Night was shown came a young couple. The woman was speaking incredibly fast, as though she was afraid to forget her thoughts before she could express them. He listened to their conversation when he realized that she was explaining to her boyfriend—no, husband, if he could believe their ring fingers—the difference between the two Starry Nights, also mentioning other pieces from Van Gogh’s nocturne series.

Then she saw it. Cornelia’s Colors. A soft gasp spilled from her delicate lips, painted in a pink that wasn’t unlike the one she was currently looking at. She covered her mouth with a faintly trembling hand while her husband was taking her other one in his, bringing her closer to the frame so she could really see it.

“What’s this one, babe?” the man asked with a strong Australian accent, leaning closer to read the description. 

She turned to him, then to the painting again. “It’s by Naro. He’s the one who did my favorite painting.” She pressed herself closer to her husband. “It expresses the beauty and freedom of a young woman’s heart.” Tears were threatening to spill from her eyes. “Isn’t it gorgeous?” 

It was clear to Hyunjin that this man definitely found the painting pleasant to look at but in the same way he would find a sunset pleasant to look at, too. In any case, he delivered a line that surely got him laid that night. “It is,” he admitted with a playful smile. “But you’re prettier.” 

The woman buried her face in her hands, elbowing his side. “Please, for the love of god, Chr—”

Hyunjin didn’t stay to see the rest of it. He did not need to. He did not want to. 

He hadn’t admitted this to anybody before, and not even to himself, but he wanted that. He wanted his work to be hung on a wall and for it to make people cry, too. Or laugh. He wanted to inspire them to love and to hate and to exist. He wanted lipstick-coated lips to gasp upon seeing it. He wanted to force beauty into the world. He wanted lovers to think of his paintings when they made love or when they fought. He wanted students to come to the museum to sketch one of his pieces. He wanted to be the subject of PhD theses. He wanted to be remembered.

He wanted his art to matter. And he wanted it to matter because of what it was more than because of who had painted it. But, selfishly, he wanted to matter, too.

He wanted to be somebody’s favorite painter. 

Romane was still waiting for him near the Monet, not at all absorbed by her task, mostly glancing around to find him. She seemed relieved when he joined her again and did not press him when he didn’t talk. They drew together in silence, only exchanging a few words when Hyunjin asked to borrow her pencil sharpener. An hour later, when Auclair gathered the class together again outside the museum so he could give them more information about the assignment and next week’s class, Hyunjin avoided his gaze and looked at the sky instead. Then, when everybody was dismissed, he turned to Romane.

“Wanna go have a drink instead?” 

She blushed again but she nodded. They shared a meal and drinks and talked a lot. She was really, really pretty, and fun. Her medium of choice was oil pastels on canvas, but ultimately she aspired to become a researcher and study the science behind art pieces. Hyunjin found that very cool. When both of them had enough drinks, he asked her why she had agreed to come with him today.

It was such a stupid question too, and he knew it before he even finished uttering it. “Is it because of my name?” 

She averted her gaze, choosing to focus on her glass, which she emptied in one go. “No.” 

“I wouldn’t be upset if it were the case.” And that was true. He would be lying if he said he never used it to get laid. 

“But it’s not.” She licked her lips nervously. “I thought you were mysterious. And cute.” 

Romane lived with four other roommates in a tiny apartment but it was still closer to the bar than his place was. He fucked her twice, once against the wall of the bedroom she shared with another girl who was doing her homework in the living room, then again in her bed. He fucked her maybe a little harder than he needed to. He fucked her as hard as he would have wanted to punch that Auclair cunt in the face. He fucked her hard enough that she would remember him. 

They dated for a couple of months. The sex was great. One day, she asked if he wanted to fuck her ass. She had never done it before and wanted to try. Another time she wanted to have sex in a public space so she sucked him off at the back of a train. Then came the trip to Montpellier for Auclair’s class. They walked together in the museum, hand in hand, like a real couple would. And they were a real couple, Hyunjin figured. But something felt off, he just couldn’t figure out what. 

Still, she sat with him when he went to sketch the second painting he had chosen, which was Alexandre Cabanel’s Phaedra. Ultimately, he wanted to paint this one using Monet’s impressionist style and color palette, which would fundamentally change the painting, and even its meaning in some way. 

“Are you sure you want to sketch this one too?” Hyunjin asked Romane soon after they settled near the painting, which was rather large. 

She shrugged. “What do you mean?” 

“I mean, you don’t have to use the same painting as I do.” 

He saw it then, in Romane’s eyes. A certain darkness, tangible and awful. “I know,” she replied. “Do you want me to sketch something else?” 

Hyunjin sighed. He had noticed that in the past couple of weeks especially, Romane seemed to seek his validation and his affection too, using methods that he could only imagine she would come to regret one day. On days when he was a little busier and couldn’t text her as much, she would drag him to a private bathroom somewhere and give him head, not letting him return the favor. On days when Hyunjin was a little less patient, more irritated, more stressed, she would send him nudes or even videos of herself masturbating. 

But it was only then, in Montpellier, that Hyunjin realized the magnitude of it. How fucked up it was. He hated himself for not seeing it before. For letting Romane become pathetic because he wasn’t able to give her what she truly wanted, which was love. 

“You can sketch whatever you want, Romie,” he replied, keeping his voice low, troubled by the realization that had just hit him. “It’s your assignment, your grade.”

She stayed by his side for a few minutes before moving a little farther to another painting. Another Cabanel—his very famous Fallen Angel. The day went by as it normally would have—Hyunjin endured a bit more of Auclair’s backhanded compliments and snarky comments, and he sat in the silence Romane imposed on him. 

They had dinner together nonetheless and the mood improved when they discussed their plans for their respective paintings. She would paint the waterlilies in Cabanel’s style, she said, insisting once again that she could pick a different painter entirely if he preferred. 

He took her back to the hotel room he rented for the both of them. There, he told her she shouldn’t fold herself into whatever shape she thought others wanted. He told her she should find her own voice, her own ways, that she should carve her own path, even if it meant some people would like her less. It would never be a bad thing because she would discover new aspects of herself every day. 

She cried a lot, asking him if he hated her. And of course he didn’t. She was still crying when they laid down on the bed to sleep, so he held her in his arms and apologized. 

But he knew that she knew he was right. He knew, also, that this would be their last night together. So he fucked her as hard as he had the first time, drilling her into the mattress, pulling her hair, fucking her from behind. She melted a little more with each thrust, her pussy throbbing around him, soaking the sheets beneath her. She came so hard she almost blacked out, milking him in the process, but he fucked her through their orgasm. 

It was her who broke up with him as they recovered from the intense and sloppy sex. “I wanted you to love me so badly that I completely forgot who I am.” What a sad thing. “I’m so angry inside, Hyunjin. I almost hate you.”

He knew that feeling intimately. It wasn’t just love, and it wasn't hate. It was something else, something much worse, uglier. Insidious. 

Resentment.

Hyunjin dropped out of Auclair’s class right after he handed him the painting, Phaedra, in the impressionist style. He was excessively proud of it, having worked many hours on it, so much that he would surely fail other classes. It didn’t matter though. 

When he went to meet Auclair in his office to give it to him, Hyunjin informed him that he wouldn’t return to his class. Or to any class. He had made up his mind and already bought a plane ticket to go back home.

“Why did you give me this then?” Florian Auclair asked, staring at the canvas Hyunjin brought.

“Because I wanted you to see it.” He was proud of it. The painting. It had been tricky to produce after all, and the idea behind the assignment was clever. He had learned a lot through it. “Also, I just wanted to know if you resented me.”

That seemed to deeply unsettle Florian. He put the canvas down, studying it a few more seconds before turning to Hyunjin again. That was new for him—to be blunt about things, direct. To ask for the information he needed. But he had come to realize that living in uncertainty was worse than living with a truth he didn’t like. 

He had learned a few things about Auclair, mostly by asking around the people he knew in the department. Because, well, his name was known, and professors often came to him for discussions. And this is what he learned through asking—that Auclair had heard that the head of the department would offer Hyunjin a course of his own, should he choose to keep studying at their institution. However, it meant that Auclair’s experimental course would probably have to be removed from the program to accommodate him.

“It’s alright if you do,” Hyunjin added. “But I want to know and I think I’m entitled to that knowledge.” 

Maybe Auclair couldn’t admit to it. “No, I don’t resent you. I resent the way the system works.”

Hyunjin didn’t pretend he didn’t know what this was about. “I liked your course a lot. I thought you were a visionary. I wouldn’t have let them take it off the program. I wouldn’t even have wanted a course of my own. I was never a threat. They gave you a whole course right as you graduated, too.” 

Florian Auclair went to the window of his office to stare at it for a few seconds while he thought this over. It was a rather cloudy day. 

“I appreciate that you think like that and cared enough to come and tell me,” Auclair said, his gaze still turned to the cityscape outside. “They gave me a class, yes. They’re on my ass constantly though, making sure I’m not wasting their precious money by teaching it. But I know it would have been different for you. And I know you will always have it easier than any of us.” He turned to Hyunjin then. “You’re one of the best students I ever had. Your understanding of color and the way you use it…” He sighed.

Hyunjin came a little closer. “So why do you hate me?” He just needed to know. 

“I don’t hate you, Hwang. You piss me off. You’re either the best contemporary painter currently alive or you will be within a few years. But it doesn’t even fucking matter. You could be the worst and you would still be standing here in front of me anyway. Have you never thought about it? Why do you think schools let you retake courses, change majors, and it never affects your GPA? These schools—this very university—all want to be the one to hand Naro’s last descendant his diploma.” 

As much as it hurt, Hyunjin had to respect it. He looked at his assignment again, seeing it from a different eye now. He saw it all—the countless hours he spent practicing and working on his technique, all the times his father shat on his work, all the times Hyunjin had to start a painting over because he wasn’t happy with the result. He saw all the hours spent at the museum when he was younger. He saw his professors shaking his hand and praising him.

Auclair was right. 

None of it mattered.

“I think you’re doing the right thing,” Auclair added after a while. “Dropping out, I mean. All you’ll ever get here is either bias or prejudice. You should find your own way.” 

And that’s exactly what Hyunjin did. He packed his things, left, and started over. Again.

When he returned to Seoul, Hyunjin stayed with a friend he knew from his old university while he was looking for a place of his own. It was not bad at all. He had always liked Seungmin a lot anyway, even though the two of them didn’t have a lot in common at first glance. They got along well, like brothers. 

Despite being busy with his job, he helped Hyunjin a lot. He helped cheer him up after the Paris fiasco. He helped him find a job—a paid internship at the company he worked at. They were a media company with different markets such as two radio stations, podcasts, book publishing, magazine publishing, and even a small video game studio that was just starting. Hyunjin didn’t need the job per se—while he wasn’t crazy rich he had enough money to live well. But Seungmin insisted that it would keep him busy with something else, and Hyunjin had to agree. So for a few months, he would go to work and then come back home and paint, extending his stay at Seungmin’s place because it was great to live with him and it was easier this way.

Until Seungmin met a girl and it turned out to be a perfect match. 

Hyunjin found a nice apartment not too far from the office. The building was a little old but he didn’t mind—the light was good in the living room thanks to the large windows. That was the place where he painted his first commissioned work—Seungmin had asked him to paint his girlfriend’s cat so he could give it to her on her birthday. Hyunjin didn’t want to take money from him but Seungmin insisted. I want to be your first client. It made Hyunjin smile. The cat was really cute. 

Hyunjin opened an Instagram account for his work. He did it more for himself than for others, feeling like it could also serve the purpose of organizing and archiving his work. Things happened quickly then—he started selling some paintings while opening a few slots for commissions here and there. It was hard, sometimes. To let them go. The paintings. Hyunjin didn’t have much—all he had was his family name, painting supplies, and windows in his living room. He lived a rather solitary life, using his lunch breaks to sketch what he wanted to paint in the evening and his weekends to produce even more art. 

He painted. A lot. With all of his heart. It was all he had. It was all he was. It was all he could do. It was all he was meant to be. A man standing before a blank canvas. A man saturating it with the colors of his soul. It felt wrong to sell them. It felt as though he was selling parts of himself to strangers. He thought about that at night when he was in bed. By now, dozens of strangers had his sorrows, his joys, his worries, his love, his pain hung in their living room. Or maybe in a hallway, or their bedroom. 

The absence of resentment meant an absence of love. For months, he didn’t speak to any member of his family. He just painted. It was better this way. But it was very lonely. 

He was very alone. 

There were days when the sunlight filtering through his windows wasn’t enough to warm him up. Music wasn’t enough to cover the heavy silence of his empty apartment. The feeling of his paintbrushes applying oils on the canvas wasn’t enough to fill his empty heart. 

He’d go out then, with Seungmin or other people from the office who weren’t really his friends. They were just people from the office. It was better to keep people at arm’s length. Sometimes he’d even go out alone. Usually he had a few drinks and, rarely, went home with a girl. Or a guy. Their place—never his. He didn’t want people to exist in the same space where his art existed. It was fine if they saw and used his body for one night, but he did not want them to see the colors of his soul. It wasn’t like he had series and series of hookups, but sometimes it felt good to pretend. To pretend he wasn’t lonely and destined to die alone. To pretend he could be loved. To pretend he wasn’t just flesh and bones, that something, a small fire perhaps, still existed within him. 

Every time somebody bought a painting from him, he figured it was because of his family name, despite the fact that he signed his art with his first name only. Every time somebody opened their legs for him, he figured it was because of who he was, even though they had no fucking clue who he was. 

None of it mattered. But it did not mean there was no pain even though it didn’t matter. 

He painted. It was all he was meant to do. He painted until he ran out of space in his apartment to store the paintings, the canvases, his paints, and the shipping supplies required to wrap and send out his art. He couldn’t stop thinking about it. His father. Romane. Auclair. The other professors, those who were too nice to him. The ones who resented him. 

Over time, his paintings changed. He painted less. He found an art studio for rent, furnished it and transferred all of his supplies there. He thought it would help to keep art and his life separate, only there was nothing to separate—they were made of the same things, the same atoms. 

Hyunjin went to the HR department of the office to officially quit the job. He wanted it to be clear that he wasn’t quitting because he disliked working there, only, he had decided to be an artist full-time. He spent more time elaborating his projects and more time painting them, too. He tried all sorts of new techniques and mediums. 

It just so happened that the CEO of the company was also visiting HR that day, and this is how Hyunjin met Lee Minho. “I saw your work,” he told Hyunjin. “I’d like to buy something from you. Want some coffee?” 

Hyunjin was largely intimidated by the man—but that lasted only a few minutes. It turned out Minho was a warm, kind man, clever and passionate, too. He told Hyunjin that someone from upper management had sent him a link to his page. 

They talked about Hyunjin’s tortuous path in college and they talked about Minho’s love for camping. Despite being very rich, he had a very grounded attitude. 

“So, about the commission…” Hyunjin started.

“Oh, no no no. Not a commission,” Minho specified. “Just paint something, and I’ll buy it.” Seeing that Hyunjin was a little uneasy, he went on. “It’s your creative mind that I’m after—I’m not looking to have my vision come true. Paint whatever you want, however you want it, whichever size. Doesn’t matter. It can take a month or a year.” He pulled a business card out of his desk but before he handed it to him, he wrote a phone number at the back. “That’s my personal phone. Call me when it’s done. You name your price then. Any price.” 

As Hyunjin walked home that day, he realized that Lee Minho was the first person since his grandfather to blindly trust him and his abilities and to believe in him. Not once during today’s conversation did he bring up Naro or any of his art. He asked Hyunjin about his favorite locations in Europe and told him about the best fishing spots he had visited. He was too cultured and too intelligent not to know who Hyunjin was, so the omission was intentional. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that. But he knew exactly what he wanted to paint and he couldn’t wait to start. 

He had been touched by Minho’s honest, almost pure appreciation of his camping trips. The way he described nature—or rather, the way he described the way he felt when he was surrounded by it. It made sense to Hyunjin to paint something reminiscent of that so he bought a huge canvas and a lot of green pigments, and got to work.

Hyunjin met Dara when he was about one week into Minho’s painting. He had stopped taking commissions and had stopped selling paintings, too. It no longer felt right to let people pay money for anything less than his absolute best. He had come to realize this—that even if he put his whole entire soul into something, it did not make it any better. It just made it more real. 

Dara moved into the art studio next to his. It was much smaller than his but fully renovated.

It’s a tale as old as time. A lonely guy meets a lonely girl and it creates sparks. One loves the other very much. The other is also in love, but their heart lives in a cage. 

And the sparks become a wildfire, ravaging them both. 

Some days, Hyunjin almost wished that Dara had never fallen in love with him—she wouldn’t resent him then. It would be easier if she just straight-up hated him. 

It’s a tale as old as time. Finding love and losing it, only to realize we never really had it in the first place. It’s such a strange feeling, like trying to hold onto sand and watching it spill from our cupped hands. 

Except you're in love with the sand, desperately so.

Jeongin waved at you frantically. “Boss! You decided to come!” 

It was damn near impossible to resist the young man’s wide smile as he watched you approach. It was his third summer here and he just loved opening day, so you always made sure he got to work on the site for at least a few hours. Enough time for him to eat some barbecue, some ice cream, and to chat with people. He was especially popular with the grandmas—they all adored him, and he left the premises with his pockets full of candy. 

This was why Jaime had come in today to be at the shop for a few hours, and also why Chris’ mom had taken a break in her retirement to take care of the office and check-ins. She didn’t like parties too much and was happy to help. Not that you or Chris had asked her. She had just assumed that you still had a beating heart inside your chest and that attending the yearly opening party was something you wanted to do. And you just didn’t have it in you to tell her that you’d much rather lock yourself in the office with your laptop and a series to binge-watch. 

But you didn’t want her to know. You didn’t want her to see the gaping wounds that you were so desperately trying to conceal because you knew they would hurt her, too. You wanted nobody to see the true magnitude of it. Just thinking about it made you want to hide somewhere. 

Everybody would know why. Everyone would figure out exactly why Chris had stopped loving you and why you were hurting so much. Even if they saw just a little. Just a slither of it. They would know. That it was all because you hadn’t been able to keep your baby safe and alive inside you. That it was because you had failed as a wife and as a mother. 

So you forced a smile on your lips. At least, Jeongin’s pleasant personality didn’t make it hard for you to be around him. “Here I am,” you said, giving him a gentle slap on the back. “Are things going alright here?”

“Concert’s going to start in about half an hour,” Jeongin explained. His tongue and his lips were stained from the blue slushy he must have drunk not long ago. It only added to his boyish aura, although you knew he was also a very serious employee and trusted him with his responsibilities. “But the hot dog stand ran out of propane, so the boss had me get one of the tanks from the emergency stash. Told me you should know.”

You nodded. Yes, you were in charge of that—the emergency supplies. Chris took care of most of the daily supplies such as food and other necessities. 

“Noted.” You stood on the hill at the end of Warbler Rd—from here, you could see most of the site. It was properly packed today, more than you had expected. More than last year for sure. “Thank you, Jeongin.” You would give him a raise this year for sure, and probably promote him to a management position at the end of the summer.

He gave you a nod, still looking at the crowd down below. He held his walkie-talkie in one hand, often lifting it to his ear to listen to whatever transmission was on the main channel, in case he would be needed somewhere. He was on Security tonight, which you had figured would give him a good opportunity to watch the concert. 

You felt warmth in your chest at the thought of pleasing someone. You weren’t doing much of that anymore these days. Chris used to be so happy when you’d pack him a lunch or bring home some trinket from a store, bought because it reminded you of him somehow. 

“Hey, Ayen,” you started, making sure to use the young man’s nickname. “Give me your radio. And your badge.” 

He turned to you so abruptly you felt the air move in between you two. It was dusk and this particular spot wasn’t too well-lit so you couldn’t see his face, but you could see his big, shocked eyes. “Are you firing me?” 

You let out a chuckle, unable to control it, letting it turn into a full-on laugh. There wasn’t a lot of that either these days, so you chose to let the sweet taste of it linger on your tongue. “Of course not! Are you insane? You know we need you here!” You gave him a friendly nudge, taking the walkie-talkie from him. “You go to the concert, I’ll cover for you tonight. If you go now you’ll have a good view… and I’m pretty sure I saw Lucy in the crowd somewhere…” 

Jeongin choked on nothing and went with the smooth recovery of a fake cough. You let it slide but you weren’t born yesterday—there was an ice cream parlor on the camping site and its owner had a daughter who was just the same age as Jeongin. And there was an undeniable chemistry between them. 

And she came to help her dad for the pre-season prep last week, with a few of her friends from college, and you heard her tell them about her crush on Jeongin. 

You carefully removed Jeongin’s name tag from his t-shirt. “Now go. And don’t worry, I’ll still pay you the full day. Just don’t drink too much, ok?”

“Thank you boss!” Jeongin gave you a big hug before leaving, basically prancing away towards the stage where the concert would take place.

The warmth in your chest lingered until you lost sight of him, and then you were alone again. It was dark by then already, dusk turning into night. You hung the walkie-talkie at your belt and began your round, deciding to start by the corner where the restaurant and ice cream shop were. Sometimes, some reluctant teenagers, dragged here by force by their parents, could cause some mild issues if there wasn’t anybody around.

It was a rather short walk there, but you were stopped a few times on your way by people who had questions or needed directions. It was night when you reached the courtyard and you found yourself slowing down as you approached. You could hear voices, almost whispers, coming from there. You put your hand on your walkie-talkie, ready to ask for help if you needed. Until you heard a laugh. A laugh that sounded like a bright sunrise. 

Chris was here.

You let go of your radio, scanning the area to find him. Almost all of the tables were empty except for three, occupied mostly by older people who wanted nothing to do with a cover band and just wanted to enjoy some ice cream before they went to sleep. 

Then you saw him. Chris. He was flattening empty cardboard boxes on the other side of the courtyard, but he wasn’t alone. 

Now here’s the thing. 

You knew he didn’t love you anymore. Most days, you hoped he would do something to free the both of you from this prison. You hoped he would sit you down and ask for a divorce or something, only, he didn’t, and you knew why. You understood—he did not like giving up. He was allergic to failure. And sometimes it cost him a lot, but he couldn’t help it. You had always loved that about him. His determination, his strength. 

Here’s the other thing.

The camping site was quite large and it demanded a lot of maintenance. So, two years ago, you hired a landscaping company to do it for you during the busy months. This way, everything was neat all the time and even a lot prettier than it used to be since neither you nor Chris had time to do much gardening around here. The landscaping company was small and familial. A man with his son and daughter. The man was close to retirement age but stubborn as hell. The son was a few years older than you and the daughter a few years younger. Both of them were lovely people, much like their father. 

The woman’s name was Summer, and she looked just like it. Silky hair, gorgeous face. She radiated warmth. A bright smile, an honest smile. A voice like music. A good heart, too, hidden inside her beautiful body. 

She was here with Chris tonight, and this wasn’t a rare occurrence. Since she was on site almost every day, they saw each other often during high season, and they got along exceptionally well. A little too well even.

The worst part was that you couldn’t dislike her because she was a great person. Intelligent, funny. Kind. Generous. 

No, scratch that.

The worst part was that she obviously wanted to fuck Chris and Chris obviously wanted to fuck her. Only you knew he didn’t and you almost hated him for it. You loved him even more for it. They spent a lot of time together, just like tonight. But he didn’t fuck her because he was too good of a person for that, too loyal. But he was being loyal to something that was killing him from the inside. 

They were flattening empty boxes and making piles of them. He laughed again at something that Summer said and your heart dropped in your chest. There wasn’t a lot of that these days. Laughter. But Chris laughed when he was with Summer. 

You quickly turned away before either of them could see you, fleeing the scene as though it was you who had been caught red-handed. 

You couldn’t hold it against him. You wouldn’t even hold it against Chris if he did have sex with her. But of course, none of that meant it didn’t hurt you. There were days you wanted to tell him everything. I love you, Chris. I think you should sleep with Summer. That would hurt him. And then the both of you would hurt and it wouldn’t benefit anybody. 

There were fewer people on the trails as the concert was beginning—you could hear the evening’s host make his speech before the band would come on stage and play. Tears burned your eyes and you tried very hard to hold them back, knowing it was dark but that you could be seen by a staff member at any moment regardless. Nobody could see you because they would know then. They’d run into you here, see the tears on your face, and then keep walking and run into Chris, who was being Chris and not a ghost version of himself, with Summer. And they would know.

You took a deep breath, then another, still walking your usual round through the camping site. 

Maybe it had to be you. Maybe you would need to hurt Chris even more and tell him that you wanted a divorce. You couldn’t tell him you were setting him free—he would just resent you even more for that. He would say, don’t put this on me, and he would be right to say so. After the storm would pass, though, he’d ask what the both of you were supposed to do now. He’d leave the house to you, surely. But this—the camping, the store. You knew he couldn’t leave it. 

But you wondered if you, however, could. 

Maybe you could sell your ownership parts to somebody. Summer’s dad, for example. He liked the place and knew it well. He would give your job to his daughter and then Chris would get to see her even more often and everyone would be happy. 

But this—the camping, the river, the forest. It was all that you had always known. You remembered college well and how it never felt right to be somewhere that wasn’t here. You never felt quite at home and you had made the mistake of making Chris your home instead. 

It was all that you deserved anyway. To feel astray and exiled wherever you went. You had failed as a mother and then as a wife and this was all life’s poetic way of punishing you. You had lost so much. You had lost everything. You had lost too many parts of yourself to remember who you were supposed to be.

“Come ON! It already started!”

A pleading voice broke the quietness of the immediate area around you. While you could definitely hear the first notes of the concert—the band always started with a cover of Barbie Girl, rock version—it seemed that nobody was in this part of the site. Well, except for the two people you could hear arguing. 

You were in the RV area, which was either populated with elderly couples or rich ones who wanted to get a taste of camping without having to sleep on a cot or on the ground. The trail here was well-lit and, in the light silence, you could hear the river just behind. You passed a few RVs and then noticed a black Jeep Patriot. 

“You dragged me all the way to this… place, that’s already a lot, Lee. I’m not going to a concert tonight. I can hear the music from here!” 

Your heart missed a few beats when you recognized Hyunjin’s voice. You slowed down, knowing you probably shouldn’t, but you couldn’t help it.

Both he and Minho were standing outside by their RV. There was a small fire lighting up their area. They seemed to have unpacked a lot of things but a few containers were still stacked up by the door. While Hyunjin still had his stylish outfit from earlier, Minho had changed into jeans and a t-shirt, looking relaxed. 

“That’s the problem with you,” Minho told Hyunjin, shaking his head. “You’re afraid of fun. Your brain immediately jumps to the option that would provide you with the least dopamine, which then makes you crave dopamine and search for it in stupid places.” 

“Stop psychoanalyzing me,” Hyunjin retorted. “I pay someone to do that. A professional.” He paused then, looking at Minho as he was searching into one of the containers only to pull a light sweater from it. “I take my meds. I just don’t want to go. I want to draw.” 

Minho sighed. “You draw all the time.”

Hyunjin mumbled something you couldn’t make out. By then, no matter how much you had slowed down your pace so as not to be seen or heard, you had made it to their lot. It just so happened that it was also where the road ended, with a fence blocking cars from going any further but allowing visitors to sit by the river. You glanced at the riverfront, making sure no one was there since nobody was supposed to be too close to the water after dark. When you were certain it was safe, you turned back and started walking from where you came… 

…and ran into Minho as he was walking away from the RV. So much for not being seen.

“Hey, uh, check-in lady!” He offered you a smile. “Didn’t think I’d see you around here.” 

You waved the flashlight you were holding as though it was police evidence, feeling warmth creeping up at the back of your neck. For some reason, being in his—and Hyunjin’s—presence unsettled you. And it made it so much worse not to know exactly why. “I’m making rounds.”

“You also do security? Talk about a resourceful woman. Love to see it.” Minho glanced behind him and you followed his gaze. Hyunjin had taken a seat on a camping chair by the fire with a sketchbook in hand but was staring in your direction. The flush at your neck spread all over your face and you thanked all the gods you knew that it wasn’t daytime. “Are you a manager or something?” 

Your gaze lingered for a few too many seconds on the man behind Minho, even after he had turned to you again. Hyunjin was now pretending not to be listening to your conversation, his head in his sketchbook, using the fire as sole lighting. The flames reflected on his skin the same way sun rays refracted in water, swaying lazily. 

“Uh… actually…” you started, your mind occupied mostly by Hyunjin’s peculiar posture and the way he was holding his pencil like it was too small for his large hand. “I—I’m the owner. Of the camping.” You did look at Minho then, only to see his eyes widening in surprise.

“Really? Damn!” He reached out, offering you his hand to shake. You reciprocated mostly out of habit, although you found his reaction a bit excessive, yet adorable. “I have to compliment you then. This place is awesome. Somehow you’ve managed to make a family-friendly camping site without being boring for childless people. Everything’s clean, well-thought and organized. And that lobster mac and cheese at the restaurant… absolutely divine. Hyunjin ate two bowls.” 

You forced yourself not to look behind him. “I appreciate it and I’ll make sure to send your compliments to the chef,” you spoke playfully. The ‘chef’ was Marlene, a woman in her 70s who refused to retire but complained about work just about every day. She did make the best damn mac and cheese in the state, though. “I should admit it’s not like I established the camping or anything, I…” 

You hesitated for a few seconds, realizing you didn’t want to say the words my husband, which were necessary for you to tell the full story of Riverside Campground. 

No, that wasn’t just it.

You didn’t want Minho—or the guy who was very obviously eavesdropping behind him—to know you were married.

And now it was taking you way too many seconds to come up with a rephrasing of that initial sentence. You were wasting Minho’s time.

“My parents owned the general store uphill,” you started. “Their close friends owned the campground. Their son and I run things now.”

Their son.

“That’s awesome! I also run the company my father started.” If Minho had noticed your unease he didn’t let it show. “I always love to hear how people manage their employees or their investments…” He shook his head as though he was deciding something. “Look, come by anytime if you wanna chat, ok? I’ve always said people can learn from one another—should learn from one another.” 

“Yeah, sure, thanks.” You smiled, taking a few steps back. “Hope you enjoy the show—they’re a fun band. Call the number on the map if you need anything.” 

“Thanks! Have a nice night!” Minho waved at you and, instead of following you, turned to Hyunjin. They spoke in quiet voices that you heard less and less as you walked away. 

It felt good to disappear into darkness again. To be invisible once more. You kept your flashlight off so as not to be seen. There was something stuck in your throat—tears, sure, but tangled with excruciating shame. 

You should have said My husband’s parents owned the campground and now we run things after their retirement. Or something like that. But you didn’t.

You made your way back to the empty lot where the concert was taking place. It was packed and it looked like people were having a good time already, singing along and waving their lit-up phones in the air. You found yourself missing the period of your life when such a sight made you happy. Because you were already happy, or as happy as you could be anyway. You missed the woman you were then—warm and kind and funny. 

You did a few more rounds than necessary but at least it kept you away from the concert. Still, you hummed along to the songs you knew, quietly, walking alone in the dark. Just like any time you were on your own, your mind wandered, forcing you to imagine ten or a hundred divorce scenarios. There was once a time—maybe up until a few months ago—where it was still bearable, where you believed that things could be mended even though they could never be like before. 

Everything was different now, and tonight was just one more proof of it. 

You circled around a few times but when the end of the concert came near, you returned toward the stage area to help the crowd make it back to their camping site. The field was almost empty when you saw Chris. He had put on a black hoodie over his t-shirt and he was talking with Summer. Again. Both of them stood by the path, nodding and saluting the guests as they walked away but never cutting their conversation short. 

You looked away, turning your gaze at the sky instead. There were still too many lights on to allow you to see all of the stars.

Was that really it?

Was he no longer your best friend? Was he just somebody’s son? You wondered what you were to him exactly, other than the place where his daughter had died. Did he harbor, still, a few warm sentiments for you? Or had his love—all of it—turned into resentment? You wondered if he had noticed your presence at all, or if, maybe, he was pretending he hadn’t.

You checked your phone only to realize you wanted to stay outside for much longer than the hour you had left. You didn’t want to go home, even if Chris rarely went there for very long anymore. Something about today was different—you felt it in your bones, as though there had been a shift. But it did not show itself, staying hidden in the shadows somewhere, waiting. Or maybe you weren’t ready to know yet.

You texted Jake, who was supposed to come in in an hour to cover the night security shift. He had been working here for many, many years—before you became owners, he used to wash dishes at the restaurant—and he was among your most trusted employees. You thought about your text for a few seconds before typing it. Hey Jake! Look, I accidentally scheduled both Maggie and you for tonight. Since she’s already here, I thought I could give her tonight’s shift and you could come in tomorrow instead? But it felt wrong to lie to him. You were lying. To everyone. Every minute of every day. Every ghost of a smile was a pretense. Every I’m great! What about you, how are things? was yet another fabrication. And you were tired of pretending.

You: Hey Jake. Do you want tonight off? I’ll pay you half your night

The response took no time.

Jake: Sure! Jake: everything ok? is there a problem?

You: No problem. I just feel like being outside so I’ll cover for you. I’ll see you tomorrow?

This time, he took a little longer to reply but you could only figure that the exchange must be strange from his perspective.

Jake: call me if you need me to come in anyway. see you tomorrow, boss.

He had started calling you boss when Jeongin began doing so. The two liked teasing you with it. They were good guys, and the use of the nickname warmed up your heart a little. 

You were about to circle back to do another round when you ran into—once again—Minho. To your utmost surprise, he wasn’t alone. You had noticed over the evening that Hyunjin was no longer sitting outside the RV but you had obviously assumed that he was inside and had gone to bed. You were a little shocked to see him walk with Minho, the two of them talking with their heads close to one another, as though they didn’t want to be heard. Then Hyunjin lifted his gaze, establishing direct eye contact with you.

You froze. And he froze, too, prompting you to quickly look away. He must have thought you were staring or even stalking him. Your heart raced in your chest again, the same way it had earlier while he checked in and then again near their RV. God, what would he think of you? Surely he would think this had something to do with Naro’s paintings. Or maybe he would just think you were weird.

Minho, however, didn’t seem to think anything nefarious—his face was illuminated by a smile when he followed Hyunjin’s eyes. “Hey! You again!” He waved at you, elbowing Hyunjin. “Be nice,” he told him. 

You pressed your lips together, your mind going a thousand miles an hour trying to calm yourself down. There was nothing to be so worked up about. He was just some guy. Hyunjin. He was literally just a guy. 

Minho walked toward you. “You were right. The show was awesome,” he said. He was, for sure, very generous with his compliments. “Even Hyunjin ended up coming by.” 

Hyunjin nodded slowly. “Yeah. It was great.” He smiled. He made himself smile, more like.

“Look, I bought a bunch of bacon and eggs and other stuff,” Minho started. “I bought too much. Do you wanna come by for breakfast tomorrow morning? I’d love to talk with you about how you run this business. And Hyunjin is shy, but I’m sure he’d like to talk to you about art.”

Flames spread on your cheeks. You exhaled, finding yourself unable to inhale. Your skin burned in places—your face, your ears, the back of your neck, even your chest. It felt like you had been under the sun for too long. 

Minho was about to say something else but he closed his mouth and took one step back, looking behind you. You twisted your neck to see what had silenced him and found yourself muted too. Your insides—hot like lava just a second ago—turned to ice. 

Would it be exaggerated to say it felt as though he had caught you cheating? Perhaps. And yet you felt exactly like that—like he had seen you do something you weren’t supposed to do. You wouldn’t feel any differently if you were six years old and a store owner had caught you stealing a candy bar while your mom was looking away. 

“Hey,” Chris told you with a smile but you knew something about this smile wasn’t quite right. “What are you doing here?” He was there, just standing there, and Summer was a few feet behind him, only, she was now the one wearing the black hoodie that Chris had on just earlier. You tried to feel some kind of way about that piece of information but your brain made you unable to process it at all, moving on to something else.

We’re just talking, I don’t know them, you almost said, your heart racing. But then he gave the walkie-talkie you were holding a nod of the head and you understood what he was saying.

“I—Uh—figured I’d let Jeongin enjoy his evening since his friends were here,” you explained with a shaky voice. “I’ll cover tonight’s shift too. I made a mistake in the schedule and I didn’t want to call anyone at the last minute for it, since I’m already up.” 

 Chris’ facial expression changed ever so slightly—his eyes took a faint squint and you could imagine he was scanning his memory to remember tonight’s schedule. It was hosted on a shared account—apparently, you had forgotten that little detail. You quickly pulled out your phone and subtly erased Jake’s name, which was very much there under tonight’s date, and showed your screen to Chris.

“I thought Jake was coming in,” Chris replied with a shrug. Then he turned to the two other men. “Good evening,” he said in his customer service voice. “Is there anything we can help you with?” 

You averted your eyes, unable to look at anyone currently involved in the conversation. 

“No sir, thank you very much,” Minho replied with a tone that was a little too merry. Perhaps he hadn’t appreciated being interrupted in the middle of a conversation, which you could understand. “We were simply giving our compliments to the lady.” 

“Compliments?” He looked at you then at him. You, on the other hand, observed Summer, all wrapped up in your husband’s hoodie. The one you had given him for his birthday a few years ago. 

“He is the co-owner,” you said, not even looking at either of the guys, only staring Summer down. You didn’t want to hate her. Hell, you didn’t hate her at all. But she could try to be a little less obvious, especially in public. 

“The co-owner?” Minho seemed surprised but still offered his hand to shake nonetheless. Meanwhile, Hyunjin was just glancing around with his hands in his pockets, his hair hiding most of his face. “Christopher…” 

All employees—Chris and you included—had badges with their names on them. Mostly it was a way to let all the guests know who they could ask for help or directions, and the names were a little friendlier than the simple mention of ‘staff’ on a t-shirt. 

You saw Minho make sense of things. First, he saw Chris’ last name. Then he looked at yours—again. 

You could see the cogs turning in his head. “So you two are related?” 

One second.

Two seconds.

Three seconds.

You knew it had to be you. It always had to be you, somehow—but it was the burden bestowed upon you for what you had done. For what you had failed to do. It was life’s poetic way of punishing you for being inadequate. 

Four seconds. And four seconds of silence, when right in the middle of a conversation, might just as well be four hours.

To your—and everyone’s—surprise, it was Hyunjin who spoke first, relieving you of this cumbersome task that had been following you for years. 

“They’re married, Min,” he said from behind his hair, his voice strangely quiet and low. 

Minho’s mouth fell open but he tried to conceal whatever emotion that was by nodding fervently. “Ah! Of course, of course. Well, nice meeting you, Mr. Bahng. This is a fine business you have here, as I told your wife earlier.” They shook hands. “Lee Minho, Hwang Hyunjin. We’re over at the RV site. We should probably get going.”

“Thank you for choosing Riverside Campground!” Chris waved at them when they turned to leave. “Hope you enjoy your stay!”

Minho smiled flatly at you, waving with very little enthusiasm. Hyunjin didn’t wave but he lingered around a few seconds more than his friend. Or boyfriend. You still had no fucking clue who they were to one another. 

“Bye,” he told you. 

Not to Chris and certainly not to Summer. He spoke to you, just you. 

There was a rumbling somewhere deep within your chest. Like something there wanted to come back to life.

Hyunjin’s story goes like this—

His life was never normal, partially because of his family name and a lot because of the pressure his father felt about his own family name, all of which he projected onto his son. He tried many things. He tried to get away from painting but that didn’t work. He tried to become a scholar but that, also, didn’t work. He broke exactly one heart and had his broken a few times, but never in an irreversible way, even when it felt like it. Until he met Dara.

His life was never normal until he met Dara. He liked her as soon as they met and the spark was indubitable. Others noticed it too—Seungmin, then Minho when he came to visit Hyunjin in his studio to see where his commissioned painting was at. Hyunjin’s mother even noticed something. You seem happy these days my son, she told him. And he was happy, for the first time in a long time, or maybe ever. Like he hadn’t been happy before and was only discovering the taste of it. 

It’s a tale as old as time. A lonely guy meets a lonely girl and it creates sparks. One loves the other very much. The other is also in love, but their heart lives in a cage. 

It was one of the first things he learned about Dara. The morning of the second day they knew each other, he knocked at her studio door with coffee. She was unpacking supplies and other things. Among them was a stunning painting of a flower but broken into hundreds of uneven pieces, as though it was made of glass. Dara told Hyunjin she painted it the day her ex broke up with her. There was another painting stored with it, this time depicting a woman with abstract lines, some of them even violent with how powerful of a stroke they had required. Red paint was splattered across the entire canvas, which was large. The woman was holding something small in her hand, something that the viewer couldn’t see—he could only feel its significance. 

Dara didn’t tell Hyunjin this from the get-go—she used other words on that second day. A little later, though, when they were having drinks on the tiny balcony of his studio, she said this: “I can’t love again you know? It’ll kill me. I don’t trust people anyway.”

It was a cool night, but not too cool either, or maybe it was thanks to the wine they kept drinking. Hyunjin looked into his glass—in the dark, it seemed like it held black ink, or poison, instead of wine. 

“Isn’t that what everyone does these days?” He shrugged. “Situationships, I mean.” 

Dara burst into a laughter so pure it sounded a little like crystal bells, or even like beautiful notes on an ancient violin. Hyunjin sat quietly, letting Dara’s profound beauty permeate him. She had stunning eyes—expressive, deep, honey-brown eyes, and he loved staring into them. 

“Do I look like I can do situationships?” And he knew what she meant—when Dara did something, she did it with her whole entire heart and soul, whether it was a painting, a conversation, or eating a meal. He could only imagine how passionate of a lover she might be.

They both laughed at that. “I guess not. I don’t even know how that works, to be honest. I understand one-night stands more than situationships.” After all, he had a few of those. One-night stands. To fill some void that was still very much unfilled. “Do people go to others and be like, hey, wanna fuck but like, just fuck? Repeatedly?”

“RIGHT?” Dara slammed the table, almost causing the wine to fall off it. “My other question is, how do you even have this sort of relationship with someone you’re not in love with?” 

“I don’t get it either,” Hyunjin admitted before drinking some wine. He hesitated a little before saying the words that were on his mind. “Does that mean you’ll never have sex again?” 

Dara’s laughter died in the night. She didn’t seem upset at the question—she took her time to think about it, drinking and lighting a cigarette. “Guess so, uh?” Then, maybe in an attempt to soothe the slight unease that was creeping up on the balcony, she gestured around at nothing. “It’s not like there’s a queue for my bed anyway.” 

The truth is Hyunjin’s cock twitched in his pants at that. He blamed it a little on being touch-deprived. The truth is, Hyunjin, at that point, didn’t know that he was already in love with Dara. They spent entire days together, just the two of them, in either of their studios, painting and talking and painting. Talking about painting. Talking about love. About their past. And everything about it was easy and he never stopped to overthink it. Because it felt right.

It felt normal. For the first time ever, somebody was seeing him, perceiving him, and not walking away, not demanding more or less of him. For the first time, someone liked Hyunjin just the way he was. 

To this day Hyunjin couldn’t tell what overtook him—what kind of boldness possessed him at that moment, because he wasn’t exactly the kind of guy to say these things. But he said, “But of course people want to fuck you. Why wouldn’t they?” God, that was an awfully direct thing to say to somebody he saw every day. But what it really meant was, Of course I’d fuck you. In a heartbeat. Right here right now. 

But he still didn’t know that he was in love with her.

Dara didn’t push it. They went home separately, but that night was the first night Hyunjin thought of her when he jerked off in the shower. He thought of Dara, her mouth, the way she applied paint, her laugh, her broken heart as he fucked into his hand, his forehead pressed on the cool ceramic tile. And he was ashamed. But he still didn’t know that he was in love with her.

Hyunjin’s story goes like this—his bond with Dara grew stronger as weeks passed. He trusted her and she trusted him, both of them surprised at how easy it was to open up to the other. 

Hyunjin’s story goes like this—they got drunk one night in his studio, and Dara kissed him. And it was exactly at that moment that he finally realized he loved her, that he had loved her this whole time. He kissed her back and they talked a lot. They kissed more. They made love three times throughout the night, first on the floor, then on a table, and then on the couch he had in his studio for when he needed to take a nap. For him, it felt as though his fate was sealed. Because nothing had ever felt like this before, and he knew that nothing ever would again. 

Because at some point into the night, Dara pinned him down to the floor, riding him like a goddess would ride an ocean or something like it, and she leaned down to kiss him and to whisper three little words on his lips, and he believed her.

Hyunjin’s story goes like this—Dara meant it when she told Hyunjin that she loved him. But she also meant it when, a few weeks earlier, she told him that she couldn’t love again. It might have been more accurate to say that she wouldn’t love again, but to her, there was no difference between the two. The paradox spawned something dark within her, although she tried to hide it. Maybe she knew she would hurt Hyunjin. Maybe she knew she had already hurt him. 

But Hyunjin wasn’t an idiot. He was in love but he wasn’t stupid. Dara had made it very clear before, and lovemaking, as visceral and passionate as it might have been, wouldn’t change that. He knew it. Yet, somewhere deep within his heart, he held the hope that maybe Dara’s love would be as big as his, and a love like this could move mountains. It could certainly move aside the fears haunting her since it did exactly that for him. So he waited, patiently. And all that Dara did was drift away from him. 

He stopped painting. Meanwhile, Dara couldn’t stop painting. He went to the studio every day, and everything was the same except that he was in love with her and Dara was in love with him but she didn’t want to, or couldn’t, be with him. He tried his best to hide it. He tried because he knew it would hurt her if she ever came to realize the emptiness she had left within him. 

So things went downhill. And they could have gone very low if it weren’t for Minho who, one random day, showed up at Hyunjin’s place to inquire about the painting he had commissioned him a while ago. Not with the intention to rush him, just to ask about it. But he found Hyunjin in a profound state of decay. After all, he hadn’t seen him for months. But Minho understood—he, too, had lost his first love. 

Hyunjin’s story goes like this—he learned that resentment could only exist in a place where there was once love when he felt it in Dara. Regret. Resentment. As though he was a reminder of the love she could feel but not give. One time, Dara confronted him about it and he had to pretend he was okay about the whole ordeal and he hated doing that. What an awful feeling. To keep a love silent. Secret. But he did it for her sake. He said it was okay. And that was a lie.

It took a long time. He and Dara had a lot of conversations about it. They had a lot of conversations about many other things, too. Their friendship remained the same. If anything, it grew stronger than ever. He started painting again and things were good. He was exclusively painting commissions now and he was quite successful. He took his time with them, truly giving each painting the love they deserved. After all, it was the only thing he could love openly, so he did that. He put all the love he had for Dara in each stroke of a brush, in every little bit of impasto he could, in every vibrant red he used. And his art had never been as beautiful, so he knew that his love was true. 

Hope takes such a long time to die. But it dies. 

Hyunjin’s story goes like this.

He fell in love and then he fell in despair. And when he reached the bottom of it all, he had to climb back up. And he did. Only, nothing was ever the same after.

The night was quiet and your mind was anything but. 

No matter how hard you tried to chase them away, the thoughts always returned. Mostly Chris. Your determination to avoid him. Your determination to keep an eye on him to see if he cheated on you yet. The pain of knowing he wouldn’t cheat on you, even if it killed him not to. Naro’s Loss. Your loss. Minho’s insightful eyes. 

Hyunjin. Just Hyunjin. 

Most people were still up and about on your first patrol of the night, perhaps needing to unpack a few more things after the concert. It was calm at the RV site—Minho and Hyunjin’s lights were off entirely. You lingered a little longer than you needed there but it was to listen to the river. It was the best spot to observe it too, which you often did in the daylight. 

The general store was open a few nights of the week, including tonight. Sometimes it was the same employee who handled the shop and security duty and sometimes it wasn’t. You should have been at the shop tonight while Jake handled security but now it was just you. And it felt better and worse at once.

After the patrol, you took refuge in the shop’s back room, sorting items and taking inventory. You only had two clients show up, one for a pillow and the other for some late-night snacks. 

It was better here than out there. Because here, you were forced to think about work. You weren’t just walking, and some less pleasant thoughts couldn’t haunt you as easily. You played music on the speaker Chris had bought for the store last year. You unboxed the cutlery you hadn’t been able to shelve earlier. You unboxed the remainder of the kids’ section you hadn’t had time to do before. Small water pistols, coloring books, frisbees, sweet-smelling SPF, sidewalk chalk sets, children’s shampoos and body cleansers. Balls, ring toss games, a few storybooks. 

Watercolor paint sets. The small ones, with cheap plastic brushes. 

It was always you who did it. Unboxing the items for the kids’ section. Because Chris couldn’t, or wouldn’t. Not that there was much of a difference in his case. He had done it the very next summer after Judith and then never after. Not a single word had been said about it—he would sometimes set up the shop in just a day, getting everything ready pretty much all on his own. Except for the children's stuff. It would remain in its boxes in a corner of the storage room until someone took care of it. You. Or someone else. His mom used to do it. But it had to be you because you were the one who deserved that punishment. 

The watercolors were the last item you stacked on a shelf. You kept them for last on purpose, Hyunjin’s image permeated the fog in your mind, no matter how thick and how dark it was. More smoke than fog. Like something had been on fire for a long time and yet there was nothing left to burn. But it somehow still burned.

You returned to the counter, reaching for the iced coffee left next to your phone. However, your hand hovered the device instead, and you grabbed it almost like you didn’t mean to. It didn’t stop you from immediately opening a search engine and typing Hwang Hyunjin inside it. 

The results were mostly unsurprising. First was his Insta account on which no pictures of himself appeared. Instead, it was all art. His, or museum visits, or stunning pictures of whichever scenery moved him on a given day. It seemed to you like he was into photography at least a little because you could tell he used fancy cameras and different lenses depending on the location. You scrolled mindlessly, trying to see as much as you could as quickly as possible, almost as though there was a time limit. Almost as though someone would catch you. As if it was bad to look at someone’s profile on social media. 

Yet, the more time passed, the slower you went. Always careful not to accidentally like any picture so you remained unseen, your eyes refused to follow, lingering on the art that Hyunjin created. You found yourself studying many of his paintings for several minutes.

He was incredible.

Describing his style would be difficult because it seemed like Hyunjin couldn’t help but try new things. New techniques and methods, all the types of paint known to mankind or something like it, varied compositions. All sorts of genres, too. Still life, portraits, landscapes, seascapes, figurative styles or charcoal sketches. 

First you noticed his contemporary impressionist paintings. Or rather, the way he used color in it like the subject of the painting was telling a lie and the color palette was telling the true story. Two lovers in a bed, entangled, only most of the canvas was saturated in blacks. Different blacks, expertly blended. A stormy sea with treacherous currents. Again, most of the canvas was dark. A boy sitting at a table, drawing, and his eyes were oozing black. 

His expressionist pieces were just as poignant. Two lovers again—their outline chaotic yet undeniably recognizable. The two of them were kissing, and it looked like a passionate kiss, too. One of them was saturated red, the color spilling all over, staining the other with it. A beautiful, deep Alizarin Crimson, to be more exact, which was a shade of red that you particularly appreciated. Hyunjin used it often, or so it would seem.

Not two pieces were the same and yet they all obviously belonged to Hyunjin’s artistic genius. It was a little as if he used his soul in place of paint, and you could feel it through the screen of your phone. 

You sat with it all for a while, lazily continuing your search. While his Insta seemed official and like he was selling paintings through it, he also had a website that served as a portfolio. Nowhere did it mention his blood relation to a renowned painter. 

The pieces in his portfolio were even more refined, but one in particular caught your eye.

It was titled Resentment. Mixed media on canvas.

Two lovers. Again. Two silhouettes sitting, intertwined together and making love, surrounded by a variety of objects, made prisoners by them. The objects were like tangled strings, wrapped around them, their chests, their wrists, their throats. You wouldn’t say the lovers appeared unbothered by this strange prison but while it hindered their movements, they also seemed resolute to focus on one another, pretending they weren’t being choked to death by a string of broken Christmas lights. The glass shards punctured their skin much like the roses that were braided into them, whose thorns made them bleed. Headphone cords, coarse sisal rope scratching them all over. A silk ribbon around an ankle, tied too tightly, so tight it cut the skin there, too. Chains, heavy or fine, leaving their marks on arms or stomachs or thighs.

You let go of your phone, speechless, realizing your vision was blurred by tears. This was clearly inspired by a very real and personal part of Hyunjin’s life and yet it was something else you saw in the painting. You could feel the desperation, the weariness, the torment. The love. Painful, raw, real as hell.

It was Chris and you that you pictured, tangled in strings of resentment strong enough that they were, slowly but surely, suffocating both of you.

You covered your mouth, looking away, your mind running marathons as it emptied itself, leaving only vivid memories playing at a loud volume. The first time Christopher kissed you. That time when you were eight years old and you fell and scratched your knee and the blood scared him so much he cried. Being locked in his bedroom as teenagers, listening to music, laying in his bed, in love and unable to admit it even to yourself. Being in love with Chris. Chris being in love with you. The time he took you on a trip to Paris. When he fucked you here on this very counter after slow dancing with you in the shop. Waking up in the same bed as him. 

Waking up in the same bed as him and being whole, still.

Sometimes, you read a book, watched a movie, or saw a painting that reminded you what it was like to be in love. Actively. Not just in the passive way, but in the painful way. Not the kind of love that was a memory. A ghost. A love that used to be something and turned into less.

Here is what happens to a heart that loves something that doesn’t love it the same way. Something that loves back but from a distance. An intentional distance, put there to protect one or both parties. A love that is incompatible. 

It hurts. At first, it hurts. The worst kind of pain. Excruciating. It feels like you’re dying except you’re not, you’re painfully alive until you wish you weren’t anymore, until the ache morphs into something else. Something even darker. The absence of light. The absence of warmth. You’ve already lost big parts of yourself at that point and you’re starting to understand they’ll never come back. 

The human body and the human mind have a limit to how much damage they can endure. To how much agony they can withstand. Unfortunately, that limit is very high. It destroys you, slowly, molecule by molecule. It drains the colors out of life first, and then out of you. This is when you start feeling like nothing is quite worth it anymore because you’ve lost the ability to appreciate things. It’s not worth it. It doesn’t feel worth it anyway. Then one day you see a beautiful sky over a mountain and it doesn’t even move you. It’s not beautiful. It is just a sky over a mountain.

You miss it. You miss them. You miss the less damaged version of you. You’re ashamed because you allowed somebody to fill in the voids of your soul. And now that they’re gone, as though the ocean recedes at low tide, your edges, sharp and rugged, are exposed. Bare. Raw and sensitive like open wounds.

Loss. Only something that occupies a vast amount of space within you can cause it. At one point, you realize the emptiness has nothing to do with the tides—you become aware of the tsunami that is about to drown you. What was taken from you is returned tenfold, only not in the form of love. It’ll seep through your skin and infiltrate your lungs. Grief. Sorrow. Melancholy. Resentment. Aloneness. 

Forced upon you. Waterboarded upon you.

This is when you pull away. From people. From things. From life. Not even intentionally, but it happens nonetheless. As a defense mechanism perhaps. You become the one who puts a distance between the world and you, but it doesn’t even matter, for you are barely corporeal anyway, and nothing or nobody can touch you.

The alarm on your phone went off, pulling you back to reality, only you weren’t here yet, not entirely. It was time for your second patrol of the night. And you were crying. And you were making peace with the second most violent thing that had ever happened to you, which was the fact that Christopher was being choked to death by resentment and it was your fault. And maybe you, too, were struggling for air, and you couldn’t save him. You couldn’t save either of you. It felt like all you could do was watch life fading away from him, the same as it was from you. 

Of course, someone with an outsider’s perspective might tell you that if Chris seemed resolute not to ask for a divorce because it would be a failure and he didn’t like failures, why didn’t you do it? After all, you were the one to say it always had to be you—what was so different about this? And they would be right. But they would be wrong, too. The failure would remain no matter who initiated it. So maybe it was inevitable, but on top of being the place where his baby had died, you would also be what had officially brought forth the biggest failure of his life. Because that’s what he would say. You knew him. 

And you were not quite ready to be hated by him. It was one thing not to be loved by Chris. But hatred? Loathing, even, maybe? No. You weren’t strong enough to do it, not now at least.

You walked the same path as you had previously, your eyes blank, advancing almost like a zombie, your head filled with awful things. With beautiful things turned awful, too. And those were even worse. 

The campground was quiet except for the chirping of crickets and the song of tree frogs echoing in the woods, the sound of them bouncing on the trunks of trees. Your mind was lingering in the kids’ section of the shop but the sounds of the night anchored you and you let them. The soft soil underneath your walking boots. The river flowing steadily. The stars in the sky. Your mind was lingering on a painting as beautiful as it was sad, and somehow, you were seeing the world with different eyes and hearing it with different ears. Like something had shifted inside you, but it was too early to figure out what exactly. Maybe it was just that you relished that feeling of knowing you weren’t as alone as you thought you were. Someone understood you, even if it was, maybe, in a different shade of aloneness. It was aloneness anyway. Unfortunately for him, Hyunjin seemed to be able to portray the sorrow that afflicted you, which meant he must be intimate with it, too. What a terrible thing to be burdened by.

You wondered if you would ever get the chance to ask him. How would you even go about it? You couldn’t picture yourself straight up telling him you had looked him up. It sounded stalky and weird. He had seemed reluctant to share some parts of his personal life earlier, which was understandable considering you were a total stranger to him. You knew Lee Minho had invited you to breakfast out of politeness but, obviously, you wouldn’t go. Because you were a stranger. They were strangers. So it was likely you wouldn’t talk to Hyunjin, not even once, in all of the summer.

But then you smelled weed.

You stopped in your tracks, inhaling deeply to make sure you were actually smelling it. You couldn’t see anything as you looked around—you had just entered the RV site and everything was still. Not a single light was on in the vehicles and things were just the way they had been earlier. It didn’t take you very long to find the source of the smell. You made it to the river, walking on the edge of it, mindful of each step you took. You knew this place by heart though and would have been able to navigate your way with your eyes closed. 

Someone was sitting on the ground, smoking, resting on a smooth, large rock behind them. 

You sighed, starting to regret offering to do night security. Most of the time there was no issue, but when there was one once in a while, you weren’t exactly the kind of person who liked to exert your authority. You tried telling yourself this was most likely just a stray teenager trying to get the most out of this parent-imposed vacation, looking for some peace away from their family.

You cleared your throat. “Hey, excuse me?” Your voice sounded a lot smaller than you wanted it to. You were the boss. You were the owner of this place. You had a right to set rules. Right? “It’s just that we don’t allow drugs on the property, so…” 

You took a few more steps toward the culprit, only to realize it was a young man with long, dark hair, wearing a pair of sweatpants and a loose t-shirt. 

“Oh, hello you.” Hyunjin sat upright, turning to you. It was dark but some light from a nearby lamppost filtered through the tree leaves, caressing his honey skin and showing his soft smile. “Sorry about that.” He waved the joint he was holding. 

You froze. “Oh.” You took it all in at once. The soft breeze caressing his silky hair. His deep, intelligent eyes. The sorrow he exuded. His beauty. “H—Hello.” 

The man stood, his lips pressed together in a contrite smile. “I didn’t think I’d get caught,” he admitted with a giggle that echoed in your empty chest. 

“It’s fine, it’s fine.” You waved at him when he went to put out the joint. “I don’t really mind. It’s just that we had to make rules for when there are kids around.” 

“Makes sense.” Hyunjin shook his head, half-sitting on the boulder, his eyes not leaving you as though he was studying you. “How’s the night shift going? Not too many problems I hope?”

It took you a few seconds to be able to speak again. Something about Hyunjin was unsettling, but not in a bad way. He was so unique. You had never met anyone who had this energy before. He made you want to sit and make him tell you the story of his entire life. Like he was an ancient sacred manuscript written in an intricate language, unknown and familiar at once. 

“No, not too many,” you heard yourself respond, surprised at how comfortable you were around him. “Just one guy I caught with weed…” 

At that, Hyunjin’s giggles turned into full-on laughter, causing a smile to appear on your lips. A genuine one, so tangible it felt warm on your face. The warmth spread slowly, spilling onto your cheeks and at the back of your neck.

“Kids these days!” He said sarcastically, rolling his eyes in a dramatically exaggerated manner, brushing his fingers through his hair to push it away from his face.

The laughter died slowly and silence returned. Only, it wasn’t really silent. The river was flowing and the frogs were still singing and from here, you could even hear an owl, and crickets. As if the world was desperate to remind you that it was still alive, no matter how lifeless your own heart was. 

“Maybe I can buy my way out of this,” Hyunjin added with a mysterious look on his pretty face. 

He reached into the tote bag left near him, pulling out of it a handful of mini liquor bottles, offering you some with an inviting nod. 

You pretended to be shocked. “Are you trying to corrupt me?” You tsked him with a sigh. “Well, I have to say, it’s working.” You grabbed a bottle of whiskey with a playful smile.

Hyunjin smoked quietly, watching you as you screwed open the bottle and drank most of it in one go. It was good whiskey, smooth, but it burned your throat just enough to anchor you to the present moment. He sat down on the grass again, gently patting the space next to him, inviting you. “Care to stay for a minute? Or should you not?” 

You weighed your options—everything seemed orderly enough after all, so maybe hanging out here was just fine. 

After all, before tonight, before seeing the true colors of his soul, you didn’t think anybody could understand the pain you had, your inner conflicts. Which was self-important and perhaps even selfish, but it had been a long fucking time since you had related to anything as much as you related to his paintings. 

You sat down, not saying a word, the vivid images of Hyunjin’s art still floating in your mind almost like flashbacks badly edited into a low-budget movie. You finished the whiskey, eyes on the sky above, watching the stars and the way they sparkled. 

Out of nowhere, Hyunjin handed you the joint. “Are you alright?” He asked it to you quietly but in a very sincere way. 

For a couple of seconds you couldn’t believe that he would just share weed with you like this. Then you realized you had simply forgotten your college days and how blissfully unaware you had been back then. This would be far from the first time you smoked with a stranger. 

His question troubled you. You took the joint from him, inhaling the smoke and pretending to be super cool about how it immediately made you cough. It had been a while.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” you replied. “What about you?”

You turned to him, only to be faced with Hyunjin’s grave expression. A faint squint had appeared between his brows, and he didn’t shy away from staring. His eyes went from yours to the joint you pressed between your lips, back to your eyes. 

He completely ignored your question. “You look like you’ve been crying.” 

One thing you hated about you was how skilled you had become to dodge these. Yet it did not feel the same coming from Hyunjin. A stranger perhaps, but one who had faced sorrow, truly faced it, had been stabbed by it probably repeatedly, and lived to tell the tale. 

Like going on vacation to a foreign country and accidentally coming face to face with someone from home, and knowing they were from home before they even opened their mouths. You knew that Hyunjin came from the same place as you did, which was a place where loss was a tangible thing, worn around the throat, a place where one was a slave to it. 

To someone else, someone who didn’t come from that place, you would have bullshitted something about allergies. Typically, they bought it. 

To Hyunjin, you said, “I have bad days sometimes. Today is a bad day.” 

And it felt good to say it. It felt good to say it to him. It was only a minuscule drop of the gargantuan secret that lived with, the pain that you carried with you and kept trapped within you so that it wouldn’t spill out and stain others. So that it would never hurt Chris. 

Hyunjin nodded and took the joint back from you after you handed it. In exchange, he simply passed you another whiskey and then proceeded to open one for himself. 

Your wedding ring shone under the faint light. You observed it for a few seconds.

“I understand that,” Hyunjin said after a while. “I get those too. A little too often to my taste, but it’s better now that I take meds for it.” He drank some whiskey and turned to you again. “Is there something I can do to cheer you up? Other than getting you wasted, I mean.” He had a guilty smile. 

You chuckled. “Thank you. That’s actually really nice of you. Offering.” Nobody offered that to you since nobody knew you had bad days. No one. Not a single soul. “Getting wasted does help.” 

Few words were exchanged as you finished the joint together. More bottles were opened, too. You wondered where Chris was. He was probably back home. He would have gone back home when you told him you’d spend the night here and that no one else was scheduled. Because it meant you couldn’t leave the premises and there was a zero percent chance you’d go back home, too. You two were rarely there, at the same time, at night. He’d come by during the day to do laundry and even have lunch or dinner with you. But then he bounced. And you’d see his car parked in his parents’ driveway or he’d just be somewhere here. Doing maintenance he called it. But really he just couldn’t stand being too close to you at night. Like you were a sleep paralysis demon. But really you were just the place where his daughter had died. And it was worse.

“I’m sorry you… have bad days,” you tentatively said after a while. You could feel the various substances having their effect on you. You felt heavy and weightless at once. It was as though all your sadness was still very much there, but you weren’t actively drowning in it. 

You didn’t know if it was because you were high or because for the first time in years you had admitted to someone you weren’t alright. 

“For some people, you know, it’s just easy to be happy. I’m not one of those people,” Hyunjin explained with a shrug. “Minho actually made me see his therapist. He thought he could fix me.” He paused for a few seconds. “Not everything that is broken can be fixed. But broken things can still have a place and a purpose in life.” He had another pause, longer this time, and you dared not interrupt him. He faced you—really faced you, turning his body towards you—and spoke again. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think you’re like that too, right?” 

He took your breath away, just like that. 

He smelled like weed, like his intricate and fancy cologne. His breath smelled like liquor. And his scent was melting in the air, blending with the sweet and pleasant esters and terpene of the evergreens around you. The moss that grew on them. The water from the river. The faintest trace of salt, brought by a breeze that came from the beach. You smelled him. Really smelled him. You let the olfactory memory of the moment engrave itself in your mind. 

You looked at him. Really looked at him. The delicate traits on his face, how violently pretty he was. His gaze, heavy, meaningful, honest. The softness you felt in him was a strange contrast to the strength he evidently had. His large shoulders, his plush lips. The way his clothes were too big for him and yet hinted at a perfect, sculpted, toned body. The way he held himself, leaning toward you. You looked at him. Really looked at him. You let the sight of it carve itself into your soul.

You did not want to forget that moment. 

You had not been seen, really seen, in a long while. 

Long enough that you had forgotten that feeling. And yet it was undeniably there, in your chest, coming back home after a long vacation away only to find its home empty, desolate, devastated. Decayed. You could picture it kicking at your dead heart, wondering what the fuck had happened in the past years. 

You gulped. “Yes,” you breathed, averting your gaze, ashamed. And ashamed of being ashamed. “Yes, I’m… like that.”

His response took no time. “It’s alright. It doesn’t change your value as a person or anything.”

You looked down at the river. How many times had you considered just throwing yourself in it, letting it take you somewhere else, hoping you would drown before anybody could find you? 

He didn’t know. Hyunjin. He didn’t know what you had done. He didn’t know the ugly things inside you. He didn’t know that fearful thoughts were corporeal and dangerous. He didn’t know that you had been punished for your greed and for your uncertainty and that it, in fact, lowered your value. A lot. 

And what the fuck were you doing here anyway? Chatting with this man you didn’t know and let him read your soul like you were some unsolved riddle in a magazine left on a table in a dental clinic’s waiting room? 

It took half a second—you went to stand back up, the motion of it barely happening—and Hyunjin lowered a hand on your arm to stop you. “Wait.” 

You stared at him, motionless, a little numb. Not numb enough. His skin was smooth and warm. You felt a faint spark of electricity run through you when he squeezed—terribly faintly squeezed—your forearm. 

“I’m sorry,” he went on. “I didn’t mean to say anything offensive or hurtful, I just—” 

You didn’t like to see guilt written on his handsome face, especially not because of you. “You didn’t,” you assured him. The electricity had run its course and it went to die in your chest, where other forces were at war with your inert heart. “Please, it’s fine.” 

Hyunjin retreated his hand, sitting against the boulder again. “But I made you want to leave.” 

“I always want to leave.” It just came out of you, like that, without warning. One of those awful truths about you that you kept buried, hidden away. That you tried to forget. “It’s not people’s fault, it’s mine.” 

“Yeah. Yeah, I get it.” Hyunjin nodded, licking his bottom lip in a slow, lazy swipe of his tongue. “I always want to leave, too. Almost. I don’t feel like that when I paint, or when Minho forces me to go fishing or something.” Hyunjin gulped, clearing his throat faintly. “I don’t think I’m feeling it right now either. Your energy. It’s…” He frowned while he was looking for the right words. “It’s like a color that contains multitudes of other colors. And I love colors.” 

Part of you wanted to remind him of how fucking high he was for saying stuff like that.

But another part of you stopped you, forcing you to think about his words, forcing them down your throat, into your chest. Using them like an antidote on that fucking heart of yours.

“And now I’m making it worse,” Hyunjin added with a self-derogatory sigh. “Sorry. I’m not good at talking to people or making friends.” 

Tears pricked at your eyes as a variety of emotions overcame you, washing over you like the high tide on a beach. “I think the opposite. So far you’ve been nothing but nice to talk to.”

He smiled faintly. “I don’t know why you’re sad, but I just thought of something that might cheer you up a little.” 

Hyunjin reached into his tote bag again, this time pulling his phone out of it. He scrolled for almost a whole minute, visibly looking for something specific, truly absorbed in the task. You couldn’t look away from him. Fucking hell. Fuck. 

He let out a little thrilled exclamation. “There it is!” Then, Hyunjin simply handed you his phone. You, a stranger. 

You took it from him, intrigued. The screen showed two pencil sketches on paper. 

But then you saw it, and you nearly dropped the phone. It was not pencil. It was charcoal. At the bottom of the sheet was a signature below a date in the late 19th century. A signature you had seen countless times before.

“What the fuck?” You glanced at Hyunjin who now had a shit-eating grin on his face but quickly returned your attention to the screen. “Is this real?” 

“Yup. It’s real. My granddad had them, and he gave them to me some time ago.” 

You studied them with a hand over your mouth. The sketches. Drawn by Naro himself, all these years ago. 

The one on the left depicted a scenery. Something beautiful, probably from his time in South Holland if you could trust that you recognized the architecture of the town behind the empty field that was drawn. Tall grass, swayed by the wind, with a forest on one side and Leiden on the other. The sketch was simple but no less beautiful, and Naro’s style was undeniable and undeniably intriguing. The accuracy with which he drew the trees, yet made the city more of a blur, an impression, a suggestion. He always loved nature, or so the books said. Very much.

The sketch on the right left you speechless. Slowly, air stopped coming into your lungs and you found yourself staring at it through tears that you were desperately trying to swallow back. 

It showed his wife, sitting on the edge of a bed on which an almost faceless child lay. The little girl wore a gown with flowers on it. She was holding onto a doll. Her face suggested pain and exhaustion. Her face was barely a face. It was just that. Distress. Her mother was holding her other hand and caressing her hair. 

If Loss the painting had a prequel, that would be it. The sketch was depicting the last moments of Naro’s daughter before she passed away.

You gave Hyunjin his phone back. It seemed to you like it weighed a ton all of a sudden. You couldn’t even look him in the eyes, or maybe it was because you didn’t want him to see your tears.

But it was too late. “Ah, shit, I didn’t want you to cry, I just, you said, well I thought—” Hyunjin stuttered his life away while you sat there, watching the river. 

Your heart. In your chest. They were operating on it. They had cut it open and were trying to restart it. After all, dead things didn’t hurt that much, did they?

“Hyunjin,” you heard yourself say, your voice weak and shaking. “I saw your paintings. Some of them. And I know that something—someone—broke your heart.” You wiped the few tears that had begun to roll down your cheeks. “I know that your pain is deep. Deeper than the soul.”

You did look at him then, his face illuminated by the screen of his phone which still showed the sketches. His eyes had a glassy aspect to them. Was he high or was he sad?

“I have a pain like that too.” They had hooked your heart onto a defibrillator. It jumped in your chest but it did not restart. Hyunjin put the phone down, listening intently, wiping, too, the corner of his eye. “The woman. On the drawing.” You motioned at the device resting on the grass. “That was me once.”

Slowly, Hyunjin put together what you were trying to tell him. And you didn’t even know why you were telling him. It made no sense. You didn’t talk about this. To anyone. Ever.

You almost told him everything. How losing Judith had driven you crazy enough that you were convinced you had somehow caused it. That it was all a punishment for all the greedy things you had done, the horrible thoughts you had. That you were so scared at first you weren’t sure you ought to be a mother at all. That, maybe, it was best you never became a mother because maybe you would be an awful one. That life showed you what was meant to be. It forced it on you.

Forced upon you. Aloneness. 

Resentment. 

You went on but only barely—the words remained trapped in your throat, too real to be spoken out loud. 

“You don’t have to say more,” Hyunjin whispered, his speech slower than it had been. “I… I get it. I think.”

Hyunjin stared at you and you couldn’t read the expression on his face, but you understood the emotions it evoked. Horror. Compassion. Something even deeper than that. There was another detonation in your chest and this time, your heart shuddered. 

He couldn’t talk for a long time after and neither could you. But somehow, it was okay.

“I’m so sorry,” he said after a while. “God, I am so sorry.”

You wiped the rest of your tears. More might come later, but at least it was over for now. “I’m sorry for unloading this on you. You didn’t ask for any of this.” 

He shook his head. “No, no. I shouldn’t have… I just wanted… I didn’t know…”

You cut him off. It felt strange—like the pain was very much there still but different. Not so alone, in a good way. As in, you were sad and you knew you would always be. But you were other things, too. “Of course you didn’t know. We don’t know each other.”

He tilted his head, just a little, staring right into your eyes. “But I don’t think we’re strangers anymore.” He was beautiful the way art was beautiful. It took some time to take it all in. And you never really took it all in. He wasn’t just a piece of art anyway—he was a whole museum. “I mean, you discovered my deepest secrets in my paintings and you just told me one of yours. I think it amounts to something, doesn’t it?”

Yes. Yes it did. 

You mirrored him, cocking your head to the side too, studying him. Taking in not just the sight of him but this strange feeling that was carving itself a home within you. You couldn’t understand what it was. Or why it was. All you could do is let it settle in.

All you could do was let your heart be revived. And you didn’t want to. Really. It was just a waste of time. It was worse than that. Your heart had died already, stopping at the same time as Judith’s. And it had remained this way when you failed at being someone that Chris could love. Should it be stopped again—and it will—it would just kill you for good. 

“Was it a long time ago?” you inquired, accepting how peculiar the conversation was. Accepting that you were comfortable with it. With him. “That… it… that you had your heart broken?”

His eyes flicked but returned to you in less than a millisecond. “Not really. Some time last year.” He breathed in. And out. “It still hurts. That’s the problem, right? It’ll always hurt. It was the first time I loved someone for real. So it hurts more. I loved her so desperately. I couldn’t admit to myself she didn’t love me back for a long time. No, it’s not even that. She didn’t want to love me back. It made it so much worse.” 

She didn’t want to love me back. How unfair.

You wondered whether Chris wanted to love you still or not. 

Hyunjin returned the question. “What about you? Was it… a long time ago?” 

“A few years. Three? Four?” How were you supposed to explain that after a while, when spending too much time in misery, it just becomes misery minus the time? “It’ll never not hurt.” 

“I feel like all those comforting phrases people say about grief only make it worse,” Hyunjin pointed out in a low voice. “We all know it will hurt always.” He frowned. “I’m so sorry,” he said again. 

“What do you mean?” you asked. Somewhere near, a whip-poor-will sang its distinct song a few times. A glance at the sky behind you let you know the moon was out. 

“Someone told me once that grief is just love that has nowhere to go anymore,” Hyunjin explained. “It’s meant to be comforting. But it’s not. Love, when it has nowhere to go or when it isn’t wanted. It’s not uplifting. It’s just cruel.” He looked around, startled by the sudden birdsong echoing in the night.

“It’s a whip-poor-will,” you told Hyunjin. “They kind of look like if a frog had a baby with a bird.” Chris liked to tell the tourists that, and the tourists all found it very funny. It was also strangely accurate. “You’re right. About grief. Nothing makes it not-grief.” Then, you added, “I never really talk about this.” 

Hyunjin let out a displeased grunt. “So you’re just… alone with it?” 

“Aren’t you?” 

He thought about it. “I have Minho. I don’t know where I’d be if he didn’t make me get my shit together.” He bit into his lip. “But he doesn’t know everything. So I am alone about certain things. Like resentment.” 

“Resentment.” The thing you wished you didn’t know how it felt at all. 

“You know, resentment can only exist in a place where there was once love. Maybe, for some, love turns into grief. And for others, it turns into resentment.” 

Yes. Yes. Fuck.

You felt it in your chest. An earthquake made of light. 

Could it be? That you had found the person on Earth who could understand—really understand—you? And who you could understand, too? 

No, it couldn’t be. This was too reckless. Creating bonds with others was such a significant risk that you avoided it altogether. What was the endgame here, after all? You would come hang out with Hyunjin once in a while and, throughout the summer, get to know him, perhaps even tell him everything? About Judith and about Chris and about how you missed your mom and about how you weren’t a person anymore. 

And maybe he would tell you more about his broken heart. And then he would leave and forget you ever existed. And he was handsome, dangerously so. He made stupid little butterflies appear in your stomach when he looked at you for a little too long or when he touched you or when you smelled him. And you were married and you shouldn’t even be thinking these things, you shouldn’t be thinking about his lips and wondering how it felt to be kissed by them. 

You didn’t remember it. The feeling of being embraced and kissed and loved.

You sat there, psychoanalyzing yourself, telling yourself that you were so starved for love and attention that you were willing to drink up whatever was offered to you. Even if it was just a guy being polite—not dishonest or anything, but just polite, and kind. It made sense to seek warmth when you were out there freezing to death.

But, god, he was beautiful.

“I should go back,” you heard yourself say, and it hurt you to say it. You wanted to stay here all night, talking or not talking. Just existing alongside Hyunjin for a moment. 

He nodded. “I’ll walk you back.” He stood up without waiting for a response.

You stood too, almost stumbling over as you did so. Hyunjin caught you just in time, his arm around your waist while you regained your balance. 

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

Oh no. No no no no. No. No. Fuck.

“It’s fine, I’ll be fine,” you told Hyunjin, keeping one hand on the boulder, your breath coming to a stop. It was at that moment you realized there was a difference between an arm around the waist for pretense and one with purpose. Intention. Even if that intention was as insignificant as preventing you from falling over. Pretense would always be that. A lie. An impression. The suggestion of something, which is a million times worse than nothing. 

“I’ll go,” Hyunjin insisted. “If you say no, it’s fine, but I’ll just follow you until you make it to wherever it is you’re going.” He let go of you and the night felt cooler than it had been. The ghost of his touch lingered on you and the whip-poor-will sang again. 

You had a nervous laugh. “So you’re a stalker? At least you’re an honest one.” He laughed, too.

He gathered his things and both of you retreated, walking away. You couldn’t help but look behind your shoulder as you did so, just to see it. The spot you were sitting in when something changed inside you. When your secret became a little less secret. It looked the same as it always had and if you came back here tomorrow or a year from now, it would be identical. But it would always be that place where your heart restarted. 

You had never truly believed it would ever happen, but you always figured that if your heart came back to life, you would feel it. It would be grand, like fireworks. An explosion. Lightning and thunder. You imagined it would feel as though the Earth had shifted on its axis. 

But there was none of that tonight. Turns out, a heart that’s thawing is quite silent, inconspicuous even. Turns out, one moment your heart is numb and one second later, it isn’t anymore. And that’s it.

Hyunjin helped you over the fence. You didn’t need his help but you let him because it felt good to be touched by him, even for just a moment. You walked together in silence for a long while, just following the path, taking your time. At one point, he took his phone out to look up something and his giggles echoed into the night. If you had to describe the giggles, you would say they were endearing and a little goofy, dorkish even, but contagious. 

“You were right about that bird. It does kind of look frog-ish.” For emphasis, he showed you his image search, displaying whip-poor-wills. 

You told him about some of the wildlife around and Hyunjin listened avidly, asking questions when he wanted precisions on something. He seemed particularly interested in woodpeckers and inquired plenty about the yellow-bellied sapsucker, baffled by its cry after he listened to it on his phone. “It sounds like a squeaky toy!” 

And you kept on walking. He was advancing with ease, his long legs allowing him graceful, efficient steps. You informed him you were returning to the general shop since it was open through the night, except for while you did your patrols. He asked a few questions about that, too. You told him about your parents. Your mom. He tried to give you his condolences but you didn’t let him.

The shop was in sight by the time you gathered enough courage to say something about Naro’s sketches from earlier. “Hyunjin… those sketches,” you started. “Thank you. For showing them to me.” 

“In hindsight, I shouldn’t have,” he pointed out gravely. 

“No, I’m glad you did.” And to your surprise, you meant it. “I never saw them before.”

A proud smile appeared on his face. “Of course not. We never shared those with the public or anything. They just stayed at my grandad’s place and now they’re at mine.” 

“Damn, that’s cool as hell.” You shook your head, suppressing a smile. “What else do you keep at your place? Not the stolen painting, I hope?”

He let out a heartfelt laugh. “I fucking wish,” Hyunjin sighed. “I could make some serious money with that.” 

You let silence creep in before you spoke again. “I really liked it. The art I saw from you. It’s amazing. I’ve never seen such elaborate storytelling within individual pieces like that. How long have you been painting?”

“Oh, my whole life I guess,” Hyunjin explained. “My grandfather mentored me a lot. My father worked as a curator in museums. For a while.” He paused there. “So my whole life has been about art. I tried to distance myself from it but that didn’t work, did it?” 

You snorted. “Doesn’t look like it, but it’s great though! How it’s a family thing.” 

“Yeah, you could say that.” He motioned towards the shop, now very close. “Same goes for you. It’s a family thing.” Maybe you were crazy but he looked like he hesitated. “Your family and your husband’s.” 

What were you supposed to say to that? “Yeah.”

He stopped when you reached the door. “Thank you,” he told you. “For chatting with me. And… for liking my art. You look like you know what you’re talking about, so it’s a pretty big compliment coming from you.” 

“I just like art. Good art,” you specified with a smile. “Thank you. I owe you a couple of drinks at least.” You grabbed your keys from your pocket and unlocked the front door, also turning the lights back on. 

You turned to him again—his irises were dilated, his lips were raw from biting them and from smoking and drinking. But god, he was beautiful. 

“I’d love that, so I hope you meant it.” Hyunjin smiled—a coy smile, almost. 

He did something you didn’t expect—he opened his arms and hugged you briefly. Just a couple of seconds, pressing you against him with his big arms around you. His body was warm, and his embrace was gentle, tender even.

“Bye,” Hyunjin whispered, pulling away. “I’ll see you around.”

He turned and walked away, leaving you speechless. His scent stayed on you all night. You spent hours trying to reason with yourself but there was no point. 

Turns out, there is a difference between a thawed heart and one that’s set ablaze. 

A big fucking difference.

... to be continued.

Note from Mari: I do feel like a broken record when I write these but I absolutely want to say thank you to my readers. Thank you for reading my stories, sure, but also for making this place a welcoming one for me and for treating me the way you do, which is with kindness, compassion, and love. I don't think I deserve so much, but I keep all of it in my heart. Thank you for giving me a purpose.

This is a combination of my old and new permanent taglist. It seems like I upset a few people by restarting my taglist and I do apologize. It's more work than it seems to keep track and since so many people on it were silent readers or straight up inactive, I wanted to try and make it a little easier for me. Only a handful of people responded to my initial post so I assumed people were losing interest and no longer wished to be on my taglist, hence why I didn't make several subsequent announcements regarding it. I didn't mean to hurt anyone or ignore anyone. I did my best to compile everybody for this one and am sorry if I missed anyone. Please let me know.

Permanent taglist:

@abiaswreck ; @accalus ; @aimeexx ; @anylady-fics ; @b4kuho3 ; 

@binstitsweat ; @byeobie ; @cb97percent ; @chans1aptop ; @chartrucewhore ; 

@compersian ; @cybergracie ;  @hanjingin ; @hwan-g ; @hyuneyeon ;

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[hyvneluv]

I’m about to make this clip my whole personality because do you see this cute dumpling

[hyvneluv]

I don’t usually post reblog comments under fics but my friend recently recommended this to me and it might just be one of my favourite portrayals of Hyunjin and one of the best writings that have ever blessed my eyes and brain… but I saw the last update was in 2022 so I don’t know if we’ll ever get an update for the last part but it’s so good and I feel like everyone needs to read it…

𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐠𝐢𝐫𝐥 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐧𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞, 𝐢𝐭’𝐬 𝐚𝐥𝐰𝐚𝐲𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐚𝐦𝐞.

part one of the velvet opiate series— part two.

pairing: rockstar! hyunjin x reader (+ minho, felix, chan)

genre: visual gothic rock band, manipulation, dark smut, hurt/comfort, toxic skz, set in the late 90’s-early 00’s.

word count: 3.6k

warnings: profanity, sexual themes, unprotected intercourse, drug & alcohol abuse, violence, self hate, mentioned self harm, mentioned bdsm, dark! members.

a/n: this is a dark fic. i do not condone the actions of the characters, nor do i associate the guys with this behavior. this is entirely fictional. lmk what you think! 🤭

The newspaper wrote ‘Yokohama Arena: the horrors of Velvet Opiate’s destructive nature,’ in bold letters.

Felix read the article animatedly, emphasizing how ‘scandalous’ this band was, how ‘corrupting young girls, and brainwashing teenagers should and would not be encouraged.’ That societal rules are there to be followed, and ‘these barbaric acts of animalistic chaos have to stop’, it ‘cannot on any level be considered music, when the frontman is half naked in front of high school girls.’

“Fucking gorgeous, frontman,” Felix coughed, smirking. “They got it all wrong.”

Their agency had been getting calls all morning; parents complaining, endorsers pulling out, others paying double to have the band advertise their products. Magazines wanting to set up interviews—one thing was certain.

Everyone was talking about Velvet Opiate—everyone wanted a piece of them. Good, or bad, or both. As long as they were paying.

Their manager had them turn on the TV—channel 7 was reporting on yesterday’s concert, broadcasting the band across the nation. If anything, their little scheme had worked. What would a rock band be, after all, without bad publicity?

Chan pulled his cap further down, hiding his face from view. “We’re gonna have to go into hiding for a while,” he crossed his arms.

“Lockdown, huh?” Minho looked bored. Hyunjin could almost see the gears in his mind, already working out ways to sneak out.

“Just for a couple weeks,” their manager promised. “You’ll be staying at the same hotel, as usual. And Minho, for fuck’s sake, don’t even think about it this time.”

Minho met Hyunjin’s eyes—smug bastard. Knew it.

“Got it, boss,” he replied, fake defeat in his stance.

“Wardrobe is ready for you. This will be the last interview for a while. Remember to not mention yesterday, the interviewer has been made aware.”

All of it was an act—a costume that they had to wear. Felix had become the ‘it’ boy of the scene, Vivienne Westwood had wanted an exclusive contract with them, because of him—he was destined to lead a band, and he carried it well with his deep voice, and unique features.

Chan was the heart and soul of their music. Without him, they’d be nothing. His ability to produce and oversee everything, his patience with the members, his cool demeanor and critical thinking—it’s helped them out of difficult-to-navigate situations.

Like Hyunjin’s drug scandal. Like Minho’s mystery pregnant girl.

They survived those things, because the label believes in Chan’s song making; because Chan fought for them—because what they have, has been Chan’s dream since he was a little boy, watching Led Zeppelin on TV, swearing to himself he’d be just like them when he grew up. What a fucking dream.

The rest of them? They’re just there for the ride. They’re there, because they’re handsome, and because they can play an instrument. Trouble always finds them, they attract chaos.

Hyunjin had always been a quiet boy, a reserved artist. He picked up painting as a hobby when he was a teenager, and now cannot, for the life of him, find where he ends and color begins. It always has to be obsession with him—heart attack, on the floor bleeding, if you take something that’s his.

He has trouble quitting—like Minho. But where Minho can be cold, and detached, Hyunjin would rather bury himself alive.

It started with cutting when he was nine; his mother abandoned him for a month, and his father, the rich asshole, was never there for a day in his life—Hyunjin struggled with loneliness from a young age. He would accept anyone that gave him a little love, would split himself open for them, and would ultimately fall into the deepest fits of depression after they left him.

He got used a lot. Sometimes it’d be older women, sometimes classmates, wanting his money. He gave, and gave, and believed all of them. Then the alcohol came, and it numbed the pain so good. A false sense of confidence.

That’s when he picked up the electric guitar. The loudness of it, could drown him whole. An artist through and through, alone in the world, with money to burn. A cliché fucking tragedy.

Heroin didn’t come ‘till later, but no one wants to hear about that. All of it was an act—a costume they had to wear.

As for Minho—a total mystery. A question mark. He appeared like God one day, when they were looking for a bassist, and since then he’s given them some of the best bass lines there are out there. A womanizer, good at getting his way, secretive when it comes to his personal life.

Hyunjin knows he grew up in an orphanage. The media has attempted to dig deeper, find out more, but the agency pays them good money to stop trying.

For the past two years, since he’s joined them, they’ve become like brothers. Felix hates his guts sometimes, but Hyunjin has seen the way Minho gently guides him, has seen how protective he is over the youngest and the most important.

For Hyunjin, Felix is his twin. The public sees it that way, and the label sells them like that. Every photo shoot, every album jacket, Felix is Hyunjin’s mirror. The light to his dark, the sun to his moon. In a way, they attract each other.

The interviewer asks all this, and all of them try to paint an interesting personality. All an act, all a costume. No one ever truly knows, and that’s fine, as long as that blinding, glamour like limelight falls on them every night. As long as they get to play, and be together.

“Lastly, the fans would like to know—do any of you have girlfriends?”

Wouldn’t you like to know? Chan glanced at Minho. He had intently been staring at this woman, and she had noticed, how could she have not?

“Are you interested?” Minho asked, half teasing, half joking. Legs crossed, arms crossed over each other, that simple, that easy.

Minho had found his girl for the night.

“We’re all single, ma’am. Are we done here?” Chan, ever the politest individual, all business.

“Yes, I think so. Thank you so much!”

The members got up, and bowed. Countless autographs, and pictures later, Velvet Opiate was back in the van, ready for some well deserved privacy. Except for Minho.

Minho was waiting in the hall, a dark angel dressed in an all black private school uniform, with numerous silver, safety pins all over, a slightly oversized leather jacket draped on his shoulders.

Inky mid length purple hair, and glittery dark brown eyes. He will devour that girl whole, Felix said, looking between them. He wasn’t wrong.

Their manager entered the SUV, doing a head count.

“Goddamnit, Lee!”

Chan snorted. “Did you really expect him to behave?”

Hyunjin had been silent, looking out the window, cigarette in mouth. He was itching for something more, the hole in his heart growing larger.

“Speaking of,” he started, “could you drop me off at the Red Light?”

“Hyunjin,” Chan warned.

He knew. No matter how many times Minho broke the rules, he would always get a slap in the knee. Because he can contain himself—because he knows what too much is, knows how to get himself out.

Hyunjin would never be Minho. Hyunjin would be his own demise.

“I really need this, man.”

“What you need is sleep—”

“You guys have no idea how much shit you’re in. There are mosquitos out there, waiting, dying to bite you. You’re killing yourselves here,” their manager was getting progressively angrier.

“I’m not always gonna be there to pick you up.”

Chan rested his hand on Hyunjin’s shoulder. Hyunjin shrugged it off, sharply. Felix sighed.

“I’ll go with you,” he said. “He’s not gonna do anything with me there.”

Hyunjin hated Felix then. Hated him, because he was right. He respected the boy too much to invite him into the horrible fucking shitshow his personal life was. With that being said, the itch was becoming a pain, and it wouldn’t be long now.

“You’re going for her, aren’t you?” Felix whispered, once the car was on the road.

Hyunjin’s face was half hidden behind long blonde hair. Exhaling smoke, he looked at his better twin. Shorter, platinum hair on top of a cute, kind face. So many piercings adorning his ears, a single stud on his nose. Plaid suit, with combat boots.

Picture perfect rockstar, coming to the rescue. Hyunjin smiled, throwing his cigarette out the window.

“She doesn’t mean anything, honey.”

Felix scowled. “Fuck you, Hwang.”

“Say when.”

“Ladies,” Chan reasoned from the back seat.

Hyunjin laughed a full laugh, putting his arm around Felix’s shoulders, pulling him in. Felix fought, but to no avail. Hyunjin grinned down at the younger boy.

“Maybe,” he replied honestly. “I want to see her.”

He’d seen you serving there. A vision to his drunken self, you appeared an angel to him. He’d had no voice to ask for your name, no way to bring you closer.

This time he was completely sober, much to his dismay. But he had to be—he had to know you. You’d been haunting his dreams for a month now. All his highs, you were there extending your hand to him, pulling him out the shadows, kickstarting his heart.

“I’ll have the driver pick you both up,” Joon, their manager, said. “No later than two o’clock, and no fucking drugs, Hyunjin. I mean it.”

“I wouldn’t dare.”

“I wish that was true.”

Hyunjin’s long, black trench coat was moving against the wind, making him look quite unreal. Felix followed behind him, looking out for any person recognizing them. If word got out, they could get in big trouble.

“Don’t worry too much, hm?” Another cigarette had found its way to the elder’s mouth. “You’ll forget about everything in there.”

One look at the bouncer, and the door was open, no questions asked. Hyunjin seemed well known around this place. Of course, it could be the name of the band he was in, that gave him such power, or simply the fact that he was Hwang Hyunjin. He could bewitch anyone. If only he realized that.

The bar’s name rang true, as a red neon light bled throughout the whole establishment. Black leather couches, and a never ending bar was the main point. Girls dressed in bondage served, while hypnotic, dark music played. There were no windows, just one single erotic dream, on replay.

Felix had never been there. He wondered why. Hyunjin was greeting some people behind the counter, a sinner dressed in all black, pale hair acting like a halo, enveloped in smoke.

His band mate fit right in. Felix hoped that didn’t mean he was too far gone.

Hyunjin was in agony. He needed a fix, and he needed it before Felix could sense how fucked up his friend truly was. Cigarettes did shit all for him, and he’d already went through a full pack of them.

He downed his drink, and ordered another one for Felix.

You were across the room, tiniest fucking skirt barely covering your ass. Fuck him, a hundred times. What took over him was primal, the need to see you naked making him dizzy.

What were you doing to him? His itch went away as soon as his cock got hard. He needed you. He needed you like heroin.

A flash of a black coat towards you, and you were taken away from the crowd, backed into a wall next to the bathrooms. Your heart had leapt out your chest, your breath stolen.

Who was this angel man staring into your soul?

“You have cursed me, sweetheart. I can’t see anything but you.”

Those lips, those eyes… You’d seen them before. On TV. Long black coat, angel hair, long fingers playing the guitar…

Your mouth fell open. This was the lead guitarist of Velvet Opiate. He felt so strangely familiar to you, yet you cross your heart and hope to die, you’ve never been this close to him before.

There was a cigarette in his right hand, and it was burning your eyes. You were completely trapped between the wall and his chest. It was the way he was staring down at you, like you were the last thing holding him on planet Earth.

“I’ve been waiting for you for so long,” he muttered, leaning above your lips, his tobacco breath fanning your face.

“I have to go back to work, sir, please—”

“May I kiss you?”

He looked so starved, how could you refuse? This tall, broad, shell of a man was asking you to save him, how could you ever say no?

“Yes,” a breath.

His mouth devoured yours, his non dominant hand roughly grabbing your chin. This was what hunger felt like, this kiss, the way his tongue moved with yours, searching, ravaging. You moaned, and he growled, cigarette long forgotten, now burning his hand. He felt nothing of it. Your mouth was paradise.

His hand travelled down, scratching your waist, over your hips, in between your legs, yes, yes—you were burning, scorching hot, and sweating. You wanted more, more of what he offered, all of it, whatever he would give you—

He’d give everything. You could take it all.

“Fuck, angel. You’re gonna be the death of me,” his lips got lost on your neck, sucking and biting and killing you.

Oh, you were dying too. You were gonna die with him. Your heart was beating in your ears, your blood rushing. This was what it felt like—to be wanted. Entirely.

His palm was rubbing against your aching, wet cunt, his mouth kissing you raw once again.

You would die the necessary death. As long as he never stopped kissing you, you would.

He picked you up, and walked you underneath the staircase, the darkest place of the bar. You could feel it, feel him, his want for you, what it meant. He held you against him so tight, like he was afraid you’d disappear.

He wanted you. Out of everyone, silly, old you.

“I need to be inside you, sweetheart.”

You were already nodding, already in a hurry to unzip his pants—you were going to cum on his fingers, before you could even have the real thing. You needed him inside you, too. He had started a fire, and he was the only one who could put it out, before you burned alive.

“I’m not like this,” you rasped, voice gone, tears streaming down your face. “I’m not anything like this, I swear—”

Hyunjin wiped your eyes, kissing down your cheeks, as you grabbed his cock. He faltered, taking a sharp intake, eyes squeezing shut.

“Tiny fucking skirt, an angel just for me,” Hyunjin words were feverish, all in your mercy. You guided him in your cunt, and he cursed. “You’re just for me, baby.”

He entered you in one fluid movement, and you both groaned. Your arms hugged his neck tighter, as he started fucking you brutally. Your back was hitting the wall with every thrust, but you couldn’t bring yourself to care. You were so wet, so incredibly wet for him, and aching—an ache so strong, you’d let him fuck you in front of everyone, if that’s what he wanted.

You should’ve known he’d be bad for you, then. Instead, you didn’t. You let yourself be fucked senseless, and you came hard, over and over, as Hyunjin whispered sweet nothings in your ear.

Letting a stranger have his way with you like this—what were you thinking?

You weren’t. You’d do it again, in a heartbeat.

“Your dick feels so good, fuck…” You had been reduced to whimpers, and tears. “Please…please…”

“What do you need, sweetheart? I wanna fucking cum in you, angel. My perfect girl. That’s right, baby, fuck on me, get whatever you need…take it all…”

When he came in you, you realized this man had destroyed himself for you. A dark angel, his seed deep within you, his breath stolen by you. Your taste all over his fingers. This man would have to leave with your scent all over him.

When you came for him, Hyunjin knew he would never leave you alone. His perfect angel, draped in red, fucked out, holding onto him. That’s what all his dreams were about.

You, naked, being taken—being consumed by him. There was nothing stronger than you, then. Nothing he craved more.

A terrifying panic set in him. Being addicted to a person was so much worse than being addicted to a needle. He was getting buried again, like every time before.

One look at you in his arms, and he couldn’t give a damn about himself. Cursed, and alone. He was dead already, he had died a long time ago.

Setting you down, he helped you with your skirt, making sure to memorize your skin, kneeling on one knee for you to hold onto, while his mind was taken over by shadows again.

He would have to leave you, with no way to see you again. Damn him to Hell.

He needed a drink, and a fucking cigarette. He was not good at leaving—was never the one to go. But there was no choice—Joon would agree.

Better it being a person, than a drug. Even if the person can be so much more deadly.

You crouched down with him, holding his bicep, trying to get a look on his face. You saw the flame of the cigarette, but his eyes were covered by silky hair. Your heart skipped a beat—this man was breathtakingly beautiful, and he had wanted you, but he didn’t belong anywhere near you. How, then, was this going to end up in anything other than heartbreak?

You were prepared. All rockstars fuck girls, and never speak to them again. You weren’t stupid, but you were naive. You did fall for the oldest trick, after all.

Love. Pretend.

What you weren’t prepared for, though, was seeing tears trickle down his porcelain face after he turned your way. Dark eyes, taking in your face, his hand reaching for your neck.

When it wrapped around you like a vine, it felt like you deserved it. A punishment for falling into a trap. He stared at you like this, grip never tightening, no matter how much you wanted it to.

He smiled at you then; through tears, through angel hair; picture perfect—your broken rockstar.

“My girl,” he murmured. You went to reach for his face, but he shook his head. Your hand dropped like dead weight.

Your heart dropped with it.

His fingers moved, down to your collarbones, making way up your neck again, grasping a fistful of hair, pulling lightly, and then finally resting on the back of your neck. He looked like he wanted to kiss you, but made no move to do so.

You waited, like a beggar, like a little girl waiting for Christmas. You waited for the present, you waited for the crumbs.

“I won’t see you for a while,” his hand moved away, and he got up, leaving you down.

Missing him already.

“Tell me I wasn’t stupid to do this, and I’ll believe you,” you said, looking up at him.

Your broad angel of death, in all his ruin.

He took a long puff of his cigarette, considering your words. No matter what he said, it would sound like a lie. You held too much over him, to be betrayed.

You held his sanity, now.

“You’re my lifeline, now, angel.”

You had no idea what that meant, how much it entailed. But you’d learn, later, and wish you never did. He will ignore this, and love you dead.

Because this is what he does. Because this is a very old story, and there is no other version to it. It has to be this, always.

When he left you, his black coat swung behind him, halo on his head. You had been sure he’d been a dream.

How to meet a dream again? How to wait for it?

Hyunjin found Felix making out with, what he assumed was, a waitress. The music had changed into something with more bass. He grabbed Felix’s half empty drink, and downed it.

Then he knocked on the table loudly. Felix groaned, and looked at his direction.

“You’re back,” he commented, a devilish grin spreading across his face.

“Should I leave you here?”

Felix considered it. The waitress on him giggled, and the choice was made.

“You’ll be okay on your own? Promise me,” Felix’s features sobered immediately.

Hyunjin nodded. “Always.”

Later, when he couldn’t move his body, the abandoned house burning a slow, blue fire, he thought promises meant nothing.

No one ever kept them.

[hyvneluv]

𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐠𝐢𝐫𝐥 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐧𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞, 𝐢𝐭’𝐬 𝐚𝐥𝐰𝐚𝐲𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐚𝐦𝐞.

part one of the velvet opiate series— part two.

pairing: rockstar! hyunjin x reader (+ minho, felix, chan)

genre: visual gothic rock band, manipulation, dark smut, hurt/comfort, toxic skz, set in the late 90’s-early 00’s.

word count: 3.6k

warnings: profanity, sexual themes, unprotected intercourse, drug & alcohol abuse, violence, self hate, mentioned self harm, mentioned bdsm, dark! members.

a/n: this is a dark fic. i do not condone the actions of the characters, nor do i associate the guys with this behavior. this is entirely fictional. lmk what you think! 🤭

The newspaper wrote ‘Yokohama Arena: the horrors of Velvet Opiate’s destructive nature,’ in bold letters.

Felix read the article animatedly, emphasizing how ‘scandalous’ this band was, how ‘corrupting young girls, and brainwashing teenagers should and would not be encouraged.’ That societal rules are there to be followed, and ‘these barbaric acts of animalistic chaos have to stop’, it ‘cannot on any level be considered music, when the frontman is half naked in front of high school girls.’

“Fucking gorgeous, frontman,” Felix coughed, smirking. “They got it all wrong.”

Their agency had been getting calls all morning; parents complaining, endorsers pulling out, others paying double to have the band advertise their products. Magazines wanting to set up interviews—one thing was certain.

Everyone was talking about Velvet Opiate—everyone wanted a piece of them. Good, or bad, or both. As long as they were paying.

Their manager had them turn on the TV—channel 7 was reporting on yesterday’s concert, broadcasting the band across the nation. If anything, their little scheme had worked. What would a rock band be, after all, without bad publicity?

Chan pulled his cap further down, hiding his face from view. “We’re gonna have to go into hiding for a while,” he crossed his arms.

“Lockdown, huh?” Minho looked bored. Hyunjin could almost see the gears in his mind, already working out ways to sneak out.

“Just for a couple weeks,” their manager promised. “You’ll be staying at the same hotel, as usual. And Minho, for fuck’s sake, don’t even think about it this time.”

Minho met Hyunjin’s eyes—smug bastard. Knew it.

“Got it, boss,” he replied, fake defeat in his stance.

“Wardrobe is ready for you. This will be the last interview for a while. Remember to not mention yesterday, the interviewer has been made aware.”

All of it was an act—a costume that they had to wear. Felix had become the ‘it’ boy of the scene, Vivienne Westwood had wanted an exclusive contract with them, because of him—he was destined to lead a band, and he carried it well with his deep voice, and unique features.

Chan was the heart and soul of their music. Without him, they’d be nothing. His ability to produce and oversee everything, his patience with the members, his cool demeanor and critical thinking—it’s helped them out of difficult-to-navigate situations.

Like Hyunjin’s drug scandal. Like Minho’s mystery pregnant girl.

They survived those things, because the label believes in Chan’s song making; because Chan fought for them—because what they have, has been Chan’s dream since he was a little boy, watching Led Zeppelin on TV, swearing to himself he’d be just like them when he grew up. What a fucking dream.

The rest of them? They’re just there for the ride. They’re there, because they’re handsome, and because they can play an instrument. Trouble always finds them, they attract chaos.

Hyunjin had always been a quiet boy, a reserved artist. He picked up painting as a hobby when he was a teenager, and now cannot, for the life of him, find where he ends and color begins. It always has to be obsession with him—heart attack, on the floor bleeding, if you take something that’s his.

He has trouble quitting—like Minho. But where Minho can be cold, and detached, Hyunjin would rather bury himself alive.

It started with cutting when he was nine; his mother abandoned him for a month, and his father, the rich asshole, was never there for a day in his life—Hyunjin struggled with loneliness from a young age. He would accept anyone that gave him a little love, would split himself open for them, and would ultimately fall into the deepest fits of depression after they left him.

He got used a lot. Sometimes it’d be older women, sometimes classmates, wanting his money. He gave, and gave, and believed all of them. Then the alcohol came, and it numbed the pain so good. A false sense of confidence.

That’s when he picked up the electric guitar. The loudness of it, could drown him whole. An artist through and through, alone in the world, with money to burn. A cliché fucking tragedy.

Heroin didn’t come ‘till later, but no one wants to hear about that. All of it was an act—a costume they had to wear.

As for Minho—a total mystery. A question mark. He appeared like God one day, when they were looking for a bassist, and since then he’s given them some of the best bass lines there are out there. A womanizer, good at getting his way, secretive when it comes to his personal life.

Hyunjin knows he grew up in an orphanage. The media has attempted to dig deeper, find out more, but the agency pays them good money to stop trying.

For the past two years, since he’s joined them, they’ve become like brothers. Felix hates his guts sometimes, but Hyunjin has seen the way Minho gently guides him, has seen how protective he is over the youngest and the most important.

For Hyunjin, Felix is his twin. The public sees it that way, and the label sells them like that. Every photo shoot, every album jacket, Felix is Hyunjin’s mirror. The light to his dark, the sun to his moon. In a way, they attract each other.

The interviewer asks all this, and all of them try to paint an interesting personality. All an act, all a costume. No one ever truly knows, and that’s fine, as long as that blinding, glamour like limelight falls on them every night. As long as they get to play, and be together.

“Lastly, the fans would like to know—do any of you have girlfriends?”

Wouldn’t you like to know? Chan glanced at Minho. He had intently been staring at this woman, and she had noticed, how could she have not?

“Are you interested?” Minho asked, half teasing, half joking. Legs crossed, arms crossed over each other, that simple, that easy.

Minho had found his girl for the night.

“We’re all single, ma’am. Are we done here?” Chan, ever the politest individual, all business.

“Yes, I think so. Thank you so much!”

The members got up, and bowed. Countless autographs, and pictures later, Velvet Opiate was back in the van, ready for some well deserved privacy. Except for Minho.

Minho was waiting in the hall, a dark angel dressed in an all black private school uniform, with numerous silver, safety pins all over, a slightly oversized leather jacket draped on his shoulders.

Inky mid length purple hair, and glittery dark brown eyes. He will devour that girl whole, Felix said, looking between them. He wasn’t wrong.

Their manager entered the SUV, doing a head count.

“Goddamnit, Lee!”

Chan snorted. “Did you really expect him to behave?”

Hyunjin had been silent, looking out the window, cigarette in mouth. He was itching for something more, the hole in his heart growing larger.

“Speaking of,” he started, “could you drop me off at the Red Light?”

“Hyunjin,” Chan warned.

He knew. No matter how many times Minho broke the rules, he would always get a slap in the knee. Because he can contain himself—because he knows what too much is, knows how to get himself out.

Hyunjin would never be Minho. Hyunjin would be his own demise.

“I really need this, man.”

“What you need is sleep—”

“You guys have no idea how much shit you’re in. There are mosquitos out there, waiting, dying to bite you. You’re killing yourselves here,” their manager was getting progressively angrier.

“I’m not always gonna be there to pick you up.”

Chan rested his hand on Hyunjin’s shoulder. Hyunjin shrugged it off, sharply. Felix sighed.

“I’ll go with you,” he said. “He’s not gonna do anything with me there.”

Hyunjin hated Felix then. Hated him, because he was right. He respected the boy too much to invite him into the horrible fucking shitshow his personal life was. With that being said, the itch was becoming a pain, and it wouldn’t be long now.

“You’re going for her, aren’t you?” Felix whispered, once the car was on the road.

Hyunjin’s face was half hidden behind long blonde hair. Exhaling smoke, he looked at his better twin. Shorter, platinum hair on top of a cute, kind face. So many piercings adorning his ears, a single stud on his nose. Plaid suit, with combat boots.

Picture perfect rockstar, coming to the rescue. Hyunjin smiled, throwing his cigarette out the window.

“She doesn’t mean anything, honey.”

Felix scowled. “Fuck you, Hwang.”

“Say when.”

“Ladies,” Chan reasoned from the back seat.

Hyunjin laughed a full laugh, putting his arm around Felix’s shoulders, pulling him in. Felix fought, but to no avail. Hyunjin grinned down at the younger boy.

“Maybe,” he replied honestly. “I want to see her.”

He’d seen you serving there. A vision to his drunken self, you appeared an angel to him. He’d had no voice to ask for your name, no way to bring you closer.

This time he was completely sober, much to his dismay. But he had to be—he had to know you. You’d been haunting his dreams for a month now. All his highs, you were there extending your hand to him, pulling him out the shadows, kickstarting his heart.

“I’ll have the driver pick you both up,” Joon, their manager, said. “No later than two o’clock, and no fucking drugs, Hyunjin. I mean it.”

“I wouldn’t dare.”

“I wish that was true.”

Hyunjin’s long, black trench coat was moving against the wind, making him look quite unreal. Felix followed behind him, looking out for any person recognizing them. If word got out, they could get in big trouble.

“Don’t worry too much, hm?” Another cigarette had found its way to the elder’s mouth. “You’ll forget about everything in there.”

One look at the bouncer, and the door was open, no questions asked. Hyunjin seemed well known around this place. Of course, it could be the name of the band he was in, that gave him such power, or simply the fact that he was Hwang Hyunjin. He could bewitch anyone. If only he realized that.

The bar’s name rang true, as a red neon light bled throughout the whole establishment. Black leather couches, and a never ending bar was the main point. Girls dressed in bondage served, while hypnotic, dark music played. There were no windows, just one single erotic dream, on replay.

Felix had never been there. He wondered why. Hyunjin was greeting some people behind the counter, a sinner dressed in all black, pale hair acting like a halo, enveloped in smoke.

His band mate fit right in. Felix hoped that didn’t mean he was too far gone.

Hyunjin was in agony. He needed a fix, and he needed it before Felix could sense how fucked up his friend truly was. Cigarettes did shit all for him, and he’d already went through a full pack of them.

He downed his drink, and ordered another one for Felix.

You were across the room, tiniest fucking skirt barely covering your ass. Fuck him, a hundred times. What took over him was primal, the need to see you naked making him dizzy.

What were you doing to him? His itch went away as soon as his cock got hard. He needed you. He needed you like heroin.

A flash of a black coat towards you, and you were taken away from the crowd, backed into a wall next to the bathrooms. Your heart had leapt out your chest, your breath stolen.

Who was this angel man staring into your soul?

“You have cursed me, sweetheart. I can’t see anything but you.”

Those lips, those eyes… You’d seen them before. On TV. Long black coat, angel hair, long fingers playing the guitar…

Your mouth fell open. This was the lead guitarist of Velvet Opiate. He felt so strangely familiar to you, yet you cross your heart and hope to die, you’ve never been this close to him before.

There was a cigarette in his right hand, and it was burning your eyes. You were completely trapped between the wall and his chest. It was the way he was staring down at you, like you were the last thing holding him on planet Earth.

“I’ve been waiting for you for so long,” he muttered, leaning above your lips, his tobacco breath fanning your face.

“I have to go back to work, sir, please—”

“May I kiss you?”

He looked so starved, how could you refuse? This tall, broad, shell of a man was asking you to save him, how could you ever say no?

“Yes,” a breath.

His mouth devoured yours, his non dominant hand roughly grabbing your chin. This was what hunger felt like, this kiss, the way his tongue moved with yours, searching, ravaging. You moaned, and he growled, cigarette long forgotten, now burning his hand. He felt nothing of it. Your mouth was paradise.

His hand travelled down, scratching your waist, over your hips, in between your legs, yes, yes—you were burning, scorching hot, and sweating. You wanted more, more of what he offered, all of it, whatever he would give you—

He’d give everything. You could take it all.

“Fuck, angel. You’re gonna be the death of me,” his lips got lost on your neck, sucking and biting and killing you.

Oh, you were dying too. You were gonna die with him. Your heart was beating in your ears, your blood rushing. This was what it felt like—to be wanted. Entirely.

His palm was rubbing against your aching, wet cunt, his mouth kissing you raw once again.

You would die the necessary death. As long as he never stopped kissing you, you would.

He picked you up, and walked you underneath the staircase, the darkest place of the bar. You could feel it, feel him, his want for you, what it meant. He held you against him so tight, like he was afraid you’d disappear.

He wanted you. Out of everyone, silly, old you.

“I need to be inside you, sweetheart.”

You were already nodding, already in a hurry to unzip his pants—you were going to cum on his fingers, before you could even have the real thing. You needed him inside you, too. He had started a fire, and he was the only one who could put it out, before you burned alive.

“I’m not like this,” you rasped, voice gone, tears streaming down your face. “I’m not anything like this, I swear—”

Hyunjin wiped your eyes, kissing down your cheeks, as you grabbed his cock. He faltered, taking a sharp intake, eyes squeezing shut.

“Tiny fucking skirt, an angel just for me,” Hyunjin words were feverish, all in your mercy. You guided him in your cunt, and he cursed. “You’re just for me, baby.”

He entered you in one fluid movement, and you both groaned. Your arms hugged his neck tighter, as he started fucking you brutally. Your back was hitting the wall with every thrust, but you couldn’t bring yourself to care. You were so wet, so incredibly wet for him, and aching—an ache so strong, you’d let him fuck you in front of everyone, if that’s what he wanted.

You should’ve known he’d be bad for you, then. Instead, you didn’t. You let yourself be fucked senseless, and you came hard, over and over, as Hyunjin whispered sweet nothings in your ear.

Letting a stranger have his way with you like this—what were you thinking?

You weren’t. You’d do it again, in a heartbeat.

“Your dick feels so good, fuck…” You had been reduced to whimpers, and tears. “Please…please…”

“What do you need, sweetheart? I wanna fucking cum in you, angel. My perfect girl. That’s right, baby, fuck on me, get whatever you need…take it all…”

When he came in you, you realized this man had destroyed himself for you. A dark angel, his seed deep within you, his breath stolen by you. Your taste all over his fingers. This man would have to leave with your scent all over him.

When you came for him, Hyunjin knew he would never leave you alone. His perfect angel, draped in red, fucked out, holding onto him. That’s what all his dreams were about.

You, naked, being taken—being consumed by him. There was nothing stronger than you, then. Nothing he craved more.

A terrifying panic set in him. Being addicted to a person was so much worse than being addicted to a needle. He was getting buried again, like every time before.

One look at you in his arms, and he couldn’t give a damn about himself. Cursed, and alone. He was dead already, he had died a long time ago.

Setting you down, he helped you with your skirt, making sure to memorize your skin, kneeling on one knee for you to hold onto, while his mind was taken over by shadows again.

He would have to leave you, with no way to see you again. Damn him to Hell.

He needed a drink, and a fucking cigarette. He was not good at leaving—was never the one to go. But there was no choice—Joon would agree.

Better it being a person, than a drug. Even if the person can be so much more deadly.

You crouched down with him, holding his bicep, trying to get a look on his face. You saw the flame of the cigarette, but his eyes were covered by silky hair. Your heart skipped a beat—this man was breathtakingly beautiful, and he had wanted you, but he didn’t belong anywhere near you. How, then, was this going to end up in anything other than heartbreak?

You were prepared. All rockstars fuck girls, and never speak to them again. You weren’t stupid, but you were naive. You did fall for the oldest trick, after all.

Love. Pretend.

What you weren’t prepared for, though, was seeing tears trickle down his porcelain face after he turned your way. Dark eyes, taking in your face, his hand reaching for your neck.

When it wrapped around you like a vine, it felt like you deserved it. A punishment for falling into a trap. He stared at you like this, grip never tightening, no matter how much you wanted it to.

He smiled at you then; through tears, through angel hair; picture perfect—your broken rockstar.

“My girl,” he murmured. You went to reach for his face, but he shook his head. Your hand dropped like dead weight.

Your heart dropped with it.

His fingers moved, down to your collarbones, making way up your neck again, grasping a fistful of hair, pulling lightly, and then finally resting on the back of your neck. He looked like he wanted to kiss you, but made no move to do so.

You waited, like a beggar, like a little girl waiting for Christmas. You waited for the present, you waited for the crumbs.

“I won’t see you for a while,” his hand moved away, and he got up, leaving you down.

Missing him already.

“Tell me I wasn’t stupid to do this, and I’ll believe you,” you said, looking up at him.

Your broad angel of death, in all his ruin.

He took a long puff of his cigarette, considering your words. No matter what he said, it would sound like a lie. You held too much over him, to be betrayed.

You held his sanity, now.

“You’re my lifeline, now, angel.”

You had no idea what that meant, how much it entailed. But you’d learn, later, and wish you never did. He will ignore this, and love you dead.

Because this is what he does. Because this is a very old story, and there is no other version to it. It has to be this, always.

When he left you, his black coat swung behind him, halo on his head. You had been sure he’d been a dream.

How to meet a dream again? How to wait for it?

Hyunjin found Felix making out with, what he assumed was, a waitress. The music had changed into something with more bass. He grabbed Felix’s half empty drink, and downed it.

Then he knocked on the table loudly. Felix groaned, and looked at his direction.

“You’re back,” he commented, a devilish grin spreading across his face.

“Should I leave you here?”

Felix considered it. The waitress on him giggled, and the choice was made.

“You’ll be okay on your own? Promise me,” Felix’s features sobered immediately.

Hyunjin nodded. “Always.”

Later, when he couldn’t move his body, the abandoned house burning a slow, blue fire, he thought promises meant nothing.

No one ever kept them.

[hyvneluv]

Just a reminder….this is what Hyunjin’s hands look like…

Artists’ hands are so nimble and steady and you can’t convince me Hyunjin wouldn’t always be touching his s/o! Also knowing how often he wears rings I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t be afraid to use them to his advantage either. Just imagine all the pretty handprints with ring imprints he’d leave on your skin! 🙂‍↕️🥰

[hyvneluv]

☾ ━━━━━━ 𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐨𝐫 𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠

☾ ━━━ PAIRING: HYUNJIIN X READER ☾ ━━━ CONTENT: ESTABLISHED RELATIONSHIP, APHRODISIACS, FOOD (COOKIES), UNPROTECTED SEX, MULTIPLE ROUNDS IMPLIED, CREAMPIE, BREEDING (?), BEGGING, WHIMPERING, MENTION FEELING LIKE SUFFOCATING AND DYNG ☾ ━━━ WC: 1K ☾ ━━━ 18+ work!! minors and ageless/blank blogs DNI! you will be blocked, put an indicator on your blog somewhere that you are 18+ before interacting with this work/blog

     Baking was a holiday tradition. Y/n found joy in it, even when her arms didn’t. She didn’t have any family recipes that she used, just whatever she had found on the internet. She found a new one to try and everyone said the cookies were delicious and tasted amazing. The ingredients threw her off just a bit but she just followed the recipe regardless. 

     The recipe was for a small batch so it was perfect for her and Hyunjin. Something small for the two of them to enjoy. She let everything cool down before grabbing a cookie and taste testing. The comments were right, they were delicious. 

     “Smells good down here,” Hyunjin said as he came down the stairs 

     “How was your live?” Y/n asked him as he pecked her lips and then took a bite of the cookie in her hand

     “Good, not as good as these cookies though. You did a really good job sweetie,” Hyunjin said

     “Thanks,” Y/n smiled, finished her cookie, and cleaned up the rest of her mess. Hyunjin munched on the cookies before his girlfriend yelled at him to save some for later. The idol just laughed and finished his last one and helped her clean up.

     “I’m going to shower and then figure out dinner,” Y/n told him

     “Can I join?” Hyunjin smiled

     “Sure,” Y/n agreed. 

     Hyunjin started the shower while she grabbed them both a change of clothes and then joined him in the bathroom. Hyunjin pulled his shirt off and then tossed it into the hamper. Y/n followed ensuite before they both got in the shower. Hyunjin stood behind her and wrapped his arms around her as she started washing her face. The warm water hitting her skin and Hyunjin’s kisses on her shoulder. One hand traveled up to her chest while the other moved down between her legs. 

     “Smell good,” Hyunjin told her as he groped her chest. 

     “Yeah?” Y/n asked, an intense heat firing up in her belly as Hyunjin pressed his erection against her ass.

     Neither knew what it was. Showering together had always been one of their favorite nonsexual intimacy times so it wasn’t that. Hyunjin himself just knew he had to do something right now about his painful erection or it felt like he was going to pass away. 

     His fingers dipped into her aching cunt, finding her already soaking wet for him. “Baby,” He moaned and nipped at her skin. 

     Y/n moaned in response. Her whole body was more sensitive than ever. It felt like she was on fire and needed to get put out. Hyunjin seemed to feel the same as his fingers moved in and out of her. Though it wasn’t helping at all. 

     “Need more,” Y/n whined 

     “Me too,” Hyunjin agreed 

     Y/n turned off the water and pulled him out of the shower. Hyunjin backed up onto their sink as his lips encapsulated hers. Y/n moaned into his mouth as she sat on the edge of the counter. Hyunjin made quick work of pushing his aching cock into her and spreading her legs open for him. 

     “Hyun,” Y/n moaned, wrapping her hands around his biceps

     “I’ve got you, baby,” Hyunjin told her, leaning her back till she hit the mirror. Starting to thrust into her as he slipped his tongue into her mouth.��

     Hyunjin was one to take his time in these situations. He’d rather love and dote on his partner than fucking but now he had a primal urge to just fuck. Nothing was going to relieve that pressure in him. 

     Y/n moaned into his mouth. Having a boyfriend who takes his time to know her body, using that to his advantage every time they were in bed, came with perks. It was second nature for him to know what angles, positions were best, etc. It was like breathing to Hyunjin now. 

     Y/n still felt like it wasn’t enough. Begging him for more and Hyunjin happily complied. Needing it just as much. If not more.

     “Fuck,” Hyunjin groaned as she tightened around him. 

     Her walls pulsating around him. Overly sensitive and Y/n couldn’t understand why. She wasn’t going to complain but she’d never felt this horny to the point of extreme sensitivity before. They’d barely started and she already felt like she was on the edge. 

     “Let me cum in you. Please, baby. Need to fill you up,” Hyunjin rambled as his lips moved from hers to her neck. Kissing, sucking, and biting on the skin.

     “Please,” Y/n barely got out before her orgasm hit. Clenching around her boyfriend’s cock. Hyunjin whimpered into her neck as his own came about at the same time. Their cums mixed inside her, warmth filling her. 

     Hyunjin grabbed her hips and held her close to his. Both took a deep breath as they came down from the high— well Y/n did. Hyunjin was still kissing on her neck as he stayed hard inside her which wasn’t normal.

     “One more. Need one more round,” Hyunjin begged, pace already starting again.

     “Counters not comfy,” Y/n groaned, now annoyed with the facet digging into her back.

     “Let’s move to the bed. Just need to go again. Need to fuck you till I’ve got nothing left.”

     Y/n and Hyunjin lost track of how long and how many roads they truly went before passing out in each other’s arms. Waking up close to noon the next day, Hyunjin was very cuddly with her.

     “Hyun,” Y/n said

     “Mmm,” He grumbled

     “You okay?”

     “Tired,” He sighed and took his head out of her chest. “ How are you feeling?”

     “Right leg feels numb but could be from you laying on it.”

     “Sorry,” Hyunjin apologized and laid back on his side of the bed, pulling her onto his chest.

     It wasn’t until an hour later when Y/n looked back at the recipe and looked up the ingredients that she realized it called for a strong aphrodisiac.

     “That’s why I couldn’t find it anywhere!” Y/n exclaimed

     “Is that why I felt like I was going to suffocate if I didn’t fuck you?” Hyunjin asked

     “I think so. Probably shouldn’t have eaten three cookies.”

     “They were delicious and I would do it again.”

☾ ━━━━━━ KINKTOBER M. LIST     M.LIST    TIP JAR

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[hyvneluv]

🪐˓⠀˚⠀drive you wild⠀@⠀no nut november.

synopsis: throughout the academic year, the sigma kappa zeta fraternity hosted so many parties that it was impossible to keep track of them all. the leader, bang chan, organised the beginning-of-summer party 一the last before going on vacation一, but the first party, held the first weekend of the first term, was also very famous. it happened in its sticky atmosphere, in the house where the eight frat members lived, that hwang hyunjin heard about the no nut november challenge for the first time. he proposed it to the group before the end of october, and when november 1st arrived, everyone was more than ready to win.

⠀⠀⸺⠀⠀pairing ★ each member individually x reader.

⠀⠀⸺⠀⠀genres ★ non!idol au, college au, sigma kappa zeta universe ; stablished relationship, friends to lovers, started dating recently (first time together), friends with benefits to lovers.

⠀⠀⸺⠀⠀warnings ★ it all starts with a bet. smut warnings are - besides hickeys, heavy make out, blahblahblah - oral fixation, corruption kink, choking kink, amiquesis, begging, hair pulling, dollification, restraints, clothed sex, daddy kink and make up sex. swearing, alcohol consumption, jealousy, but mostly fluff & comedy. more warnings per chapter.

⠀⠀⸺⠀⠀author's note ★ couldn't decide if i should write kinktober or nnn adn ended up creating a mix. may i present to you mars' no nut november, but every time a member loses, the scene involves a kink hehe big big thank you to @cinhomi my baby rora who helped me to clear doubts i had about some plots 🤍

⠀⠀⸺⠀⠀credits ★ mdni banner by @cafekitsune + warnings : if any under 18 / ageless acc interacts with this series i'll block them.

SEE MORE.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀general mlist.⠀⠀taglist.

00 ⊹    the bet : introduction

01 ⊹    try it, bite it, lick it : part one

02 ⊹    as she walks through : part two

03 ⊹    please, please, please : part three

04 ⊹    oh, to touch her : part four

05 ⊹    to forget my own name : part five

06 ⊹    my pretty angel : part six

07 ⊹    make you mine : part seven

08 ⊹    take my breathe away : part eightㅤ

ㅤㅤin the same universe.⠀⠀⠀come home, w seo changbin .ᐟ

ㅤㅤ© stayconnecteed 2024 ★ do not copy, translate, repost or share this work as yours on other platforms ! consider leaving a comment or reblogging.

[hyvneluv]

❛ON CAMERA❜ ( h. hyunjin )

p. camboy!hyunjin x fem!reader w. 1.4k

warnings? masturbation, unprotected sex, filming, dirty talk

— 𖦹 ( hyunjin catching you watching you his stream and invites you to joing ) !

authors note. this was supposed to be shorter but i got carried away.

when you moved into your apartment your roommate made it clear what he did for a living— he was a camboy. You didn’t care though; rent was cheap, he bought most of the food and cooked, and he was nice — but curiosity eventually got to you and you looked up his name.

the first time you got off to his stream; you could barely look him in the eyes. Eventually you got over the embarrassment, using his stream as your main source of entertainment to make yourself cum on your fingers; he was completely unaware to your slightly perverted ways— well at least that’s what you thought.

much like many nights before, you found yourself spread out in your bed, laptop next to you; headphones in and your hands in you short, slowly rubbing your clit as hyunjin stroked himself, reading off certain comments.

“fu-fuck you want me to go faster?” *strokes faster* “if I go any faster im gonna cum all over myself.” *faster* “fuck i wish it was you i was cumming all over.”

that last sentence made you moan, quickly biting your lip so he would hear; moving your fingers faster as you worked towards your orgasm along with him — completely unaware that hyunjin knew what you were doing and he had known, and he was smirking.

He found out after using your computer, stumbling across a tab you kept up, clicking it and to his surprise— it was his account that popped. he thought it was cute, watching you struggle to look at him the next morning after a stream, stuttering over your words when he handed you a plate of food.

he's always wanted to fuck you— the moment you moved in; you were just so precious, you were a little shy and timid, slowly warming up to him, he was obsessed but he didn’t want to make you uncomfortable, but listening to your moans from the other side of the wall, it seemed like you wanted it to.

“fu-fuck.” he whimpered, squeezing himself, the comments telling him to slow down; edging himself. “wo-would you guys be upset if i bought a guest.” he groaned, reading the comments.

fuck please it would be so hot.

i wish it was me.

im jealous

he smiled, knowing that last comment came from you. “good, i already know she’ll say yes.” he groaned. “she such a precious she’ll look so good on camera.” he stroked his cock faster, his cock twitching in his hand, he was about to cum. “and i know she’ll be a good girl for me on camera, cause she’s such a good girl for me in real life -shit- listens to everything i say.” he groaned. “oh fuck im about to cum.” the thought of him fucking you sending him over the edge. “fuck im cumming” his load shooting from his tip, landing all over his stomach

shit he’s so fucking hot

he came so much this time, must be thinking of that mystery girl …

when can we see her?

“you can meet her tonight, if she’s finished making herself cum on her tiny fingers while watching me, and just come into my room.”

your heart stopped— he was talking about you? he knew you were watching him? he wanted to fuck you— on camera nonetheless. “oh fuck!” you squealed, feeling yourself cum without warning. he smirked, his cock twitching as he heard you cum. “you guys can’t hear her right now, but she sounds so cute when she cums.”

fuck please go get her.

god i want to hear her now

fuck i wish it was me.

“you see that baby?” it felt like he was staring at you through the screen. “people are waiting for you, you don’t want to keep them waiting, do you?” you shut your laptop, slowly getting up; your clothes disheveled, opening your door, making your way down the hall to his room.

he heard your little knock on his door, his already hard. “there she is, told you she was a good girl.” he said. “come in baby.” you opened the door, standing in the walk way nervous. “don’t be nervous pretty girl.” he beckoned you in. “everyone is waiting for you.” he said.

you finally got the courage to walk to him, standing right in front of him. “good girl, let me ask you this.” he said toying with your waistband. “do you want to be filmed, because i’ll turn this camera off and fuck you privately, I don’t want you doing anything you aren’t comfortable with.”

That alone made you whine. “it-its okay.” he smiled. “then come sit and say hi.” he patted his lap, you slowly sat down, sitting on his cock, he groaned. “fuck princess, want to rip these clothes off.” He kissed your neck. “say hi to everyone.” You moaned as he bit down on your neck, working on your shorts. “h-hi.”

she’s so cute.

fuck I wanna watch her cum.

god he’s so lucky.

“i am aren’t i?” he pulled your shorts down throwing them on his bed. “get to see this cutie everyday.” he spread your legs, cursing in your ear. “such a pretty pussy.” he propped your legs on his, making you lean back. “look how pretty her pussy is.” you felt a wave of pleasure on your mound as he cupped your cunt, you moaned out. “hy-hyune.”

he sunk his fingers into your pussy, his fingers covered in your juices from your previous endeavors. “so wet for me baby, isn’t she so wet.” You heard all the donations coming in. “cant wait to have you on my cock.” You tightened around his fingers. “hyune im gonna cum.”

“should i let our good girl cum?” he said. “or should i edge her for being a bad girl and getting off to me like a little pervert.” You whined, wiggling in his lap. he slapped your thigh; making you stay still. “be good.”

make her cum please

edge her.

make her cum on your cock please.

“that’s a good idea.” He pulled his fingers out. “please.” You whimpered. “don’t worry princess you’ll get to cum on something better.” hyunjin wasn’t even worried about the camera. “sit up for me baby.”

He grabbed his cock, stroking it. “sh-shit, sit on my cock baby.” You moan, slowly sinking down. “hyune.” You moaned out. “fu-fuck princess keep going, you’ve taken most of my cock already.” He grunted as you sat down fully on him. “there we go, took me all the way.”

He held your hips, bouncing you on his cock. “fuck yeah princess, your pussy is so good.” He groaned. “I bet everyone is so jealous right now, that I get to fuck this pretty cunt -fuck- fill you up with my cock.” His hand came up to your tank top, pulling it down, squeezing your tits. “fuck hyunjin!” you screamed. “louder, let the viewers know how good im fucking you.”

“s-so good.” You moaned. “so deep.” His hand came to your clit, rubbing figure eights on your clit. “yeah, gonna cum for me.” You nodded. “gonna cum.”

fuck let her cum

shit she sounds so good.

i wanna watch both of you cum.

“fuck im gonna cum too.” He grunted. “when we’re done with this -fuck- im gonna turn this camera off and fuck you until you’re running from cock princess.” he moaned. “cum for princess.”

He spread your legs open, your thighs shaking, the knot in your stomach snapping, you gasped for air as you felt your juices pour out of you. “fuck hyunjin.”

she squirted fuck

so messy.

“fuck you made such a mess.” He moaned, his cock twitching inside of you, keeping you still as he fucked up into you, chasing his high. “gonna cum, where do I want it?” he tapped your clit. “you want it inside?”

“yes please.” You cried out. “fuck im cumming!” you felt his load shooting inside of your waiting womb. “shit.” His cock slipped out of you, giving the viewers a shot of his cum leaking out of you. “next time i want you to keep it inside for me.”

He grabbed your jaw, turning your head kissing you deeply. “you liked that?” he pulled away a fire still in his eyes. “y-yeah.” He smirked. “good , cause im not done.” he turned to the camera. “that’s it for you guys tonight.”

“but not for this pretty girl here, im gonna fuck her until her pretty little body gives out.”

©️LUVYENI