#I KNOW TOO DAMN MUCH ABOUT THESE DAMN KINGDOMS

[morrigan-sims]

another late night / early morning wip pic under the cut

>:)

[vulpinesaint]

kind of unfortunate that so many fantasy epics are also war novels because i will be honest i just do not like war novels that much... the grand clashing of forces is compelling obviously but it requires characters to talk about so much practical battle strategy and while i can get my brain to comprehend all these fantasy maps and kingdoms and borders and battalions and front lines and army movements it takes up. so much space in the book. feels like i'm fighting a war of my own trying to get through it sometimes

[gensnix]

Sigh....

I miss botw Zelda

[maxiwaxipads]

Tuxam Who Visits Bad Badtz-Maru Kingdom! (2/?)

Asphalt timbers the landscape and people decorate the buildings. The wind roams across the city, and the light illuminates below and above.

Badobarm - “It’s a bit crowded than I thought.”

His eyes—the one in black, dwindled across the back-and-forth people’s ravine as it splurged to life’s motion. Stuck in a little gap called an alleyway, he turned to the person beside his left—letting out his hand.

Tuxam - “Badobarm?”

Badobarm - “The crowd here… It’s a bit... Well,—crowded. I’m worry you’ll get lost.”

Tuxam smiled momentarily, as if to comfort Badobarm.

Tuxam - “I’ll be fine. So I’ll stick closely to void your worries.”

Badobarm—gestured forward as they became joint with the walkers. Sound was visualized and noise becoming one with consumption—colored connected and ill-defined. They walked and walked. Veered to the shoes meeting the ground—the bright cheers of advertisers in proclamation. It smelled of fresh product and the grease of good food.

Badobarm - “Hm… Is there anything you want—Tuxam?” “There’s food—but we already ate. There’s toys. Furniture. Clothes. Anything and I’ll get it for you, since it is your day.”

(Badobarm, who waits for a response) (Soon turns around, to not find him)

Badobarm - “…Tuxam?” “Oi, Tuxam! Don’t tell… (Sigh). I didn’t think I’d lose that guy so easily to a crowd…”

Badobarm - “TUUUXAAMMM!” “…I looked down too… I don’t see a flat-as-a-pancake Tuxam sprawled on the floor…”

His shoulders relaxed, as Badobarm closed his eyes. He finished taking a deep breath. Scrouging himself to look up towards the sky, before clasping his hands into a megaphone—

Badobarm - “TUUUUUXXAAAAMMMM!!!”

Echoing. And echoing. Some glanced with confused looks or continued their very way. He repeated this a few times, before pushing across the crowd to see a blue dot in the corner of his eyes. Focusing. Interacting with a shirt in hand, he gouged it with a pair of sticks. Next to him, were a few stacked shirts and plastic bags full of who-knows and whatevers. Pushing through the crowd, as he came forward to him. Tuxam.

Badobarm - “…There you are!”

(But the person he called towards was too distracted…) (He crouched down… Waving his hand towards his face, but he was too into the groove… Disastrous indeed…!?) (You can hear Tuxam mumbling to himself)

Tuxam - “…Ideally the design should be simplified but still recognizable to Lord Sam’s size and shape…”

Tuxam - “…It must express both his handsomeness and his cuteness… That is a must-have.”

Tuxam - “…I should see if there’s any cheaper fabric and thread here…” “…It would be a waste if I used my own…”

Tuxam - “…I should also prepare photocopies of my lord as well—to an artist, I’m sure a reference would be of help…”

(Looking towards the side of the knight who was strangely fixated on fixing a shirt… No. Multiple shirts.) (Plastic bags full of yarn, thread, and bootleg tuxedo sam merchandise) (Badobarm took a small plushie, and in “immaculate” imitation…)

“Tuxedo Sam” - “Tuxam! Tuxam! Look over here! I turned thiiiisssss small!”

(The knight, who was fixated on knitting a shirt, finally looked up in surprise)

Tuxam - “…My lord!? How could—”

(He noticed it was only a plushie, but managed to finish his sentence.)

Tuxam - “—you turn this small.”

(He finally noticed Badobarm, crouching down to his level while holding a small tuxedo sam plushie to his face)

Tuxam - “It’s not a good idea to impersonate a lord.”

Badobarm - “It wasn’t my intention, but—I had to get your attention somehow. And I did just that, right?”

(Badobarm placed the plushie back onto the bench, before standing up)  (Looking down to the knight, who awaited to see what he would say)

Badobarm - “Now, what are you doing here?”

Tuxam - “There’s nothing more blasphemous than an incorrect depiction of his handsomeness and cuteness, Lord Sam.”

Tuxam - “In my moment of looking around and admiring the architecture, I spotted the likeness of my lord in one of the—no in multiple shops.”

Tuxam - “As his Knight of Fragaria, it is only my right to do this.” “And I took the challenge of creating designs that could honorably express the image of Lordd Sam”

Badobarm - “Uh-huh.”

Badobarm - “Tuxam.”

(Taking off the hat Tuxam wore, Badobarm delivers a karate chip straight towards his head. It didn’t hurt, but the action was certainly noticeable.)

Tuxam - “Eh…!?”

(Tuxam held the top of his head, in surprise as he watched to see what action Badobarm would take.)

Badobarm - “When I called you out, and suddenly you weren’t there—I thought you got squished by the crowd and flatten yourself into a pancake?!”

Badobarm - “So, Tuxam. Make it an effort to tell me if you see something interesting, okay? We’re both together and spending our time together.”

Badobarm - “But after talking…” “Take this.”

(Badobarm forehead flicks Tuxam.)

Badobarm - “…And this! A personification of my anger.”

(He delivers his final blow…!? A forehead flick…!?)

Tuxam - “…My apologies, Badobarm. I didn’t meant to worry you in that way.”

Badobarm - “I didn’t think you’d be in any danger… But it did worry me when you suddenly vanished like that.”

Tuxam - “Sorry…”

Badobarm - “Take it to heart, will you?”

Tuxam - “I will…”

Tuxam - “But Badobarm, my visor, could I have it back?”

(Badobarm looks at the hat within his hands within a moment, before putting it directly back on Tuxam’s head)

Tuxam - “Thank you.”

(Tuxam readjusts to its position) (Badobarm eyes the bench—a few shirts in a distinct blue color are stacked and seemingly differentiated between each other) (Next to it a single plastic bag stuffed to the brim with Tuxedo Sam merchandise as a ball of yarn spills from it, with the end attached to a pair of knitting needles)

Badobarm - “Could I have a look at that?”

Tuxam - “I don’t see why not.”

Tuxam - “As you can observe, I differentiated the two between what I haven’t fixed and the fixed.”

Tuxam - “It is… Technically meant to be a depiction of my lord, Tuxedo Sam.” “Albeit, a bit poor in taste for my liking.”

Tuxam - “That reminds me! Badobarm, could you—”

Badobarm - “Before you finish with what you have to say…”

Badobarm - “I keep a very delicate line between separating work life with my personal life. If you have something to say, I want you to write a letter to me, ‘kay?”

Tuxam - “…Oh! I’ll keep that in mind then.”

Badobarm - “Good.” “But I’ll carry that for you, if you don’t mind.”

Tuxam - “Ah. You don’t have to do that.”

(Tuxam who takes off his hat.) (And like a magician… He takes the items on the bench and stuffs it within the hat.) (Badobarm blinks a few times.) (He blinks another time—and before he knows it, the continents that once lounged on that same bench is gone.) (Tuxam, who already has hit hat fitted onto him before Badobarm knew it.)

Tuxam - “There.”

Tuxam - “I apologies for wasting valuable time.”

Badobarm - “No—No worries. It’s best if we get going, yeah?”

(Tuxam nods in agreement, and the two of them walk together…) (Badobarm recalls the moment when he managed to take Tuxam’s hat… Wonderstruck if there was a bigger void than he had realized.) (Empathize setting and Badobarm getting lost in thoughts) (Things starting to blur and swirl like getting knocked out, the conscience of a thousand pitter patter of footsteps and the sound of the city becoming noise to the incoherent trace of mind) (something something) (Tuxam - “A gentleman should also be prepared to store his belongings.”) (That’s what he imagined.) (The figment of what a Tuxam might had said if he asked.)

Badobarm - “(What else is a gentleman…?)”

(BWAMH! Badobarm stumbles, as he reclaims his footing.) (In front of him, a convenient pole.)

Tuxam - “B—Badobarm!”

Badobarm - “Huh—What…?!”

Tuxam - “…Be a bit more careful with where you’re a walking.”

Badobarm - “Right…!”

Tuxam - “You’re okay? It doesn’t hurt?”

Badobarm - “Yes. I’m fine. Let’s just continue—”

Thus Ends The Story... (so i can brutally battle myself to the death because the reign of writer's block will soon come never...)

To summarize my problem, “I overheated my brain, and my idiocy couldn’t take it!” (And I want to have fun, not have a headache like right now </3)

Story Concepts I Wanted To Explore

The Crownmaker’s Festival revolves around the local folktale about a king who holds a contest to make a crown suitable for his royal-ness. In exchange, the winner will be granted a wish of their choice. Despite all the elaborate crowns presented to the king, a humble flower wreath wins. The person who won asked to become king for a day. 

The flowers that the participant used are known as “Bird’s Wreath." (further notes below)

The idea behind the “Crownmaker’s Festival” is to explore Badobarm’s dream to become king and whatever that entails? I find Badobarm who would rather prove himself than be dependent on a wish to grant him what he wants. (<- and writing this little in a paragraph about this character makes me want to write essays length about what his character could be like)

i remember went to a derail trying to write this...

I tried to write or outline a concrete setting.

So I started with what the atmosphere of Bad Badtz-Maru Kingdom could look like and maybe what Badobarm's house could also be. (I should have written notable landmarks instead, why am I reflecting on this now at this time...!?)

And then I came to the conclusion: "I need to make a map in order to better visualize the setting." And then I got in the process of worldbuilding (nothing complex, more like writing a few good ideas down). And then I made the map. And then I thought it would be cool if the world of Fragaria was strawberry-shaped.

i blanked out during that. i snapped out of it and realized I spent 4 hours doing most of this in this order. time goes really fast...

[phoenixiancrystallist]

Month 4, day 25, Keen demanded I work on him tonight so I did :D Better defined his wings and leg armor, gave him a skirt, rotated everything so he could be nice and big on the canvas and have more room for his wings, and even gave him his emblem and name :D Yeah, he still refuses to change it. He's an asshole, your honor.

[hauntingblue]

Skypiea time

Robin saying that because I know she only got on a ship to then leave it...

Nami sees Conis and gets sanji out of there so SHE can talk to her akdhksajka not a single second lost

Hello my favourite panel of nami maybe ever

Sillies...

CHOPPER YOU ARE THE CUTEST

Robin throws this guy off a cliff and to make just to make sure she breaks his neck too akdjsksk who is doing it like her???

OMG ACE!!!! IT IS TIME!!!!

[flaskuwu]

I like when people make head canons of Ganondorf just being some guy or like working with Link and Zelda because there’s a bigger threat. I think there was something like the in Smash Bros brawl too

[zosan-secondchances]

The Pirate King of the North

Main Themes: Villain Sanji, Alternate Universe, Zosan Ship

AU where Straw Hat Pirates meet old Sanji from a reality where Reiju didn't have emotions.

Warning: Long post ahead and some One Piece spoilers. Contains strong language.

Part 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14

Young Zoro hates the fucker but those scars and piercings are doing a number to his soul.

Old Sanji's story goes like this:

He didn't experience compassion from anyone else aside from his mother, who--you know what happened.

Judge kept him locked away until he was 13. He had him released when he was deemed too broken to do anything, and he was apparently a waste of space. As far as the world was concerned, he was already dead. He gets left behind at some random pirate town in the North.

His swirly brows were recognized by the pirates who took him in--only for him to be enslaved because people would pay a lot to have their way with royalty.

He picked up some skills from the other slaves and became cunning af--because he had to be.

At 17 he started a revolt against the slaver pirates, effectively taking over as their new pirate captain.

He became the feared "Mr. Prince" and his words are as sharp as his bite.

He's underweight because he doesn't give two shits about good food.

"The All Blue? It's nothing but an old fishwive's tale," he says.

He used his cunning mind and new pirate crew to hunt down and kill his own father from the shadows.

He enslaved his own siblings and becomes the new ruler of Germa Kingdom. Over the years, he used them for warfare and expanded the territory of the North.

His heart is a bottomless pit for power and control.

He had a fling or two or several with is closely allied with Doflamingo because god damn they're both mad like that. The alliance eventually lead to direct connections with Celestial Dragons.

Sanji gains more power and becomes the notorious "Pirate King of the North"

Meanwhile at the other side of the world, Luffy didn't make it as far as he could have without a good cook.

Luffy would have recruited one from Baratie but the restaurant was absolutely destroyed before the smaller Straw Hat crew could make a difference. Some of the staff didn't make it.

Zoro left the crew when it fell apart at some point.

Due to Zoro's reputation and bounty that he had occurred during his limited time with Luffy, he was offered a position as a Warlord, ultimately taking over the late Jinbe's old role. He accepted and served for several years before he was assigned a job that he didn't know would be the most challenging one yet.

The Celestial Dragons didn't like the fact that Sanji had started to have more worldly control over their own, so Zoro was quietly assigned to hunt down the great Pirate King of the North. Zoro accepted because he felt that he needed more experience before he could take on Mihawk again.

Zoro quickly realised that this mission is not a walk in the park.

Sanji loves toying with the Demon Warlord so he insists on taking him on by himself.

It becomes an endless game of cat and mouse. Sometimes Sanji chases and sometimes he runs, sometimes he wins and sometimes he loses.

They're at each others' throats everywhere in the world. Any person, city or being of any kind that gets in the way usually gets torn apart in the chaos. The hunt goes on for a lifetime. They're currently in their 40's.

Zoro severs Sanji's left arm during one huge fight.

Because of this, Sanji relentlessly tries to get Zoro to marry him to use him in so many ways he can think of--both as an asset and under the sheets--oh the things that he wants the swordsman to do and beg for.

Sanji likes to refer to the tiniest scar on his lip as "Zoro's love bite"

He was about to get a nice fresh one on his chest when some fuckers teleported him away.

Hearing old Sanji's backstory was a bit much. It was young Zoro's turn to have a nosebleed that day.

----------

Oh yes I had fun drawing old silver fox, damaged Sanji. I wish I have the time to colour it up. I've also been very much into reading AU stories, especially soul brand ones. Keep them coming, you beautiful people.

Edit: Woo! I finally decided to make my own AO3 account. It's about time. Link here for the story: https://archiveofourown.org/works/60686077

[hallowxiu]

How the Brothers Would Deal with MC's Mortality

Mammon:

You casually brought it up as a joke

Probably something like “i’m here for a good time, not a long time” or “why should i care what happens in 100 years? It’s not like i’ll be around to care”

Would probably confuse Mammon at first as to why you wouldn’t be around, but he would put the pieces together in the middle of the night when trying to sleep.

A whole, eyes snapping wide opening and flinging out of his bed kind of moment.

Mammon would worry himself sick

Yes, he knows humans can die, hell, he used to mock you for being so frail when you first came to the Devildom, but now? 

Well, now things are different. How he feels about you is different

He's spending all his money on ways to keep you kicking longer. 

Anything he can think of that’ll help, he’s buying it. Vegetables, fruits, protein powder, comfortable clothes, a nice pillow, vitamins, shampoos- anything. He has no idea where to start, so he just starts grabbing everything. 

I mean, something will have to help, right? 

If you notice he looks panicked, don’t point it out, it’ll only make it worse. Unless you want to be smothered to death from his affection and worry, then by all means. ;)

Leviathan:

Look, he can barely handle his favorite anime characters dying, so you? Yeah, no, that’s way too much. 

Nothing actually popped up to remind Leviathan of your mortality, it was because of Satan throwing his books all around the house that did it. 

Suddenly, it was all he could think about. How did he not think of this before? 

Leviathan is no Satan though, and he’s certainly not Lucifer. Researching medical documents and trying to think of things to keep you alive longer are a little over his head. That being said, there were some things he could do.

Leviathan dove into his own research that would be within his realm of understanding, studying that humans who have more positive mindsets and who are less exposed to depressing forms of media, may live longer than the average person. This- this was something he could work with. 

Suddenly, you were constantly being invited to his room, Leviathan having a variety of slice-of-life anime for you to watch with him, all of which had happy endings to boot. If an anime was even remotely depressing, he made sure to keep that out of reach. 

Video games? He’s keeping it safe; he’s not risking anything here. If it’s not similar to Stardew Valley, Animal Crossing, Dreamlight Valley, or The Sims (which must be on a good day), you’re just not playing it. Kingdom Hearts if you’re lucky. 

Satan:

Would do an insane amount of research 

Likely overheard the topic on a news segment about the tragically short lifespans of humans before it all clicked together.

Satan, unlike the other brothers, has never experienced death before, so while it sounds silly, he never had reason to think of you dying.

Looks up humans who had long lifespans to see how he can implement those things into your lifestyle.

Books will be littered everywhere (although that’s not really unusual, but what is would be the topic of said books- The Long Lives of Humans, Human Lifestyle for Dummies 101, The Road to Human Immortality, etc. etc.)

This is when Satan learns just how easy it is for a human to kick the bucket.

Heart attacks, brain aneurysms, strokes, seizures, cancer, the list goes on and on and it’s starting to scare him. He didn’t know humans could just drop dead. 

He’s going to start researching curses to increase your lifespan, or at the very least he’s going to make sure you’re careful as hell. 

You won’t even get as much as a cut without him being aware of it; he’s going to hover around and mother hen the absolute shit out of you. 

Try not to get too annoyed with him though, it all stems from good intentions. 

Asmodeus:

He’ll be damned if his shopping partner for life is going to die on him.

Asmo isn’t stupid; if anything he’s pretty emotionally aware. He's known for a long time just how short the lifespan of humans is.

But still, it came in the form of a nightmare. One where he couldn’t save you, despite giving his best efforts. The way you died was tragic, long before your life should have ended. 

This sent Asmo somewhat into a frenzied state trying to find things to keep you alive once he woke up. 

Vitamins, vitamins, vitamins

Humans benefit from vitamins, right? Surely you’d benefit from Devildom vitamins then. If it’ll increase the lifespan of a demon, he sees no reason why it wouldn’t increase your lifespan. 

Of course, it really only gives you nicer nails and shinier hair. 

He’s 10x more intense with your morning and night routines. 

He will be unloading all his facial creams on you, and telling you the benefits of each one and how it might add a few years to your lifespan. 

You want to stay up late at night to finish homework? Maybe watch a movie? Yeah, no, not on Asmo’s watch. 

Your ass is going to bed every night at 10pm, right along with him. You do realize you’ll be getting exactly 8 hours of sleep each night, too, right? 

Beelzebub:

Regarding his trauma with Lilith, it came as no surprise when he started to fret over your well-being. 

Poor Beel saw an article that discussed how tragically easy it is for a human to die. The cherry on top? How they could die from simply overeating. 

Overeating isn’t a concept Beel is overly familiar with (because to him, it’s never overeating), and while he knew most people couldn’t keep up with his eating habits, he didn’t think it could actually cause harm to a human, let alone kill them. 

Grocery trips are now a more anxiety-inducing event. 

He’s suddenly paranoid that any of the Devildom food could and will kill you. Are you allergic to anything? How would you even know? 

What if one day he serves you his favorite boiled dragonhead and you just drop dead at the dinner table?? No, that will never do. 

There’s a list of Devildom foods that he knows for sure you can have without dying, but then comes the issue of portion control. How much is too much for a human? 

Beelzebub swore he would never lose another loved one again, and it’s a promise he intends to keep. From now on, you will only eat what he deems safe. 

You want to try a new food in the Devildom that you’ve never had before? You better get some seriously good convincing skills if you want him to cave in. For someone who only ever thinks with his stomach, he’s surprisingly stubborn. 

Belphegor:

He’s still plagued with nightmares about Lilith, especially since he still thinks it’s his fault. Tack that on to the way he blamed you and the rest of the human race for it? The man is walking trauma. 

 Like Asmodeus, this was brought on by nightmares about you dying. Different from Asmo’s, however, you usually died by his hand. Naturally, considering your tumultuous history. 

Belphegor, unlike his brothers, takes a different approach. He just doesn’t approach you at all. 

What better way to keep your lifespan long than by staying away from you altogether? 

Is it something that he wants? Of course not! But how can he trust himself to never hurt you again? To never kill you again. 

He can’t. 

So, he locks himself away in his room, sleeping most of the day or just avoiding the areas you normally like to lounge. 

On a normal day, almost everyone in the household, including yourself, would notice this behavior change. However, since you’re now being cornered by all the brothers and their concerns about your lifespan, it’s easy for Belphegor’s absence to slip your mind. 

This hurts Belphegor, but at the end of the day, he believes this is for the best.

Lucifer: 

Lucifer didn’t need a reminder of your short lifespan; if anything, it’s something he’s thought plenty about. 

Lucifer has trauma, we all know that much. After Lilith, he’s absolutely terrified of losing another loved one to something outside of his control.

And your lifespan is not something that’s out of his control. At least not how he sees it, anyway. 

If you thought he was overbearing or overprotective before, brace yourself. He’s going to step it up several notches. 

No excess of junk food, no more pulling all-nighters, no more sitting around the house gaming all day, and definitely no more overexerting your use of magic. He’s no fool, he knows the toll your magic could eventually take on your body. 

Honestly? He wasn’t this bad until his brothers started to panic about your mortality, and though Lucifer told himself he was above such nonsense, he quickly found himself taking all the precautions they were taking (and then some). 

Fortunately, if you find yourself becoming overwhelmed, they’ll be more than willing to listen to you (granted you take some of their concerns into account).

[earth4angels]

𝐝𝐚𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠, 𝐢'𝐥𝐥 𝐰𝐚𝐢𝐭 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐲𝐨𝐮.

jacaerys velaryon x aunt!targaryen reader ͟ ͟ ͟ friends to lovers, sexual content but no smut, incest (reader is aunt), fluff, semi angst(?), aemond being dumb, jace knows how to fight, i refuse to believe laenor never taught his kids how to defend themselves. slight switch of povs, basically the dinner fight, but added my own take, not edited.

summary: after the accident in driftmark the relationship between y/n and jacaerys became distant, when it came to the petition of the heir to driftmark, feelings came back full force. it took a bloody fight yet again to get jacaerys to act on his feelings before it was too late. but also, to unite the house of the dragon.

a/n: um? this is probably more than 1k words, i really went in. i had so much fun writing this & gosh.. do i have the guts to expand their relationship BUT ANYWAYS ENJOYYYY

somewhat based on this request. jace tag list: @jacaerysgf, @star611, @jules420, @gracexthoughts, @astrxq, @reyndaisy, @hxtd

For as long as Jacaerys can remember, he had always felt deep affection for his dearest aunt who was no more than a year older.

At first, it started with a childish admiration for how she spoke to him, how she would run her fingers through his curls when he would run towards her after sword training, read stories about the doom, or Visenya who she claimed was the best warrior to ever exist. Jacaerys admired her, she was his favorite aunt not that he had many but besides Helaena, she was his favorite. Again, it started with a childish crush. The smallfolk had a joke spread about how if anyone wanted to find Y/N, one had to look for small Jacaerys who followed closely behind her like a pup.

She never minded the talk, she loved her siblings and her nephews, it was one thing that differed her from her own brothers, who grew to despise the Velaryon boys. She loved Jacaerys, the way he always spoke of his growing bond with Vermax, the small adventures they would take to the gardens, or the adventures they took through the secret passages, and the library. She especially loved the moments he would sneak her strawberry cakes during her high valyrian studies when no one was looking. To her, Jacaerys was so dear to her heart, she dreamed childishly how it would be if they married.

She never understood why the hatred grew to the point everything that pointed toward her older sister was prohibited. Her siblings never had a close relationship with their father, but she did, she enjoyed the stories her father told her, but she mostly loved building and painting his replica of the seven kingdoms with him. Her father, King Viserys had always talked to her about protecting their own, as it was said, the House of the Dragon had to stay together to hold the realm united.

"Damn bastard," Aemond muttered under his breath as he rushed past her dusting his now muddy training gear. She narrowed her eyes at her brother, the word bringing her to wince. It was not the first time she heard it, at the age of 6, her mother had prohibited her from spending time with her half-sister and her children since the fight at Driftmark. She understood why, but she could not bring herself to be cold towards her half-family.

"Brother, enough." Y/n had her hand up to his shoulder, Aemond's one eye glared at her, "You must learn to let go of this anger, it is treason to speak of that word out loud."

Aemond scoffed, "Of course, my dear sister, protecting the bastards, you still defend them after what they did to me?" Aemond had snatched his eyepatch from his eye, showing its bright blue glow of a gem towards her.

"Brother... we were all children! Luce was only protec-" She choked as she was now slammed against the wall, a hand tight around her neck, she wildly stared at him, alarmed.

"Protecting? Dear sister, you are more than a fool. You rather protect bastards than the blood of the dragon?" Aemond chuckled in disbelief, "You, the same as father are fools."

He let go of her as she slumped against the wall, her hand clasped around her throat as she heaved, trying to get air back into her lungs. She watched teary-eyed from the loss of air the shadows of her brother grow distant with the further he went down the hall.

"Y/n?" a voice spoke from the opposite side of the hall. She looked back to meet the face of her once-best friend. "Seven hells! What happened?!"

Jacaerys rushed towards her, lifting her carefully as if she were the most fragile jewel to exist. In a sense to Jacaerys, she was.

She blinked, confused as to where he had come from. The last time she saw him, they were children, and he had promised to write her, yet after five ravens, the letters stopped, causing her to believe he had grown to hate her for what happened that night. It was then she realized why Aemond was so upset, why her mother suddenly left her and Heleana from embroidery to attend the council. Her mother avoided greeting her half-sister. Today was the petition of who was going to take over Driftmark. The house of the dragon was united once again, but not in the way she wanted to.

"Nephew?" She asked, confused again.

"Come, sit here. Let me get you some water," Jacaerys had placed her in the comfort of the shade of a tree. He had removed his cloak, placing it on the ground for her to sit as he ran to get her water. She stayed in silence beside her dry coughs that slipped once in a while. Jacaerys appeared again with a glass of water, she muttered a soft thank you before she drank till her throat was once again free from the harsh itches.

She looked toward him, finding him looking at her softly, his eyes burying themselves in the soft lilac color of her eyes. She blushed, coughing to avoid looking at him instead she focused on the grass beside her, picking at it softly.

"So... care to explain why you have a red mark on your neck?"

Y/n bit the inside of her cheek before she focused her stare on the blank blue sky, if Jacaerys was not paying attention he would have missed the soft murmur of her voice, "It was nothing."

Jacaerys opened his mouth to argue when the bells of the castle banged so hard that they echoed through the hallways.

"Don't think I won't let this go y/n," he spoke softly beside her, she only blinked in response. He shook his head as his tongue touched the roof of his mouth and he let go, making a sound that almost sounded like a click.

"You should go, my sister would probably be worried as to why you are taking so long. It is rude to keep your mother waiting."

Jacaerys rolled his eyes, before he lifted a hand towards her, a gesture for her to grab onto it. She stared at his pale hand, taking a moment to admire the changes, he was muscular now, and no more stood the boy who almost looked easy to push around. She followed the path of his hand toward his face, her breath hitching when she realized he still wore the necklace she had made him when they were children.

"You... you kept it?" Y/n stuttered, pointing to his neck. Jacaerys hummed, touching it delicately, his fingers rubbing softly at the soft shells. She had made that the day of Laena's funeral, she went and followed the path towards the beach to find seashells. She made it in hopes for him to feel better. She never thought he would keep it after all those years.

"Why wouldn't I?"

She stood up on her own avoiding his touch in fear she might want to curl into the safety of his hold.

“Go figure. You stopped writing to me.”

“What?” Jacaerys stood in front of her, stopping her from stepping another step further from him, “I never stopped? What do you mean I stopped? I sent so many ravens to you. I never heard from you after the fourth or fifth one.”

Now she was confused. “I sent you ravens too! You never sent me any back, I waited… I figured you just blamed me for what happened,” she muttered.

Jacaerys did another click with his tongue, before he reached out to her, her small hands fitting perfectly well inside his.

“Whatever happened that night, it’s forgotten. We were children, you were not even there for me to blame you. Aemond being your brother changes nothing, I still care for you just as much as I did when I was a child.”

She tightened the hold of his hands between hers before looking into his eyes, all she found was a soft gaze, not anything that was malicious, as she would find mostly in Aemond’s eye.

She opened her mouth, then closed it, she did not want to tell him how she felt for him. It was like Jacaerys had read her mind, though he was one year behind her, he always looked after her, to Jacaerys - she was everything he wanted in a wife, and he dreamed of making her as such.

“I’ve missed you, did you not?” he lifted one hand to caress her braid that was left falling off her shoulder to slowly reaching for her cheek where he held her delicately once again.

Y/n smiled, the fluttering feeling in her stomach making it hard to not release a giggle, she felt home.

“Of course I did Jace, I missed you so much.”

Ser Arryk spoke from the entrance of the garden, his armor glittering with the rays of the sun reflecting it, “Princess? The queen is expecting you in the grand hall.”

She nodded, feeling regretful of not spending more time with Jace, she had so much to tell him, to get caught up on.

“Thank you Ser Arryk, I will be there in a minute.”

She looked towards Jace again finding him still looking at her, a glint of mischief flashed, she narrowed her eyes making him smirk, “I guess you have to go aunt.”

The way he said it made her want to clench her thighs together, she cleared her throat, “I’ll see you soon my dearest nephew.”

He laughed like the word from her mouth was the biggest joke he had heard. His curls bouncing with the shake of his body, he reached down for her hand, placing a lingering kiss, “Princess.”

She watched as he turned, walking towards the grand hall passing Ser Arryk who bowed his head. Her stomach was still fluttering, all she wanted to do was jump and roll in the comfort of her bed, but she needed to meet her family and yet again witness another rift between the family.

"Her children," a long pause echoed through the grand hall, Y/n had her hands interlaced with each other, squeezing them so hard her skin was becoming white. She quickly glanced around the room, noticing her brothers smirking with anticipation, to her half-sister's family. She came across the eyes of her prince, who looked seconds from using his sharp sword to kill. She licked her lips, the anxiety building, she knew what was coming, and honestly, she was looking forward to it.

"ARE BASTARDS! And she is, a whore," Vaemond exclaimed.

Echoes of gasps and murmurs were heard, but Y/n blocked it as it all happened quickly. The blood splattered harshly like a quick burst of wind splashing her dark emerald dress. She gasped, her body being pulled back by Aegon who quickly acted to wipe off the blood off her dress and the little that landed on her face.

She would lie if she said she did not enjoy what she saw, in fact, she was glad it happened. That word being tossed around needed to be acted with a consequence, and she was proud of Daemon for warning those who followed Vaemond in speaking of her family that way.

The court ended and she was left rushed to her chambers, her ladies-in-waiting rushing to prepare a quick bath as her father requested them to have dinner together.

"You all can go," y/n spoke as she untied the laces off her dress.

"Princess-" Elydia, her closest handmaiden reached towards her to help her protested.

"Please, I need to have some moments alone, I will notify when finished."

"Princess."

She sighed, the weight on her shoulders becoming too heavy, she rolled her head side to side to relieve the pain. As she sunk into the rose-covered bath, moaning in bliss from the warmth she was sunken into, a knock was heard from her bed chamber. A familiar series of knocks, one that she missed hearing, sparking a rush of adrenaline.

She rushed to throw on a light blue gown, her hair soaking the silk material, making her breasts noticeable. Her footsteps were rushed as she reached the familiar wall by her bed, she knocked a similar tune before she pushed into it.

Jacaerys stood behind the wall, in his hands laid a wooden box with letters, her letters.

"Hi," he spoke softly, his voice sending butterflies all over her body

"Hi," she moved aside to let him enter her room, her eyes flickering quickly to the door of her room before eyeing the male before her, "What are you doing here? If my guards, see you... the scandal we could be in!"

He smirked, his plum juicy lips - she did not want to stare so much but she could not help observing him - quirked to the side, "That did not stop us when we were children."

She scoffed, "You said it yourself when we were children."

He smiled mockingly before he stopped in his tracks. He did not expect to see her so... vulnerable. The fantasies started to play out in his mind, he recalled all those moments he thought of her late at night. The fire ignited inside of him when he saw her in the garden, her hair flowing through the wind, her soft features to her soft lilac eyes.

Jacaerys wanted to propose to her mother a betrothal, to finally make y/n his, to act out all the fantasies he thought when she appeared in his mind.

"Jace?" She whispered, feeling self-conscious about the way he stared at her. He looked ready to bounce, his brown eyes scanning her up and down, she squeezed her thighs together.

"You... aunt I can see you wholly," he cleared his throat to avoid his voice sounding so raspy.

"Excuse me?" Y/n was confused until he gestured to her body, "Oh... Oh!" Her cheeks blossomed with a deep scarlet red tint; she rushed across the room to grab her robe tightly wrapping it around her body.

Jacaerys cleared his throat again, "Um... I just wanted to stop by before we saw each other at dinner again, the letters you had sent me."

Her cheeks still stained with red walked towards him, gathering the box between her hands, "So what with it?"

"I received and sent you letters y/n. I never stopped writing to you, I even made Mother annoyed with how many times I have asked her if there was ever anything sent to me."

She blinked her confusion, "Jacaerys I always wrote to you, your letters never came but I always sent you updates how things were here - "

"I know of everything, but I am giving you complete honesty on the fact that I never stopped," he stepped towards her, his hand on her cheek with his thumb rubbing soft circles calming her.

"What do you want me to do with that information? Do you know how much our families hate each other? How much Aemond goes around cursing Luce's name, your name? I shouldn't even be talking to yo-"

She stopped when he stepped closer, she felt his breath on her lips, her eyes darted down his lips to his eyes. Her breath hitched, he was so close. So close, she just wanted to taste how soft his lips truly were.

"Tell me to go, and I will. I will never bother you again, but tell me, you never want to see me, and I will."

Jacaerys hoped she never spoke of the words, as he wanted to kiss her, to tell her of the once confession he wrote in those many letters. She was just so pretty; he wanted to steal her and take her to Dragonstone where he wanted to marry her. He wanted to taste the sweetness between her legs, to have her scream, moan out his name, to fill her belly with the future heirs of Westeros.

His hand stayed on her cheek as he continued to stare, waiting for her to speak. Her breaths came out shallow and she began to shake with need.

"Don't go," she whispered, her hands reaching to grab his shoulders, pulling him closer towards her, "Please don't leave me."

"Gods," he wrapped his arms around her as he shakingly asked her, afraid she will finally reject him, but he hoped, "Can I kiss you?"

She gasped, the dazed look in her eyes fading as she began to pull away, "No... No... we can't Jacaerys! We are not betrothed, we are not promised to each other, my virtue could be quest-"

Her rambles were left to the old gods to wonder as Jacaerys placed his lips on her, "No offense, but you talk a lot."

She groaned against his lips at the jab he made but melted into the kiss, a kiss she longed for as the feelings that she did not want to admit surfaced. She only read books about the acts of kissing, yet she felt as if she knew with the way she kissed Jacaerys.

Her core suddenly felt tingly with how he was holding her, his hand deep inside her hair as the other ran down the silk of her gown to hitch a leg around his waist as he guided her down her bed.

"Jace..." she moaned, her throat begging for air as she pulled away, yet he did not stop, his lips trailing down her cheeks, prepping her with soft kisses to finally nipping at her throat. She moaned again.

"I have always wanted to do this," he whispered against her throat, "I badly want to take you, to have you sore, so fucked out of your mind that you forget your own name," he raised his head, his elbow by her head to prep himself just so he can look down at her.

She breathed heavily, "You..." she reached out, "You can't..."

"I would never dishonor you that way, but I will fight to make you, my wife. I will speak to mother, to my grandsire."

"Jace..."

He placed a kiss on her nose, smiling when she let out a giggle, "Tell me you also want me."

"I never wanted to admit it, but I do, I have always wanted you."

A knock disturbed their sweet bubble, and they both scrambled away from each other as y/n pulled her gown down. Jacaerys grabbed his cloak she did not even realize he had removed as he moved to the secret passage again.

"Princess? The queen requests your presence, dinner will start shortly."

She looked at Jacaerys as he whispered, "I will see you soon aunt." Y/n rolled her eyes but still smiled as she nodded.

The wall closed, and as if nothing happened, the room became quiet once again, she gathered her thoughts as she replied, "Almost done, please help me dress Elydia."

The entire time she was prepped for dinner she was smiling to herself. She could not wait to see her prince again. She had even requested for her hair to be loose, just two small braids creating a crown decorated her. She had wanted to look perfect for him.

Dinner was awkward, to say the least. Her family was beyond divided, as she sat beside Helaena, it was too quiet, the only noises came from the cooks who were walking around to place the food on the table. She watched as Aemond sent nonstop glares towards her nephews.

She had found out through Helaena that Aemond had lost against Jacaerys during training. Jacaerys had taken his sword one minute into sparring. It finally made sense why Aemond was so upset when she came across him in the garden. Her lips tugged into a quiet snicker at the idea of her brother being put in his place.

As she drank her wine, her father spoke.

"It pains me to see our family divided. As the house of the dragon, we must be united to have the kingdom prosper in peace. All of you must leave behind your childish arguments! Do it for me, your father, your brother, your husband, your grandsire. Leave behind this anger!"

As her older sister stood to make a toast in hopes of making peace with her mother, she made eye contact with Jacaerys who was already looking at her. He smiled softly at her before he looked towards his mother, his mouth turning into a smirk as he hid it behind his glass of wine. Her eyebrows furrowed, and as she was going to question her sister's voice came through.

"... It has been decided for the good of our families, and to make the future of House Targaryen stronger, that Princess Y/n, and my son, Prince Jacaerys be wed. They shall be in the future the King and Queen of the Seven Kingdoms."

Alicent shot up from her chair, "What?!"

Viserys wheezed but held strong as he banged his hands onto the table preventing an argument once again, "I wholeheartedly agree to this proposal as my dearest grandson himself asked to be wed to my beautiful daughter. They are to be wed as soon as possible."

Y/n couldn't help but smile widely, "Thank you, father," she looked towards her oldest sister, "Sister."

"Har! Har! Har!" Daemon raised his glass with a mischief glint in his eyes, his mouth into a wide smirk, he enjoyed seeing Alicent and Otto Hightower's plans get ruined.

Her mother could not argue against the newest betrothal since the King had officially declared it. She also had made peace with her once close friend as they toasted to each other. However, that did not stop her brothers from having a mind of their own, their mouths ready to retaliate.

As the night passed, and her father was no longer there to hold the peace, she held her breath as she knew, no she felt the anger boiling from her family. Aegon was the first to let out jests, and with that followed Aemond who did not hold back.

Jacaerys stood, his hand slammed into his uncle's shoulders to sit him back onto his seat, "You will keep your mouth shut about my betrothed. Jest all you want about me, but my wife-to-be, you will keep shut. Understood?"

Aegon snickered, satisfied with the reaction, he lifted his hands up in surrender.

She did not want to admit how it ignited such a need for her soon-to-be husband. She has never found him any hotter than what he looked like. His curls covered his dark gaze, his veiny long hands clasped together as to hold himself back.

"Boys. Enough. Let's finish dinner without any more arguments." Rhaenyra spoke in hopes of stopping the tension that was boiling.

It was enough for a moment. As Lucerys snickered at the pig that was placed on the table, in hopes for his uncle to join in the fun, as he believed it was an innocent act of jest. The blood came and what was a peaceful dinner, turned into the dragon's war.

"I dare you to say that again," Jace spoke from beside her, his hand holding hers to calm himself.

"Are you not proud of your house, dear nephew?" Aemond mocked, Aegon snickered, as the adults surrounding them stopped their dinner to hear what was going on, "I thought you considered yourself a strong knight."

A growl-like rumble came from Jacaerys as he rushed to punch her brother over and over. She scrambled towards them, yelling for them to stop, Aemond had gotten two hits through, but Jacaerys had the upper hand as his knuckles were bloodied. The guards had come to pull her brothers and nephews apart.

"Enough! All of you, back to your chambers! Now!" Rhaenyra spoke, sending them to their rooms. Y/n felt the angry tears stream down from the exhaustion of the fights between her family.

She yelped when a hand pulled her into the shadows of pillars. With a scream stuck in her throat, she widened her eyes at Jacaerys who had his hand on her mouth to stop her from screaming.

"Come back home with me, we will marry before the old gods," he whispered.

"But if I leave, I can potentially make mother and grandsire even more mad..."

"You are already promised to me, the realm will soon learn of it, ravens are being sent as we speak. Nothing will be able to stop our union, please. Just come home with me."

She hoped she was not making a mistake, for she loved Jacaerys so much more than waiting around for her family to come between her happiness. She only hoped, this union, would unite the realm and stop any possible war that Helaena had spoken of. As she kissed Jacaerys in the shadows, the said sister smiled as she poked another thread into a gown to continue the embroidery.

"From the blood of red and green, the pain will end as the union will bring peace once again."

[sp0o0kylights]

Steve Harrington was wearing a Hellfire t-shirt.

It was far too tight on him, the name of the club stretched wide over his chest. The sleeves dug into his biceps, making them pop even more than they usually did, and that was before he crossed his arms. 

Worse?

It was short.

Which meant the damn shirt was constantly riding up to give everyone a nice show of the smattering of hair that trailed down past the band of Harrington's jeans. 

The same hair that Eddie was determinedly not looking at. 

“Henderson, a moment?” He crooked a finger, a smile on his face that was more feral than welcoming. 

Rather than cower or even acknowledge that Eddie was two seconds away from murder, Dustin just gave him a gummy grin, all too pleased with himself and his scheme. 

“Sure Eddie. Steve, don't just stand there, go help set the booth up!” Dustin gestured to Hellfire’s sad little table, crammed all the way in the back of the gym. 

Jeff and Gareth both reacted to the suggestion like a rabid squirrel had been set upon them, nervously inching towards the other side of the booth as Harrington sighed and--shockingly--did as he was told.

‘What,’ Eddie thought angrily, ‘in the everloving fuck.’

“Do you guys mind if I set this down on the table?” Eddie heard Harrington ask as he stormed away, Dustin on his heel. 

They wandered just around the corner, out of sight and hopefully, out of the fallen king’s hearing range.

Eddie wasn't sure if Harrington would try and white knight the very much deserved dressing down he was about to give. 

Didn’t want to chance it, considering the downright weird relationship he had with Hellfire's freshmen.

(While he’d heard many a tale at his table regarding King Steve since the newest recruits had joined Hellfire, most of them dissolved into arguments without ever really going anywhere.

 Best anyone could figure out was that Dustin and Lucas had a bad case of hero worship, while Mike owned a begrudging amount of respect that hailed from a series of misadventures. 

The very same misadventures that, despite all protests to the contrary, was clearly some sort of babysitting gig for Harrington.) 

Either way, plenty of the King’s court would have loved to take this opportunity to fuck with Hellfire.

Given that Henderson was absolutely too old to require a babysitter at fourteen, Eddie would bet his lunch money that was what Steve was here to do.

Something the club couldn’t afford since they were forever and always two seconds away from being stripped of club status and banned from school grounds. 

“I would love to know what went through that all A’s brain of yours when I said,” Eddie whirled on Dustin when they were firmly in the clear, voice low and furious.  “no Henderson, do not invite King Steve to help, he is an invading force and would ruin our peaceful kingdom!?”

He clasped his hands behind his back before leaning into Dustin’s face. “Because clearly whatever you heard wasn’t that.” 

To Eddie’s continued frustration and confusion, Dustin did not treat this like the threat it was. 

None of the freshmen had ever truly treated Eddie like a threat--had somehow skipped that part of the usual onboarding ritual entirely.

Eddie, town freak and drug dealer, who had cultivated his looks and craziness to such a degree that most everyone steered clear, wasn’t used to it. 

Everyone had been afraid of him at some point in this shitty school. Jeff, Gareth, hell even half the staff--and that the dorky trio of fourteen year old's clearly thought this all was play-acting made his eye twitch.

Even if it was--maybe, sometimes--welcome. 

“I know what you said, but I’m telling you I’m right.” Dustin argued immediately, and oh God, he was using that tone again. 

A hand went up into the space between them and Eddie groaned aloud, knowing what was coming.

“First,” Dustin ticked a finger up, “Hellfire really needs the money. Even thirty dollars would get us new figures, but more than that, if we don’t fundraise, we can’t go to Gen Con!” 

Dustin's eyes bored into Eddie’s, full of fire and conviction

“Yes,” Eddie said through gritted teeth, “but--”

“Second!” Dustin cut him off, and God the little shit even threw him a look while he did it, like Eddie was the one being ridiculous here!

“We had to fight just to get our table! Principal Higgins was in algebra today practically begging the mathletes to show up, but then tried to tell us we couldn't be here? That’s messed up!” 

As if denying them a spot to fundraise was the worst thing that asshole had ever done.

Eddie sighed, breath blasting out of his mouth like a dragon’s. 

“Because people think we’re freaks and satanists, Henderson. You don’t typically invite freaks and satanists to the school’s annual Holiday Bazaar. Especially not when all the local moms are paying to hawk their bullshit crafts and tupperware!” 

It was more than that of course. The Hawkins High Holiday Bazaar was a tradition spanning several years now. Starting in the gym and spilling clear into the parking lot, everyone from local artists to even some local shops came to host a small table for the day, thus growing the event from a small school fundraiser to a Hawkins' “must-do.” 

Half the fucking town was here to sell, and the other half was here to shop, which meant Principle Higgins had wanted Hellfire banned from the fucking premise. 

Eddie had been forced to pull out one of his trump cards he’d been saving--blackmail on Higgins that related to the man’s not--so--legal addiction to Percocet that he relied on Reefer Rick for. 

(And bless Rick, that hadn’t been the only tidbit he’d shared with Eddie about Higgins. That information, however, Eddie needed just so the asshat wouldn’t give him the boot from school entirely.) 

The only reason Eddie had pulled it out to secure their rightful spot, was because of Gen Con. 

It was Hellfire's White Whale, their grand adventure, and this was going to be his year to take his friends on one last epic quest to make memories of a lifetime surrounded by people who understood them.

Come hell or high water, Eddie was going to Gen Con--but being able to fundraise by selling wares and baked goods at the stupid Holiday Bazaar would go a long way to help.

Even if he had to listen to the band repeatedly play ear-bleeding renditions of Christmas songs.

“All the clubs get to have a table, and we’re a club!” Dustin continued, like it was that simple. “But you know, I get it. We look scary.” 

He gestured down to his own Hellfire shirt, before gesturing towards Eddie’s entire outfit.

Like Eddie didn't know what he looked like, let alone that he'd made this outfit specifically to scare people away from him.

(And maybe add some rockstar flair to this dinky little hick town.)

“You know who doesn’t look scary?”

Dustin held out his hands and swiveled his body like he was presenting a prize instead of gesturing in the vague direction of; 

“Steve!”

Eddie’s left eye twitched.

‘You can't kill him, you need his character for the campaign.’ He told himself firmly, even if he envisioned strangling Dustin like a chicken.

Cartoon squawking and all. 

“The King isn’t going to help us fundraise, Dustin.” Eddie said, in an effort to break down why Harrington couldn't be here. “He's just going to cause us problems that we can’t afford to have.” 

So many problems, half of which Eddie couldn't think of because if he did, he'd start spiraling.

“Really? Because as you keep saying, Steve used to be the King. People love him, Eddie! Mom’s love him.”

Eddie had pulled himself back up to his proper height a while ago, and now rocked back on his heels while he ran a hand down his face.

There was no getting through to Henderson when he was like this. 

Not unless Eddie really lost it, and it was practically club lore that he only lost it when someone missed an important game. 

One cannot keep a herd of sheep if their flock is terrified of them, after all. 

(“Perhaps you’re just a giant fucking softie.” Tiff, one of Hellfire’s graduating members, told him once. “Honestly dude, I bet you throw up stuffing.”

“Shut up Tiffany, your choker is on backwards again.” He'd spat back, completely offended and not at all trying to distract from how true that was.) 

“We can’t be satanic if Steve’s the one selling cookies!” Dustin finished doggedly. 

“We’re not even selling cookies--that’s not the point!”” Eddie shook his head, hair flying. He was not going to be sidetracked, he wasn’t!

 “Harrington is going to end up siding with all the moms about how we’re all wasting time with D&D, if he even spends the whole time at the table. Is that what you want?” 

He stuck out a ringed finger, poking at Dustin’s chest.

“Every single person who comes by our table has to be convinced D&D is a writing and math based game. Good for the mind and souls of growing, impressionable children. A game that got a bad rep because of  a few silly images.” 

A pitch he and Tiff had come up with during the third or fourth time they had to convince an adult that no, just because their shirts had a dragon on it, didn’t mean they were summoning demons in the drama room. 

“Harrington can’t do that because Harrington doesn’t even know how to play!” 

This Eddie punctuated by throwing his hands in the air. 

Given the startled look of the mother-daughter duo passing him by, clearly was louder than he’d intended--but screw it!

He was right!

Hellfire was in a precarious position to both fundraise and do a little damage control among the slightly smarter members of this shithole small town, and Harrington rolling his eyes and gossiping about how stupid it was would hinder that.

“Okay, first of all, Steve’s played D&D with me and he didn’t even kill his character.” Dustin said it like he was unveiling a smoking gun and not lying through his ass--which Eddie would absolutely be calling him on the second he was done talking. 

Because King Steve? Play D&D?

'Ha!'

“And he’s not gonna say shit because we--me, and Lucas and even Mike!--asked him to help, and he helps when its serious. I know you have some weird grudge with him, but I’m telling you Eddie he’s our golden ticket to Gen Con!” 

“You’re killing me. You are standing here, acting as a friend, when you are bringing a-- a dark force into the midst our of mission--” Eddie hissed, because he was losing the fucking fight and he knew it.

Dustin Henderson was not a man easily swayed. 

Had never been, even when the odds were stacked against him (and Grant and Gareth were howling in his ear.) 

The set of his shoulders and the glint of the little shithead’s eye meant Eddie wouldn’t be able to use him to oust Harrington--if he even could get him out without the dick causing a massive scene anyway. 

As always when outgunned, Eddie flipped to dramatics.

“Betrayed! By my own chosen heir no less!” He moaned, pressing the back of his hand over his eyes as Dustin scoffed.

"Don’t be so dramatic! Steve will help, I promise! Just don’t be a dick to him.” 

 Conversation apparently over, Dustin turned around to head back to the table

Snidely, he added over his shoulder: “Plus we’ve all caught on to the heir thing Eddie. You tell everyone that so they do what you want.” 

The dick.

“You’re too fucking smart for your own good. I’m gonna start feeding you paint chips to bring that IQ down.” Eddie muttered angrily as Dustin went back to their little table.

He gave himself a moment to get his shit together and stomp a foot like a child when Dustin was around the corner and thus couldn’t witness it, before following his wayward sheep back.

Could only pray to any deity listening that Henderson’s meddling didn’t blow up in Hellfire’s face.

[woof-verine]

guys I’m sorry I know everyone loves grumpy Wolverine (and I do too) but after he and Wade get together I think he is THE biggest user of pet names ever. like Logan is a flirt (see x1 and x2) and he’s possessive as all hell (see his animal disposition) and do NOT think I forgot about him calling Mariko ‘princess’ in The Wolverine, so..

you can’t tell me that he isn’t calling Wade ‘princess’ and ‘baby’ and ‘sweetheart’ all the way to kingdom come, especially when he finds out how flustered it actually makes Wade when Logan flirts back.

like…. (accidentally wrote a ficlet below, good LORD that’s a lot of yapping for one post)

“Back from the grocery store, honey badger! Picked up those doggy diapers for our disgusting little cuntchkin that you asked me to get. Still don’t know why you said no to me just training her to pee on the neighbor’s doormat, though.”

There’s a yapping at his feet, and Wade sets the grocery bags on the counter, then leans down to rub the scabby head of the aforementioned cuntchkin. Logan is in the kitchen frying up something (smells like bacon? Wade doesn’t want to get his hopes up, but it really, really smells like bacon).

Logan takes the pan off of the stove — it is bacon, and Wade’s never been more excited in his life, not even when Gossip Girl announced their short lived 2021 reboot that immediately flopped — and wanders over to Wade, putting his hands on Wade’s hips to give him a kiss.

Wade doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to that. Some days, he can’t even believe he’s alive at all, much less that he’s alive in a world where he’s dating the god damn Wolverine.

“Thanks, princess,” Logan rumbles against his temple, arms wrapping further around Wade’s waist, keeping him there.

Wade does his best impression of a large, bald fish that just got pulled out of water and thrust onto dry land. His mouth opens, then closes, then opens again.

“Sorry, what was that?” he asks eventually.

“Thanks?” Logan says, taking a step back, confused.

“No, the other thing.”

“…Princess?” Logan tries.

“Yeah. What’s that about?”

“What, you don’t like it?”

“No! No,” Wade says, backpedaling. He loves it, he just… he just… he doesn’t know what he thought. The whole pet names thing had always been his schtick, never Logan’s. Wade becomes aware of how hot his face is, of the flush that must be creeping up over his scarred cheeks.

“Ohhh,” Logan purrs, nice and low, stepping forward again to crowd Wade against the counter. Wade’s face heats even more. “You like it, princess?”

Wade swallows. This man is going to be the death of him.

[pruneunfair]

Tropes in manhwa are awful yet people still defend them

I'm in a bad mood right now so what better way to release all that pent up anger by ranting on what can ruin a good story.

1: Slavery being inserted only for cheap plot and slaves being demonized as obsessive/greedy monsters for "not knowing their place"

Theres nothing wrong with wanting to insert slavery in your story AS LONG as it's not just cheap plot to make your MC look "better" by buying from a single to all of the slaves because let me tell you this: there is no such thing as a good slave owner, you cannot morally own another human being. A lot of manhwa like to have slavery be a part of their plot completely ignoring that just because the MC goes "wow this is terrible" doesn't make them a good person after they buy a slave.

Remarried empress does this with its villian Rashta by pushing the notion that she's being greedy for not wanting to stay in poverty so Navier won't suffer because apparently a slave wanting what the silver spoon mouthed nobles were born into is so terrible not to mention they justify slave owners and slavery in general as a punishment for criminals (neglecting the fact that children can be sold by their parents)

The villainess has fun again justifies a child slave being bought by the lead and he becomes an obsessive shouta love interest, fans continously justify by using the ancient lolicon excuse "he may look young but he's actually 99182823 years old!"

In divorcing my tyrant husband, Robelia buys 30 slaves and the only 2 that consistently show up have no other personality other then "we love you FL we will worship you till the end of time!"

There's a damn manhwa out there literally called the order of slave breeding and even when a story tries to do this correctly such as VADTD with Penelope being portrayed as a bad person for what she did to Eckles, fans have been so deluded by the idea that FL's buying slaves is "girlboss" that they think Eckles should be grateful to be Penelopes "pet"

2: ML's murdering innocent people after one guy hurts the FL

I already made a specific post about it before and I'll say it again: all this does is make your male lead/father figure look like a horrific monster. While you could say it's because its a medieval kingdom (objectively that is true that they would do this) manhwa and OI is the same place where despite in those times taking a mistress was considered normal they still view it as cheating and "how could you pick that slut when you have such a perfect wife!? 🤬" in most stories. So yes, modern morality is still inserted within these tropes. While I can get it's a way to show that the man in questions loves the FL so much he's willing to go to such lengths to protect her I think just mutilating the guy that actually did the sin would be enough because try imagining yourself as a faithful servant who was amazing at your job getting brutally slaughtered by the Emperor because your boss attacked his daughter or lover.

Into the light once again does this with Aishas dad murdering all the relatives and close friends of a count that tried to kill Ysis and Aisha, Aisha doesn't seem to care despite being in a situation where she was wrongfully executed in her past life.

Remarried empress does this too. After Navier is nearly killed by Krista's brother, Heinrey tortures and kills the dad and slaughters the servants of the zemensias. I can't remember if he also murdered the remaining family members but I wouldn't put it past him.

3: protagonist centered morality

Protagonist centered morality is the biggest indicator that a piece of media is dealing with a mary sue FL. Whatever the protagonist says is right is immediately morally correct. This is actually used to justify the last 2 examples with "it was for the FL!" Things like slavery, murder, workplace abuse, union busting, pedophilia, and being a POS to your loved ones are all justified if the protagonist finds a cheap way to justify it and you HAVE to agree with her because her backstory is very tragic 🥺. Protagonist centered morality also ruins the chance for good characters since the FL herself never has to grow as a person so she stays the same exact thing as she was just with more enablers and random characters will be treated as villains even if they aren't actually wrong about being suspicious of the Protagonist or calling out her behavior. It twists the narrative in such incomprehensible ways that you don't even know what your reading anymore. I can't even list all of the manhwas that do this given how many there actually are so I'll just list some that are at least self aware there Protagonist is awful/morally grey or isn't even a bad person but they still have flaws that can be pointed out

Villains are destined to die

My in laws are obsessed with me

Not sew wicked step mom

Depths of malice

The villainess turns the hourglass

Beware of the villainess.

4: villains being dumbed down to make the lead look smarter

This is unfortunately another common staple often used as a quick way to make the FL look smart and witty but is that really hard to look smarter when everyone else around you is an idiot? Not only does the FL not have to put in actual effort to best her enemies but you just start to pity the villain for basically being a punching bag. Dimwitted villains aren't always bad in fact they can be some of those most entertaining characters no matter much they lose but that only works when they are meant to be seen as a goofy character that your not supposed to take seriously. Villains that are written as extremely childish and stupid but your still supposed to treat them as serious antagonists on the other hand are just annoying since you wonder how the protagonist even got killed by them in the first life if they're so stupid.

Isabella de Mare while admitly having a good reason for being dumbed down (she's a teenager in the 2nd life so it's reasonable she wouldnt be as smart as her adult counterpart) is still a joke of a villainess who keeps flipping back and fourth from a snot nosed whiny brat to a mastermind only at convenient opportunities when the plot needs conflict.

Mielle from the villainess turns the hourglass was first portrayed as extremely conniving as she arranged for Arias downfall in the shadows but in the second life she fails at every scheme she has even though she has Emma and Isis to help her out.

Ragibach is a literal demon possessing the body of another woman with the goal of setting demons loose on the word to start another human vs demon war and she succeeded in that the first time, the devastation was all there so clearly she has to be a formidable antagonist right? Well no, she's another case of being dumbed down further and further so Keira can succeed and while they do understand some plot holes such as Ludwig not trusting her as much in the second life it doesn't change the drastic character change from evil genius to bumbling idiot.

In short: dumbing down your villains so your lead can look smarter is essentially going to give the equivalent of a hydrogen bomb vs a coughing baby.

5: feminine women being demonized as basic "other girls" sluts

Okay this one isn't nearly as terrible as the others on this list because we all love the good old "a demon makes itself look beautiful to deceive humans" kind of villain, in fact as you probably know by me by now, white lotuses are my favorite kinds of character and even in media outside of manhwa I always find myself drawn to angelic villains but it seems like this is less of that and more of "Oh those are all the other girls who just want a man to save them, look at how much better my badass rich boss babe is for working for herself while taking all of their men at the time 😎" in manhwa. As soon as a traditionally feminine girl shows up, comments are already calling her a two faced bitch and half the time protagonist is already skeptical of her. This is the opposite of what being a feminist really is, a real feminist wouldn't be putting down other women just because they dress with more pink with bows and skirts and while I do think for most manhwa this is unintentional I do wish that we could have more characters like Psyche, Helena, Athy, and Jennette that prove that being overly feminine doesn't make you a backpedal on feminism. This doesn't make the badass or sexy fl's bad either, it just means they can co-exist.

An angelic villain should be treated as evil for being a well calculated schemer, not because they have a light colored color scheme

6: toxic relationships being romanticized as good

You know for a large community that claims to be about girl code a good chunk sure likes to look the other way when it comes to toxic relationships as long as the abuser is "hot" and theres always the terrible excuse such as "he has trauma!" Or "he doesn't know how to show his love normally!" No just no we aren't doing that here. Cry or better yet beg has this problem with not only the narrative claiming that Matthias graping Layla is okay because she actually loves him and doesn't know it but a large part of the fanbase also defends it, the same goes with try begging, a manhwa written by Solche who also wrote cry or better yet beg and once again despite Leon being an abuser everyone's ready to justify his actions because he's just a soft little boy who ends up falling in love with Grace awww 😍 (what the hell?) Everyones all about not justifying abusers because they had a sad past until it's the "sexy" male leads with daddy issues.

7: maid slapping

This shit isn't asserting your dominance as a boss bitch it's just work place abuse. This trope has gotten so out of hand of being justified by narratives and readers that there is an entire webtoon called this isekai maid is forming a union that's all about criticizing twisted manhwa tropes that get brushed off with maid absuer being at the biggest one. It's funny because a lot of people complain that Isekai maid union villainizes the nobles too much but they never ask the same questions when a OI is demonizing maids as greedy and lazy in order to deserve a beating. This doesn't just stop at hands either it can escalate to threats of mutilation just to assert dominice which is absolutely sick. Most of the time these leads used to be office workers or terminally ill patients, they know how terrible it is to be treated like garbage by their superiors yet they continue to absue every maid who isn't getting on their knees for them. Most maids in real history would not mistreat a noble even if they were the most hated in the house and even if they did they'd be fired without a letter of recommendation so why can't the FL's just fire the rude maid if they care about dignity so much because I'm pretty sure getting violent with a maid isn't very dignified either.

8: disgusting age gaps

Very similar to #6 but in this case while the ML/FL isn't a cruel monster to their partner it doesn't change the fact that grooming and pedophilia is still a crime worthy of life in prison. You'd think "oh no way, this can't be justified can it?" You'd be wrong. Now I belong to house of Castillo thankfully has a larger fanbase of people who think that a relationship between a girl who got groomed by her knight is bad but in cases like into the light once again a lot of people like to say "Well Aisha is technically 28 so it's fine!" When it really isn't since Aisha is still mentally 14. Taming my ex husbands mad dog is another one that does this with Reinhardt grooming a 16 year old boy and its apparently meant to be "cute".

9: claiming a character as unattractive yet giving them a perfect body and appreance

I just think this is a major cop-out since there's time where they want to make a realistic story yet also wanting a fantasy fufilment. I don't think its a coincidence that the only woman in tears of a withered flower that yout supposed to support is a Victoria's secret model body type. Even though she's meant to be an overworked exhausted 33 year old woman being mocked for losing her beauty she sure as hell isn't drawn that way, the only other women around hae soo are all women with smaller boob's and in general more common body types that are either classed as stupid or jealous that Hae soo is so beautiful that all the attractive men want her

how about we don't pit all the women against each other for once? And let's especially not villainize other women because their jealous they could never be have large boob's and tiny arms+waist at the same time?

10: the commoner protagonist actually being a noble rich person all along

Look I know most of us had loved those "the hated child is the lost princess" GLMM but we need to drop it because it's kinda disappointing that the nobody who had to work their way to the top is actually a secret magical princess who had royal blood in them all along. While I did think the villainess turns the hourglass was a pretty decent read I was super disappointed finding out that Aria was of noble descent all along. I liked seeing a commoner protagonist for once and it really felt like it was critiquing the idea that all commoners and poor people who want nice things like the nobility are greedy animals. Something similar can also happen with certain saintess manhwas that decide to twist itself into "the villainess was the true saintess all along!" And I'm just sitting here thinking "well there goes the hope that you didn't need the super duper rare power to be a strong character"

I feel way better now after writing all this.

[acepalindrome]

It had been weeks of being trapped on top of a table in Volkarin’s study and Johanna was quite literally bored out of her skull. She was also, infuriatingly, surrounded by books, none of which she had access to because she no longer had hands.

Volkarin was probably too much of a square to have any books that would help her figure out how to free herself from her present predicament (and she will find a way out of this, mark her words! And when she does, there will be more names added to the revenge list!!) but there could still be some tomes in his collection that could be of use to her, or at least keep her from losing her mind from boredom.

But she had to solve the issue of how to get the books first. Well, who has hands? That stupid little skeleton boy. Volkarin and his obnoxious paramour do have hands as well, but Johanna would sooner crumble to dust than ask them for help. So, how to convince the skeleton to help her?

She started by offering to teach him spells that Volkarin was too much of boring coward to let the little brat learn. This worked quite well. The skeleton was eager to learn anything new, and soaked up information like a sponge. He still insisted on calling her ‘bad,’ as if that was her name, and occasionally told her to ‘be nice’ when she let Volkarin’s idiot roommates know exactly what she thought of them, but aside from those annoyances, he was a passable student.

There was also the incident when she taught him the Grease spell, which he decided to test out all over the study floor just as Volkarin was entering the room. Best entertainment she’d had in ages. Volkarin, after he finally managed to pull himself upright on a chair after several hilariously failed attempts, had demanded to know where his skeleton ward had learned that spell. The boy had just innocently pointed at the shelves and said ‘book!’ until Volkarin gave up and shuffled off to tend to his bruises. The boy had then turned back to Johanna, giving her a thumbs up with his gloved bony hands.

So now she knew he could be trusted to be discreet. Excellent.

Finally the next step of the plan could commence. She asked him to bring her a book, and explained how to hold it up for her to read and to turn the pages when she instructed. It would be more difficult to request specific books, since the boy didn’t seem able to read yet, but that bridge could be crossed later.

The boy understood the instructions and had fetched her a rather dry field guide on mushrooms from Ferelden. It wasn’t exciting reading, but damn the gods it was a relief to have something to read!

But then about an hour later, the boy closed the book, declared that it was now ‘Manfred turn!’ and clattered his way back to the bookshelf.

He returned with an illustrated copy of The Grand Adventures of Jeremy the Nug.

…well. Part of this plan did involve staying in the boy’s good graces. This was a sacrifice she must make for her ambitions. Just so long as Volkarin didn’t find out about it.

(Emmrich did indeed find out, about a week later. Rook stopped by his room to ask him a question and found him hiding outside the door, a hand clasped over his mouth and shoulders shaking with silent laughter.

From inside, two voices could be heard.

“And the king said, ‘Jeremy, for your great bravery-’”

“No! Do voices!”

Sigh. “And the king said,” now in a comically posh voice, “‘Jeremy, for your great bravery, I will grant you the Magical Lance of Dragon Slaying. Now go forth, young nug! The fate of the kingdom is in your paws!’”)

[somewillwin]

the way i’ve been away from ifs for around a year and you single-handedly reminded me i was obsessed with infamous and made me realize i haven’t played the last update just from stalking your blog ahsjdjd… would you spare some if recommendations pls? 🥺 so curious abt what you’re into lately bc i remember we had pretty similar taste in ifs/ros lmaooo

Damn I was writing this and tumblr closed and I lost it all 😭😭😭

Ok so AGAIN!

@vapolis ! I love the merc so much and orla my Queen 😩😩😩 (I love crazy mcs)

@apt502-if is a slice of life pretty cute with a side of heartbreaking lmaooo just how I like it. (I’m about to brake a couple up)

@pressplay-if is another musician if but the story is told by a bunch of interviews about how your band split up??? Really interesting.

@thesoulforgeorder this one is made by a friend and has TOO MANY CHOICES and variations and I looove.

@taleofcrowns X my beloved!!! I need to replay this whole if before ch 12 comes out cause it’s been a while.

@bloodlegacies !!! I love this one. Cold mc x fiery princess from a rival kingdom??? Yummmmmmmm

@sanguinesky-if siblings!!!!! 🥹🥹🥹 also moreno my beloved I love her. I’m a fan of detective mysteries ✌🏼😗

The bureau by @morbethgames ! I’m not sure yet who I’m gonna romance here but I love the team dynamics and how it is to step into that team as a new agent after the trauma the team went through.

I don’t remember more right now.

Ones I love love love but they haven’t updated in a while, but if you want them!

@swallowthedark I LOVE THIS ONE SO MUCH. I love ifs that let me have siblings and taking care of them

@speakergame you probably know this one but if you don’t? PLAY IT!

@if-mirrormine this is such an interesting premise it got me hooked immediately. Basically time stuff, you disappear for like 10 years but for u was like a second. So pretty angsty i love. Also love the mom and sibling 🥹🥹🥹

@whisper-game what can I say. I love crazy mcs shhshshsh

I can probably think of more but I think that’s enough for now lmaoooo

[gyuswhore]

Never Shall We Die (3; final)

«« 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 tags: hoshi loves thighs, corruption kink to the mAX, clit stimulation, oral (f. receiving), breast play, p in v sex (unprotected, 1800s contraception will make you prefer it but pls dont do this irl), making out

[AN]: final part oh my god if youve read the other parts up till now, THANK YOU SO MUCH I LOVE YOU i hope you guys enjoyed reading this as much as i loved writing it, im really proud of this fic and im so happy so many of you have enjoyed it so far. @highvern betaing as always ty for not giving up on me. AS ALWAYS, PLS TELL ME YOUR THOTS IN THE RBS OR THE REPLIES OR SEND ME AN ASK LITERALLY WTV MUAH MUAH HAPPY READING <3

THIS IS THE NICEST PRISON Hoshi has ever been in, which was saying something, because he had been in quite a lot of prisons. 

But it was uncomfortable nonetheless, six grown men tied up and shoved into a crouching space to be done with as the men that prowled above pleased. 

Hoshi would be lying if he said he hadn’t had to restrain from pushing some of those sorry soldiers into the ice waters beyond the glaciers. He had resisted, the crew had resisted, but just enough to convince them of their unwillingness. 

Hoshi had realised early on that there was no possible way of getting aboard Tigress without somehow climbing aboard the King’s boat first. The king wasn’t about to simply hand Hoshi’s ship over, and there was no indication that they'd wait till after nightfall to depart. 

Hoshi also knew that the King would refuse to have him die so easily in the waters of the Green Islands, his pride depended on it. He imagines the man drawing up the specifics of the most gruesome execution the Kingdom would ever see. Hoshi was counting on it. 

The bounds could’ve been broken out of and the locks somehow picked, but Hoshi also knew that he had to wait. Wait for you to find him first. 

“What’s taking her so long?” Jun asks. He’d been the most anxious out of all, the shaking feet and restless moving making it clear. 

“The bomb won’t…go off still strapped to her, will it?” Minghao asks and Hoshi isn’t quite sure he wants to know the answer. 

“It shouldn’t. Not until she pulls the tab. But…”

“But?” Hoshi whips around. “Why is there a but? You were supposed to make sure there was no but!”

“Big bomb, more boom, less predictable!” 

“Are you sure we can’t break out and look for her ourselves?” Mingyu grumbles, the most compromised with his longer limbs folded in uncomfortable positions.

“The minute they know we’re loose they’ll swarm her. There won’t be a way to get to her, not without fighting off every last bastard on this ship. They’ve taken our stuff too, we don’t stand a chance.”

They did, actually, stand a chance. But that was only if they were to break away and head straight for Tigress that was empty and standing right beside this very ship. But they couldn’t. Hoshi couldn’t. Not without taking you with him. 

Nobody dares to suggest the easier route, and he doubts it’s just because of what he wants. 

But panic was beginning to trickle into Hoshi’s veins anyway, the closed off brig refusing to give him any indication of the time of day. 

The sun was only beginning to set when they were taken to the ship, and he knew they were near done for if they didn’t finish what they started before nightfall. He can’t tell how long it’s been, and it eats away at his insides. 

Please be okay. 

And then he hears it, the sound of a body hitting the floors with a loud thud, a chortle of air before it’s knocked out. He finds himself sitting up straighter, pressing his hands to bars of the prison, trying to peer out the narrow walkway that leads to the doors. 

And then you appear in the lamplight, haphazard and ruffled up beyond measure. 

The knife in your hand drips with blood, your shirt torn at the arms, your hands bloodied and bruised. 

When Hoshi sees your face he almost doesn’t recognise you. 

There’s angry blooming marks of red and purple all across your neck and collarbone, your eyes bloodshot and red, watering like you’d been swimming in salt water. 

“Who did this?” he asks before anything else, watching you drop to your knees in front of the prison, unanswering as you fumbled with a giant ring of keys in your hand. 

You jam each key into the lock, twisting it to no avail. Your hands are shaking. 

The crew finally twist out of their loose bonds, Minghao lurching forward immediately, swatting your hands away. He picks out a few skinny pins from his boot, picking the rusty lock. Despite the strange angle, the bars creak open within seconds. 

“There’s…There’s ropes hooked onto the ship on the main deck.” 

Your voice sounds like you’re speaking through sandpaper, talking while struggling to emerge with the bomb you had. 

Hoshi doesn’t know what to do when he crawls out of the space. 

He’d had it all figured out in his head, what would happen in every possible outcome. You getting hurt wasn’t in any of his universal conclusions; especially not on this ship. They’d kill his crew, they might even kill the King with themselves, but you were meant to remain unscathed. 

“Why–why do you look like that? What happened?” Nothing registers in his head, not even when Jun is pushing him out into the hall. 

“Get up to the deck and get out across the lines!” Jun gruffs in his ears. “That bomb’s gonna go off with us still on here.”

He sees the canister that lies in the same prison they had just exited, he sees your mouth moving without sound. All he can think of are the distinct fingerprints around your throat and how it looked like somebody tried to kill you before they tried to kill him. 

“Soonyoung,” he hears you say in a broken voice and that’s all it takes for him to snap out of it. 

His crew is looking at him expectantly. He looks back at the door and sees the crumpled bodies of the prison guards. 

So much for leaving quietly. 

The minute Hoshi is out the door of the brig, he finds a chest next to the collapsed, bleeding soldiers. Kicking it open, he can only scoff as he finds the entire crew’s weapons in such close vicinity. 

He feels better with his dagger at his hip, along with the rest of his knives that he slips into the loops. Even more so with the rest of his crew armed and ready. 

“We know where the deck is.” He swallows, eyeing his crew’s weapons in their ready hands. He knew they’d agreed to ensure the clean sinking of the ship, but the fallen bodies on the floor were an ode to a different route they’d have to take. “Don’t hesitate if someone gets in your way.”

Taking cautious steps to the upper decks, he finds more bodies collapsed onto the floor, bleeding and unconscious. He opts to ask you the details later, wondering how you were able to take down all these guards by yourself. 

It isn’t until they reach the stairs that lead to the main deck that he comes across a guard. 

Before the witness can raise any alarm, Hoshi’s slamming the butt of his dagger into the side of his head, knocking him clean unconscious as he falls off the side of the short railing. 

Clambering up the steps as quietly as possible, he raises a hand behind him to signal his crew to halt, peering into the main deck first. 

The sun is still out, but low in the sky as it dips in the sky. There’s a few people on the deck, pacing and moving about in preparation for departure. Angling his gaze, he finds ropes suspended over the edge of the railing, parallel to the water. 

He can’t see Tigress, but he knows that’s what the ropes are hooked on to. 

“Jun,” he beckons. “How long till the bomb on the other ship goes off?”

The bomb Jun had planted in the first ship they had arrived in should be going off any time now, and Hoshi finds himself needing it to go off now. 

Jun barely opened his mouth to reply when the ship shuddered. 

For a moment, Hoshi thinks the bomb in the brigs had gone off, but when he finds the clambering of boots to one side of the ship, opposite to where the ropes tied to Tigress, he realises their surrogate ship had given its last gift to the crew. 

The rest of the ship would be bounding to the main deck to inspect the noise soon, so he shoots a quick, “Hurry!” behind him before stepping onto the main deck. 

The entire deck is occupied with the ship that lies a ways away across the expanse of sea, the beginnings that would soon lead the entire ship to be engulfed in flames. It’s tilting at a dangerous angle. 

Hoshi stands as he uses the crew straight towards the ropes that lead to Tigress. Glancing, he finds Mingyu and Chan already hanging on the suspended ropes, making their way towards the empty deck of their ship. 

Hoshi keeps his eyes on the occupied men on board, still staring at the lightshow that was their old ship. It isn’t until one of them turns, eyes towards the stairs that lead to the lower decks, that his eyes dart to the unfamiliar men on the deck. 

“Fuck,” Hoshi curses, before lunging, grabbing the man by the shoulders and covering his mouth, dragging him wordlessly to the edge before throwing him off the ship and into the icy waters below. 

“Go!” he hears you rasp brom behind him, ushering him to the ropes. 

The crew is gone, Jun making the last jump to land on the deck. They’re running around, pulling ropes and fastening the sails to push the ship off into open waters as soon as possible. 

There’s two ropes that tie the two ships together, and Hoshi ushers you onto one of them, pushing you to suspend yourself before he follows. 

“There’s not enough time, go to the other one!” you tell him, pushing him to hold onto the other tattered rope. 

Soonyoung eyes your state, “Are you sure you can—”

“Yes! I promise I can, please, before they cut both the ropes.”

So he trusts you, eyes straight ahead to the railing of his ship, gripping the rough, frayed rope to push himself towards the deck. His hands burn, but he finds himself moving ever closer to his final destination. 

His hand grabs hold of the wooden railing of his Tigress at long last, pulling himself onto the deck of his beloved ship. Immediately whipping his head to his right, he tries to find you reaching the ship with him. The crew is preoccupied in attempting to get the ship ready for departure, he finds your form nowhere. 

When he looks back, the rope he had climbed was gone, leaving gaping space in its absence. He trails the second rope, from the hook that had dug into the railing of Tigress’s wood, trailing it to the naval ship’s deck. 

What he sees puts his heart in his throat. 

You stand on the deck of your father’s ship, swarmed by now alert guards and soldiers who swarm you, yelling profanities and orders as they watch their prisoners get away right in front of them. 

Hoshi watches as you lift your dagger, and cut the last rope that ties you together, free to fall and hit against the hull of his ship.

He calls out your name in what could only be described as a guttural scream. 

His crew halts whatever it was they were doing, taking the steps to realise what had just happened. 

Hoshi’s boot meets the top of the railing, ready to take the plunge into the water. He’d climb back up the ship and get you out. He doesn’t know what you were thinking, what he was thinking when he left you there, but he’d get you out. 

Arms pulling him, he’s yanked back and positively thrown onto the deck.

“What is wrong with you?” Minghao yells, pushing his captain back as he springs up. 

“She—”

Your father emerges from the crowd of guards and soldiers that run rampant on the deck, approaching you at the railing of the main deck. 

Hoshi sees the hand that remains on his shoulder, the blood that covers the still bleeding wound, the effort it takes him to simply walk. 

The bruises on your neck, the wound at his shoulder that looks like it was slashed through by a knife. 

And then it clicks in Hoshi’s head, what had truly happened in the hours that you were out of his sight. And all he sees is red.

WITH THE WAY THE words on the pages seem to double, you would’ve thought you were going mad. 

You’re a child, barely grown into your own body as you sit in the dimly lit library of the palace, utterly exhausted, wishing to be anywhere but sitting at the wooden desk with your name on it. The moon barely shone through the window, your only source of light the fireplace that burned in the corner and your lamplight. 

It was a time where you felt like you could prove yourself, that perhaps, the reason your father refused you his approval was because you were simply not working hard enough. And now, at an hour where you should be fast asleep in your four poster bed, you attempt to understand diplomatic structures and everything that made your country what it was. 

It was late, and there was nothing you would’ve liked more than to put your head on the table and rest your eyes for a few tantalising seconds, which you do, right over the book you were reading. 

You awoke in the same place, shaken awake by a panicked looking servant, the sun shining through the great windows of the palace library.

It seems your disappearance from your bedchambers had put the entire palace in disarray, not realising the princess was fast asleep behind the giant pile of books other servants had already skimmed past thrice. 

Not only were you unable to recite the rankings of the constitutions with the vigour your father required, but you were unable to give him a reason as to why you were absent for both breakfast and morning lessons. 

He made the servants kneel in the throne room for hours, and did not fail to tell you that it was all your fault.

And now, in the ice cold of the Green Islands, old and wise enough to know that your father simply needed a reason to despise his heir, you accept the hands around your throat as his final act of terror. 

Red faced and arms shaking, your father does not speak to you as he presses down on your windpipe with all his might. Your vision is going dark and splotchy, and you decide, for a moment, to let him have this moment. 

He’s too preoccupied in applying his pressure to realise that you’ve raised your right foot enough for your hands to fish out your knife from its place, taking positivity in the handle of your knife that fits in your hand. 

Before you can lose consciousness, you raise your arm high, and plunge it directly into his neck. 

Howling, he releases you from his hold, both of you dropping to the floor of the ship with a resonating thud. You cough, sputter and hack, cold hands finding your now warm neck. 

Your father lays clutching his shoulder as he remains in agony on the floor, and you realise you missed the crucial plunge in your own disarray. 

It was good enough, rendering the old man incapable of finding his bearings. 

You watch as he writhes on the floor of the quarters that almost became your figurative deathbed, the same hands that wrapped around his own daughter’s throat now clutching the shallow wound that renders him useless. 

Standing over him, throwing your own shadow on his body, you feel a surge of power, a rush of adrenaline that shoots straight to your head. Perhaps this was your circulation returning from the deprivation, but you let the feeling imprint in your soul, let your father’s broken figure bring you satisfaction.

You leave him there, writhing in pain, digging your knife under the lock of the quarters, pulling back to break it away from the door. The guards stationed outside do nothing as you leave, and it isn’t until you’ve taken to lower decks that you hear the distinct yell of, “Your Majesty!”

Two more guards, who don’t expect an altercation from their princess, simply buffer as you send your knife plunging into them both. You do it deep this time. 

Nobody was innocent, you knew these people as your father’s closest men, and knew that all of them were to remain silent as their King murdered his daughter. And when the remorse doesn’t do that thing where it trickles in after doing a bad thing, you decide you weren’t part of the innocents either.

It’s easier than you would’ve expected to get to the crew in the brig, letting out a sigh of relief as you appreciate the familiarity of people on your side. 

And when Hoshi took his place to guide everyone out and into the open space of the main deck, you let your racing mind rest and decide to trust the man in whatever decision he made to lead you all out. And he did, he led himself and his crew right into the ship that was theirs, safe and where they would have the upper hand. 

Hoshi didn’t know it when he climbed onto the ropes that lead to his boat that he wouldn’t have made it if you hadn’t stayed, hadn’t used your voice of authority to keep the soldiers from attempting to shoot at the escapees, cut the rope while Hoshi remained suspended from it, still only halfway there. 

You didn’t look at him when you sliced both ropes before either party could pull back, didn’t register him screaming your name across the void, pretending it wasn’t taking everything out of your strength.

But you couldn’t jump into the water, not now when a dozen of the royal guards remained ready to take the plunge to save their princess as their duty. The same guards that would comply with their king when told the princess was dead for reasons they all knew but were to forget. 

The bomb had to go off first, and you had to keep them away from hooking another line to the ship in the meantime. You were operating on a flawed plan and an overenthusiastic crowd of guards that were moments away from shooting a canon straight into the side of the disconnected pirate ship.  

The distraction comes in the form of your father parting the crowd of soldiers like the red sea, swatting every soldier that attempts to help his bleeding form for anything it was worth. He approaches you at the railing, and for once, you don’t look at the ground in his presence. 

“Bold,” he heaves, the effort in his voice apparent. “Bold of you to think you could slip away.”

“I haven’t tried to slip away, father,” you correct. “I’ve stayed right here, even after you failed to kill me. And I, you.” 

“Nobody is going to listen to you, child. Give in. This is the easy way out,” he says. 

As if on cue, Jun’s bomb goes off for the second time, but this time the ship shudders with more force. It has your father unbalance and fall, along with multiple other soldier’s stumbling. You grip the railing tight, counting on your father’s need to live. 

Despite your horrid throat and the ache in your body, you announce as loud as you can. “The bomb is in the brig, this ship is sinking.”

The fallen king trembles in a rage you had never quite seen before. Any other time of your life, you would’ve wished for the ground to swallow you whole to be the subject of such anger. 

Except, in the setting sun, a burning ship in the background, a pirate ship that awaits you, and the ground beneath your feet that was actively sinking into the freezing water; you smile at your doomed King. 

“Get to the brig! Secure the lower decks, do not let this ship sink or so help me God!” His voice rings across the deck, spittle blowing from his mouth at the situation. 

And just like that, your father gives you the final gift of clearing the main deck out for you, leaving but a few straggling soldiers that are too preoccupied with either the sinking ship or their bleeding sovereign. 

Looking back, you find the crew of Tigress standing at the railing, you find Hoshi already half over the edge and send him a slow nod. 

Turning back to your father that remains on the floor of the ship that would become his coffin, you utter your next words; for yourself, and the girl that was every second before this, all the way to her first ever memory of sad:

“You’ve taught me to be a ruler fit to be the best for our Kingdom. Consider your death my first act of service for the Crown.”

And then you jumped into the darkening void of the waters below. 

THE COLD FEELS LIKE every nerve in your body ceased to work. 

It was nothing at first, the temperature so intense it had your body numb in the face of shock. And then it grew, to a striking cold, and then a feeling that pricked every inch of your skin like a million needles plunging into your body. It was only getting worse with each passing second, before it was so painful it was hot, going from cold to searing and blistering like you’d plunged into the licks of flames. 

Nowhere in your body did you find a rational sense of mind, something to tell you to kick, flail or float. The warped sky was an orange through the green, only more vibrant. Like there were two ships actively burning on the surface of this water. 

Hoshi’s face appears behind your closing eyelids, like a mirage or a taunt. Like he was there with you when he wasn’t. 

Would he come for you? Would he take the plunge for the girl he held in his arms, promising her something to fill the gap of a companion, right before she killed her own? 

You’d given him what he wanted; your father, his worst enemy, dying as he sank slowly into the bottom of the ocean. You’d run your course of use, and if he was as smart as people claimed, he’d leave you to suffer the same fate as your father. 

He could find his freedom elsewhere. 

And you would find your freedom in the close of your eyes, and the sinking feeling of nothingness. 

Except, you feel a hardness against your body, stronger even than the current of the waters. Moving impossibly upwards, you remember opening your eyes to find a leather cord suspended in the float of the water, before you remember nothing. 

THE GREEN ISLANDS WERE on fire.  

But as unnatural as it seemed, Hoshi had no inclination to register anything but the way the ship in front of him tilts so far out it's already half submerged in the waters. He’d assumed they might have to ready the cannons, but with the way debris and hollowed wood floats in the waters below, they would not need to. 

The King was about to be introduced to Davy Jones’ Locker at the hands of his enemy and successor, but Hoshi could not care enough right now to relish in it. 

Right now, he stares at the direct circumference of water your body had made contact with and disappeared into, like the world would explode if he lost his place. 

“Should I jump as well?” Mingyu asks, already half taking his boots off. However, when the man turns to find his captain gone, he lurches over the railing to find his captain diving into the water through all the debris.

Hoshi lets the momentum of his dive take him as further down as possible, whipping his head around as soon as his eyes open into the abyss. The water ripples and erupts in showers of bubbles as broken pieces of ship come apart to fall into the water. It blurs his vision immensely, any ripple that could be you in the water coming out to be yet another piece of wasted wood. 

The deeper he goes, the more the water presses into his ears. He was a good swimmer, good at holding his breath when needed, but even he had limits. 

When he cannot see any sign of you, he begins to feel the churning of something skin to panic brew. Panic was never good, not this deep in the water. 

Twisting and turning, flailing about in place, moving dangerously closer to the burning ship that continued to drop flaming bits of killing slabs, he finds no sign of you in the water. 

Instead, he watches men in uniform sink deeper and deeper in their failed attempts to stay afloat. 

All he can think about is if they were losing the battle for air, then so were you, somewhere deeper in the void than he was. He prays that he’s looking aimlessly, that you’ve already somehow made your way to the surface by yourself, and you were safe on the deck. 

The beaded bracelet that remained on his wrist, but belonged to you. 

“A reason for you to come out of this alive.”

Even without the encasing on his wrist, you had given him more than enough reason to want to come out of this alive, to want to live beyond just for himself and his duty to the crew he’d taken in. 

He chose the life of a pirate because it was his only out, and every member of his crew that he recruited in succession, he acted as the hand he had needed so desperately in that awful brothel where his mother despised him and his father, a faceless man of Port Ash. 

Amphitrite was not kind, it was a lesson he learned quickly in his first ventures out at sea. So he too, had to learn to be unkind, to survive in the horrid bellies of ships that weren’t his own. And when Tigress came into his life like a vessel of hope, he found a home in her merciful wood, in the ship that he could call his very own. 

Hoshi lived as a free man on his ship, with his crew that had become his brothers in ways beyond what the thick of blood could offer. He did not care if he lived or died after that, as long as it was on his ship, in the waters that held no quarter for anyone, but gave him everything that nothing else could give him. 

And so when you approached him with a proposal so bizarre yet so apt for a man like him, he could not refuse. It may have been the way he saw himself in you, terrified of the prospects  but thirsting for an escape more than the fear that came with it. 

Besides, the king was a nuisance that needed to go, and he found himself agreeing to play the hand too complicated for you. 

What he did not expect was to end up here, in the depths of the ocean in the most uninhabitable part of the earth, trying to pull you out of the cold, unrelenting sea. 

Hoshi realises in that moment that this might ruin him, the possibility of breaking the surface without you. 

He decides that if the heavens do not let him find you, he would simply drown in the same waters that gave him purpose, and find peace with the idea that he would lay rest in the same waters as the person who might have given him something more. 

Kwon Soonyoung, the deadliest pirate to cleave the seas, was in love with you. A princess, so undeserving of a man like him; a bastard, a rogue, a good for nothing criminal. 

And when he spots the all too familiar build of your form, the linen shirt under the corset he had tied for you just hours ago, the dark brown trousers that signified the change he’d brought into your life, he swore to leave everything he’d ever known to thank the skies and seas for bringing him to you.

His burning lungs, screaming and searing for air, grabbing for your suspended arm that looked as defeated as your closed eyes. Tugging you towards him, he wraps his arm around you to press you to him as tight as he could. 

Relief. And with the warm sting in his eyes that he doubted was from the salt in the water, he’s sure of everything he’s felt with the feeling of you in his arms. 

With the bruising on your neck, the bleeding wound in your father’s shoulder, he finds it within his breaking body to begin kicking upwards. 

Every limb, every cell, every hint of life in his body shrieked with its efforts to make him stop. There was no air in his lungs and he’d lost track of time in his search for you, he doesn’t know how long he has. 

But if the blots of nothingness in his eyes were anything to go with, he doesn’t presume he has much. In a last ditch effort, he attempts to kick his boots off to weigh him down a little less, holding your dead weight tighter than anything. 

He was so close, he could feel the warmth of the upper levels of the water change in its temperature on his skin. The glow was near blinding as the orange refracted on the disrupted surface of the ocean, so close yet so far. 

Inch by inch, kick by kick, memory by memory, he does everything left in his drained power to touch the surface. 

And he does, breaking out hand first into the burning air of the world above, taking the longest gasp of air he ever has in his life. Once he’s sure he knows where he is, he pushes you up further on his chest, your head resting against his collarbone, still unconscious. 

“Stay with me, princess,” he pants into your ear, hoping you could hear. “I’ve got you.”

Chan and Mingyu are in the water beside him, pushing him towards the pulley that awaited them. 

Mingyu makes an attempt to take your weight of his already struggling captain, but Hoshi finds himself holding on to you tighter, simply urging him to help him back on the deck. 

The minute your head hits the wood of the deck, he’s checking your pulse. There’s no regard for the chaos that ensues around Tigress, both him and his crew too preoccupied with the way you were not breathing. 

“I–I can’t feel anything,” he stutters his words as Seungkwan places a less panicked hand at your neck, under your nose. 

“It’s weak, she’s taken in too much water.”

In an instant, he reaches for his knife at his hip, only to realise it was gone, lost somewhere in his rescue. 

“Knife,” he rasps before repeating louder. “Someone give me a knife!” 

The minute a hilt is in his hands, he’s pushing you over, to reach the back of your constricting corset, pushing his knife into the complicated sailing knot he’d tied it into before, breaking it free. With both hands, he takes hold of the top of the corset and rips it clean in half. 

Turning you back over, he presses his hands over your clothed stomach, pushing into it with all his strength in an attempt to get the water out of your system. He keeps his eyes on your face, and when he sees no sign of you coming round, he feels another set of hands pushing him off. 

Seungkwan takes over for his weakened captain, pushing into your stomach harder, attempting to get a break out of you. 

“Why isn’t she coming around, what’s going on?” He throws the question aimlessly as he takes your unmoving face in his hands, trembling from everything. 

Only a moment later, he hears the glorious sound of you sputtering like something was stuck in your throat, promptly spilling out an ungodly amount of water onto the deck as you retch loudly. 

Sitting up from the force, your hands clamp onto the deck as you cough and heave, Hoshi’s hand coming behind you to thump your back hard, pushing you to throw up any remaining seawater from your body. 

The sight of your back moving up and down, the audible sound of you taking in air; it was enough for Hoshi to simply lay on the deck and pass out. 

You rear your head and look up at him, both of you still breathing heavily. 

“You’re okay,” he assures, gulping. He takes your face in hands cupping it very gently as he speaks to you. “Go with Seungkwan, you’re okay, you’re safe.”

Nodding, you let yourself be helped up by the rest of the crew, watching as you’re led to the lower decks of the ship. 

“Open your shirt, let me see the wound,” Mingyu says, and Hoshi doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Looking down, he sees his shirt soaked in red, sticking to a wound on the right side of his torso. He didn’t even know where he got it. 

It looks like a shallow gash, but enough to leave a scar. He takes it better to have it tended to while he was still high on adrenaline and he couldn’t feel much of the pain. 

By the time Mingyu and Minghao are done cleaning him up and Hoshi’s standing upright with wobbly legs, he finds the two burning ships beyond his own mere floating structures of wood that were in slow flame. There’s too much debris, too many bits of everything that bob in the large expanse of water to make out any bodies. 

“There’s nobody,” Mingyu tells him. “Most of them were in lower decks when it all went down. Trapped themselves.”

“And…?” he asks in silence. 

“He stayed on the deck until it sank,” Minghao informs. “Yelling about how he…about how he should’ve finished her when he had the chance.”

“Horrible king and somehow an even worse father,” Mingyu scoffs. “Made it better to watch him die.”

“He didn’t suffer enough,” Hoshi croaks as the marks on your throat dot his vision. 

Just then, floating in the water, illuminated by the final streaks of setting light, Hoshi sees it. A darkened purple cloth right next to the hull.

“That,” he points out. “Get that out of the water.”

The late king’s purple cape laid on the deck of Tigress, darkened with water, but also with his blood.

To the Kingdom, this cape would be the last piece of their King that was gone too soon. But for every person on this ship, it would forever be their spoils of war.

Hoshi makes sure the cape will be dried and stored, ordering his crew to begin their slow journey out of the Green Islands, before he too crumples onto the deck unconscious. 

IT WAS A SPECTACLE to see Hoshi in his element. 

Something about how he seemed to beam, like this ship was charging him a different kind of energy. It was infectious, the rest of the ship decreasingly sour as they put on musical performances on the main deck while they cleaned the floors. 

As relieved as you felt, the tight ball of anxiety refused to leave the pit of your stomach as you grew closer to the Kingdom. Nothing could prepare you for the shitstorm you’d have to deal with the moment you’d step onto the soil off a pirate ship of all things—let alone as Queen. 

The first few days following the ship's exit from the Green Islands were difficult, if that was all you had to describe it. You took to your hammock for most of the day, curled up as you pretended to sleep, only waking up when one of the crew would come down to force feed you and to make sure you hadn’t died. 

You knew they were doing all this to make you feel better, and somehow it was working. More than halfway through your journey, you began to feel more like yourself, emerging from your cave to visit the deck on times other than the nights. 

Even now, as you sit on the floor of the deck with Seungkwan, who hands you an all too familiar stack of parchment, you feel nothing as you take them into your hands. As you read his handwriting scrawled in ink, you appreciate your past self for having the sense to keep them all. 

“I’m glad you’re feeling better now,” he says to you. “Had us worried for a while there.”

“Sorry.” You smile weakly. “But thank you for…everything. I don’t think I could ever express how much I appreciate everything you’ve done for me. All of you.”

“I’d like to think we’ve gone past the status of mere business partners,” Seungkwan chuckles. “Lion befriends the bear? Whatever it is. But know we’d do it again.”

Blinking back the sting of tears and doing your very best to not let the warm feeling in your chest overwhelm you, you place the letters on the floor next to your folded legs. When you look up, Seungkwan's eyes are on your neck.

“They’re taking their time to fade, aren’t they?” you say. 

Seungkwan has a hard look in his eye, “I guess you didn’t need your letters to remind you of anything after all.”

Your mind wanders, drifting past how easily this crew could have been forgotten in the unforgiving elements. Perhaps you would have let the man that wrapped his hands around your neck finish his job.

“Was getting captured part of your grand plan?” you ask Seungkwan. 

“Hm?” It takes a moment to realise what you may be questioning him about, smiling slightly. “What makes you think we went in with a plan?”

“I thought I asked you to man the wheel?” Hoshi stands above the both of you.

“Not to batten down the hatches,” he side-eyed his captain. “Clear waters ahead, the wheel does not need manning.” 

You zone out as they squabble over nothing, not finding the heart to be entertained by their back and forth. Seungkwan either loses or forfeits, because you feel him rise from next to you, only for his captain to take his place. 

“What are you thinking about?” Hoshi asks. 

“Everything,” you sigh. 

“How come Seungkwan gets a thank you for your service and I don’t? Need I remind you who jumped for you and who didn’t?”

Rolling your eyes, you answer him, “Thank you, Captain Hoshi Kwon, I am forever indebted to your service.”

He chuckles in exaggeration, “Oh please, all in a day's work.”

“I mean it.”

“Hm?”

“I never did say thank you. But you did jump for me when you didn’t have to.”

“Who said I didn’t have to?”

“Our deal was done.”

“Of course not,” he scoffs. “Our deal was to get you out when you jumped. I merely honoured that promise!”

“Merely?” you raise a brow. “Was it all merely a matter of conscience?”

His gaze locks with yours. “Don’t ask questions you know the answers for. I would’ve jumped even if you asked me to rope myself to the mast.”

“Please. I have enough blood on my hands and I haven’t even sat on my throne yet.”

“Blood is only on your hands if you tell a soul of what you’ve done,” Hoshi utters. “You’re the only living soul who knows.”

“And you are…?”

“Pirate. Our word means nothing.” Hoshi smiles. 

The thought hangs in the air as you take in the man in front of you. He’s changed an era’s worth, yet all the same. His hair is longer, going from his initial shorter crop to curling around his ears, shielding his eyes. It makes him look younger, like a boy with much to live for. 

That, and the multitude of notable scars he’s added to his collection, many of which have somehow been because of you. The wound at his torso is doing better, but far to go in its quest to heal. 

Hoshi senses something amiss even after his sermon. Breaking his gaze, he turns to look straight ahead at the raised bow of the ship instead. 

“Do you know how I got my splendid reputation for being the filthiest pirate on the seas?”

You can only stare, “I have a few guesses.”

He chortles, “Other than my criminal status.”

“Tell me.”

“Unnamed sailors have the odds of a peanut facing its inevitable fate of being crushed under a straggling boot. Pirates don’t see the government as their enemy when they’re own supposed brothers are more likely to jam a cannon in their mouths.”

He lets out a heavy sigh before continuing, “My mistake wasn’t that I was on the losing side in my early days, but more about how I was leaving nothing behind when I was done.”

“How humble,” you hum. 

“Dead men tell no tales. When it’s worth it, it might be better to leave a straggler or two to live to tell the tale. A routine stab in the jugular can turn you into somewhat of a myth.”

��Am I a survivor?” you question. 

“You may be sovereign on land, but you’re also an unnamed pirate,” he responds, turning back to lock eyes with you. “And you’ve left nobody to tell the tale.”

No one listens to a pirate, and everyone listens to a Queen. 

“This isn’t to say there won’t be a legend that follows you.” He quirks a brow as he speaks. “Shows up and claims her father and his entire ship and crew sank at sea, only to befriend his sworn enemies in the aftermath. And then it evolves; she sent a cannon through her fathers ship, he died at the end of his own daughter's sword, she cursed him to captain a crew of the undead for eternity.”

“Have I planted the seeds for yet another ghost story?” It’s difficult to not giggle at the thought, despite how morbid. 

“You’ve given yourself substance,” he says, a little stronger than before. His eyes too, wander to your neck and the bruises that refuse to budge. “Beyond just a royal or even a pirate. You did it for your honour as a human being, and that may be braver than anything I have ever conquered.”

In your anxiety ridden, feeble mind, your thoughts had convinced your conscience that everything would be over the minute your father’s heart stopped beating. That it would bring you peace at last. 

And it did, especially when it felt like you’d gotten rid of this constant monster under the bed that had followed you far into adulthood. But from the bleeding heart of the creature emerged yet another one of its brethren, and then another and then another. 

Smaller albeit, but monsters nonetheless. Problems nonetheless. 

Weeks of this, and in one short interaction, Hoshi seemed to have given you the key to turn this monster into a pet. 

On instinct, you feel your hand reach up, brushing against the skin of his cheek. It’s an all too familiar setting, seated on the deck of a ship too close for anybody but yours’ comfort. But without the rum and resentment, of course. And how you doubt he’d pull away this time. 

Very lightly, you brush your lips against his. It was nothing but to simply feel him again, to feel a semblance of familiarity. 

You feel him take your hand that rests on his cheek to place a kiss on your palm, nuzzling his nose into the concave of your hand. 

Everything that was to come seemed a little more possible in that very moment. 

Even more so when his fingers found the sensitive areas of your coloured throat, when his lips closed against your jaw, only to trail lower and to press into the marks his fingers continue to trail tucked into your neck. 

That night, when slipping into your hammock felt like the most unbearable prospect in your near future, it couldn’t possibly be worse than uttering your next question to the man that seems to fix it all.  

“Will you stay with me?”

With nothing but the light snores of the rest of the crew and the creaking of the ship, both you and Soonyoung laid in a hammock most definitely not meant for two. Head on his chest, ear pressed against where his heart beats under his scar, it’s bliss. 

The feeling of his warm body against yours and the scent of him settling in your lungs, you decide that this was enough. At least for now. 

IT WAS DIFFICULT TO give yourself the full list for obvious reasons, but it does seem to help when you tick off all the possible reasons why your patience has run as thin as it has. 

Sitting at the decorated seat at the convened court of old men appointed by your father, you briefly wonder if you should finish them off too amidst your flash of anger. The men continue to squabble and babble about the next course of action, slamming their wrinkled hands on the pristine table and sending their own daggers of threats to the other inhabitants of the table. 

“If you’d like to send a search party for the King’s body, be my guest,” you finally speak, having had quite enough when the throb in your temple worsens. “But remind me what troops you’ll be sending to the North if your best men will be gone for months attempting to find a body they never will.”

The dispute in the North side of the Kingdom was taking up most of the conversation anyway, and you doubt they’d put customary burial rites over their own glory of victory the North would bring. 

“Your Majesty—”

“I would happily jump on the next search ship for my father,” you lie through your teeth. “But I watched him drown in front of my own two eyes, and as the next sovereign I cannot let you waste our resources for something that will both risk our soldier’s lives and have them come back home empty handed.”

Perhaps you had come off slightly more heartless than you intended, so you quickly add, “Please, let my father rest in peace.”

That seems to end the conversation easier than you had expected, but they’re quick to jump to the next issue not long after. 

“The court would also like to bring light upon the palace guests.”

Tightening your jaw, you slump against your seat slightly. “What about them?”

They remain silent as their mouthpiece attempts to form the right words for the following question, mostly because you’ve addressed this multiple times beforehand but they continue to sit restless. 

“Allow me to help you, Lord Bridge,” you sit up straighter, intending to put this matter to rest. “My guests will remain here for as long as they do, and if you have any more arising issues towards my guests I will only take it as your collective issues towards me.” 

In the moment of silence, you continue, “The Kingdom is in a place of instability as we are all well aware. I find it most appalling that you remain fixated on trivial matters of the palace’s domestic code of conduct than you do for the wellbeing of this country!”

Silence yet again as you wait for their forcibly rehearsed chorus of apologies. 

“Our greatest apologies, your Majesty.”

The pain in your temples becomes near unbearable as you dismiss the table after that, screeching your chair as you push it back as loud as you possibly can to do nothing but spite the men. 

Turning the corner out of the room, you catch the open gates that lead to the paved gardens outside, the sun seeping into the marble floors indoors. Taking an instinctive step towards the gardens, you find most of the crew sprawled onto the grass as they soak in the sun. 

Chan and Seungkwan look like they’re wrestling, their laughter ringing throughout the open court while their captain snaps at them to cut it out, only to get roped under one of their headlocks all the same. 

There’s a call of your name and a giant wave from Mingyu, who spots you from beyond the flower beds. Still leaning against the gates, you smile and wave back. 

Years the halls of the palace had gone, never hearing laughter in its walls. And something about watching them let themselves ruin the petunias and laugh so loud it echoes, heals you just a bit. 

Even that night, when you find yourself in your giant four poster bed you’ve slept in since you were a child, this time dozing under the arm of another, you feel the itch of a healing wound somewhere in your heart. 

Soonyoung laid with you for every night on the ship since that night, and stayed even here where the space was big enough to host the ghosts of your worries if not distracted. 

He had found you on that first night in the palace still awake, haunting the library fireplace with another stack of papers to keep you company. 

“Can’t sleep?” he’d asked as he picked up some of your documents. 

“Clearly not,” you huff. The papers were mere decorations as you attempted to find an excuse to leave your rooms. 

“You realise you won’t be much of an effective monarch if you exhaust yourself to death?”  

There was no answer to that, especially when you were absorbing nothing of your new duties. You’d expected to fall asleep on the armrest of the uncomfortable settee whenever it was that you exhausted your brain of thoughts, even then refusing to sleep in that large bed. 

He’s awfully persuasive, because as he tucks you into those very sheets, about to leave but not before placing a kiss on your forehead You stop him. 

“Stay. Please.”

True as he has always been, he does.

THE CROWN IS HEAVIER than you had expected, even more so when it remains on your head for longer than your previously practised sessions walking around the throne room. The crew was exceptionally good at giving you things to train with, including fraudulent rodent scares to ensure the crown would not topple from your own head the minute you rise from your coronation.

And now, as you finally remove the decorative piece from your head after your actual coronation to replace it with something lighter for the following ball, you find relief in the fact that you’d only ever have to wear the actual thing only a few times in your life. 

Everything moves as smoothly as it could, the decorated pirates that saved their Queen from a horrid shipwreck taking up most of the attendees attention as they either question inquisitively or send snarky remarks to the men who are well versed in how to rebut in true informal manner. 

The past months had taken up more of your time than you had anticipated, and during the latter half of the still twinkling party, you attempted to spot the person you’ve been trying to corner all night. 

Soonyoung stands at the edges of the gathering, empty handed as you watch him reject yet another offer for a drink from the trays that float about. His attire is the most formal you had ever seen, his face scrubbed and hair pushed back for the glorious occasion. 

Approaching him from the sidelines, you take hold of his wrists and pull him towards one of the many doors in the ballroom and into a hallway you knew for a fact was rarely ever frequented. 

“I feel I haven’t seen you ages,” you say once you’re sure you’re alone. 

“Probably best for you to keep busy,” he replies with the smallest smile. 

“Have the wrappings on your wound come off?”

Looking at his covered torso, he runs an instinctive hand over where the wound was. “Just a smaller patch now, but it’s nearly there. Disappointed it won’t scar too much.”

“Disappointed?” 

“These are my spoils of war, miss princess,” he adds with a smirk, before correcting himself. “Ah, miss queen?”

“Doesn’t have the same ring,” you comment. 

“The crown suits you.” His voice is soft and sincere.

Scoffing a little, you answer, “I would hope it did.”

“Although, I do prefer you in trousers and a knife.”

Laughing, you can only agree. Especially in your heavier than yourself dress and jewels. “I think I prefer them too.”

At the mention of your new status, he asks, “Shouldn’t you be milling between your new subjects?” 

Keeping your eyes on his face, you wait until he meets your gaze. “I have more important things to attend to.”

He breaks eye contact first, and you can feel the distance grow further. One reach and you could take his hand in yours. 

But you don’t. 

“I know I’ve been quite busy, but…” you trail off as you attempt to find the words. “Is something the matter? What’s going on?”

With a long sigh, he runs a hand through his kept hair, effectively tousling it a little. “I was going to wait until after the ball to tell you.”

“Tell me what?”

He makes no moves to look at you when he utters his next words. “The crew and I will be leaving at dawn tomorrow. We’ve taken up enough of your space and it’s best if we don’t intrude any further.”

It’s like you’ve taken a blow to the chest, the air knocked out of your lungs as you register what he’s just said. “You’re….you’re leaving?”

“I would think we’ve both gotten what we wanted. We had a deal.”

Deal? Why was he mentioning that now?

“Are you going to abandon me too?”

His head snaps up to finally meet your eye, mouth opening closing as words betray him. 

“What happened to what you said about gaining you? All of you?” There’s a blatant accusation in your words.

“And you have! We’ll visit. Assuming the state doesn’t want my head on a pike anymore,” he chuckles uncomfortably. 

In a moment of desperation, you take his hand in both of yours; his scarred, gnarled hands that tell you even in the dark who’s warmth it is that you feel every night next to you. 

“Stay. Stay with me, please,” you plead. “I can’t live in this place alone, I despised it when I was young and I’ll only despise it even more now.”

Soonyoung brings his other hand to clasp over both of your own, eyes closing as you hear him take a somewhat shaky breath. “I’m doing this for the both of us.”

“So am I! I can’t possibly rule a kingdom by myself.”

“I’m sure you’ll find someone—”

“I don’t want someone! I want you!”

He begins to whisper your name, moving his face away to blink rapidly. 

“How do you feel about becoming a pirate king? I can never forbid you from the waters, that’s your home, and you will have it.”

He does not look at you, but you know he’s listening more intently than ever before.

“But I ask you as someone who loves you more than I have ever anything else, will you stay and marry me?”

Soonyoung falters as he absorbs the fact that you’ve just proposed to him. 

“I—” he stutters. “The court—”

“The court wouldn’t dare to deny me the man that saved my life.”

You squeeze his hand tighter, moving impossibly closer. 

“And even if they do, I'm ready to fight for the man who fought for me. So answer me as a man and not a pirate, Kwon Soonyoung, will you marry me?”

Soonyoungs mouth enclosing over your own is all the answer you need as you feel him break free of your hands to let them find your waist instead. Amidst the pile of fabric he pushes himself into you as close as possible, letting your hands guide his head to move against your mouth. 

It’s everything, as you grip onto the back of his shoulder, pressing unforgettably into his open mouth. He takes in your bottom lip between his own, sucking before letting go, only to engulf your mouth once again. 

“We’ll figure it out,” you whisper against his lips, feeling the nuzzle of his nose against the apple of your cheek, hot tears spilling from your eyes. “I promise, we’ll figure everything out.”

He shushes you when he feels you shudder in his hold, pulling away to rest his forehead against yours. “No need to torment your pretty head. Not right now.”

For once, you listen to your pirate captain without a fight, simply feeling the stretch of your lips as he moves down to capture them once more. 

The pressure of his hands isn’t nearly as strong as it would’ve felt without the layers upon layers of fabric that cover your form, but standing in this desolate hallway, you swear his fingers might as well be caressing your bare skin underneath. 

The thought sends your mind into a dazzling spin, letting go of his mouth with a gasp, suddenly needing to take a step back. 

“I have to—I have to go back inside,” you breathe into his slick mouth. “Meet me outside my quarters at midnight.”

As scandalous as it was, you could not deny how alive it made you feel to be like this, meeting in darker corners in the dead of night. But for now, you allow him to fix the bits of your ensemble you could not see. With the bad of his thumb, he blends in the smudges of your rouge, swiping at your lips ever so delicately to ensure he leaves no trace of himself. Tucking the loose strands of hair back behind your ears, and finally, fixing the encrusted crown on your head, a flash of one of the diamond’s gleams reflecting onto his perfect face. 

“You’re beautiful.” There’s a dazed look that graces him. “Beyond beautiful.”

With one last innocent press of your smiling mouth onto his, you promise him your midnight. 

BY THE TIME IT was finally an appropriate hour for you to excuse yourself for the evening, you were near to exploding entirely. 

Whispers of “Are you alright, your Majesty?” plaguing you through your already racing mind. It was beyond difficult to keep the constant shaking of your foot unobvious, however you could not simply up and leave whenever you wanted—at least not yet. The monarch would remain in an unstable authoritative position for quite some time after ascension, and with the unorthodox situation at hand, you assume you’d really have to push yourself if you were to be of any use as sovereign. 

But when the time finally came and you were escorted out of the grand ballroom, only mere ticks away from the resounding bells of midnight, you were holding back from breaking into a sprint. Outside your quarters it was empty, but you remain steadfast in your refusal for your ladies in waiting tonight, promising you could dress yourself for bed on your own. 

Standing at the double doors of your rooms, still the princess’ quarters as you refuse to move into the Queen’s rooms, you stand waiting. The two guards remain staring straight ahead, and you wait for the clicking of your ladies to go muffled before you ask. 

“Has the Captain approached?” 

“No, your Majesty.”

You try not to feel disappointed, despite knowing the midnight bells were yet to sound. “If he does, allow him in, please.” 

Opening the double doors, you half wish you had let your ladies help you out of the god awful dress, tight and loose in all the wrong places. The jewels are thrown haphazardly on your vanity, needing the heavyweight of them off of your body. 

Perhaps months of little to no bedazzling had rendered you incapable of wearing anything mildly less comfortable than linen and leather, but you suppose you’d slip back into the habit just as easily as you slipped out of it. Your nightgown feels like heaven on your tired, tired body, and the dimly lit interior of your bedchamber is only encouraging you to slip under your covers and fall deep into sleep. 

That was one thing about the ship you doubt you’d ever miss. 

Three rapt knocks outside of the heavy double doors have you sitting rapt at attention, hastily making your way to the door from your vanity. Pressing the front of your nightgown down, you open the door slightly and poke your head out. 

Soonyoung stands at the door, nervous of all things, still clad in his full suit. You smile as you let him in, closing the door to turn the lock. 

“Your guards mortify me.” 

“Oh? So they’re doing their job right?” You walk up to him and grasp onto his lapels, pulling him down to meet the lips you’ve missed so much despite only being hours apart. “Why? Has this big bad pirate found his match in the palace guards of all places?”

“Hmm,” he’s humming against your lips. “I could take them both.”

Giggling like you were in love, you wrap your arms around his neck and hold him close. 

“I hope you weren’t bothered too much,” you say. “The aristocracy seem to have being a pain in the ass written in their birthrights.”

“I think they were too scared to approach, probably thought I’d start swearing and snatching the pearls right off their necks. Some of them were bearable, asked me how long my sword was.”

It’s difficult to not laugh at that, “Well?”

He raises his brows unceremoniously, “Won’t you like to know?”

Taking the opportunity while you giggled uncontrollably at the situation, he goes back placing never ending kisses to your mouth. Sighing involuntarily, you melt into him once again, infinitely more relaxed than in the hallway. 

Soonyoung’s eyelashes brush against yours in a whisper of their own, only reminding you how close you were to him in the moment. His kisses go from soft and fleeting to something with a little more vigour. The warmth of his mouth goes back to overtaking the lower half of your face, sucking and licking into your mouth like his life depended on it. 

If your mind was reeling when his hands were merely ghosts of pressure over your heavy dress, the feeling of his palms and fingers so distinct over your nightgown, the only thing separating you two, is enough to have your knees begin to buckle. 

From your waist, they move to your back, before caressing back to the sides of your waist, thumb running in circles. Gentle handfuls of your flesh, bunching and letting go of the material of your nightgown. Very soon, his mouth leaves yours and instead moves to your jaw, the air in the room letting you feel the wetness that he leaves behind as a passionate trail.

He soon reaches the junction of your jaw and neck, leaving a particularly long suck in the area that has a gasp leaving your mouth. Remaining in that area, you feel the pleasant graze of his tongue on your skin, only making you tilt your head farther out to let him carry out his loving. 

Your mind wanders back to the hands that grope you in ways that would defame you, the unseemly palms that have you needing to feel him all the same.

With grazing hands, you slip your fingers underneath his jacket, pushing it off one shoulder. He understands the message, flicking it off of his frame before loosening his cravat and throwing it somewhere behind him. 

Unlatching from your neck, he comes round to face you to find your face the epitome of disconnected and dazed. 

“Can you wait for me on the bed, my love?”

“But—” The thought of him being even an inch away was most aggravating, but he cuts you off before you can refute. 

“I’m not going anywhere, I promise.” Soonyoung rests his forehead against your own, taking your hands in his. “I’m right here. I just need to take this awful suit off.”

Your face must have been peculiar because he’s immediately jumping, panicked. “Uh—do you not want me to, we don’t have to, I just thought—”

“No!” you yelp, wide eyed. “I, um, I’ll wait. On the bed, I mean.”

He lets you walk over to the giant four poster bed, pushing the flow of your gown down when you realise how high it had ridden, cheeks burning scarlet at the thought of exposing so much. 

Hearing ruffles from behind you, you cannot bring yourself to look back at him, already extremely lightheaded and afraid that the sight might make you faint altogether. 

Perhaps you were experiencing a delayed case of sea legs, because it’s more difficult than usual to make yourself comfortable on the soft beddings. You make a futile attempt at slowing your breathing. 

By the time Soonyoung is done, meeting you in the middle, you keep your eyes on his face as he’s immediately climbing over to kiss you softly. Hand on the back of your head, he guides you to lay flat, adjacent to the headboard so you’re laying on the breadth of the bed. 

He handles you like you were made of glass, and it only makes the strange ache between your legs increasingly present and uncomfortable. 

Noting a cool feeling on the base of your throat, you open your eyes and catch the leather cord that dangles from his neck, the letter opener charm that’s attached to the end of it connecting you two as your lips part. Just beyond, through the dip of his collarbones and the valley to his chest, you catch the scar  that curls above his heart. Even lower, you find the smaller wrappings of his scarring wound. 

You trace over the edges of the new addition, shaking hands as you try your best to not brush over the wound. 

On the other side, Soonyoung has his hands on shin as his body hovers over you between your legs. Curling around, he caresses the skin of your bare calf, drifting to the back of your knees. He takes the opportunity to lift your leg, urging you to wrap it around his waist. 

The action has gravity doing what it does best, the hem of your nightgown dropping to bunch over the junction of your leg, your entire thigh exposed for the air. 

Soonyoung takes no time to let his hands wander higher, taking light handfuls of the flesh of thighs, dragging his grip further and further up. 

“Nearly tipped the ship over when I saw you in those fucking trousers,” he says, eyes closed as he drags his mouth over the inner part of your thigh. 

The sound that leaves your mouth is breathy, mind preoccupied with how quickly he was making his way towards the apex of your thighs. He’s using his mouth like he used it on your own lips, nipping at the flesh before biting down hard. 

“Soonyoung!” 

Tongue running over the patch, he sucks on the area to sooth the bite. It’s taking everything out of you to not twitch uncontrollably in his hold, the heat in your core reaching temperatures you’ve never experienced. 

Unlatching himself from your thigh, Soonyoung rears his head slightly. The sight has your head rolling back, mind drifting to the face of the man who’d visited you in your dreams, the same man that had now made home between your legs. 

Before you realise it, the bunched hem of your nightgown is flown upwards entirely, fluttering as the fabric lands on your stomach. 

Your heat is bare underneath, evident with the way Soonyoung keeps his eyes on the now fully exposed part of you. Your chest continues to rise and fall as you lift your head to look at him, eyes half closed and mind muddled.

“What…What’re you doing?” 

Soonyoung looks like you’ve disturbed him from a trance, snapping up to look at you as you ask him your question. 

It hardly registers in his mind. What was he doing? Was it not obvious—

Ah. 

If the mere sight of your bare thighs weren’t enough for him to release his load onto the sheets untouched, your unawareness might just end up doing it for him. 

Of course you didn’t know why he was at eye level with your cunt; women from this world were not supposed to know. 

The buzz in his mind renders him useless for a few moments as his vision blurs, the pain in his lower region unbearable. The thought of him being the first person to do this to you, to pleasure you like this; he wasn’t sure if he’d make it till the end of the night alive. 

Screwing his eyes shut, his palms full of your thighs, he drops his head and counts to ten. 

“Will you let me show you how a Queen is meant to be worshipped?” 

Wet mouthed and unhinged eyes, your arousal was doing nothing but multiplying at the sight of him. 

“Do you trust me?” he asks. “I promise I’ll make you feel good.” 

It takes you less than a moment to nod your head, eyes locked with his. 

Bringing a hand closer, he dips one finger into the beginnings of your hole. Bringing some of the glisten onto his fingers. Your lips are parted and he brings a second finger to gather your arousal, rubbing over your entrance ever so slowly. 

The motion makes you let out a heavy exhale, gripping onto the bunched fabric at your stomach till your knuckles turn white. 

With little warning, you feel his fingertips push and drag upwards, right over the sensitive bundle of nerves. Immediately, he’s rubbing your arousal all over the area, rubbing your clit in rhythmic circles with both fingers. 

You can’t stop it when you throw your head back and let out a slight whimper, relishing in the feeling that overtakes every last sense and capability, anticipating the next surge of pleasure that courses through your entire body like you've been struck by a bolt of something.

Vision obscured, you loll your head to the side when you feel his fingers retract, confused. 

All you catch is the outstretched nature of his tongue, and how it lands directly where his fingers were. 

You let out the loudest moan yet, back arching off the bed as he licks a forceful drag up your cunt before moving back down your clit, circling your hole with the tip of his tongue, right before repeating. He flicks your nub right where he’s found you twitch the most, back and forth as your hips begin to fail at your suppressed stutters, his hands needing to pin you down onto the sheets to continue. 

He becomes more generous, laying his tongue flat now as he massages your nub so good. Your thighs are closing around his ears and he does nothing to stop you, nearly suffocating between them. Hips going from their stutters to a grind, you find your hands flying to his hair, grip tighter than you thought you’d come down with. It doesn’t help that he’s now taken a finger to circle your entrance while his lips suck on your clit. 

“Soonyoung.” It’s all you can say, throat incapable of forcing anything but his name, the burn behind your eyes only making it harder to not say it louder. 

When he pushes the finger in, it has you letting out a moan, the foreign feeling against your walls only forcing them to clamp onto his digit. Gradually, you feel his pace quicken as he slides his finger in and out of your hole, his mouth still doing beautiful things to your cunt. 

It doesn’t take long for him to shove in another finger, stretching your hole as you let out a constant string of noises through the pleasure, ever-building as every passing moment only scrambles your brain further. 

And then you feel him groan, a vibration throbbing through your system. 

It’s suddenly all too much, and before you can tell him what’s going on, you’re rendered incapable. You don’t know where your limbs fly, but all you feel is white hot and overwhelming to an unbelievable degree. 

“Oh–ungh—” Your body is telling Soonyoung all he needs to know as he only pushes into your pussy even further, letting you ride out your high as you claw at him in every way possible. 

Inevitably, the feeling subsides and you realise you’ve been reduced to sobs, tears streaking the sides of your face. Laying flat with your head still on the sheets, you stare at the ceiling of your four poster, trying to remember where you were. 

Barely noticing the man that now hover above you, you hear him whisper. “Are you alright?”

Nodding weakly, you don’t even try to lift a finger in the remaining aftermath. 

“I need words, my love.”

Swallowing thickly, you give him a breathy, “Yes.”

The lower half of his face glistens in the light like unorthodox diamonds, and all you can think about is how you need him closer to you. 

You make an attempt with your nightgown, your trembling arms, still coursing with the aftershocks of your orgasm. 

Soonyoung decides to help, hands pushing your spine into an arch as he pulls the slip up and over your head, now entirely bare in front of him. 

You watch as instead of throwing the fabric away, he brings it to his mouth to wipe the slick off, tainting the gown with your essence. 

Mouth over yours in a salty kiss, you pull him into you as close as humanly possible, needing to feel his heat, his weight, his scent as close as possible. His mouth reaches your throat again, lips brushing over the expanse as he places open mouthed kisses over the nearly faded marks. 

His hands are lingering once again as they ghost the sides of your breasts, thumbs coming close to your nipples before retracting in a caress. He takes them in handfuls as he goes back to busy your lips with his own, massaging the mounds with a pressure just enough to have you reeling. 

Flicking your nipple lightly, he goes back to circle the bud with thumb again. Making himself further familiar, his fingers begin to pinch and pull at them, pressing down to get a noise out of you, one that you sound as you breathe into his mouth. 

Trailing over your stomach, he pushes himself off of you. On his knees, he takes the distance as his chance to look at you in your entirety for the first time. Your fucked out expression and your lack of words is doing nothing but fueling him, your loud breaths somehow more sinful than anything he could ever do to you. 

In one swift motion, he’s slipping his arms beneath you, pulling you up so he can lay you against the headboards and pillows. You barely register what’s happening, having given yourself up to him long before. 

Grabbing one of the millions of cushions on the bed, he swings one over. Using no strength of your own, he lifts your hips and places it down beneath you, effectively propping you up. 

And then he’s meeting you at eye level, hands cupping your face. “I need you to listen to me, darling.”

He waits for confirmation, of which you can only nod, still seeing mild stars. “Do you want to stop?” 

It's a visceral reaction; the violent shaking of your head, the hand that flies to his bicep. “N–no!”

You pause as he grips onto your upper arms tight, right as you continue. “I just—a moment. Don’t stop, please.”

Leaning down, he places a long kiss on the corner of your mouth before moving his head to fit into the crook of your neck. He nuzzles his nose against the skin below your ear. 

“I’m right here,” he whispers. “For as long as you want me.”

His kisses go from desperate to something with a little more intent, pressing his lips into your neck consistently. Oh so gently, it begins to feel like a draught. He turns into calm just as he could become chaos, bringing you down from the after effects of his own actions. 

The hum that leaves you is unthinking, fingers remaining deep in the roots of his hair. Your own nose is pressed against his hair, his scent mixed with sweat infiltrating your nostrils. It fills your head with a pleasant buzz, one that you feel force a pull at the corners of your mouth. 

“I meant it when I said it,” you murmur into his hair. “I don’t want anyone but you.”

Raising his head, he meets your eye, smiling slightly. “I believe you. Forgive me for making you believe I was trying to leave you.”

“You weren’t?” 

He presses his lips into a line, exhaling as he drops his chin to his chest. “I’ve needed to be selfish my whole life just to survive. Leaving…I wasn’t sure how I would’ve gotten on that boat in the morning without taking you with me somehow.”

Moving back to look at you, you realise very quickly there’s more to the mere glassy look in his eye. “For once, I wished to be anything but a pirate, to be anywhere but near the sea. Not when you wouldn’t be there with me.” 

Taking one of his beautifully decorated hands to your mouth, you kiss the soft of his palm. “You’ve done more than anyone ever has to protect me.” 

You laugh against his hand, “This is my turf, captain. Let me protect you… protect us.”

Something injects you with a dose of bold, and you find yourself wrapping your arms around his raised shoulders. “But…I believe we were in the middle of something. I’d hate to ruin the mood.”

The smirk that graces his lips is immediate, pushing you back down onto the sheets as you let a laugh escape you. 

And then you feel something warm graze your bottom lip, pointed in the way it pushes inwards. He’s brought the glinting letter opener charm up to your lips, the trinket pinched between his fingers as he continues to keep it on your mouth. He kisses you deep as the metal remains between you two, your hands run across the expanse of his back, feeling the muscles ripple as he props himself between you. 

“I love you,” he cuts between the kiss to groan, the charm dropping from between your mouths to your chest. 

“I love you, mmh—” His fingers have found your clit mid confession, rubbing quickly as he attempts to get you all hot and withered again. 

Your legs raise on instinct, back arching as he rubs you mercilessly, the pressure building quicker than it had before. 

“I–I think—” you start to tell him, and it seems it’s all he needs to remove his fingers entirely. 

“Soonyoung!” you yelp, landing on the bed with a thud. 

Looking down, you find his hands wrapped around the length between his own legs, and you realise this was your first time seeing it. Past the white-oozing slit, his tip is a painful looking red. If his hands weren’t already pumping and he hadn’t already lined himself up to your hole, you would’ve taken him into your own palms, done exactly with your mouth that he’d done with his own. 

But you can’t find it within yourself to stop him when you feel the initial push of his bulbous tip against your hole, the stretch causing you to drop your mouth open. 

“Fuck,” you hear him curse, and when you look up you find his own eyes screwed shut. His hands grip the plush of the pillow beside your head as tight as ever, face askew like he was holding himself back from combusting entirely. 

Slowly, you feel the stretch turn into something akin to a burn, a sting in the back of your eyes. You let him push himself into you at his own pace, the never ending battle between your mind and your refrained hips ever present as you attempt to keep them at bay. 

He keeps his pelvis flush against yours ince he’s sheathed himself inside you entirely. BOth of your pants fill the thick air of the room, the throb of your walls around his shaft leaving a tremble in his forearm despite your forsake. 

Hand somewhere above your head, you feel Soonyoung pull out ever so slightly before pushing back in. Just like this, in shallow thrusts, he pumps himself in an out of your walls in a slow pattern. 

It begins with a simmering tremble of pleasure that prolongs as he drags his cock in and out, and then in and out, and then—

Your eyes fly open when you feel his hips slam against yours with a resounding sound, fingers gripping his arm as he does it again, your moans penetrating the air. Before you know it, he’s hiked your legs up to wrap around his waist, ankles locking as he goes back to snapping his hips into you. 

“Oh, Soonyoung.”

Your nails are digging into his bicep like it was the only thing tying you to this earth, the only thing keeping you from passing out entirely. He’s taken up a brutal pace, pistoning into your clamped walls with a vigour unmatched. 

All Soonyoung can hear is the stretch of your moans and groans directly in his ear, the obscene squelch of both of your fluids mixing at your middles. Your hands have migrated to his back, clawing at the skin like you’ve been utterly possessed. 

He can’t seem to mind, not when they’ll simply become reopening wounds every time he’ll have you like this, all to himself and no one else. He wonders vaguely if your guards outside can hear the way you’re losing yourself in him just as he is in you, wonders if it appalls them that a filthy pirate gets to have their Queen in his arms as her vindictive pleasure. 

One hand rubbing over your slick clit, he pulls back to sit on his heels, the angle allowing him to keep ever part of you occupied, his spare hand coming up to toy with the pillow of your breast. 

It’s all too much, for the both of you as your collective noises become increasingly frequent and high pitched.

And then he’s pushed you over the edge, the shake of your thighs electrifying as you nearly scream out in the bliss of your high. Hands moving every which way to find a grip as you let the feeling crash into you over and over again. 

“Oh, that’s so good, so good, oh my goodness.”

You’re still in the middle of your climax when Soonyoung can’t take it anymore, letting himself release his load inside of you like a mark. It’s a mess of force and pleasure as the both of you lose sight of your strengths and weaknesses, the feeling of his hot cum shooting into your walls only prolonging your orgasm even further. 

He continues to thrust, continues to play with your nub, continues to flick at your nipples despite the orgasm subsiding. It’s all suddenly too much all at once, the sharp jerk of your body and your voice asking him to stop. 

“Soon—Soonyoung, it’s too much.”

Hands coming to a halt and his thrusts slowing, you feel him ease himself out of you. 

It’s a sight Soonyoung doubts he could ever forget even if he tried, your still pulsating walls doing everything but keeping the milky white of his load inside you, globs of the liquid spilling out as you shudder near lifeless on the bed. His hands grope at the inside of your thighs, pulling your lips apart to take in the mess he’s made. 

He can’t help himself when he pushes two fingers into your hole, feeding his cum back into your hole right where it belongs. 

You’ve only barely started to come round when he meets you at eye level, plopping next to you on the bed. 

“Hi,” he grins. 

“Hi,” you breathe back, hands coming up to touch his face. 

He lets you breathe for a few moments as he finds himself getting off the bed to find your tainted nightgown, moving back to you to spread your legs and wipe you clean as best as he could. 

You find it within yourself to allow him to pull you into a sitting position, a cup of water from the nightstand pressing against your tired mouth. 

“Come on, just one,” he urges as you slump against his chest. 

You take a few sips as he coaxes you into drinking the full cup and half of the second helping. 

He gives up as he holds you against his chest, brushing his fingers through your tangled hair to push past your face. 

“Are you alright?” he asks you. Your eyes are closed when he leans down to place a peck on the apple of your cheek. 

“Mhm,” you muffle. “Want to sleep.

“I’d let you, but…”

“Soonyoung, I can’t go again,” you whine. 

He chuckles, “I meant to ask where we could find some sugar around here. You barely ate anything at the ball.”

“The kitchens?” you answer with a floating question mark. 

Soonyoung can’t help it when he squeezes you so tight it has you complaining loudly, not being able to sustain the love just in the tiny expanse of his heart. 

“Come on, let’s get you some cake before both our hearts give out.”

BUNDLED UP IN WARMER clothes, the only thing the palace walls hear is the tiny whispers and giggles of you and your lover as you make your way to the kitchens. 

It’s empty at this time of night, the dying embers of the fireplace the only source of light. Soonyoung uses every last bit of his thievery to manage to find a basket of dough balls, the syrup more readily available at the table in the centre.

The tingling in your brain can’t seem to decipher the overwhelming happiness that floods you from the ends of your hair to the tips of your toes. Especially when you call out his name amidst his shuffling, your heart can’t take the grin on his face as he hurries to join on the floor in front of the fireplace. 

Arm looped through his own and your head on his shoulder, you decide you’d be quite okay dying like this. 

The dough balls are cold and the syrup is probably a little too sweet, but you can’t possibly complain when it warms you just the same. 

“I’ve despised my name my entire life,” Soonyoung starts in the silence, picking at the insides of his treat. “Some old merchant sailor was giving his ship away in exchange that the taker would take care of it. He’d built his Tigress from the first board to the last sail, but the years had made their mark. It was practically falling apart when I took it off his hands.”

He pushes the remaining bit of the pastry into his mouth, muffled as he continues, “He had a strange name, said it was given to him by his crew when they realised he was born without a name. Hoshi. I liked it well enough so I kept it.”

“Soonyoung—”

“That one. I wanted to replace the name I loathed, the one my own mother gave me.” You watch as his throat bobs as he swallows. “Ash is my birthplace, my mother worked in the brothels where I was born only because she couldn’t get rid of me.”

Taking one of the hands that wrap around his arm, he brings your fingers to your mouth, kissing the tips of each one. “I despised that name, until I heard it from your lips.” 

“Soonyoung.” It felt right on your tongue, like you were destined to say his name. 

“Yes, my love?” He smiles softly. 

“I love you.”

“I love you more,” he says as he kisses you again. “Thank you for keeping my name, thank you for giving it life.”

You take the opportunity to grab one of the syrup soaked dough balls from the basket and stuff them into his mouth. “Enough, don’t tell me all this luxury’s made you soft.” 

It was a jab but a lighthearted one in any case, you loved to see this side of him and you doubt you would ever get enough of seeing him like this. Vulnerable with his softer smiles and squinted eyes. 

Bringing one of your digits to your mouth, you suck the remaining syrup off your fingers. 

Soonyoung is quick to take notice as he takes your hand and brings your fingers up to his mouth, running his tongue over the pads of your fingers to take in the remaining sugar left on your fingers. 

He keeps his eyes locked onto yours as he sucks on the tips of your fingers, making sure every last hint of sweetness is gone. 

And then he’s kissing you, tongue in your mouth as he moves against your lips slowly. 

Breaking apart, you whisper, “As much as I’d love to, the bakers will be coming in any minute now.”

Soonyoung’s grin is dangerous, and you find out why the minute you feel his arms loop around your waist and under your thighs, lifting you clean off the floor of the kitchens. 

You squeal before you can help it, his lips finding home in your neck as you laugh as loud as your chest would allow. 

You could get used to this. And you will. 

THE SERVANTS CARRYING THE giant stack of plates nearly topple over when you sprint past them, yelling a loud apology over your shoulder as you do nothing but hasten your pace. 

The paper in your hands is clutched tight in your fists as you run to where your carriage awaits, near yelling at the driver to make it to the docks before the streets would be full of the early morning merchants and bakers, slowing the gallops of the decorated horses. 

The town is waking as your carriage races past, the beginnings of the new day making itself known as the sun peers through the gaps of the houses. You’re incapable of sitting still, your heels tapping against the floors of your cabin incessantly as the docks grow nearer and nearer. 

And then you see it, the rush of dock handlers that see the royal carriage slow to a stop in front of the boardwalk. You slam the door open before any of the tens could do it for you, breaking into a sprint as you find the distinct flag of the royal crest wave high on the other end of the docks. 

You had already seen Soonyoung off in the dark of the night as he made his way to the ship that was near ready to depart as you slide to stop in front of the anchored ship. 

There was nothing sane about what you were doing, the chortles and shocked noises of sailors and merchants deaf to ears as you finally spot him near the prow. 

His eyes meet yours and he has to do a double take. 

Panting and needing to hold onto your knees for support, you peer up as you watch him run towards the ramp that leads down to the docks to see you, to ask why you were here when he’d kissed you goodbye mere hours ago. 

By the time he meets you at the wobbly boardwalk, you’ve somewhat recovered.

“Are you alright?” he asks you as soon as you’re within earshot, hands grasping onto your upper arms in evident concern. 

“I had to tell you, this came in right after you left.” You brandish the paper clutched into your fist, smoothing it over as the light catches the red stamp at the bottom. 

It takes him less than a minute to realise what it said, eyes blinking rapidly and mouth gaping like a fish. “They…They said yes?” 

“They said yes,” you repeat, nodding furiously as you break into a smile. “We can get married, Soonyoung, they said yes.”

His arms are crushing you before you know it, wrapped around you so tight as he buries his face into your neck, repeating it like a mantra, “They said yes…”

By the time you part, he keeps his arms around you, still embracing you in front of the entire port. You take hold of his face bringing it closer to you. 

“Three months, and then you come home,” you breathe. “And I get to marry you, in front of everyone.”

Soonyoung lets his lips meet your own in a chaste kiss as he corrects you, “I get to marry you in front of everyone.” 

There’s a thud of something nearby, and you look up to find the crew of the Tigress hanging over the railings of the newly appointed naval ship that looked suspiciously like a pirate’s. 

“He can’t come back home, if he doesn’t leave!” Seungkwan yells over cupped hands. 

You’d like to send him an affectionate gesture involving your middle finger, but choose to save him in front of the crowded port. 

“You’ll miss me, Seungkwan, just you wait,” you send him a pointed glare that he simply scoffs at. 

He might miss you, but you’ll definitely miss the lot of them when you return to a significantly emptier palace. 

“Don’t let the royal snobs walk over you, you’re a better sailor anyway,” you tell Soonyoung. “Not that I needed to tell you, anyway.”

“I promise on our future wedding to be a complete menace.” He grins at the declaration as you admire him in the morning light. 

One last time, you memorise the dips and hills of his features, pressing your final kiss into his lips as the voices telling him to hurry it up grow louder. 

He blows you a kiss from the railings as the anchor is hoisted, and you send him one right back. 

As your carriage trudges its path back to the palace, at a pace more acceptable for both the stamina of the horses and the integrity of the structure, your eyes remain glued to the shrinking ship that fades into the distant horizon. 

There’s a pang in your chest, one that brings a tear to your eyes. It’s all very dramatic, the way the melancholy makes a home in your heart. An inkling tells you how you’ll probably become quite used to the feeling, learn to greet it like a friend. 

For now you enter the lighter palace, and take your place on the chair in your study and find solace in the ideas your mind brings. 

That no matter how long Soonyoung will remain far from you, he will always come back home to you. 

Always. 

[AN]: ty for joining my babies on their journey, i cannot thank you all enough for reading all 48fuckingK words of this i love you guys truly!!! thank you for all the reblogs and comments on the other parts, it makes me genuinely so happy to see you guys enjoy this universe that i've built. I read every single comment and know i appreciate all of it so so much <3