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ghoulphile · 9 months ago

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janey's dad | c.h./the ghoul | part 01

➥ pairing | cooper howard/the ghoul x f!reader ➥ word count | 3.7k ➥ warning(s) | 🔞 smut; age gap, hair pulling, teasing, making out, mutual pining, lipstick kink, stockings, frottage, porn w/ feelings, porn w/ plot, mild angst w/ happy ending, divorced!coop, babysitter!reader, pre-war/bomb ➥ summary | “We really, uh, shouldn’t - oh fuck, you look --” ➥ notes | i'm so sorry this is later than it should be. i am unfortunately a corporate slave and this fic just did not want to cooperate 🫠 there are a lot more things planned and this fic is turning into a bit of a beast (20+ pages and counting rip lmao) so i've decided to split it into two parts to make it more manageable for myself mostly un-beta'd atm a special thanks to @corinthianism for all her lovely help ❤️!!

feel free to send in thots, questions, requests! | masterlist

Divorce is hard, but being a divorcé is downright hellish.

One of the ugliest things in the world, if Cooper Howard has any say. At least when he was a Marine, they told him where to point his gun, where to aim; nameless threats vanishing with a quick squeeze of the trigger.

Here, these ‘enemies’ aren’t enemies — not really.

It’d be easier if they were.

Worse still, they have names he holds as dearly as his own. There’s Barb, whip smart and always so clever. Then Janey, the light of his life and so sweet his teeth ache.

Once upon a time, life was sweeter than apple pie on Sundays.

Then came the separation.

Afterwards, he finds it hard to look at what’s left of his family without losing breath like a horse kick to the chest. Their absence rips open a hole inside him ten miles wide, its edges jagged and wrong.

And when he can’t take the silence anymore, fingers of malt liquor help dull the ache, though it’ll never be enough to mend what’s broken.

See, war’s something he understands.

But these domestic battlefields where he sits across from his ex-wife while lawyers barter this weekend and that holiday?

How he struggles to meet his daughter’s eye every time she asks if he’s coming home?

When Barb keeps the house and the money while he keeps the scrapbooks and the dog?

He doesn’t — can't — refuses to comprehend.

Because in what world can you reconcile looking down the barrel of a smoking gun only to find the woman you love staring back, finger on the trigger? Left out to hang as Vault-Tec orchestrates his downfall.

The true depth of their involvement is unknown, but it’s no coincidence his bank accounts dried up faster than the Mojave in June. The ink still wet when the media snapped up the story of his failed marriage.

Thus, his reputation (rather what’s left of it) unraveled faster than a spool of thread.

Knocked on his ass and kept there by a boot heel crushing his windpipe. Whose? He hasn’t got a fucking clue.

But whoever they are, they’re making sure he stays a washed up nobody who struggles to land a call back, much less pay his monthly alimony on time.

See what we can do? You were America’s favorite gunslinger - now look at you. Mind your place.

Hell, millions used to scream his name.

Nowadays people whisper it behind their hands like a dirty secret, “Oh, did you hear? Cooper Howard…” as they dissect pieces of his life into bite-sized Before’s and After’s. “Hah! Serves him right. Y’know, I never liked him much.”

While he grits his teeth and swallows his bitterness with a smile, he hates how he can’t protect Janey from snide reporters and nosy strangers. Juggling actor-father-divorcé with fumbling hands.

It’s only been six months; a heartbeat, a lifetime, and already he’s scraped thin like butter over too much bread.

Something’s gotta give.

After all, he’s only one man.

But just when it's bleakest, the clouds part.

A young woman moves in next door, the first bright thing that’s come his way in a long, long while.

At first, he kept his distance.

Exchanged vague hello’s and how-are-you’s. Then Janey took a shine; always so friendly and eager to talk about her latest books.

Any reservations he might’ve had died when he saw how enamored you are with her.

Only made sense that over time small pleasantries turned into playdates. Then those playdates turned into sleepovers.

Before long, you’re watching her when a gig runs late.

Rustling up grub and tucking her into bed more often than not these days. And when he slinks in through the door, knees aching and stripped to the bone, there you are with a shy smile and a warm meal.

So what if he takes himself in hand after you leave, stroking his cock to the thought of you down on your knees in that pretty little sundress?

Imagines the wide stretch of your ruby lips as you swallow him down, lipstick smeared an awful mess?

Cums hard to the fantasy of your teary eyes and hiccupy breaths as you choke?

What you don’t know can’t hurt you.

After all, he’s a gentleman... he promises to keep his hands to himself.

“All right, Sugar Bomb, it’s bedtime.”

Bundled in navy bedding up to her nose, Janey’s wide brown eyes peer up at you from beneath a riot of frizzy curls. Roosevelt, her ever faithful companion, plasters himself to her side. The tip of his tail swishes once, twice before falling limp.

“Ah, c’mon guys. Don’t look at me like that.” You sigh with a fond shake of the head, hip popping out to rest against the doorframe. “I don’t make the rules, I just follow ‘em.”

A muffled response sounds from the lump of little girl, “Nmfhm.”

Squinting, you dip your head and tap the side of your ear, "Pardon?"

“Mnhfmmmm.”

“Ye—eah… Didn’t catch that, Mumbler.”

Janey tugs down the blanket, her mouth pursed in a moue of displeasure. “I said,” she crosses her arms with a huff, “not until Dad gets home.”

Shit.

“M’sorry, baby. He’s still gonna be a while.” Walking across the room, you stop beside the bed and motion your hand back and forth. “Scooch over.”

Gangly limbs fumble as Janey wiggles into the middle of the mattress, her feet tangling in the blankets. Roosevelt takes a toe to the nose during the transition, but flops across her knees all the same.

Together they settle with a bounce of springs.

In the open space, you slide in.

The bed sinks under your weight, a plume of rich cologne tickling your nose; mint-spiced citrus. Cooper. Your stomach swoops, and your heart trips.

“I didn’t see him at breakfast — or lunch!” A pout tugs at her mouth. “Not even dinner. I gotta go home tomorrow. So when am I gonna see him?”

“Oh, bug.” You sigh, propping yourself up on your elbow. “Your dad’s been real busy at work. And I know that’s been hard for you, but I promise to make sure he’s here for breakfast tomorrow.”

“D’you mean it?” Her cold nose digs into your skin. “Me and Roosevelt miss him so much.”

Cuddled into your chest, Janey tosses an arm around your back. Her fuzzy head rests in the crook of your arm, springy curls tickling your skin.

You squeeze her tight and trace your fingertips over her forehead.

“I can do you one better,” you say, bopping the tip of her nose just to hear her giggle - a soft sound that sits warm and gooey in your chest. “I pinkie-promise.”

Her finger loops around yours, so small and fragile.

“I’ll even make pancakes. How’s that sound for a promise?”

“Oh, yes, please! I think Dad will like that,” a wide yawn cuts her off mid-sentence. “He’s sad, but he always smiles when you make food.”

Janey’s words — unexpected as they are sudden — cut so deep it steals the breath from your lungs. You flounder, your heart a throbbing bruise in your chest.

“... Then pancakes it is.”

As if nothing happened at all, she asks, “Do I have to go to bed now?”

“Afraid so, little miss.” Your responding chuckle sounds stilted even to your own ears. “Just you wait. When you wake up, Dad’ll be home.”

“Fi—ine, but I want extra pancakes.” Janey pauses, considers you with narrow eyes, then adds, “With syrup!”

“Whatever you want,” you say with an indulgent smile. “Now... time to sleep. It’s really past your bedtime.”

She gives you one last squeeze then lets you tuck her in nice and tight, blankets pulled up to her chin. You drop a kiss on her forehead while Roosevelt re-settles on the pillow beside her after a quick scratch behind the ears.

Everything in order, you turn to go only for a little hand to stop you.

“Yes?” you reply, glancing at her from over your shoulder.

“... can you put on one of Dad's movies?”

The tremble in her voice - like she’s about to get scolded - breaks your heart clean down the middle. Stitching on a soft smile, you nod and walk to the darkened TV set in the room's corner.

After fiddling with the nobs, static flashes to life.

“The Man from Deadhorse okay?”

The holotape sliding into the track swallows the sound of her tiny “Yeah.” Starting up with a whirl of machinery, the second-hand Radiation King flickers to life in black-and-white.

A vast plain and bright sky stretches across the screen.

Then Sugarfoot creeps into frame with the one and only Cooper Howard sitting astride the noble steed. The sheriff’s badge on his chest glints in the sun.

“Thank you,” she mumbles, already half-way to sleep.

“Anything for you, baby. Sleep tight.”

Flicking off the lights, you leave the door cracked. Walk away pretending like hearing her whisper goodnight to the TV doesn’t lance through you like lightning.

The desire to whisk her into your arms and soothe all of her ails is almost impossible to ignore.

Somehow, you distract yourself by wiping up the table, then by fixing a plate of dinner for whenever Cooper rolls in. Though all the while, how brokenhearted Janey sounded sits in the back of your mind like a leaden weight.

When Cooper stumbles into the living room, it’s half past midnight.

You’d gotten up to greet him, curled as you were in an armchair reading, when something about the stern line of his mouth gave you pause.

Where the usual lighthearted greetings lingered, a pensive stillness trembled to life.

Tension crackles through the air; a held breath of agitation. By the faraway gaze and defeated slump of his broad shoulders, it’s plain to see the night didn’t go as intended. And no matter how much you long to soothe, you can’t.

After all, he’s not yours to touch.

Instead, you offer a sympathetic smile and ask, “Rough night, huh?”

Cooper ignores the prompt, squeezing past with a brief touch to your elbow as he makes a beeline for the dry bar. The heat of his body is there and gone in a flash, his cologne teasing your senses. He says, “Thought you’d be asleep by now.”

Your heart flutters in your throat. “Ah,” you lick your lips, “well, I was going to finish my chapter first.”

Humming, he turns his back to you and fiddles with high balls and decanters. The tink of crystal glassware fills the air as he speculates which alcohol goes best with his mood.

“Thanks again for watching Janey.” He nods in approval and fixes his whiskey neat. “I don’t know what we’d do without you.”

“Oh, it’s no trouble, Mr. Howard.” You shrug. “She’s a sweetheart.”

He shoots you a dry look from over his shoulder, stirring the dark amber of his drink with a forefinger. When he sucks his skin clean with a soft pop - a flash of a pink tongue taunting, teasing - your stomach swoops.

God, I wonder what else his mouth can do.

Flustered, you clear your throat and stare at a spot on the wall.

“How many times do I gotta tell you to call me Coop?” he says, digging through some drawers until he finds what he’s searching for: a lighter. “It must be a million and one by now.”

Flint sparks as flames jump, eating away at the end of a cigarette. Cooper inhales in short little puffs, pulling on the filter. His cheeks hollow, the shadows enhancing the cut of his jaw before the tip catches alight.

“Well,” he exhales, his gaze catching yours through a plume of smoke as he turns, brow raised. “Anything to say for yourself?”

“Old habits die hard, I guess,” you chuckle.

The corner of his mouth lifts in a lopsided smirk. “I’ll drink to that.” He knocks back the last finger of whiskey before refilling with gin.

Springs groan in protest when he drops to the couch, settling in with an outstretched arm and wide spread thighs.

“It’s been a long fucking day,” he rasps.

Gulping, you try to ignore the space at his feet.

The stirrings of desire provoked by the urge to sink to your knees and fill it with your body, to ease tension from those shoulders with your hands, your mouth, your cunt — if he’d let you.

“You heading home?” Nursing the fresh drink, he swallows a mouthful, only to hiss low through his teeth at the chemical burn. His throat bobs, framed by the open collar of his shirt. “Whew! Goddamn, that’s strong.”

“No, I can stay for a while.” A bird on a wire, you perch on the cushion beside him. “Got nothing else planned for tonight, anyhow.”

Cooper snorts. “I doubt that very much. A sweet young thing like you,” he motions towards you with his glass, “I’m sure you’ve got plenty of fellas calling, especially on a Friday night. Don’t waste your time with me.”

“That’s not why I--” you stop yourself short.

Save for the bustling LA avenue right outside the complex, the apartment itself is stone silent for several heartbeats. Words hover on the back of your tongue, catching in the bend of your throat molasses thick.

Meanwhile, Cooper continues to swirl the alcohol in his glass.

Maybe in a different life, you wouldn’t hesitate to express yourself.

But here — with him — you shouldn’t.

Christ sake, he’s a grieving divorcé, you chastise yourself. The last thing he needs is me trying to lay one on him.

When you speak, his name glides off your lips for the first time, clementine sweet, “... Cooper, I’m not wasting my time. I enjoy spending it with Janey - and you.”

“Well,” he husks, hooded eyes dragging down your visage in a slow once-over, “you’re the first one in a long while to feel that way, sweetheart.”

Dripping like honey whiskey from Cooper’s lips, the simple phrase burns its way down-down-down until it blooms like liquid fire in your belly. Warms you all the way to your toes as your heart pounds against your ribcage.

“I mean it.” Your knuckles twist in the pleats of your sundress, bolts of blue fabric bunched around your knees. “Everything I do is because I want to.”

The flash of red nails plucking at the sheer nylon of your stockings snaps up his attention, his gaze snagging - staying as he chases the curve of your exposed leg, hungry.

He wets his lips, and tenses his jaw when he spots how the soft fat of your thigh dimples in because of your garter. “That’s awful sweet of you to say.”

You tremble beneath the intensity of his attention.

Greedy.

Little kisses of awareness spark bright along the path his eyes carve like the caress of shy fingertips.

However, before you’re able to confront him about his interest, the heat leaches from his expression, grows mute and cold like a muzzled dog.

Readjusting the waistband of his slacks with a tug, he says, “I know you got better things to do than keep an old man company.”

Irritation sparks. “Cooper--”

“If this is about paying you for tonight,” his lips quirk into a sheepish smile, “I won’t be able to yet.” He scrubs a hand through the stubble peppered along his jaw. “The gig tonight didn’t… Well, it doesn’t matter.”

“No, that’s not what I --”

He plows on, “Anyway, the one I’ve got tomorrow should be enough. How about I stop by around seven o’clock? I’ll treat you to dinner as an apology.”

Frustration bubbles beneath the surface of your skin, antagonism thrumming through your veins. Your hands shake almost as much as your voice. “Cooper!”

“I… uh, yes?” He blinks.

Your brows furrow. “You don’t get it,” you say. “I mean, you truly don’t know?”

“I’m afraid there’s a lot I don’t get. You’re gonna have to be more particular.”

Maybe not said in so many words (or at all) but actions speak far louder.

Otherwise, why else would you spend most of your time in his apartment, fill every spare moment with Janey, and reserve evenings for his company?

Hell, you even cook and clean!

Almost scream your interest from the rooftops, and it’s obvious to everyone but him, it seems.

Here you are thinking he was preserving your dignity whenever he ignored a passing comment or lingering touch when, in fact, he’d been oblivious to their existence to begin with.

How a man can be so obtuse when you’re throwing yourself at him is beyond you.

If he wasn’t so captivating…

“Are you kidding me,” you ask, mindful of your tone, “how could you not know?” You throw your hands in the air. “I’ve been — for months!”

“Well, I don’t have a goddamn clue what you’re talking about, sweetheart,” he snarks, setting his glass on the table. “Care to enlighten me?”

Fine. If that’s how he wants to play, let’s play.

When he moves to take another drag from his cigarette, you strike, fingers locking around his wrist mid-lift. And although his glassy eyes narrow, he keeps his hand still.

Waiting to see what you'll do.

Tucking your knee under you for balance, you bend forward and watch his face from beneath your lashes. When your lips wrap around the filter, a dark hunger bleeds into his expression, his pulse a steady thud against the pad of your thumb.

Inhaling, the cherry lights up, a flashbang in the dim overhead light.

Cooper’s breath hitches, and then you’re pulling away with a lungful of smoke; the taste of ash heavy on your tongue.

He tracks your movements with greed, gaze flicking for the briefest of moments past your chin before refocusing on the ring of red lipstick staining white paper.

“If you wanted one,” he chokes, gripping the back of the couch with white knuckles, “all you had to do was ask.”

With a coquettish grin, you exhale to the side and stare at him with hooded eyes. “Is that so?” Plucking the cigarette out of his limp hold, you stub it out in the ashtray. “What if I wanted to ask for something else, Mr. Howard?”

The next moment finds you deposited in his lap, his hands shooting out to grab at your waist only to freeze before they make contact.

“Woah! I--”

“Tell me something.”

Your lips caress the shell of his ear, sharing breath - sharing space as you plaster yourself to his front, arms looped over his shoulders. He jolts, body trembling with restraint.

“Would you give me what I wanted if I said please?”

The distance between you snaps taut with anticipation. “C-Coop,” he stutters. “Call me Coop.”

You hum. “Well, Coop, would you?”

“That depends almost entirely on what you’re asking for, sweetheart.”

Red nails skate along the back of his neck, play in the downy soft hair of his nape just to feel him shiver. And then you’re leaning back with your hands braced on his knees, your legs falling open in invitation.

The hem of your dress bunches around your waist, exposing the soft cotton of your underwear, and the darkened patch of slick soaking through.

“I think you know exactly what I want,” you purr. “Because you want it too. Don’t you?”

He bites down on a strangled moan when your hips arch forward, rocking the soft plush of your ass against the heavy weight of his thickening cock. The zipper digs into your skin as he tents the front of his slacks.

Mouth dropping open, his tongue flicks out to wet his lips - a slick circle of temptation that makes you clench. “I, uh, I don’t…”

Reaching between your splayed thighs, you hook a finger beneath your panties and pull the fabric aside. He jerks forward, exhaling hard at the flash of your soaked cunt and twitching clit.

“C’mon, be honest.”

With a sigh, you gather your arousal on the tips of your fingers.

Cooper’s gaze is a heavy weight pinning you in place as you pretend it’s him dragging his knuckles over the top of your mond. Him dragging calloused fingers up along sticky folds to play with your sensitive clit, ripping soft little mewls from your lips.

“Can’t you see what you do to me, Coop?” you say, pulling your hand away to show the webs of slick stretching between your fingers. “I’m so wet. Please, I’ve wanted you for so long…”

His hips rock against your ass in an aborted thrust. “Shit - shit!” Eyes slamming shut, he grits his teeth and digs his fingers into your sides hard enough to bruise. “We really, uh, shouldn’t - oh fuck, you look --”

“Why not?” Your hand brushes over his groin. “I can feel how hard you are.”

“It isn’t right, that’s why.” He stutters, stumbles over his words, “Besides, Janey…”

“I can be quiet,” you say, lips trembling. “I promise.”

“Goddamnit, you can’t say things like that and expect me not to --” Cutting himself off, strong fingers seize your chin and tilt until you’re met with Cooper’s severe expression, his scorching gaze. “You need to tell me now: are you sure this is what you want?”

There’s no hesitation, “Yes.”

In what world would you refuse?

The words barely pass your lips before Cooper’s bowing his dark head, mouth ravenous as it captures yours in a slick glide of bruising lips and hungry tongues.

He steals your breath, licks into your mouth and traces along the sensitive inside of your lip.

Pulse jump starting, your toes curl over the edge of the cushion and your thighs squeeze the barrel of his chest, kneecaps digging into his ribs.

“Oh,” a moan punches itself out of your throat - a breathy little thing swallowed up by his lips. “That’s--”

Anticipation swells, simmers between you like a band before it snaps. A strong forearm locks around your waist, tugging you into the cradle of his chest until you’re plastered from stem to stern.

Too hungry for tenderness as his free hand slips up to cup the back of your head, fingers catching in the briar of your hair and tugging at the roots.

You claw at his shoulders while sparks of pain ricochet down your neck, sufficing into a prickly flush that heats your blood. “Hnn, Cooper,” you gasp.

He murmurs your name through languid flicks of his tongue and sharp little nips of skin that leave your mouth tender and swollen. When he pulls away to survey his handiwork, his eyes are dark. Fathomless.

"I never thought I'd get the chance to kiss you like this," he says, wicking his thumb over the pillow of your bottom lip. "You taste as good as I imagined."

Dragging your nails across his scalp, you plead, “No more teasing - I can't take it.”

"Well," he grunts, fingers twisting up in your dress, “If that’s how you feel, then you better put those hips to good use and work for it, sweetheart."

part 2 dropping soon

#cooper howard x reader #cooper howard x you #the ghoul x you #the ghoul x reader #cooper howard smut #cooper howard #the ghoul #the ghoul smut

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kdyq · 1 month ago

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Vacation time

Ambessa Medara x Fem!reader.

Context : You convince Ambessa to take you on a been needed vacation.

Ambessa Medarda wasn’t the type to take vacations. The word itself felt unnecessary a waste of time better spent plotting her next move. But you her Darling had insisted.

“You’ve conquered empires, Ambessa,” you said your eyes sparkling with mischief. “Surely you can handle a few days by the sea without plotting the downfall of your enemies.”

Ambessa had grumbled but ultimately relented. How could she refuse the woman who could disarm her with a single look?

The ship cut smoothly through the waves, its sleek design a testament to Piltover craftsmanship. The ocean stretched endlessly around them, a sparkling expanse of blue that seemed to calm even Ambessa’s restless mind.

You stood at the bow, your hair whipping in the salty breeze. You turned and smiled as Ambessa approached her grin wide and free as though she were untouchable in this moment.

“Come here,” you said while holding out your hand.

Ambessa hesitated. She wasn’t one for a lack of seriousness and yet… the way you looked at her like she was the only thing that mattered, made her step forward. She took your hand, letting herself be pulled closer.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” You asked, gesturing to the horizon.

“It’s vast,” Ambessa replied, her eyes scanning the endless waves. “I’ll give it that.”

You chuckled. “You can admit it’s beautiful, you know. I won’t tell anyone.”

Ambessa smirked, slipping an arm around your waist. “Fine. It’s beautiful. But not as beautiful as you.”

You rolled your eyes but leaned into Ambessa’s side. “Flatterer.”

Your destination was a small secluded island known for its white sand beaches and lush forests. As the ship docked, Ambessa surveyed the surroundings with a tactical eye her instincts never fully at rest.

“You don’t need to assess the island for threats,” you teased taking her hand and leading her down the gangplank. “We’re here to relax not conquer.”

Ambessa raised an eyebrow. “Old habits die hard.”

You shook your head, laughing softly as you both stepped onto the warm sand. “Then it’s a good thing you have me to remind you.”

The days passed in a haze of warmth and light. They walked along the beach at sunset, the waves lapping at their feet. Ambessa, always the warrior, spent her mornings swimming in the ocean, her powerful strokes cutting through the water with ease.

You delighted in exploring the island’s hidden coves and tide pools, dragging Ambessa along despite her mock protests.

One afternoon you and Ambessa lounging were beneath the shade of a palm tree. Ambessa leaned back against the lounge chairs her legs stretched out in front of her while you rested in the other lounge chair sketching the view in a small notebook.

“Do you ever get tired of being in charge?” You asked in a soft voice.

Ambessa thought for a moment, her gaze fixed on the horizon. “Sometimes. But it’s what I’m good at.”

You glanced at her a playful smile tugging at her lips. “You’re good at this too you know.”

“At what?”

“Being here. With me. Letting go even if just a little.”

Ambessa’s expression softened. “You make it easy to let go. But only because I trust you to keep me grounded.”

Your cheeks flushed as you walked over to press a kiss to Ambessa’s lips your hand lingering on the warrior’s jaw.

On your guys last night, ambessa built a small fire on the beach and you sat together, watching the stars. You leaned against Ambessa’s shoulder her fingers entwined with yours .

“Thank you for taking me here and being with me” You said. Your voice barely above a whisper.

Ambessa pressed a kiss to the top of your head. “Thank you for reminding me there’s more to life than power.”

As the waves lapped gently at the shore and the stars shimmered above Ambessa allowed herself a rare moment of peace, knowing that whatever battles awaited her, she would always have this you and the sea, a sanctuary from the rest of the world.

“THE END”

A/N : I’m gonna post sevika Next 😋😋😋 just give me time I’m finishing that one up this another draft I had in my notes.

#mel and ambessa #ambessa x you #ambessa x reader #ambessa league of legends #arcane ambessa #ambessa medarda #lol ambessa #ambessa the chosen of the wolf #arcane x you #arcane x reader #arcane

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dokidokitsuna · 18 days ago

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GameSwap!AU #2

Thank @earthykinous for this idea; I saw it in the tags of the first GameSwap and immediately knew I had to give it a try ^^

-Taranza seems like a very ‘devoted’ character, the kind who very easily latches on to personal influences…so as part of the HWC, I think he would be just as involved with the Mother Computer as Haltmann, maybe even more so, just to be able to share something with him. Just in general, he’d be agonized about his father not recognizing him anymore, and desperate to prove his worth despite it, trying to replace familial love with company loyalty in a VERY toxic-positive way. ^^ And besides, if he uses that control helmet often enough, maybe he’ll lose all his painful memories too… And in this scenario…maybe the reason Haltmann dies is because he sacrifices himself to Star Dream to save Taranza somehow, finally recognizing his son when he realizes he’s about to lose him again. OR, maybe he just feels like Taranza is too important to lose without knowing why, leaving only Taranza to bear the true emotional weight of that sacrifice.

-I think Susie is a more mature character than Taranza– despite her sad backstory, she seems to handle her situation well during the game, and doesn’t even seem that affected by Haltmann’s death post-game. If it’s not maturity, at the very least it’s a much lower level of emotional attachment.

So how would she go about dealing with her crush mutating into a tyrannical insect queen? I think she would actually just lose respect for her, and end up turning on her.

Despite staying by her side and aiding in her conquest, she would secretly be plotting her downfall: praising and obeying Sectonia to her face, while trying to undermine her in the background…keep your friends close and your enemies closer, as they say. Rather than mistakenly capturing the wrong ‘Hero of the Lower World’, Susie would’ve picked Dedede on purpose, knowing that Kirby was the ‘real’ hero who would come to save him AND defeat Sectonia. She’d then pretend to oppose him throughout the game, throwing challenging bosses his way to prepare him to face the Queen…and finally, she’d reveal her true motivations once Dedede has been freed.

But maybe, just to bring back the stakes and drama…maybe Sectonia overhears this reveal, and enters the scene. Through the ensuing argument, we could learn a bit about how Sectonia became evil in the actual game, and have Susie basically call her out, admitting to her treachery and daring her Queen to do something about it. To throw away the last shred of their former friendship, once and for all.

Which Sectonia does, of course, and from there the rest of the game could proceed like normal. Only, I think Susie’s characterization as a tough-yet-caring friend and a twist-hero would make her return with the Miracle Fruit a lot more satisfying. Rather than failing to see how evil Sectonia had become until it personally affected her, she knew exactly how far-gone she was, and put her life on the line to try and wake Sectonia up. And despite losing that gamble, despite witnessing her friend choose to become a monster in more ways than one, she survived and came back to help us end the battle. ^^ I think that would be really heartwarming~

#kirby #fan art #susie haltmann #taranza #I’m REALLY getting into these AUs ^^

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gyuswhore · 8 months ago

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Never Shall We Die (1)

«« Nothing is too outlandish when it’s a life of liberty on the line. »»

PAIRING: kwon soonyoung x reader

PLAYLIST: right here!

pirate lingo glossary (pls refer!)

SYNOPSIS: Deadliest pirate on the high seas or a damn fool? The stupid King and his men have snatched Hoshi's precious pirate ship with their too clean, too soft hands; grounds to question his own vices. Except, when he and his crew land in the quarters of a navy ship, revenge on their roster, they stumble across a princess in its gallows. Hoshi wonders if he's just struck gold, or if you'd become the final tread to his downfall.

GENRES: pirate!au, enemies to lovers, slowburn, angst, fluff, smut [minor dni], some pirates of the carribean vibes but ? idk

WORD COUNT [full fic]: 48.1k

Part 1: 17.07k | Part 2: 15.2k | Part 3 [final]: 15.8k

@highvern's out of context comment box: new fear unlocked: hoshi with explosives, victorian ankle moment, HATE HIM (need him carnally), hoshi covered in soapy water would distract me enough, strip for me pirate mingyu [hes litrally taking off his jacket], your honor hes a bitch, freaks!, mingyu crushes hoshi's head like a grape, WONWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, massive dick, the way i literally gasped like an old scandalized woman

masterlist

WARNINGS: slowburn, plot heavy, happy ending bc no angsty endings in this household, being taken hostage, knives, bombs, and guns, mentions of blood, mentions of SA (does not happen and it is not explicitly mentioned), alcohol, mentions of death (patricide), hoshi is ✨selectively moral✨but kind of moral nonetheless, side character death, [pls lmk if im missing something its alot] smut tagin following parts

[AN]: thank you so much to @highvern for betaing for me and helping out with the plot so much, this fic would not exist if it weren't for her!!!! and thank you reader!!! for clicking on this and reading it, this one's been about 7 months in the works and I would love to hear what your thoughts are when you're done, plsplspls leave a rb or a reply with your brainrot lol <3 happy reading

HOSHI’S BOOT IS STUCK in the ground.

No, that’s a branch.

Or is it a plank?

He doesn’t try to find out as he yanks his foot out of whatever stopped him from moving. A tree root, he finds as he kicks the remnants of jungle rubbish from the surface of the shrouded root. He kicks it to satisfy himself.

His crew resides on the beach; where he can see them attempt to build a fire before sundown, the mound of discombobulated twigs making up most of the sad pile of wood. Hoshi trudges up to it and drops another handful of puny branches into the mix.

Exhaling loudly as Mingyu calls for him, he falls to his bottom and sits cross legged on the sand. Mingyu trudges up next to him to inspect his pile, sighing when he realised this was all he had to work with. He picks up two hefty looking stones and begins to strike them together, putting his faith in the primitive fire.

Hoshi stares into the horizon, watching the died down waves drift onto the shore, moving closer by the minute.

Hoshi thinks, which he can’t say is something that he does very often. Perhaps that’s why he was sat on this nature-overrun island as a shipless captain of his shipless crew. He chews on his tongue as he thinks of his Tigress, his beloved hunk of wood and metal; the beloved hunk of wood and metal that he could not see on the shoreline, because she was taken by the royal navy.

He wonders if Tigress would ever forgive him for letting that happen to her, for letting those clean, soft handed soldiers rip her away from his grasp.

Hoshi needs to start thinking more often.

Mingyu is frantic over the small flame that erupts in the middle of his leaves, dropping his rocks to blow into the fire, encouraging it to grow.

“Captain, it’s done! We can rustle up those fish we caught, have supper sorted.”

“Hm.”

The bustle of the entire crew lasts until night has fallen and they’ve gotten food in their stomachs. Hoshi hasn’t moved from his spot for hours, something the others noticed very quickly, but decided not to mention for fear of waking something dangerous. They understood he was suffering from a broken heart.

It isn’t until the first of the crew had begun to doze off that Hoshi speaks. Chan is propped up against a tree while Seungkwan laughs at the dangerously low coconut that hangs above his head. Mingyu readjusts his trousers after a full meal. Minghao stretches onto the sand, feet facing the water.

His voice isn’t loud, nor is it commanding, nor does it have his usual edge of jest—in fact, it sounds nothing like Hoshi at all.

Or does it?

“Who wants to steal a ship?”

YOU'RE AWOKEN BY THE sound of yelling. Which is never a good sign in any case, but especially not when it’s pitch black outside and you’re on a ship in the middle of the ocean.

The grogginess is quick to fade as you try to understand what’s going on outside your quarters. Your room isn’t a mess, all the trinkets and royal seals remaining in their places on the walls and shelves. Nor is the ship lurching or moving in odd angles to indicate an unexpected spat from the skies. A quick peek outside the window shows you clear, calm water amidst the mostly dark expanse of ocean.

There is only one other answer in your head that would cause this much commotion—especially on a boat where the admiral resides (and a princess).

Slipping out of the covers, your feet hit the cool hardwood floors of your quarters, a small shiver going through your spine from the cold, with nothing to cover you but your thin nightgown. You’re in the middle of tying your robe to see what the ruckus was about outside when a particularly loud thud hits outside of your door. You immediately freeze.

Staring at the doorknob, you attempt to move backwards in the space, heart beating faster as you watch the knob move slightly. The back of your knees hit the bedside table with a thud, the sound has you gasp out loud. Whoever it was outside your door jiggles the knob harder, the force exerted having you scan the room for something you could use as a weapon.

Spotting the letter opener on your desk, you lurch across the room to grab it, holding it in front of you as you back away from the door. The knob continues to bang against the wood as you refuse to take eyes off of it. There’s sounds of men outside, loud and rambunctious, momentarily halting the grievances.

Until the knob moves again, slower this time, a light click that could be heard as it unlocks itself, opening into the low light of your quarters.

You recognise the frazzled looking soldier at your door.

“Lieutenant,” you voice in recognition. “What’s going on?”

He eyes the letter opener that you hold defiantly in front of you from across the room, and it has you retracting your force slightly.

“Pirates, your Highness,” he breathes out. “We must get you to lower deck—”

“Where is the Admiral? The Captain?” you ask as you take a couple steps forward.

“They’re handling the situation, your High–”

An arm has come up behind the soldier that pulls him into a headlock, a swift pull to have him dragged away from your vision. You would’ve gasped if your voice hadn’t been caught in your throat, refusing to make itself known as fear brews in the pit of your stomach. Your hold on your makeshift weapon is tighter than ever before, yet you doubt how it’s going to help you as the culprit finally steps over something to appear in your doorframe.

His clothes are in a disarray; slashed, torn and covered in grime. There’s a deadly looking machete in one hand, the blood that coats it has you eyeing the trail that drips onto his hand and on the floor. His forearms are perched up on the doorframe as he inspects you, tongue to cheek as he stares.

Threatened as you feel, there was less hunger in his gaze as you had expected, more like he was trying to figure out who you were. He eyes your tiny letter opener you hold like a knife and lets out a little exhale you think might be a laugh. It has you gripping the handle impossibly tighter. The man moves his face into the hallway, to where you know the staircase to the main deck is.

“Hoshi!” he yells loudly. “How’s this for bait?”

Your back is pressed inexplicably against the wall, wanting to sink into the wooden boards as you attempt to gain your bearings amongst the nauseous bouts of mortification that surge through you. Your only exit is blocked.

No. You have one more option.

The sound of more men bounding down the hall has you praying there were more soldiers here, but the calm regard the man has for the approaching people has your heart sink to the depths of this very ocean itself.

More faces peer into the room, men with the same haphazard, grimey clothing complete with equally sinister weapons in their grasps. One of the men breaks out into the biggest grin as he lays his eyes on you. You nearly throw up.

For the first time in your life, you wish you’d listened to your father.

“Jun, you savvy motherfucker,” the grinning man explodes, slapping the man who found you on the back.

Another voice speaks from behind him, “Ships cleared, captain.”

“Perfect. Bring a spring upon ‘er. Get as far away from those cleans as you can, let them fend for themselves in a tiny boat for once.”

Captain. The grinning, stupid looking one is their captain.

He regards the rest of his crew as he finally steps through the threshold, waving them away as he enters your quarters.

It was taking everything out of you to not buckle your knees as you stood, every step he takes is turning your strength into dust. He keeps his eyes on you, eyes on your sorry excuse of a weapon. He registers the mix of fear and determination in your eyes.

He stops a few feet away from you, looking directly at you past the makeshift knife you hold.

He says nothing as he drops the knife in his own hand to the ground with a loud clang. He removes a pistol, a couple more knives, a grenade and a sword. Weapons drop to the floor one after the other, emerging from all over his body and clothes. All in a pile on the wooden floors. He puts his hands in the air.

“No weapons on me. I merely wish to talk.”

The look on his face is not ordinary, some strange combination of mock innocence and jest. You don’t answer him.

He continues, “You can keep your… scalpel… if you so wish.”

“What did you do to the soldiers?” you finally rasp out.

“They’re not dead, if that's what you’re asking.”

“Yet?” you ask with a slight tremble to your voice.

“They’ve been shoved into a boat with a map and a compass to fend for themselves. I’m not entirely ruthless,” he adds with raised brows and a hint of a smile. “Admiral, were they calling him? You must be his wife.”

“W-what?”

“Oh, guess not. Daughter? Captain’s wife, Captain’s daughter?”

Your previously stagnant brain is now running a derby with all the thoughts galloping across your mind. He doesn’t know who you are. Yet, anyway.

He’s scanning the room now, nodding at the trinkets and trophies scattered across the place. “Can’t imagine giving a lieutenant’s anybody quarters like this.” He circles back on you, eyes sharp. “Who are you, darling?”

You don’t think you have anything that should give you away, but the way he starts pacing the room has your anxiety going through the wooden roof.

He has his back turned to you. You’re not sure if he’s confident or careless considering you could drive your weapon into his back and make a run for it. But then what? By the looks of it there’s an entire crew of pirates pacing the deck. Perhaps the soldiers haven’t gotten that far; they know you’re still on board, they know it’s their heads on a pike if they leave you here.

He’s reached your desk during your thinking, inspecting your stationary, picking at the bejewelled quills and paper weights as he mutters nonsense to himself.

“Oh!” he announces, a little too enthusiastic. “What’s this?”

He brandishes the loose leaf of paper, and you recognise the print on the back immediately. It was a letter from your father, the King.

“How on Earth did you read this, the writing is illegible.” He flips the paper over, double taking when he sees the royal seal on the back. He looks into the letter closer now.

You wait with baited breath.

“The kingdom needs their princess…your father…ah.”

Should you plunge the knife into him anyway? You almost do it, but stop when he begins to turn around to face you again. His eyebrows are raised, a slight hint of exasperation on his face when he begins to laugh a loud, loud cackle.

It’s mortifying, especially when you don’t understand what on earth was so funny to elicit a reaction like that. The man is downright hysterical. He wipes a lone tear from the corner of his eye as he drops the letter back onto the desk.

“W-what’s so funny?” you try to sound brave.

“It seems, miss princess, that we’ve gotten more than we bargained for,” he says, looking straight at you as he sobers up. “You’re the King’s daughter, now, are you? What are the odds the first ship I hop onto with a royal seal slapped on it, held the crown jewel of the kingdom in its gallows.”

And then he starts walking, towards you, for that matter. Imperative because you know for sure that this is how it all ends.

You know you still have your one last option, the option that is now pressed against your back as you shimmy to it with miniscule movements. The window is cool on your hand that rests on the glass, you know the lamp will be enough to break it, enough for you to push through and fall into the abyss of the dark, dark sea. He knows who you are now, and you’d rather drown than die at the hands of a pirate—or go through whatever it was that’s curling the minds of all the men on this ship.

He takes another step forward, hands on his hips. “He’s not going to like this, is he? His dear daughter in the hands of the Kingdom’s favourite degenerate captain.”

What?

He then adds in a whisper to himself mostly, “Or least favourite with all the wanted posters off the churches and brothels.”

Hoshi. Hoshi. Hoshi.

The man who had found you had called him Hoshi. Hoshi the pirate. Hoshi the pirate that’s been giving the Kingdom and its court absolute hell for as long as you can remember.

The man that you are now trapped alone with on a ship is the most feared pirate the Kingdom has ever seen.

You don’t doubt your face has gone grey, feeling your breathing turn near erratic. “Oh God.”

He smiles wryly as the life is sucked out of your very soul.

This was bad. Very bad.

“Now, fear not, you will soon be returned to daddy dearest,” he places a mildly dramatic hand over his heart. “Pirate’s honour.”

He paces back to pluck the letter off the table, pocketing it. “All you need to do is relax and tell me a few things so we can part ways as soon—”

“No.” The word blurts out of your mouth before you can stop it, horrified at the thought of giving information to any pirate, let alone this one.

“No?” Hoshi looks genuinely shocked, his eyes wide, eyebrows raised. He laughs a little incredulously, “Oh, I see, can’t tell all the delicate details to a scary ol’ pirate.”

He smiles a little bit, “Worry not, miss princess, we shall only need a few minor details. Just enough to have your father sprinting to get you out of here. We all win.”

He stares at you almost expectantly, and you wonder if you look as confused as you feel.

“Well, I’ll be bidding you goodnight now, I’m sure we’ve interrupted your beauty sleep enough. Rest assured we won’t be bothering you for the rest of the morning.”

Hoshi begins to make his way to the door, picking up his pile of weapons off the floor before wrenching the door open. He’s calm as ever, but your mind is in a disarray.

A ransom, but whatever for? Gold could’ve been retrieved by raiding any ship, and it sounded like he’d chosen to hop on a ship belonging to the navy. Come to think of it, as much of a nuisance this man has proved himself, you don’t remember a case where he’s directly meddled with the Kingdom. All of this can’t just be for gold.

Steeling yourself, you bet your odds against your voice and asked him, “What do you want from my father?”

You watch as he halts in his tracks, halfway through the door as he finally looks over his shoulder. The look on his face has you wanting to break open the window immediately and let the water flood in, once and for all as you take these bastards down with you.

“Your father has something of mine. And I intend to take it back,” he says, before finally slamming the door shut. You hear a shuffle and a thud, and you do not doubt that he’s locked you in.

Your knees give out almost immediately, dropping to the ground as you breathe in quick, shallow breaths. Trying to look past the dizziness, you try not to think about the last thing he’d said before he left, moreso the look on his face as he did.

The first rays of morning sun are beginning to shine through the windows, casting the beginnings of a glow in your quarters. You think of the supposed assurance he had given you, that they wouldn’t hurt you, that they intended to return you.

The thought leads to a faraway memory, yet one that’s tucked itself into a front corner of your mind, you can almost hear your father's voice as he says it; never trust a pirate.

You remain on the floor, and you remain wide awake.

THE SUN IS HIGH in the sky by the time you put your limbs to work.

The first hours after the pirate locked you in your quarters were spent trying to reign yourself to earth. You can’t be entirely sure your soul has come back to your body, but whatever little of it that has landed is whispering some very dangerous things.

The lamp remains, the ornate jewels glinting almost enticingly in the afternoon light. The flame inside it has long died, but you itch to give it another purpose. You don’t note the trembling of your hand as you reach for it, pushing yourself to your feet as you get a feel for the heavy hunk of glass and metal in your hands.

If there was a level of regard before, it disappears when you set eyes on the bright window and the creases of crystal blue water. With all your strength, you don’t think twice when the lamp makes hard contact, a loud thud erupting as a result, but no damage when you pull away.

You go again, harder this time, and only vaguely register the glass of the lamp that shatters into your hands. Gripping the metal bit tighter, you swing for the third time, pulling back for the strongest blow yet.

A hand wraps around your elbow and you’re yanked backwards, landing on the floor. There’s a kick at your hand that’s flown into the air, the one that holds the bludgeoned lamp. It goes flying across the room as you retract your hand into yourself.

You don’t register a thing as you’re suddenly being pulled back up to your feet. Face to face with the pirate captain, your soul finally clicking back into place.

“Didn’t think I scared you this bad.” He’s made a joke, but all you can see is his face that’s a mask of rage.

The initial instinct is to move away, pulling your elbow out of his grasp in an attempt to flee. You fail as he tightens his grip to a painful degree, hauling you towards the ajar door of the quarters.

It’s only then that you realise that there’s more people in the room.You note another big, burly man next to the window you just assaulted, inspecting it with another shorter man. You don’t get to note more as you’re pulled into the narrow hallway, begging the saints he doesn’t take the turn towards the lower decks. Instead you find he leads you upstairs to where the main deck is.

Walk the plank? Did navy ships have planks to walk on? Not that you’d mind too much, you were trying to drown yourself and this ship in any case. But then there’s a settle of dread in the pit of your stomach, realising death may be the most merciful thing this man could give you.

The pirate captain pushes you against a mast, one of his other minions rushing in with coils of rope on his shoulder. The sun beats down on the deck, not a gust of reprieve from the wind.

“Keep the ropes tight, she’s got less wit than I’d thought,” the pirate captain says with a grunt, huffing as he lets go of you. He takes a few steps away, hands at his hips, the image of vexation.

The person who ties the cords around your hands whispers slowly, “Stop moving.”

But you can’t, not when the panic is near the lip, not when all the possibilities are flashing gore filled images into your vision. It's scary to blink.

“Why won’t you let me die?” you ask to the back that’s turned.

He turns around, not even bothering hiding the exasperation that paints his face, mouth opening furiously before closing again. “Why won’t—Because you were trying to take us all with you!”

“Kill me!” you all but scream. “They won’t know till you’ve gotten what you want, I’d rather be dead than let you try whatever’s brewing in all your sick heads!”

He’s silent for a moment, noting your defiant gaze, your pull against the ropes, the heaving of your chest. Taking a few steps forward, Hoshi seems to be attempting to bring the boil in his blood to a low simmer, “Listen, princess. We’re pirates alright, but me and my crew, we keep to ourselves. If your daddy the king hadn’t decided to meddle and steal my fucking ship, you would’ve been home in your pretty palace, asleep in your bed of gold by now.”

The pirate captain’s face is closer than you’d ever be comfortable with, seething in a way that has you pressing further into the mast. “We may be degenerates but we keep our own morals, as twisted as your people heed them to be.”

When he finally pulls away, you take a breath and thank the air that simply exists, eyes downcast as you attempt to look braver than you feel.

“I’m not pushing you overboard. I’ve duped your people once, they’ll be more prepared next time. We need you alive while you’re in our hands.”

“How are you going to summon a ransom? You sent away your only messengers,” you ask, a sad attempt at a mock, but also because you wanted to know what his plan was.

“Your useless Admiral’s taken up that job.”

“By lifeboat? You’ve left them all for dead, how do you expect this genius plan to work?”

“They could’ve swam to shore if it came to it, we were close enough.”

“How are you so sure?” you spit.

“Do I need to gag you too?” he gives you one last irritated look before stalking off towards the lower deck. You’re left alone in the cooling afternoon heat, the sound of the sea keeping your ears company along with your own slowing breaths.

Everything he said has a good enough chance to be a complete and utter lie. Never trust a pirate. No weapon to cut yourself out of your impossibly tight binds, nothing to protect you or give you reassurance besides a pirate’s word—the worst pirate’s word.

Your battered thinking leads you straight through the setting of the sun, the orange glow of the sky shrouding the ship in the dreamiest backdrop while you live what you can only sum as a nightmare. Perhaps not, for you doubt your mind could ever conjure up a terror like this.

This was life, the most terrifying nightmare of all.

Having managed to wiggle your tied hands downwards, you had seated yourself with your head against the wood of the mast, staring into the translucent skies. So much freedom that taunts you in its illusion of proximity, yet so far still.

There’s murmurs below deck, the only semblance of life you’ve heard in the past few hours after the stupid pirate captain stormed off. It seems to be on the stairs, a heated argument.

“Obviously this wasn’t part of the plan, the chances were supposed to be zero to absolutely none. We landed with that scumbag’s successor, that’s just our piss luck and nothing more.”

“You wanted a woman for bait, this should work the same.”

“Hao, I wanted a woman for bait to trigger a lukewarm reaction, this princess could either doom us all or make our job a fat punch easier, and I’m not betting on the latter.”

There’s a pause.

“If only she’d cut it with the random hysterics and creepy-staring-at-the-sky we could actually get something useful out of her.”

“Pray that window holds up or any chance of a miracle is gone to the wind.”

It’s like you’ve woken up with the way the stupid idea begins to form in your head. You think of your father, the kind of man he is, the kind of ruler he is. All the ‘if’s are guiding you to a conclusion. One that gives you a fighting chance, one that may go beyond this massive navy ship and clear into the rest of your life—if you make it that far anyway.

Your father and his men would come, give this unhinged pirate what he desires so dearly, you know that for sure. But you also know it wouldn’t be for you, but for the crown that’s destined to fall upon your cursed head.

If it’s his ship that he wants…

The next time you see one of the pirate captain’s goons on the deck, you ask for an audience.

“DID YOUR STUPID FATHER drop you on your head as a baby?”

Hoshi stands before you under the light of the midnight moon, an incredulous expression on his face. You try to keep the scowl off your own but it proves difficult when his voice pierces your skull.

You ignore him from your position on the floor, “I know my father, and I know he loathes you enough to finally want you and your incompetent crew gone for good.”

He scratches his chin, “Can’t be that incompetent if he hates us so much.”

“I can help you.”

“You were ready to die than to be on the same ship as us a few hours ago. What’s changed?”

“Perspective,” you shrug in an attempt to remain nonchalant.

“Are you gonna go back to wailing in the morning then?”

God, this was going to be the hardest thing you’ve ever had to do.

“You want your ship back and you were hoping for someone less important to exchange it for. But you’re stuck with me and you know it’s not going to end well for you. You need my help.”

“Why so merciful, miss princess? Are you not on your father’s side?”

You gulp as discreetly as possible.

“I want something in exchange.”

He raises his eyebrows, staring at you to continue.

“I want you to kill my father.”

If his eyebrows were raised before, they’ve broken for the skies now. He leans his head back, eyes closing for a moment before reopening, reigning back to you before asking very gracefully, “What?”

“I want you to kill my father.”

“No, I got that bit,” he snaps. “Your father as in, the King?”

“Yes, as you’ve pointed out far more times than anyone ever has.” You can’t help but roll your eyes despite the weight of the situation and the hammering in your chest.

He stares at you in an expression you can’t quite read, and it unsettles you deeply. For a moment, you wonder if you’ve gravely miscalculated, watching as he moves around the mast you’re tied to. Out of the corner of your eye you see the metal glint of a dagger, and you nearly short circuit.

Is he about to cut your hands off?

You feel a distinct tug at your wrists, the sound of slicing, and the voice in your head asking why it didn’t hurt.

Suddenly your hands are free, intact and free as you achingly bring them in front of you, wincing audibly at the pain of moving them after so long.

“You can jump into the water if you’d like, I won’t stop you.” He walks back over, sitting cross legged opposite you, at eye level.

“What?”

“You’ve clearly gone mad, I’ll find another way to get my ship back.”

“I’m being serious.”

“Of course, and I utterly enjoy having a kingdom’s worth of blood on my hands. Shall I take the entirety of the court down while we’re at it? Carry out a fucking waltz with Jack Ketch?”

“Why are you acting like you’re above murder? Another part of your strange moral code?”

“No, no, not above it at all. But I like my head and rather not have it guillotined. They might skim over the death of some too-nosy soldier but I doubt they’d leave me be after I put a bullet between the King’s eyes.”

“I’ll protect you.”

He looks at you for a moment, “Quite reassuring.”

You sit up straighter, licking your lips as you prepare yourself. “My father isn’t a good man.”

The pirate captain snorts, “Oh, I’m well aware.”

You try not to stare too hard at the still unsheathed dagger that he digs into the floorboards, knifing out splinters in disregard.

“My father doesn’t want me home, he wants the crown home. He wants me to be a carbon copy of himself, he wants to be in control long after he’s gone.” You try not to grind your teeth too hard but it’s difficult when your father’s face burns behind your eyelids. “I want control over the throne, full control.”

“And your conclusion is to eliminate him.”

“I don’t have another choice.”

“Then what? You’ll pardon me and my crew after we get our hands dirty for you?” he asks, eyes wide in mock hope.

“Yes. You can do whatever it is that you sail about doing and no one will be of bother. I might ask you for sparing favours. For a wage of course. But other than that, you can live as lawlessly as you wish.”

“You’re asking me to become your personal lackey?”

“Having a queen’s favour is no small feat I hope you’re aware. Besides, it's a leap better than the hoops you’ve been jumping through during my father’s reign.”

You realised his face had been shrouded by the dark between your negotiating and the clouds that had veiled the moon. Every moment that was supposed to strengthen your understanding of the man that sat across from you only brought you more confusion.

“You want your ship and freedom of land and sea,” you continue when it’s silent for a beat too long. “I only ask for a small favour in return.”

“I’d argue the miniscule nature of what you’re asking from me,” he scoffs.

“Nothing is too outlandish when it’s a life of liberty on the line.”

There crawls in the silence once again, the same one that seems to grab you by the throat for every moment that ticks past undisturbed.

“We’ll have to see to that,” he says, huffing as he gets back on his boot clad feet. You follow him with your eyes as he walks towards the creaky stairs that lead to the lower deck, utterly confused.

“Where are you going?” you ask, bewildered at his strange behaviour.

Turning around, just as he had a mere day ago in your quarters and you feel yourself suppressing a shudder. “I have a crew to consult.”

So he was considering it.

“But you’re the captain.”

“And?”

THE SKY IS A lighter sheen of blue, leaning towards the premature hours of the morning. He’d left you untied, and as you gaze into the duned waters in the minimal light, the urge to jump in and create a ripple that goes beyond just the water is less tempting than you’d thought. The prospect of having a dead father, and a dead king, was enough to snap you out of your hysteria despite it being a plot of your own devising.

You’ve been alone for a while, little indication that there was other life on this ship at all with the lack of human activity. There wasn’t much that you knew of sailing or ship handling, but leaving the deck unmanned for this long gave you the vague impression that you were on a vessel with poor practising pirates. If they’d thought you’d be equipped to handle any hiccups, they’d either find out the hard way, or whenever it was that you could find the wit to bring it up to the pirate captain and his strangely attached crew.

Something that sounds distinctly like boots are thudding gradually up to the main deck, the unmistakable blond of the pirate captain himself coming into view. You aren’t quite sure what it is, but the low thuds are sending your heart racing, panic overcoming your senses for a brief moment before you recalibrate. It’s only then that you realise it’s been more than 24 hours since the ship was hijacked. Somehow, you could have believed it was a lifetime.

He’s disturbingly nonchalant, hand at the sheathed hilt of the dagger at his hip, a casual glance around at the empty abyss of ocean and sky. When he reaches the far end of the deck, right above the prow, he stops.

“Are you going to push me off the rails?” you ask, half genuine, half trying to fill the silence as you face one another.

“No.” He said it plainly, the single word reply leaving you even more uncomfortable.

“Have you thought about what I said…with your crew?” you ask, hand coming up to grab the railing for support.

“I did.”

“Do I sense an objection?” you ask, swallowing the lump in your throat

“Not exactly,” he says. “We want to hear your master plan for this heist before we agree to anything.”

He’s asking for a plan, a plan that you do not have.

You aren’t sure how he figured it out, perhaps it was the slight darting of your eyes as you thought of a response, but he seemed to read you like a book. He snorts loudly, “You don’t have a clue, do you?”

“You’ve done this before, you’d know better.”

“And if I led you astray?”

You look at him, this time right into his dark eyes, “Then you lead me astray.”

“Your contentment with death is wildly unsettling.” There’s a ghost of a sneer at his lip.

“I’d rather be lounging in the bottom of the ocean than live with a prospective future with my father.”

“So I’ve heard.”

There’s a huff that leaves you as you steel your voice. “I’m not trying to set you up if that’s what you’re afraid of.”

“I doubt you’d have that capability,” he says as he leans his forearms over the railing. You briefly consider pushing him over but think better of it.

As much as you wanted to be a sneaky link, you simply didn’t have that trait. You blame all the dependency your father’s fostered into you, ensuring that you couldn’t rule without his influence.

“Are you willing to brew a plan or not? I need to time my dip in the ocean accordingly,” you say, sounding almost disgruntled.

He lets out a big sigh, “Follow me.”

He’s made himself familiar with the ship, you soon realise, as he leads you right downstairs to the lower deck towards the war room. When he opens the door, the room is lit with lamps, casting a golden glow on the reddish interior, warmer than the rest of the ship.

“Stay here, and don’t do anything stupid,” he tells you as he shuts the door behind him, leaving you alone in the cabin.

You only exhale in response as you turn away from the door, towards the large table in the centre. It’s slightly cluttered, studying the scrawled notes as you realise they’re all from the Admiral, his directions and plans of course littered across the table. Turning towards the map on the walls, you lift a finger to trace the lifted ridges of snow capped mountains, trailing towards the dipped shallows of the blue water.

It was an exact replica of the tactile map in the war room back home, and you’re suddenly hit with a pang of nostalgia. Not that you’d been away from home for too long, but the end result of what you're about to do, regardless of the outcome, would change your life forever.

You feel yourself breathing in the lingering scent of mildew, a strange comfort in the warm quarters.

There’s a creak at the door, and you quickly retract to find the pirate captain back at the door, walking in with a trail of men behind him. You recognise them by their faces, watching as they all take their places in the edges of the room. They look relaxed. You note the pirate captain taking his place behind the main drawing table.

“Your throne, miss princess.” He gestures exaggeratedly towards the lone cushioned chair across from him. You’re hyper aware of all the eyes that are trailed on you, and you feel almost embarrassed to take the only seat.

It only lasts for a moment. You walk up to the chair with what you hope exuded confidence and take your place across from the pirate captain. His men circle the edge of the room, and you count five other men.

He sighs, “I think introductions are in order.”

“Mingyu, Minghao,” he points to the two men that had inspected your window right after you tried breaking it open.

“Jun,” he gestures to the one who had found you in your quarters the night it all went wrong.

“Seungkwan and Chan,” you recognize the latter as the one who’d tied you to the mast at his captain’s command.

“They’ll be helping kill your dear father.”

It’s silent for a moment as you attempt to moisten your mouth. You’re reminded you haven’t eaten or drank for hours, not since one of them had come up with a tray of whatever they could find for you from the reserves.

“I know I may not be the most admissible person to trust, or vice versa—” You hear someone snort but choose to ignore it. “But I’m willing to make myself useful to you if it means you would help me too.”

“Would it not be easier to lock him up instead?” someone asks, and you turn to find Seungkwan asking the question from next to the tactile map.

“He has too many people indebted to him, too many that are too loyal for their own good. I cannot truly rule for as long as he’s alive and well.”

“And how do you expect his loyal court mongers to let you bid favour to the people who killed their king?” the pirate captain asks with a raised brow.

“Which is why it needs to look like an accident.”

“How do you reckon we go about that?”

“What message have you given the Admiral?”

“You don’t answer a question with another question—”

“We need to be transparent with each other if either of us wants to make it out relatively unscathed.”

He doesn’t look too happy but he answers anyway, “My ship and five hundred thousand for all our trouble. Two months from now at the Green Islands up north.”

The Green Islands were anything but green, the glaciers being near uninhabitable owed to the ruthless weather. It was smart enough, it’d be near impossible to bring as much violent power that far north, no matter how influential anyone is.

“Is five hundred thousand all I’m worth?” you feel the beginnings of a sneer rise up your mouth. You aren’t sure what prompted it but you don’t want to fight it either.

“Didn’t know I was bartering for a fucking princess’ case, did I?” he snaps. “Now tell us how you want us to commit the undetected homicide of a King.”

“We need to blow up his ship.” To your surprise (and maybe even a little horror), the pirate captain breaks into a slight grin. Neither do you miss other bits of his crew releasing a bit of a snicker.

There’s a flare of defiance within you, “Do you have any better ideas then?”

“No, no. Go on,” he says with his head hung. You’re surprised he has the character to shield his smile.

“He doesn’t frequent the seas but I’m almost sure he’d be present at the exchange.”

“Almost?” he questions.

You hesitate. The combined chance of needing the crown home and seeing to the downfall of his enemies would be enough warmth to send him to the greenlands himself. You were confident, but your father could also be unpredictable.

“He’ll be there. I’m sure of it.”

The pirate captain lifts his head, locking eyes with you. You try not to look as weak as you felt, as unsure as you felt, pooling all the remaining confidence into your face.

He swallows before looking away, addressing one of the crew members. “How big are we talking?”

Jun looks up like he’s only just begun to pay attention, fumbling over the revolver in his hands as it thuds to the ground like a theatrical mistake, “What?”

His captain sighs before replying, “Explosion. How big does it need to be to blow up a naval ship with a King on it?”

The man brings a hand up to the back of his head, scratching his nape. “If it’s anything like this one, we’re gonna need a lot of ammo.”

“Just enough to sink it,” you speak before you could decide not to. “Even better if they don’t realise it’s happening.”

He thinks for a moment. “We could plant it in the bilge somehow.”

“But how do we get on that ship? When they’re giving us a tour of the lower decks?” The man you recall as Seungkwan scoffs.

“Throw a grenade on board somehow?” you hear one of them suggest.

“Real subtle, Chan,” you hear another mock.

The war room is in shambles before you know it, loud voices talking over threats to slit throats and to shove people overboard. The room is humid and it feels as though the light from the oil lamps are fading. You close your eyes amidst the utter chaos, rubbing the heel of your palm on your temple in an attempt to soothe the throbbing vein.

“Enough!” The pirate captain has spoken and you have the urge to ask what took him so long.

Tranquility once again and you almost thank the man. Before anyone can say another word, nausea begins to build in your stomach.

It takes you a minute to realise the room was spinning and that you weren’t completely losing your mind. The ship begins to rock harder as the seconds tick by, everybody in the room seemingly still as they perceive the change.

“Batten down the hatches,” the pirate captain says to no one in particular.

Chan is the only one who moves to the door to leave before he’s interrupted.

“All of you. Those clouds weren’t looking too nice up there, we’ve got a storm on our hands.”

By everyone he surely did not mean you, because as the room rushes out and you hear the thuds of boots clamouring up to the main deck, you’re left alone with the captain. Yet again.

It’s becoming increasingly difficult to keep steady, and you wonder how he’s able to remain balanced while on his feet. It isn’t long before your chair begins to slide as well, the legs croning as they slip on the hardwood. You spring up on instinct, hands coming to the bolted down drawing table to stabilise yourself.

The pirate captain seems unphased, moving the curtains on the far end to try to get a glimpse at where the water breaks. He steps like he knows exactly where the evermoving floor would be, barely glancing below to gauge his footing.

“Shouldn’t you be up there?” There’s effort in your voice, your grip on the table as hard as ever as the ship banks to a hard left. He barely grabs the wall in support.

“Huh? They can figure it out themselves, they’re big boys,” he grunts.

“Your big boys were at each other’s throats a moment ago,” you grunt back, stumbling at a particularly forceful lurch.

“If you weren’t so ill prepared they wouldn’t need to use their brains, that’s always dangerous,” he shoots back. He’s on the other end of the room, pushing the unbolted cabinet back in its place

“I gave you a job and it's up to you to see it done, I’m not—ah— I’m not supposed to be planning at all!”

“Are you?” He’s turned to look at you know, mouth hitched in a snarl as his forehead reflects a light sheen. “Because trying to murder a—”

“Trying to murder a King isn’t a normal task,” you finish for him in a hiss. “Yes, as you’ve reiterated a million times.”

“Great, so you know!” Sarcasm is a deadly look on him, you realise as he walks over from the cabinet to where you were in the middle of the room. The waves have given in, the rocking becoming significantly slower. “Now do you mind telling us about a plan that actually has better odds?”

Your white knuckles have relented, the hands that gripped the table coming loose as you stare back at the pirate in defiance. “I should just hand you over.”

“It’s sweet you think you’re in charge here,” the grit in his voice is evident. “This isn’t your turf anymore, miss princess.”

“You don’t trust me, and you don’t give me reason to trust you—ugh.”

The waves seemed to have decided she hadn’t had enough just yet, this particular lurch sending you hurtling backwards into the wall, back hitting the hardwood as the stable pirate himself loses his footing. You could almost believe you’d landed sideways with the gravity that’s lost its way beneath your feet.

The chair you were once sitting on is hurtling towards you with a vengeance, gaining momentum as you simply watch it approach like a wooden bullet. A boot clad foot kicks it to the other end and you realise the pirate captain’s gotten hold of his bearings before you have.

“What happened to being transparent with one another?” he huffs, breathless and wide eyed as he attempts to pull himself to his feet.

There’s another lurch that sends you both skidding towards the table, just short of grabbing on before you’re hurtled into the cabinet that had moved again, and now slams back into the wall with the weight of the sea and two humans with a bang!

“Fine. You give me your ammo to blow up the bilge, let me on the ship with my dear father and one of you scoops in and saves me before I drown with him,” you yell over the sounds of clanging and banging of everything on this cursed ship, and the whooshing and thunders of the skies, winds and water. “And if I riddled the chances of you letting me drown with my father? Where does that leave me?”

“On the bottom of the seabed,” he deadpans. “But that also leaves me without my freedom.”

You find the opportunity to look at him for a moment, and he’s looking at you too. He looks away towards the door, already making moves to walk out and join his crew above deck. The conversation was over, and it was evident in your lack of reply.

Mother nature, however, sends another one in as a surprise and you're both sent flying to the other end of the ship, yet again.

There’s a cushion to your blow this time as you find yourself landing right into the pirate captain’s chest, hand above his heart in your instinct to save yourself any more bruises. Between your bickering and the staggering of the ship, his shirt had flown open nearly down to his navel.

Your eyes barely register the nasty scar across his left pec, instead moving upwards to lock eyes with him. It’s insanity, how you instinctively dart your eyes towards his half open mouth.

“If you wanted me that bad, miss princess, you could’ve just asked.”

Whatever airborne drug that’d been willy nillying in your noggin seems to spin into a rage as his words register a moment too late. Clenched jaw and a vice grip on his shirt, you spit back.

“I don’t ask for things. They come to me.”

There’s a crash above you and you realise the oil lamp that was suspended above has shattered, raining glass over your forms.

Expect you don’t feel it, because he’s ducked over you and suspended his arms in the air to catch the crystalline.

Before you can decide whether it was instinct or not, you hear a yell at the door.

“Captain! One of the—oh.”

A barely balancing Mingyu, is staring into the now dimly lit war room, his captain and their supposed prisoner pressed against one another in a dark corner of the room.

Your instinct forces you to take a slow step backwards.

“Get back up,” he snarls, already pushing past you to stalk towards the door. He actually makes it this time, shoving Mingyu into the hall towards the stairs.

Not as much as a glance back before he slams the door shut, leaving you in the tattered war room alone, shards of glass at your feet.

THE STORM SEEMS TO have done its damage as it calmed itself for the rest of the morning and well into the day.

One of them had come down and escorted you to your quarters, Chan telling you that you could keep it while the rest of them adjusted in the other cots and quarters aboard. Changing out of your ragged, days old clothes felt luxurious, the familiar scent of your quarters putting your tense shoulders at ease; or at least a semblance of such.

Neither you nor the captain have attempted to speak to each other after the incident in the war room. Having berated yourself for letting your guard down enough, you chalked it up to the lack of food and sleep and put the matter to rest in some deeply buried chest in your head.

For now you board up the door of your cabin (because you haven’t completely lost it), and burrow under the covers for some much needed shut eye.

You aren’t sure how long the universe lets you rest, because unless you’ve slept all the way to the Green Islands the banging on the door seems incessant enough to warrant an arrest of its own. The sleep is slow to leave, and it’s hard enough to push an entire drawer against a door, the bleariness paired with whoever the fuck was outside the door isn’t making it easier to push it away from the entrance either.

By the time you’ve wrenched the door open, you’re thoroughly annoyed, and met with a very alarmed Seungkwan.

“Oh thank goodness, I was about to try opening it,” he says, looking genuinely relieved. “I thought you might’ve….anyway.”

“You weren’t trying to break in before?” you ask.

He only thrusts a tray of rations and water towards you, “Captain said to give this to you.”

Accepting the tray, you try to balance it in one hand with furrowed brows, “Oh.”

“Um. That’s it, sorry for waking you up.” He makes a move like he’s about to turn around and leave but falters. “If…if you need anything a bunch of us are on the main deck.”

And then he’s gone.

You take it as your cue to shut the door, kicking one of the heftier pieces of furniture against it before moving back inside.

When you peer up your tiny window, it’s late afternoon and the beginnings of orange on the surface tell you the sun is beginning to set. You decide it was a good enough amount of sleep. Setting the tray down on the smaller than usual desk, you find that these pirates do not have a knack for subtlety. Many of your letters and papers are haphazardly stacked and shoved into one corner of the table, very obviously sifted through.

Not that you care too much, there was nothing awfully important that you wouldn't have told them yourself. Ripping off a piece of bread from the tray, you take pleasure in chewing as loudly and as open mouthed as you wished, plucking the parchment at the top of the pile to study.

It’s another one signed by your father, not a question of your wellbeing in sight as he scrawls ink on paper all the incorrect things you did in the Southerner’s banquet last month. If anything, you were glad the stupid Admiral was away from your presence, his incessant habit of reporting your every breath and turn to your father was becoming too much to handle.

This was one of his tamer letters, less insults attached to his criticisms but a pain to read anyway. You don’t brush away the crumbs that fall onto the parchment.

There is not a diplomatic bone in your body. Perhaps move on from drinks and dessert and into more important territories besides the Duke’s son. Our kingdom needs a ruler that’s strong, not one that forgets where she is after a sip of brandy!

If you squint hard enough, it almost reads as a parent scolding a child for a spill, like regardless of what you did, he might just love you the same.

You wonder how good of a mood he was in when he wrote this.

Sifting through the rest of the papers you take a mental note of every reason he’s given you to believe that you’d be a hopeless ruler, a few years ago you even questioned why he kept you around before realising his contradicting intentions. As you read, letter by letter, you think of reasons you know are going to make you a better ruler, better than him and better than his stupid court of old men.

These pirates are a blessing, you think, and you aren’t about to let this chance from the universe drown in these waters.

HOSHI ISN'T IN TROUBLE. No, he isn’t. On his butt on the sleek floorboards of the ship, his own golden dagger glinting in the sunlight as it's held in a threatening hold, except it isn’t in his hands.

It’s pointed right into his jugular vein, held by some grimy sailor who considers himself something akin to a pirate. Perhaps the stench this sorry excuse of a crew carries around may be their idea of a criteria, but as Hoshi remains inches away from death, all he can think about is the atrocious fingers around his dagger, and all the scrubbing he’s going to be doing after this is all over.

Mingyu had warned him, told him to take down the flag of the navy from the mast, the royal seal in the smack middle of the ginormous thing. He brushed it off. He wasn’t quite sure if he was tipsy, hungry or just plain exhausted when he made that decision, because he’d forgotten just how stupid some of these simpleton sailors could get.

They were taken by surprise, their only weapons mops and buckets of soapy water as they were ambushed by some overlooked wherry that had suddenly thrown hooks over their railing and climbed up like uninvited sewer rats.

In the initial confusion, interrupted mid-chorus of some pretty siren and her pirate prince, the first few intruders had simply crumpled over onto the slippery deck, a few slipping overboard completely from the suds and water on the wood. His crew, and Hoshi himself, could only stand and watch as the newcomers sabotaged themselves for a few incredulous moments before they gained their bearings.

Chan and Seungkwan swang their mops right into the necks of a couple, sending them into the ocean without waiting for a splash.

Hoshi slips out his dagger with practised ease, swinging the butt of the hilt over the head of another ambushing intruder, right on the head as he crumpled to the floor with a loud thud. He kicks him over for an indication of where he came from. No ink that shows an alliance, no brooch or jewels with a crest.

New guys, ones that were clearly still learning the ropes.

Hoshi’s crew had better senses than required for him to yell out orders, and it only took a few more disgruntled minutes to disable the remaining extra men aboard.

“Where the fuck did these guys come from?” he asks no one in particular, mostly just annoyed that they were disturbed.

Minghao, who’s peeking over the railing replies, “It’s a tiny thing. They either lost their actual boat or didn’t have one at all.”

He vaguely registers him making a jerking arm movement over the exterior before he hears a wail and a splash. “Disgusting.” Minghao holds his hands away from his body like he didn’t want it anymore.

Hoshi’s mistake was keeping his guard down, because before anyone could warn him, the dagger that he held loosely against his hip had slipped out his palm. The next thing he knows, his neck is in some grimy sleeve’s grip, and the point of his dagger is lodged into his own throat. He holds his breath, afraid he might pass out completely from the stench alone.

“Not a move.” He sounds like a boy more than anything, but his grip indicates a harsher life. “Everybody into that fishing boat. I’ll throw this one in when you’re done.”

He sounds unstable, but that only makes him more dangerous. Hoshi can’t try to wiggle his way out of this one, one wrong move and it’s the end. His crew can’t do anything as they stand with broken mops and empty buckets as their weapons.

It was stupid of him to even allow himself to be cornered like this, not when he’s weaselled his way out of more dangerous situations with more ease than this.

His crew looks at him, and he can only close his eyes in encouragement. He watches as Jun steps over one of the defeated bodies to reach the hooks that’ve lodged into the railing. His movements are slow, and he can tell he notices the unhinged nature of this boy that he doubts is barely over 17.

Chan follows, then Seungkwan as Jun double checks the integrity of the ropes. He’s stalling.

“Hurry!” It was supposed to come out as a threat, but it sounded more like a plea from the boy.

And then Jun stops completely, his eyes trained on Hoshi. His eyes are wide, his grip on the rope so tight he can see the whites of his knuckles from the other side of the ship.

No, he wasn’t looking at him, he was looking behind him. Before he can register, there’s a loud bang of a gunshot, and Hoshi feels the body of his captor slump against his back, his dagger dropping to the ground with an ominous clang. He falls with him, turning over to push the dead weight of the body off of him.

There’s smoke in the air when Hoshi looks back and it takes him a moment to realise who just basically saved his life.

You stand in your nightgown, shawl over your shoulders, and a revolver, Jun’s revolver, clenched tightly in both hands. It remains frozen in the air, hovering as he takes in your face. Eyes wide, mouth open slightly, the colour drained from your face.

Hoshi scrambles to get up as the rest of the crew swarm both him and you. He grabs his dagger before anything else, looking back to see a bullet lodged in the back of his captor’s skull, blood pooling the deck.

He looks back at you shoving the revolver back into Jun’s hands eagerly, like you didn’t want to feel the warmth of the metal any more than you wanted to make that shot.

He looks back at the cooling body, and then back at you, an undeniable warmth overcoming his chest.

You just saved his life.

“Are you alright?” he hears Chan ask you. You nod slowly, and then quickly.

“Where did you find this?” Jun asks.

“Uh, in one of the quarters. Downstairs. I went down because I thought it’d be safer, you were handling it and I didn’t want to get in the way. But then…all your weapons were there.”

Your voice sounds airy, like you were in a daze. Hoshi comes to the stark realisation that this may have been your first time with a weapon, and then even more horrifying, your first kill.

“I’m sorry, I just thought it was getting out of hand and—”

“It’s alright,” Seungkwan says. He watches as you let him lead you back down the stairs below decks.

It was like the shock turned you into a different person, complacent, less defiant. Seungkwan clearly had more of an emotional range, because it certainly took Hoshi too long to realise you might be on the edge of panic.

Hoshi doesn’t say a word as you disappear, the smell of gunpowder from the singular shot wafting through the deck. He doesn’t realise he’s staring into space until Mingyu interrupts.

“Should we—”

“Throw them overboard,” Hoshi says, voice flat.

“But, this one seems like he’ll come around. We could question him and drop him off wherever next—”

“He’s a shit seaman, if even a pirate, he’s got what came for him. Throw. Him. Overboard.” Hoshi is out of breath, yet grits the words out through clenched teeth. “All of them.”

Hoshi slips his dagger back into its sheath at his hip. All he can think about is your blown pupils and you in your nightgown. All he can think about is how they were almost bested by a child. All he can think about is how you had to make that final shot to save his ass, that he couldn’t do it himself.

Mingyu senses his mood and asks no more questions, simply pushing the remaining bodies out into the water. He vaguely registers Minghao sending the men a prayer into the sea. Mingyu’s already trying to get the stupid naval flag off the mast, stripping off his jacket and disposing of it at the base to start climbing.

Chan pushes a clean rag into his chest, and he looks down to receive it and notes a tinge of blood at his collar. Right, he was bleeding.

They go back to cleaning, except it’s a lot more silent.

Jun walks back up to help, but this time he has both of his clean, black revolvers strapped at his hip.

THERE WERE FEWER PEOPLE in the war room this time around, the captain sits beside Mingyu, Jun and Minghao as they attempt to sketch out a crude rendition of your discussion. The pirate captain does nothing but use his dagger to pick under his nails, barely speaking as he listens in on the conversation.

Not that you cared, you and the rest of his crew seemed to get along better than you did with the captain anyway. Saving the man’s life seemed to hold no weight to him, not that you expected it but a ‘thank you’ would have sufficed.

“Keep the grenade til the last minute if it makes you feel better, so you’ll know I’m not trying to sink the wrong ship,” you sigh as you clarify. Minghao doesn’t reply as he scribbles the details. Jun rolls his eyes at his meticulous nature.

“We need to port in the next couple days if I’m gonna finish this grenade in time,” he says, looking at his captain pointedly.

“We can stop at Port Ash,” Hoshi says.

Port Ash was no man’s land, which also meant it was every man’s land.

Being mostly occupied by pirates and other thieves and criminals it was considered dangerous territory for anyone who didn’t speak in lies, deceit and fists. This crew would fit right in, but you worry for yourself.

“That’s not gonna be till a week and a half,” Mingyu interjects.

Jun frowns as he looks at Mingyu and then back at his captain, “I can’t wait that long.”

“We’ll pick up what we can at Hasry when we stop for rations,” Hoshi replies.

“But—”

“Deal with it. There’s nothing we can do about it.”

Jun looks like he wants to say something, and Mingyu has the good sense to interject again to ask more questions about the plan.

“How much manpower do you think the king’ll have?” he asks.

You sigh, crossing your arms as you lean back in your chair. “I have no idea. Could be five, could be fifty.”

“Not even an inkling?”

“Considering how he wants the lot of you gone, it’s probably on the larger side. But…” you pause.

“But?”

“He’s smart. Always seemingly one step ahead. I wouldn’t be surprised if he catches us blind.”

“I know enough about that,” Hoshi snorts. There’s a glint in his eye that suggests something, but you don’t press.

“I was wondering…we should probably change course even if it takes us longer. My father might intercept—”

“Did that. Didn’t take the obvious alternative route either,” Mingyu replies, and you note that he looks proud of himself. “We can take our time too, the ransom note suggested we took the way past Scarsfield.”

“We should be careful of other boats anyway,” you say, gulping down a lump in your throat before continuing. “Those other sailors could’ve been my father’s men too, for all we know.”

“They were on a smaller boat too,” Hoshi adds, he looks like he’s making connections in his brain. “What’re the odds they were dropped farther back into a smaller boat?”

There’s a pause as you absorb what he’s implying. “Are you saying they’re on our tail?”

“I wouldn’t doubt it,” he says, exhaling heavily through his nose. “He’s done it before. It was a sorry attempt then and it was a sorry attempt now.”

“How did you shake him off last time?”

The panic in your chest is barely there, but as you register the possibility, you find yourself breathing increasingly heavy.

“Circling farther out before going the opposite way so we wouldn’t cross paths.” He shakes his head. “But we can’t do that now, not when we can’t afford detouring. The port stops are as late as I’m willing to go.”

“What if we skip Hasry? It’s our more obvious stop, we’ll just stop at Ash later,” Minghao suggests.

“We’ll starve, we’ve got no food,” Hoshi gruffs.

“Portwater?”

“Too far.”

It’s silent yet again as everyone racks their brains. You feel very useless all of a sudden, you didn’t know the names of harbours or ports this far out.

“We’ll just port at Hasry and be extra careful, there’s nothing we can do.” Hoshi sighs at his own ultimatum.

He gets up and walks around the table to the door, “I’ll update the others.”

You glance as he walks past you, his figure leaving a gust of wind in your face. He smelled nice, which was saying something considering the state some pirates are known to be in. As he brushes past, your gaze is met with the other side of the war room, an empty oil lamp bracket on the wall.

The memory of the storm floods your mind, and suddenly your cheeks are burning. Snapping your head back, you're thankful they’re all absorbed in the papers and plans on the table, oblivious to the memory that’s flashed before your eyes. Mingyu was the one who saw you in your compromising position, and you didn’t know him well enough to decide whether he’d do something as dumb as dish out his captain’s ‘affairs’.

You file out the room with them. They don’t escort you to your rooms, make sure you stay in one place, restrict your wandering anymore. Perhaps they’d realised you weren’t actively attempting to sink the ship anymore, or that if you jumped off the edge it didn’t matter to them that much, but you appreciated the space anyway.

Briefly catching Seungkwan filling Mingyu in on the past couple hours they’d been below deck, you turn over to catch his eye. He waves, and you wave back. You don’t realise what you did till it already happened, noting the smile on his face as he did it. You choose to move past it and find the captain.

There was something you wanted from him.

There’s no trace of him on the main deck, eyes scanning the area to no avail. A movement from above catches your peripheral attention, eyes squinting as you crane your neck up to look. Hoshi has leaned his back against the railing of the crow’s nest, arms crossed, visible hand occupied with a brass telescope that glints in the sunlight.

He isn’t using it though, merely gazing at the horizon with furrowed brows. As though he could see better without the device in his hand. In the few minutes that you’re looking at him, you notice the muraled, multicoloured shirt that blows with the wind, a kaleidoscope of beiges, greens and reds. The crop of his blonde hair blends in with the clear blue-white sky.

Briefly wondering how he’s managing the impossible heat, a hand coming over your own eyes as a visor, you simply look back down. Seungkwan is next to you. You aren’t quite sure how he got there, but he stands next to you, hands on his hips, a pleasant expression on his face.

“Is there anything you want when we dock? We’re trying to make a list,” he says. Somehow, the prospect of pirates making lists boggled you a little. It was a little jarring, not quite sure why he asked a captive anyway.

But then again, were you a captive anymore?

“I don’t think so, no,” you reply and then juggle whether you should push it with another measly formality. “Thank you for asking.”

“That was your first kill, wasn’t it?”

“What?” You knew what he was talking about, but you weren’t expecting him to bring it up in the moment when he’s asking you about restocking supplies. And especially not with a smile on his face.

“That day, when you used Jun’s revolver to shoot the lad.”

A kid. He was a child.

“I…yeah I’d never done it before.”

“What made you do it?” he asks, remaining as nonchalant as ever.

“I—I don’t know, it looked like there wasn’t another option,” you say, not quite sure of yourself either.

Why did you shoot him? You’d never laid hands on a gun before, your father forced you into the category of archery and crossbows, not that you were very good at them either but it was also because you simply wanted to spite your father by being plain bad. It worked, because it only took a year and a half and an arrow straight into his study window to retire from the sport entirely.

Even then, your targets had been apples, barrels and tree trunks. Never a person.

You’d heard of what people tended to do in pressuring situations, and with the way the aftermath unfolded, it didn’t seem like you made the wrong decision to pick up that revolver anyway.

But the feeling lingers, the same one that you saw as you gazed into the back of the boy that held the captain of this ship hostage. It felt wrong. Like watching the pirate captain cornered was a picture you couldn’t quite make sense of in your head.

So you pulled the trigger.

“In any case, we’re glad you made that decision. We all owe you for it.”

You don’t know what to say to that, so you gulp, inhale and press your lips in a line. “That’s a lot for a pirate to say.”

“I know.”

BY THE TIME YOU manage to corner Hoshi it’s already the next day, and you’re only a couple hours away from docking at Hasry.

It’s an anxious ordeal, the crow’s nest constantly occupied by someone trying to catch sight of a possible tail. There was no sign, yet anyway.

“I want to learn to use a knife.”

He was piling coiled ropes when you’d said it, pushing the heap to the side, sweating through his clothes. There was a flash of confusion on his face as he registered you.

“Why? So you can slit all our throats in our sleep?” he grumbles as he pushes a barrel against the railing. He’s too aggressive, and the force has the splashback soaking his clothes in freshwater, tsk-ing audibly.

You ignore the way his previously loose shirt now sticks to him, ignore the way the droplets land on your boots when he shakes his sleeve.

“We’ve discussed what we might be up against, I don’t want to be useless when the time comes.”

“Seemed pretty alright with that revolver.”

“Anyone can shoot a gun,” you say, getting the sudden urge to fidget with the front of your shirt. You try to make your voice sound as declarative as possible. “I want to learn to fight. With a knife, with a sword, with my hands if I have to.”

He doesn’t say anything as you look down, fiddling with the tassels on your shirt. Your excuse was the sun and the way it was beating down on the deck this afternoon, getting tired of squinting to simply look straight. When the silence prolongs you look up to push further, juggling with bringing up the fact that you saved his life and that, as Seungkwan very graciously told you, he owes you.

The sound your throat makes is unhuman, because when you look up the captain's soaked shirt is now off his back.

The skin is near white from the glare of the sun, remnants of glazed water that’s somehow made its way to his back as well. The dip in his shoulder blade reflected a dark marking, one that you couldn’t make out.

He wrings it as you can only watch, mouth gaping like a fish. Hanging it over one of the suspended ropes to dry, he mutters as he walks to the lower decks.

“Fine,” he says nonchalantly. “We’ll get you a knife at Hasry.”

Hasry. Right.

The port is quiet, at least as quiet as a port can be. There’s not much to see but fishermen both returning and leaving for another week's worth of fish supply. Minghao manages to pay and convince the harbourmaster that they were merchants on their way back to the Kingdom, stopping for supplies. The naval make of the ship helped, and then the crew pulled lines and ropes secured from masts in ways you couldn’t quite decipher.

You assumed you would stay on board, yet when Chan knocked and brought you some roughspun clothes from the town, you were informed you’d be joining them.

Hoshi deemed it safer, keeping the rest of the crew on board while he, along with you and Seungkwan, ventured into the village to get what was needed and leave before the sun fully set. If they really were being followed, the ship was going to be the first thing they seized.

Pulling the grey shawl further up your head, you attempt to look as blended as you could, Chan pressing down your shoulders to force you into a slouch.

“Stop walking like you're important,” he had said.

“I’m a princess,” you snapped back, but he wasn’t listening, only jabbing at you to keep the haughtiness out of your tone before it caught somebody’s attention.

The town was a quaint little place, something out of what you were read from storybooks, reminiscent of the paintings that you’d run past on the walls of the palace. The streets cleaner than you’d expected, the faint scent of baked goods in the air mixed with, onion soup, was it? In any case you were glad you were past the fish market, the yelling and the stench nearly sending you to the pavement, gagging.

When Hoshi returns, you and Chan are looking at a jewellery stall that’s selling necklaces, bracelets and anklets that look like rosaries; colours of deep ocean blue and sunset pinks, beautifully vibrant against their grey canvas backdrop.

You can only observe from afar, instructed to not interact with anyone while he was gone. Hoshi was gone to get food supplies, but returned empty handed. Systems were in place, that the crates would be on their way to the “big naval ship” at the docks for the rest of the crew to receive.

“They said there was a blacksmith up this alley” Hoshi says, eyes also trained on the uncharacteristically colourful jewellery stall, but he does nothing to move towards it. “We can get your knife there.”

“Knife?” Chan asks, confused.

“Miss princess wants to learn to fight—”

“Don’t!” Chan hisses, eyeing the men in black uniform that patrol the market from the shadows.

“It’s fine, they’re too far,” Hoshi says. “Let’s get this over with.”

You do find a blacksmith, an older man with a greying beard and bloodshot eyes that presents Hoshi and Chan with an array of knives and daggers. Either they were able to give an excuse, or he gave no mind to the third woman that trailed behind, the blacksmith continued to deal with the two men as they haggle over prices.

There’s another seller a ways away, and she’s laid out her goods on the floor on what looks like old drapes. It’s a woman, not much older than you were, unravelling a long string of leather cord. She cuts it, strings a charm through and seals the frayed end with a candle flame that burns at her side.

The curtain she’s laid her accessories on is patterned with bright colours, and you realise you can’t make out any of it from where you stand.

Glancing behind you, the men are still occupied with their bartering, seemingly forgetting of your presence. Taking a step back, you pretend to skim through the neighbouring stalls, glancing breezily at woven baskets, layers of folded fabric and towers of painted ceramic cups.

You stop before the laid out array of more necklaces and earrings, scanning the ground. The vendor looks up and gives you a big, crooked toothed smile, urging you to come forward, to take a look at what she has to offer.

Something does catch your eye, and you immediately crouch down to see it better. Picking up the necklace from the charm, you let the gold and red rest on your fingers as you study the make.

“That one’s new,” the woman says. “Practical too.”

The small brass letter opener that’s looped through the cord looks like it could do its job just fine despite its miniscule size.

“It’s quite popular among the busy merchants,” the vendor speaks in a rough tone, almost like she had a perpetual sore throat. “Easier to use this instead of looking for those bulky ones in their neverending drawers and—and in their cabinets.”

She lets out a laugh, “Quite pretty too.”

You stare at it for a moment, “How much?”

“Ten coin.”

You sigh, setting the necklace back down onto the cloth. Standing straight, you turn to walk away before she yells again.

“I’ll do seven!”

You consider whether you should speak, but you also doubt you’d be recognized just by the sound of your voice.

"I don’t have coin,” you rasp.

“How about that pretty thing on your finger then?” she asks.

The ring on your middle finger is a simple band of silver, a coming of age present from your father’s court a few years ago. You stare at the band, worth boatloads more than what this woman in an alley was offering you.

But you find yourself moments later, middle finger empty, and pocket lined with the long leather necklace with the miniature letter opener charm.

By the time you return to the blacksmith’s shop front, Chan is handing the man his coin as Hoshi holds an object sheathed in fabric. They turn around just soon enough to make it seem like you never left.

“Why are you standing so far away?” Chan asks. “Come closer.”

You listen, moving closer to the both of them as they get ready to make the trek back to the docks where the ship waits.

“The crates have probably been loaded too,” Hoshi says, his hands suddenly empty. You assume he’s pocketed the knife somewhere. “Let’s hurry and leave before—”

“Princess?”

It was your mistake that you turned around to acknowledge the title, something you realise as soon as you register the man that spoke to you.

Henley was a stout man, dressed even now in the finest suit of a berry colour, hair white as a ghost. There was no reason for a merchant so rich he had ties with the royal family to be wandering in a harbour market, but he also had every reason to be here.

If it was the recognition in your eyes, or the fact that they were just being smart, you feel one of the pirates wrap their fingers around your upper arm and pull you to walk away from the alley.

“Princess!” Henley yells and you cringe at his volume. People are looking now, and you briefly wonder why you aren’t running yet.

Your heart is pounding against your chest so hard it’s deafening any other sound in your ears, you still don’t know which one has a hold of you, but you let them guide you into a speed walk as you exit the narrow alleys of the main market.

The shawl above your head is pushed further down, shielding your face in a shadow. There’s nothing in your mind other than Clarence Henley and his rich suit, his gold pocket watch, his trimmed, white hair. His face that you only ever saw within palace walls, always accompanied by your father.

There’s a good chance you’re shaking, because you can feel your body rejecting it with the pain in your palms that you can only consider to be your own nails pressing into your hand.

The stench of the fish market helps, bringing you back from your daze as you finally register the ground beneath your feet. It’s only a few more minutes till you reach the docks and you’re suddenly being pushed up the ramp that leads to the main deck of the ship.

It’s immediate comfort, the familiar brown of the floorboards, the scent of saltwater and warping sounds of the sails. You’re led to your quarters, where you finally let the makeshift hood and cape fall.

“Are you alright?”

Snapping your head up, you’re met with Seungkwan and his concerned gaze.

“Oh, erm.” Your voice sounds��not like your own.

“It’s okay, breathe.” It helps, because it really did feel like you’d forgotten to breathe.

“We’re leaving in just a few, everything’s been loaded. Nobody followed you on board, don’t worry.”

Right. You were on the ship, you were in your quarters with some of the most feared pirates on the seas.

The way Seungkwan is easing you through your gulps of water suggests legends in the mix, but you appreciate it regardless.

When you’ve come round, feeling more like yourself, the ship has already left Hasry Harbour, sailing into the deeper waters of the ocean.

“Captain said they couldn’t run because it just would’ve been more suspicious,” Seungkwan informs you as you nod. “Did you…did you recognise him? The man at the market.”

The thoughts come flooding back, the colour of his suit, the jarring nature of a man of such wealth standing in a rundown port market.

“He’s a merchant, one of the wealthiest. A friend of my father’s. If he even has any friends.”

You pause as you think about the near blackout you’d had, the way the panic more than boiled over, taking over your senses and your rationality.

“I think…” you trail off. “I think I just felt like it was the end. I finally had an opportunity to get rid of that tyrant and seeing something that was from home, felt…it felt like I was going to end up right back where I started.”

Seungkwan doesn’t say a word as you digest your own words, accepting your own fear that had rendered you useless in the time it probably mattered most.

“Do you feel better now?”

“A little,” you answer.

“Maybe a weapon can help.”

At the door stands Hoshi, a stern expression on his face as he looks directly at you on the bed. In his hands, the same fabric covered knife he acquired at the market.

You know that you asked for this, but the jolt in your stomach still makes itself known.

“He’s right,” Seungkwan says, lifting from his chair. “Blades have a way of calming you in any case.”

You note the glinting hilt of Seungkwan’s sword sheathed at his hip, remember Hoshi’s own daggers that he seems to be emotionally attached to.

Lifting your head back to Hoshi, you ask, “Can we start now?”

He smirks.

ALL NIGHT, THE STUPID pirate captain had you taking swings at the air.

“Your opponent’s baked a fruit cake by the time you were done with that swing,” he comments, continuously unhelpful. “Swing faster.”

It’s nighttime, nothing but a few oil lamps on the floor of the deck keeping you and Hoshi in the light. Your shoulder burns, your forearms are liquid, and your non-existent opponent remains forever stronger than you.

“I’m done,” you huff, thoroughly spent. Crumbling to the floor, you bring your non-dominant hand up to your aching shoulder in an attempt to massage it.

It’s been a while, the moon high up in the sky when you finally decide to quit it for the night. He lets you go without a fight, and you doubt you’d have the energy to if he decided to do it anyway.

The following day, he’s tweaked his regiment a little, and you find that you’re finally swinging at something tangible; him.

He leaves himself open, an invitation to strike wherever you want. You feign for his shoulder, but he sees you coming from a mile away, already deflecting your flattened blade that comes for his thigh.

“Don’t look where you want to strike, you’re giving yourself away.”

Furrowing your brows, you dislodge your knife from his own and back away again. He’s immediately cocking a brow, telling you to come at him again. You go for his middle, slashing your knife in an arc as he simply deflects.

“Come on, find a pace,” he grunts.

Coming down with your knife again, he blocks you but this time with his forearm, pushing you back by the wrists. It was a battle of strength, as he forces your wrists down. He was stronger than you, and there was no way you could push away, so you dispel your own force. He stumbles from the sudden forward force, and you pull away to take a swing from above.

He recovers faster than you thought he would, already coming up when you’re ready to swing. He raises a hand to deflect, half a moment too late as your blade slashes across the heel of his hand.

There’s a brief splash of red against the blue backdrop of the sky, and you gasp on instinct, immediately moving away.

There’s an apology ready on your lips, mouth gaping as you watch him inspect the wound. You don’t get to say anything because he beats you to it.

“Deep enough,” he comments, like he was inspecting a painting. “Keep this up and you might actually be good by the end of the week.”

Oh.

“Alright,” he says again, moving back into position.

“Are you gonna wrap that?” you ask, referring to the bloody hand.

“It’s fine, I’ve fought with worse,” he says.

You blink as you reluctantly get back into position, bracing yourself as you continue to look at his hand dripping blood onto the deck.

“You’re getting the hang of pacing, but you need to start considering your blade as an extension of yourself—JESUS!”

You’ve swung at him faster than you ever have, putting everything into that single tug of your knife. He wasn’t expecting it, still talking over your glances at his palm. He had his guard down, and you took the chance. He ducks on instinct, but it could’ve been another scar for him to remember if you’d made it.

You stumble as he circles you to the other end, flattening his blade on your back.

“Nice try,” he says. “Really nice try. But you never turn your back to your opponent.”

“I lost my footing,” you defend, but even you knew that wasn’t an excuse.

“And I just stabbed you in the back. And now I’ll have to present your corpse to your father and hope he’ll accept it and give me my ship. We all lose.”

The pressure of the blade leaves your back and you're suddenly left looking stupid despite doing something somewhat right.

“You’d just swindle another poor sailor off his boat and move on,” you say. “You’re a slippery thing.”

He has a smile on his face that borders a smirk yet is innocently mischievous enough. It’s a strange sight, bloody hand, relaxed face. There’s a clean-ish rag on a nearby closed barrel that he uses to wipe the excess blood off his hands.

“I keep going because I live without regret.”

You can only roll your eyes as a scoff leaves your mouth before you can stop it. You simply turn around, settling to the floor, going back to massaging your still aching shoulder. That last blow only made it worse.

“I don’t regret things, miss princess. Ask me why.”

You remain silent.

“Come on,” he urges, that silly smile remaining on his face. He’s washing the wound now with freshwater from the barrel.

Sighing, you ask him, “Why?”

“Because I don’t ever do things I’d regret.”

“That insinuates you think before you act.”

“Right-O,” he declares, wrapping another torn cloth on his cleaned wound.

“Funny,” you answer. “Because I dont think I’ve ever seen any hint of light behind your eyes.”

He turns around to you, sheathing his dagger at his hip, a dangerous look in his eye.

“You’ve looked into my eyes?”

The clench in your jaw must have been visible, or the look of disgust on your face might’ve been apparent just the same, because the pirate captain simply laughs out loud before retreating towards the stairs to go below deck.

“I’ll send Jun up, practise with him.”

You wanted to send your knife, point first, hurtling into his retreating form.

Never turn your back to your opponent, my ass.

But you don’t, mostly because he’d probably manage to deflect that too. So you resort to sitting cross legged on the deck, staring at your dagger while waiting for Jun to meet you upstairs.

Hoshi said he picked the knife based on a number of things you’d already forgotten, something about carbon steel and having a good grip. It’s quite pretty, you’ll have to admit. It’s plain silver, but the reflection it makes in the sun makes it difficult to look away. You’d gotten used to the handle and how it fit in your palm, Hoshi assured you that the more you used it, the more the hilt would mould into your grip.

Jun stomps onto the deck, revolver-less and instead equipped with an array of knives that he deposits on the deck.

“Should’ve picked a plain old gun,” he grumbles as he holds one of the longer blades in his hand. “Job’s done and you don’t need to get within ten feet.”

“Don’t have to reload a knife, do I?” you comment, taking the first swing.

Jun may have an affinity for guns and explosives, but his handling with a knife was still nothing below an expert level. He pushes your arm off before spending you into a ballroom spin, flatting his blade at your collarbone.

That could’ve been your throat.

“No, but by now I could’ve shot you, thrown you overboard, and been on my way to a nap,” he says in your ear, before releasing you as you get back into position again.

That could’ve been your throat.

THE FOLLOWING WEEK PASSES with your days and nights muddled into a strange mixture of swinging knives and taking breaks slumped against the deck of the ship, unmoving.

It’s a particularly hot day, the giant glowing orb beating down on the deck with no mercy. Not that it stops you, because the sun remains unwavering, high in the sky, and you remain unwavering in your wide legged stances as you lunge for Chan again.

Chan’s entire being glistens in the afternoon light, the beads of sweat that he wipes off his forehead only seem to reappear every couple minutes. His clothes cling to him like a second skin, taking long breaths through his teeth amidst the difficult, humid air.

You don’t doubt you look the same, one hand in your hair suggesting you just took a bath in your own sweat. But Chan seems accustomed to the heat, and while you weren’t, you couldn’t deny your growing comfortability with it all.

It’d been a while since your meal, hence your sluggish movements were slowly turning increasingly sharp, having cornered Chan multiple times in the duration. You’re determined to not be the one to call for a time out, so you find yourself pushing beyond what you’ve been doing for the past week or so.

There’s a particular punch of heat at your sides, and you can feel yourself slowing.

One deep breath, a slow exhale.

It’s all clangs and reflections of knives, tiny droplets of blood as evidence of both of your tiny, unintentional nicks and cuts. You’re succeeding, pushing the man further and further back.

“You’re getting sloppy, aim for the blade not my tendons,” Chan seethes through his teeth.

“I’m trying,” you grunt through the effort.

You’re set back for a couple minutes before you go back to pushing. Your lungs burn, your entire side is numb from exertion, but you give more than your body is made for, and you succeed—kind of.

Chan back is against the railing of the deck before he realises it, and perhaps it was momentum, or sheer exhaustion, because one minute you’ve got eyes on Chan’s hands and his blade, and the next he’s gone. There’s a loud splash, and you suddenly realise what you’ve done.

You just pushed Chan overboard.

You scream before you can help it, dropping your knife with a loud, resonating clang. Pushing against the rails, you peer down to find a giant ripple on the surface of the ocean, whipping your head around to the stairs leading below deck to find Mingyu and Hoshi bounding upstairs.

“What? Where’s Chan, he was supposed to be with you,” Hoshi asks, whipping his head around the deck.

Your wide eyed, horrified response from near the edge tells them all they need to know.

By the time Chan’s pulled himself on board, soaked and dripping like a wet poodle, you’ve sat yourself the furthest away from the railing to prevent any more trouble. He drops onto the floor, creating a human sized puddle.

With the way the two men had merely sighed and threw the ladder over the exterior of the ship, you concluded that this must happen enough for them to be beyond the point of concern. It only adds to it when you see Mingyu nudge Chan’s unmoving but heaving body with the toe of his boot, giggling at his expense.

You make your way over, crouching beside Chan sheepishly.

“Sorry about that, got carried away.”

He’s sitting up now, quickly pulling himself back to his feet and you spring back from your crouched position.

“It’s fine, happens.” He has a small smile on his face as he says it and you conclude that he may find the situation laughable as well.

“Now, Chan,” Hoshi says, not letting Chan move into the deck any further from the railing. “What’s the first thing you learn about brawling on a ship?”

Chan looks slightly embarrassed as he answers, “Be aware of your surrounding—ARGH.”

Hoshi pushed him into the water.

You jump as you run back to the rails, watching as Chan’s head re-emerges at the surface after his second dip in the ocean.

Just as you’re about to say something to Hoshi, he’s stuck his head over the railings as well, yelling at Chan in some singsong voice.

“One time was a mistake, twice is a problem!”

To your left, only adding to your horror, is Mingyu doubled over in his fit of laughter, heaving as he giggled uncontrollably. He’s also holding onto the railings for dear life, but clearly, for reasons completely different from yours.

The situation resolves itself as both you and Chan learn a few lessons of practicality. Deciding you’ve done enough damage to your body, you announce that you’d be retiring for the day.

“Thank goodness, I was about to confiscate that stupid knife, I’ve been hearing clanging in my sleep,” Mingyu mumbles as he pulls the rope ladder back up to the deck.

In any case, you have the urge to take a dip in the ocean yourself, feeling increasingly uncomfortable in your drying sweat.

Grabbing a clean washcloth, you fill a bucket of freshwater from one of the barrels on deck and lug it into your quarters. The soaked washcloth does wonders for your overheated body, feeling enormously better after a change of clothes.

Your scalp, however, remains itchy and burning, so you decide to go back up to the main deck, hoping to manoeuvre a hair wash situation without needing to mop the floors of your quarters.

Refilling the bucket of freshwater, you set it down before scanning the empty deck for another spare bucket. You try not to scoff at the unwavering determination of the pirate crew to keep the deck unoccupied for such long increments, that last altercation teaching them absolutely nothing. You wonder how they’ve managed to survive for so long like this.

Shaking the thought, you use the spare bucket as a way to deposit your waste water as you pour cups of clean water over your aching scalp. The feeling does wonders for you, letting the water wash away weeks worth of grime, sweat and stress.

You’re almost back home in your quarters when the whiff of your hair salts hits your nose, the ones you’d packed for yourself, closing your eyes for a moment as you rub them into your scalp. You don't expect the clench that seizes your chest, but you falter when it happens anyway.

It’s nostalgic, and you hate it.

It smells like the palace, like the incense your ladies in waiting always burned, the stench of citrus having made its way into your bones from the years of exposure to the scent. It’s too much as you blink back tears, owing them to the suds that have made their way into your eyes.

The sting helps bring you back, opening your eyes to an orange glow and the waft of seasalt hitting your nose. You’re more aggressive when you dunk your cup into the bucket this time, too aggressive as you feel the half full bucket tip over and spill water all over the deck as you cause yet another accident.

Cursing loudly, you try to blink away the suds from your eyes, soap still in your hair as you try to figure out how to get another bucket of water without ruining your fresh change of clothes, mentally kicking yourself at not thinking this through.

“You realise we have to make do with that freshwater till we make it to Ash?”

Wet hair still in your hands, you attempt to peer up at the voice, only to find Hoshi standing above you, arms crossed over his chest with a funny expression on his face. Huffing, you grumble out in response, “Can you just get me a fresh bucket?”

“Hm, I don’t know, can I?” He removes his gaze and begins to pretend looking over at the horizon and the setting sun.

Chiding yourself for even bothering to ask, you reach for the tipped bucket yourself, deciding you’d figure it out yourself if this dumb pirate was choosing to be of no help. But before you could latch your fingers on the handle, the bucket’s snatched away.

At first you think he’s being funny, taking the bucket away to watch you struggle even further. “You—”

Except you watch him as he dunks the bucket back into the barrel of freshwater, lugging it back to where you could reach. “Try not to paint the deck with it this time, I’ve already mopped twice.”

The thank you freezes on your tongue, and for some reason you can’t say it to him. So you make a scene of splashing into the bucket with vigour, sending spills over the rim and taking mild satisfaction in hearing him sigh at the sight of more mopping.

He’s already gotten hold of the worn mop by the time you’re done as you remerge with clean hair, wringing your own mop of hair to deposit the excess water. Straightening out your back, you take hold of the spare cloth you brought along with you, patting your hair with it.

The sun remains in its mission to cast its golden glow, but only illuminates Hoshi’s grumbling form as he mops up all the water you’ve spilled.

“You know, I should really be making you—” He halts as he makes eye contact with you, your hands still occupied with patting your hair dry, flicking the wet strands. You have a rebuttal already prepared, waiting for him to finish his jab.

“Make me what? you grind.

You can’t make out the look on his face, somewhere between constipated and on the edge of a yelp, he keeps staring at you. You note a slight trickle of water making its way down your neck and chest, bleeding into your shirt as yet another water stain.

“Nothing,” he says, to your surprise.

And with that uneventful climax, you trudge back down to your quarters, a strange brewing in your chest.

[AN]: congrats you made it to the end of part 1!!!!! reblog ur thots and opinions or send me an ask, id love to hear the turmoil in ur minds lol

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softspiderling · 9 months ago

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✦ . * ocean blue eyes (social media au) | r.c.

pairing: rafe cameron x reader

author's note: guys i did it.... i got weak. i have a rough plot line but mostly making it up as i go, good vibes only. also, yes, I do have a lot going on. tagging @oceandriveab @zyafics and @ghostofwriting bc i know they'll fw this <3

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦

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youruser welcome to the family Sarah 🤍

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ynsbiggestfan omfg sarah as in gracie's old background guitarist????

➞ abrmsyn when worlds collide 🤯

ynfancam they're gonna be such an iconic duo i know it

➞ ynforever frrrr

➞ allhailyn WAS ABOUT TO SAY THE SAME THING

sarahcam biggest dream come true ❤️

➞ youruser ❤️

johnbroutledge 🤩

sabrinacarpenter purr

liked by kiecarerra, cleogriffith, johnbroutledge and 88.213 others

sarahcam thank you @/youruser for trusting me with this job. it’s such an honor getting in tune with you🫶🏼

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kiecarerra my fave artist and my fave guitarist together? when's the first show?

➞ sarahcam i’ll let you know asap😘

popephotography let me know if i can shoot one of your shows

➞ cleogriffith this is so ratchet of you

➞ cleogriffith anyways sarah let me know if yn needs a model for a mv 😘

johnbroutledge so proud of you❤️

➞ sarahcam ❤️❤️

youruser best addition yet👀

➞ sarahcam 🤭

youruser replied to this story: wait who's the guy in the front?🥵

johnbroutledge: that's sarah's brother👀

youruser: WHAT

youruser: lmao nevermind

liked by topperthorntonofficial, sarahcam, sofia_flores and 209.204 others

wonderland @/rafe talks growing up in kildare, balancing a healthy work life balance and the scrutiny a model has to face

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rafe247 holy shit

rafeupdates 🙇🏻‍♀️

rafeandonlyrafe i want rafe to step on me🥵

➞kelleigh_leclerc me 2🤭

topperthorntonofficial fresh

jjmaybank what happened to your hair?

➞ jjsandrafes jj and rafe enemies to lovers when😫

rafe replied to this story: tell her im single

sarahcam: ew no

rafe: praying on your downfall

liked by youruser, rafe and 128.764 others

sarahcam happy birthday to the most annoying big brother in the world

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rafesgf Rafe is Sarah’s brother?????

➞ allaboutrafe they literally have the same last name…

➞ rafebrazil02 you must be new here

rafe247 everyone say thank you sarah for providing us with unseen pics

➞ rafesnumberonefan Thank you Sarah

rafe i’m suing you for posting these pictures

➞ sarahcam 😘

➞ rafefan LMAO

sarahcameronsbaby rafe said 😛

youruser cutiess

❤️liked by rafe

➞ raferaferafe same yn, same

➞ rafecameron4lyfe omfg rafe liked yn’s comment👀

────────────

rafe started following youruser

youruser started following rafe

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦

author's note: if you saw your user in this au, thanks for giving me inspo, trying to come up with so many fan page names is so hard. also what are we thinking

#rafe cameron x reader #rafe cameron #rafe x reader #rafe x you #rafe cameron x you #rafe cameron social media au #drew starkey social media au #rafe cameron imagine #rafe cameron fanfiction #rafe cameron fanfic #rafe cameron fic #drew starkey

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importantstudentbusinessspy-blog · 7 months ago

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Cold-hearted wolf

Masterlist

Pairing: Cregan Stark × Martell reader

Tags: arranged marriage, cregan starts out mean in this, enemies to lovers cus he's grumpy and has no time for feelings,

Chapter 3: the way he's obsessed with you, can't stop thinking impure thoughts while he's away, the calm before the sex... pick your favorite.

Note: I made up a war with Highgarden subplot that's not Canon. Ahem, for the plot, so bare with me.

Cregan Stark sat inside a tent with his face twisted in a mix of pain and discomfort. The maester carefully worked to stitch up a nasty gash that ran from his neck to his lower abdomen, courtesy of an enemy soldier's sword. He had little pity for the other man when he cut him clean through the heart with his own blade. The wound was a battle scar from the successful siege, a strategic victory that had his soldiers celebrating and chearing outside.

One of Cregan's knights entered the tent, bearing two pints. He handed one to his injured ruler. "This ale should ease the pain, my lord."

Cregan took the offered drink. "Bring more. This stitching feels personal."

The old man, still focused on his task, dismissed Cregan's jest. "Your Highness, if you'd stop squirming, it would help."

Cregan held still as the maester continued his work. "How many casualties did we suffer?"

The knight looked thoughtful for a moment. "Surprisingly low, my lord. The plan was exceptional."

Cregan's gaze shifted to the ground, and a sense of guilt crept over him. The plan that had proven so effective during the battle was one that you had worked on together. Right before he rudely discarded you. Your tactical insights and knowledge of warfare had been instrumental to saving his and his men's lives today. "I should have listened to her sooner.”

“My lord?”

“Lady y/n.” Cregan specified.

The knight nodded in understanding.

The maester stitching spoke up. “It takes time to see the wisdom in others, my lord. We can only strive to make amends."

Cregan hated being proven wrong. He kept his mouth shut.

As the stitching neared completion, the knight spoke up, "You've fought well today.”

Cregan shook his head with a satisfied smile. "I can't take all the credit. Tyrell's sword was his own downfall.” His enemy's weapon, though notoriously giant, was unwieldy, and Cregan, younger, more agile, and more practiced with his weapon, found his opening.

With the gash stitched and the pain somewhat subsiding, Cregan took another sip of ale. He couldn't help but feel a need to have you close. To celebrate with you, and thank you for your strategy, which was invaluable to his cause. He wanted you beside him in the next council meeting.

But you were far off, warm, and safe in Winterfell. No doubt giving his sister an earful about what an awful husband he's been if the letters he's received from her were any indication.

I like her very much, Cregan. And if you open your mind you would come to like her too. Also, it would help if you'd stop behaving like an ass.

The thought of you two getting along made him smile. Even if it was at his expense.

He was ashamed to admit there was truth to your accusation that night. No, he had not seen you as an equal. How could he?

What could you possibly know of the plight of living in the harsh and unforgiving environment of the North. Of its values and way of life. He'd read about Dornish life in his studies. Sunspear was warmth, music, dancing, and hedonism, literally the opposite of Winterfell. This showed to be true the moment you stepped foot on his grounds. You, with your carefree attitude and enticing dresses, perhaps accepted in your culture, but downright scandalous in his.

He remembered his anger in the hot springs when he heard the men going on about your wardrobe.

“I'd like to see if the Dornish sun forgot a few places.”

They were only jesting. Men, especially soldiers, made vulgar jokes all the time. But the fact that his men spoke about you in such a way made his blood boil hotter than the springs underneath the palace grounds.

All it took was a look from Cregan, and the man shut his mouth, swallowing nervously. But Cregan's anger didn't subside so easily.

He closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair, remembering taking his frustration out in your bedroom that same day he heard the vulgar comment, and the two more times that evening, and once more the next morning. His hands gripped his chair, mimicking the possessive way he'd held you with every thrust.

He wondered if you questioned why he was so upset. Although even if you did, judging by your whimpers and moans, you didn't seem to mind.

Visions of you flooded his mind. Walking around with a high brow, flaunting your skin freely with seductive silks for his court to admire. Looking elegant and graceful while flipping him onto his back in the training yard. Unknowingly offering up a fantasy of an exotic warrior princess from the far south to hungry and repressed northern eyes… all just so you could prove a point.

He laughed. Maybe his sister was right. Stubbornness was something you two definitely had in common.

----------------------------------------------------------

War was a lonely ordeal. And despite the women from the neighboring towns being more than happy to keep his men company, Cregan’s mind kept finding flaws in each of them.

Their lack of quiet defiance made them too agreeable, he decided. Although, no, not only that. It was also the missing fire in their eyes, the missing pride. They also had the wrong color hair and the wrong length, too. And on top of that, their clothing was also too... cold, yes. Too modest.

The gods help him. He was fucked.

Amidst the noise of his tent, he sat at a table surrounded by his men who were drinking and celebrating. The soft glow of candlelight cast a warm ambiance in the night. A raven's message had arrived, and he quickly sloppily unfurled the parchment, his eyes scanning the words eagerly.

The letter was from you, recounting the events of the day. "In an attempt to offer you a change of scenery, I will try to paint an image of how things are back home.” Your handwriting said. “Winterfell is alight with celebration of your victory. The town square was full of life. The common folks greeted me with glee and danced and sang. I even tried deer meat at an inn. It was… chewey."

A corner of his mouth lifted as he red the letter in your voice.

"You are well loved and admired, my lord. And missed. Also, please pet Grey for me as he is dearly missed as well."

A chuckle escaped Cregan's lips as he reached over to scratch his loyal dog behind the ear before continuing to read. "I even showed one boy how to use my Dornish blade. My favorite one."

Your willingness to connect with his people - your people, he corrected himself, was quite marvelous. A smile tugged at the corners of Cregan's lips as he pictured you among the celebrating townsfolk. He felt a painful pull at his chest, his hands itching for your skin.

He wondered, not for the first time, how he could remedy his actions of your last night together before he marched off. Regretfully recalling the fire and hurt in your eyes.

It would take more than a letter to make up for it. Cregan was neither poet nor a man of many words. He took action. He needed to fix this the only way he knew how.

The next day, he helped his squires and men pack the Stark army camp. With victory secured, they would be marching back to Winterfell.

Cregan was coming home.

@malfoycassimalfoy @leahnicole1219 @literishdegree99

#cregan x you #cregan stark x reader #cregan stark #hotd season 2 #hotd fanfic #house of the dragon #eventual smut

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paishoeyeroh · 14 days ago

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Bearer And The Bound

☰ Pairings: Sukuna x Reader, Slight Megumi x Reader

✧ Summary: When you stumble upon an ancient ring in an abandoned house, you unknowingly bind yourself to a cruel, powerful demon who thrives on torment. Trapped in a reluctant bond and forced to navigate a shared existence, Sukuna plots your downfall while you fight to survive his sadistic games. But as your fates entwine and secrets of Sukuna’s dark past begin to unravel, the lines between enemy and ally start to blur.

✧ Tags: True form Sukuna, Enemies to Lovers, Dark Romance, Demonic Bonds, Heavy Angst, Slow Burn, Sukuna is Bad at Feelings, Possessive Sukuna, Tension, Forced Proximity, Eventual Smut, College/University AU, More Tags To Be Added Later

✧ Status: Ongoing

✧ You can also read it on AO3

☰ Masterlist

✧ Chapter One: The First Command

✧ Chapter Two: The Strings of Control

✧ Chapter Three: Between Humanity and Death

✧ Chapter Four: Echoes of the Past

✧ Chapter Five: Truth Beneath the Surface

✧ Chapter Six: A Fallen King

✧ Chapter Seven: Unspoken Truths

#sukuna x reader #sukuna ryomen x reader #sukuna x you #true form sukuna #jjk #jujutsu kaisen #jjk angst #dark romance #slow burn #enemies to lovers #ryomen sukuna #bearer and the bound

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knightsickness · 2 months ago

Note

Hi! I hope that I don't bother you with my question. I'm asking out of genuine interest for an analysis and also because it has been 5 years since I last read any asoiaf book.

Coming from you comparison of Cersei's and Tyrion's time as Hand, what obvious mistakes did Tyrion make? I was probably not paying too proper attention because Tyrion did a lot of sympathetic things like ending Jeoffrey's terror on Sansa, or came up with a great strategy to limit casualties during Stannis invasion. His downfall struck me as Cersei conspiring against him, and Tywin taking all the credit for the work his son did. But I feel like I missed something here, and don't have all the details. (Again genuine question, not a "how dare you imply that perfect innocent angel uwu did anything wrong" way!)

i originally wrote a much longer list for this but i think the myrcella episode sums up most of the problems w tyrions politicking in microcosm

the entire point of the scheme is to embarrass cersei and undermine her with the removal of one of her spies. a lot of tyrions moves in acok are ridiculously cersei-focused because it makes him feel good to get petty wins over her he enjoys doing kings landing spy vs spy antics. constantly asking ‘what is cersei doing? does cersei know what im doing?’ when the answer to both is invariably ‘spying on each other’. when theyre still actively fighting three major enemies all this effort to plot and spy feels like it could be focused elsewhere. the scene where they laugh at stannis and renly pettily stupidly fighting each other rather than them obviously an acknowledgment of this neither of them notice

the idea to tell all the small council members different plans and then identify whichever one he told the story cersei gets mad at him for as her spy is good on paper a lot of tyrions moves are motivated by what makes him feel clever. in practice its kind of a mess

the idea of littlefinger having harrenhal is initially proposed to him by tyrion (who notes littlefinger looks extremely excited) as a reward for him arranging a hypothetical myrcella arryn match and then snatched away annoying and alienating him. its then next raised when littlefinger has obviously requested it to kevan/the tyrells/etc as his prize after the battle of the blackwater and he gets it. this isn’t necessarily direct cause and effect littlefinger always wanted to be a big lord he could have wanted harrenhal on his own but it seems like he was told he would have it, formulated his affc taking-over-the-vale plan, and then found out tyrion was fucking with him. again getting one over littlefinger makes tyrion feel good its gratifying to have the biggest schemer at court going grr you used me as a pawn and lied to me do NOT do that shit again

one of the main strengths of the situation tyrion inherits is a hypercompetent small council he immediately sets to turning on him (petyr) and giving them dangerous personal secrets (varys) while fantasising about having all their heads on spikes over the city walls

the idea of an elaborate plan to prove pycelle of all people is an incompetent lannister toady is absurd. you can tell that by talking to pycelle once. worse this makes pycelle hatee tyrion when if tyrion hadnt noticed he is ALSO a lannister he could have benefited from this !!

the sending myrcella to dorne plot that tyrion commits to lest cersei thinks he wasn’t serious and this was a finding-the-mole ploy (in which he gave them plans so obviously shocking and upsetting to cersei that if theyre her allies theyd immediately tell her) is terrible on the face of it and in affc proves to also be terrible in practice. the two outcomes are she gets crowned or killed both explicitly to start a war with the lannisters + burning one of your two spare heirs on the outing pycelle as a fraud and annoying cersei and littlefinger plan is. misguided. its insane to me he goes through w it he could still say ohh i changed my mind + let cersei think she’s persuaded him out of it (giving her a false win) or even just say yeah i was fucking with you haha you fell into my trap and exposed your own spy but he doesnt do either

tyrion’s conclusion on the plan is ‘this doesnt actually prove i can trust varys and littlefinger. theyre just untrustworthy in a subtler way. nobody in the world is as smart as me nobody has ever been this good at politics’

#asoiaf #a song of ice and fire #tyrion lannister

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kcthelazyartist · 4 months ago

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Something of note is the ‘MCGUCKET’ code on thisisnotawebsite.com and how the song further confirms that Fiddleford is the reason for Bill not getting Ford in the end. This could either be just plot related [As Fidds leads to his downfall] but is more likely in a romantic sense as it references the singer not being married due to the other.

This could be just making fun of Fidds or be from Fidds’ perspective, but as Fidds won in the end and Bill lost Ford this is unlikely. Instead, it's likely Bill showing his frustration at Fidds getting in between him and Ford.

This could also imply two things, Fidds being too wary and perspective got in the way of everything, or Ford had feelings for Fidds instead of Bill.

In regards to Ford changing the story from ‘A Tale of Two Stans’ to ‘The Last Mabelcorn,’ when Ford was pushed through the portal queer people were about 4-6 years away from being legalised and it was very looked down upon. Of course when he first arrives home he is unaware of the current state of queer politics and is going to assume it will be the same as when he left.

This could be an explanation as to why he changed the position to something less intimate. Alongside the wording used around him saying he’s glad he's friends with F with the ‘…’ before explaining that Fidds would be terrifying as an enemy, as well as Bill constantly mentioning ‘the hillbilly’ and putting him above Ford’s own father, his feelings towards Fiddleford are very suspicious.

Another suspicious thing on his end is that he writes literal pages about gifts he is given by Fiddleford and Bill at one point [The squash, the gloves and snowglobe, the axolotl…]

@hugenthusiast recently made a post discussing the line, ‘Go back to your doting family and a life of fear and compromise,’ and the queer undertones and comphet feel around the phrase. I would like to expand on this idea and how queer the context actually is.

Starting off with the line directly after, “I weep not for our failed partnership, but for the golden opportunity thrown away! To think I considered him a friend! I know my true friend. It is my Muse.’ This line adds more context that makes the line they pointed at that much more queer, Ford telling Fidds to go back to his family then saying he isnt crying over their partnership but something else makes it sound like a breakup. Ford then compares his friendship to Bill’s, whom he has a queer relationship with.

Combining this with the full page rant and how he was willing to tell Fiddleford about his muse even after years of manipulation and it just feels like a breakup. Ford throwing away the ring also adds to this as it mimics people throwing away things related to their ex and another thing that mimics a breakup is Ford calling Fidds names.

Now going back to the line @hugenthusiast points out, whilst fear and compromise in this context is supposed to be about the portal it is a bit of a double-sided phrase as compromise can mean making do with less than ideal circumstances and being married to someone you have no interest in absolutely fits that, and the fear of outing was very real during this period of time.

‘Doting family’ is also interesting as mixed with the second half of that line it seems as though taking away the fear and compromise would alter his relationship with his family, whom later turn their backs on him, showing how rocky their relationship is and his family's bias’ as they don't even try to help him. I feel like this mixed with how he chooses not to go back really says something, ford calls his family doting yet he doesn't return to them?

#I'm probably going to rant next post so heads up I guess?#fiddauthor #gravity falls #fiddleford mcgucket #stanford pines #fiddleford hadron mcgucket #gf stanford #fordsquared #fordford #ford pines

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nerdishpursuits · 1 day ago

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This show really said Nihil sine Marta. There's no front where she doesn't have to do battle and defend. The sheer amount of pressure she's under right now is overwhelming. If Marta gets out of this without any health issues, I'd be surprised. At least there's a silver lining. For while most of the world is out to destroy her, she finds solace, passion and love in Fina's arms. They are each other's strength and watching them reaffirm their devotion and commitment to each other, time and again, is both heartwarming and inspiring.

I don't think I've ever seen such a well-developed sapphic relationship on TV. It feels like a breath of fresh air and it's a joy to watch it unfold and grow. They’ve planted their flag and defend it, standing tall in the face of so much adversity. How far they’ve come. Does it mean they are unafraid now? Of course not. But they are embracing their truth and choosing each other every day in spite of that fear. Because the love they have for each other is worth fighting for, is worth facing the entire world for.

Speaking of an unfolding narrative. They are truly putting them through the ringer. And it's most likely only the tip of the iceberg. The constant stress they are under is debilitating. Inimicus ante Portas: hurling their accusations, making their demands, snarling in condescension. There's blood in the water and Marta's enemies would only declare themselves sated if they were to witness her downfall, professionally and personally. At this point in the narrative, it's a miracle she's still standing. But like she confessed to Fina: as long as they have each other? Marta will not fall. Therefore, I find myself dreading the kind of blow that would bring Marta to her knees. The kind of blow that would pull Fina asunder too. Would it make for delicious angst? Certainly. Would it hurt? Most definitely.

Nevertheless, while all those fires rage and consume? Marta de la Reina continues on her own quest, one that bestows upon her the title of Great, True Romantic. Endangered too. For hopelessly romantic she is. Judging by the way Mafin is written? I'm inclined to think it's mostly penned by someone who is either profoundly in love, or someone who has loved beyond measure. I also suspect it's most likely a woman / women. For who else bleeds on the page this way? Don't you see, we only have each other. You are everything to me. My strength, everything. I am safe as long as you are safe. There is no turning back, I cannot conceive of my life without you. By your side, I feel that I can face the entire world. The only thing that could undo me is losing you ... I don't want you to suffer and endure humiliation the way that I have. My sole desire is for your safety ... You will not lose me ... I’ve spent half my life adrift, bound to the inertia of others, confined to the shadows, until I found her and she became my light. You cannot ask me to give her up, because you’d be asking me to die while my heart still beats.

It will be an arduous uphill battle but I think Marta's words are also prophetic in nature. There is no turning back for them. The road ahead is together, as one, no matter the sorrow, no matter the cost. Regardless of how much they'll have to wander? Through hope and despair and back again? As long as they have each other? They are not lost.

Speaking of their wanderings through the land of plot. Chairwoman Marta. Pelayo's confession that Marta is his lover, while briefly throwing Don Pedro off the scent, most likely feeds into Carpena’s misogyny. To me he comes across like the kind of man who, deep down, believes women don’t belong in business. The kind of man who thinks women only succeed when they play the seduction card. Which is infuriating for someone of Marta's caliber, who has worked her fingers to the bone to be worthy of her current position. Her intellect, determination and hard work won her the mantle of leadership. Maybe the show wasn't even trying to make this point but Carpena's immediate, sleazy grin upon hearing Pelayo's confession? It irked me because, of course, the only possible way Marta could have gained Pelayo's interest and favor? Her womanly wiles. Points for Pelayo, though. Seems like he's trying to be a good friend and protect Marta as much as he can. And on to rant some more (I'm afraid this post is getting out of hand - for the life of me, I can't seem to keep it short *sigh*)

I’m not one to cuss (much, eh @midniteowlet 😏?) but today it feels warranted. All the idiots coming out of the woodwork with pitch-forks and battle-rams and having lost their intellect, meagre as it is, along the way.

The Merino Bros & their mommy dearest, Pedro and, quite possibly, Tasio? A tomar por cu**.

Marta's face listening to lunacy after lunacy is an absolute poem.

Currently? Marta is the only one making informed decisions that benefit them all. Alongside Damián? She’s the only one who knows how to run the business so they all stand to gain and the workers have job security (I suppose Jesús has business acumen too but his Machiavellian ways leave a lot to be desired)

Which makes it pretty obvious they were going to try and take Marta down. That all these spineless, envious men cannot stand seeing a woman in power. A woman who outsmarts them at every turn and who actually thinks things through.

On the bright side? Should Marta lose the executive chair? I want to see how mama’s boy Joaquin goes running to Marta &. co. later, begging for help, because he’s sinking the business with his arsinine attitude and decisions. I want the Merino to fail so spectacularly they choke on it.

The business with the bathhouse will go up in flames because Joaquin and Luis lack intuition for business. What drives them is an underlying desire for vengeance and a need to satisfy their ego by calling the shots. Competency is not part of their vocabulary. They’re utterly insufferable, terribly immature and are woefully unprepared for what it means to be in charge. Their incompetency, if left unchecked, will prove disastrous for the company.

And then we have Digna. On the one hand? She lived up to her name and acted with dignity, keeping the promise she made Marta and Fina: that she would protect their secret and would never expose them. The fact that she made it clear to Pedro she wouldn't use such harmful rumors to hurt her niece, or the young woman she considers a daughter? It speaks of her capacity to empathize and understand. On the other hand? Her lack of business expertise shows in how she approaches the bathhouse project. She tries to gaslight Marta with talk of family and respect, while showing Marta absolutely no deference or familial support. Digna possesses zero knowledge about running a company. But she has the gall to lecture Marta about it, all because her crybaby sons demand instant gratification and loathe the fact that Marta is in power. The Merino are a sorry bunch and while I feel truly sorry for Gervasio’s demise? If he was as good a business man as his sons? I see why Damián felt he needed to run the company himself (I don’t agree with his methods, of course, but one cannot deny that the Merino family are an executive liability). It also irks me that Digna has the nerve to condescendingly call Marta daughter, while going behind her back and giving Tasio the proverbial knife, urging him to betray his sister. And to think Marta, generously and kindly, wanted to give Tasio a chance. Felt indebted to him, even, and wanted to start anew, as siblings. No matter how they twist and turn his character, he ends up falling short somehow. Or doesn't he?

And since Tasio dearest is next on the block? Much like the Merino brothers? A deplorably mediocre man, crying to Marta about how dependent he is on his wife. For how dare Marta send Carmen on a business trip, which is part of her responsibilities as store overseer, given he cannot function without her help?

Poor Tasio. Who’s going to do the dishes now, who’s going to iron his shirts and cook his meals? Woe be him. I honestly can’t with his level of incompetence and stupidity. To have the gall to launch veiled threats at Marta concerning her relationship with Fina (trying to take credit for piecing it all together while knowing full well it’s Carmen who dropped the ball, spectacularly might I add) and insinuating Marta is playing favorites? The level of idiocy this man possesses is truly astounding. As is the level of self-projection Tasio is doing here. Quite noteworthy.

If he only stopped to think for a minute, he’d realize:

1. Fina is Carmen’s right hand at the store. As such, she has the most experience to help out in this situation.

2. Marta emphasized it’s a temporary solution. Tasio’s entire reasoning here is a case of that aforementioned self-projection: he knows full well he’d show favoritism if he were in charge, which is something he confessed to Carmen he’d do. So Tasio filters Marta’s decision through his own, faulty thought-sieve. Heavens help him. Not to mention he's also easy to manipulate. That moral high-horse the Merino are riding? I can't wait to seem them all trampled into the dirt.

3. Mighty hypocritical of Tasio to claim Fina is being ascended (again, temporarily) due to special treatment, when his own promotion is a case of nepotism (unlike his wife, who Marta ascended based on her competence and hard work - wife, who Tasio never threw his support behind, too jealous of her new position). Same story with the shares Tasio received from Marta. His level of entitlement here? It’s that outlandish and that outrageous.

That being rambled? Because Tasio is often such a narrow-minded, pathetic little man? He might cast the deciding vote to remove Marta as CEO. For while Tasio often wants to best himself? He also remains profoundly petty, terribly misinformed and someone who shouldn't be sitting on board meetings. Were it not for Marta’s kindness and goodwill? He’d only have his father’s name and gratitude, and little else.

And what’s going to be Marta’s thank you for it all? Quite possibly a knife to the back. Should that occur, which it might, I do wonder how Tasio thinks he will fit within the de la Reina family in the aftermath? After all, his display of ''business shrewdness'' would prove ruinous. Even Jesús votes for Marta (because in spite of their differences he recognizes she is smart, would never vote against his family and sees the Merino brothers for the fools they truly are) And that’s saying something. So if Tasio really wants to become a pariah in the eyes of his new family? By all means. Vote with their incompetent adversaries. Ultimately, Damián will be more lenient in forgiving him, I suspect. But Tasio would be proving himself undeserving, uninformed, unreasonable and willfully ignorant. Of course, previews are often deliberately misleading and who knows, another Brutus might be lurking in the shadows. Andres maybe? He's so utterly useless, incompetent and easy to manipulate it's pathetic. If Jesús remains the only brother who amounts to anything? Oh, the laughter.

Sure, things might not go down that way at all. Marta might not lose the executive chair, Tasio might not vote against her while Andres could and Don Pedro could resort to blackmail to remove her from the board. As always, we shall see when the episode airs. But goddamn, these PEEople are beyond exhausting. Marta needs that vacation with Fina and she needs it yesterday.

P.s the last gif on the right? that's also me upon realizing how goddamn verbose this post is. Off to word-jail with me!!!

#mafin #mafin commentary #marta de la reina #fina valero #sdl #suenos de libertad

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lo1k-diamonds · 4 months ago

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Stellar Behavior 💜 Part 7 (end)

"I said I like it fucking quiet.”

PAIRING: Officer!Yoongi x Mafia (f)reader

SUMMARY: Yoongi thought it would be bliss from now on, but not yet. Not until you both own the city.

WORD COUNT: 4.8k

GENRE: Gangster AU, Law AU, enemies to lovers, smut

RATING: R (explicit)

WARNINGS: angst, plotting, kidnapping, blood, violence, knifes, guns, physical violence, death. (Am I forgetting something?)

A.N. Ahh, no way I could just let them be happy, okay? Not without suffering first, it's my style 🤣 Again, infinite thank yous to @moonleeai and @downbad4yoongi for helping me around the clock and being incredible betas! Check out their fics too! Now get ready 😎

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Yoongi didn't know life could be like this. Once, he had been sold on that dream; it was the reason why he got married, bought a house, and started on the force. He wanted a loving home and family, and everyone told him to follow those steps to get there.

You were everything he had ever dreamed, immersing him in a bliss he never thought possible. That day, at the charity event, you took charge of things. You left with him, took him home, and spent the next twenty-four hours making up for the lost time. Your sheets didn't witness just your bodies reattuning to each other, but also the other moments when your hearts did. When you told him so much more about what you did, what you had in motion, what you proposed to secure both his and your positions, and how you planned on providing the best for your unborn child.

“Ours,” he corrected gently, kissing the back of your fingers.

You looked up with your head on his chest, and a moment later, you just nodded, “Ours.”

At that moment, he was willing to compromise for you — whatever you needed. He just didn't think it would come in the form of you not letting him leave.

He all but moved in with you soon after, and at 34 weeks, he believed he'd never leave. You adored snuggling up to him at all times of day, especially because he massaged you all over while you talked. Someone almost busted a plan of yours? You could vent while he thumbed the ball of your foot. A politician was acting ridiculous? Your hands and arms needed to let go of the stress you accumulated during the day. You had stood for hours at a charity event? Those idiots should be sued for having you standing like that; your legs needed the soothing of his fingers. You were still on your computer when he arrived home from work? Your shoulders needed to be relieved of the tension.

He still had to work and there was no way you'd pause your work, not when you had a grand plan to own the city, just like he suggested. You had decided you didn’t need to excel in every business you had to control the city, especially because the top was naturally the first to be challenged. You were too branched out, and it wouldn’t pay off — if you tried to dominate everyone, you were inviting multiple enemies to ally themselves to throw you down. Not even Yoongi would be able to help you, despite him assuring you he would.

“I’m not interested in destroying what makes you our good half,” you had chuckled when he brought it up again. You looked beautiful under the dim lights of your bedroom, naked with your baby bump up, half lying on him in bed. This was something he couldn’t do without anymore. “We’re stronger if they don’t suspect you have hidden interests. If they think I’m a woman alone, I seem fragile. A kid will help. It’s all about finding the right balance, because if I’m too weak, they’ll destroy me. You can be our secret weapon.”

Your teasing grin as your tongue peeked between your teeth made him laugh. Ultimately, you knew your way around that world far better than he did. He’d always trust you with it.

Your strategy was to have insurance. If you had dirt on everyone and monopolized at least that market, you would be as safe as possible. Your downfall would just be too risky all around, and it would be less likely that your enemies would become friends trying to overthrow you. You wouldn’t be a significant enough threat to alarm other organizations, but you’d easily manipulate things in the shadows — everyone won.

You had started with medium management, as you liked to call it, and worked your way up. You already had a pretty big web of people working for you on the inside in various industries — other mob families, prisons, the police, the military, the entertainment and media conglomerates, even hospitals and pharmaceutical companies, without mentioning politics. Your tycoon status allowed you to keep an eye on the echelon, which meant you had everything covered. A politician wanted to do something you didn’t like? You knew of their kids’ DUIs, and the scandal was just too easy. Someone didn’t want to fundraise for the Mayor you had chosen? You had reports of companies faking quality control reports for products or negligence in the hospitals; you would leverage the media to destroy their business overnight. The media heads themselves didn’t want to cooperate? Too easy to leak footage of them in brothels or orgies that could ruin their entire reputation. And all mob families had their weaknesses; having people in the prisons and low-level thugs meant you’d know what you needed to keep them at bay. In essence, a network that gave you just enough to have leverage but not enough to be a direct threat to anyone.

He admired you for handling everything with such zeal and trusted you absolutely to take care of things. On his side, he was more worried about assuring the one thing you were most likely to overlook: your safety. First, he became intimately involved with your security details. All of your staff answered to him, which he liked. On top of that, he had his officers keeping an eye on you as well. Some probably suspected this wasn't about a case, but Yoongi didn't care as long as you were safe.

You had worked hard all over those months to carry out your master plan. It was ambitious, and if the pieces fell into place, not even Jae Seong Seok could touch you. The frustration was in getting the last piece of information — if you could find out who he was working with now, you'd be able to use your network and have him in your hand. But whoever he was working with, he was keeping it under wraps.

“It's ridiculous!” You whined, despite Yoongi massaging your shoulders. “It's a better kept secret than who the President's mistress is! Fuck!”

You jumped up from your office chair in a burst of anger, only to groan and take support on the desk. Yoongi was instantly behind you as you rubbed your swollen tummy; he didn't even flinch when you gave him a look between petulance and tiredness.

“It doesn’t matter—”

“It fucking does,” you insisted, falling back into him when he hugged you from behind. “Without knowing who is doing the Commissioner's bidding, we’re blind to his plans. It means we have a blind spot and—”

You held your breath, scrunching your nose with instant relief. He had just taken the weight out of your strained back by raising your belly, and you could breathe freely for a moment.

“Is that okay?”

His voice was a whisper to your ear that had you sighing praises. He kissed your neck the whole time until he had to let go slowly, gently, distracting you with his lips on your skin before you’d get grumpy again.

“Didn’t you have someone on his team?”

“I lost them a couple of weeks after I told you that. He took exile in Heuksando last I heard.”

Your head fell back into his shoulder and he hummed, “I’m sure we’ll know something soon. Between your people and mine, we’re bound to hear or notice something. It’s a matter of time.” You pursed your lips, rubbing your belly again; time was a luxury you did not have. “Besides,” he spun you so you’d face him. “He’s not stupid. He wouldn’t just attempt to get rid of you; he probably knows we’re together.”

Your expression didn’t smooth, “For as long as he does bullshit without us knowing, we won't own the city.”

He nuzzled you, “He’s just one man. One tiny, meaningless man. Don’t worry about it.”

You didn’t seem fully convinced but you definitely relaxed in his arms that night, and the few nights after. Yoongi believed what he had told you: if the both of you were blinded to the Commissioner’s movements, then he was to yours too. You were stronger than him, you were together. You were bound to win.

But that night when he drove to the Aether at the maximum speed his car allowed, he wondered if he’d been too naive. If it was right to think that owning 98% of the city was enough to protect you and your child, only to learn the worst way possible that it could all fall through the cracks.

He arrived at the club, and from the outside it might have looked like the security were handling a typical problem, like a rowdy customer. When Thoma greeted him at the entrance, Yoongi followed him hurriedly, his blood freezing inside his veins. Your head of security didn’t just make that face for no reason.

Still, Yoongi couldn’t have believed it until he saw it with his own eyes. Before he got to your office, he passed your security and staff being checked by medics in the hallway, some even bleeding on the floor, almost passed out. Yet, when he entered your office, the situation dawned on him.

You had put up a fight. Your office was completely upside down, with your screen and papers on the floor, fallen chair, and broken glass everywhere. There was blood on the floor, which he kneeled to see. His fists closed instantly at the thought of you getting hurt, but maybe you had hurt them instead before they took you. You were good with your knife. He looked around; he couldn’t see it anywhere.

He got up, “Who the fuck?”

He asked simply, quietly, and Thoma answered, “Look at the back of the door.”

Yoongi turned, his dark eyes scanning the open door for traces of it being used or handled some way. His long, black raincoat billowed behind him as he moved and quickly used a glove to push the door closed.

I also prefer it quiet.

The scribbles or the paper glued to the door made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.

“Does it mean anything to you?”

Yoongi’s eyes were the color of death, “Yes, and it does for you, too. You’re going to do exactly as I say.”

Thoma disagreed with Yoongi’s instructions, but he’d carry them out anyway. Yoongi didn’t care about the man’s opinion; it wasn’t him who was about to lose his whole life to a bug he didn't squish properly.

When Yoongi had decided to help you back when it was a conscious decision. Not just to step into your life, but to stay in it. To make it better. To use what he had at his disposal to do so. He didn’t regret it for a second, not even now. Some would say he was reaping what he sowed, but that was a stupid understanding of the situation. A coward’s subservient view on what was happening — when they touched you, they knew there were only two possible outcomes. And for Yoongi, there was only one.

Of course, Thoma didn’t like calling the police and reporting the assault or that you were kidnapped. But the police responded to Yoongi in that area, so that wasn’t the problem. He didn’t like that he was to play dumb and not tell them who had done it. Eventually, they would be shown footage that Officer Jung could recognize, all to buy Yoongi the right amount of time.

Because to Yoongi there was only one outcome. As he stopped in a hidden alley without cameras, he opened the trunk of his car and pulled the bottom to reveal a secret compartment where he had an arsenal. He picked and loaded a pistol, screwed in the silencer, and hid it along with magazines under his long raincoat. Then, he made his way to the back of the Evgeni Sports Center.

Yoongi refused one of the possible outcomes as if it wasn’t possible. That was maybe why he entered the building casually and unnoticed amidst a football game, making the big crowd watching it on the flat screen completely wild. The beer was plentiful, as were the cheers, and he was able to swiftly enter the kitchen in the back, where the staff didn’t dare look at him. He was a man with a purpose and only one option.

When he reached the back door and went down the stairs, he grabbed his pistol and started his work. There was only one justice down there — the one he inflicted himself. Big or small, he didn’t care. People fell like flies before the commotion began and even then, to reach him was a nearly impossible task. He was an agent of death dealing it swiftly to everyone who had dared to condone this heinous crime. To touch you at any point would have been dangerous, but now? It was a death wish — the only possible outcome.

Blood tainted the walls at his passage while he shot, punched, and kicked whoever dared to stand in his way to find you. He noticed the heavy metal doors, knowing they hid bullshit that wasn’t meant to be found, but he continued. It would be a shit show, but he didn’t care. His officers would show and turn the place upside down. Weapons? Drugs? Torturing people? He huffed and wiped the blood off his knuckles; all fine and dandy, but not what he was looking for.

He didn’t mean to, but he ended up cleaning that floor like it was a military operation. No one but people being tortured were left alive in his wake; no witnesses, no surprises. All he wanted was you, he’d leave once he got what he came for.

He held his gun up and in position as he faced the last door at the end of the corridor. It took him one second to calculate the odds of finding you there. Then he risked it and opened it, only for a kick to hit his hands hard.

He grunted, and although he didn’t instantly loosen his grip on the weapon, a punch to his back made his form crumble.

A series of punches made him grunt and raise his arms to defend himself, and a careful dance ensued. Yoongi almost lost his patience as he handled that single amazing enemy, but then two things happened: his pistol fell to the floor, and he saw you.

You were sitting on a lonesome chair in the middle of that humid, dark storage room, tied and pale. He instantly saw your shining eyes and the hairs glued to your forehead with sweat, your chest heaving tensely over your swollen belly, and knew he hadn’t come fast enough. He needed to get to you.

Those fuckers just had to keep their strongest guy next to you. It pissed Yoongi off; he much rather shoot him too. But he was forced to fight and manage the situation, not letting him get near you or the gun.

After a succession of punches and counters, Yoongi landed a punch on the guy’s ear and made a judgment call that put everything in jeopardy — he ran to you. Your eyes widened, seeing the guy behind Yoongi rush for the gun on the floor. He was dizzy from the punch, and your brain struggled — even if you warned him, Yoongi would never make it back in time to grab it.

So you shook your leg frantically, “The knife!”

Yoongi rushed to kneel before you and grab the knife, thinking to use it to set you free, but you kicked him as hard as you could.

A gunshot echoed and Yoongi’s breath caught as he fell back to the floor. For a second, he thought his life was over — not because he had been shot, but because you had.

But a split second was enough to hear the bullet ricocheting off somewhere and hear the guy fall to the floor. Yoongi’s training kicked in and two seconds later, he was on top of the guy, trying to finish it. His enemy was brave, dizzy, and without balance, but he was still a tougher foe than most people Yoongi had encountered in his career or training. The pistol had fallen somewhere when the guy had lost his balance, so it was all about the knife. They started fighting for it and in a slip of his hand, the guy caught it, and slash.

Yoongi grunted and fell back, holding onto his face more with shock and instinct, than actual pain. He thought he was blind for a moment, feeling something thick on his fingers while his sight darkened, but he couldn’t stop. To stop was to endanger you, and he couldn’t allow that to happen. He opened his good eye and, seeing the guy with his back turned advancing toward you, Yoongi rushed to kick him as hard as he could in the back of the knee.

The guy fell forward with a grunt, letting the knife fly away, and in your attempts to escape him, you leaned back on the chair. The push was enough to make you gasp and fall back with a bang that scared Yoongi shitless. His head was hurting, and along with the blood covering his eye, it put him off balance, to his frustration. He gritted his teeth, trying to get to the fallen guy by crawling; it wasn’t like it was his ears, so his balance was fine. It was just his damn eye!

But he didn’t move fast enough; suddenly, he heard steps rushing and tried to get back on track and jump on the guy, but he couldn’t see him. It was too late.

A gunshot echoed again, and this time a body hit the floor. Yoongi sat up and rubbed at his eyes roughly, widening his eyes to check on you , and there you were. In the same dress as this morning, though covered in sweat, dry blood, dust and now even chair bits from when it shattered with your fall, standing a few steps away from him, emotionlessly eying the guy you had shot in the head.

Then, you rushed to his side and kneeled. Yoongi wanted to grab you close, speechless, but you grabbed his head instead and brushed his longer dark hair aside.

You sighed in relief, “You’re okay, it’s just a scratch.”

He blinked at you, finally acknowledging the sting on his eyelid and cheek and that he could see fine, but instantly it didn’t matter. He widened his eyes at you, raising his arms around you, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah.”

You meant to get up, but you groaned. Something wasn’t right.

Yoongi called your name and you looked at him. It was as though you had gone deaf; his lips were moving but you could barely hear him.

“You’re bleeding.”

“What?”

“You’re bleeding,” he repeated, supporting you more steadily, trying to calm you, but you were confused.

“I’m not, I’m fine. I wasn’t shot.”

“No,” he brushed your cheeks gently, trying to make you focus. “You’re bleeding.”

It was like a CD entered the slot and it finally dawned reality on you. You looked down, holding onto his arms around you, and the pain hit you like a truck. You were bleeding down your legs, and suddenly you were dizzy. Your legs couldn’t hold you; you only wanted to curl around yourself and he let you down slowly.

“It hurts—”

“Breathe.”

Yoongi started the breathing exercises you both had learned but the way you glared at him was enough.

“I’ll carry you out. Ready?”

Your groan had a pitch of fear, but you bit your lip and screamed through the pain as he lifted you in his arms. Everything was a blur; hot and cold sweats going up and down your spine as you tried not to scream your pain out. It was visceral, terrifying, and rife with despair— something was wrong. You needed help. Now.

Once upstairs, people had scattered in a commotion, but fortunately, it seemed nobody quite knew what was going on. Some were running outside, others were filming, but the center's staff was surprisingly quiet. It was almost like suddenly, there was no one to take charge.

Fortunately, an ambulance had already been called to tend to the reported distress at the building. So when Yoongi stepped out with you in his arms, the paramedics quickly turned to the pregnant person with a bloody dress instead of a drunk making a scene.

In a matter of seconds, you were on a stretcher being carried inside the ambulance, and Yoongi wanted to go with you.

But you held his hand, “No.”

He frowned, but you just looked behind him and then gave him a look, and he understood. He let go of your hand and instantly turned back as swiftly as possible. The crowd was in shock with the reported noise and the bloodied pregnant woman that just passed by them, and so, distracted.

Yoongi rushed downstairs, leaving the door closed behind him. He grabbed your blade and his pistol, then quickly looked around. It was a storage room with all sorts of boxes and containers, and he needed something that could destroy evidence fast, but not so fast that all the people tied up in other rooms, bleeding to death, couldn’t be rescued in time.

In the end, he found flammable paint and poured it on stacks of documents far back in the room before setting them on fire with a lighter. He hoped the humidity made the fire spread slowly enough, but even just the water from the sprinklers would help once they were triggered.

After dealing with that, he made his way completely upstairs through another set of stairs that weren’t accessible to the public.

He had been there before, so he knew exactly where to go and that there were no cameras. He assumed he had killed most of the goons because only a handful tried to stop him. By then, he had reloaded, and nothing could stand in his way. Something was wrong; you weren’t supposed to be bleeding. It was too soon. It was all those fuckers fault!

He reached the office of Prokhor Evgeni and staggered for a second — Jae Seong Seok was sitting right there as though he had had an audience with the Russian. Both older men looked scared, which made the situation strange, almost comical. Only Yoongi wasn’t in a laughing mood; he raised his pistol and shot precisely twice.

Each man fell back onto their chair or on the floor while Yoongi pushed his hair back with annoyance, flaring, “I said I like it fucking quiet.”

Before his anger could go further, his phone started buzzing inside his pocket, and he sobered up. That meant Thoma had told Officer Jung what he needed to know; that signaled that the force was establishing a perimeter and a team to swarm the place.

He holstered his gun on his belt, then quickly put on gloves and searched for each man’s guns. Prokhor had one in his desk drawer, and Yoongi used it to shoot Jae Seong Seok a couple of times before shooting all around the room and throwing it on the floor. The Commissioner had a revolver with him, and it wasn’t hard to shoot in Prokhor’s direction and simulate a scene. Would it raise questions? Absolutely. But the more questions it raised, the harder it would be to get to the actual truth.

Yoongi went downstairs and blended in with the crowd still lingering about before reaching for the fire alarm to pull it. A loud siren went off, and the fire in the basement must have finally triggered the sprinklers because they went off, too. He made his way out amongst everybody else. Then, he faced the sky and started laughing.

He thought to just take out his raincoat so no one would know he was inside, but it was raining outside. So he stood there under the rain, smirking, letting it wash away the blood from his face, clothes, and any evidence that he had been inside.

He stood under the elements the whole time, the image of diligence coordinating the police and firemen who responded to the scene. It was a bloodbath and instantly the bodies became the reason for a national scandal. The media couldn’t get enough of it, especially the bit about the Commissioner and the Head of a Mafia family. The officers, though, were more inclined to believe the Commissioner had come to save you in person, and something had gone wrong. Maybe your child was even his. It would make sense, considering both your statuses. Maybe you were having an affair.

Yoongi focused on making sure that everything was accounted for, even the witnesses that said he was seen before the firemen and police arrived. He made sure their statement was taken too because they were contradictory with other witnesses. Some saw him carrying a pregnant lady, some only saw him when the alarm went off. The more information the police had, the better.

But it didn’t mean he wasn’t worried about you. He understood why you asked him to stay, he needed to finish things and handle the outcome. After all, you both needed to own that city.

But he was dying to hear news from you. He had texted your people as soon as he had a second, so he knew they were with you, but still. Waiting just wasn’t possible, not tonight.

He was smoking and wrapping up the last details before the scene could be sealed when his phone buzzed inside his pocket. He picked it up this time, and the wails of a baby caught his breath.

“Is it done?”

“Yes,” he breathed, then he closed his eyes. “Our boy?”

“Eager to meet you.”

“You?”

“Come see for yourself.”

He didn’t need anything else to tell the last Officers on the scene he was leaving. He walked away to reach his car, then drove calmly to the hospital. He was drenched, so he left his raincoat inside the car and got on the elevator straight to the level you were in.

You were in a private, spacious room with everything you could need. It was just you, already wearing something of your own under the sheets, snoozing with a baby to your chest. Yoongi neared you and kissed your forehead, closing his eyes with the relief flooding him. You awoke with his touch and leaned in closer. He smelled of rain and new beginnings.

When he pulled away, you reached to touch the cut. Someone had cleaned it, leaving it red and furious across his eye, top to bottom. Looking into each other’s eyes, you knew the other was fine. Each with your own pain, but united in that moment, at last.

Finally, Yoongi took a look at his son. He was reddened too, with puffy cheeks and pouty lips, just like yours. He leaned in to kiss and nuzzle his son with a heart so full, he couldn’t speak. All he could do was sit on the bed, embracing you and him in his arms.

You were looking at your baby before you noticed your position, englobing your son on two fronts, completely. Your lips curved, and you looked at Yoongi. You had finally won.

There we have it! I hope it was a nice, wild ride! 😁👋💜

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