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stevie-petey · 23 hours ago

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lonely hearts club

You kiss her forehead and pull Steve up from the couch, putting your jacket on and tossing him his. “Our Valentine’s day wouldn’t be the same without someone crying or throwing up. We’re going. Dinner can wait.” Steve wraps an arm around your waist. “She’s right. This is just tradition for us. A sacred thing we look forward to every year.” “You two confuse me so much.” Nancy laughs wetly, overwhelmed by your kindness. “We get that a lot.” Steve kisses your temple. “C’mon, angelface. The lesbians need us.”

Summary: ten valentines days with steve. some years it's romantic, some years it's heartbreaking, but for better or worse, he's your forever valentine.

Rating: general, some swearing

Warnings: swearing, fem!reader, use of y/n, mentions of vomit, pregnancy, cheating (steve doesnt cheat)

Words: 11.9k

Before you swing in: happy valentines day !! is this a day late ? sure. but we're going to ignore that ! heres a cute little fic of valentines day with steve throughout the years. joe touring really influenced this because i made steve a rockstar but honestly it fit tbh. anyways, hope you enjoy !

Somehow it’s always Steve who you spend Valentine’s day with.

In high school it’s because of academic obligations. You’re student body president and Steve is the president of the key club. Each year when February rolls around, the two of you are responsible for hanging pink streamers in the gym and selling enough tickets to afford a decent DJ.

Thanks to the infectious Valentine’s day yearning for love and potential makeouts under the bleachers, the Lonely Hearts dance always manages to draw in a crowd. That, and Steve promises that anyone who buys a ticket is guaranteed a dance with him.

It’s gross and highly exploitative. And also quite brilliant.

You never cash in your ticket, though. While Steve spends the night spinning around girls dressed in pinks and reds and whites, you’re manning the punch bowl to make sure no one spikes it.

Each year, Steve finds a way to sneak gin into the cherry liquid behind your back.

“I’d stop serving little Benny there that punch of yours.” Steve slides next to you, dressed in all black with a rose pinned to his ribbed vest. He reeks, a terrible concoction of every perfume worn by the girls he’s spent all night with.

Benny, a small, frail fourteen year old with eyes too big for his comically small glasses, hiccups. His hand is extended towards you, empty cup waiting for more. His face is flushed and he sways ever so slightly.

You sigh. “How much gin did you pour in this time, Harrington?”

“An entire bottle.”

“I hate you, you know.”

Steve laughs. “Not my fault that you never catch me.”

Pinching the bridge of your nose, you glare at him. “I still hate you.” Then, remembering that a severely intoxicated Benny is still waiting for his drink, you gently tap the kid’s arm. “Why don’t you go sit in a corner, buddy?”

Benny hiccups again and stumbles away. Steve snickers, but his laughter turns into a yelp of pain when you kick him in the shin. “Don’t you have girls to dance with?”

“Not if you keep kicking me like that,” he winces, rubbing his quickly bruising injury. “Jesus, are those heels made of steel?”

“Why are you still talking to me?”

“Can’t a guy talk to his most consistent girl?”

A snort masks the reddening of your cheeks. “Real flattering, Harrington.”

“I’m serious!” Steve nudges his shoulder against yours. He’s smiling wide at you, charming as ever. “You realize this is like, our third year spending Valentine’s day together, right?”

You roll your eyes. “We’re only spending it together for a school dance.”

“Still makes you my longest running Valentine, Y/N.” He winks, smug, and you want to stain his pretty face with the cherry red of the punch before you. He’s close to you now, close enough that you can smell his expensive cologne under all the perfume that taints it.

Suddenly your mouth goes dry. You look up at him and find that he’s already staring down at you. He doesn’t move, doesn’t shy away from the proximity that only seems to be growing smaller and smaller between you.

“Steve!” Heather Morgan stomps over, the ruffles of her lilac dress swishing with her forceful steps. She stops in front of you and him, though she doesn’t bother to acknowledge you. “I thought I was guaranteed a dance?”

Three Valentine’s days with Steve Harrington, countless prom committee meetings and club organization conferences, shared lunch periods and classes, all have led to the intimate knowledge of the lines of his face and how every miniscule twinge of muscle reveals everything he’s feeling.

The forced smile that he gives Heather, eyebrows drawn together and eyes dim, is nothing like the bright and overwhelming smile he gave you only moments ago.

“You’re absolutely right.” Steve holds his hand out to the girl and walks towards her. “With all the hard work Y/N put into this dance, it’d be a shame if I let it go to waste and not abide by my promise.”

Your cheeks burn at the indirect compliment and Heather simply rolls her eyes. She yanks Steve’s arm and he gives you one last weary, yet shy and gentle, smile that’s etched alongside his freckles and moles.

–

After graduating and moving to Chicago for college, you figure that maybe your first Valentine’s day in a big city will be spent with someone who doesn’t get freshmen drunk and dance with demanding girls.

Then, your first week in intro to philosophy, you meet Oliver.

He enters five minutes late, out of breath and frantic, and blindly throws himself into the first seat he finds. In his rush, he doesn’t see you until he’s thrown his jacket off and hears your quiet, “ouch.”

“Oh, my god.” His blue eyes are wide as he stares at you in horror, taking in the scene before him. He’s completely thrown his jacket on top of you. “I-I am so sorry!”

His British accent nearly sends your brain reeling. Oliver is tall, his black hair makes his skin appear almost luminescent, and there’s a dimple in his cheek that softens the harshness of his accented vowels.

“It’s fine,” you shrug the jacket off, too shy to say much else. He’s arguably the most perfect man you’ve ever met and it’s eight in the morning and you’re not quite sure if this is a dream. “Just… caught me by surprise?”

“Christ, I’m genuinely so sorry.” He runs a hand through his hair. “I-I overslept and I only just switched into this class quite literally twelve hours ago and–”

“Top row,” your professor clears her throat, glaring at you and Oliver. “Is Aristotle really so interesting to you that you decide to interrupt my class in glee?”

You’re beet red, frozen in shame and fear, but Oliver simply laughs and ducks in head. “My apologies, Miss. Please, continue.”

Even the professor is charmed by his accent, and she shakes her head with a slight chuckle. She carries on with the lecture and Oliver is quiet next to you. You don’t speak for the rest of class, but during the last five minutes, a note slides across your desk.

Coffee?

– Oliver (the dunce who threw his jacket on you)

A second coffee date follows the first. Then a third. A fourth. A fifth and sixth until they slowly turn into dinner dates. Sneaking into each other’s apartments when your roommates aren’t home. Kissing as you lazily study together in bed.

Late January comes and you think that you’ve finally, finally, found someone to spend Valentine’s day with. Someone real and yours and lovely.

Oliver tells you to meet him at his apartment at 7:30 for dinner. He’s promised you homemade roast, a recipe from his mother. Valentine’s day will be a quiet dinner with only candlelight as your company. No streamers or spiked punch; it’s everything you could’ve ever wanted.

“The potatoes need a few more minutes, then we can eat.” Oliver kisses your forehead as he wipes his hands with a towel. The kitchen is warm, the smell of herbs and garlic infiltrate the air. On the counter the beef is resting, its aroma enough to make your mouth water.

You take a sip of wine. “Thank god.”

“Hungry, are we?”

“A home cooked meal by my hot boyfriend?” You raise your glass. “Of course I’m hungry!”

Oliver laughs, kissing you again. “Well, good thing I have all night to feed you–”

The front door slams, startling the two of you, and someone calls out, “Sorry! Sorry, please ignore me!”

Your fingers tighten around the stem of your wine glass hearing their voice.

Oliver groans, “one second, babe.” He leaves your side, but you don’t follow, too afraid to face what’s waiting for you on the other side of the wall.

“I thought I told you I had the apartment tonight?” You hear Oliver hiss at the intruder.

“You did! I just-I kinda left my guitar here and Robin will kill me if I–”

“Hurry up!”

“What, your date can’t wait five seconds?” A laugh, pleased with his own joke. You close your eyes, imagining the scrunch of his nose and tilt of his lips; you haven’t forgotten the details of his face, even after months of not seeing him.

Oliver mumbles something and you strain your ears to listen. He sounds upset, anxious, arguing with the other person in the room, and something akin to unease creeps into your stomach.

“Relax, man. Just go finish that bizarre British dinner for Bianca.”

Silence.

You set down the wineglass and finally walk into the living room. The click of your heels is the only evidence of life within the apartment. Oliver stands near the door. His eyes are closed, he doesn’t want to face you just yet.

Steve’s back is turned to you. His posture is relaxed, natural. He isn’t aware of what he’s just undone.

“Long time no see, Harrington.” Your arms are crossed, shielding yourself from what’s to come. Your voice sounds more confident than you feel. “I guess you’re the roommate I never got to meet.”

He spins around quickly, almost falling over, recognizing your voice immediately. His childish stumbling tells you that he almost doesn’t want to believe it. When Steve’s eyes land on you, they soften, warm brown filling with fondness once more.

“Y/N!”

Steve steps forward as if to hug you, but then seems to remember where he is, what he had previously been talking about with Oliver. He stops, the fondness in his eyes diminishing to confusion, then slowly to anger.

“You’re… not Bianca.”

“Evidently not.” Your laugh is bitter.

Steve narrows his eyes at Oliver. “What the hell, man? You told me you were dating some chic named Bianca.” He points a bewildered finger at you. “This is Y/N.”

“In my defense,” Oliver sighs tiredly, clapping his hands together in a defeated manner. “I didn’t think you’d know either one of them, so. This is just brilliant.”

“Are you dating them both?” Steve’s eyes bulge out of his head. If you weren’t on the brink of crying and throwing up, you’d laugh at his poor state of shock.

“That’s how cheating works, Steve.” You say weakly.

Oliver tries to say something, but he’s drowned out by Steve’s yelling. “Are you fucking serious?”

“Steve–” He tries again.

“No! I-I was unknowingly an accomplice in your cheating?”

“I did try to hide them both from you–”

“You’re such a jackass! I thought the British were supposed to be posh and all that-that bloody bullshit!”

You touch the back of Steve’s elbow. You’re mortified and embarrassed and you really want to cry right now. No words come out. Your mouth won’t open. All you can do is hope that your touch is enough.

Immediately Steve stops yelling. He tugs you against his chest, understanding everything the touch meant. He doesn’t care that it’s been six months since he’s seen you or that you were never particularly close in the first place. He wipes the tears that have started to fall from your eyes with a tenderness you didn’t know was innate within him.

“I’m taking you home,” he says, voice barely above a whisper. “Go get your things, alright?”

Weak and numb, you do as you’re told.

“Y/N, wait–” Oliver tries to reach out for you.

Steve steps between you. The look on his face is violent, almost frightening. You’ve never seen him like this. “Don’t.”

Oliver stumbles back. It’s enough of a distraction for you to quickly grab your purse and keys, vision blurry from tears as your body shakes. Every nerve, every fiber of your skeletal body is screaming at you to run.

When you’re ready, Steve uses his body to prevent Oliver from looking at you. His hands are gentle as he guides you to his car. He whispers reassurances, rubs circles into your back, and allows you to cry the entire way home.

It doesn’t surprise you when Steve doesn’t leave after parking in front of your apartment. It also doesn’t surprise you when he walks you to your door and lets himself in.

“Stay here,” he all but shoves you onto the couch before making his way to your kitchen. He walks through the apartment as if he’s done so his entire life. “I’ll be right back.”

“What are you–”

“Less talking, more crying!”

You curl yourself into a small ball, too tired to argue with Steve. While you have no idea what the hell he’s doing, you’re relieved that your roommate, Jane, is out with her boyfriend for the night.

At least someone is having a happy Valentine’s day.

Steve returns with two pints of ice cream and spoons. He’s already opened one of them and hands it to you as he plops onto the couch. “Figured you’d have a stash.”

The ice cream he hands you is your favorite flavor. You don’t remember ever telling him this. “How did you–”

“This is our fourth Valentine’s day in a row, Y/N,” Steve pokes your side. “When are you gonna stop questioning my loyalty to our sacred tradition?”

Mouth cold from ice cream and face hot from crying, Steve manages to pull a laugh out of you. It’s feeble and small and more of a grimace than something joyous, but it’s more than you ever thought was possible.

Steve laughs with you, knocking his own pint of ice cream against yours. “To Valentine's day, angelface.”

“To Valentine’s day,” you sniff, laughing again. The moment is bizarre and not at all how you envisioned spending the day, but somehow it’s wonderful and reminiscent of the years before. There’s only one thing missing. “I miss the pink streamers.”

“I’ll hang some up next year.” Steve promises, winking at you as he always seems to do, falling back in familiarity.

You rest your head against the couch, warm, and hum thoughtfully. Steve always keeps his promises, and you can almost envision the messily strewn up streamers and tacky holiday decorations he would find and insist on using. The apartment would be full of light and warmth, and the thought makes you smile.

“I’d like that.”

–

Inexplicably, Steve becomes your best friend.

He all but declares Oliver dead to him and refuses to step foot in their apartment unless it’s to eat or sleep. He cuts off all contact with the guy without even blinking. You try telling Steve that he doesn’t have to jeopardize his relationship with his roommate and he scoffs at you.

“I’m giving that motherfucker the coldest shoulder known to man, Y/N. Whether you like it or not.”

And there isn’t anything else to talk about, really.

Slowly Steve starts spending all his time at your apartment to avoid his, and you find yourself actually enjoying his company. He doesn’t stray far from your room and he always brings over extra napkins from the restaurant he works at, saving you an extra five dollars a week in household supplies.

Plus, Steve introduces you to his coworker Robin, and she’s so enthralling and chaotic and vibrant that it’s only natural that when she becomes your best friend, Steve does, too.

Spring semester ends and Jane announces that she’s moving out to live with her boyfriend come summer. The first person you call is Steve. He moves in a week later.

“Have you looked over the sheet music yet?” Robin has her legs tossed over your lap as the two of you sit on the couch. Steve sits on the floor, leaning his head against the couch, his hair tickling the bare skin of your leg.

You’re watching some movie that Steve had been dying to see. It’s Valentine’s day and he’s begged you to let him watch some cheesy romance movie he saw an ad for. He claims it’s to get into the holiday spirit, but you know it’s because he has a crush on Patrick Swayze.

Robin tagged along because she has a crush on Jennifer Grey.

“Hey, doofus!” She throws popcorn at Steve’s head when he doesn’t respond to her question.

“Can you at least aim for my face?” He flicks the popcorn out of his hair, cringing. “The butter makes my hair feel gross.”

You ruffle the locks, shaking his head in the process and he swats you away, albeit without any cruelty or malice. “Could be from all that hairspray you drown it in.”

“I’m with Y/N on this one,” Robin leans forward, invading Steve’s space with ease. “Anyways, did you read the music or not? Kelly wants your opinion before our gig tonight.”

“Why does she care what I think?”

“Because you’re the lead singer?” Robin looks at you. “Do you think all that hairspray has rotted his brain?”

You shrug. “Probably.”

Steve flips the both of you off and you giggle together at his annoyance. Ever since meeting Robin, making Steve’s life as miserable as possible has become your favorite thing to do together.

Robin then asks again about the song and she and Steve fall into a conversation about Kelly and her obsession with their other bandmate Connor and whether or not the song is actually good or if it’s just another attempt for her to win him over.

You watch them talk with a lazy smile. They become so animated when they discuss music, and you admire how well they work together. It doesn’t surprise you that they formed a band together after only being friends for two days. They take music seriously, obsess over it in a way you don’t think you’ll ever quite understand, but that you will always admire.

“You’re coming to our gig tonight, right?” Steve suddenly turns to you, eyes pleading and hopeful.

“Where is it again?”

“The Vexture. We go on at ten.”

Robin has turned her hopeful eyes to you as well and you shift uncomfortably. The Vexture is a grungy club that’s always packed with people looking for someone to call their own, and given the fact that it’s currently Valentine’s day, it’ll only be worse.

The thought makes you nauseous.

Steve sees you grimace and he immediately throws himself into your lap. “No. Absolutely not. You have to come.”

“I haven’t even said anything–”

“You were going to bail!”

“I–I wasn’t!”

Robin pinches your cheek. “You’re a terrible liar, dear.”

You try to argue but Steve covers your mouth. You thrash underneath him, completely opposed to his body weight on you and his grimy hands covering your mouth, but he’s freakishly strong and Robin is a traitor who helps him hold you down.

“Look, Y/N.” Steve’s hair falls in your face. “We all know that last year was rough.”

“Fuck Oliver!” Robin shouts, wringing her hands together as if envisioning choking him.

“What she said. Anyways, you took a hard hit. It’s understandable. But I refuse to let you spend Valentine’s day all alone, alright? You haven’t dated anyone in months. You’re coming tonight.”

You want to bite him, to kick him off and pinch his skin, but you know he’s right. Deflating, you cross your arms and reluctantly nod.

Steve and Robin cheer, jostling you around, and despite the annoyance and fear you’re feeling, you can’t help but laugh at their childish joy.

“Love the enthusiasm, but can you guys get off me now?” You croak out in between laughs.

They scramble off the couch and Robin helps you up. She fixes your hair and kisses the tip of your nose. “We have three hours to make you irresistible tonight.”

“I’m not dressing up–”

“You have no free will when it comes to me.” Robin smiles wickedly and grabs your hand, pulling you to your room, having long forgotten about the movie that’s still playing in the background.

“Can I join?” Steve calls after the two of you.

Robin slams the door in his face.

The Vexture is loud and overflowing with people by the time you get there. The lights are dimmed and Robin has to hold your hand as she guides you through the crowd. Since they’re performing, they’re allowed to cut the long lines and are able to get you the best seats in the house: backstage.

“You made it!” Kelly throws her long and lithe arms around you. She smells of vanilla and honey and her hair is tied in loose knots. Glitter adorns her eyelids and pink hearts dot her cheeks.

“I’m being held against my will,” you shout into her ear, hugging her tightly. “But I’m here.”

Connor pats your back and chuckles. He’s matching Kelly’s heart theme with a pink heart painted on his own cheek. “Well, at least you’ll have a good time!”

Steve hands him a guitar and checks his hair in the mirror. Robin dressed him in a white button down and demanded that he leave the first four buttons undone. The exposed strip of skin from the base of his neck to the swell of his chest burns your lips.

“We ready?” Steve pulls you by the waist, flush against him, and winks at his bandmates.

Kelly and Robin cheer and Connor slams his drumsticks together. A cheer of your own tumbles from your lips, allowing your body to lean against Steve’s, and his fingers dig into your side as his chest rumbles with pleasure.

The crowd erupts when they get on stage. They all get into their places. Robin with her keyboard. Kelly and the bass. Connor behind his drum set. And Steve, front and center of the stage, smiling into the mic as his fingers pick at his guitar.

“How’s everyone doing tonight?” He’s a natural on stage. People scream his name and he plays into it with such confidence and charm. Steve smirks, knowing he has the audience in the palm of his hand. “That’s what I like to hear!”

He plays the first few notes of the song they’re starting with tonight. Easy and light. He’s setting the audience up, tempting them, leaving them wanting more.

Steve grabs the base of the microphone and tilts his head at the crowd. “Who’s here with their Valentine tonight?”

Almost everyone cheers and whistles. Hands get thrown into the air and lovers kiss the smiles off each other’s face.

“Hell yeah!” Steve laughs, high on the energy in the room. He plays a few more notes, turns his head away from the crowd as he does so. You watch him, curious, and find that he’s looking at you.

When he has your attention, Steve laughs again and goes back to the mic. He’s smiling wide, cheeks pink. “You know, I’m also here with a Valentine tonight.”

The audience gasps and cheers and claps for him. Robin wolf whistles, loud and obnoxious, teasing eyes looking only at you. Kelly snickers and Connor points one of his drum sticks at you, clutching his heart dramatically.

The apples of your cheeks pinch together a glorious red and Steve can’t take his eyes off you. His eyes, soft as they always are when he looks at you, are like molten earth. He smiles into the mic again, unable to look away from you.

“This is our fifth Valentine’s day together,” he tells the crowd, smiling so much he’s almost slurring his words. “I kinda hope that this angelface will always be my Valentine.”

Robin whistles again and the roar of the Vexture is so loud now that you can’t hear anything besides the blood rushing in your head. Steve screams along with the crowd and Connor counts the band in and there’s music all around you and dancing and Steve’s sweat drips down his chest and there’s a burning deep within your stomach.

He’s beautiful.

You hope that he’ll always be your Valentine, too.

–

Sophia enters your life early junior year. You find her in your kitchen one morning wearing one of Steve’s old t-shirts, and you make her a cup of coffee.

She’s nice. Her hair is bronzy and she has incredible green eyes and an angelic laugh. She studies English and she’s the only other person besides your classmates who has read Plato, so you’re honestly quite fond of her, and you can see how Steve falls for her hard and fast.

Robin, however, has other thoughts.

“I don’t trust her.” She says one day in January. Steve is at Sophia’s, so you invited Robin over to bake cookies and watch the latest episode of a show you both enjoy.

You frown at her. “Why not? I think Sophia is nice.”

“Ever notice how the only way we can all collectively describe her as is nice?” Robin shivers. “What kind of psycho only has one personality trait?”

Well. There isn’t a lot you can argue with there. Sure, everyone who has met Sophia has liked her, but when you think about it, Robin’s right. They’ve all described her as nice, maybe quiet, but always nice.

“I think you’re just overprotective of Steve.” You try to defend. You like Sophia. She’s become a very loose, very distant, acquaintance. “Just give her some time.”

“They’ve been dating for months now, Y/N. She creeps me out.”

“Sophia isn’t some off putting creature, Robin–”

“Guys!” Steve barrels through the front door. You and Robin both scream, but he ignores your terror and throws himself at the two of you. “How much do you guys love me?”

Robin responds with, “how much money do you want?” while you reply, “depends on the day.”

Steve breathes heavily, grasping your hand. “I need you guys to please, please do me the biggest favor.”

“Did you kill someone?” You pull your hand away, weary of the scene before you.

“What? No! I just–” Steve inhales sharply. “It’s Sophia.”

“I knew it!” Robins screeches, but you jump and cover her mouth. She tries to scream through your silencing, but her words are muffled and jumbled.

You smile at Steve awkwardly. “Don’t mind her. What’s going on with Sophia?”

“She wants to go on a double date for Valentine’s day.” You and Robin stare at him as if he’s insane, and Steve groans. “Look, I know it sounds crazy, alright? But she-uh. I guess she’s had some shitty Valentine’s days in the past and thought it’d be better if we had other people with us? As a safeguard?”

“That’s…” Concerning, you want to say, but Steve is staring at you, pleading, and you really don’t feel like dealing with his anxious monologues. “Interesting.”

He rubs his face. “It’s insane, I know, but I just… I really like this girl, you know? So if one of you could just–”

“I’m out.” Robin raises her hands and you shoot her an incredulous look. “I’m sorry, Y/N, but I actually have plans this year and I really don’t feel like spending them with Steve.”

“And you think I don’t have plans?” You ask them, offended, and Steve looks at the ground and Robin suddenly finds the tile very interesting. “Okay. At least pretend that I have some dignity.”

“I’m sure you have a lot of dignity, angelface.” Steve tries to amend. “And you’d have even more dignity if you went on a double date with me and Sophia. I’ll even find someone to be your date!”

In theory, it sounds like your worst nightmare. Spending a night with a loved up Steve and Sophia while you’re with some guy you met only hours ago. All because Steve’s girlfriend doesn’t feel comfortable enough spending Valentine’s day alone with him.

But Steve has had to hold your hand through a nasty breakup and other horrific dating exploits since then. He’s held your hair up when you’ve been sick. Makes you your favorite snacks during busy exam seasons. He cleans your room when he knows you’re exhausted.

Steve is your best friend. The least you can do is this.

“Fine,” you finally give in. “But the guy better be hot.”

The guy Steve finds you is, in fact, incredibly hot. His name is Max and he meets you and Steve outside the restaurant dressed in a well tailored suit.

“Where’d you find this guy?” You whisper to Steve while Max isn’t looking.

“He knew Connor in high school.” He whispers back. “Makes a lot of money. Works in finance.”

Your mouth drops, but you quickly cover it up when Max opens the door for you and Steve. He’s a perfect gentleman and rests his hand on the small of your back. “You guys been to this restaurant before?”

“A few times together, but I don’t think my girlfriend Sophia has been here yet.” Steve sits down and grabs a menu before checking his watch. “Actually, she should be here by now.”

Max’s face twists slightly. “Her name is Sophia?”

“Max?” Sophia, rushing towards your table, stops and gasps out his name as if she’s been stabbed.

“Oh, dear.” You set down your menu. Something tells you that there won’t be any eating tonight.

“Sophia?” Max nearly falls to his knees in front of her, eyes shining at the girl as if she’s hung all the moon and stars with her delicate fingers.

They stare at one another, neither moving, and Steve looks between them with a bitter taste in his mouth. “So… you guys know each other?”

Sophia winces and Max coughs.

You grab your purse. “Steve, why don’t we head home–”

“What’s going on here?” His voice is strained. He looks at Sophia and you see the upset he tries to suppress. The clench of his jaw and the furrow of his brow. “Soph, who is this guy?”

“He’s no one, I promise–”

Max steps forward. “We dated for a few years.”

“Years?” Steve exclaims.

“Broke up on Valentine’s day last year, actually.” He looks at Sophia with a pained expression. “I… I missed you.”

Steve falls against his seat in disbelief. Sophia holds the base of her throat in a weak attempt to soothe herself.

“You’re really not helping, Max.” You glare at him, rubbing your friend’s shoulder as he sits at the table, mourning. Steve’s mouth doesn’t seem to be able to close and he’s looking at Sophia as if trying to silently plead with her to tell him that none of this is real.

Except is it, and Sophia closes her eyes. “I-I can’t do this, Steve.”

Her apology sends the chair flying back as he stands abruptly, desperately reaching for her in the crowded restaurant while you and Max remain silent. “Wait, can’t we just–”

“I should go.” She’s crying and the green of her eyes are a startling shade of brilliance. She really is quite lovely; the beauty breaks your heart. Steve calls after her as she leaves.

You hold him back. He screams at you to let him go, but you know that this time you have to be the one to break his fall. To catch him as he caught you the year Oliver broke your heart. There are tears in his eyes and his hoarse voice begs the girl to stay, but she’s long gone.

Max stands there in the wreckage. He doesn’t know what to do or who to follow.

“Just go,” you tell him, pulling Steve back down to sit. He collapses into your side, too ashamed to cry and too exhausted to care. He’s weak against you and your arms encase him. Max doesn’t move, and your voice raises before you can stop it. “Go!”

He listens, and the other patrons in the restaurant watch as yet another person runs from your table. A waitress gives you a pitying smile that you don’t reciprocate.

Steve hides his face in your neck and you gently cup his cheek to make him look at you. “Hey,” you say when his eyes finally focus on you. “Let’s get you a drink, okay?”

He drops his head on the table with a defeated sigh. “Give me whatever liquor they got.”

“The stronger the better?”

“Yes.”

“Coming right up.” You wave a waiter down and order four shots and two beers. Steve doesn’t say anything while you order, but he does shift closer to you once the waiter is gone.

The buzz of the restaurant is low, though full of laughter and conversation. You sit with Steve, fingers stroking through his hair as his head remains on the table. He lost all sense of pride the moment he begged Sophia to stay, so he allows your nails to scratch his scalp.

Drinks get set on the table and Steve throws both of his shots back before you can even pick one of yours up. He wipes his mouth and cringes at the taste. You stare at him, slightly concerned. “Alright over there?”

“Need more liquor.”

You stroke his cheek. “How cute. You think I’m going to let you drink your sorrows away.”

He bats your hand away. “I don’t know if you’re all caught up, but I just got dumped on Valentine’s day, Y/N.”

“And?” You laugh at him. “That happened to me too, buddy. You’re officially a part of the lonely hearts club. How’s it feel?”

Steve drops his head back onto the table. “It feels like we’re fucking cursed.”

“I’ll drink to that,” you clink your beer against his. “Cheers.”

It’s quiet for a while. You finish your shots and sip slowly at your beer. Steve remains hidden away at the table, refusing to sit up and face the reality of heartbreak. You allow him to take all the time he needs, replenishing his drinks when he runs low. He’s quiet, but he knocks his knee against yours every time you squeeze his hand.

I’m here.

Thank you.

The chatter in the restaurant dies down and you pay the tab and help carry Steve home. He’s significantly more drunk than you are, and you’re relieved that you chose to eat somewhere close enough to walk. He stumbles the entire way home and you have to cling onto his hand so that he doesn’t fall.

Steve drags your body onto the couch the second you open the apartment door. He collapses on top of you. His arms hold your waist and his nose presses against your neck. You bring your hands to his hair and sync your breathing with his.

“Think it’ll always be like this?” Steve murmurs after a while. “You and me and goddamn Valentine’s day?”

Six years of sharing the holiday together. Six years of being each other’s person to spend the day with and draw cheesy cards for. Six years of laughter and tears and secret glances and inside jokes.

Six years, and yet it still doesn’t feel like enough.

“We’re best friends, Steve.” You whisper into his ear, lips brushing skin. “Of course it’ll always be like this.”

He shivers at the sensation of your lips. Alcohol burns through his system. He finds himself upset that he drank tonight. He wonders what would’ve happened had he not met Sophia. If he had taken you to the restaurant alone and left sober.

Steve wonders if he would’ve kissed you then. If you would’ve let him.

But he had met Sophia. He’d taken you to the restaurant to have dinner with her. He got drunk tonight to forget the way she tasted. You walked him home because you couldn’t trust him to take care of himself. And now he’s too afraid to kiss you because he knows it could ruin everything he’s so carefully built with you.

He falls asleep to your heartbeat.

–

“Who gets married on Valentine’s day?” Robin tugs at her dress in disgust. “I mean, that should just be illegal.”

You help her fix her dress and shrug. “I don’t know. I think it’s sweet.”

“That’s because Steve’s walking you down the aisle tonight. You’re biased.”

“He’s the best man and I’m the maid of honor,” you poke her stomach. “It’s quite literally tradition to walk down the aisle as a pair.”

Kelly, who has been fixing her makeup the entire conversation, peeks her head from behind the mirror. “To be honest, Connor and I did intentionally plan for Steve to walk you down the aisle.”

Your jaw drops. “Kelly!”

“The two of you are just so cute!” She laughs. “You’re two of our closest friends. We want what’s best for you, so Connor and I figured we’d just give you guys a little push.”

Robin rolls her eyes. “Believe me. I’ve been trying to get them together for years now. What is this, your eighth year of being each other’s Valentine’s?”

Your head whips to her. “It’s only our seventh. And what do you mean you’ve been trying for years?”

“I’m practically the reason Steve moved in with you. He wanted to live with me months before you asked him to move in. Naturally, I’m a prophet, and I told him no. Now here you guys are, walking down the aisle together. Tada!”

“Oh my god.”

“I mean, it worked!” Robin frowns. “Well. Sort of.”

You’re speechless and Kelly takes pity on you. She walks over and rests a gentle hand on your shoulder. “Y/N, I love you. Connor and Robin love you. Steve loves you. You know that, right?”

“I…” You’d be a liar if you said the thought never crossed your mind. Especially after the breakup with Sophia. You’ve always been close with Steve, but in the last year there’s been this shift that you haven’t been able to describe.

There’s coffee waiting for you every morning. He holds your hand and strokes his thumb against your palm. Steve ends up falling asleep in your bed most nights now, wrapped around you as his breath warms your skin. His own room has slowly been turned into a makeshift studio for his music.

Sometimes you catch Steve staring at you, and sometimes the heat of his gaze doesn’t scare you.

But sometimes it does.

“Why are we even talking about this?” You deflect, setting your eyes on Kelly and her gorgeous veil. “You’re getting married in less than an hour. Can’t we talk about that?”

“Babe, all I’ve done for the last year is talk about this goddamn wedding. I’m the bride and right now I demand that we gossip.”

Robin laughs at you and you’re about to make up some excuse about needing to go organize the roses again when the bride’s door opens. Kelly yelps and covers her dress as you and Robin step in front of her to block the intruder’s view.

“Relax,” Steve holds his hands up. “It’s just me. Unfortunately, I’m not the groom.”

Kelly shakes his head at him fondly. “What do you want, Steve?”

“Connor sent me here because apparently I lack the ability to shut the fuck up and it was stressing him out.”

You snort and Robin hunches over as she giggles. Kelly smirks. “Yeah. I believe that.”

Steve sticks his tongue out at the three of you, and the conversation from earlier gets dropped. He helps you and Robin with the rest of Kelly’s makeup. He irons her dress, showers her with compliments, and your heart constricts every time he touches the edge of your silk dress with childlike wonder.

“You look beautiful, Y/N.” He whispers when it’s just the two of you. The door to the aisle hasn’t opened yet. The rest of the wedding party stands behind you, waiting.

A blush coats your cheeks. You loop your arm through his and bask in his fondness. “Thank you,” your hand rests on his chest. “You look quite handsome yourself.”

And he does. Steve is cruelly beautiful in his suit. His tie matches the lace of your dress and you want to pull the end of it and bring his lips to yours. He stares down at your lips and you wonder if he’s thinking about yours, before the music starts.

The door opens. Down the long, carpeted length of the church stands Connor. There are flowers everywhere and Steve grabs the hand that rests against his forearm. He squeezes it, takes a deep breath, and together you walk down the aisle.

During the wedding Robin cries. The vows are exchanged and she has to cover her mouth to contain the sobs that spill from her. Steve catches your eye from across the pew and the two of you smile at your friend, your love for her forming into one.

Sometime late into the night Steve finds you. He hands you a drink before promptly dragging you to the dancefloor. You protest, shy, but he doesn’t listen.

“I told myself I’d dance with the prettiest girl at this wedding, angelface. And it just so happens that that girl is you.”

You laugh at him, following his hands as he guides you through the motions of dancing. “Don’t let Kelly hear you, otherwise she’ll strangle you.”

“Let her,” Steve spins you, eliciting more giggles to fall from your pretty lips. “I’ll die a happy man now that I’ve danced with you.”

“That was disgusting.”

“And charming. Don’t forget charming.” He spins you again before bringing your bodies even closer together. “You know what this reminds me of?”

You gaze up at Steve. “What?”

“The Lonely Hearts dance.”

Exasperated laughter follows his confession. “You’re really thinking about our high school dance right now?”

“Why wouldn’t I? Every year I was dying to dance with you.” Steve’s thumbs stroke up and down the sides of your waist. His grip on you tightens. His voice lowers and you recognize the adoration that paints his brown eyes. The air between you stills. Steve dips his head, his forehead brushes yours. “And now I finally got that dance.”

You don’t breathe. If you do, you’re afraid that the exhale would shatter the fragility of this moment.

“Was it worth it?” You don’t recognize your own voice and the breathy way it comes out. Your hands move up Steve’s chest and snake around his neck. His head knocks against yours, your noses centimeters apart, lips separated by inches.

You feel Steve’s smile more than you really see it. “You tell me.”

He kisses you, cradling your body as if it were made to fit into the crevices of his palms. Lips move against lips and your skin hums at the sensation of finally welcoming him home. His skin greets you with a soft tenderness and your lips coat his mouth with sugary sweetness.

“Get a room!” Robin throws a napkin at the two of you, forcing you apart, and when you come up for air you see the biggest smile on her face.

You hide in Steve’s neck, embarrassed, though not enough to not leave small, fluttery kisses on every mole your lips can find. You’re already addicted to feeling him shiver beneath you.

“Seems we have a wedding to plan for next year!” Connor raises his beer and points at you and Steve, cackling loudly.

Kelly is next to him and she kisses her husband’s cheek and beams at him. “It took ‘em long enough!”

“Do you guys mind?” Steve pulls you away from the dancefloor, glaring at his closest friends who all love him endlessly and whom he loves even more, and basks in your giggling as he whisks you away. “I’m trying to kiss Y/N here!”

“Use protection!” Robin calls out while Connor and Kelly whistle and cat call.

Steve finds an empty closet and no one can find you for the rest of the night. Kelly never lets you live it down, Connor commends you for the bravery, and Robin has to wipe away her tears.

–

Your first semester of senior year, Steve and Robin’s band gets signed. The record label is apparently legendary because they collapse onto the ground screaming when they get the phone call. Twenty minutes later, Connor and Kelly are at your apartment screaming alongside them.

Two weeks later they book tickets to New York and you help Steve pack his bags. Everything happens so quickly and it’s almost nauseating trying to keep up.

“We’re in the studio from nine to five every weekday, so I’ll call you every day at six.” Steve folds a pair of jeans and hands them for you to place in his suitcase. “Weekends I’ll call you at five so that we can eat dinner together.”

You give him an odd look. “Don’t you want to go explore the city while you’re there?”

“I mean, sure. But I can do that during the day. The moment the clock strikes five or six, it’s my girl’s time.”

“Steve…” You’re so stupidly in love with him sometimes. “I don’t want you worrying about me while you’re there. This is a huge opportunity for you.”

“Who said anything about worrying about you?” Steve walks up behind you and kisses your neck. “Angelface, I’m worried I might die after the first week without you.”

Your hands brush through his hair. “You’ll be fine, Stevie. I guarantee that in five days tops you’ll be having too much fun to miss me.”

“Wrong. I will be talking everyone’s ears off about you and will probably get banned from a lot of bars because of it.”

Sighing, you turn and face him, pressing a soft kiss to his brow. “Steve, it’s only for a few months. Each day we’re apart will be one day closer to being together.”

“How about no days apart and every day together?”

You kiss him, slowly and drawn out, as if time is on your side and you’re in excess of it. Steve hums against you, tightening his arms in a lazy hug, and you know that you’ll miss him forever.

The first few weeks are hard without Steve. You’ve never lived on your own before and you’ve never really spent a day without him since you were eighteen. Now you’re twenty-one and there’s no one to kiss you awake or make faces in the mirror with you as you brush your teeth.

What’s worse is that Robin is gone, too. And Kelly. And Connor.

Their absence makes you realize that you direly need other friends who aren’t in a literal band together.

Steve keeps his promise and calls you every day. He always asks about how your day has been, he tells you every detail about his. He tells you that he’s started writing all his thoughts down in a notebook that he wants to tell you so that he doesn’t forget, and it makes you ache even more.

The months pass by slowly. December drips into January and then February greets you with her winter’s kiss. There’s snow in Chicago and even more to come, and you know Steve will be excited to see it when he gets back.

Which coincidentally happens to be Valentine’s day.

And also the day you get violent food poisoning.

After months of being apart, the first time Steve sees you again is with your head in the toilet bowl, hacking up your lungs and dying.

“Oh, Jesus.” He drops his bags and comes running over, immediately gathering your hair so that you don’t get it dirty as yet another wave of nausea hits you.

“Welcome home.” you say in between bouts of bile. Truly, you think this is a new low that you’ve reached. Here you are, deathly ill and incredibly sweaty, while your lovely boyfriend has just arrived home after months of missing each other. “Sorry that you have to see this.”

Steve rubs your back and sits with you on the ground. “Don’t be ridiculous. Even spilling your guts out I think you’re hot.”

“That’s sweet,” you throw up again. “Would you be a dear and kill me now?”

He laughs, massaging your tender body, and doesn’t once leave your side. He flushes the toilet for you when needed. He gets a rag and soaks it in cold water and rubs it across your forehead to help regulate your fever. He hums to you when your stomach twists in pain.

Eventually the nausea settles enough for you to ask Steve to carry you to bed. He does, and he sets you down gently before crawling in next to you. He fits your body against his, hand on your stomach as if he himself can ease its ache.

“I’m sorry,” your voice is raspy, the acidic bile still lingering. “I’m sure this isn’t the grand reunion and Valentine’s day that you had in mind.”

“I’m laying in bed with you and you love me.” Steve kisses your overheated forehead. “That’s all I ever want for Valentine’s day.”

Your eyes fall shut and you exhale shakily. “I just… I wanted our first Valentine’s to be special. I had it all planned out. I rented your favorite movie and bought all the ingredients to make the gnocchi you love so much, and then as I was folding the laundry I just-I died.”

“Food poisoning. America’s silent killer.” Your laugh rings in Steve’s ears and he smiles, kissing your face again and again and again. He runs his nose down your chin, brushes the hair out of your face. “Besides, this isn’t our first Valentine’s. I’m counting all the ones we spent together single and lonely whether you like it or not.”

“The fifth one wasn’t so bad,” you muse. You still remember the roar of the Vexture as Steve announced that you were his Valentine. “You were annoyingly charming that night.”

“That was me declaring my love for you, you know.”

You turn to him, startled. “Please tell me you’re joking.”

“Nope.” Steve clutches his chest. “There I was, telling the love of my life that I wanted her to be my Valentine forever, and then in the end she friendzones me. Truly brutal stuff.”

“But that was years ago! We were nineteen, there’s no way in hell you were actually in love with me.”

He grabs your hand and kisses it. “Y/N, I’ve been in love with you since we were fifteen. I was just waiting for you to like me back.”

The idea of Steve being in love with you since you were kids nearly sends you back to throwing up. You’re overwhelmed by it. By the idea that someone could’ve loved you for as long as he has. That he still loves you now. For nearly a decade.

“Y/N? You got all quiet over there. You alive?” Steve pokes your cheek and it’s then that you know that there was never anyone else for you. You were his from the moment he walked into student council and demanded cleaner mirrors in the men’s bathroom.

“I love you.” You tell him. They’re the only words created for what you have.

Steve scrunches his face in an endearing manner. “I love you, too.”

“Now tell me all about New York.”

And he does.

–

Robin tells you that tour life is romanticized and that within the first week you’ll strangle her and Steve to death, but you don’t believe her. When you see the size of the bus the five of you will be staying in for months on end, you start to second guess what she’s said.

“It’s… cozy?”

Connor huffs at you. “That’s one way to look at it.”

“It’ll be fun, guys!” You try again to make light of the situation, though really you also don’t believe what you’re saying. “I mean, think about how much closer we’ll be after this.”

“Weren’t you a philosophy major?” Connor looks at you skeptically. “Isn’t the whole schtick of those old white dudes pessimism?”

Steve throws an arm around you. “She graduated top of her class, actually. And yes. Those old white dudes loved being bitter bitches.”

“I think Y/N’s right.” Kelly joins in now. “We’re a family. It can’t be that bad.”

“Famous last words.” Robin mutters.

They are, in fact, famous last words.

Connor learns that he gets car sick easily on day two. Kelly learns that she has a fear of car sickness on day three. Robin leaves her keyboard at one of the venues they play at the second week and doesn’t realize it until you’re already at the next venue an entire state away. Steve loses his voice after the sixth show and spends the entire bus ride to the next venue sulking.

You, however, are honestly having a great time. You didn’t get to travel with the band last year due to school, and now that you’ve graduated, you’re enamored with seeing places that aren’t native to Illinois or Indiana.

“Steve, if you gargle salt water in my ear one more time, I will shave your head in your sleep.” Robin threatens during week four. Her eye is twitching and you truly do believe that she has a razor hidden somewhere.

“I have to protect my voice.” He argues, pouring more warm water into a cup before mixing salt in. “I can’t lose it again!”

“That was a pretty rough show.” Connor says from his bunk. Being nearly 6’4, he barely even fits in it. His legs hang off awkwardly and he’s been complaining about his back for weeks now.

“I thought Robin sang pretty well.” Nancy, the band’s tour photographer, says quietly from the makeshift kitchenette. She joined during the third show and you think Robin’s been in love with her since the fourth one.

“Uh, thanks. I guess.” She squeaks out, hiding behind you in a not so subtle manner. You pat her hand, sympathetic.

Steve gargles and spits the water into the sink. “Robin has an incredible voice, I agree. But that’s besides the point. We’re on the clock full time, even if we don’t have a show tonight.”

“And tell me, my dear wife, why we don’t have a show tonight?” Connor sings to Kelly.

“Why, my dear husband, I do believe it’s because it’s Valentine’s day and Stevie over here demanded the night off so that he can court our beloved Y/N.”

Steve rolls his eyes at them and you laugh. “In our defense, we haven’t exactly had a normal Valentine’s day together. We’re in dire need of one normal night.”

Nancy tilts her head at you. “But aren’t you guys together?”

“Yeah, but we weren’t for a while.”

“One Valentine’s day Y/N found out her boyfriend was cheating on her, who also just so happened to be my roommate.”

Robin throws her head back and shouts, “Fuck Oliver!” And Connor and Kelly join.

“Thanks, guys.” Steve turns back to Nancy. “Another year I made Y/N go on a blind double date with me and a girl I was dating at the time. Turns out, the guy I brought for Y/N was also the ex boyfriend of my girlfriend. So that was fun.”

“One year we actually walked down the aisle together. Before we were even dating.” Nancy’s eyes widen and you shrug at her. “We were in the same wedding party.”

“Happy anniversary, babe.” Connor blows a kiss to Kelly and she catches it, blowing him one back.

“And last year I got horrendous food poisoning and Steve had to drive me to the hospital since I was so dehydrated. He cried filling out my paperwork.”

“I did.”

Nancy looks between you and Steve. “And this year, you guys will…?”

“I’m taking Y/N out to a nice, totally normal and totally romantic dinner. I’m going to wine and dine my girl and then we’re going to cuddle in our way too small bunk bed and sleep.”

You beam at everyone. “It’s a pretty good plan.”

Except you and Steve don’t even make it to your reservation. Later that night, right before you call a taxi, Nancy bursts through the bus door with a frantic look in her eyes. You drop the phone and rush to her. “Woah, hey. What’s going on?”

“Have you seen Robin?” There are tear stains on her delicate face.

Steve’s body tenses. “Last time we saw her was when she left with you guys, why?”

“I–” A broken sob prevents Nancy from telling him anything else, and you take her into your arms.

You soothe her, your own worry for your friend setting your body on edge. Steve shares a look with you, both wondering what the hell is happening. Robin left with Nancy and the others hours ago to go check out some local bar, and now here Nancy is, crying in your arms, with Robin nowhere to be found.

“Nance,” drying the girl’s tears, you try to get her to calm down enough to speak. “I need you to breathe with me, okay? Take a deep breath and then let it out slowly.”

You inhale, so does she, and after several seconds you exhale long and slow. Nancy’s breath stutters and her tears soak the white blouse she looks so delicate in, but still she breathes.

Steve stands over the two of you, arms crossed with his eyebrows pinched together in worry. He taps his foot and you know it’s taking everything within him not to tear down the entire town to find his best friend.

“What happened with Robin, Nance?” Steve gently asks her, crouching down to her eye level. “Is she okay? Are you okay?”

Nancy wipes her face and sniffs. She can’t look at you or Steve. Her eyes face only the ground as she picks at her nails. “We… We kissed.”

“That’s…” Steve looks at you, silently asking if he should be elated or concerned, and all you can do is shrug helplessly at him. “That’s-that’s great, right? I mean, you two were totally love at first sight. Like, Romeo and Juliet but without the, you know. Death. I mean, at least I hope there’s no death, but seeing as you’re currently crying I’m a little nervous–”

“What my boyfriend is trying to say is that we’re happy for you guys, but also a little concerned.” You interrupt Steve’s ramble. “What happened after the kiss?”

Nancy continues picking at her nails. Her crying has subsided but her face remains broken and anguished. Her eyebrows knit together and her mouth draws into a thin line. “I-I kissed her, and then she just… She ran.”

“Shit,” you sigh, dropping your head.

Steve throws his own head back and curses as well. “Another category five.”

“Yup.”

Nancy turns to you. “Category five? What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

You wince, grabbing her hand in hopes of quelling her sudden anger. “Look, Robin is…”

“A gem.” Steve finishes for you, and you nod at him.

“She’s my best friend, and she’s incredibly brave and charismatic and bold. I’ve seen her punch men five times her size. She always speaks her mind and never takes no for an answer, but she’s also vulnerable. She hides a lot behind her humor.”

“When I first met Robin, she was going through a pretty rough breakup.” Steve sits next to you and Nancy now. “And since then she’s become the worst person imaginable when it comes to dating. She always freaks out and leaves the relationship before they can leave her. And a category five freakout is… bad.”

“We’ve only seen it once before with some girl she met at a gig a few years back. They kissed and Robin locked herself in the bathroom and refused to leave until the girl was gone.” You tuck Nancy’s hair behind her ear. “We aren’t telling you this to scare you, we’re telling you this because you clearly love Robin, and she loves you. She’s just… she’s been hurt before.”

Nancy slouches on the couch. “But I don’t want to hurt her! I didn’t even mean to kiss her, but she looked so pretty under the purple lighting and was laughing at some stupid joke I made and-and suddenly we were kissing and it was incredible and then–”

“Category five.” Steve mimes an explosion with his hands. You glare at him.

“How about this, we’ll find Robin for you and bring her back here. I think the two of you just really need to talk about this.”

Steve raises his hand. “I personally think they just need to makeout.” You elbow his side and he groans in pain. “Yeah, okay. That was fair.”

“I can’t ask you guys to do that.” Nancy sniffs. “You were so excited for your date tonight and you’ve already done enough.”

Steve wraps an arm around your waist. “She’s right. This is just tradition for us. A sacred thing we look forward to every year.”

“You two confuse me so much.” Nancy laughs wetly, overwhelmed by your kindness.

“We get that a lot.” Steve kisses your temple. “C’mon, angelface. The lesbians need us.”

Nancy nearly chokes on her laughter and you giggle as well. The bus door closes and it’s just open road before you. You’re in the middle of Wisconsin with nothing but grass and dirt for miles ahead. Wherever Robin ended up running off to, you sincerely hope it’s close.

In the end, you and Steve end up walking nearly two miles to a nearby gas station and find Robin face deep in a pint of ice cream. Her cheeks are smeared in chocolate and her puffy eyes are red. The moment you find her, Steve throws himself into her arms and you hold them both as she starts to cry.

It takes several conversations, many tissues, and a few threats before you’re able to convince Robin to walk back to the bus with you. She freaks out the entire two miles and Steve has to fully pick her up at one point to prevent her from fleeing, but eventually you’re standing in front of the bus door with Robin’s iron grip on your hand.

“I-I can’t do this.” She chokes out, short of breath as panic sets in again. “Please don’t make me do this.”

“You can,” Steve pokes her cheek, though his hand rubs her shoulder with affection. “And you will.”

“What if she hates me now?”

You hook your chin over Robin’s shoulder, butting your head with hers. “Then we’ll be here to catch you, dummy. But we won’t need to, because Nancy is currently pacing the bus waiting to kiss your pretty face again.”

Robin’s body tenses and she gets ready to run, but Steve swoops her into his arms and you yank the door open so that he can throw her inside. She screams, but you slam the door shut and Steve helps you keep it closed as her fists pound against it.

“Let me out!” Robin screeches, throwing her body against the door.

“Kiss and make up! Those are the rules!” You scream back, clenching your teeth to keep your footing.

Robin screams again and Steve has to throw his entire body weight back to keep her inside, but eventually her anger exhausts her and soon there’s only silence within the bus. You and Steve press your ears to the door, breaths held so as not to miss anything, and faintly, very faintly, you hear Nancy’s soft voice mixing with Robin’s embarrassed tears.

Stepping back, Steve holds his hand for you to high five, which you gladly accept. “God, we’re great.”

“The best matchmakers this town has ever seen.”

Steve tugs you against him and holds you close to his chest, inhaling your scent and humming in content. You melt into him and he holds you for a while, just the two of you, swaying softly together as the gentle February wind dances around you.

“I think year nine went pretty well.” You murmur into Steve’s skin.

He buries his face in your hair. “I have a feeling year ten will be even better.”

–

The band’s breakout album, Angelface, becomes an instant success. It tops every chart, critics praise it, fans scream along to all the songs, and Steve claims that you’re the reason for it.

“I name an album after you and suddenly it sells a million copies overnight.” He nips at your neck, humming when you writhe beneath him. “You’re my good luck charm, angelface.”

You want to tease him and call him crazy, but when his hand comes up to massage your breast through its thin fabric, your moans drown out the noise in your mind.

Connor and Kelly buy a house with a studio built inside of it. The band rehearses there every day in preparation for their next album. Robin brings Nancy along, the two of them always giggling quietly to themselves in between sessions. Nancy becomes the band’s official photographer. All the photos are of Robin.

Steve surprises you one day with the keys to your own home. He tells you that the second the money from Angelface was his, he went out and bought the house the next day. The home is much bigger than the apartment you once shared together, though small enough to still feel intimate. There are mahogany floors and a bay window in your bedroom and you couldn’t be more in love with it.

February comes and Steve sits you down at the kitchen table with a pen and paper in front of him.

“Alright,” he says, setting his hands on the table with an air of authority to him. “Valentine’s day is approaching. We know what that means.”

“That disaster is ahead.” You nod solemnly, following along.

“Exactly, so here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to make you a fancy dinner without anything that can possibly get you sick. No eggs. No meat. No dairy. Nothing prone to yacking.”

“Not sure what that leaves you with, but I’m listening.”

Steve writes everything down. “There will be only electric candles because I’m now terrified that the only disaster left is a house fire, and I spent a concerning amount of money on this house.”

“I fear the same.”

“Perfect. I’ll get us some wine and a movie to rent. Our landline will be turned off so that absolutely no one can contact us. We’re going AWOL here, Y/N. Desperate times call for desperate measures.”

You lean forward and place your head in your hand. “What if Robin tries calling, though?”

“I love her, but we landed her a girlfriend last year. She owes us this Valentine’s day.”

“Touché.”

Steve looks down at his list. “Okay. Am I missing anything?”

You think for a moment. “No, I think that’s all, just don’t forget I have a doctor’s appointment that day so I won’t be home until a bit later.”

“Already accounted for that. I’ll be buying undisclosed decorations for the house to surprise you with.”

“Undisclosed? How many spy movies did you watch before this?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

True to his word, Steve does decorate the house while you’re gone. You get back from your appointment and your home is an explosion of pinks and reds. There are streamers everywhere and a small disco ball hangs from your living room ceiling. Music from your high school years plays softly in the background and the house smells of acidic tomato and garlic.

“Steve?” You call out, breathless as you walk towards the kitchen. He’s spared no expense. The floor is littered with roses and there’s wine waiting for you on the table with small electric candles flickering in the darkness.

“Do you like it?” You turn around and find Steve holding a bouquet of roses, dressed in a familiar tuxedo. It’s all black and his ribbed vest has the same rose pinned to it that it did back when you were in high school trying to stop him from pouring gin into the punch.

Your heart beats wildly and an overwhelming mix of emotions simmer in your stomach. “You’re…”

“The best boyfriend in the world? I know.” Steve grabs the wine and pops it open, pouring you a glass. He hands it to you with a wink, but you don’t accept the drink. He tilts his head in confusion. “I thought you loved red wine?”

“I-I do.” You’re quick to reassure him. “But after my doctor’s appointment today, I’m not so sure I should have any.”

Your heartbeat spikes again and Steve sets the glasses down immediately. He’s at your side a second later, worry for you written all over his handsome face. “You said it was just a regular checkup. Are you alright? Are you sick again? I-I can drive you to the hospital, just let me turn off the stove before we actually do have a house fire–”

“Steve,” your voice cracks with love and warmth. He looks up at you, pink lips parted in a small frown that you want to kiss better. “I can’t have wine for nine months.”

“Nine..? That’s an oddly specific number.” His lips turn downwards. “Is it like, some type of allergy now, or–?”

“No, Stevie.” You cup his face with a smile. Grabbing his hands, you bring them to your stomach. His palms lay flush against your abdomen, warm, and something in his face shifts. His eyes widen slightly, soft air escapes him, and your face burns from how wide you smile. “It isn’t an allergy.”

“You’re–?” He doesn’t want to say it, afraid that if he does, that if he’s wrong, his heart would be broken in an irrevocable way.

You nod, brushing his hair back. “I’m about ten weeks along.”

Steve sinks to his knees, dropping his head to your stomach and staring at it with an innocent gaze of love. His eyes fill with wonder, with tears. “Y/N.”

He whispers your name like a sacred prayer, lips pressing to the flesh over and over again as your fingers tangle in his hair and your joy coats his skin.

“I know we’re young, but…” You whisper down to him. “I want this. I really, really want this.”

“I want this, too.” Steve slides his hands up your body and stands, cradling you in his arms while his face buries itself into your neck. You can feel his tears wet your skin, the slight trembling of his body. “God, I want this.”

Your lips ghost the shell of his ear, down the veins in his neck, the crest of his collarbones and the lines of his jaw. Steve pulls you, closer and closer and closer, until your skin is his and his breath is yours.

“Happy Valentine’s day, Stevie.”

Steve smiles down at you. His face has changed since you first met ten years ago. The lines around his eyes have deepened slightly, his boyish smile is now more charming than endearing, and his jaw has become more defined.

His eyes, however, are the same eyes you fell in love with all those years ago. The toffee brown still reminiscent of the student council meetings you always bickered in. They’re still soft when he looks at you, open and lovely as they were at the Lonely Hearts dance.

There is still so much love that is embedded in Steve’s hand woven features for you. His hands stroke your stomach and your lips are against his. The excess of love is syrupy thick.

All it took was ten Valentine’s days.

⌑ writing masterlist

⌑ if youd like to buy me a coffee ☕︎

⌑ please feel free to like, reblog, and comment. i adore hearing from you guys :)

#steve harrington x reader #steve harrington x you #steve harrington fanfic #steve harrington blurb #steve harrington x fem #stranger things #m's writing #fluff #this is such a cheesy one #i was smiling so hard writing it my god #havent done purely fluff in so long

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iamhereforfunnzies · 2 days ago

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Chapter 1: I see you

Bruce overlooking his paperwork and plans of capturing crimminals and crime rates, he felt his stomach grumble. Seeing the grandfather clock tick a 11:15 p.m. he smiled “Just in time for Lunch.” He felt a bit sad knowing he is eating alone today, Dick being Bludhaven, Jason never really visiting, Tim out somewhere with Conner, and Damian out doing voluntary work in a animal shelter. What a lonely time to be in the manor.

Scratch

Heavy breathing was on the otherside of the door he saw you , (Name) how different you were usually … out? But it’s better than eating alone and it would be nice to converse with you , he called you but why do you look at him like that. You arm is bleeding from your intensive scratching , eyes forcing itself not to cry what happened? Why do you look like you died? “(Name), what are you doing?” you turn to him. “OH- um… Just anxious that’s all” Bruce narrowed his eyes as you look down slowing down on the scratching. “About what?” He sat next to you ,why is he so tall?!

“Just…I had a nightmare.” GREAT (NAME) (MIDDLENAME) WAYNE , he’s gonna think you’re a huge incompetent baby. Nice going , idiot your mind screams at you. Bruce blinks he feels so amused , how adorable he just wants to pinch your cheeks and coax you to sleep. He chuckled lightly “What happened in your nightmare?” he can’t believe he is having a normal parent to child conversation. Honestly, your not sure if you can tell him , since it wasn’t a dream you died and then you just time travel back 2 weeks before your death. “ I was walking back to the manor after work.” Bruce hid his shock as you mentioned having a job. “There was a man …” your head throbbed as you try to see your memory clear. “He touched , choke, then…No, No it was choke , someone else touched me, then a gun was shoved in my mouth.” Your head throbbed harder as your heart was trying to break out your ribs. “Something happened , c’mon remember” you hit your stupid head trying to make your death clear as you start mumbling curse words.

Bruce stood still not knowing how to respond , he held your hands. “Don’t . Stop. Just don’t think about it.” He was comforting you , now that he had a good look at you. When did you get so tall? Weren’t you just a seedling a month ago? (Name) when did you get your nails done? Why are your eyes so tired? Weren’t you trailing Dick and Tim to play with you? When did your hair changed? Alfred eyes widen as he see’s Bruce hugging you with what looks like a panic attack. “Lunch is here”

What is wrong with you? Why the hell did you cry infront of him! Never once did Bruce took the time with you. He always seemed so occupied with his little only boys squad doing who know’s what! It’s so weird they are always fighting at the gym with Dick , Tim , and Damian (Rarely Jason), they are so secretive that you just stopped asking questions. Pacing in your quaint room with all this awards from last place to gold , you stare at them how much you lost and won over the years. Yet, you held every lost with pride because you tried well that’s what Alfred tells you.

A sudden text came in your phone as you see your manager asking you if your free in 2 weeks in Tuesday. You stared at your phone , you died at Tuesday. A normal Tuesday nothing special about the date but you died. You died, you left the message seen. Staring at yourself in the mirror you said to the mirror. “Am I doing enough to worth living?” Years , hours , days and seconds of awards in your room but not one moment of them stood out. All of this rewards weren’t for you , they were for them.

You look at the photo stand of your family I the gala, you were always the one who they claim to protect you but they never tell you anything . Laughing among their little group never explaining to you or care to want you to join in. Even in movie nights it feels like your watching them instead of the movie. Game nights were just you being some extra player they never needed. You grimace as you hid the photo frame of your table. Your childhood was dedicated to appease their eyes , your life to make interesting so they can be interested in your welbecoming but you died. Dead with nothing to remember.

A robin in a tree chirping in the trees as the gotham sky in a rare moment glows gold like heavens gate, the sun shinning, the air crisp and fresh . The robin turns it’s head to you tilting it’s head but flies away with the other birds in the sky. “Fucking heavens , God if this a sign I am not gonna take this second chance for granted.” You muster a trembling smile. “I am gonna lived.” You took your phone.

(Name), are you free the week after this at Tuesday 8:00 a.m.?

Today 12:05 p.m.

I quit. Thank you for the experience.

Today 12:15 p.m.

I genuinely hope this is readable

#yandere batfam #neglected reader #yandere bruce wayne #yandere damian wayne #yandere alfred pennyworth #yandere dick grayson #yandere jason todd #yandere tim drake

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fangel · 20 hours ago

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YVE !! ♡ my angel, your feedback means more than all the stars in the sky ଘ꒰ ॣ´͈ ᵕ `͈ ॣ꒱ଓ i’m going to scream with you under the cut

starting with the synopsis alskdwlmzap i mean who doesn’t see sunghoon and #WantThat ?! i fear he wouldn’t leave a room with me in one piece

as an evil, weird, off putting girl myself i had to represent !! she was so easy to write bc i was half self-inserting during this story 😭 i love her idc ! she never did wrong !!

m*n are rotten, and i wholeheartedly agree that 100 random m*n should be sacrificed monthly. honestly, put them all in jail to start until deemed worthy of being free ! ~ the father / reverend is the true evil here. absolute terrible man (but necessary for the plot) i love how you dragged him every chance you got LMAO he deserves all the hate “it’s time for you to die” IJBOL, so real

it was hitting real close to home while writing ㅠㅠ and you’re so right - she wasn’t born resilient, she had to become resilient because of the environment she grew up in !! and omg your comments about her made me realize how sad and angsty this story is (i didn’t even think it was that depressing while writing but ohmygod it really is ajskakf)

NOT THE “it’s nice to be seen, noticed” being a theme in my works 😭 am i exposing myself ?!? (yes)

sidenote — I LOVE ALL THE LIL MEMES AND GIFS SO MUCH HAHA the debby ryan ones always get me

i live love laugh when one of the love interests is a lil scared. yes, fear me, i love you but am also out to get you (in many ways, this adds to the mystery hehe) likkkke sunghoon doesn’t know what to do with all that !! … or does he?

THANK YOU! i pride myself in my weird creativity and no it’s not weird, it just means you’re a Real One. be giddy and excited !!!

you’re freaky comments kslakdpalb #REAL

soooo much religious trauma in this story. i’m the biggest nerd when it comes to theology and religious media (i honestly don’t know why, i don’t love or hate religion and im not religious (anymore), but something about it i’m always itching to write). i think it’s perfect for wanting to write about a relationship dealing with unlearning shame and guilt etc idk ! you get it? yeah, you do

reader is 100000% projecting her feelings / trauma onto him. she doesn’t even realize that until later and how ironically she kind of was acting like her father in a way. and you’re on the money again ! she does like ruining sunghoon and having power over something but eventually realizes she likes the company much more after being alone most her life

omg ty ily for loving my ‘evil’ mc :( 🤍 she’s so complex and so very human. loved how you described her because that’s exactly how i wanted her to come across. yeah she’s a little mean but how can we blame her 😔

NO YOU ARE CORRECT !!! jake in HoP is also jake from attic angel. just them as college students (tbh i don’t remember all my details from attic angel, but i did want him to make a cameo here so yes this is my multiverse)

FATHERLESS BEHAVIOR ! i screamed. but sunghoon is sooooo cute. i had to bring the babygirl hoon agenda to light bc he’s so sweet and loser boy coded to me

YES THE TEDDY BEAR SCENE it’s actually my favorite part of the whole story 😭 because she’s finally opening up to him and being somewhat vulnerable. tender intimate moments >> anything else. I LOVE SLOW BURN, AND I MEANT IT !! before writing on this account angst and slow burn was always my go to :)) also the blood oath scene is one of my favs. it was supposed to be longer but was lazy lol

(i have to reply to the comment, sorry not sorry) but i had to gut you open to blow on the boo-boos </3 i needed that fluff to feel extra rewarding after the angst

IM SOOOO HAPPY you feel this was made for you because it was !! it really truly was. you’re more than likely a lot like me and this story was a love letter to all the people that the world made me feel small. we are seen and we can and will be loved just as tenderly as we wish regardless of how negative we feel about ourselves or what others think, etc 🤍 (i swear i have no cameras watching you!! unless.. JK)

NOT YOU CALLING ME OUT ABOUT THE ROOMS HAHA college boys are truly a mess, you got me there. i remember my guy friends dorms and it was horrid. sunghoon would never tho..

i could reply to everything you said (i totally did out loud to myself while giggling and kicking my feet with a fat grin) but i’ll end with THANK YOUUUUU SO MUCH FOR TAKING YOUR TIME TO READ MY STORY AND EVEN MAKE COMMENTS WITH ALL THE PICTURES AND WHAT NOT IT MEANS THE WORLD TO ME HOW YOU PUT EFFORT INTO YOUR RESPONSES. I LOVE YOU SO BAD AND ITS BC YOU I ENJOY WRITING AND SHARING MY WORK EVEN MORE <3 !!!!!!! may the most tender, kind, and warm love find you.

harvest of purity — sunghoon [ 박성훈 ]

pairing ⦂ sunghoon ⨯ fem. reader

synopsis ⦂ au in which an innocent, shy, and faithful sunghoon takes a summer job as a farmhand. he’s never indulged on his desires until the farmer’s daughter shows him a taste of sin. although riddled with guilt, he cannot deny or escape the new rousing feelings that impurify him. especially when she's set on ruining him every chance she gets.

genre ⦂ smut, slow burn romance, strangers to lovers word count ⦂ 29k tags ⦂ fluff and angst, repressed desires, innocence loss, guilt and shame, exploring relationships, falling in love, southern gothic vibes, summer au, clingy down bad sunghoon, ‘mean’ morally gray reader, both are weirdo loser freaks content advisory ⦂ mdni ! dark-ish content ⚠︎ sexually explicit content in four scenes: handjob, oral (m. rec.), dry humping, thigh fucking, unprotected sex, virginity loss, corruption!kink, degradation!kink, praise!kink, switch!hoon, he whines whimpers and cries; religious themes, concepts, corruption, and criticism; manipulation, animal death, blood, intense scenes, abusive parenting, gun mention and use

note ⦂ poured my heart out. i hope you love it as much as i do. dedicated to my other evil, off-putting, and/or weird girls┊reblogs and feedback encouraged ⇀ playlist ⸝⸝ masterlist 🌾

　You’re not sure what life in your small town was like before you were born. You can imagine it’s not too different from what it is now though. The thing about old country towns is they never seem to change. Open fields and miles of farmland. Two gas stations, one grocery store, a few family owned vegetable stands or in-home produce product shops. Only one notable neighborhood where the majority of the townspeople lived if not hidden somewhere else in the countryside. And too many churches to keep track of if the abandoned ones were included in the count.

You like to think your parents were happy before you too. Hopeful and optimistic when offered to take over your uncle’s farm. Excited for the next step in their relationship after their marriage. They were the ideal family dream coming to life: high school lovers, engaged after graduation, married, a career handed to them through family with a large property of land and lovely farmhouse. All that was left was to grow that family. To have children to not only help tend the fields and animals but run around barefoot, all smiles, and wide eyed.

You were positive that it was something they wanted.

But life couldn’t have been that easy for them; it would’ve been too gratuitous of a blessing.

The day you were born, your father knew there was something greatly wrong with you. He claimed that on the day you ripped your mother open, screaming and crying, that God spoke to him for the first time. He called it divine intervention. Believing the birth of your soul was a red-herring of all that was set to come but God would show him the light, the truth: that you were nothing short of evil and needed saving.

That year on the farm there was nothing but death. It only furthered your father’s harsh thinking of you. The crops and produce either died or rotted before it had the chance to grow or ripe. The animals were dropping dead from unknown illnesses. Every female livestock that gave birth passed in doing so. Barely any profits were made that year. Taxes were rising and so were the prices of nearly everything. It was a huge toll for your family, especially when raising their first child. Before you were even conscious of the situation everything was already deemed your fault.

Through the harrowing struggle, your father’s optimism turned to resentment. He claimed that bringing you to the farm was not like bringing a daughter home, but a corrosive parasite. He believed that you were the reason for the life being sucked away from their perfect farm life. So, he turned to the only thing that he could trust to save the family from your curse: God. Begging and pleading through prayers every morning and night to the sky for a better season.

He studied religion here and there before taking over his brother-in-law's farm but with the farm failing for the first time, he took a change of career paths. He was already well known among the locals, close with the church goers in the community. And somewhere along the way, he managed to start preaching himself. Nearly every christian in your town moved churches to follow where he went. Like sheep to a shepherd.

If only they knew what you did, what he was truly like behind the closed doors of your home. How his devotion was turning to violence. Day by day, becoming uglier.

While your father busied himself with his new found family, often away from home on the farm, the crops and animals began to thrive again. Slowly but surely, growing and regaining health. He would say it’s God’s doing, a small taste of His salvation.

Your early years were mostly troubled by the relationship of your parents. Too young to fully understand their disputes, drawing at the kitchen table with their yelling sounding the house. It was always about you, that much you knew. Because you watch and you listen. Quick to learn that they tried for another child but never had any success. They wanted someone else to be their baby. Something that felt more like a blessing than you. Your father constantly spitting in your mother’s face that you were the rot to the fruit of her womb. And then he would always end up leaving by slamming the door and your mother would always join you at the table with tears and a bottle of wine. You always just watched, listening in silence. Perhaps just born resilient.

Growing up was different for you compared to most of the kids in your town. You never had the opportunity to make many friends being homeschooled. The only time that was spent around others your age was kindergarten. Kindergarten was short lived because of your behavior; the teachers at school were concerned about you. How you were mean, rough, and sinister with your actions towards others. Picking on the kids you were simply interested in because of how different from you they were. Drawing pictures of gutted cattle or dead, half developed baby chicks still in their shell and giving them as gifts to the teachers. Sharing to classmates the cruelty of farm life and why it was pretty with a smile.

Your father loved to find out about this, you could see it in his eyes. The way they were wicked and screamed I told you so to your mother. You didn’t understand why it was bad or caused trouble. You were only having fun for the first time. The way the kids ran away crying or the teachers wore faces of shocked horror, it made your insides light up in joy. A new feeling—a sense of excitement. You didn’t know it was sick. And of course, it was taken from you. You were removed from school and your mother became your teacher. Your classmates became stuffed animals and the real ones in the barns. It was hard for you to find that joy you briefly felt with others.

Sometimes you had a glimpse of it again when your father would punish you. But even that you grew sick of. The mess, the stench of it all. Sticky and red, worse in the heat of summer. He drilled the sick moto for his actions into your head, “I know no punishment, only mercy.”

Father took you both to church more often after that. He had a false image to uphold afterall, one of a happy, God loving family. In his ego he had to prove that his preaching and prayers could fix you, save you. But that was only admitted at home, loud and scary to your mother. Your poor mother, weak and defensive of you, eventually waved her white flag. You wished she kept fighting for you and that she wouldn’t begin to see you the way your father did.

Childhood and adolescence was a string of questions about yourself. Never quite finding out what made you so bad to be seen as devilish when all you thought of yourself was curious. Perhaps just unlucky to be correlated with negative happenings on and off the farm, always gone without a chance of understanding. Despite it all, you knew well enough the way your parents talked and looked at you was without unconditional love.

On your 17th birthday, the family dynamic made the biggest shift to be experienced.

At this age, you had such a strong sense of independence and with the lack of parental guidance and monitoring, you would leave town when you could. Ride your bike down the long road to the bus stop at the center of town and take the bus into the city over. Your mother was generous with allowance and you saved your money well, only spending it on books or trips to the movie theater. A form of escape that allowed you to learn more about the world and all the things your parents tried to keep hidden from you. A way to learn how to be human.

So when your father was tearing your room apart in search of the same gift he re-gifts you every year, he found some things that made his stomach churn. Every year for your birthday he rewrapped the same, first ever, bible he’d given you. Funny enough that he gave you anything at all considering he never even referred to it as your day, only his day of revelation. And to his disgust, on his sacred day, he found books and journals of explicitly detailed copulation and debauchery.

He almost fainted. Stumbling over his own feet, hands shaking as he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the words on the pages. That was the only time you smiled on that day. Just for a second. And then a glimpse of hell broke loose.

In a rage, he destroyed everything. Your mother stood next to you in tears, telling him to stop and stop. Her hands covered her face but she saw everything through her fingers. You only watched in silence, hands balled in fists by your side. A silent hatred and anger coursed in you. He called you names that no man of God should, especially to his own daughter.

“You’re a disgraceful deviant of Satan! I should’ve known. My own day of revelation is a curse!” You watched him rip pages apart, his voice booming through the house. “Years spent praying for you and this is how you turn out?! Succumbing to nothing but a dreaming whore?!”

A part of you liked his mean words. It was so rare for him to use such colorful language.

You knew what would come next. He was going to have you ‘cleansed’. Something he always did when he discovered something new and sacrilegious of you.

But it didn’t come. Because there was no dying, old sheep on the farm at the time. He did make a promise to not forget though. A promise to have you washed in sacrificial, blessed blood on a day you least expected.

Your father left after that, leaving you and your mother behind. He moved to the city to continue his preaching at a larger church. He became known as the closest reverend to God for miles and miles. Lost in his ways, he only made visits when he needed to sort things out for the business of the farm.

You were content with his departure, yet couldn’t quite understand why your mother missed him. As far as you’ve seen, he was never kind towards either of you.

　But now, it’s several years later. And although you’re free of your father’s heavy presence and homilies, he still makes his trips to the farm. You can feel the air change whenever he does, as if you’ve gained a sixth sense for his coming. Naturally intuitive to things having spent your childhood walking on eggshells in your own home.

And today, the air feels particularly chill for summer. The breeze sweeps in through your open window. The forecast called for nothing but sunshine all week, yet there’s an angry, dark cloud hanging over your farm. A foreboding feeling shivers through you, and you know he’s going to fulfill his promise today. You sigh and slide out of bed. “Let’s get this over with.”

You spend the morning doing your usual routine. Brushing teeth, washing your face, then dressing in farm work attire. Your breakfast consists of tea and your mothers homemade strawberry scone. Next is tending to the animals. Your mother usually takes care of the crops and gardening. It’s a quiet and early morning, as most are. The both of you keep to yourselves, just doing what needs to be done day by day.

The sound of a car is heard coming down to the long dirt road and you know who it is by the sound. It’s a fancier vehicle than the one he left this property with years ago. A meaner part of you likes to think his greedy hands got into that mega church’s donations but you’re too self aware of the successful farm your family owns.

Your father parks in front of the house and your mother is quick to rush over to him, presumably with many questions: How have you been? Are you hungry? Thirsty? What brings you here so early in the month?

You roll your eyes at her desperation to cling onto the relationship that clearly ended when you were a child.

You place a hand on your hip, leaning your weight to the side that isn’t carrying the heavy bucket of chicken feed. Walking away from the coops and back towards the shed by the house, you make eye contact with your father despite only taking a glance.

He watches you with narrow eyes from the lowered window of the car he’s still sitting in, very much not listening to a word your mother is saying.

He calls your name before you can open the shed. Spinning on the heels of your boots, you turn around with raised brows of questioning.

He mouths the words sacrificial tree as he exits the car. Your mother sees this. She wears pained disappointment as she scurries away. Presumably to the barn where the sheeps and lambs are kept. She might as well be a sheep too, you think.

The bucket slips from your fingers and drops to the patchy dirt grass by your feet with a thud, spilling over in a mess that will be cleaned later.

You don’t bother giving him a nod of understanding. You just turn around and begin your walk to the tree line where the man made path is. Knowing it would take some time for his preparations, you walk to the lake that’s hidden behind the farmland.

It’s a brief walk through your familiar woods. Once at the short wooden dock, you sit down at the end, taking in the gloomy summer scenery. A light fog hugs over the water. You bring your knees to your chest, in your sitting position, and hug yourself the same way.

This is your favorite place out of all the land your family owns. It’s serene, mostly. Always quiet. You’re the only one who comes here. And it’s nice to swim with when the weather warrants it. There’s a feeling here that’s hard to feel anywhere else you find yourself. Sometimes you imagine what it would be like with someone else, but you doubt it would be as nice. Trouble has a way of following you, it seems. You frown at the thought.

It’s silent like this for a few minutes, just you trying to find a sense of calmness before the impending chastisement. Then you hear some rustling of leaves, heavy footsteps following. You don’t turn around yet, you only wait for the call of your name. Your time of tranquility is too brief. You sigh before giving yourself a squeezing hug.

“It’s time,” the reverend calls out loudly, “quickly now, we have new farmhands arriving soon.” The sound of his feet walking away is when you stand. You wave a goodbye to the foggy lake before parting ways. Your feet move unconsciously, taking to where your body knows to go.

Leaves crinkle underneath your boots and twigs snap. The trees’ branches sway in the gentle morning breezes that pass.

In the mix of the small forest, man made crosses of sticks or plywood are spaciously scattered. Like a graveyard to all your bad doings. Most small but one large. Old rotted wood that stands crooked and begging to fall over right next to the largest, strongest tree. Your eyes, that are trained to ground, move upwards the cross and then to the tree. Your father stands there with a large knife in hand. Your mother waits cautiously not too far away. Her demeanor is frightful as if this is the first time. Coward.

An old sheep hangs by its hind legs from a sturdy tree branch. Unmoving and defenseless. Big beady, dumb eyes look in all directions but you. You think it must feel the same guilt as yourself, sorry that its life purpose is to embarrass you, make you hate what you are.

“God told me to make a sacrifice to prove my faith. He guides my hand in washing your soul clean of sin. So here I am with our blessed, dying lamb.” He’s said this every time. His voice is always miserably rehearsed and preacher-esque.

You thought long ago that this was their, the lambs, only use on the farm. It’s a shame. All that devotion has made him so ugly and violent.

You make small steps closer to the lamb. It’s whining in bleat baas and mehs. Does it know what’s happening? Is it scared? You like the lambs, sheeps. Pure white, soft, and docile. They never fight back. They just take it. I doubt they need restraints. You could hold them above me just the same and they’d never resist.

“Move faster, for the love of God. Yeah, stand right there underneath like you know how to.” He instructs you, annoyed. His patience running thin as the distant sounds of a truck makes way down the dirt road to the farm property.

“Okay…” You don’t fight him, with arms crossed behind your back and a hand squeezing around your own wrist, you move closer. Maybe you’re a lamb too.

Maybe all your father really was is the executioner.

He raises the knife as he begins to speak, it slides over its cotton, white throat but does not cut, “Revelation 7:13-17 Then he told me, ‘These are those who come from the great tribulation, and they’ve washed their robes, scrubbed them clean in the blood of the Lamb. That’s why they’re standing before God’s Throne. They serve him day and night in his Temple. The One on the Throne will pitch his tent there for them: no more hunger, no more thirst, no more scorching heat. The Lamb on the Throne will shepherd them, will lead them to spring waters of Life. And God will wipe every last tear from their eyes.’” He slits its throat in a quick, harsh movement. The blood spills just as fast, squirting spurts of red before it comes pouring down onto you. “Face up,” you obey even though it brings you rage, “it ought to cleanse those unholy thoughts I know that are still in there.”

Head raised to the sky with eyes and mouth squeezed shut, you let it consume you. Warm, thick and wet washes down from your head onto your clothes then down to your feet. The smell of animal, metallic iron covers you. It’s sticking to your hair, eyebrows and lashes. You can already feel your clothes clinging to your skin in the dirtiest ways.

You stand there, drenching in the its blood. Your father speaks again, firm and slow, “Say it with me now, ‘I know no punishment, only mercy.’” All you feel is the animal’s rain of life flooding you.

You open your mouth to speak but are quick to spit and cough out the blood that manages to get into your mouth. Smack.

“I don’t have time for this,” his voice sounds like an echo, your head is ringing from the harsh swing of his hand. The skin of your cheek stings. He hits like a bitch, you think. “Say it with me now, dammit!” You can feel him wipe his bloodied hand on the side of your shirt.

You step back from under the red shower. “I know no punishment, only mercy.” Your words align with his in the perfect paced harmony you’re trained to do so. Enunciated, slow and strong, through gritted teeth.

There’s a beat of silence before the sound of your parents footsteps walking away.

Standing there in red, yet to open your eyes, you breathe out a shaky sigh of defeat. It sounds more like a growl. With the mostly clean hands you kept safely behind you, you bring them up to wipe the blood from your face. You don’t dare to look at the dead animal in front of you. Being covered in it is enough alone to make you feel sick.

You think of going back to the lake, jumping in and letting the blood wash off you there, but knowing you’d either walk back with further drenched clothes or naked didn’t seem like options you wanted to deal with either. So you just head back to the house. It’s a slower walk than need be, but you just felt like avoiding the eyes of the newcomers, hoping they’d be off in the fields or in a barn by the time you walk through. You feel numb.

You’re wrong though, by the time you’re passing the barns and coops, the group of new farmhands are already lined up outside the horses’ stable. Your mother is talking to them, although not all are paying attention. Only a few pairs of wide eyes follow you. Catching the sight of you must really shock them but you can’t blame them. Something about this makes you excited. You stop in your tracks and look around to see if your father’s car is gone. It is. The realization feels like a wave of relief and it suddenly feels brighter outside already.

You take a glance down to your disheveled appearance. Shirt, pants, and boots painted like the barns. You look back to the group, brushing the soiled hair back from your face. Some pieces stay stuck, in the early stages of drying against your skin.

It’s safe to have a little fun.

You begin a slow walk over to the group. You take a headcount and there’s five of them. Two younger men, closer to your age. The other three look a bit older, not by much but definitely older. Your mother is yet to turn around from whatever rundown she’s giving them. Too dense to even recognize that now none of them were paying any attention to her.

You creep up beside her and open with, “Hello,” your voice is louder than even you’ve heard it be in a long time. It’s nice to be heard, noticed. You usually avoided the farmhands, but this summer was going to be different. You decided this on the walk over.

Being cooped up on the farm for so long made you different, it’s obvious to anybody. Not properly socialized in your developmental years caused you to be an anomaly to the ones who did come across you. Enigmatic from far away and up close. Now isn’t the greatest example though, the situation is too clear as to why.

Your mother turns to you, gasping and jumping back slightly in the shock of your gross state and sudden introduction. “My goodness, girl, whatta ya doin’ here like this?” Her voice is hushed, clearly unsettled with the situation.

They all just stare at you, open mouthed and bewildered. You take the time to get a good look at each of them up close. Your eyes follow their faces individually down the line. And then they stop.

At the end of the line is a man more beautiful than the ones you’ve seen in the movies. You feel stuck in time, left with parted lips, staring at the man before you. And far too intently for your character. He stands tall, sharp, pale, and elegant. What is a boy like this doing here? He averts his eyes from you, clearly uncomfortable by what’s before him. He looks uneasy, shifting his weight foot to foot with his hands behind his back. His pretty eyes glance around from you to your mother to the other men and the ground. He simply doesn’t know what to do with himself. You find it dangerously darling of him.

You don’t even realize the small smile that takes your lips. You step closer to him and he steps back, now looking at you with wide eyes of small fear. You extend your hand to him, it’s coated in drying blood. He gulps and the sight, his adam’s apple bobbing in such a biteable neck stirs something in you. This will be far more fun than you intended.

You say your name softly for introduction and step a little closer, “Nice to meet you," you feign cuteness as much as you can, looking up at him through your blood clumped lashes. It’s clear to everyone there is something off; there’s little to no real emotion behind your voice and face.

Your mother eyes you suspiciously as you corner the handsome man, but she says nothing. Sometimes she fears you too.

He looks from your eyes to your hand, having an internal battle with himself on what to do, “Ah, I am Sunghoon... Nice to meet you too.” His politeness must be stronger than his frighteness, because he takes his hand in yours and shakes it gently. His hand is large in yours, nearly covering it entirely. You squeeze it hard, your eyes never leaving his, trapping him in the scene.

He wants to look away, to hide somewhere. The way his skin crawls tells him he’s a prey already in the mouth of a predator. And you know he’s nervous under your intense gaze because your hand feels like a lamb is still bleeding above you. His palms are sweating, and it’s nowhere near hot enough for that yet. Your smile grows to a smirk.

Although you’re wearing the lamb, having Sunghoon’s hand in yours made you feel like a wolf.

　Sunghoon’s first day of his summer job starts off duller than he imagined. The sun isn’t out this morning and it only intensifies his anxiousness, as if the grey skies reflect his inner emotions. He’s already new to the area, away from home and staying in an apartment not far from his college in the city. A private, christian school that he studied hard to get into with his friend. He wishes his best friend and roommate, Jake, was joining him in this job, but Jake already had plans to teach at a summer soccer camp for kids through their school.

He found this opportunity through the college church they attend together. A reverend from another church in the city came to visit one Sunday, handing out flyers to the young men in hopes of finding farm help. The pay is good and the bus fairs to the small town over where the farm’s located is covered. He’s never done work like it before, nevertheless was he going to let a simple offer pass him up.

Things are going smoothly to start, being told how to care for, clean, and feed the animals to crop preservation. Everyone would have their own specific roles on the farm. Sunghoon was assigned the easier of the tasks, either feeding animals or watering and fertilizing the vegetables and fruits crops. He learns there are already regular farm workers that would come throughout the week to collect produce, material, and use the machinery for the more laborious work. And if she wasn't around when needed then they could ask any of the regular employees for assistance or find her at the house.

As the farm owner is about to give details on the horses’ maintenance, a girl saunters in. And the anxious feelings become of Sunghoon all over again. His eyes are wide, taking in her appearance. The smell of the farm dissipates and putrid copper takes over. The worst part is how calm she appears, and the fact that she’s unbothered with all that she wears.

He thinks his brain short circuits, everything seeming muffled and unreal. He doesn’t even realize he introduced himself or touched her. It all was too quick and unfamiliar for him to grasp.

He watches as she walks away, back to the house that sits slightly over the hills and valleys of the property. His expression is blank, blinking slowly at the strange girl then down to his hand that’s stained red too.

“Don’t pay her no mind,” the woman speaks up, she sounds as if she’s warning them. “Just get yer work done and when everyone’s finished y’all can head back home. I won’t ask too much of ya in yer first month here, alright? That might be a different story later.” She tries to end the statements in humor with her forced laugh.

Sunghoon nods but his eyes don’t leave his dirty hand. The other men nod along too and give their ‘yes, ma’ams’ in return.

The woman continues walking them around the farm, listing rules and guidelines they must follow, along with advice and tips for the work they’ll be doing.

The day flows as easy as it can for Sunghoon. He doesn’t talk much with the other farmhands. He also doesn’t know them well enough to be comfortable in their conversations, so he just exists in awkward silence, sometimes reacting. While they can joke around and find fun in the work, his mind keeps wandering off to the girl from earlier, to you. How your empty eyes held onto his and small hand even tighter. He thinks the palm of his hand still burns from the interaction.

Around the afternoon time, Sunghoon and the guys are sitting around a picnic table near the house. The sun is beating down on them all now while they chug down water and eat their lunch. The owner was kind enough to provide their refreshments and meals. They were all thankful.

She adds that there’s a small lodge up the dirt road. It’s a little old but homey and has space with two spare bedrooms if they need to wash up or rest at any time. It was originally built for the farm workers that worked late and needed a place to stay if need be.

Once done, the boys stand up and talk about what they have left to do. The next bus back to the city isn’t running for another two hours so they speak of taking some leisure time and exploring the farm property. Meanwhile Sunghoon is still sitting, watching them huddled in conversation. He wipes some sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand as they begin walking towards the fields.

Sunghoon, taking what the farm owner had mentioned previously, decides that he’d like to stay inside to get away from the beating sun for a while. So he gathers his trash to throw away in the bin by the road near the house’s mailbox and begins his walk to the lodge.

Once inside he takes in the rustic, outdated furniture. It’s a little dusty and the floorboards creak beneath his feet but he finds it somewhat comforting. The living space has two couches by an old stone fireplace, a center table with board games and cards, a kitchenette, and a large dining table with enough space to seat six people.

The decor is very farmers-life-esque. From a cow print rug in the small kitchen area to the antlers mounted on the wall near the dining table. There’s scenic southern paintings hung up along with antique crosses and prints of bible verses, all adoring the faded and peeling floral wallpaper. Above the fireplace hangs a painting depicting Jesus healing a blind man.

He walks down the only short hall in the lodge to find the two spare bedrooms the woman had mentioned along with a bathroom. He takes this time to wash his hands thoroughly and splash some cold water on his face. With his hands resting on the sink, he stares at himself in the mirror. The cold drops of water slip down his face, jaw, and back into the sink.

In his mind he’s questioning whether or not he’s sure of this job. It’s all too different from what he knows and he can’t help but feel out of place here. With a sigh, he drops his head and watches the water slip down the sink.

He jumps slightly at the sudden sound of the front door opening and closing, not expecting the others to join him here quite yet. No noise follows the action for a moment, not even footsteps. Then there’s the sound of a click, like the door is being locked. He straightens his posture and peaks out the bathroom door, listening for their voices or any sound other than silence. It offers nothing to him so he begins to feel tense.

“Hello?” Sunghoon calls out skittishly, but there’s no response. His heart rate picks up a little and he starts to think the boys are trying to pull some sort of childish prank on him. He leaves the room and makes slow steps down the hallway to the main area of the lodging house.

As he rounds the corner he doesn’t find any of the boys there though, he just sees you. His heart jumps at the realization. Sitting on the couch, in overall shorts and nothing else. Bare legs crossed and hands against the couch by your sides as you watch him peer around the corner with apprehension. You’re just sitting there, leaning forward and waiting for him to come find you.

Cowardly, Sunghoon makes a half turn. He presses his back against the wall of the hallway as if he could hide away or disappear into it. He even closes his eyes, thinking of a quick prayer to save him from this circumstance.

“Are you pretending to be shy or are you really this cute?” Your voice is teasing, and he can hear the wicked smile in it without seeing.

Feeling caught, he just sighs and slowly makes his way to the living area. He tries not to look at you, thinking you are too revealing. So he looks everywhere else and then to large windows that give view to the farm; none of the guys are in sight. Most likely somewhere goofing off. All he can see is the fields and farm buildings standing large in the distance.

He doesn’t move and speaks softly, “I should probably go find the others-”

You speak before he can finish his attempt of an excuse, “Come sit with me.” You pat the space on the couch next to yourself. Your voice sounds welcoming but he knows there’s an undertone of mischief.

He makes a quick glance to you and sucks in a breath at the view of your body that’s exposed from your overalls. The glimpse of the curve of your breast disappearing under the denim already makes him feel like he’s seen too much of you. And he has. He’s never seen such bare skin on a girl and he’s never been alone in a room with one either.

“Come sit with me, now.” You’re more stern this time, demanding in a gentle way. Your hand makes small movements, soothing over the material of the couch like you’re warming the space for him.

He visibly swallows as he makes his hesitant steps over to you. His heart is racing and with every beat there is a question of his strength. He sits down on the same sofa but not directly next to you like you want. You smirk nonetheless and turn to face him, sitting with your legs criss-cross now.

With your elbows to your knees you hold your head in your hands, watching the side of his face. You’re again realizing how sculpted his features are. Dark thick hair on his head, eyebrows and lashes too. An array of moles sprinkle his pale face. A sharp nose that sits above pink, full lips. You wonder if he knows of his own beauty. It’s fascinating to see such a person like him in front of you.

He’s sitting with perfect posture, not relaxing into the couch. Alert like a deer that’s waiting for too sudden of movement to pounce away. His eyes just watch the table, reading through the names of the board games that lay there as a way of distracting himself. He’s awkward.

“Uhm… d-does your family own this farm?” he tries for small talk to break the silence. His bottom lip finds itself between his teeth as he makes one quick look over to you. Luckily your overalls sit high up or he’d have a full view of your chest. He can’t help but think of the fact and it makes him shift uncomfortably.

“Do I make you nervous?” you question, seriously so. Brows pulled tight in a furrow with a straight face. You lean in even closer to him, watching for every change on his face.

“Yes,” his response is honestly quick and ends with a tight lip, like he’s holding his breath. He is yet to comprehend what is happening, still in a whirlwind of thoughts of what could—will—happen.

“Why?” Your head tilts slightly to the side, it makes him think of his roommate briefly. And man does he wish he were here to ease the tension.

He doesn’t want to admit that he’s never been in such close proximity with a girl alone before, so he just clears his throat and remains quiet after doing so.

Curiously, you bring a hand up with a pointed finger and brush the tip of it over the mole on the side of his nose. He jolts back at the sudden touch, his cheeks flushing a warm pink. His eyes now watch you with gentle confusion. He touches the same spot you did with a trembling hand.

“You have a constellation on your face. So many moles… Do you have a girlfriend?”

His face burns a little more, both from the observation and the question. He shakes his head, sitting himself further into the couch and further away from you. He can’t quite understand the situation. Are you messing with him? You seem too serious for such. Maybe you’re just weird like he initially thought. Either way he can feel his faith slipping; he is cupping holy water in hands during an earthquake.

“Did I do somethin’ wrong? Am I not pretty?” You pout to be playful with him, acting as if his actions are offending you. He takes it literally though.

“No!” his hands rest on his knees and he holds them hard, trying to find stability despite sitting down. “Y-you are… pretty,” his words grow quieter, like he’s sharing a secret. “I just don’t know you or why you want to talk to me.”

“Hm.” You lean your head back against the couch. With your eyes still on his face, you speak just as quietly, “I’m still trying to figure that out too.” After some beats of muted air you speak up again, but with more presence, “You came to work here. Why?”

“A man was handing out flyer ads at the church. I wanted a summer job.”

Is he always this direct and boring? And church, of fucking course. You roll your eyes, pushing yourself off the back cushion and even closer to the man. Your knees touch the side of his body and his thigh. He looks like he’s trying to control his breathing, to feign lack of disturbance, but his face says everything you need to know.

You place a hand on his thigh and his whole body stiffens at the action. Your smirk to yourself. It’s only resting there on the top of his jeans. “You act like a girl has never touched you before.” You give him a soft squeeze and he sucks in a sharp breath. “Well? Has a girl ever touched you?”

He shakes his head quickly, “No,” he breaks, feeling overwhelmed and wrong, “and I don’t think you should be. It’s against the churches values-”

“At your age you still follow the rules?” Your hand slides lower and back up his thigh, it’s a slow and teasing motion. There’s enjoyment in how scared he’s becoming.

Sunghoon knows that this is only going to lead him down a path he swore to God not to take. And if his parents were to know that in his first year away from home in the summer since college was locked in a lodge with a promiscuous girl he’d have it handed to him. The thought of their wrath makes him shiver all the more.

“I just don’t want to sin.” His eyes close and he bites down onto his lip again. He no longer cares if a stranger sees him as a loser or prude. His virtue is being tested in real time, and he’s feared facing this battle many times in the night because even in his dreams he loses.

“I’m only touching you. How is it a sin?” The tone of your voice changes, it’s soft like the hand that moves closer to in between his thighs. Your fingertips press into his clothed skin here and there, curiously feeling him up. You just try to get a reaction out of him. There’s a warm feeling in your stomach that you don’t recognize; it’s faintly familiar.

“Your hand isn’t supposed to be… there.” He makes a strained sound, something like a low whine, as your hand ghosts over his cock.

You look down to your movements for the first time and realize he’s sporting a half chub. You snicker quietly, cupping him in your palm. “Then why are you getting hard, Sunghoon? Do you like the way I’m touching you? I bet you’ve thought about doing this before too.”

He makes another noise, a whimper. He can’t bring himself to open his eyes and accept what’s happening. He also can’t find it in himself to stop you, or get up and leave. This wasn’t just a struggle with evil’s temptation but his own biological nature. Something yet to be explored, something that’s been scratching at his ribcage for years to be fed.

There’s too much he can’t admit in this moment. Starting with how he enjoys the sound of your voice, the slight accent and dialect difference he picks up. How the way his name leaves your lips makes him want to crumble like a burning church. And how he silently likes the fact he can’t control the way his body is reacting to your hands on him.

It’s all wrong, wrong, wrong. And he is weak.

“Answer me, Sunghoon.” Your hand presses down on him, feeling the growing hardness under your palm. You give him a small squeeze, massaging over the bulge. To your surprise he feels big. Your eyebrows quirk at this and then you look back to his face. A single tear runs down his face and you find satisfaction in it. “Lying is a sin too,” you remind him.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, his hands fist the couch cushions at his sides. He grips the material so tight that his knuckles turn pink through the pale of his skin. His chest rises and falls through slow and deep breaths.

“You shouldn’t feel sorry for something that makes you feel good.” You palm over him a few more times, drawing out little moans and whimpers from him. He’s struggling to sit still. You can even feel him try not to push his hips back up into you; if only he would admit that he wants it. He’s practically pulsing beneath you, like there’s never been such a rush of blood to his cock in his life. You sigh dramatically and pull your hand away from him, sitting back to give him space. “That’s too bad. A good dog will always be loyal, huh?”

His eyes shoot open when he feels your hand is gone. He looks at you desperately with wet eyes, a small pout to his lips. You make him feel sick for wanting to ask why you stopped, or if he did something bad for you to take away his short-lived pleasure.

You smirk at his expression, so pitifully beautiful with want. “Have you ever touched yourself?” you ask, placing your hand over his that hasn’t let go of the couch. It takes you back when he flips his hand around to hold onto yours, clingy and wretched. His thumb brushes over your knuckles. Repulsed, you react quickly and take your hand away from him at his impulsive intimacy. It makes him frown with a meek whimper.

He shakes his head slowly, looking down to his lap. “I can’t.” He knows he’s not allowed to. His father was adamant through his puberty that he mustn’t succumb to his body’s natural taste for sin. He was told that sometimes the devil had a funny way of sneaking into a man’s mind. That Satan would haunt boys in their sleep to wake them up with guilt of uncontrollable lust to be like him.

“But you like when I do it, right?” You rest your head on his shoulder and look up at him. His eyes look from your face to the thin opening of your overalls where your chest can be seen from the angle. He bites down hard and nods slowly. You coo, moving your hand back to his still hard, clothed cock. “I can make it go away if you want. You want that?”

He’s battling all the repressed things he’s been too afraid to explore; fearful of the swing of his parents belt he felt once long ago after being caught in a misunderstanding. In spite of it, he nods again. “It hurts.. Please, help me.” His voice is so quiet. Even he doesn’t want to hear his own pathetic begging.

Your fingers find the zipper of his jeans then you tug it down slowly as you stare at him. “You have to pull them down for me, okay? I can’t help you with just this.”

Sunghoon freezes for a second knowing he has control over being the one to take out his own cock. Yet apprehension leaves in a breath. Then he’s pulling the clothing down to his knees with frantic haste. You didn’t expect him to take everything off so fast but there’s a sense of pride in how eager you’ve made him become in such a short time.

You weren’t sure what to expect, but it certainly wasn’t this. His cock is as beautiful as him. Pale and raging pink, crying at the tip much like his eyes. He’s also big, bigger than you knew dicks could be. You thought they’d be ugly, gross and worm-like. But his is clean and pretty. It’s your first time seeing one in person; you wouldn’t let him know that.

You take him bare in your hands, feeling him like a foreign object. More curious of his body than in his pleasure in the moment. His body tenses then relaxes against the couch. A shaky, breathy moan leaves his lips. His eyes flutter at the contact of skin.

You squeeze him, making his moan weakly again. It’s heavy in your hand. Truly just a stick of warm flesh. A part of you wants to squeeze him as hard as you can just to see if it can break, but you withhold on hurting him for now. Not wanting to scare him too much in hopes of exploring him further through the summer.

Your hand wraps around the length as much as it can, pads of fingertips brushing over every vein and curve as you slowly move your hand up and down. When your thumb circles around his tip and flicks the leaking hole, his body lurches forward with a loud cry of a moan from him. You wonder if he’ll cum in the next few seconds of simply touching him.

“I think you’re a slut for a little pleasure, Sunghoon.” You use your palm to gather his precum, circling over the tip to smear the thick cream around. Then you drag it back down himself, wetting his cock in his own prerelease. It slides easier now, your hand. You move faster, jerking him off in lazy, inexperienced motions. Not that he would know anyways. “You gave into lust so easily, didn’t you? Must’ve wanted this for so long. Your body’s nasty, eager for it.”

In his ears, you make the nasty words sound delicious. And he wants to devour more and more, like the starved man he is. His hips snap up into your hard, sudden and rough. You wrap your free arm over his shoulders, a hand sneaking up into his hair to tug aggressively on the thick dark locks. You’re pulling his head back, forcing him to look at you. “Don’t be a whore. I’m helping you. I didn’t say fuck my hand.”

“Ahsh- I’m sorry, I’m sorry…” he whines, tears burning his eyes, “it, it f-feels good. I feel so good.” His head falls to lean against yours, face burying into your hair. His head makes little shakes as he begins to cry, telling himself no, no.

“Shut up...” You don’t like how close he is to you. You only like doing so to tease him, but when he does it, it makes you feel a fiery anger in your chest and belly. Uncomfortable. Smothering.

Your hand works in sloppy motions. Pumping his pulsing cock to reach his orgasm. At the tip your wrist makes flicks with your thumb, working him up further and further.

He stutters out incoherent apologies into your hair throughout his sobs of wanton, whimpering moans. Everything about his body is sensitive to the new sensations. He can’t help but move his hips up into your hand, humping the small fist that’s fucking down onto him.

Confused by the warm, tight feeling flexing of his abdomen he whines against you, “I can’t- I can’t take it. My body feels weird now. Mmph, ‘m sorry. I don’t know what’s h-happening.” His body feels volcanic, ready to burst.

You continue your movements, jerking his reflexing length until he’s cumming into your hand. It’s a heavy load of thick, creamy mess. His voice is too close to your ear as he moans a drawn out needy sound. Your face remains plain while you pump him until he’s milked dry. His body flinches and curls into yours through the aftershocks, clearly overstimulated and over-sensitive. His arms snake around your waist to pull you against him.

You stare down at your hand that was earlier covered in the blood of a lamb and now the cum of a virgin. It looks like fucking snot, you realize with repulse. Without thinking you bring your hand up and lick the strange release. Your face scowls at the unknown taste so you just wipe the rest on your overalls. “You are disgusting,” you mutter.

Sunghoon remains silent aside from his sniffles, eyes peeking through his bangs to watch what you’re doing. He still hasn’t stopped clinging to your side, as if you could save him from his first lustful sin.

You push yourself up and off the couch, his body slightly falls to the side where he was leaning on you but he catches himself. He watches you with sad, scared eyes. You stare blankly in return then look out the window to see the group of men walking around the picnic table they ate at earlier.

“Farmhands will be leaving soon. Clean yourself up in the bathroom.” You don’t spare him another look, you just walk to the front door, unlock it, and leave. You ignore the way he looked like a sad abandoned puppy. Something about it angered you in the same way he was being clingy.

You walk back to your house with a slight skip to your steps. As you step through your front door, you’re about to head upstairs to your room but stop in your tracks because your mother speaks.

“Hate him all ya want,” your mothers words slur, she speaks slowly and tired-like, “but he was a good man. He used to love me… And then you came along.” You turn to the living room on your left where your mother lays on the couch, wine glass in hand and eyes heavy lidded. “I know what yer capable of. I’ve seen the things ya do on this farm, in this home.. When ya think no one is watching.. He just might be right about you.” You glare at her now. “There is something evil in ya, child. Leave that boy outta yer wickedness.”

Her wine glass falls to the floor from her fingers and she groans, turning to her side. You stare at her for a moment before walking up to your room.

Meanwhile Sunghoon spends his next 20 minutes in a spiral of guilt and shame. He cleans himself up in the restroom like you told him to. Then waits, watching outside the window for when the boys are gathered around the truck they drove in from the bus stop to leave in. It was hard for him to get the tears to end. He fell right into sin’s lustful trap and it made him feel so- No, it only made him feel hurt. Stupid. Bad.

On his bus ride back into the city he prays. Sitting in back, alone with his indignity, and head bowed low so no one could see his red rimmed, glossy eyes. Time goes by so fast that he nearly misses his stop to get off.

He ignores his roommate when he’s home. Jake, excited and curious of Sunghoon’s first day, is left cold. Sunghoon showers for longer than usual. He scrubs so harshly at his skin he turns red; unable to feel clean no matter how much he washes. He doesn’t eat dinner because he feels he doesn’t deserve to. He gets into bed earlier than most days too. He tries to sleep but the day haunts him, keeping him awake.

He’s up all night in tears, face in his pillow with the blanket thrown over his head, trying to hide from He who watches. The begs of forgiveness seem endless.

“Dear God,” he whimpers, “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.” He doesn’t sleep much that night because he can’t find it in himself to stop humping into his mattress in hopes to chase and achieve the feeling you gave him earlier. His hips rock his aching hard cock into the bed, anguished yet titillated. “Please, forgive me. Forgive me. I’m so sorry.” He continues to cry, drowning in his pillow, knowing he will do it again.

　The next day on the farm is an early morning for everyone. Sunghoon sits quietly in the truck with the other summer volunteer farmharms. They talk amongst each other about the day’s schedule of duties and tasks. He struggles to keep his eyes open, head leaning against the window despite its bumps from the uneven dirt road. He thought about calling it quits on the whole job after yesterday, but couldn’t bring himself to. It’s for selfish reasons too. The ones that deepen his guilt.

The arrival to the farm is quicker than anticipated. Sunghoon forces himself to be more alert and awake, starting to pick up on the conversations between the others as he exits the parked truck.

“Do you think it’s still hanging there?” One says. “The lamb of slaughter?” Another dumbly asks with a snort. “Well yeah, dipshit. You guys think that girl did it? She was weird as hell.” A third voice chimes in, “Being covered in blood and then leaving a dead animal hanging from a tree is creepy as fuck. The lady was right, stay the hell away from her.” He laughs. The others walk away in continuous chatter, leaving Sunghoon by the truck.

Sunghoon is confused by this conversation and deeply disturbed. He doesn’t follow or press them with questions though. But it will give him much to think about for the day. He’s so exhausted from the lack of sleep, he wonders if he even heard them all correctly at all. Yeah, your whole introduction was strange but killing an animal and acting like nothing happened and then toying with him on the same day? Was all that really something a girl like you would do? He can’t say for sure because he doesn’t know you.

He goes about his morning tasks lazily. His mind is too busy with the thoughts of you. He thinks of when or if he’ll see you today. You haven’t shown around the farm all day. It’s only an hour before noon, he tries to rationalize with himself. He still ponders throughout his work. What time will you come? Will you mysteriously show up like yesterday? Will you touch him again? Will you let him feel good? Is he forgivable or going to burn in hell for wanting more?

He shakes his head to rid it of the thoughts. Perhaps he’s too hopeful. After lunch time he goes back to the farmers lodge to take a nap. At least that’s the realistic excuse he used. He struggles to even fall asleep because he’s so anxious about listening for any sound of you possibly coming back here.

His eyes, sullen and tired, just can’t stay open after half an hour of waiting. So eventually he does fall asleep. You never show up. When he wakes up from his long needed nap he somehow feels worse knowing you didn’t visit than he did committing his first sin.

The following day of work is a repeat. He doesn’t see you at all yet you occupy all of his thoughts. He thinks badly of himself for many reasons.

　On the fourth day, you finally decide it’s time to check up on the poor boy. You watched Sunghoon mope around the farm for two days and it was cute at first but you’re getting bored again. You did like how his eyes were always searching around, hopeful that every sound he heard from behind or around corners was you. Knowing you had such an effect on him made you wonder how much more you could do to him.

From the window of your room, you watch when they all arrive. Your mother greets them like she does in the mornings and gives them all tasks that need to be completed for the day. It’s Thursday which means she’ll be out for a few hours to go into town and sort out business for products: cow and goat milk processing for cheeses and soaps. At least you assume considering you overheard her phone call about such the day prior.

You spend the morning around the house, reading and snacking on fruits, waiting for your mother to leave so you can proceed with your plan. There was some effort into your appearance today. You wear a spaghetti strapped white babydoll dress, lined at the bottom with sewn embroideries. It’s simple and flows nicely above your knees when you walk. You hate it because it alludes to soft purity but at least it feels good to dress light in the summer heat. And it might make you all the more approachable to feeble Sunghoon.

After about an hour, your mother finally leaves. You give it about 10 minutes before you’re shoving on your boots and leaving the house. Some of the blood from earlier in the week still stains the brown leather; you did clean them off but clearly not to the best extent. You’re okay with that though, it seems prettier this way to you.

Looking and walking around the property, you see the scattered farmhands busy with different things. The sun isn’t kind today, it’s piercing in brightness and temperature. The sweat begins to seep from your pores in a matter of minutes, making you feel sticky. You run a hand through your tangled hair, fingers getting caught in unbrushed knots that you yank through anyways. You don’t see Sunghoon anywhere that’s directly under the sun. You continue to search around the farm, gaining a few cautious looks from the other workers. As you walk past their gazes you wear a wry smile with a tilt to your head. They look away quickly after being caught staring.

Some wandering in and out of the different barns and coops are done. He wasn’t in any of them though. You greet the animals you pass by and give pats to some of the cows. “Have you guys seen him nearby? I’m not a fan of hide and seek.” You mumble to one of the goats, scratching lightly beneath its chin while it chews away at grains and hay. It maas in return. You pull your hand back out from the stable then leave to continue the manhunt.

It’s when you’re walking by the horses’ stables that you see they’ve already been cared for, telling you that someone was here already. You glance to the smaller shed nearby, having a suspicious inkling that it's where Sunghoon is. You walk to the shed and see yourself inside. And he is. He has his back turned to you, standing at a work bench table and cleaning something off.

You walk up behind him, the sound of your footsteps being dulled by the scattered hay on the wooden floors; he doesn’t notice that you entered the space, clearly lost in his own thoughts. You tap his shoulder which makes him spin around in surprise, dropping the brushes he was cleaning.

Sunghoon’s eyes are wide at the sight of you standing so close to him. You can tell he’s lost sleep by the dark circles around his eyes and how his complexion is impossibly paler. His mouth is stuttering to find words, opening and closing.

You step closer to him and he steps back, his backside now pressing against the table. It wobbles on the uneven wooden stilts that hold it up. Reflexively, his hands reach back to hold onto the table, but he’s using it for his own stability. You simply stand there in between his legs, staring up at his face and taking in all the details that differ from the last time you saw him. He swallows, quietly watching your face in return.

“I haven’t seen you around.” Sunghoon speaks first, his voice a soft surrender. You feel his breath on your face.

“I know. I saw you though. You missed me.” You state bluntly, taking note of the little fangs he has for teeth. He probably bites good, you think, licking the back of your own teeth.

“If you saw me then why didn’t you…” he trails off into a quiet again, closing his eyes for a moment with a sigh. “I wouldn’t call it that.” His eyes open again as he feels your hands on his chest, sliding up his white tank and underneath the sleeves of his denim jacket to his shoulders. He bites down, suddenly stiff.

Ignoring his response you continue, “How can you wear this when it’s so warm out?” Your hands slide over his shoulders and down his toned arms, the jacket slips down to reveal the toned limbs. Your eyebrows raise at the sight yet your face remains relatively blank. “You’ve got muscle. Good for farm work.” Small hands continue to run over the smooth milk-like skin, learning every curve of his lean built physique. It’s not sexual, just exploratory.

Sunghoon sucks in a breath, watching you inspect him. He begins to feel flustered, relishing in the contact of skin on his. You notice his tense body and ask him if it’s okay, to which replies a raspy stutter, “Y-yeah.” Your hands slide down his arms and back up to his shoulders. Then down his chest and body to stop at the waistline of his jeans. He has a nice body; he must be athletic. You don’t care to ask in what ways. Your fingers dip into his jeans just slightly to pull him in closer to you, he gasps, his growing cock pressing against your stomach.

“Sunghoon,” You ridicule him, tsking under your breath at the pressure you feel of his arousal. “Already?” You look up at him but he can’t meet your eyes, feeling embarrassed. You play with the waistline, your fingertips running back and forth between the denim and his skin. “Is this sinning?” It’s a soft question yet mocking. He only shakes his head, nervously gnawing at his bottom lip. “Do you want to?” He whimpers, slowly nodding his head. You take your hands off him, crossing your arms. “You have to tell me. Look at me and tell me.”

He looks back at you dispirited. He knows that you know what he wants. And here you are making him admit it outloud, both to you and God. “Please.” He begs quietly, hoping it only reaches your ears and not the sky’s. “I want you.”

There’s that feeling again. The lit match that falls from your throat to the gasoline of your stomach that erupts in flames. Fire to your abdomen and loins; it’s an angry feeling, sparked by his honest admit of want, and for you specifically. You watch him with narrowed eyes while mumbling, “you revolt me.”

He doesn’t reply to your venomous insult. It stings to hear the degrading words in both his heart and pants; he thinks himself disgraceful too.

You drop to your knees, hands finding place back on his jeans to undo his zipper. He stares down at you in bated breath, hands still gripping tight on the table behind him. His are pulled down slowly, purposely so. You watch him writher, body and face. “Did you do it again?” you question, looking up at him from below. He would never avow to how the sight of you on your knees alone makes him ache all the more.

He wants to tear his eyes away from you but he can’t. The image of you in your white dress on the ground before him needs to be burned into his memory. He stutters a mumble of words but you don’t catch anything, if he even said a coherent response at all. You ask again, pinching his thigh. He tries to hum over the strained noise in the back of his throat, “Yes.. I mean no! B-but I didn’t touch myself.”

You try not to giggle, biting the inside of your cheek. Knowing he wanted to feel that way again but couldn’t on his own gave you a funny sense of power over him. One of your hands traces the outline of his hard cock through his boxer briefs. “You make a mess?” He shivers at the feeling of your breath on his suffocating length. He breathes out a ‘no’ while you lick a strip over the material. “Why not? I showed you how.”

He moans softly, trying not to let his hips chase after the feeling that he’s been after for days. “You know I can’t,” he exhales. You roll your eyes, mouthing and licking at him languidly. Your hands are still half tugging at the material that keeps him hidden. A faint pool of precum quickly stains his boxers.

“Sunghoon,” you look up at him with your chin resting on the bulge. He swallows hard, acknowledging you with a hum. “You will never be free from it. The sin I let you taste will forever linger on the tip of your tongue, begging and licking to taste more in crave. No holy blessed water can possibly cleanse you even if you drown in it.”

His bottom lip pouts out with a little droning whine. He should defend himself, say that his faith is stronger than he is and that his soul is saveable by mercy. But a part of him also feels that doesn’t want to be. His eyes begin to well with tears.

“Not even a god could make you pure again,” you give him a small smile and pat his naked thigh before pulling down his underwear. His cock now free slaps his stomach to which he breathes out heavily. You grab him with both hands, giving him one last look before taking the leaking head into your mouth. Hands working on him steadily.

“T-that’s dirty!” he leans forward with a low sounding moan, his hands on your head and in your hair. Your eyes go wide at this. “Why would you put that in your mouth?!” he gasps, the warm wetness around his tip making him dizzy. “This is so vulgar, oh God, forgive me.” he cries, not pulling your mouth off of him but holding you there.

You circle your tongue around the tip and over his leaking slit, licking the beads of precum that leak out. It makes your grimace before you lean back, a wet pop as your mouth leaves. “Enough of your penitence, and take your hands off me.” It sounds like a warning to which he complies without question, only a hushed apology. He’s the one who wants to be touched anyways, not you.

You take him into your mouth again, your lips wrap around him in a painful stretch to accommodate his size. He sits heavy on your tongue that lays flat underneath, doing what you can with it. Your hands at the base work around him, jerking and squeezing him like you did before. You weren’t really sure what you were doing, mainly just mocking the actions you read about in books. It seems to be working for Sunghoon regardless because he can barely hold himself together. Whining and whimpering through fat tears, whole body shuddering from the overwhelming wet heat of your mouth.

His jaw goes slack, mouth hung open only to elicit a breathless moan. His head rolls back on his neck and his eyes flutter to a close. The feeling of your mouth wrapping around him is hot heaven. His body trembles with the new, sweeping sensation. Stomach already tight with contracting muscles. He thinks he could pass out.

Watching his face, him, discover and feel pleasurable sin is slightly euphoric to you. You’ve seen it in movies and read of it in books, but it was something you never quite fully explored yourself. There’s been a few instances that you did touch yourself; it always felt empty or like something was always missing. There’s little to no excitement when doing it alone in shameful hiding. Witnessing, causing such debauchery is different somehow. Safer in ways you didn’t dwell in thought on. You do wish he would stop crying about it, you find it pathetic of him in a provoked way.

Involuntarily, he thrusts himself down your throat with a guttural groan. You gag and cough around him, tears sting your eyes that make you squeeze them shut—refusing to let a single one dare to escape. Now it felt like a challenge. One to which you wouldn’t back down in fear of looking weak.

Your hands hold his thighs roughly, bruisingly so if you had the strength. You move his body in a small back and forth motion, encouraging him to continue his movements. You’re looking up at him with glazed over eyes and a slight nod. He chokes a sob at the sight, you on your knees not to pray but to devour him.

“Ah, I- I’m sorry. Your mouth is so wet, so warm.” He starts off with shallow thrusts, dragging his cock along your wet muscle. His hips stutter while his world seems to be crashing down. “This is so dirty. You look so dirty. And—ngh—it’s.. it’s so good. It’s so good,” he babbles, pushing himself as far down into your mouth as he can. His tip kisses the back of your throat making you gag around him. Your nails digging into the flesh of his strong legs. He can’t stop moaning and whimpering, becoming a slave to pleasure.

He watches your face. Hollowed cheeks sucking and swallowing around him, the tightness of your throat around him hugging and contracting through chokes that reverberate your body to his cock. The spit that leaks from your lips and all over him is obscene, such a sinful mess. He so badly wants to grab your head and force himself down further, but his nails dig into the wood of the table instead.

“Hm, I can’t—” he moans your name, thrusting rougher now. His whole body crumbling in on itself, chasing the feeling of release.

Then there’s the sound of footsteps and a few voices that follow. Sunghoon sucks in a deep breath, taking a fist to his mouth to bite down onto. He looks at you in fear because of the proximity of the other farmhands right outside. This only makes you smirk around him, a glint of evil in your eyes. He shakes his head hurriedly, stopping his movements—as if that would make you both disappear.

You push yourself off his cock, licking over your cracked and saliva covered lips. You bring a finger to your lips and shush him. “Be quiet or they’ll find out what a nasty whore you are. Unless you want that.” Your voice is quiet and raspy from the abuse of him fucking himself down your throat. You stare into his eyes intently before taking him back in. He glances from you to the door of the shed, his body shaking.

You slurp and suck him up, purposely loud and sloppy. A hand jerking off the base that doesn’t quite fit in your mouth. He cries quietly with his mouth open, meek and desperate sounds escape that he can’t withhold. “Please…” He’s whimpering, begging for something that he doesn’t know the context of.

“Do you think the extra feed is in this one?” A voice questions, the door being opened just a crack.

Sunghoon quickly tries to bend down for his jeans but you slap his hand away, pushing him back into the table. You grip his thighs and force yourself to take all of him down. You gag around him, eyes never leaving his panicky and fucked out face. His face silently begs for you that enough is enough but you don’t stop, because a part of you knows he doesn’t want you to either.

“It doesn’t hurt to check, does it?” The other replies with a light chuckle. “Could take a break for some shade too while we’re at it.” The door opens slowly with an agonizing creak, sunlight barely pouring.

Each passing second feels like an eternity to him. The door is still only cracked, not enough for them to see inside but it’s cutting it close. His cock twitches at the thought of being caught with his dick down the throat of the farmer’s daughter. A blazing adrenaline rushes through him.

Sunghoon can’t bear it any longer. His hands find purchase on the back of your head, pushing himself completely into your mouth. His hips stutter with a whimper on his lips as the hot cum pours down your throat. “Ah, sh- ngh!” You smack at his legs for him to release the hold, choking for air to breathe. You instinctively swallow around him, consuming his load of sin.

“You dumbass! The horses are already fed, let’s just go for a water break.” The door slams back on itself to a close. Their footsteps can be heard walking away.

Sunghoon breathes heavily, letting go of you. His body instantly relaxing back with his elbows on the table to support him. Meanwhile you fall onto your ass, a hand around your throat while you gasp for air through rough coughs. “What the fuck did I say about putting your hands on me?” You rasp before coughing again. The taste of him sits on the back of your tongue no matter how much you swallow.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, “we shouldn’t get caught.” He pulls his pants and boxers back up then extends a hand to you, an offering to help you stand back up.

You scoff, ignoring his hand and stand up on your own. You brush the dirt and stray strands of hay from your knees. “Whatever. We both got what we wanted.” You start to turn for the door to leave the shed with the thought of brushing your teeth in mind.

Sunghoon, confused as to what you could’ve gotten out of helping him, just reaches for your hand. He grabs you and pulls you back to look at him. His eyes are sad, maybe even a little afraid by your haste to leave. “Y-you’re just going to leave me again?” He sounds broken by the fact.

“What?” You can’t help but breathe a laugh, “Did you expect me to do more?” You ask with raised brows.

“No! No, not like that.. But..” He swallows his pride, “I- I don’t know. Just don’t leave yet. Please.”

You blink at him, scanning his features like a robot in calculation. The pleading of his expression and his words aggravate you. A fiery burning to your insides and the skin that he touches, that he reached for. You look down to his tight grip on your hand before yanking it away. You don’t say anything more, and neither does he. He wipes his eyes from whatever salty wetness is still there.

A moment of silence solidifies your decision. You beckon him to follow you out and he does.

For the rest of his work day you remain. You try not to think about why. But subconsciously you know it’s because for the first time someone willingly wants to be by your side. At first you imagine it’s because of what you’ve done for him—gave him what any man desires: pleasure. A man falling into temptation is far too easy.

Though he doesn’t ask for more and he doesn’t bring it up. Almost like it never happened.

It seems like he really just wants to be around you. There’s little said between each other. It’s just idle farm work with company. And it’s more peaceful than you expected it to be. He didn’t touch you, question you, or do much at all to bother you in general.

Sometimes he stares at you, but you do the same to him. He even gives a sheepish smile when he catches you; it doesn’t get returned. That doesn’t bother him though. He thinks you look beautiful on the farm in your dress with dirt covered hands and hair messy from the wind. He hopes to tell you that one day but for now he stays shy, still weary and afraid.

The sun shines relentlessly unless a cloud mercifully passes by. The breeze is rare yet kind. The animals make their sounds to sing a collective song. The trees and crops sway like waving hands of hellos and goodbyes, depending on where you’re headed to or from. It’s not so bad.

　Two weeks go by. Time flies by for both you and Sunghoon. He comes to work during the week, and he spends his weekends missing you. He doesn’t know what you two are to each other, and he’s too scared to ask. There’s definitely been changes to the dynamic, however. Subtly so. You still don’t smile, or let him touch you. You roll your eyes and insult him if he’s too emotional. But you’re there.

Certainly not everyday, but most, you spend his work days with him. It’s easier to be around one another. There can be small talk, usually about the farm or the weather. Still much to be learned about on a personal level, but he’s fine with the pace of the relationship (outside of the unholy acts that are committed). Sometimes you even end up helping him. Or at least he thinks of it that way. In reality you don’t like how he does things and take over to do it yourself.

You still tease him in your cruel ways. Always ending with him in a mess because he’s easily worked up by your handsy curiosity. He caves into you every time because he can’t fight the divinity that you show him.

There are other times where you confuse him. You suggest a water break knowing he’d gone hours without hydration under the summer heat. You insist on having him take a break under a roof away from the sun when his skin gets too sweaty or red. Which is followed by a reminder that sunscreen is important if he wishes to keep his milky complexion. It’s critical statements that you provide him, but he can’t help to think it’s a weird way of showing you care.

Sure, it could be seen as you selfishly saying these things because it’s what you want for yourself, but in the back of his mind he’s very aware of how you watch and cater to him. It makes his heart jump every time and butterflies swarm his stomach. He can’t help it. The little things, the small acts of kindness—that you might not even intend—make him delusionally overthink.

On the third weekend since starting his summer job, Jake can’t help all the questions he’s been building up and dying to ask. Jake doesn’t understand what Sunghoon has been going through, especially when his moods change so drastically. At first, Sunghoon was self isolating and pouty, clearly in his own head and sulking. But then he would come home from work beaming with an afterglow to his aura. And then on the weekends he was back to his reclusive, depressed state.

Sick of being left out of Sunghoon’s inner turmoil, Jake finally pesters his friend.

“When are you going to tell me what’s going on?” Jake stands in the doorway of Sunghoon’s room, staring at his friend who’s laying face down in his bed.

“I don’t know…” Sunghoon’s words are muffled in his pillow.

Jake walks in with a sigh and sits at the end of the bed. He playfully slaps Sunghoon’s leg. “Dude, just tell me. You’re obviously going through something. You know I can keep a secret. I won’t judge.”

Sunghoon rolls over on his back, his hands clasped together over his stomach as he stares up to the ceiling. He confides in Jake, telling his story from the beginning of when he first met you. He stutters over his words when he admits to the sinful acts he partook in with you. He tells Jake of his guilty conscience and how he enjoyed indulging in the feelings. Then he tells Jake about how he simply likes your company even without the sexual circumstances involved. How he’s mystified by your complex personality and only wishes to know you more. However, he does leave out the viciousness of your nature, since a part of him doesn’t quite believe in it.

“It seems like you’re starting to develop a crush.” Jake laughs lightly, “And if it’s about religion, don’t overthink it too much. Nobody dies completely pure.” He reassures him. “You should show her more of you. That you like her too.”

Sunghoon groans and covers his face at the terrifying suggestion. If only you were that easy to approach in such a vulnerable way. “I guess… I’ll consider it.”

The next day is Sunday. Jake and Sunghoon attend church as normal. Sunghoon participates less in his prayers and songs than usual. His mind is too preoccupied with all he has going on in life. He feels guilt and frustration.

Sunghoon, lost in his own world, fails to realize that his best friend—Jake—battles something similar internally.

You’re never as alone as you think you are if you take a better look around. Everyone is riddled with their own self disgust, guilt, or shame. How else would the churches be so full?

　Entering the fourth week of summer should feel easier than it does for Sunghoon. The work seems to be picking up regarding responsibilities. The weather is only becoming less forgivable. The peak is yet to hit, but that only means the seasonal storms are right around the corner. More care is needed in the fields and barns in terms of protection in case of unpredictable weather.

Aside from the work, Sunghoon is anxious because of you. He hasn’t seen you yet today and he feels nervous about it. Perhaps he has grown too clingy, finding close comfort in knowing you’re there with him on the farm. There’s a sense of safety when you’re in the line of sight; you make things easier for him and he enjoys the presence.

While he’s watering plants and checking the sprinklings through the fields, an older man approaches him. It’s a familiar face that he’s seen around a few times over the past month. The man waves with a smile and Sunghoon does the same.

“It’s amazing what you’ve done, boy.” The man begins, Sunghoon questions where he’s going with the start because he’s just an extra hand of help and doesn’t feel he’s accomplished or improved the farm in drastic ways. “I’ve worked here, hm, well I’ll be damned! Nearly 15 years! And I’ve never once seen that farm girl talk to anyone. Much less spend time.” the man chuckles.

“Oh!” Sunghoon blushes and hopes it’s only mistaken as feverish from the summer. He smiles small and stares down to the bundle of plants he brought with him to the farm today. He feels special knowing this much of you. “She’s something…”

“Sometimes I’d see her talk to herself and the animals.” The man pulls out a cigarette and lighter to smoke. “She’d walk around aimlessly like a ghost. Used to scare the hell outta me.” As he laughs, smoke escapes his lungs. He wheezes a little before continuing, “But now she follows and watches you like she’s worshipin’. If only she did the same with her daddy. Although with a face like yours, I can’t blame the girl.”

“Pardon? What do you mean by that?” Sunghoon, bemused, watches the man smoke and laugh between weak coughs. “She has a dad?” His last question is overroad by the man who speaks over him.

“You keep up your work, kid. I outta get back to mines too.” And then he’s walking away with a low chuckle, shaking his head to himself.

Sunghoon’s aware of your mother. He always thought it was just the two of you running things. He’s never once seen a man, your father, leave the house or so much so be around it. This gives him more to think about, especially on the fact that he still doesn't know much about you at all. You’re still an enigma to him, but he wants everything.

By the afternoon when all the guys are finishing up their break, you finally come out of the house. With the sound of the front door opening, Sunghoon is quick to straighten his posture and find your eyes. You’re already looking at him, watching him and his surroundings with no expression. His cheeks burn and he can’t help the smile forming on his lips.

Two and a half days without seeing you feels like so much longer.

He stands up from the picnic table, grabbing his newspaper wrapped bundle of greenery and shyly hiding it behind his back. He walks over to you, tripping over his feet as he approaches the porch steps to the house. You stand there in front of the door but at the top of the few stairs, arms crossed and amused.

He’s diffident, arms behind him and modestly attempting to hide how nervous he feels on the inside. His stomach is doing flips, his heart racing. On top of already sweating. He feels like he could throw up his lunch right in front of your feet. He swallows thickly before slowly bringing his hands out in front of himself.

“I,” he clears his throat, “ehem, I got these for you.” With outstretched arms, the bundle of flowers shake in his trembling hands. He suddenly feels he’s too nervous to even meet your eyes, so he watches the chipped paint wood of the front porch steps.

You just stand there, watching him with wide eyes and your heart in your throat. Your mouth is lost for words, glancing around at the few farmhands who haven’t left yet and are staring at Sunghoon’s exchange in a similar bewilderment. Some are trying to keep themselves from bursting out into laughter.

“Are you some kind of stupid?” You whisper harshly for only him to hear, snatching the flowers out of his hands. “Why the hell would you do this?” Your words like your tone are mean, but in your chest there’s a raging pounding. It’s a seething raw emotion that doesn’t know how to be dealt with. You’ve only just stepped out of the house and your body feels like it’s inside a furnace.

Sunghoon’s head shoots back up to look at you, his face and heart drop. “I-I’ve never had a girlfriend before so I wasn’t sure what to do.. This is what boyfriends do, right?” He takes a hand to scratch at the back of his head. Inner turmoil takes over and he thinks he’s fucked up. He bites at his lip, doing his best not to instantly cry in regret.

You notice this and sigh, irritated. You look from the neatly wrapped white roses and tulips and back to Sunghoon. “So you are stupid,” you mumble before taking your own bottom lip between your teeth. A part of you wants to sneer, but you spin on your heels to hide the warmth that floods your face in substitution. “I’m throwing them away,” you announce, opening the door and walking back inside your house.

Sunghoon, broken, just drops his head and turns back. A few of the farmhands are snickering from not too far away, chattering among each other and eyeing Sunghoon. He wishes God would smite him on the spot from the humiliation.

Wanting to avoid everything for a little while, he thinks of heading to the lodge to lay down in hiding. But before he can walk away, the front door of your house swings open once more. He glances back at you, meeting your eyes like he always seems to do.

“Done for the day already?” You call over to him, now leaning over the banister of the porch with crossed arms.

Sunghoon, unable to refute you, offers a weak smile and shakes his head. “No.”

He walks back over to you and you meet him halfway. You don’t say anything else. You don’t bring up the fact that he had bought you flowers or confused the odd relationship you share for dating. It’s cute in all its blind innocence, but that just goes to show you that you have more work to do with him.

You don’t think of messing with him today. He’s distinctly grown too clingy with how much time you’ve spent with him. Yet you can’t ignore him either. The two of you carry out the rest of the day’s farm work in silence. The inner fury you feel with him doesn’t seem to go away, despite how he hasn’t said much or even brushed skin with you.

You don’t know how you’re remaining pacific by his side. The rampaging of your heart strings tug like a screaming instrument just from being next to him. How he can keep walking tall, stare at you when he thinks you aren’t looking, or even smile at you is beyond what you know is capable of humans. Men like him only existed in books and movies. You wonder if he’s perhaps playing a game like you.

By the time he’s in the truck to go back to town to catch a bus into the city, you’re sitting at the lake dock. Criss crossed legs, a bouncing knee, and fingernails being ripped at by your teeth. You stare blankly at the water, hoping for that sense of serenity to encapsulate you. It never seems to come. It just feels cold.

So you decide on punishing him for making you feel this way.

You don’t leave your house for the next three days. You don’t make yourself known, heard or seen. However, you’re peeking out every window of your house to get any chance of a view of him. You hate yourself for being so curious of him in the first place. What was supposed to be good fun has only left you feeling angry. Taking his innocence was never going to heal you, or even make him like yourself. In fact, it’s making you sicker.

And on the night of the fourth Thursday, you’re laying in bed staring at your ceiling. A stuffed animal is hugged tightly to your chest. You can’t sleep and you can’t stop thinking about someone for the first time in your life. No amount of tossing and turning, counting sheep, or button presses to your distorted singing, stuffed bear made it easier.

Somehow, you ended up punishing yourself. You always had a knack for that, historically, but this time felt different. It actually kind of hurt. Being alone came naturally to you, but tonight it hits you just how lonely you’ve always been.

　Friday, the farmhands are huddled on the front porch of your house. All the animals are safely away in their designated homes thanks to their help. It started to storm in a heavy downpour only minutes ago. What started out as a dark gray gloom and windy rain quickly turned into an early flooded property, illuminated by strikes of flashing lightning and roaring thunder.

You stand dry under the protection of the porch roof by the front door. Watching and listening to your mother suggest the shaking cold, soaked men take shelter in the lodge until the sky lets up so they can head home.

Sunghoon hasn’t spared a look to you all day, but you know that he feels his eyes on you. It’s in the way he shifts awkwardly amongst the men that ignore him. How his eyes are trained low and unfocused yet always trying to move in your direction. His wet hair falls over his face, concealing his emotions you wish to dissect. He comes off as stoic but you know he wears his heart on his sleeve; how his body language speaks volumes.

Your mother pushes past you to get back inside, saying she’ll check the basement for a spare heater that the boys could use at the lodge. There’s something in you that makes you move without thinking. Suddenly a hand is tugging at the bottom of Sunghoon’s damp jacket for his attention. The material is too thin for this weather and the thought of him becoming sick crosses your mind.

“It’s warmer here,” your words, for once, came out soft. Too much so, being lost in the cracking sound of thunder. He looks at you through his bangs. The wave of alleviation from whatever he was dealing with is palpable. His eyes and body almost look relaxed. You tug him towards you once more, insinuating that he follows you.

He does. Like whatever subconscious emotion made you approach him also made him follow you in. As he steps in, he notices the indistinguishable vibes of the farmer’s lodge. It’s updated and cleaner, but similar in aesthetics. A shotgun sits leaning up against the wall by the front door. His brows furrow and eyes narrow. “Those aren’t safe to have lying around…” he mumbles.

You tug him towards the staircase to walk up, “It’s protection. Only my mother and I are here,” is mumbled back as you lead him up the wooden, creaking stairs. Your feet move light and quick, like a mouse in a home not theirs. If your mother saw you, there would be unnecessary consequences. And the possibility of your father’s involvement would only worsen such.

Sunghoon cautiously steps into your bedroom, his body tenses at the sound of you shutting and locking the door. He feels on edge, wrapping his arms around his shivering body and soaked clothes. You move around him to sit on your bed, telling him to remove his sopping attire. He does so with shaking hands, leaving him in nothing but his underwear. He shyly looks around the room while using his hands to cover his manhoon.

His eyes scan over you, sitting quietly on your bed with a look of contemplation that stares past him. A wooden cross hangs on the wall above your bed, the dark wood matches the decadent bed frame. The nightstand nearby has a pile of books and journals with a low light lamp and unlit candle.

The large window has sheer white curtains drawn open and a vase on the windowsill. A glass vase filled with the flowers he gave you earlier in the week. His heart aches at the sight of the still healthy white roses and tulips, and a smile graces his lips. You liar! You kept them! Is what runs through his thoughts.

Without Sunghoon realizing, you got up to grab a towel and drape over the back of his shoulders. He’s taken aback by your ghost-like actions, but offers you a small smile of appreciation. “Thanks…”

You nod for response and glance from him to the vase of flowers he was lost in thought over. You didn’t have it in to explain yourself, mostly because you didn’t understand why you had done so either.

He dries himself off and finds a place to sit at the end of your bed. You’re on the other end with your back pressed to the headboard, watching him, counting every mole you can find on his pale canvas. The stuffed animal you sleep with is being mindlessly fumbled around in your hands.

Sunghoon turns to face you directly, he reaches a hand out, eyes shifting from your face and the winged bear. You shoot him a mean look at first, only holding it closer to yourself before your face softens to slowly extend it out to him.

He takes it with careful hands and looks down to inspect the old toy. Its cream colored fur is dirtied and matted with age. The holographic satin wings on the back have loose stitching and its halo is crooked. Across the chest of the bear reads ‘Jesus Loves Me’ but it’s obvious the sewn name Jesus has been ripped away at. One paw has a red heart embroidered saying ‘press me’. His thumb brushes over the button heart before pressing down. The bear sings in a distorted happy voice the lullaby of Jesus loves me.

“His name is Saint Michael,” you say quietly and he almost doesn’t catch it. Sunghoon can only breathe a laugh because he finds the dichotomy cute. You almost laugh too, but bite your tongue and look back to your empty hands. You don’t know it but he can see you try to fight your little smile. To him, this moment means more than anything; he’s starting to see you’re more tender than you realize. It brings him a sense of surety in knowing that he can break you like you to do him.

Silly as it may seem for a troubled girl, the bear was the only comfort you had throughout childhood. There was no kindness from your father, no solace from your mother, no guide in knowing life or love. But there was Saint Michael, the stuffed angel bear; he may not have defended you in battle but he hugged you back, and that was enough to cherish him like a deity.

Sunghoon crawls across the bed and sits himself next to you, too close for your liking, but you don’t push him away. He hands the stuffie back to you and you place it on the nightstand to face away from you. You lower yourself in the bed, shuffling under the covers of the blanket and he does the same. His skin naked bare yearns for more warmth, yours specifically.

You feel him turn on his side next to you, pressing up against you despite there being enough space on the bed. His movements are awkward and nervous like he is. You feel a certain pressure against your thigh that isn’t his bones or limbs. You spare him a glance, he doesn’t know if it’s a warning or dare.

“...Have I ruined you?” You wonder aloud, looking back to the ceiling.

“No,” he answers quickly, shaking his head against your shoulder. The way he’s missed you in his desire to touch you, hands tingling with want to snake around your waist and pull you in tight. “I think I just want you all the time now. I can’t help it, m’sorry.” He sounds ashamed in his soft mumbles.

“I’ll only keep stripping all that purity from you. Once it’s mine it’ll remain mine, you know that right?” You look back at him before brushing some of his drying hair from his eyes. He tries to lean up into the touch but your hand is taken back. “And I will pretend it’s healing all that’s missing from me. Do you really want to be mine, Sunghoon?” Your words are so gentle yet laced with threat.

“Yes,” he exhales, “I want to be yours. Let me be yours please.” It’s hushed, a secret prayer with hope. His hips push further into the skin of your leg, where the hip meets the thigh. He wouldn’t mind going to Hell if it meant more time with you.

“You beg like a needy barn animal in heat.” You use a hand to cup his face, he sighs into the hold as he eyes flutter to a close. You push your leg in between his, terribly close to his exposed and vibrating body. “So hump me like one.”

“W-what?” he stutters out before licking over his lips, his thighs squeezing around the plush of yours now trapped in his. His eyes already wet with desperate want, staring back at yours.

“Do it. Like it’s mating season and you want to claim me before anyone else.”

A cracked voice whine falls from his lips and he begins to roll his growing bulge against you. You watch as he sucks in breaths between quiet breathy moans. His pink, plump lips pursing and falling open. His eyes try to stay on your face, how close you are to him, but they fall shut sometimes in his basking of rapture. It’s a slutty sight of a faith-sickened boy.

He loves the little to no proximity that there is. His hands find place on your waist, and he’s aware of how that makes you feel, but he can’t stop it. He wants more and more of you. His hands slide up under your shirt, the feeling on your bare skin in his hands makes his body shudder. Untouched, warm flesh for his large hands to explore and learn every curve of.

Even you stiffen at his exploration, holding in your breath as if you’ve forgotten how to breathe. Your shirt lifts up more with his hands and the exposure is daunting like you’re revealing your insides.

The pit of your stomach lights up and you're frozen under his clutch. The pads of his fingers hold you so tight as if he’s scared you’ll disappear. His cock is raging and you can feel every pulse of blood that his heart beat floods to. He’s humping into you desperately, chasing the euphoria that he could never find on his own. Such a delicate, shy boy now driven by lust and longing.

“You’re pathetic and disgusting. You’re practically fucking me through our clothes,” you murmur while you try to push his hands down off you, but his grip won’t let up. Instead his nails dig further into you, a barely sounding broken noise escapes you from the pain. This makes his body collapse further into you, his head dropping between your shoulder and neck. His movements are sloppy and rushed.

“N-no, I’m still good. You make me feel good, I am so good,” he whines, tears beginning to fall from his eyes to your shoulder. You try to imagine his holy water is washing you clean but it only singes.

“Tell me that only I make you feel good, that you’re only good for me.”

“Only you—can only be you to make me good,” he cries against your warmth, rocking himself into you roughly. His leaking cock begins to twitch against you and his hips won’t quit their stuttered jerks.

You hum lightly and run a hand through his hair, pushing it back from his face. He looks up at you with those desperate, wet, dark eyes and you can’t help but acknowledge how pretty he is like this. His puffy cheeks are flushed pink as the tip of his nose. “Only for me,” you mumble.

“Yes, thank you, I am yours. Yes.” His breaths are jagged and heavy. There’s a coiling in his abdomen that feels borderline explosive. You were right, he craves this feeling. It’s surreal to him how he’s gone so long without it. His arms wrap around you completely now, holding you down while his body rolls on top of yours, situated between your legs. His heart hammers against your chest; he wants to mold into you, to become a singular rot.

You squeak a gasp, being caged down by him. Your heart beats with the same veracity. One of your arms wraps around his waist to hold his back while the other holds the back of his head that hasn’t left the safety of your neck. He continuously sobs through meek moans. His hair tickles your skin like sparks while his lips brush over your jaw and neck making the tingle feel like crackling flames.

Under his weight you feel yourself slipping in both confidence and dominance, your body wanting to sink down in submission from the unknown comfort of his control. Your heart aches and you feel something you’ve never felt before. You think you’re scared of it, yet your body pulls him closer. Hand in his hair, tugging with fearful aggression. Nails piercing the skin of his shoulder blade. You’re pliant under his heavy thrusts and sounds of sin.

The rain pours harder outside with whips of harsh winds smacking the window. It’s almost like God’s wrath is screaming to be seen, to shout that He is watching.

Sunghoon’s hard cock is relentless against your core. The rough grind of him is stimulating in ways you’ve never felt before, your body sensitive and starving for more. You squeeze your eyes shut and moan within your closed mouth, hating yourself for feeling this way because it was never supposed to be about you. You are betraying yourself more than your fathers.

The sounds you try to withhold make Sunghoon weaker. He feels uncontrollable, only becoming needier and hungrier with his movements, “I can’t stop. I can’t stop.” He whines, begging for you to vocalize how you feel it too.

You feel like you’re breaking underneath him, and it feels shameful. Like every harsh word your father ever spat at you was true now that you’re a part of the experience and not just the cause. Everything is too much. It takes every ounce of strength you have to turn both of your bodies over. Now sitting up on top of his lap, you can finally breathe again, sighing in relief. He whimpers at the distance between you both but also from the view of you.

He moans your name softly as he grips your hips, pushing himself up into your clothed pussy like he’s fucking you. Your hands push down on his shoulders. You stare into his eyes with a plain expression and contrasting sharp eyes, grinding your hips back down on top of him. It’s hard to ignore the way it makes you feel, watching him fall apart beneath you as his pulsing cock fucks against you, but you manage.

“Cum for me,” you demand quietly, “make a mess and imagine it’s inside me.”

“Holy fu—ngh,” his entire body spasms and shudders with a low groan falling from his open lips. His movements slow down only to become lazier and uncoordinated. You can feel the warm wetness he spills soak through your thin pajama shorts and underwear.

“You’re right. You are good for me,” you coo softly, cupping his face and using your thumbs to wipe away the tears. Your hips circle and swivel slowly on him until his quivering cock finishes cumming.

Sunghoon has a sparkle to his wet eyes. The way the gentle praise left your lips makes him melt, and he can’t stop the flickering glance between your eyes and lips. He breathes heavily through his post clarity. Still he basks in your touch with a hopeful look in his eyes. His tongue slides over his lips before he’s leaning up towards your face, hands affixed to your waist to pull you closer to him.

This makes a wave of panic wash over you, knowing what he wants to do. You shake your head no and pull yourself away, slipping off of his lap only to turn away from him.

“None of that. It’s not what-”

And then there’s a press of lips to your cheek. Your face burns as if a hot coal was what kissed your face. Your eyes go wide, turning to see the boy sitting up next to you. He only wears a shy smile as he sees your reaction.

“I’ve wanted to do that for a week now,” he admits with a small laugh. “Not exactly there but that’s fine. I wish you would let me help you feel good too.” he whispers, looking back to the windowsill where the gifted flowers stood in their vase with the raging storm as their backdrop.

“That’s dumb and I don’t need to,” you reply, still watching him stare forward. Your chest feels painful; it’s an ache like shattered glass trying to piece together in the wrong ways. Stabbing but trying.

“I think you deserve to,” he argues. “But I understand if it’s not what you want. I was really touchy and I shouldn’t have been because you don’t seem like it. I was too caught up in the moment.” His mind goes to the mess he’s still sitting in and he feels self-conscious all over again. “Is it embarrassing how much I need you?”

You blink at him, swallowing the words that were never going to come out because you didn’t even know what they should or would be. So you settle with a simple, “No.”

You think it would kill you to admit how much you actually always wished to be wanted, needed, or loved. A bigger part of you didn’t think you were worthy of it, let alone capable. The world had such a way of saying otherwise. Until it brought Sunghoon to you; the boy who showed you feelings and experiences you never thought possible.

As if he could read your mind, he asks, “Why did you choose me out of everyone?” He falls back onto the bed, laying down and pulling the blanket over himself.

“I think you reminded me of a lamb.”

“Pardon?” His brows furrow.

You lay back down next to him, facing him like he is to you. “Pretty, white, and docile. You were so nervous when I first saw you—sometimes you still are.” You even laugh a little. “When you shook my hand I knew I could do anything to you because you’d let me.”

“You think I’m pretty?” He smiles wide, scooting closer to you.

You scoff with an eye roll, leaning further away from him. “Oh shut up, you’ve seen a mirror.”

And then it’s his turn to laugh a little. He looks at you like you’re the reason the sun rises and falls. It kind of hurts you to see him like this because it reminds you of your initial rotten intentions and how they’re dissipating the more you’re with him.

Time passes faster than the two of you realize. There’s light banter and easy conversations. You learn more about Sunghoon. Where he goes to school, what he studies, and who his friends are. He tells you of the sports he used to do and what he does in free time with his best friend. The more you learn about him, the more you understand his naivety and how despite what you’ve done, he won’t change. There’s something lovely about it.

You don’t have much to share about your life the way he does, at least not in the same light. But you show him your favorite books, drawings you made over the years, and share the stories of movies you found interesting. He savors the moment of you simply confiding, enjoying the more he can know about you.

The storm passes later in the evening. So caught up in borrowing time, the rain has slowed down to a simple pitter patter. The clouds dispersed and the setting sun only came through to say goodbye to the day.

The sound of the truck that the farmhands use to take back to town is heard roaring to life, signalling you and Sunghoon that it’s safe and time to head out.

Sunghoon jumps out of bed but by the time he’s shoving himself into his still damp jeans and looking out the window, the truck is already speeding down the dirt, now mud riddled road.

“They just left without me,” he breathes out. “I’m used to them leaving me out, but t-this is.. How am I going to get home?” He looks back to you with sad eyes, not the light they had earlier. He’s not shocked by their actions, but he is disappointed. A hand runs through his hair in his stress.

“Should I kill them?” Your question is brazen, body and voice eerily still in your seriousness.

“W-what?!” he whispers in shock, freezing for a moment.

“I’m joking.” You sit up and watch Sunghoon resume getting dressed. “I think you should head back to the lodge for the night. There’s a washer and dryer for your clothes. And spare food for dinner too.”

Sunghoon nods slightly, “your jokes are weird, but okay.” He looks like he’s thinking of something, taking his bottom lip between his teeth in thought before speaking again. “Can you stay with me for the night at least?” he asks shyly.

“No,” comes out quicker than you intended. “...But I guess I can walk with you there.”

He nods again but now with his signature small dimpled smile. You almost forgot about being angry at the other farmhands for taking it away.

You have to make sure the coast is clear before leaving the house. You tiptoe down the halls and stairs, weary of where your mother is inside the house. To your luck, she’s in her usual state. She’s passed out on the couch with two empty bottles of wine on the floor. The television volume is low, playing a rerun of the reverend’s sermon; the devil himself of your childhood, preaching about how he lost his child to the otherside.

With a finger to your lips, you silently signal for Sunghoon to be quiet and to follow you out.

Once safely out of the front door, you take his hand in yours and start running for the lodge. The tall boy is behind you, so you don’t get to see the bright smile on his lips or in his eyes as you run through the light run towards the lodge.

Now standing in the front doorway of the farmer’s lodge, wet from the sky all over again and still hand in hand, Sunghoon bravely speaks up.

“I don’t like it when you disappear on me,” he breathes out shakily, honestly. “Nobody else sees me like you do,” he squeezes your hand tighter in his, feeling you begin to pull away. “Come with me into the city tomorrow. We can- I’m not sure yet, but I’m sure I want more time with you.”

His eye contact is unwavering, begging. Both of his strong hands hold onto yours. You glance from your hand then back to his pleading expression. He will always remain so sweet, no matter what you do to him.

“I felt less lonely before I met you,” you confess, eyes unblinking as you stare up at him for a long pause. “I’ll meet you here in the morning.”

In only seconds, he’s pulling you into a hug. His arms wrap around you so tightly as he holds you to his chest. You go stiff in his arms, forgetting how to breathe for a moment. What feels suffocating at first turns into a warmth you’ve become all too familiar with, and it was never anger. The indignation you always wear is just a hand me down from your parents; it doesn’t fit you right even though it’s comfortable.

With a shaky exhale, you wrap your arms around him too. The hug surrounds you like a blanket of unknown comfort. Your ear pressed to his chest listens to the sound of his racing heart. You can feel the pound throughout his entire body too. Every emotion held within is trying and fighting to be seen. It’s still so cold from the rain but he feels contrast, only warm. His lips press a kiss to the top of your head, making your body burn even more and your hold all the tighter.

　True to your word, you meet Sunghoon at the farmer’s lodge the next morning. He seems happier than usual. Very giddy to be spending a weekend day with you without work in the way. No distractions or excuses to leave. Just the two of you and a new day with zero obligations.

Because you had a spare bike, you both are able to peddle towards town to the bus stop together. Having made these frequent trips alone, you’re familiar with the owner of the gas station at the stop. He’s a deaf older man, and it surprises Sunghoon that you know how to sign and ask him to hold onto the bikes until you’re back. You tell Sunghoon that you learned some basics from reading a book you bought a long time ago.

Stunned, Sunghoon realizes that you went out of your way to do so for one man who watches your bike while you endure solo trips. You, the odd girl who was mean and sinful, used your money and learned a language for one man who did a simple favor. He’s learning more to admire you for by the day, and it’s crazy to him how you don’t see your own charm.

Sunghoon pays your bus fares even though you insisted on being capable of doing so yourself. Sat in the middle of the bus that’s only barely half filled, he asks if there’s anything you’d like to do for the day while in the city. Nobody has ever asked you such an effortless thing, and you like it more than you imagined. Just uncomplicated curiosity of your wishes.

“The book store. The small yellow one on main street. Maybe see a movie if anything is worth seeing.” You shrug, spewing out the usual things you do. Looking around the taken bus seats, you notice some familiar faces.

“That sounds nice,” he smiles, “our first real date! I think there’s a cafe near that book store too. Do you like coffee?”

Your cheeks burn as you stare at him in bewilderment, “you think we’re going on a date?!”

“Of course we are,” he laughs like it’s obvious and wraps an arm around your shoulder, looking out of the window. All that the town can offer him other than you passes by. “I’m a fan of americanos. You seem like you’d take your coffee black.”

“I don’t even like coffee,” you mumble, turning your attention out of the window as well. “Tea is nice though.” You add in, crossing your arms over your chest.

“Hm. I can see that too,” he hums as he pulls you closer into his side.

So much can change in such little time. You’ve experienced this many times in one life. How one day can open a new door to a path otherwise not taken. Showing Sunghoon more of you has made him bloom into a larger ray of light. He seems more comfortable, and now you’ve become the awkward one.

The ride to the city doesn’t normally take this long, or at least you don’t think it does. Every second with him by your side makes the experience feel brand new. The theme of time being unreal is common with him, you’ve discovered. It’s when you’re in the bookstore and see a holiday sale that you realize it’s not even June anymore.

While Sunghoon looks for books for his upcoming college semester, you find yourself in genre sections you never really cared for before. The dark and racy ones were fun to bring home, sure. But innocent, cliche romance was always something cringey to you. Now if you change your perspective to that of research then it’s less daunting, right? Perhaps you’d make sense of all the things you’re discovering about yourself and him. Yeah, that’s convincing enough.

He teases you at the checkout counter when he sees what you picked out. Your face flushes in embarrassment and you can’t even bite back at him or defend your choices. So you smack him with the book on the way out while he laughs and makes jokes that aren’t very funny.

The two of you do manage to catch a movie. You honestly didn’t care to see one, but having to sit silently in a theater for at least an hour and half seemed like enough time for him to, hopefully, forget and drop the whole book situation. It’s a summer slasher film. A group of teens go camping and the plot is very ‘who done it’ style. Overall, it’s a fun choice. You have your turn to laugh and joke when Sunghoon gets jumpy or scared.

After the movie, you both end up at the cafe Sunghoon mentioned while on the bus. There was something painfully intimate about everything today. But especially sitting down to eat with him. Not even your mother could meet you at the table anymore.

“You seem softer today,” Sunghoon states, setting his half-drunk coffee down. “Almost nervous. Is it because we’re out together for our first date? Or just the people in general?”

You raise a brow at his brazen curiosity and observation. “Maybe you’re rubbing off on me,” you play with your fork to move around the barely touched food in front of you. “Or maybe it’s a bit of both.”

“If you come to the city enough to know sign language for the man who watches your bike, do you like it better than the countryside?”

“Don’t know. I’m used to the quiet life, but leaving it behind and pretending it’s not there is nice too.”

“What keeps you there?”

“The scenery. The air. The lake. Being friends with the animals.” You look up from the plate to Sunghoon who is watching you like a lecture: attentive and learning. “I’m not very good with people, so I think it suits me alright.”

“You’re good with me though,” he argues softly.

“No, not really. I wish I was more like everyone else,” you inhale deeply as your eyes wander around the bustling cafe. There’s a choir of laughter, conversations, and social dynamics you would have to study to master. “If I were a good person, everything would be easier.”

“...but I like you as you are,” he mumbles loud enough for you to hear, watching you shift in your seat. He doesn’t think you’re not a good person, and it hurts that you see yourself as such.

As Sunghoon speaks, there’s a chime that follows as the front door of the cafe is swung open. A disheveled man stumbles inside, heavy feet stomping the tile floor to attempt to stabilize his disorientation. The man burps obnoxiously loud, and many eyes find him with the grand entrance.

He scratches at his lengthy, unkept beard as he looks around. When his sunken eyes find you sitting at the table nearby his eyes grow wide and his mouth falls open. His hand shakes with a pointed finger in your direction, “y-you! The girl from the reverend’s sermon!” He’s loud, capturing the attention of everyone now. His sloppy movements make way towards you and Sunghoon; you feel everything within you freeze, and your heart knocks at your chest fast and hard with anxiety.

He slams his hands on the table, causing your plates and drinks to rattle. He reeks badly of alcohol and his crazed eyes never leave yours. You swallow thickly, fight or flight mode still trying to understand the situation before you. Meanwhile Sunghoon, worried and confused, slowly begins to stand up and grab your bags.

But you, you’re frozen staring at the messy man who talks of your greatest hate. Your hands tremble on the table.

“I thought the reverend made you up for stories, but my God! You’re the real living thing just like the pictures; his only sin,” he laughs boisterously in your face and you try not to gag. “I saw him a little whiles earlier, ya know,” his voice goes quieter, it’s taunting even. You wish to remain calm but your eyes tremble and a frown takes your face. “I should go find him and tell him you’re here. He really-”

Sunghoon takes your hand, practically dragging you away from the table. You almost fall from your seat, like a baby deer just learning to walk, there’s little strength to your legs.

“It’s not too late! You can be on the right side of things!” his voice ricochets off the walls of the now quiet cafe. “If I can be saved by his preaching, so can you! Look at me!” His mad laughter follows you and Sunghoon outside.

Sunghoon watches you stand on uneasy feet, zoned out staring at the sidewalk. It didn’t take much to put the pieces together that the drunken man was talking about your father. Your father being a reverend who’s not in the picture gave him much to wonder about, but now isn’t the time. He just wanted to get you somewhere away from this memory.

He crouches down in front of you. You slowly blink back to reality, now looking down at his back. You don’t want to speak so you poke his shoulder in questioning.

“Hop on. Let’s go somewhere else.”

“What if I’m heavy?” you look at the bags he’s already holding, feeling that you too are a burdened weight he doesn’t need to hold.

“I’ve got good muscles, remember? Good for farm work,” he’s patient and calm with you while his eyes watch the man from outside the glass cafe windows. “Come on, baby.”

Without thinking, you end up on his back. He carries you on his back, strong arms holding your legs while yours are loosely around his neck. Your insides are a flared up hurricane but at least that allows your body to forget the empty ache you left at the cafe. With your chin hooked over his shoulder, you watch the many people and downtown stores that pass by.

Sunghoon doesn’t exactly know where he’s walking, but thinks it’s best to end the day here and return you to the bus stop. He’s never seen that look on your face before—the one you had when the man was loud in your face. He didn’t like it, and he’s sure you hated it. You looked intimidated, or afraid.

“Would you kill him for me?” you watch the side of his face, “the reverend, I mean.”

He stops in his tracks and turns his head to look back at you, “w-what? I can’t kill someone… and you should joke like that.” he panics, looking around to see if someone was listening to the wild conversation and request.

“Yeah, I know. I’m fucking with you,” you look away to hide your smirk, “and only half joking.”

“Did you believe him before?” He starts walking again, but this time at a slower pace knowing the bus stop isn’t too far now.

“Who? My dad or Our Father?” There’s a use of air quotes at the end of your question.

“Both?” his head tilts.

“Neither,” you confirm. There’s a pause for thought and Sunghoon waits for you to further explain. “My relationship with both is too similar. They’ve both known me my whole life, right? Seen all of my wrong doings and in return shown wrath through unnecessary punishments called forgiveness. In what good world is tolerance violent?”

“What do you mean? What did he do?”

“Sometimes, after my mother set the table for dinner, he would knock my plate to the floor. Tell me to eat off the ground like the animal I was or starve.” Sunghoon frowns at this, coming to a slow stop when he sees the bus shelter bench. “Sometimes I had days and nights locked in the barns, but he switched it up to the basement when I was too close with the animals.” You laugh a little, but he senses the pain behind it. “I watched him kill the animals, too, only to smother me in their blood. Beatings were rare, but I think only because he despised the thought of even touching me.”

Sunghoon slowly sets you down to the ground and breathes out your name safely, taking your hands into his. He looks at you with sorrow, like he was the one who endured it with you.

“God’s orders, am I right? My father, the church goers, speak of God like they’ve seen his face and heard his voice, but they haven’t. I would’ve by now too.”

If He was really in everything, all around, why did He always turn a blind eye? Why does He pretend to not know you? It only made it harder to believe in—something that would bring you here, torture you then watch you suffer for not living how it pleases. God wants to be believed in, but so do you. Only you would never beg for compassion.

Sunghoon squeezes your hands in his, “I don’t think you should stay there. You never deserved that… even if you’re volatile and strange… because you’re also kind and caring. It’s why I like you. It’s their fault for not seeing that,” he reassures. “I haven’t been through what you have, and I can’t understand. I-I mean I can try to, ya know… it’s not like I’d leave if I didn’t.” His words begin to stumble nervously, not confident in its sympathy reaching you where needed.

You laugh nervously, trying to tug your hands away from his grip that doesn’t let up. “Okay sure whatever, this is really embarrassing now…” You swallow hard and find difficulty in meeting his eyes.

That’s all that matters, what he said to you, but you didn’t have it in you to say it. He already knows it though, smiling small and holding your hands still. Without words or excessive displays he can still see it in your eyes, the subtle comfort of acceptance.

He could never blame you for your nature. He sees your anger as you just trying to be strong all while being sad. Whether you are his lover or executioner, he would accept you as you are every time with open arms, receiving hands. Even more readily, now.

　Even more time has passed since knowing Sunghoon. Summer has never flown by so fast. The calendar doesn’t exist to you anymore. It’s only the days you see him and the days that you don’t. The season will be wrapping up in the next few weeks, but only for him. He has to return to his regular scheduled routine of pursuing education while you will stay here, on the farm. It’s rare for you to feel this emotion: fear. You are scared of losing him. And the concept is something you do your best to avoid thinking about because it makes your skin itch with anxiety. It crawls over you like something that needs to be cut out.

And then an idea hits you. Something far more deep-seated than everything else you’ve done with Sunghoon that would solidify that this summer is real and yours. Something that will always stay; a reminder that good things are possible despite how the world has made you.

It’s a damn near perfect day. The sun is so bright, and only peers down onto you both through the gaps of the trees. It’s just warm enough. Just quiet enough aside from the sound of Sunghoon’s gentle breathing and natural composition of the nature that surrounds. Rustling of leaves, chirps of birds, and scurrying of whatever life that wishes to not be seen.

You both sit criss cross at the wooden dock by the lake, simply enjoying the scenery and all it has to offer. His large knee is affixed to yours. If this was early June, you would have moved away. But now it’s a week into August and you wouldn’t have it anywhere else. Just like you always imagined, and secretly wanted, the view is nicer with someone else.

He didn’t bother asking why you never brought him here before, or why it is that you chose to now. He’s just happy that you decided to at all.

You slip a hand into your boot and pull out a pocket knife. You flick it open and do a brief inspection of the cleaned blade. The sun glints off the metal as you turn it.

“Sunghoon, do you trust me?”

His eyes flicker from your blank face to the blade. He nods slowly with a swallow, “of course.” There’s a subtle apprehension to him. You hand him the small blade and leave your palm facing up, open to him.

“Cut a diagonal line down my hand,” you point and draw a line down the middle of your palm.

“Huh, seriously?” he takes the blade confused and concerned with what you’re asking of him. “Why? I can’t hurt you.”

“Do it. Don’t think of it as hurting me, but still do it deep enough to leave a scar.”

He struggles to understand the situation, but you’re so serious and clearly waiting for him to do as you asked. He exhales deeply, taking your hand in his while the other holds the knife just above the bared skin. Hesitant and slow, the tip of the knife pressed down into your flesh. You wince a little, which makes him pause. You nod, encouraging him to continue and he does despite hating the act. He slices the palm of your hand open just as you wanted. You hate blood, but it’s not so bad when caused by him.

“Shit, it stings,” you swallow through the pain. The feel of open flesh burning and stinging. “Your turn,” you exhale while taking the knife back with your free, unharmed hand.

“My turn,” he agrees as if all logic has left him and readily displays his palm to you. Deep down, he feels guilty for hurting you, so to make it even he wants to feel the same.

Just as hesitant and careful, you create a matching wound in his hand. A deep enough, bleeding, lesion in his left hand to match your right one. He cringes at the sight and the pain before looking back to your face. Your expression is so soft yet attentive, almost awestruck.

“Even when you hurt me you’re gentle,” he remarks, watching you in amazement with a meek smile.

“I am not gentle. I have sullied you,” you remind him, your eyes attempt to glare but they’re too bright in his.

“In the softest way, why?” His voice is delicate and still like the lake that sits before you. You blink slowly at him because there are no words to be found. He continues, “I never thought of you as a bad person,” he pauses as you drop the red stained knife, unsure if he should continue at first but does regardless. “And, uhm, I’ve thought a lot about this summer. What I've learned from you. Purity is constructive—like something made to bring shame.” You don’t move, watching him. “I don’t have to be clean to be good…and your hands never made me dirty. Because they never were either.”

Like an excavator to your tall, strong built walls Sunghoon has knocked your shield down. The facade of your character is breaking down, crumbling into the broken pieces that made it. A single tear escapes your eye and runs down your cheek. It’s rare for you to cry and you’re disgusted with the reality as to why it’s now that you break. Simply falling apart from kind words.

You try to use everything in you to ignore the heat in your body, to show the anger you think you’re feeling inside. So your eyes remain sharp and strong, boring into his, as they still water. You swallow the dry lump in your throat and without a word, you take his hand into yours to join in a mix of blood.

At first, you had one goal; one similar to murder. The sparkle he had in his eyes, you wanted to eat—to make them empty—and see the world ugly and godless like you. Yet somehow, somewhere along the way, his eyes shone even brighter. You only wanted to take and take of the innocent boy, but in this moment you realize, maybe I just wanted to give him some of me.

You wipe the wet drop away from your face with haste, pretending as if it was never there. Whatever blood oath you’re making with Sunghoon allows you to feel something indescribable. You don’t know if it’s deserved, but you smile anyways. Because the indescribable feeling feels like it’s an unknown, unspoken promise.

He’s seen you smile before with insidious malice, but this time, for the first time, you are really smiling. It’s a raw expression of surfacing emotions, and he returns the emotion like the sun. He thought of you beautiful before but with your brightness finally peering through your clouds, he believes you to be heaven sent. A part of him always wanted to see you cry—usually it was him with tears in his eyes; which is funny, because he wasn’t much of a cryer himself. You just had that way of breaking him down. He knows now he does for you too. And he can tell that you’re probably the type of person who needs to cry the most.

His hand squeezes yours tighter, a grip so loving, as you bind in one. Neither of your eyes or smiles leave each other until the bleeding stops.

　A week later, Sunghoon asks you on a date. The summer fair is in town. It’s something like a festival where all the locals from towns around the city come to visit and join in on festivities from carnival games, rides, food, and uncommon entertainments. You think of being mean, denying him the acceptance of the date, but you have always wanted to go. So you said yes without your words: took his scarred hand in yours and nodded.

The evening sky is a watercolor of warm tones as the sun begins to lay down for the night. The bright lights of the fair illuminate the large open field turned carnival. There’s a sea of people here tonight, and although it makes you nervous inside, having Sunghoon by your side makes the ordeal easier to handle.

The line for the ticket booth is lengthy but it passes by. You approach the booth, standing a little behind Sunghoon who takes out his wallet to buy your entrance wristband passes and tickets. You look around at the many people: families, friends, and couples, all immersed in their own experience as the music and sounds blend in the background of conversations.

“Oh wow! You’re really handsome,” the girl at the ticket booth gawks at Sunghoon. She straightens her posture and fixes her hair from her face, “one ticke-?”

Catching this, you step forward and snatch Sunghoon’s wallet from his hands, “he already knows that. Do your job or I’ll feed you to pigs.” You slap the cash amount for what you need down onto the table top with a straight face and mean eyes.

Her eyes go wide and she hushes an apology, quickly giving you both wristbands and tickets for the evening. She even threw in extra tickets as you stared her down.

Sunghoon watches you with a flushed face, even the tips of his ears burn red at your jealous threat. You both walk off into the fair, a sheepish smile on his face as he leads you through the crowd with an arm wrapped around your back and hand to your waist.

“Was that one of your jokes too?” he grins down at you.

“Nope,” you glance at him with a small smile. You weren’t sure what came over you in the moment, but it was something internally deep, and territorial. An innate reaction to someone trying to appeal to something that belongs to you. It felt ugly and you didn’t like it.

The idea that he could possibly be taken from you was a phenomenon you’ve thought of for a while now. Knowing he has an existing life outside you, outside of this summer, that he would return you made you sick. You’re far from perfect, or the right thing for him, and he could find a safer option if he ever pleased. Pushing the thoughts away is harder than you imagine, so you cling to his side even more.

You and Sunghoon use up your spare tickets for carnival games. You toss rings around bottles, shoot water guns into the mouth of a clown frame, and throw darts at balloons. The both of you aren’t very skilled at any of the games, but it's fun enough to enjoy the time without winning a prize to show for it.

Eventually, Sunghoon does find frustration within the ‘rigged’ set up of the games. He even pulls out his wallet for cash when the tickets are gone. You’re surprised at how competitive he is; his determined nature is something that stirs your insides around. You don’t know if you’ve ever smiled so much in your life.

After 3 rounds of throwing a ball to knock over a moving target, he does manage to win. Going 3 for 3 and not missing a single shot. The excitement you feel when he succeeds takes over and you’re proud, doing little jumps in place and clapping your hands together.

“You did it! You won!” you exclaim, hugging onto his side.

He can only smile down at your joyfulness. A fire burns in his heart and he hugs you back, kissing your forehead. “All for you. Which prize do you want?”

“It’s yours, you should pick it,” you blush, elbowing his side with a shy smile while your eyes keep looking up to the stuffed white lamb with a lace ribbon around its neck and a cushion gold bell adoring the throat.

Of course, that’s the prize he ends up choosing. It might not be Saint Michael the stuffed bear, but it’s something far happier, cleaner, and softer.

The stuffed animal never leaves your hold throughout the rest of the evening. It rides the many rides you and Sunghoon do. And sits at the picnic table with you both as you share fair snacks. Popcorn and cotton candy was never so sweet for either of you. Like contentment melting on your tongues.

Cliche as ever, Sunghoon wants to end the night there with a round on the ferris wheel. The line moves quickly and when it’s your turn to step into the carriage, he takes your hand and sits you down the seat next to him.

It moves slowly and rocks back and forth with shaky movements that have you gripping the side handles. With an arm around your shoulder, he holds you close to him. The array of flickering colorful lights and people below you feels almost magical.

Taking your eyes from the heightened difference between you and the ground, you look back to the boy beside you who is already looking at you. The reflection of rainbow luminescence glistens in his eyes. It’s even prettier than the view from the top of the little world you’re in. You give him a shy smile, finding it impossible to look away.

He says your name in a whisper, taking your chin between your fingers. “Thank you for choosing to let me in.”

Confused and wide eyed, you watch him lean into your face. You gasp when his lips meet yours before returning the notion. With eyes closed, you melt into his kiss. It’s sweet as all the things you’ve experienced today because of him.

It’s also as clumsy and messy as a kiss can be for two people who’ve never done so before. However, human nature and desire take over and ease the rest for you both. Lips move over another in a gentle waltz, careful and slow.

And as if the situation couldn’t get anymore cliche, fireworks light up the sky. At first you thought it was just your imagination and all the books you’ve read flooding your consciousness, but the booming sounds and cheers of the crowd are too loud to not be real.

You pull away from him first, and he’s already wearing a shit eating grin so wide that you can’t help but roll your eyes, fighting the urge to smile back at him. Your face burns in both embarrassment and adrenaline from the kiss.

After that, you don’t leave the city like you should. The bus takes you both back downtown but neither you or Sunghoon feel it’s time for goodbye. So, for the first time, he takes you back to his apartment. You’ve never been to anybody else's home before, and it’s nerve wracking to say the least. The complex is large and somewhat modern, housing many of the second and third year private college students.

When you step inside, it’s quite plain but at least clean. You’re immediately greeted by a boy shorter than Sunghoon. He has a big mouth smile and shining dark eyes. His hair is shaggy but it suits him. He’s practically bouncing on his toes. You shift yourself behind Sunghoon and hold onto his shirt, hiding slightly from the excited puppy-like roommate.

“How did it go? Oh, and nice to finally meet you,” he rambles out quickly, “I’m Jake. The best friend and roommate. I’ve heard a lot about you.” He shoots Sunghoon a wink before grinning back at you. He extends a hand for you to shake but you don’t reach out. Something about his eyes doesn’t sit right with you.

“She’s shy,” Sunghoon laughs a little as he guides you past Jake and towards his room. “It was fun though. I recommend going before it’s gone.”

“Ah, you got yourself a nice little angel, huh?” Jake leans over the kitchen island, watching you both. His smile falters. “I’ll have one of my own some day.” For some reason, you think of him as a secret pervert.

Sunghoon laughs his comment off and tells Jake goodnight before showing you to his room. His room is neat and as simple as a college boy’s room can be. A bed, desk, dresser, closet, and bathroom. One poster of a musician you’ve never listened to and a window with unopened blinds.

You sit yourself at the end of his bed and he sits down next to you. There’s some awkward silence as you look around, unsure of what you’re supposed to do. He feels similarly to your internal dilemma.

“I-I’ve never had-”

“It’s okay,” you cut him off. Of course he’s never had a girl over. And of course you’ve never been over to a boys house.

“Are you tired?” he asks, and you lie by nodding your head. So you both get ready for bed. He gives you a shirt to borrow for bed that change into in his bathroom while he changes into sweats and a t-shirt in his room.

In minutes you’re both laying in his bed under the covers and staring up at his ceiling in the dark room. Not a word is said as you both lay there wide awake and untouching. But you know he’s wanting to by the way his body is shifting and turning, inching closer with every minute movement.

And before you know it, although expected, his body is nestled closely to yours. His arms wrap around you, pulling you into an embrace. For the most part, he usually does keep his space. Knowing how you are when it comes to physical touch that feels too sudden or invading. But with barriers breaking down more over time, he thinks you’re learning to handle the comfort better.

“I thought you were tired?” he mumbles, head on your shoulder. His hands trace up and down your arms that are wrapped around yourself like a guard.

“I lied,” you whisper. Your eyes can’t look at him yet, so they remain aimless to the ceiling. Some moonlight slips through his cracked window blinds, giving you enough view of the spinning ceiling fan.

“I had fun today. Mostly because you did. I like seeing you happy,” he smiles after kissing your shoulder that’s exposed in the neckline of his shirt too big for you. “And… I liked when you kissed me back,” his voice is quiet and shy-like.

“Do you want to do it again?” Your eyes shift to him and you can barely see the warm flush to his cheeks. He’s cute.

Taken aback at first, he just blinks at you with a parted mouth. Then he nods his head slowly, licking over his lips.

You turn over onto your side to face him and his hands don’t leave your waist. Unsure of what to do with your own, you wrap them around his neck. Good thing they sit behind him and it’s dark in the room because it would kill you for him to notice the slight tremor in your fingers.

With a scarily racing heart and stiff, trembling body you surge forward to kiss him. His lips are quick to capture yours. Soft and pillow-like, they mold into yours in waves. What starts off as clumsy and unskilled turns into hunger. Something desperate and needy. His grip feels bruising to your hips but in a nice way. In a way you want it to hurt more.

His nails digging further into your flesh to keep you impossibly close make your lips gasp, or maybe it’s the lack of air, or just both. And instinctively his tongue is licking its way past your lips and into your mouth. He kisses you like he’s starved for it. His wet tongue drags over yours, and your teeth, then as far as it can inside of you. He whimpers, pressing his already hard cock to you as he licks and kisses you open.

Your stomach has never burned this way before, and you feel the hot sensation all over then down to your core that aches like it’s hungry too. You feel disgusted by yourself but can’t fight the hum you make as you devour him right back. You’re getting wetter every second he’s in your mouth.

This time, he pulls away first. Panting for air and staring at you with glazed over dark eyes. He licks over his wet lips again, savoring the taste of you on himself. He bites down onto it and a part of you wishes it was you he sunk his teeth in.

“Can I do what I did last time?” he breathes out, his hips involuntarily jerking up against you at the thought alone.

While trying to act like you’re not catching your breath too, you say quietly, “do whatever you want.”

He kisses you again but with more desperation. You try to do the same but you can feel your heart and your head preparing for battle. The way he’s feeling you up and grinding himself on you is in no way unwanted, and that’s part of the reason you’re struggling to maintain presence.

It’s so much happening so quickly, but you’d be lying to yourself if you said you didn’t imagine this happening eventually. Sex was inevitable. The way his body yearns to be one with yours makes you feel special almost. He’s already engraved into you but in his mind he has to be inside of you and it hurts so badly how you think the same.

But is the last thing that keeps him pure really yours to take? You’ve stripped so much away from him for all the wrong reasons before and now it feels strange. You are no good and that’s all he is.

The only thing keeping you here, in the moment, is him. His exploratory and gentle yet rough hands, his body grinding into you, his lips that can’t leave yours or your skin for even a second, and the weak wanting sounds that leave them.

“I need more, please. I want- I need to feel good with you. Please,” he’s whining into your ear. Then pressing kisses along your jaw and neck that are all so tender, slow, and deliberate. Large hands caress you like you’re breakable, as if not already just a body of fragmented pieces made whole and called a person.

Your still shaking hand reaches down between your two bodies and slips past his sweats. He had the nerve to go commando and you wish you could tease him, but you can’t. You’re lucky you’re even here right now and breathing his air. Your hand wraps around his aching length and gives him a few tugs to which he’s quick to moan. He kicks off his sweatpants while you bring him closer to you. The plush of your thighs trap him; he whimpers against the soft heat of your flesh.

Your hips grind up into him once, showing him what he should do too. He’s slow to start, rocking himself between your thighs. Slutty and hopeless sounds leave him in a string of his want. His leaking hard cock is so close to your core. Only the thin layer of your underwear keeps him from feeling your clear need for him too.

Wrapped in each other's arms, you bury your head to his shoulder. You can feel the pulse of his aching desire rubbing and grinding against you. It makes you shiver in sensitivity and cower further into his neck. You don’t bite down onto your lip, but his neck. There’s a sting to your eyes because you hate it—the wet warmth that pools out of you. Your sin sticks to your underwear and your skin like the red raining life of all the animals you made leave the earth; your haunting subconscious correlates with your growing pleasure.

You know you’re not religious yet every time Sunghoon touches you there’s a divinity to it and it makes your hands want to join in prayer to thank the universe for sending someone like him to you. Because his hands roam your body as if they have in every world; as if there is not one timeline where you have not been made for him. Like you were carved from his rib every time.

Your body smolders in that angry way it always did whenever Sunghoon got too close to you. Whenever his words were too kind, his touch too gentle, or god forbid when he just smiled at you. That fire is just the divine nature of your relationship, lighting up everywhere he touches and leaving flames in the wake. You thought it was your body rejecting his purity, but you were only denying the likeness. He made you feel good. And in the most ironic way possible. You just didn’t think you deserved it.

Yet an anguished moan leaves you, rumbling against his skin as you bite down harder. Regardless of it all, he is yours right now.

The feeling of your sinking teeth in him, the sounds you’re now making, and the damp heat between your legs he can’t stop chasing all makes his head spin. He bites down onto you just the same and it only makes you moan louder.

“Please,” he’s whining again through the bite. His voice a needy tremble while his hips stutter and thrust between your legs that only squeeze tighter together. The way the fat of your legs hug his raging cock through his desperate grinds makes him chase more and more for that feeling he just can’t seem to reach. The crying tip kisses and pushes up then past your leaking folds every time. It drives you both insane.

If your body is the fiery lake of creation's deepest pit, then he is the cleanest ocean of earth’s highest point. If anyone could extinguish you, and possibly make you feel whole, it was Sunghoon.

This is the most horrifying reality you’ve come face to face with. Not just intimacy, but a stronger driving emotion. You have to open yourself, rip open your chest and bare your beating heart in all its naked vulnerability. Let it scream out I like being with you. You have allowed this person into your world that nobody else has dared to step foot in. To see you in such ugly ways yet still extend their arms for you. It’s a terrifying level of closeness that you’ve never once experienced and you don’t know what to do with. You’re beyond perplexed by what he’s done to you, in both terror and awe.

You pull back from Sunghoon and he pauses everything for a moment to look at you, noticing your wet eyes. Before he can ask what’s wrong you reach down and slip off your underwear. You shift your body and maneuver him as best you can until he’s on top of you. Rattled with concealed embarrassment you remove his shirt and toss it somewhere to the floor, and he does the same.

You take a deep breath and reach back down to his cock, lining it up with your pussy. You blink and swallow away all the things trying to stop you from allowing yourself him. Pliant beneath him, you grab his shoulders and pull him down to you for a quick kiss. Foreheads now pressed together with lips ghosting over the others, you tell him, “I hate you.”

Sunghoon only smiles down at you before kissing you once more. With his arms caged around you, he slowly pushes himself forward. The fat tip of his cock fails to go through you, only sliding up and past the wet folds. He whines feeling the warm slick coat the head; his entire body shudders. He nearly cums from that alone.

He looks at you confused, and nod once while trying to shift your hips around for a better angle. It’s not like you to be so quiet during things like this. It only tells him that for once, you’re nervous about new things the way he was.

So he tries again, this time a little rougher. He thrusts his hips forward, the tip pushing past the tight walls but still barely in. You whimper at the intrusion and the feeling of you being stretched open. Your hands squeeze hold onto his biceps for purchase.

The tight sensation of your pussy squeezing his tip feels otherworldly to him. He can’t help but need to sink deeper into you. His cock pushes in further at an agonizing pace until he’s as deep as he can possibly go. His arms shake while he tries to maintain his strength and keep himself from collapsing onto you completely. The wet walls that surround him flutter and try to pull him further inside, making him feel lightheaded. His moans are so needy it’s almost like he’s crying from the feeling.

“Oh, f-fuck!” you whimper. Having Sunghoon completely inside of you feels so full. You’re stuffed with him and it hurts so good. “You gotta move, Hoon. Feels like you’re splitting me open.”

“You're so tight, mm.” His hips stutter from your words alone and he whimpers again. He pulls himself out halfway while your gummy walls kiss around him in an attempt to suck him back to be filled again. He begins to rock himself in and out of you. It’s inexperienced and awkward, but he gets the hang of it quickly. Doing what feels best for him and what seems to be the best for you too.

“I hate you. I fucking hate you,” you whisper harshly, looking up at him with tear filled eyes. It all burns while feeling like heaven. Never have you been so full, held so gently, or seen than this summer. You bite back the breaking moans and whimpers. You claw at his skin. You even begin to cry when your hips can’t stop chasing his thrusts.

“I love you too,” he whispers back. A kiss is pressed to your forehead as his cock pistons you. Sunghoon is smart enough to know you’re a liar. Your mean words that used to hurt him, he now understands. You’re not really a bad person. And you don’t hate him. You were just really damaged and if he’s damned for trying to heal that then he’s fine with that too.

“I mean it,” your body shudders, feeling his tip pound so far and deep in places inside you that you didn’t know reachable. His fat cock drags out and forces through your tight hole, making you cream all over him more and more. The sounds that leave your body, the sounds your bodies are making, it’s so obscene. Fighting off the disgust and focusing on how he makes you feel is war. It’s so hard for you to win.

“No you don’t,” he shifts himself to sit on his knees, taking your legs and wrapping them around his waist. He leans forward and kisses both of your cheeks before fucking himself into you again, only harder and faster than before.

“Ngh,” you moan again through broken sobs, blinking away the tears as you stare up at him. “I’m t-trying to.”

“I know, baby.” he mumbles before capturing your wobbling lips into a searing kiss. “It’s okay, haah, don’t cry. You’re good. You’re so good for me,” he says against your wet lips. You can only sniffle and try to turn your head away from him in your embarrassment. “No, no.” he takes your chin with his thumb and finger, forcing you to look back at him. His thrusts never letting up during his care. “Look at me. You’re so good to me.” He reminds you over and over. “We’re so good together. I’m yours. you’re mine.”

“Say it again,” you sniffle through little sounds of sin. Your hand finds a place on his cheek, and your thumb rubs over his lips that wear a smile.

“You’re so good, good for me. We are so good together. I am yours. And you are mine,” he says softly. His eyes are so filled with love, and if you could see your reflection in his then you would know yours are too. “Say you’re good, baby, it’s okay.”

“I’m good,” you sob through your whimpers, “I’m yours.”

To Sunghoon, the idea of sex was always sacred. Something that’s only done and shared between lovers bound by marriage of the church. But now, he thinks differently. He knows that there is no shame in him loving you now or years later. And he was more than happy to make love to you all night until you believed it too.

　Perhaps there was a thing such as divine intervention and if God’s timing was alway right, he knew how to be evil with it too. Because the next day, when Sunghoon takes you home, he’s met with your maker.

Your mother, aware of the frequent trips you’ve been making and how close you’ve grown to the summer farmhand boy, is quick to make a call to your father the night you don’t return home. It wasn’t necessarily because she cared for your well being. You’re more than capable of handling yourself. But it was an excuse to try and get him to come back. Only it doesn’t go how she wanted.

When you see the reverend’s car parked in front of your house, your heart drops. Sunghoon picks up on your tension, He sees how you go blank at the sight and slowly turn back into the empty girl he met months ago. He tries to hold your hand but your fingers can’t move, can’t return the embrace.

When the reverend walks out of the house with his infamous weapon of sacrificial forgiveness, you know what to do. Your body moves on its own, leaving Sunghoon to reach out for you that walks towards the woods. He goes to follow you and the desolate man that stalks behind, but your mother stops him. She’s hysterical as she drags him towards your house saying, “it’s going to be okay.” But she’s crying.

Once out of their sight, the reverend takes you by the hair. He yanks your head around, pulling you towards that cursed tree. He’s uncharacteristically rough and your scalp screams for a release but you don’t show it. You don’t even look at the man. Not even when he’s tossing your body to the ground.

“So you’re whoring around with my employees now, huh? Was ruining this farm not enough for you?” His words mean nothing to you. You dust off the dirt and go to stand again, but he kicks you back down. You tsk under your breath as he speaks again, “I’ve seen all the things you’ve done. Seen you leave my barns with red hands and smile. Cut heads off chickens like an anatomy project. Is he next? That church boy?”

Now you look up to glare at him. Seeing the reverend was aggravating enough, but to say something about Sunghoon was infuriating to you. “I am not a killer. You are! And those animals were already dead.” You spit at his black leather church shoes.

“Oh, you disgusting little devient,” he laughs lowly, untying the rope from the tree. “Your cruelty shouldn’t bring you joy. Sick and twisted, I should’ve dealt with you sooner regardless of what your drunk bitch mother protested. I can save the boy when you’re gone.”

“What?” you shuffle backwards from him, angry and confused as he stalks closer to you until you’re backed against the tree. “All those things I did was because of you. Your righteousness made me rotten!” Your hands shake, gripping at the dirt ground for anything to make the fear stop. You glance up to the empty tree branch then the rope in his hands. Where is the lamb? You think briefly before it hits you. “You’re crazy,” you whisper, “I will not be your martyr… not now what I’m finally-”

“Condemn me to Hell for all I care,” he crouches down in front of you, “This is the last time I’ll be a killer.” He throws the rope to your lap and tells you to tether yourself.

“Why do you hate me?” The words scratch at your throat. When you were younger, you did want the reverend to hate you. It was when he noticed you most, and it’s all you really knew. But now you’re older, and his disdain never made sense.

You can’t bring yourself to move even if you wanted to. Was this His plan? To allow you one good thing in life before ending it? Was ruining Sunghoon your final sin?

The rope shakes with your fingers as you stare down at it. The twine of the rope burns over the palm of your hand where Sunghoon carved his promise. Your throat feels dry, tight and suffocating; choking on everything you’ve ever done. And your eyes still puffy from the night before well with tears all over again.

“I just do,” he thinks of slicing your neck open right there. So fuck tying you down, you were always secretly another lamb anyways. He raises his knife and the metal sits cold under your chin as he lifts your head up to look back at him.

“Okay…” you swallow.

Your eyes squeeze shut and so does your mouth, as you raise your head to the sky with an exposed throat. Why isn’t this easy? Unlike the animals, you do know what’s coming. And it’s scary. Scary not because of death, but because you aren’t ready. You haven’t told Sunghoon goodbye or that you love him back. And the thought of him finding something in this world to hate, is such an ugly feeling to die with.

And then there’s a loud noise. A booming bang, followed by unsteady feet falling back and the ground rumbling with a thud.

You open your eyes and your father is on his back clutching his abdomen. He coughs and gasps before raising his hand. It’s dripping in deep red. And you can’t help but smile with tears in your eyes as you exhale a jagged breath.

You turn your head and Sunghoon stands there with the shotgun in hand, open mouthed and wide eyed.

“Sunghoon!” you scramble to your feet and run over to him, taking the gun from his hands as he’s frozen in shock.

“H-he was going to- he was about to hurt you. I had to-!” he stutters, his eyes already crying and hands shaking, still feeling the weight and recoil of the gun.

“It’s okay,” you coo softly. “Just- go back to the house and I’ll be right there, okay?” You rush out. Still in shock and dazed, he blindly trusts you and does as you say.

When he’s no longer close by, you walk over to the reverend with a blank face. You stare down at him as he tries to crawl away, dirty and bleeding. The smile you make doesn’t reach your eyes.

You point the gun back down at him, and place your foot over the shot wound Sunghoon created. The man gasps and tries to swat at your leg but you only press the gun further into his face, making him surrender.

“Divine intervention, huh? Say it with me now. I know no punishment, only mercy.” Your voice is quiet, calm, and mocking of his tone. With the barrel to his forehead, you watch him writhe in pain and cough up a little blood.

“Go to Hell,” he spits his words like venom.

“If you say it, I’ll let you live. But if you show your face to me or Sunghoon again, I’ll shoot you right between the eyes.” Your foot presses down harder. You can feel that angry little girl inside of you jumping with joy.. Knowing his God demands to be bled for, and making him know the sacrificial suffering, well it feels good to say the least. “Say it. With me. Now.” Each word pronounced with the growing applied pressure to his shot wound. And then he begs for forgiveness. He’s never seen you smile the way you did when he was below you with those words. Empty eyes were never so alive for him either. He cries and chants ‘I know no punishment, only mercy’ over and over. It was like the most beautiful hymn.

　There wasn’t much to be said about that day. Sunghoon and you just pretend you shared a nightmare. Neither of you talked about it. It was just another thing that tied you together.

Sitting there in the peak of summer’s heat. A day before Sunghoon returns to college classes. Birds chirp. The leaves of the tall trees thistle in the light breezes that pass by. Sunghoon sits criss crossed and while you have your feet hanging off the edge of the dock, kicking in the water.

“I’m sorry,” you break the silence. Shocked, he looks over to you. He never would have expected you to apologize for anything. “I was selfish when I approached you. I wanted to take all that goodness out of you and keep it for myself. I thought I wanted to hurt you, but after sharing all this time with you, I realized I was wrong. It’s weird to say it out loud,” you laugh small, awkward, “but I really am sorry. I love you more than even I know.” You stare down to your feet in the water that has gone still. A tear falls from your eye, and down to your cheek.

“I know. I love you too,” he wraps an arm around your waist. “But now the same sins bind us.” You hiccup silently and turn to look up at him. “Harvest all of my purity, farmer’s daughter.”

For the first time, you really laugh. It’s bright and loud like the big smile he’s seeing for the first time on his favorite face. It’s morning sunlight that whispers through trees to kiss the forest floor. Birds that sing songs of hope to awake life into a new day. Nostalgic, expansive days of childhood where the concept of time doesn’t exist. To him, you look like the epitome of summer; he doesn’t want this season to end.

You were never the lamb. Or the wolf. Not an animal at all. Nothing like the ones you grew up with. You were just a girl, scared and alone. But not anymore. Because it’s your last day on this farm, and tomorrow is the first with only Sunghoon.

“Your humor is poetry.” you continue to laugh until tears prick your eyes all over again. You love it.

“It wasn’t supposed to be funny.” he looks away shyly, blushing. It only makes your giggle more, but you stop to press a kiss to his cheek. He blushes harder.

“I’ll keep doing it, harvesting all of your purity, for as long as you’re good.” you say with a smile.

“Do you promise? I am always good, especially with you, so it could be a long while.” He bumps your shoulder playfully with a laugh.

You take his scarred hand in yours and you laugh like he did, pure and true, “I do.”

© fangel ┊ do not copy, repost, modify or translate my content ໒꒱ tysm for reading, ⌗unlearn shame ⌇ taglist @tinycatharsis @simjaexy @leehsngs @511rkive @beomluvrr @jjongsaengzz @slvtella @jaerisdiction @kkamismom12 @rayofsunshineeee @nshmrarki @m3wkledreamy @hanjisbeloved @filmnings @stercul1a @hooniesfvngs @moriwori @sleepyhoon

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cxrsed-angel · 2 days ago

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Long Distance Calls| Eddie Munson x fem!reader smut

summary: You call Eddie for you routine phone dates, since you're away at a college and it elevates to phone sex. (late 80s/ early 90s college AU)

warnings: Phone sex, mutual masturbation (Both m and f), use of a dildo. dirty talk, pet names, (lmk if I forgot anything please)

wc: 2k

a/n: Im in college and was missing Eddie so this was the result and wrote this. Sorry for the shitty header. not proof read or beta read

You lay on your twin XL bed in your dorm, lying on your sheets, on your stomach, fidgeting with the pink phone cord on your pink barbie phone you've definitely outgrown, but your dad said if it’s not broken, don’t fix it, so it came along with you to college. Glancing at the clock on your nightstand.

You’ve moved a few hours away for college, and since then, you and Eddie have had to get creative with how you spend time together. You would have date calls a few times a week, and then on the three-day weekends or breaks, you would drive up to Hawkins to hang out, or he would drive to you.

You wait impatiently for Eddie's call, glancing at the clock on the nightstand of your dorm room again, back at the phone, then at the phone, counting the seconds until 10:30 PM. The moment you hear your pink Barbie childhood phone ring at 10:30 PM, right on time, the clock showing 10:30 PM, you pick up, immediately answering.

“Eddie?” you answer, responding faster than usual, too excited, honestly. You really missed Eddie this week. Nothing particularly bad happened this week. You just wished you weren't 5+ hours away from him.

“Hey, sweetheart,” you hear his voice greet you, and you immediately start smiling. The familiar pet name makes your heart race, and even though he says it all the time, you still feel giddy hearing it.

“Hey Eddie, how was your day?” you ask as you lay in your college dorm bed, the phone in your bed so you're more comfortable. You grab your brown teddy bear, holding it closely. It's the teddy bear he had given you for your one-year anniversary. You hold on to it as he starts sharing about his day.

“Well, it was pretty boring at the shop. I fixed some cars, the usual. But then I got home to the trailer, and Wayne told me I got a small package from you. Now, I thought it was your usual package with cute little gifts and pictures and stuff, but I was surprised when it was a little naughtier than the usual package from you.”

Since you’ve gone away to college, you send each other little care packages, small gifts, pictures of things you did that month, letters, small candies, and stuff like that every now and then.

You frown, trying to remember what you sent since it has been a while since you sent it, but when it comes back, you feel flustered as you remember. You were particularly horny that month, a few days before your period started, and really missed Eddie, so you decided to take some explicit Polaroids while your roommate was away, it was just supposed to be you in some lingerie and suggesting poses, but with your mood, it escalated to photos of you enjoying a toy. A few with the dildo in your mouth sticking out tongue, and you got a little carried away taking some with your pussy wet evident you had cum while the dildo was on display covered in your arousal.

You smile, flustered. “Oh, did you enjoy it?” you ask, a bit embarrassed, wondering if you had gone too far. You hear him laugh through the phone.

“Did I enjoy it? Baby, I just opened it and almost came in my jeans. I had to call you and hear your voice. I liked the letter you added, gushing about how much you missed me and wanted me to touch you all over, rubbing my hands along your body and eating that pretty pussy of yours. You were really horny, huh, babe.”

You nod, feeling yourself getting wetter at his words and the memory of taking all those photos and how you fucked yourself hard on the dildo, thinking of him wishing it was him. “Yeah, Eds, I was-must’ve been ovulating or something,” you laugh lightly, joking as you feel your body getting hotter.

Eddie hmms, obviously condescendingly, teasing you. “Aww, poor baby. Is your roommate there.”

“No, she is visiting her family for the weekend.” You hear ruffling through the phone speaker for a few minutes before hearing his voice again.

“You must’ve really wanted a baby in you sweetheart, because god. These pictures are killing me. You look so sexy posing for me like this. Fuck.” You're quiet as you hear a rhythmic movement through the phone, and once you hear Eddie quiet moaning.

“Eddie, are you jerking off?” you ask, already knowing the answer. You set the phone down, take your shirt off, and slide your shorts off before picking up the phone again. “Hell yeah, I am, sweetheart. I couldn't help it once I saw that one picture of your pussy wet and swollen from fucking yourself. He grunts as you hear his hand rubbing his shaft.

Your own fingers slip under your shorts and underwear, rubbing your fingers along your wet folds, getting more aroused hearing your boyfriend get off. “You're touching that pretty cunt of yours, got a finger or two circling around your sensitive clit, huh? Imaging it was mine and having my cold rings touching you?”

You nod as your fingers move a bit faster around your wetness, imagining they were his fingers, thicker and rougher compared to yours. Feeling his cold rings against your clit. You close your eyes as the phone rests against your shoulder. You let out breathy moans as you think of the countless times Eddie fingered you when you were back in Hawkins. In his van, under the table while he was waiting for the rest of the party to join the campaign, against a wall at the renaissance fair. You could go on.

“C’mon princess, this only works when we’re both vocal. I know I have a huge, active imagination, but it can only go so far. Need you tell me whatcha you’re doing over there.” His voice brings you back to the call as a rush of heat floods your body, you’re head getting foggy a little by your arousal.

You nod even though he can't see. “Sorry baby, your voice is just really sexy.” You hear Eddie’s deep chuckle from the speaker for a bit before his moan replaces it.

“ ‘Are you touching my girl for me since I can't be there?” You nod as your face flushes as he refers to your pussy as “his girl.” You pretend to be annoyed when he does it, but you love it. It never fails to make you wet. Your fingers continue circling your cunt as you hear his moans and the sound of Eddie pumping his hard cock.

“Yeah, Eddie, I am. It feels good, but I want you,” you beg and whine as you continue touching yourself to Eddie's sounds.”

“She’s missing me, huh? Sounds so fucking pretty, baby, wanna talk to her? Put her on the phone for me, princess.” he groans after speaking a string of curse words coming out under his moans. Your fingers pause, stopping you to turn to look at the phone, confused about what he had just asked.

“Wh-what?” You're met with Eddie’s laugh before he answers.

“I wanna speak to my girl. Put her on, let me hear her.” you pause for a minute, and you nod your head before slowly putting the receiver to your pussy, slipping your fingers in and out, slowly letting Eddie hear the lewd sounds of you finger fucking yourself.

“Oh fuck…there she is, sounds so fucking good, bet she's all puffy and needy and soaking for me, huh, begging to be fucked.” Eddie moans as you hear him stroking his cock through the receiver. You swear it was the hottest sound. You loved hearing him.

“Miss you so much, Eddie, fuck…fuck me.” You whine, begging for him. The phone is still close to your cunt, letting Eddie speak to “her.”

“Fuck I miss her so much, baby, see her in my dreams. God, listen to her, soaking for me isn't she.” You hear his arousal through the speaker, imaging his leaky cock, wishing you could taste him.

“Eds, I wish I could suck your cock, so bad.” You whine and hear Eddie let out another moan.

“Yea baby? Fuck wish you could too. Shit princess, ‘got that dildo I sent you?” you nod, humming in agreement as you sit up a bit.

“Go get it, baby wanna hear how you use it. How you fuck yourself with it.”

“Okay, hold on.” You set the phone down on your bed before hopping off the twin XL bed, going over to your drawer, and grabbing the dildo you have hidden under a pile of socks, along with a bottle of lube.

“I got it.” you pick up the phone, pulling your underwear down your thighs, taking them off, and tossing them somewhere down on your bed. Waiting for Eddie to respond, but you’re met with gasps and groans and the pornographic wet sounds of his hand moving up and down his shaft. Clearly, he didn't hear you.

“Eddieeee, this only works when we both talk,” you repeat his words earlier, getting his attention. You hear him let out one deep groan before he talks to you.

“Shit, sorry, sweetheart, just looking at the picture of your soaking cunt, and its killing me, babe.” you feel yourself getting wetter as you remember the day you took the polaroid.

“You got the toy? Rub it over your pretty pussy. Get it wet for me.”

You listen, grabbing the toy and rubbing it along your slit, covering it in your wetness, teasing yourself with it. The size and length are almost exactly like Eddie’s. You remember seeing Eddie’s face light up when he spots the “Clone-A-Willy” box in the sex shop in Indianapolis, and you remember when he snuck it into your dorm desk drawer while you were moving into your dorm with a pink bow tied around the box and a note. “Not the real thing, but a close second - Eds.” You moan as you slowly rub the head of the toy along your wet folds.

“Jesus-fuck, you sound so good, baby. Go ahead and put it in for me, baby. I Can hear her begging for it over the phone? She’s been so good suffering all this time without me, go ahead and fuck for me.”

You nod, listening to him, slowly sliding the toy inside you. You let out a moan as you push the toy in deeper. You still missed Eddie, feeling his hand grip on your waist as he’s inside you, the way he kisses your chest as he thrusts into you, or the way he would move your leg onto his shoulder fucking deeper inside you. Or when he would manhandle you, flipping you over onto your stomach, pulling your hips so your ass was up, the sting you’d feel when he would plant a few spanks onto it.

But the fact that it was a model of his cock, did help, you moan, feeling the familiar stretch of his thickness inside you.

“Fuck Eddie!” You cry out his name as you continue fucking the dildo into your pussy, the phone lying on the side of your head as you lean back on your pillows, moving it deeper inside you. “Jesus Christ, you sound perfect, like an angel fuck baby. Go on fuck yourself for me, sweetheart.”

You move the toy faster in and out of your achy hole while you’re other hand rubs your clit, the sounds of Eddie jerking off making you wetter.

“Fuck Eddie, I miss you. I miss you so much.“ You moan louder into the phone, getting closer to your release, more from Eddie's moans than anything else, honestly.

“I know, baby, I miss you too, shit. Miss you so fucking much, sweetheart.” He grunts before moaning more, “Goddamn honey, Im…Im about to-“.

You hear eddies moans through the receiver you can tell he's cumming by the sounds of his moans, the string of curses he lets out, and how he gasps before groaning loudly. You can practically see his hard pretty cock spilling his cum onto his hand, probably his stomach too. You wish you could be there, wish he was spilling his cum into you.

You move the dildo and continue to fucking yourself, getting closer as your fingers rub your clit a bit faster, closing your eyes, imagining Eddie hovering over you fucking your deeply, moving your leg over his shoulder, feeling his balls against your pussy.

“E-Eddie…” you whine into the phone, getting closer.

“You close, baby? I can tell, I can hear it. Come on, baby, cum for me. Let me hear her.” Eddie’s voice sends you over the edge, feeling your orgasm wash over you, moaning eddies name over and over. You open your eyes, coming down from your release, dropping the dildo somewhere on your bed. You breathe heavily, grabbing the phone and putting it back to your ear. “Eddie?” you call him through the phone, and all you hear is Eddie’s laugh.

“Sweetheart, that was so hot, Jesus Christ. Next weekend I’m coming up there and fucking you in that shitty twin XL all day.” you laugh a bit, sitting up in your bed, you twirling the cord line around your finger and glancing at the brown teddy bear.

“Promise?” You light up at the thought of spending time with him, seeing him, and hearing his voice in person, touching him. “Yep, I'm taking Friday off, so I can drive up on Thursday and spend the whole weekend with my girl, well, my girls.” You hear him laugh as you hear him shuffling through the phone You roll your eyes at him and his personification of your pussy. You shift, holding the phone with your shoulder as you grab your blanket, pulling it over your legs. “Do you have to go now, or can you talk for a bit?” You ask Eddie, hoping he doesn't have to hang up. You really did miss talking to him.

“No baby, I'm yours all night.”

#angel writes #eddie munson smut #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x fem!reader #eddie munson x female reader #eddie munson x reader smut #eddie munson fanfic #stranger things fanfiction #eddie munson drabble

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itsnathateasy · 3 days ago

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aot characters and "will you be my valentine?"❣️

word count: 1,8k warnings: mentions of alcohol includes: eren, armin, jean, connie, reiner, bertholdt, ymir, levi, hange, erwin a/n: DON’T COME AT ME i’m not really a fan of valentine’s day either, but i hope i did a decent job with this short thingy here hehe! enjoy!

In all honesty, Eren never expected you to ask him to be your valentine and I don’t think he had any plans of asking you either. “We’re already dating, right? We’re each other’s valentines by default!” “Yes, buuut why not make it a little more special?” and then you’d present him with the most ridiculous valentine’s day gift you could lay your hands upon. I’m talking festive underwear, socks with your face printed on them and those silly cards with hearts popping when you open them. Eren isn’t the type to be surprised, let alone show it. But you got him there, and you got him good. He can’t contain his laughter at your silly gifts and he’s honestly so happy to receive them! And even though “you’re each other’s valentines by default” (smh eren🤦) he did get you a gift. It’s been wrapped and waiting for you in your side of the closet, right behind your shoe boxes. Did I mention it’s been in there for the past two weeks or so? Yeah, Eren is so pathetic for you, but he’s trying his hardest not to let it show.

You probably know this already, but Armin asked you to be his valentine in the cutest way. He handmade you a card, a quite elaborate one too, and he wrote a long ass message about how much he loves and appreciates you. He left it on your bedside table for you to find the moment you wake up, because he sadly had to leave earlier than usual. When you texted him a while later that you saw the card and that it was the sweetest thing, he had your favourite coffee and cinnamon rolls delivered to your door with the promise that “there’s more to come, this day is for you only!” The rush he was getting from spoiling you like this was insane. What could you possibly do to top his actions? It was barely 9 a.m. and Armin had already managed to surprise you twice! It made you feel like the gift you got him and the dinner reservations you’d made weren’t good enough. No matter what you’d came up with, he surely had something even greater planned. The troubles of dating a literal mastermind I guess!

Mikasa didn’t want to celebrate valentine’s day. She really didn’t want to. But then she realised you kept giving her hints about gift ideas and that you ‘had a surprise for her’ for that evening and the signs were too overwhelming to ignore. Okay, if it’s that important to you, she’d celebrate it as well. She didn’t really know where to begin at first, but, thank heavens for pinterest, she quickly navigated herself around the do’s and dont’s of valentine’s day. When you came back home, your house looked like a florist’s. Mikasa had bought a bunch of bouquets and pots and she added ribbons and hearts on basically every single item you’d ever owned. “I thought you didn’t like valentine’s day, Mikasa! What’s all this?” You honestly couldn’t believe your eyes! “Are they enough? Should I have gotten more?” For someone who was doing this for the first time, she’d exceeded all expectations!

Now, Jean… WHERE DO I BEGIN?? The boy cooked big time! Bought you a gift. Orchestrated an entire fake emergency to get you to meet him and the most romantic spot in the city and pulled his grand gesture of asking you to be his valentine. He hired drones DO YOU HEAR ME? He wanted you to remember this day! (Even though he keeps pulling grander and grander gestures each year, he wants to document EVERYTHING!). He’s doing his best to recreate scenes taken out from fairytales and plant those core memories inside your brain. He’s probably booked a restaurant too, but, to be honest with you, the entire set up he managed to create, was enough of a gift. It didn’t matter if there was a date afterwards. Waaaait… Why is your house decorated too? And why is it bursting with boxes as if it’s Christmas??? Jean’s gone overboard… AGAIN!

Connie was a bit of an ass this valentine’s date, but you can’t really blame him. He’s seen into the future and he knows his plan is bulletproof. He never asked you to be his valentine and when you asked him (rather late for your liking too, but you were really expecting him to do it first!), he said he had plans with the guys. No, for real. He wouldn’t budge. Said they’d been going over this for days. You were quite upset with him, but whatever. A galentine’s it was! Little did you know he’d made sure to let the girls know about his plan! While you were working on your galentine’s, Connie was preparing a themed date based on your favourite film/show! He’d altered the placing of your furniture (don’t expect juicy time after dinner, his back is killing him), he’s put up themed decorations, has the film/show waiting for you on the tv and even created a three course meal inspired by it! And he made all the drinks himself. Honestly, kudos to him, cause the hours he’d spent checking recipes were endless! You were so upset when the girls 'cancelled' on you last minute. You did the walk of shame home, utterly disappointed and expecting to find it empty, but… You couldn’t have asked for a greater valentine’s date!

You don’t have to ask Reiner, but he won’t ask you either. His actions speak volumes and as soon as he realises you want to celebrate valentine's day, it’s literally game over. He’s got the table set and he’s ordered your favourite. There’s flowers and balloons all over the place and he’s got some soft music playing in the background. Oh and that cute lingerie you spotted the other day while window shopping together? Yeah, that’s kind of been laying on your bed. I wonder who put it there. Reiner has plans to breach that wall, you know? Anyway, he’s being really cute about and he even made you a card! Yes, he diy’ed it! It’s the ugliest effing thing, but it’s also the sweetest valentine’s gift you’ve received in your entire life. Who else would put all this time into a single card? Reiner is acting like a schoolboy when it comes to you and you love him for it!

You and Bertholdt had a silent agreement to celebrate this day, but not go too overboard with it. The last thing you both wanted was to do all those cliché things people do on valentine’s. You’d made reservations at one of your favourite restaurants, that was quite fancy too, and simply treated yourselves to your favourite foods and some good wine. It was a lovely night overall, nothing too crazy about it, but it was the way you both liked it. You were spending time together and that was the most important thing! Except Bertholdt kinda gave in and bought you a heart-shaped chocolate box. And a heart-shaped plushie. But that’s all, he promised! He looked so precious when he admitted to ‘breaking’ his part of the deal, but that cute face was the most memorable part of your evening!

Ymir would celebrate with you, but she’d give you a hard time about it. She was determined to make you regret it. She’d probably do her best to prank you any way that she could by sending you flowers and addressing them to the wrong person or by buying you a box of candy she very well knew you disliked. Now, why would she do that you may ask. She just didn’t want you to expect the actual surprise she’d planned for you. What better way to keep you on your feet, right? And although her pranks weren’t really appreciated (you did fight about that ‘wrong name on the card’ situation) you really didn’t expect the surprise and that made it all the more special! She even baked you a cake and decorated it herself! You honestly thought you weren’t going to celebrate at all! Who would’ve thought that Ymir was simply playing games, right?

I’m so sorry, but Levi would never ask you to be his valentine. Such manifestations of affection were just pointless in his eyes, but that doesn’t mean he’ll refrain from making you happy. He’s just choosing not to participate in such a materialistic, capitalistic WHO SAID THAT holiday. He knows that it’s important to you though, so he makes sure he gives you extra care and attention today. When you returned home, you weren’t really expecting much. You’d bought some chocolate and a special edition valentine’s tea for you and Levi to try. But instead of finding a boyfriend who didn’t want to participate in the trend, Levi was running you a warm bath and had lit up a bunch of pretty candles. You smiled so big when you saw the set up! “Can we also have a cup of tea together?” “But that’s it, do we have a deal?”

Hange was so excited when you asked them! You could tell by how vividly their eyes sparkled, their excitement was the most precious thing! You decided to organise an activity together, you know, in order not to give in into those overconsumption trends. What are you if not against the system, right? You decided to book a day trip to the botanical garden or maybe a local animal sanctuary. And what an idea, because you never thought there’d be so many things to do there! Hange even surprised you with a gift, even though you’d said you wouldn’t get each other any. This gift doesn’t really count though, because they crocheted you a jumper and they spent so much time making it. (They started knitting in early January! Can you believe their dedication!?) When you came back home after a beautiful, yet tiring day, you decided to bake brownies. You hadn’t realised you’d barely eaten during the day and a sweet treat was what you both needed! It was a unique valentine’s date!

Okay, listen, Erwin is upset you asked him. He had it all planned out! Why did you have to be so impatient and ask him to be your valentine first? (He’s not really upset, he just wanted to be the man). And also, let’s be honest here, Erwin is a provider man. You get a little treat for every day leading up to the 14th and, of course, he’s booked a table at your favourite restaurant, bought you the fanciest jewellery and the loveliest attire like??? WHO IS HE? I just KNOW he’s the guy to also leave you a printed invitation on your night stand, telling you where you should meet him for your valentine’s date. He’s the most cliché of them all, but he’s never failed so far, has he? Consider yourself spoiled for the entirety of the week. And who knows, maybe longer even. That’ll depend if you’re good for him I’m afraid.

wanna be notified? 🏹 join my taglist!

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semihearts · 2 days ago

Text

Wait you think I’m pretty?

Pairing: Thanos x reader

Summary: Thanos and you are childhood friends and joined the game together, when he almost mess up during a game for being too high, he understands that you cant loose him… because you love him

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Hope you like this one!! Feel free to leave opinions and suggestions <3

༺ ༽♡༼ ༻

When you agreed on joining some shit game Thanos was talking about all week, you could never guess that they weren’t just normal games, but actually deadly ones.

-‘’Where the fuck did you get us in Thanos? I swear I’ll kill you”. -“Senorita relax!! This first game was easy, ,we’ll make out of here alive with all that money”.

You and Thanos are friends since you can remember, and honestly you can never get used to his weird personality and he still manages to get you surprised all the time. Of course he brought with him his necklace, which is full of surprises as well, but you didn’t expect that in a place like this, his first concern was to get high as hell.

During lights out, Thanos would get in your bed and lay with you, and you knew he never slept. Maybe its the effects of the drugs, but you like to believe that he’s taking care of you - and you’re actually correct, he could never sleep knowing that there’s even crazier people then him a few steps away, who knows what they would try to do to you if he weren’t close -.

During mingle, he always made sure to grab your hand and tried to stay focused, even though he was literally seeing rainbows and unicorns - all thanks to the colored pills on his cross-. When the robotic voice said Two, he already knew who to pick. You ran first to secure a room, but once you got there… where the fuck was Thanos?

In the middle of the room, there he was. Completely still, with a confused face, and lost eyes, is he out of his mind??

-‘’Thanos!! Thanos what the hell are you doing?” You screamed his name but it seemed like he was in another world

10, 9, 8…

You ran towards him, grabbed his arm and ran, of course there was people getting in the room you secured before, as you had to leave it. Thanos was clearly off, his life was in a thin line and he had no reaction or expression. This game is about surviving, even if it means killing others, and that’s the thought you stuck to.

Using all your willpower, you managed to push those players out of the room and drag Thanos inside, locking the door.

-“Thanos!” Nothing -“Thanos!!” Nothing -“Su-bong!” His eyes were immediately on you.

Like he just woke up from a bad dream, his eyes found yours, he was awake. You never called him by his real name, which is almost dead to him, he is Thanos, that’s him now, he’s way happier being this new person.

‘’What- what just happened? Oh my God Senorita I’m literally sooo high right now-“

‘’Im tired of this, really Thanos. You could’ve died right there, all thanks to these stupid pills. But of course you never listen to me when I tell you to not use them before a game. I don’t know why out of everyone I chose to love you! You’re a complete idiot”.

“Wait did you just confess?”

“That you’re a jerk?”

“Nah fuck that, you just said that you love me girl”.

#thanos #thanos x reader #thanos x y/n #squid game #su bong x reader #choi su bong #t.o.p bigbang #t.o.p x reader

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riovidql · 2 days ago

Text

i thought that i was dreaming when you said you loved me — AGATHARIO

“Honey, I’m home!” Rio said as she walked through the door, getting out of her shoes and losing her coat. “God, you will not believe the day I had. I swear, one of these days it will be proven that stupidity can kill. Then I will finally have pea- Agatha…?” She stops, because Agatha is nowhere to be seen, or felt, for that matter. What the fuck?

“Uhm, Agatha? Scratchy?” She shouts. No answer. Fuck. “Fuck, did I walk into the wrong apartment again?” But then a little ball of fur comes running down the hall, stopping precisely in front of her. She kneels down. “Hey, bunny. Where’s your mama?” She, funny enough, scratches behind Scratchy’s ear as she picks him up. He looks like he knows, but won’t tell. Well, of course he won’t tell me where she is, he can’t talk.

“Okay… Scavenger hunt it is then. And you,” she looks directly into his eyes. “Are coming with me. Agatha won’t murder, burn, bite or whatever she’s… We’re… Uhm. She behaves when you’re around! You’re my shield, is what I’m saying. Don’t look at me like that.”

“Agathaaa! Where the fuck are you?”

She looked everywhere. Even under the rugs. A woman could never be too safe. And honestly, it’s Agatha. And Rio could, obviously, try her phone. But one thing about Agatha Harkness is she absolutely, completely, despises phones. And technology over all; (some will say it’s because she doesn’t know how to use it, she will deny profusely, she just is above it).

Rio was tired. She had a long ass day at work, and she needed sleep, and no one could argue she did not look for her wife, Señor Scratchy was witness. Though that rabbit always chose her wife’s side anyway. Useless, traitor bunny. But she did send her a text, though.

As she laid down on the couch, with the little pet comfortably under her chin and the low, background noise of the TV, she dozed off. She wouldn’t know what time that actually happened or how long she was napping for… People were taking longer to get to the fucking point, traffic was ass, the elevator was broken so she had to take the stairs, and this nosy neighbor stopped her for unsolicited advice, boring gossip. And she still had to go look for Agatha. If you asked Rio, she would say that day had approximately 87 hours. And counting.

And as if it couldn’t get worse, she woke up from her sleep with a killer headache. National Fuck Rio Vidal Day, fuck me. ‘Did Agatha at least get home?’ was her second thought, but as she was regaining her consciousness and taking in her surroundings, the smell caught her senses. “What the fuck?” It smelled like…? Chicken? And bechamel sauce? And was that Agatha moving a spoon on a pan? Wait. Was Agatha cooking? Just for how long, exactly, had she been out for and did she or did she not mistakenly alternate realities? “What the fuck.” She says a little more loud this time, making Agatha look over her shoulder with a smirk.

“I thought you were dead.”

“And then you decided to cook? Aren’t you just the most romantic thing in the world.” Rio scoffs.

“Unfortunately, I was wrong.”

“Charmer.” Then Rio remembers. “Where the fuck were you? And why didn’t you call, or text? Or left a fucking note stuck on Scratchy?”

“Out.”

“Out? That’s all you have to say after disappearing for hours and making me turn and toss and destroy this apartment looking for you?” Rio crosses her arms, mildly annoyed by her wife’s nonchalant responses.

“It didn’t look like you were turning and tossing and destroying this apartment when I got here.” Agatha was smiling big now and oh, Rio fucking despised her. Fuck Agatha, was what she was going to do later.

“Fine!” She rolls her eyes, lying down on the couch again. “Just be quiet. Someone decided it was a good idea to play drums inside my head.” And just like that, she dozed off again.

When she rose, it was to a glass of water and two ibuprofens placed on the coffee table in front of her, which she gratefully took. Maybe she didn’t really despise Agatha. Or maybe the water was poisoned. Either way, she looked around and she saw that her wife was on a stool leaning over their countertop, her back facing Rio as her body looked like it was focused. Was Agatha writing hate letters to Jen, again? Standing quietly, she made her way to her wife, not wanting to startle her. Fine, she didn’t want to make Agatha aware she was snooping around her business.

That was when she saw it. Agatha was drawing. Drawing plants, elaborate ones. The pages on display had four different kind of greens, each one with their own description and functionality, all painted and shadowed, except for the one she was just starting to work on. Rio was actually, maybe for the first time in her life, stunned. Well, except for when Agatha climbed on top of her in bed and-

What was even weirder was that Agatha was so focused on her task that she didn’t even notice Rio lurking behind her. Or that Rio was actually shedding real, big ass tears. Cry baby. “What is that?” She finally spoke, which she wished she didn’t ‘cause now there was a hand coming to slap her and Rio was caught off guard and there was no way she could react fast enough to dodge a very loud, and painful, slap on her face. “Are you fucking crazy?” She shouted after a few moments.

“If you didn’t stand there like a freak for God knows how long and scared the shit out of me, all of this could’ve been avoided.” Agatha continued to draw.

“And somehow it’s my fault.” Rio wasn’t finding the situation cute anymore.

“Yeah, it is. Good girl.” You could hear the smirk in her voice.

“Oh, fuck off.” She continued lurking. “What are you doing.”

Agatha actually blushed. “What I was doing was dinner, but somebody decided to sleep. Again.”

“Quit stalling, Agatha. What is this?”

“I’ve found a hobby.” She said simply.

“You’ve found a hobby? And it has something to do with plants? The very same thing you tease me about every single day and call me a nerd for?”

“Just wanted to know what the hype was all about. So I’ve been taking a few classes, going to some lectures, you know how it is.” Rio has no idea how it is.

“About plants?” She deadpans.

“Obviously.”

“Right.”

Agatha turns to look at Rio and says, “Dinner is ready.”

Rio is speechless, dumbfounded, stunned (again), blabla. What the fuck was wrong with her wife? Maybe she shouldn’t have got up today.

“Wait a minute.” She grabs Agatha’s arm as she stands. “You? Made dinner? And it smelled good? And we’re still alive?” Rio wasn’t so sure about the last part.

“Sue me for wanting to make something nice for my wife?”

Huh. “Am I missing something here?”

“God, Rio. You’re so annoying. I fucking made you dinner ‘cause class ran late and traffic was awful and I got here after you and felt bad. And your ass was sleeping so infuriatingly cutely with Scratchy, and you looked so tired. I am taking botany classes and going to approximately a million lectures a week about plants because you do so much for me and I just wanted to show you that I care too. Was that what you wanted to hear?” Agatha made her best to look annoyed, but Rio knew her and could see just the tiniest spark of insecurity in her eyes. She pretended she didn’t see. Or she would be feet deep buried.

“My love.” Rio said weakly. God, she loved, hated, her wife. Agatha eyes softened at the two words.

“Can I go back to my drawing now?” Leave it to Agatha to run from any type of emotional moment. Even after years married. This bitch.

“Ah yes, and you’re gonna tell me all about those classes of yours. How long have you been keeping this from me? And what is up with that draw game. I did not know you had it in you.”

“I have very skilled hands, I think you of all people would know that.” Agatha winked at her. Show off.

“Debatable.” Then Rio started running for her life. This time she had a good reaction time.

HEY! i just love these witches so much it really got me back to writing after YEARS. if anyone see this, i hope u enjoy it :)

#agathario #agatha harkness #rio vidal #agatha x rio #agatha all along #f/f #fluff #alternate universe #canon divergence #señor scratchy #domestic fluff #agatha is insufferable #rio secretly loves it #marvel mcu #kathryn hahn #aubrey plaza #mother hahn #evil hag

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imsofreakingtired · 2 days ago

Note

I saw a request about anorexia comfort and I just wanted to ask could I possibly ask for sevika x reader bulimia comfort? That’s what I struggle with so I just wanted to request that.

If not that’s totally okay and thank you!

-🖤🖤🖤

all my love and support to you 💙 please let me know if any of this is inaccurate, offensive, or upsetting - i drew from a combination of my own past experiences with an ed and external research. and thank you for the request; i know struggling with an ed can be an isolating experience and i really hope this brings at least a little comfort 💙 💙 💙 💙

disclaimer: not meant to be an alternative to therapy obviously!! please reach out for support, i know it's hard but i believe you can do it loves <33 and as always if this content may be triggering to you, please scroll away and take care!!

breathe

content warning(s): depictions of an ed, body dysmorphia, heavy angst, hurt/comfort

"days pull you down just like a sinking ship memories swim and haunt you but look into the lake, shimmering like smoke rises the moon oh, close your weary eyes, i promise you that soon the autumn comes to darken fading summer skies breathe, breathe, breathe."

~~~

Sevika is not alarmed when you tell her about your eating disorder, which you reveal after you have been seeing her for nearly a month. she does not judge you. she has noticed the signs already, but didn’t want to assume anything, bring it up before you did. Sevika remembers the darkest period of her life: sixteen and feeling like the world played her like a marionette, when the stress of her environment triggered her binges. then the guilt. then the self-loathing. then the desperate need to erase what she had done. she remembers lifting for hours until her arms gave out. running 5 miles a day in a sweat suit. tracking calories. balancing food on scales. when you tell her you are going through the same thing, her heart sinks. she had been hoping her instincts were wrong. she had been hoping against hope, because she knows how hard it is.

⟢🖤⟢ her fear for you, her worries about your health, sometimes manifests in ways she doesn’t mean to. she has never backed away from honest conversations. she asks you up front: have you eaten? have you thrown up? she can tell immediately if you lie to her about it, and it hurts her to think that you’re unwilling to tell her the truth, be open about it to her. sometimes her frustration at herself for being unable to help you causes her to be harsher. she tries sitting you down and telling you that what you’re doing will hurt you badly. she can’t stand being away from you for too long, she can barely sleep at night, wondering if you’re binging again, wondering if you’re punishing yourself again.

⟢🖤⟢

she silently keeps track of the physical signs. she sees you sizing up every plate of food. she sees you obsessively reading the nutrition labels. she sees how you avoid going out to eat with people, how you always opt for something different for date nights, anything that isn’t eating together. she sees your exhaustion, the swelling in your face. you can hide it from everyone else—you can hide it from the world—but Sevika loves you too much to let a single detail escape her.

⟢🖤⟢

beats herself up honestly, especially after realizing that sometimes she could be a trigger—an offhand word, a change in her tone, a spike of irritation. you don’t blame her for this: everyone has their bad days, and sometimes the two of you argue. she wishes she could do more for you, wishing she could take away the thoughts that cause you to spiral and hurt yourself.

⟢🖤⟢

Sevika is confounded at first when you tell her candidly about your issues with body image, because to her you are the most beautiful perfect being who ever existed. it makes her furious at whatever caused you to think otherwise. maybe it was a history of bullying at school. maybe it was your mother’s thoughtless comments on your body. maybe it was the media, constantly telling you that your body is imperfect. maybe it is not your body at all, but the sense of control and discipline that comes from regulating the food, the erasure of food. Sevika’s first response is always to fight. she’s sworn to herself that she will protect you from the world, that she can keep you safe by the strength of her fists. but when the threat is something untouchable, something inside your head, she feels helpless. so she becomes more physically protective than ever. calling you several times a day just to hear your voice. kissing you, touching you, holding you more often, as if to reassure you of how much she adores you.

⟢🖤⟢

she picks up on your triggers for b/p cycles and does her best to interfere with them. she notices that your routine is to restrict throughout the day, return home, where the stress and hunger of the day triggers a binge. so she shows up at your door around the same time you return home and asks if you want to go on a walk. if you’re too tired, she stays with you and makes you soup. if you say you can’t eat it, she will not pressure you. but she stays, thinking maybe if she’s there to watch over you, she can keep you from going into the cycle again.

⟢🖤⟢

there are stretches of time where you leave the cycle. Sevika marks the days on slips of paper to keep track of your progress and gives them to you with a proud look in her eyes. you don’t want to relapse for her sake, but you’re also terrified of recovering completely. you’re scared that if you let yourself recover, your body will change—it will gain back the weight you have been controlling, and you’re scared Sevika will not find you attractive anymore. one night you give into the thoughts. and when Sevika finds you on the bathroom floor, hovering over the toilet bowl, she says nothing but pulls you into her arms.

i’m sorry, you whisper.

shh. it’s okay, sweet thing. just breathe.

she brings you water and rubs your back as you drink it. you wonder what you look like to her. you wonder if she is already planning to leave. another apology rises to your lips but you swallow it. Sevika doesn’t say anything for a long time, she just sits with you. then in a low voice, she speaks.

i used to have the same habit.

you look at her in surprise.

yeah, she says, with a deep sigh. god, it was a million years ago, but i still remember those days. i’d sneak down into the kitchen when my parents were asleep. ate anything i could find. then punished myself the next day.

her hand finds your knee, bent against your chest as you curl into yourself tightly. her warm grip grounds you. i’m telling you this because i want you to know… she pauses. …that i get it.

you tell her, i’m scared.

i know, baby.

you say, i might change. you might not want me anymore.

she looks you in the eyes. brushes the hair away from your face, leans forward, and gives you a long kiss on your forehead. you’re perfect, she says, her voice rough. you hear me? i will always, always want you. every shape. every side of you.

a sob breaks from your lips. you lean into her, and she cradles your body with her own. kissing your hair, she gives you a promise.

it’s not easy. but i’ll be with you the entire way. every damn step.

⟢🖤⟢

-thank you @hexthathoe for the req <3

-divider by @enchanthings-a

#song: rises the moon by liana flores #tw ed #sevika #sevika arcane #sevika x reader #sevika x you #sevika angst #hurt/comfort

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luveline · 3 days ago

Note

Jadee would you be up to a good old fainting fic w our lovely broody miguel?

—spidergirl gets sick and miguel is there to catch her, 1.4k

“I could get you one of those, you know.”

You sniffle with a tissue held to your nose, standing across from him, having just been to the bathroom for a concerning amount of time, “What could you get me?”

You're sick with laryngitis again, your throat sore and voice hoarse, but you’re wearing it well, little sign of your sickness beyond your increased usage of balsam tissues and your two-day t-shirt (and your sore nose, and the occasional tear edging its way unbidden from the corner of your left eye).

“A super dog.”

“You’re gonna get me a puppy?” you ask, swiping aside the e-reader and mini fabric pouch that fell into your seat as you left.

“Come on,” he says, holding out his arm.

You sit down and back under his arm again. Miguel doesn’t know much about love besides wanting it badly (and living what isn’t meant for him), but this is where you should always be. “Do you want a super puppy?” he asks, a pinch in his chest relaxing as you melt into his side.

On screen, the super puppy in question barks erratically. You like these movies, citing a deep love for the romantic background plots and the adorableness of the lab puppy as it barks its way to victory. Miguel honestly cannot believe he’s watching it, but then you cough next to him and he remembers his reasons.

“I can’t take care of a puppy.”

“I’ll take care of the dog,” Miguel says.

“Don’t be whipped.”

Sick, and you still say things with your strange sweet whimsy. “I’m not whipped,” he says, “I just want you to feel better.”

“And when I’m better we’ll still have a puppy.”

“I’ll rehome him.”

“That’s not funny, Miguel,” you say, turning to him, shifting your leg where it’s underneath you to be a bit taller. “Can I put my face here? I won’t breathe on you.”

While it did take a superbug to make you sick, your super powers, your healing and strength, aren’t as dialled up as most Spider’s would be. Miguel probably won’t catch it because he has a stronger immune response, and so he lets you put your face in his neck without comment.

“We could keep the dog,” Miguel says.

“Yeah? I worry you’re too busy for a pet, O’Hara.”

“What do you mean? I look after you.”

“So funny,” you murmur, rubbing your nose against his shoulder. He barely feels it, and somehow a contentedness springs from your touch. “I look after you.”

It’s true, and he doesn’t refute it. Miguel’s not sure what he’d do without you, too addicted now to your company. It’s not like he had a choice when it came to wanting you, didn’t he try his hardest not to feed into the whole crush? You’d twirl into his laboratory with a paper flower for his desk and he’d send you away, the memory of your hand brushing his arm stuck on repeat. He does want you, and he did choose to kiss you, as he chose to be with you —you fell into his bed in a way, but loving you is as many parts consciously done as it is helpless.

“What can I do to make you feel better?” he asks.

It’s not like Miguel to beg for things. You shift in your seat, hands on your tummy, peering at him with a thread of suspicion and more obvious adoration. “I’m okay,” you say, parts of your voice shadowed and scratched, like an old CD playing back. “I feel better just sitting here with you, and you know that.” You reach for his cheek. “Mi cielo,” you murmur, smiling bashfully, stealing his most pathetic, most precious pet name, “it’s not so bad. I’m gonna be back in working order before you know it.”

“It’s not about that,” he says, catching your hand to press to his lips.

“I’m basically fully healed,” you say, giving his palm a kiss and then, all of a sudden and without his consent, using his shoulder to shoot onto your feet. “I’m gonna make us matching banana split Sundaes with the glacé cherries and hot fudge, and we’ll eat them right here– on…”

Miguel grabs for your elbows as your eyes roll back.

His gasp is sharp. The pain in his chest sharper. Your knees buckle and it’s all Miguel can do where he’s sat to stop you from slamming down onto your ass, a folded pretzel of a girl defeated by a heavy head. “I have you,” he says through gritted teeth, nearly toppling into you as he rises and arranges you carefully. When you’re safely set down, Miguel stands and bends and drags you up into his arms awkwardly. You’re scarily limp, reactionless as he manoeuvres you onto the couch, laying you flat and long over the cushions.

“Sorry,” he says, his heart pounding hard, yours a slow, careless thing as always in your chest, “sorry, sweetheart, I’m sorry,” he murmurs, slipping his hand behind your neck. “Ah, why do you do this to me?”

Your breath comes sluggishly from between chapped lips. Miguel watches it like a hawk.

“Can you hear me?” he asks.

Lyla, blessed, awful Lyla, would be a godsend right about now if he hadn’t barricaded her (with some extreme difficulty) from appearing during the evening hours unless there’s an external emergency. She’d tell him you’ve only fainted and he’d snap that he knows. She’d calculate when you’re most likely to rouse and he’d tell her she’s a glorified chatbot.

A moment later, you wince.

“Ah, my head,” you say hoarsely.

“What’s wrong?”

“Hurts.”

“What kind of hurt?” he asks.

“Why are you shouting at me?”

Miguel takes a short breath. “Sorry. Your head hurts how, mi cielo? Throbbing?”

“You didn’t let me fall, did you?”

“Of course I didn’t.”

“Stop biting.”

He lets his forehead fall against your chest. Lost for words, he hugs you to him, hit by the horrible thought that you could’ve hit your head, could’ve never woken up again. The horrible reality of life is that it ends all the time and for stupid reasons. But you’re okay. You’re talking. Your heart beats under his ear, slowly rising in rate.

You bring your hand up to scratch weakly through his hair.

“Sorry,” you say. Your voice is so ridiculously fragile. He holds you tighter.

“I’m sorry.”

“No, I am, I knew I felt dizzy and I got up like an idiot.”

“You’re not well.”

“No.”

“It’s not your fault that you’re sick… You can’t say sorry.”

“Well, I am.”

He drags his head up to check you over. “Are you alright?” he asks quietly.

“Yeah.” Your eyes shut. “No, I don’t know. I feel awful now.”

“What can I do?”

“That thing where you kiss my stomach to tickle me would be nice.”

He thinks about it. Miguel doesn’t tend to do it unless he’s feeling particularly gone for you —when he forgets himself. When it’s all about making you laugh. Miguel rubs his nose against the soft of your sternum and promises himself he’ll tickle you later.

“Can you please just let me take care of you?” he asks quietly, lifting his chin to plead with you eye to eye.

You blink. “I– yeah. Okay, yeah.”

Miguel gathers his bearings and stands to collect the things he needs to do that, but he gets caught a step away, spinning on his heel to make sure you’re alright, and then bending down to kiss your forehead. “Idiot girl.”

“I love you.”

Miguel holds your cheek in his hand, unable to return the sentiment anymore than he does. “All I want is to look after you,” he says.

You know what he means by that. You turn your head to kiss his hand.

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iamhereforfunnzies · 2 days ago

Text

Villain & Violent

Prologue

You were a child just a normal child who just wanted a family, everyone else gets to have that why not you? All those years of calling , praying , begging for them to glance at you was embarrassing how childish of you to ever hope for them to lower themselves to you. Here you are with some thug with a gun in your temple shaking “ If y-ou don’t give me the money , I’ll shoot!” he stuttered out with a pink hello kitty gun. Staying still as if you’re a nothing but decoration in the donut store “You know I am more of a my melody gal” you began to take the cash out of the counter as you arrogantly show of your nails. “Well no one can beat the original and the BEST” he said taking the cash of your hands as you glare at him. “Hello kitty such a basic answer you poser” “ And My Melody ain’t??” the two of you have a stare off.

“Respect?”

“Respect.”

The two of you saluted each other as hear the police sirens come out of time and this how your life is a string of badluck , jinxes , accidents , mistakes , and you. “Honestly , I can’t believe I haven’t quit this daam job” you said walking at an alleyway on your way to the manor. When the same fucking hello kitty boy was fighting for his life with some oversize hyenas of men looked at you; you were about to turn away when he yelled. “HER. SHE’S THE ONE WHO GAVE ME THE MONEY” How. The . Fuck-

“And that’s how I died.” You remembered but at the same time you don’t. There had to be more than this , looking at your hands the same My Melody nailset it was fresh so it still be 2 more weeks before you died. Looking around your at the dinning room alone as usual waiting for Alfred to come and bring your lunch, you feel something wet on your cheek. Is that how my life was? Unfullfiling? A comedic death? I didn’t even get my 7 minutes… Why did I die like that? Why didn’t I run? Why did I just stand there you stupid , idiotic , dumb bitch of a- “(Name), what are you doing?” Bruce stood in the door looking at your arm full of scratches, bleeding their staining the table cloth and your blood shot eyes.

Be honest with me am I insane I wrote a 7k+ fanfic becuase I lost my cellphone and had no wifi for an entire day. I am just gonna continue it since it would be a waste not to. Enjoy my word spam of a story and no it's not even nearly done.

#yandere batfam #neglected reader #yandere damian wayne #yandere dick grayson #yandere alfred pennyworth #yandere bruce wayne #yandere jason todd

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holylulusworld · 23 hours ago

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The assistant (13) – On the road with Captain Turd

Summary: You are invisible most of the time.

Pairing: Former!Boss!Steve Rogers x Former!Assistant(plussized)!Reader

Possible pairing: Jake Jensen x Reader, Lloyd Hansen x Reader, Curtis Everett x Reader, Ari Levinson x Reader, Andy Barber x Reader, Mike Weiss x Reader, Ransom Drysdale x Reader

Warnings: flirty CEvans characters, language, plus sized/chubby reader, protective brothers, Lloyd being Lloyd, arguments, brothers being brothers, fluff, dangerous situation

The assistant masterlist

The assistant (12) - 8 times the trouble

“On the road again,” Jake, Mike, and you sing in the backseat of the van. Lloyd and Curtis refused to sing along because they were too cool to sing publicly. “I just can't wait to get on the road again.”

You giggle at Andy’s stern face. He scrunches up his nose and rolls his eyes.

Ari laughs when Steve starts to grumble next to him. He glances at the navigation system, frowning deeply.

“Guys, where the fuck are we going?” He looks in the rearview mirror. “Didn’t you say something about a meet and greet paired with a picnic?”

“Yeah. They want the first meeting to be casual. One of them suggested a picnic a bit outside of town. There should be a huge field that belongs to no one.” You answer because Mike is busy checking on his phone. “I gave you the directions, right?”

“You gave me the directions, Sweetness,” Ari replies with a smirk. “The problem is the location is not a bit outside of town. It’s like a three-hour ride, and the location is in the middle of nowhere.”

“Hmm…fishy,” Steve looks up from his phone. He checked the location the moment Ari put it into the navigation system of the car. “I hate to say it, but this smells like a trap.”

“Says who?” Lloyd grunts, but his gut feeling tells him something isn’t right. “We are on the road for how long, Ari?”

“Two and a half hours,” Steve answers before Ari can. “I was wondering where we are going. I believed you wanted to get rid of me at first.”

You gasp. “They would never do such a thing, neither would I.” Hiding your face in Jake’s neck, you sniffle. “How can he believe such a thing?”

“Hmm… I think he’s not wrong.” Curtis says as a car passes you by. “That’s the same car for the fourth time.”

“Fuck,” Andy exclaims loudly as Ari slows down the car. “Don’t fuck with us, Curtis. If you try to be funny, this is the wrong moment.”

Jake was tense at his brother’s outburst. He wraps his arms around you, looking at his brothers. “What now?”

“I suggest we make a U-turn and drive back home,” Ransom suggests, earning a slap to the back of his head from Lloyd.

“What are we, pussies?” Lloyd scoffs. Ransom glares at his brother, ready to start another fight.

“You can go wherever you want to,” Steve says. “But I’ll not let you bring Y/N in danger. I’ll carry her home if I must.”

“Dude, what’s wrong with your brain?” Mike huffs. “Do you honestly believe we’d leave you alone with Y/N? You treated her like…shit.”

“Alright,” Ari stops the car, slamming his hands onto the steering wheel. “Whoever wanted us to come out here won’t stop. Not even if we drive back home. If they got to Mike once, they could trick all of us.”

“Mike is—” Lloyd huffs as he remembers the shit Mike did in the past. “Mike was an easy target because he tried to find help online. Maybe someone hacked into our security system too?”

“Ahem,” Jake clears his throat. “I’m responsible for the security system. No one hacked into my system. Catfishing happens all the damn time. You think you have a date with a hot girl, and it’s a sixty-year-old dude wanting to grope your ass.”

“How do you want to know?” Ransom furrows his brows. He smirks as Jake’s cheeks turn pink. “Aw, Jakie tried to find love online.”

“Hey, don’t make fun of Jake,” you are quick to defend your friend. “What are we going to do now?”

"Beat the shit out of whoever tried to trick us," Curtis grunts.

“I don’t think so,” Steve shakes his head while the brothers start to argue about their next steps. “HEY! We must return to your home. No one is going to put Y/N’s life on the line.”

“Shut up, Captain Turd,” Lloyd yells, spitting while talking. “Okay, wait.” He takes a deep breath. Lloyd closes his eyes and counts to five. “Alright. Ari, we will drive to the meeting place.”

“Uh—did you not get that we are being followed and that this picnic and group meeting was a trap?” Ransom furrows his brows.

“I got that, sunshine,” Lloyd grins. “I don’t know about you, but I’m up for a fight and some trouble.” He flashes Steve a smile and winks at the captain. “What about you, Captain Righteous? Are you going to sit there and look pretty or lend us a hand?”

“Maybe the car and all of this was just a misunderstanding. Maybe the group is waiting for us,” Ransom says, not believing it was coincidental.

“Let’s be serious for a moment,” you say, and look at Steve. “If the captain believes it's a trap, I trust his instinct. I love you guys, but he’s an Avenger. Curtis said a car was following us, too. So, what do we do now?”

“As I said before, everyone stopped me from laying out my plan,” Lloyd says and pinches your cheek. “Jake, Mike, and Ransom will stay behind with Y/N. I got guns, a baseball bat, and some nice knives in the trunk.”

“You put guns in my car?” Andy is not amused. “What if the cops stopped us?”

“Oh, please excuse me for trying to take safety precautions to keep Y/N safe,” Lloyd bites back. “Now, stop interrupting me. I’m still the eldest and know what I’m doing.”

“No, you don’t,” Ari snickers. “But we let you believe you do, Lloyd. I suggest we bring them down fast and hard.”

Steve sighs loudly. He shakes his head before getting his phone out. While the brothers start a fight, he calls Tony for backup.

“Yeah, we are having a situation here.” He listens and hums. “I sent you the coordinates; can you check the area for me? Is there a picnic going on or a trap waiting for us to walk right in?”

“What the fuck, Captain Turd?” Lloyd angrily unbuckles his seat belt, ready to beat the shit out of Steve. “You’re not the boss here. I could’ve easily handled the situation.”

“Sure,” Steve retorts. “Tony will check if it’s safe to join the picnic. If not, we can still beat the shit out of them.”

“His plan isn’t the worst,” Andy admits, earning an angry look from Lloyd. “What? We can’t walk into a trap, unarmed and unprotected. Getting shot or stabbed is no fun, I can tell.”

“Agreed,” Ari says, staring at the road ahead. “And we don’t want to show up at an innocent picnic, guns in our hands, and an out-of-control Lloyd among us.”

“You fucker; I’m not out of control!” Lloyd can’t believe his brother sides with Steve in this. “Fine, go with Captain Turd.”

“Lloyd, please calm down,” you softly say and crawl onto his lap. “Captain Rogers does stuff like this daily.” You wrap your arms around his neck to whisper in his ear. “Let them handle this. I don’t want one of you to get hurt.”

“Smart of you, Cupcake,” Lloyd hums against you. “Fine, I’ll let him handle it. Hopefully, they don’t leave the place in ruins.”

Half an hour later, Tony confirms there is no picnic or people. “No sign of an enemy or a friend.” Steve talks more to himself than you and the brothers. “That doesn’t make sense. Why would someone lure you into a trap and not strike?”

“Maybe they were all scared and shit their pants knowing Captain Turd is with us,” Lloyd grunts. He cocks his head, waiting for Steve to talk back.

“He’s not wrong,” Andy interjects before things can get out of hand. The last thing he needs is another fight between his brother and Captain America. “If I got what Stark said right, someone hacked into the self-help groups’ server, pretended to be one of them, and invited only Mike and us to the picnic.”

“Correct,” Steve confirms while staring at the information Tony sent him. “It still doesn’t make sense.”

“What if—” You gasp. “What if they knew you would all come with us? What if the plan wasn’t to attack us, but to get us out of the mansion?”

“FUCK!” Ari curses loudly. If someone manages to break into their mansion, they are in big trouble. “We need to get back, like, yesterday.”

“Tony, copy that.” Steve gets out of the car to talk to Tony, pacing back and forth. “Can you check on their mansion? I’ll stay with them just to be sure. Oh, and maybe you could…” Steve can’t end his line because one of Tony’s suits drops his shield and tactical suit in front of his feet before flying past the car to scan the surroundings once again. “Thanks.”

“Great,” Curtis mutters under his breath. “Now he can play the hero.” He rolls his eyes before looking at you. “You know we can protect you, right?”

“I trust you,” you murmur, but hide your face in Lloyd’s neck. “What if someone broke in?”

“No one will get past my security system,” Jake angrily replies. “No. One. Will. Get. Inside. No one! If someone had tried, I’d have gotten an emergency notification from her.”

“Her?” Ransom questions. “Who?”

“My security system,” Jake snaps at Ransom. “Now stop asking questions and let’s drive back home. I need to find out who tried to mess with us…”

Tags in reblog.

#The assistant (13) – On the road with Captain Turd #steve rogers #lloyd hansen #andy barber #ari levinson #jake jensen #curtis everett #ransom drysdale #mike weiss

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cal-daisies-and-briars · 2 days ago

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Oh my god, I was enjoying it enough but very quickly it has become my favorite to get updates on (even more than GOMM 😳). So, please some for boy dad (a fantastic departure from the usual girl dad dynamic!!) Buck!

🗻🗻🗻🗻🗻🗻🗻🗻🗻🗻🗻🗻🗻🗻🗻🗻🗻🗻🗻🗻🗻🗻🗻🗻🗻🗻🗻🗻🗻🗻

- Sarah

Thank you! So happy you're liking this one!

90 for 🗻:

---

"I don’t have any rights to Arthur.”

Karen nods. “It’s hard. This much worry, and valid worry. I get it.”

Eddie knows she does. He doesn’t know a ton about their situation with Denny’s birth mother, but he certainly remembers the shit they went through to get Mara back.

“It’s not even really about me,” Eddie says. “I’m making it about me. It’s about Buck and Artie.”

“No,” Karen shakes her head. “That’s not true. You are his father, too. In every way that counts How you feel about this matters.”

Eddie inhales. Nods.

“Thanks, Karen,” he mumbles.

“At one time or another, I had to fight to keep both my kids,” Karen reminds him. “But they ended up where they belonged. And I really believe Artie will, too.”

She sounds so sure. Eddie wishes he was that sure.

“Thank you,” he says again.

Karen smiles. She reaches out and ruffles Artie’s curls.

“You’re one lucky little guy,” she coos at him.

Eddie chuckles. “We’re lucky.”

“Yeah,” she agrees. “You are.”

🗻

Buck finds Eddie and Karen a minute or so later. He tells them that sent Jaylin away.

“I said we could find a time for her to see him, but today wasn’t appropriate and dropping in without warning isn’t acceptable.”

And is proud of him. Really, he is. Eddie was afraid of Buck’s people pleasing. Of Buck giving in. But he’s held firm. Arthur needs him to make some of the mean decisions, now. The uncomfortable decisions. And, honestly? So does Eddie. Maybe that’s not right of him, but it’s true.

They go back to the party and try to finish it normally. Though nothing feels normal. And everybody in the room knows there’s a threat to their little family, but no one says a word about it for the rest of the evening.

Less than a week later, Jaylin is back on their front porch. This time, by invitation. To see her son for the first time in over nine months.

Eddie has done this dance before. Christmas Day, 2018. Shannon. That had been a much longer gap in absence. But Chris was old enough to remember. To miss his mother. To need her back in his life. And Eddie knew Shannon. He knew her heart. Even if it had taken him a while to trust her not to make a mistake again, he always knew she wouldn’t be reckless with Christopher. She wouldn’t put him in the sort of position Jaylin had put Christopher in. What reason does he have to extend the same faith now? None.

Eddie doesn’t really participate in the visit. He’s there. In the background. Like a dog pacing up and down the fenceline, waiting for a threat to its home. He watches vigilantly. Because, although this is between Buck and Jaylin, Eddie has so much at stake.

She sits down on the couch, eyes downcast. She looked ashamed. Eddie supposes he would, too. No. Not would. Did. He did feel so ashamed. When he would come home from Afghanistan and Chris would cry when Eddie held him. He felt rotten. He felt wrong. He knows exactly how she feels right now. He just can’t bring himself to feel bad for her. He should, but he doesn’t.

Buck brings Artie to her. Eddie watches his body language as he hands their son over to the woman who left him without a word. His jaw is tight. Clenched. His fingers hesitate, letting go. His eyes are the electric sort of blue that lets Eddie know he’s close to crying. He hates this. He hates this just as much as Eddie. More, maybe.

#daisies and briars writes #upward over the mountain fic

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maxdibert · 8 hours ago

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Personal view, as someone who grew up in an abusive environment and is hyper-reactive to seeing children in distress or being mistreated by adults, including in fictional depictions, I never felt the kids in Harry Potter were in any danger from Snape. He’s bitchy and snarky, yes. But no more so than other teachers in Hogwarts. And from what I’ve experienced in the fandom, a lot of Snape fans are abuse survivors in some shape or form. He’s a complex character, and unlike a lot of fictional abuse survivors, he can actually be angry and rage. It’s very cathartic for people who have had to mask and suppress their negative emotions in real life.

It's curious how most Severus fans tend to be survivors of bullying or people who see themselves reflected in him because they went through similar experiences in school, or people who have experienced violence at home. Meanwhile, the haters are simply kids who have a terrible teacher and project that onto Snape, so they hate him.

If we're going to play the "I had terrible teachers, so I know how it feels" card, then I can use that too. Not only did I have terrible teachers—so bad that what they did was absolutely reportable and punishable—but in university, I even had professors who LITERALLY made students cry with their critiques. And yes, I’m very angry with those teachers. Even though I wasn’t always a direct victim, thinking about the teachers from my old school fills me with rage. And yes, whenever I’ve run into some of them on the street, I’ve made sure to say something to them in a super passive-aggressive way.

But the thing is, I don’t see any of them in Severus. Not a single one.

Severus has always reminded me of a literature teacher I had in my last years of school. He was a guy who taught classes to make some money while finishing his university doctorate—clearly, his goal was to be a researcher or teach at a university level. And you could tell from a mile away that he HATED having to teach teenagers. But hey, the school paycheck was good, right? I’m not going to blame him for that. The thing is, he had a degree in Philosophy and Literature and had a level way above that of a regular high school teacher.

I remember he was young. At the time, he seemed like an old man to me because when you're 16, anyone over 20 seems ancient, but he probably wasn’t even 35 yet. The thing is, he had no patience for nonsense. He hated childish antics in class, got annoyed by dumb questions, and if he explained something and someone asked the exact same thing two minutes later, he would clearly get irritated. I remember once a kid told him he had just read the latest Dan Brown novel, and this guy, with the most cunty smirk, said, "Well, I wouldn't know about that, Mr. X. I don't read mass-market literature." And it was like… lol why so mean? But I found it hilarious.

He was the only teacher who called us by our last names and never used informal speech, which was shocking to us because it never happened with other teachers. He rarely attended staff meetings or team dinners (a teacher who was actually abusive and spent entire classes physically humiliating 15-year-olds used to complain about that a lot). You almost never saw him interacting with other teachers because, honestly, I’ve always had the feeling that he thought his colleagues were idiots—and I don’t blame him. If I worked with that bunch today, I’d think they were idiots too.

Now, this guy was strict. Very strict. If you got a 4.9, he wasn’t giving you a 5, because you didn’t get a 5. He wasn’t going to be nice to you unless he thought it was strictly necessary. He wasn’t going to be warm, he wasn’t going to be friendly, he wasn’t going to be funny. He despised mainstream literature and bestsellers, believed certain books were absolute garbage, and thought people who only read that kind of stuff didn’t actually understand literature and lacked the braincells for it. You could agree or disagree with him, but his behavior wasn’t abusive.

Was he sometimes too blunt? Did he have incredibly sharp, sometimes unpleasant responses? Yes. And, funnily enough, this teacher was widely disliked precisely because he was one of the strictest ones. He was hated even more than the guy who groped female students or the one who called kids fat, gave them weight-loss tips, and told girls they dressed like prostitutes if they wore certain tops. But those guys used informal speech, gave you a 5 if you got a 4.6, and weren’t that strict, so people didn’t hate them as much.

That’s why Severus always reminded me of this guy. Ironically, I really liked him because I appreciated his sardonic, sharp humor, and he appreciated that I had read One Hundred Years of Solitude at 12 lol. But above all, he liked that, even though I never paid attention in his classes because I physically couldn’t focus on a lecture for more than 10 minutes, I never disrupted anything. I never got caught talking, never caused trouble—I was just drawing my stuff or reading things unrelated to the lesson, but I wasn’t bothering anyone.

And honestly, I think that’s all Severus wanted from his students: for them not to be a pain in his ass. And if he was an even bigger jerk to some, it was precisely because they got on his nerves the most.

The Weasley twins were total chaos and constantly acting like fools, yet they never have a bad word to say about Snape throughout the saga besides that he was kinda mean sometimes. Why is that? Maybe because they didn’t put the whole class in danger? Maybe because, while they were insufferable in the hallways, they knew they had to tone it down in Potions?

Only two people have a real problem with Severus as a teacher throughout the saga: one is Harry, who disrespects him from day one, constantly challenges him, talks back, breaks the rules, and does exactly the opposite of what Severus tells him. The other is Neville, who basically exists to give Severus seven consecutive nervous breakdowns in a single class.

That doesn’t make you an abuser—it makes you an adult who is sick to death of two pain-in-the-ass kids.

#severus snape #pro severus snape #severus snape fandom #severus snape defense #pro snape

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benzodiazepinicaa · 1 day ago

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Let's learn more about the Charleston shooting from the victims, not from Roof.

Well, I was looking for information about the Charleston victims to organize a post, and I found something very interesting. It's very long, I even thought about summarizing it in my own words, but I think it's necessary for everyone to read it as it is. I copied and pasted it, but at the end I'll provide the website link, in case you want to keep it for yourselves.

Anthony and Myra Thompson never let much time pass without sharing an affectionate touch or warm embrace. This was one reason for their resilient marriage. Another was mutual respect: they trusted and believed in each other enough to speak honestly. When she thought he was being prideful, she said so: “Who do you think you are?”

Anthony chuckles as he remembers.

In restaurants—like the place downtown where he’s sitting and talking now, for instance—he and his wife shared their plates. They shared interests too, and the pastimes they did not share, they cheerfully tolerated. They shared a strong Christian faith that was the foundation of their lives. Anthony answered a midlife calling to become a priest in the Reformed Episcopal Church. Later, Myra felt the Lord’s summons to become a minister too. Anthony hoped that he could persuade her to leave the African Methodist Episcopal Church, but he soon realized she was too loyal. So he was content to enjoy the hours they spent discussing Scripture and commiserating over the often wayward, headstrong creatures they were given to shepherd.

That day (the day he did not kiss her goodbye) was a humid day in June when Myra asked Anthony to review her Bible—study plans for what seemed like the hundredth time. She was, he says, “a perfectionist. That’s the word.” Everything was just so in the Thompson house, spotless, gleaming. Myra, too, was radiant that day. “She had this glow about her. I don’t know how else to put it,” he says. “She was glowing, and I wanted to reach out and touch her, but for some reason, I just couldn’t. I couldn’t make myself reach out to her.”

He tells this calmly, but with intensity. After that frozen moment, Anthony had something to do in another room of the house. When Myra called out that it was time for her to leave for church, he shouted back to her: Wait. Hold on. Be right there. But before he could return, Anthony heard the door close and she was gone.

From a report by Detective Eric Tuttle of the Charleston police department: “I arrived at the incident location, 110 Calhoun Street, at about 21:40 hours … I then observed a black male running toward the church as a patrolman tried to intervene. I tried to speak with the gentleman, who said that his wife, Myra Thompson … was located inside of the church. I advised him that he would not be able to enter the church at this time and that the situation was very fluid.”

This scene doesn’t figure in Anthony’s account of that day, though he speaks of June 17 at length while his crab cake sits untouched on the plate in front of him. He doesn’t mention his frantic dash up Calhoun Street through the jam of police cruisers with their lights flashing, or the cop hurrying over to stop him, or the detective blocking his path and saying something about a very fluid situation. He doesn’t mention the fear, the anguish, the shock. Perhaps he would have talked about these things four months ago, when summer was coming down thick and sweaty over Charleston and that day was still a jagged wound. But the air is soft with the melancholy of autumn now, the pain is more of a vise and less of a dagger, and what he chooses to remember—if memory is even a choice—is Myra radiant just beyond his helpless reach, and the door closing.

Myra Thompson and eight others were murdered during their Wednesday Bible study at Mother Emanuel AME Church in the center of Charleston, S.C. But you probably know that already, because the man-made catastrophe at Emanuel is among the most sorrowful and powerful stories in recent memory. At a time when the violent deaths of African Americans were triggering protests and even rioting from Missouri to Maryland—and a national movement sprang up to proclaim that Black Lives Matter—here was a cold-blooded attack by an avowed white supremacist intending to provoke a race war in the heart of the old Confederacy.

But instead of war, Charleston erupted in grace, led by the survivors of the Emanuel Nine. It happened suddenly, but not every survivor was on board. For some it was too soon; for others, too simple. Even so, within 36 hours of the killings, and with pain racking their voices, family members stood in a small county courtroom to speak the language of forgiveness.

The brief televised hearing electrified the country. President Obama was swept up by the feeling during his eulogy for slain Emanuel pastor the Rev. Clementa Pinckney and shifted into song: “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound …” Blacks and whites filled the miles-long Ravenel Bridge in a show of unity, and within days the most contentious public symbol of South Carolina’s Civil War past, the Confederate battle flag, was removed from the state capitol grounds with relatively little of the controversy that had surrounded it for decades.

The word story might seem trifling here. Yet there are all kinds of stories, including true and tragic and momentous ones like this. But a story so freighted with shock and pain doesn’t end like a Hollywood movie, with the President singing and a divisive symbol coming down as the music swells. The dead are still dead, and sleepless nights of sorrow drag on. Loss is an aching void. And anger abides, even if the frank acknowledgment of it is now off script.

In the wake of the murders, families have split over the question of forgiveness. Church members have felt abandoned by their congregation. Hairline fissures in a wide network of relationships have burst under the pressures of sudden fame and grinding grief. And as the months have passed, the survivors of Emanuel and others in Charleston have continued to search for the meaning of this story, through a process that is intensely personal and sometimes uncomfortably public.

At the heart of that struggle are two complicated subjects: history and forgiveness. The murders at Emanuel must be fitted into the long and tangled history of race relations, racial violence and oppression that stem from America’s original sin. The accused killer, who published a manifesto of white supremacy before setting out on his hateful mission, made sure of that.

At the same time, the forgiveness expressed by some surviving family members left as many questions as it answered. Can murder be forgiven, and if so, who has that power? Must it be earned or given freely? Who benefits from forgiveness—the sinner or the survivor? And why do we forgive at all? Is it a way of remembering, or of forgetting?

In Charleston, survivors projected magnanimity and peace to the world. But feelings of outrage and demands for justice are every bit as real and long—lasting. Understanding what happened in the remarkable days after that act of evil requires a hard, relentless reckoning with all that has been lost and suffered.

The situation was fluid that night. The call to 911 was logged 43 seconds after 9:05 p.m. A man was shooting people inside Mother Emanuel. Polly Sheppard, the frightened caller, was in the room with the gunman, and she described his gray shirt, dark jeans and tan Timberland boots. She stayed on the line for more than 17 minutes, even as police swarmed to the historic white-sided building with its black-shingled steeple.

Inside were eight dead bodies and one barely breathing. There were five survivors who were physically unhurt. Immediately amid the chaos, there were rumors and unfounded reports. At a nearby gas station, police collared and questioned a suspicious man. Inside a townhouse, a sleeping couple was rousted from bed on an anonymous tip. Every car on every bridge leaving the peninsula was looked at as it passed, while still more cops raced through the streets of Charleston in search of what turned out to be the wrong make and model dark sedan.

Very fluid. A police dog went sniffing for the perpetrator. A false bomb threat came in over the phone. A detective scrambled in search of a church secretary who knew the code to unlock the room where the security cameras were operated.

The person who was clinging to life when police arrived died at the hospital. Eight victims became nine.

Hours went by seeming like ages to the families sequestered in a nearby hotel. They prayed and sang hymns and tried to hope. Finally, long after midnight, family members were taken aside to provide identifying details.

Investigators compared the details to photos of the dead. The picture of Myra Thompson, 59, her body riddled with bullets, felt like such an insult to a woman who treasured neatness and composure. Her home on Rutledge Avenue was a showcase of fresh flowers, white furniture and glimmering hardwood floors, buffed and waxed to perfection. In the dining room, formal dinnerware—as though displayed in a museum—filled a towering white wooden cabinet that was painted with a subtle floral vine. Her son, Kevin Singleton, would later recall the time that he complained to his mother that young Theo Huxtable of The Cosby Show never had to clean his room with Pledge. “This ain’t no TV show, this is real life,” his mom replied, and he dutifully gathered the cleaning supplies.

She had enough disorder during her own childhood. Her father was not part of her life. Her mother, an alcoholic, “took ill,” in the words of Myra’s sister Ruby Henry, and the children were divided among various relatives and foster homes. Myra ended up a few feet away in the home of her friends and neighbors the Coakleys. They introduced her to Emanuel, and in return she was loyal to the church for life.

Myra worked her way through college as a single mother and had a failed first marriage before she wed Anthony Thompson, a gentle man with a warm, round face. For many years, she was an eighth-grade teacher in Charleston, offering disadvantaged students the gift of caring and respect. But while she went to church, her husband says, Myra was one of those people who hear the word of God but resist letting it take root. This is a description he borrows from the fourth chapter of the Gospel of Mark.

Mark 4: that was the lesson Myra had so painstakingly prepared. She wanted to review it one more time before she left for church that day. It recounts a parable told by Jesus of a farmer who scatters seed, and some fall on hard ground, some on rocky soil, some amid thorns. By the time she died, Myra had become good soil, in whom the seed of God’s word grows strong, Anthony says. She was one of those who “hear the word, and receive it, and bring forth fruit, some thirtyfold, some sixty and some a hundred.”

Myra was a person who took the money for a new dress and gave it to someone in need. She was that person who does the thankless jobs to keep a place like Emanuel running—even as she studied at night to earn her seminary degree. She hosted holiday meals to reunite her brothers and sisters into the warm and intact family they had not always been. She encouraged Anthony to become a mentor for a boy so deprived that he had never learned to speak. And Myra became the mother that the boy had never known.

God gave Myra four spiritual gifts, says her husband: “giving, helping, teaching and counseling.” And she was cultivating them in the fields of the Lord. Almost 60, with her children grown and her future as a minister in hand, it was as if a new life was opening for Myra Thompson. But just as suddenly as a person walks through a door, it was over. There was no arguing with the police photograph.

Elsewhere during that awful night, the father and the uncle of Dylann Storm Roof, 21, scrutinized another set of pictures—the ones recovered from the church cameras, which were quickly broadcast on television. They immediately recognized the young man in the gray shirt, dark jeans and tan boots. They phoned the police.

By morning, the whole country knew Roof’s name and bowl haircut and pasty face. A sharp-eyed driver spotted him behind the wheel of his Hyundai sedan in Shelby, N.C., approximately 250 miles (400 km) from the scene of the murders. Roof was arrested without incident and waived extradition. A .45-caliber handgun was found in the backseat. Shortly before the rampage he apparently posted his manifesto online, and while FBI agents interrogated the accused killer, the airwaves filled with Roof’s racist ramblings and photos of him posed with the Confederate flag.

In a Charleston courtroom on June 19, less than 48 hours after the killings, Roof appeared as an image on a flat-screen monitor hanging from the wall to the right of Judge James Gosnell. He wore jailhouse stripes and manacles as he stood in a holding cell with two armed guards behind him.

Ordinarily, a bond hearing is a routine affair. It was obvious that Roof would not go free. But Judge Gosnell has been known to stray from routine. He once drove to the jail in the middle of the night to conduct a bond hearing that sprung a fellow judge arrested for driving under the influence. On this day, Gosnell opened with a brief speech.

“We have victims, nine of them,” the judge noted. “But we also have victims on the other side. There are victims on this young man’s side of the family. No one would have ever thrown them into the whirlwind of events that they have been thrown into.”

Nothing much was known one way or the other about Roof’s family, and whatever whirlwind was swirling around them, it did not include being shot multiple times and left to bleed to death because of the color of their skin. This wasn’t the first time Gosnell had delivered impromptu remarks of dubious validity. Once, he lectured a young offender with a snippet of tired folk wisdom that divided the world into “four types of people”—white, black, redneck and … he reportedly finished with the N word. Gosnell later allowed that his remark was “ill-considered.”

Among those listening in the courtroom was Andrew Savage III, a well-known attorney in Charleston who was representing some of the families. What he heard from the bench appalled him. “Understand where we were emotionally that morning,” he says. “And we’d just been talking about how that boy hadn’t been brought up right and his parents were partially responsible. And then the judge says, Don’t be selfish, think of the other victims, his family. And I just saw red. I was like, How dare he? Does he not know what these people have lost?”

Gosnell then invited representatives from the families to make their own statements about the case. No one had prepared for this, but when the judge called the name of Ethel Lance, her daughter Nadine Collier made her way to the front of the room.

Nadine and Ethel were best friends. The youngest of Ethel’s five children, Nadine would call her mother every morning at 7:30, just to check in. The two shared gripes about work and laughs about life, and Ethel often encouraged Nadine to go to cosmetology school and pursue her wish to be an aesthetician. Another three or four calls or texts would likely follow over the course of the day.

Griping aside, Lance, 70, enjoyed her job as Emanuel’s sexton. She liked cleaning and was quick with a joke. Once, the ministerial staff caught her on the security camera dancing as she vacuumed an upstairs carpet. She wasn’t paid much, but she had a pension after years on the cleaning crew at the nearby Gaillard Center, where she kept the dressing rooms tidy for everyone from James Brown to Jimmy Carter. Ethel’s bosses at the performing-arts center had tried to promote her over the years, but she was not interested in managing others. She loved her role backstage. Her daughter Sharon Risher thinks something else was at work too: “She did not have the confidence in herself to be a leader.”

Lance was a model of discretion. She spoke only vaguely about the evidence of excess she found in dressing rooms, keeping the details to herself. “She got to meet a lot of celebrities,” Risher says. One time, “they had a banquet, and my mama called me and told me to put my Sunday clothes on and come to the auditorium because Martin Luther King was there.” Everyone feasted on roast beef, mashed potatoes and string beans, she says, and “Mama got to meet him.”

Lance loved perfume, dancing and the great blues singer Etta James. She liked a little gambling now and then, was partial to gospel concerts and never tired of the opera Porgy and Bess. As Collier moved to the front of the courtroom, this was the woman she was mourning—a mother who, only a few days earlier, had said at Sunday dinner that she had no regrets in life.

At the podium facing the closed-circuit image of Roof with his eyes downcast, Collier began to talk in a faint voice before the judge urged her to speak up. “I couldn’t remember his name,” she recalls of her one-way encounter with the alleged killer. But she remembers that she was “angry, mad” because her mother had “more living to do.” And the killer “took something away from me that was so precious.”

At the same time, racing through her head were lessons she had learned long before: “You have to forgive people and move on,” she says. “When you keep that hatred, it hurts only you.”

Somehow—perhaps the idea was planted by the judge’s remarks—Collier was able to recognize the wreckage this man had made not just for her and the other survivors but in his own life. “I kept thinking he’s a young man, he’s never going to experience college, be a husband, be a daddy. You have ruined your life,” she recalls thinking.

What she said at the podium, while choking back sobs, came out like this: “I forgive you. You took something very precious away from me. I will never get to talk to her ever again—but I forgive you, and have mercy on your soul … You hurt me. You hurt a lot of people. If God forgives you, I forgive you.”

Since that day, Collier has had many hours to reflect on those spontaneous words, and she says she has no reason to regret or revise them. They expressed a sense of loss and absence that remains unfilled months later, as well as her desire to move beyond the horror—a desire she still feels keenly. And she believes that her mother might have said something similar if she had lived.

“I forgive you.” Those three words reverberated through the courtroom and across the cable wires, down the fiber-optic lines, carried by invisible storms of ones and zeros that fill the air from cell tower to cell tower and magically cohere in the palms of our hands. They took the world by surprise.

They took Collier’s own family by surprise. “When she said that, I was just shocked,” says Risher. “I was like, Who in the hell is she talking for? Because she’s not talking for me.”

The question of forgiveness is as old as human sin. In the Western religious traditions that loom large over Charleston—which calls itself the Holy City in honor of its many congregations—it goes all the way back to Adam and Eve. Forgiveness is a riddle to theologians, psychologists, sociologists and philosophers. Often, two people can be talking about forgiveness without realizing that they have very different concepts in mind. For some, forgiveness speaks to the condition of the offender: whatever was done wrong will be forgotten and all penalties erased. A debt can be forgiven; a crime can be pardoned. The slate is wiped clean and the sinner writes a new future.

For others, forgiveness describes the state of mind of the forgiver: you have harmed me, but I refuse to respond in kind. Forgiveness is a kind of purifier that absorbs injury and returns love. It’s not really about the offender at all. There might be a hope attached that forgiveness will inspire a radical change for the better, but the offender is still culpable, still faces legal jeopardy and, ultimately, still faces Judgment Day.

Despite Risher’s strong reaction, she and her sister were on roughly the same page in speaking of forgiveness. As children they surely heard the parable preached from Emanuel’s pulpit of a servant who begs his master to forgive a large debt. After his plea is granted, the servant refuses to do the same for someone else. “Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?” the angry master demands. And they surely heard Jesus’ teaching that a person struck on one cheek should offer the other to be struck as well. Forgiveness is to be poured out not once, nor seven times, but “seventy times seven.”

What came between the sisters may have been the question of who has the power to forgive. In Judaism, only the person who has been hurt has that power. Thus, many rabbis hold that the crime of murder is literally unforgivable because the victim is gone. “No one can forgive crimes committed against other people,” Rabbi Abraham Heschel, the philosopher and civil rights activist, once wrote. “Even God himself can only forgive sins committed against himself, not against man.”

That principle helps illuminate Collier’s improvised statement at the bond hearing. She appears to be forgiving the pain and loss that she endured when her mother was murdered, not necessarily the murder itself. But the extraordinary reaction to her words suggests that many people heard something more sweeping than a personal statement about private grief.

Risher was not the only person who felt that her sister’s words were premature. After Collier spoke, says Risher, others felt pressure to echo her words. “I’m a reverend. I’m in the church,” Risher notes, a bit defensively. “And I understand that forgiveness is a process. Some people with their beliefs can automatically forgive, but I’m not there yet. And I know that God is not going to look at me any different because I have not forgiven Dylann Roof yet.”

The tense feelings were exacerbated in the days and weeks that followed, as Collier’s face appeared on nearly every news program and donations poured in to Emanuel from around the world and talk started of books and movies and maybe even a Nobel Peace Prize. The publicity drove a wedge between the children of Ethel Lance. “My sister Esther and I have been pushed aside, and everybody has gathered around Nadine,” Risher says.

Instead of siblings being a comfort to each other, they’ve stopped speaking. Tragedy does not always bring people closer; some earthquakes leave nothing but rubble. “From my understanding, my family is not the only family in turmoil,” Risher says.

And she imagines her mother’s spirit must be unsettled by the fallout from Collier’s words in the courtroom. “I know that my mom has not been resting because of all this conflict going on. People on the outside don’t know what all of this has caused,” she says. “The flag went down, yes. This little boy is in jail, yes.” Risher is in tears as she continues. “But all of this has just caused too much.”

It is too soon to talk about healing when the wounds are still being torn open every day. The murder of her mother started a cycle of suffering that is renewed each time she turns on the news. “Every night somebody else gets killed in this country, and I have to relive that pain,” Risher concludes, “because I know what these people are going through.”

After Nadine Collier returned to her seat, Judge Gosnell called Myra Thompson’s name. Anthony had not intended to say anything at the hearing, but in that moment, he now says, the spirit of God moved him to stand up and deliver a message.

Anthony Thompson essentially agreed with Collier’s statement, as far as it went. It was important for him to forgive as quickly as possible so that he could continue to live as God intended. Forgiveness, as he later explains, is like a Band-Aid that holds the edges of an open wound together long enough for the wound to heal. Though he cannot heal what happened to his wife, nor whatever is wrong with the man who killed her, he must attend to the wound inside himself. “I don’t know what happened in his life, and frankly I don’t want to know,” he says.

His reason for stepping to the podium was something that Collier had left out of her statement. Thompson did not want to leave the impression that forgiveness is as simple as speaking three words. For Roof to be forgiven by God, the young man had an awful lot of work to do.

Thompson put it this way, speaking quietly: “I would just like him to know that—to say the same thing that was just said—I forgive him, and my family forgives him. But we would like him to take this opportunity to repent. Repent,” he repeated. “Confess. Give your life to the one who matters most, Christ, so that he can change him. And change your ways, so no matter what happens to you, you’ll be O.K.”

What sounded simple was actually complex. In this theological context, a confession is not just a matter of saying how a crime occurred and whodunit. Thompson was calling on the killer to turn himself inside out, to inventory everything wrong about his thoughts and actions—the murders, of course, but also the willful ignorance and cultivated hatred that apparently fueled him, and the vanity that would make him think he was an instrument of history, and the hard-heartedness that made it possible for him to sit with his victims and know their humanity before he ever drew his gun. A true confession of his offenses would entail a wrenching calculation of the measureless grief and suffering his crimes caused in the lives of those who survived. It would comprehend the theft he committed of nine lives, and all the promise and love that lay in store for his victims. All stolen. And it would face up, as well, to the wastage of his own life and possibilities.

As T.S. Eliot once put it: “After such knowledge, what forgiveness?”

Before dying in a Nazi concentration camp, the German priest Dietrich Bonhoeffer identified a tendency among Christians to toss around the idea of forgiveness as if it were free and easy. “Cheap grace,” he called it, meaning “the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner. Grace alone does every-thing, they say, and so everything can remain as it was before.”

That is not what Nadine Collier and Anthony Thompson had in mind. But their statements of forgiveness in the face of such evil beg the question: Are there crimes too grievous to confess and repent? In the Buddhist tradition, even the worst offenses can be atoned for through suffering, experience and good works across multiple reincarnations. Other belief systems take a narrower view. While touring hell in The Divine Comedy, Dante is surprised to meet two souls suffering eternal damnation even as their bodies are still walking around on earth. Their murderous treachery, he learns, was so foul that they were cut off from God’s salvation even before their deaths.

The great Jewish thinker Maimonides took a less colorful path to the same conclusion. He taught that atonement consists of acknowledging a crime, repaying the victim and reliving the circumstances under which the crime was committed without repeating the offense. The test of repentance, he maintained, comes when the offender finds himself back on his original path but this time chooses the fork in the road that leads toward goodness.

The Emanuel Church gunman can never accomplish this. It is impossible to restore the lives that he took. Nor will he ever return to that night in June, reenter the Wednesday Bible study and go from the room in peace. A bank robber can repent by repaying the money and never stealing again. But murder is a shattered glass that cannot be put back together.

Rose Simmons is the daughter of the Rev. Daniel Simmons, a man of stern military bearing who nevertheless could fill a room with his deep, resonant laughter. He died in a setting true to himself. The study of Scripture was the hub of his life. Rose remembers her father as an avid reader, but there was only one book that truly mattered.

“My father’s hobby was studying,” she says. “He didn’t read many books, an author or two, but he liked to study the Bible, taking notes and writing sermons.” Leading up to the night he died, he had been coaching Myra Thompson on the meaning of her parable. It was his exacting standard that she was trying to meet as she polished her lesson plan in her immaculate sitting room. On that Wednesday night, he was seated across the table from Myra as she led the Bible study, and was keeping the discussion on track.

Daniel Simmons was descended from a long line of AME pastors and raised in the little town of Mullins, S.C., not far from the North Carolina border. But it took him a while to find his way into the ministry. As a young man he served in the Army. During a winter training exercise in Germany, the weather turned so bitter that Simmons lost toes to frostbite. He was partially disabled and susceptible to infections for the rest of his life.

Honorably discharged, he became a bus driver—one of the first African Americans on the interstate lines, his son Daniel Simmons Jr. says proudly. Some of his earliest memories feature long rides in his father’s motor coach, the fields and hamlets of the segregated South passing like a silent movie on the screen of the windows. “It was hard; the country was in transition. So to have a black driver and a black youth in the front seat, I saw a lot,” says the son. But his father had a philosophy: “Kindness always wins.”

After earning a master’s degree, Simmons traded the bus for a federal job counseling disabled veterans. He welcomed the security and the chance to be of service. But in the mid-1970s, his son says, he heard God’s call to enter the ministry. It was, Simmons later said, like picking up the torch from his father and grandfather. And it caused a noticeable change in Simmons’ demeanor as he learned the delicate balancing act of leading a flock by following God. “It’s life changing what God does when he comes into your heart,” says Rose. “He felt a responsibility to be the person he felt God wanted him to be.” Dan Jr. puts it this way: “You can’t receive grace with a closed fist. My father had an open hand and an honest heart.” People began calling him Super Simmons because he gave everything to his work and expected others to give their best as well.

As his new career took shape, Simmons set his sights on becoming a bishop—a prestigious post in the national AME hierarchy. Every four years, he put himself up for election. As a man who graduated early from high school, worked his way through college, earned two advanced degrees and raised a family, he was accustomed to reaching his goals. But this one eluded him. By the end of his life he was retired from his own pulpit and pitching in at Emanuel to help its overstretched pastor.

“We know what type of man he was,” says Rose, who is convinced that her father would forgive the young man who shot him repeatedly. “We know that in his life being taken, even in a violent act, that he is with the Lord, and his peace gives us peace.” Her struggle—which she shares with her brother—is not over forgiveness; she struggles with helplessness. She is haunted by the image of her father dying in pain. What could she have done to help him? “It’s just something that we have to live with, that we could not be there.”

She rejects the idea that her father’s killer might be beyond redemption. She is opposed to seeking the death penalty for Roof and won’t even speak harshly when his name comes up. In fact, she can imagine a meaningful future for him.

“I believe there’s a day that will come, if he has to spend the rest of his life in prison, where he will have an opportunity for repentance,” she says. “So that he can change other people’s lives. And what a great ending to this story that would be—for him to know beyond a shadow of a doubt the impact of what he did, and to know and see God himself.” In the melting of a killer’s stony heart, Rose thinks, spiritual seeds could take root after all, just as the Good Book says. And, she concludes, “it is what our entire family believes.”

The past is Charleston’s constant companion. It is a place where if you park your car after sundown, your headlights may fall on worn tombstones paved over to create the parking lot. Yesterday’s ruins are tomorrow’s foundations. The old jail, with its barred windows and brute stone walls, becomes a school of design; a crenellated fortress is converted to a hotel; slave quarters are repurposed as part of an upscale restaurant. Parts of the city resemble a theme park: MagnoliaWorld. At other moments, a visitor might feel like an extra on the set of a Merchant-Ivory movie. Mostly Charleston gives the sense—more European than American—of telescoping time, of Then and Now smashed to bits and the pieces reassembled as a mosaic. Along its narrow streets, or in its private gardens or in the stalls of the market, the city swarms with the shades of aristocrats and slaves, patriots and traitors, visionaries and liars.

So you can’t talk long about forgiveness in Charleston before the past shoulders its way into the conversation—and there is much in the city’s past that needs forgiveness. The fine 18th century homes and churches were built with profits from the labor of slaves. Captured in Africa or bred in captivity, they did the work that transformed marsh and forest into the rice, indigo and cotton that powered the Southern economy. Their descendants share the community, the names and sometimes the genes of their owners, and some four centuries now after the city’s founding, every Charleston story has a backstory, and every backstory is freighted with footnotes.

Mother Emanuel is not just any predominantly black church. It is the oldest AME church in the South. And what is the African Methodist Episcopal movement but one of the earliest expressions of African-American dignity and vision?

By the time of the founding of the United States, some whites—even in Charleston—had begun to recognize the humanity of their captives. It was acceptable to envision an end to slavery, though the details were conveniently left vague. The founders set a date, well into the future, for the end of the Atlantic slave trade and ensured that slavery would not spread into the territory of the Northwest Ordinance. A relatively small number of trusted slaves among the multitude in bondage—the butlers and nannies and artisans—were allowed to attend church with their masters. Some were taught to read. Some were allowed to keep part of their day for themselves, when they could earn money to buy their freedom eventually. Freed slaves could imagine themselves raising free children.

This doesn’t describe many slaves’ lives, let alone the majority. But it does describe the spirit in which Richard Allen, a former slave, established the Free African Society in Philadelphia in 1787 (the same year the Constitutional Convention was at work in that city). And that same spirit of freedom, several years later, moved Allen and a few others to form the first AME church when they could no longer abide the discrimination and humiliation they met in white churches.

That such a powerful expression of African-American humanity and equality could spread to Charleston in the early 19th century says something important: even in the heart of the South, free blacks and educated slaves were gathering to discuss abolition, read congressional debates concerning the Missouri Compromise and worship God without the intercession of a white master. Attempts by Charleston authorities to stifle the movement seemed instead to add more fuel. It was this milieu that inspired one of the early leaders of Emanuel Church—a freed carpenter named Denmark Vesey—to take the next step. In the tradition of revolutionaries from Yorktown to Paris to the plantations of Santo Domingo, Vesey, most historians believe, began plotting a slave rebellion.

Hatched in strict secrecy—the church shielded some of the plans—Vesey’s plot called for pike-wielding slaves to overwhelm the local armory, then turn their blades and captured guns on anyone bold enough to stand in their way. After seizing control of the city and announcing their freedom, they would set sail in commandeered ships for the free state of Haiti, where slaves had overthrown the white authorities in a bloody revolution a generation earlier.

This never happened. Betrayed by a talkative slave who had been told of the plans, Vesey and more than 30 others were arrested and executed in early summer of 1822.

What happened next would have grave implications for the future of American slavery, and for Charleston; indeed, for all of U.S. history. Emanuel Church was burned to the ground and new black churches strictly forbidden. Near the site where Emanuel stood, authorities built a fortress designed to make future rebellions inconceivable. That bulwark later grew into the military school known as the Citadel.

The Vesey plot, and others like Nat Turner’s aborted uprising in Virginia in 1831, persuaded many white Americans that free blacks were dangerous. Charleston’s most trusted slaves could secretly be planning to murder their masters. Especially in the coastal low country, where slaves greatly outnumbered the white population, the specter of rebellion hung over the South “like a bloodstained ghost,” in the words of historian David Brion Davis.

This fear spelled the end of African-American schools. Teaching a slave to read became a crime. Other laws sharply limited the ability of owners to free their slaves, or of slaves to buy their freedom. The idea that free African Americans posed a mortal threat to white society powerfully shaped the mindset that led Charlestonians to fire on Fort Sumter in 1861, bringing on the most devastating war in American history.

Though Emanuel reopened after the Civil War, the name Denmark Vesey was scarcely spoken in Charleston for more than 150 years. Under Jim Crow, church members continued to be segregated, intimidated and oppressed. Across a greensward from the church loomed the Citadel, built to keep the black citizenry in line. And between the church and the fortress, Charleston raised a monument to John C. Calhoun, the nation’s seventh Vice President and one of slavery’s most vigorous proponents. His statue stood atop a towering column—to prevent black residents from egging it, according to one version of history.

This real and symbolic oppression, maintained for generations, suggests that whites in Charleston and elsewhere continued to fear black freedom and did not expect forgiveness. While the former slaves and their descendants might preach atonement and sing about grace, in the sanctuary of their hearts, was there not something that cries out for vengeance? What sort of people could forgive centuries of bondage and disrespect?

Many of those themes were on the mind of the killer as he posted his manifesto on June 17 and set out from the South Carolina midlands past pine forests and rising exurbs toward the coast. In his online justification of hate, Roof had written: “I chose Charleston because it is [the] most historic city in my state.” Even he was aware that the past isn’t over in Charleston.

Clementa Pinckney—a black man with the surname of a white slave owner who helped to find the United States—traveled that same road from the midlands that day. His morning began at home in Lexington, outside of Columbia, with his wife and two young daughters. At 41, he was already a senior member of the South Carolina state senate, and his first order of business that day was a meeting of the finance committee. Pinckney represented a sprawling, mostly rural district in the low country, where his boyhood home of Ridgeland provided a second center of gravity. A third was in Charleston, where Pinckney reluctantly accepted the post of pastor at Mother Emanuel in 2010.

“Were we ever in the same place? I don’t think we ever were,” says Pinckney’s widow Jennifer. This is the first time she has felt up to talking about her loss in a public way. After the trauma of that day—she heard the sounds of massacre from the next room, where she cradled a daughter and waited with dread—the layers of loss have piled up like endlessly falling snow. There was the day, not three weeks afterward, when their two girls, Eliana, 11, and Malana, 6, begged her to take them to the Fourth of July fireworks. It was the first time without him. There was the memory of their plans to return to Hawaii, where they had a magical honeymoon. There were all the moments yet to happen in the incredibly busy life they made together: the birthday parties and dance recitals, the date nights sweetened by their near impossibility, the family vacations they jealously guarded.

Hear Jennifer Pinckney talk about a future without her husband

“Marriage to a pastor is like a military marriage—he was always here and there and so forth,” she says. “And then he was in the legislature, and things became more demanding for him. We never were like a ‘normal family’ who every day you come home and Mom’s home and Dad’s home and the kids are here. You learn to get used to it.”

It was the price of life with one of South Carolina’s rising stars. Born into a line of politically active AME ministers and named in honor of the humanitarian baseball hero Roberto Clemente, Pinckney was a serious student from the start; his mother’s twice-a-week trips to the library could hardly keep him supplied with books. At 13, he informed a panel of adults that his plan for life was to become “a humble bishop of the AME church.” They were amused—but impressed enough to award him a license to preach. He relied on his aunt Emma to drive him from church to church, filling in for vacationing pastors, until he was old enough to drive himself.

Pinckney wore suits and ties through high school, even on casual Fridays and in sweltering heat. “His mind-set was already that he was going to be professional and profound,” says Roslyn Fulton—Warren, a classmate. He was elected student-body president—twice—and took a hard line in government class against drugs and guns. “He was comfortable with himself being different,” another classmate, Derek Morgan, recalls. “He was sure of who he was.”

He never lost that certainty. Fully ordained at 18, Pinckney pastored his own small church while studying at Allen University in Columbia. At the same time, he launched his political career by working as a statehouse page. A close friend at Allen, Chris Vaughn, says they bonded over a shared pride in the progress they had already made in their young lives. “We’d joke that we were country bumpkins—we were both from places where people gave directions like ‘turn left at the stump,’” Vaughn recalls. “We came from single-parent homes, small towns. We reckoned we defied the odds.”

On a visit to the University of South Carolina, Pinckney met Jennifer, who was not immediately swept away. Their first date was a trip to Pizza Hut, and she made it clear she intended to pay for her own meal. But she found they could talk easily about goals and dreams, and in time he was surprising her with a ring.

Six feet tall and gradually adding the bulk of a man who loved to eat and read more than exercise, Pinckney became the youngest member of the state legislature at 23. He was an AME elder long before he turned 40, responsible for supervising of 17 churches. Along the way he earned two master’s degrees and embarked on a Ph.D. program.

So numerous were Pinckney’s achievements and so extensive his responsibilities that his bishop began to worry that his young church elder might be overtaxed. Pinckney tried to prioritize. “With so many issues, multiple issues going on, was it better to put your time into expanding Medicaid or getting better access to health care for the elderly? Reforming justice?” says South Carolina Representative Joe Neal, recalling the conversations they often had about effective use of time and influence.

The head job at Emanuel called for a high-profile pastor, someone formidable enough to represent its history, yet young and dynamic enough to rekindle its energy. Perhaps Pinckney should focus on one church rather than 17, the bishop decided.

From a distance, Emanuel’s pulpit might seem like a floodlit mountaintop. But this was no ceremonial position, nor was it a post known for advancing political careers. In fact, Emanuel was a delicate rescue operation; it was known for driving pastors away. Attendance at Sunday worship services was down to about 100 when Pinckney arrived, yet the members insisted on two services because that was the way things had always been. Pinckney’s challenge, familiar to urban church leaders across the country—black and white, south and north—was to make his church relevant and appealing to a new generation without alienating the dwindling but devoted ranks of old-timers.Hear Gracie Broome speak about her grandson Clementa Pinckney

In a roundabout way, this challenge explains why Pinckney went to Charleston that day. Along with his outreach to local college students, he was trying to bring energetic new members onto the church staff. Two such women, both licensed to preach by a Baptist church, were interested in moving their ministries to Emanuel. “It was very unusual,” says Pinckney’s fellow pastor Kylon Middleton of the switch. “And it was because of Clem.”

Pinckney hoped to speed the process of transferring their credentials, and that required him to attend a scheduled business meeting at the church. He was at his most persuasive in person, friends say. “Clem had a way of telling people to go to hell and people would ask directions,” says the Rev. Joe Darby, a prominent AME elder in the state.

He asked Jennifer to make the drive with him. Grab a moment together. Eliana was busy that evening, but Malana could come along. And that is how they found themselves together for the last time.

Pinckney was known to miss some routine meetings, relying on Simmons and other stalwarts to fill in at the head of the table. That tendency rankled some congregants, and the tension flared that evening when an Emanuel trustee accused Pinckney of putting his political career ahead of the church. But tempers cooled, and by the time business concluded around 8 p.m., Pinckney could feel that the trip was worth the effort. The two Baptist ministers—DePayne Middleton Doctor and Brenda Nelson—had the endorsements needed to seek the bishop’s stamp of approval. For good measure, Pinckney put through another ordination: Myra Thompson’s. This surely came as a surprise, says Thompson’s husband. If she had known this was coming, she would have mentioned it to him, and he would have alerted their daughter Denise, who would have rushed over from Atlanta.

The Bible study was the first official act of the new minister Thompson. Though the business meeting ran late, the class now seemed too momentous to cancel. And Pinckney felt it was only right for him to attend.

Jennifer Pinckney shoulders that weight. “We didn’t get to go on our family vacation this year,” she says. The plan was to visit New Orleans, and Eliana’s father assigned her to prepare a paper on the Crescent City. At a family dinner, he had quizzed his daughter and was delighted by the range of her research. “About two weeks after everything had taken place,” says the widow, Eliana had a realization: “I guess we’re not going to New Orleans.”

If Mother Emanuel was drenched in Charleston’s past, Clem Pinckney was emblematic of its future. For himself, he sought only opportunity, because he needed nothing more. He had abundant gifts of talent, drive and compassion.

What Pinckney sought on behalf of those with less was equally forward-looking. He wanted jobs—he was able to bring a shopping center to Ridgeland and fought unsuccessfully for a port in Jasper. He wanted affordable health care. He wanted better educational opportunities—Pinckney won a bruising battle for more equity in school funding. On his last day, he grumbled to a fellow Democrat about their party’s attempt to kill a bill that would help foster children attend private schools. He understood the need to protect public schools, but still. “Why don’t we want to help foster kids?” Pinckney asked.

Even when a white police officer in North Charleston was caught on video shooting a black man named Walter Scott in the back, Pinckney’s reaction was to look ahead. Normally soft-spoken in the senate, he delivered an unusually impassioned speech to help pass a bill requiring body cameras on South Carolina police.

He was, in other words, moving in step with a city that is gradually outgrowing its fears, suggests Bernard Powers, a professor of history at the College of Charleston. Powers, an African-American Chicago native who moved to Charleston in 1992, has watched a slowly unfolding story in which forgiveness and remembering go hand in hand, because a crime must be remembered to be repented.

“Forgiveness is a very complicated phenomenon,” he says. “It’s easy to say, ‘Let’s get over the past.’ But you can’t say that when the past is a part of who you are.” Forgive and forget is a formula powerfully skewed in favor of the offender. What person or people wouldn’t like to forget past sins? Black Charlestonians—black Americans, for that matter—could not forget, so for them, “the language of forgiveness can actually reflect a resignation to certain brutal realities. People have understood that to adopt any other strategy is a fool’s errand.”

Around the time Powers began visiting Charleston for research in the mid-1970s, fear and the oppression that it breeds were still predominant. “There was a real concern among whites about what blacks would do under the influence of the Nation of Islam or the Black Panthers,” he says. But as the real history of race relations has bit by bit come out of the shadows, what whites perceived—if they looked clearly—was an ocean of forbearance, a tide of forgiveness. “The buildings, the monuments, the emblems of white supremacy are all over this city, and you’d be burdened if you took it seriously all the time,” Powers explains.

He tells a story: when he was new to South Carolina and registering to vote, the nearest registrar happened to be located inside the original Citadel building. As a historian, he knew its founding purpose as a bastion against slave rebellions. On his way to complete his errand, he passed the statue of Calhoun. And he laughed. Looking up, Powers called out to Calhoun, “I know you never thought you’d see this!”

In those days, he recalls, tourists could visit Charleston, see the historic houses and forts, ride the horse-drawn carriages and never hear the word slave. Today, every licensed tour guide is required to know more than just the city’s idealized history. Charleston’s representative in Congress is James Clyburn, the first African American elected from South Carolina since 1897. After years of effort, Clyburn passed a law to create the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor in the coastal Carolinas to preserve the endangered culture of freed slaves and their descendants.

Joe Riley, Charleston’s longtime mayor, will leave office soon after 40 years with his dream of an International African-American Museum on the brink of completion. The project is scheduled to open in 2018, on the site of a former wharf that was one of the main ports of the transatlantic slave trade. And the Citadel now offers its cadets a minor in African-American studies.

For some, the best sign of remembering can be found in a landscaped nook surrounded by live oaks draped with Spanish moss at a city park named in honor of Confederate General Wade Hampton, one of the largest slave owners in the South. Once a plantation, the parkland was used as a prisoner-of-war camp for captured Union soldiers. Disease and neglect killed hundreds of the captives, and their bodies were buried in a mass grave.

Shortly after the surrender of Robert E. Lee at Appomattox, those white Charlestonians who had not fled watched in fear as columns of black Union soldiers marched into the city with guns. It was the moment they had feared for generations. But the troops proceeded peacefully into the prison camp, where they opened the mass grave and went to work reburying their comrades in marked plots.

This has been called the first Memorial Day. Last year, after much controversy, a handsome bronze statue was unveiled in Hampton Park. It honors Denmark Vesey. “Over time,” says Bernard Powers, “you can generate real change.”

But when do you say, “Time’s up”?

From the day of the bond hearing, Malcolm Graham has been unsettled by talk of forgiveness in Charleston. His sister Cynthia Hurd was murdered at the Bible study three days shy of her 55th birthday. It was like ripping the heart from the family, because Cynthia was the one who took over when their parents died, who mothered her siblings whether they were younger or older, who always knew what the others were up to and always had a word of advice. When their brother Melvin was just off to college and homesickness was getting him down, it was Cynthia who took the phone and silenced his complaining. “You can do this,” she urged in a way that made him believe her. “No use turning back now.”

Hurd was a tornado of self-reliance and an apostle of self-improvement. She read the World Book Encyclopedia as a child. Not parts—all of it, says Graham. “That was her escape—we weren’t poor growing up, but we didn’t have a lot of money. I think that was her way of going to faraway places and learning about different things.” As a grown woman, she favored do-it-yourself: if she wasn’t in her garden or tackling a project, she was probably gleaning ideas from HGTV. Her true passion, though, was the Charleston public library, where she served as a librarian and branch manager for more than 30 years.

A younger colleague named Kim Odom credits Hurd with inspiring her career, and explains her mentor’s philosophy. “When I first started working for Cynthia—the first day—she showed me to my desk,” says Odom. “She introduced me to everyone. And she said, ‘Let’s go.’ I said, ‘Go where?’” Hurd explained that they were going to walk the neighborhood. “You can’t know what we do until you know who we serve,” Hurd told her.

That sense of a library’s possibilities and its role in the community made Hurd an important part of the city’s life. She was appointed to the board of the Charleston County housing authority, where she tried to ensure that African Americans would continue to have a place in the rapidly gentrifying city. And she was a mainstay of Mother Emanuel, where her mom once sang in the choir and where Cynthia learned to love the Lord. Her best friend from her teen years, Kim McFarland Wright, recalls the depth of Hurd’s spirituality. “Girl,” she once marveled, “you sure know how to pray!”

So great was the devastation to the family and friends of Cynthia Hurd that Malcolm Graham could hardly understand what happened at the bond hearing. His sister’s body was still in the morgue, and already people were talking about forgiveness. Where was the reckoning of all that was lost and why it was lost and what could be done? Even now, he suspects that forgiving was far from the minds of most families. “During the whole week of that shooting—and during that bond hearing—two families out of nine made that statement,” he says. “And the media kind of blanketed it across all of the families.

Hear Malcolm Graham on the search for forgiveness

“Nine individual lives, families, faith walks. Some faith walks are longer than others. For me, forgiveness is a process,” Graham continues. “It’s a journey. Forgiving for me, then and now, is miles, miles, miles away.”

The accused killer, he notes, has done nothing publicly to suggest remorse. “If my sister was walking across the street and she was hit by a distracted driver, and the driver immediately said, ‘Oh my God! Please forgive me, I didn’t mean to do this’—forgiveness would come easier. But in this case, it was calculated. It was premeditated. It was deliberate. It was intentional. This guy inflicted pain on me, my family, so many other families—and the community and the nation as a whole. My sister died simply because she was black.”

That harsh reality of murderous racism demands a more ambitious and sustained response than any he has seen so far, Graham says. As a former state senator and Charlotte city councilman in North Carolina, Hurd’s brother knows well the ebb and flow of politics, and he is worried that the chance for more profound change in the aftermath of the Emanuel massacre has already been smothered in the blanket of forgiveness.

Amid the self-congratulation over mothballing the Confederate flag, Graham published a guest column in August in the Charleston Chronicle, the city’s black-oriented newspaper. “I’m not optimistic about what will happen next,” Graham wrote, “because public-policy bodies—general assemblies and city councils and Congress—pay attention to the moment. As the days and weeks go by, people tend to say, ‘That happened; now let’s move on to something else.’”

The trouble with forgiveness, Graham suggests, is that it becomes an easy excuse to avoid difficult action. When he looks at the agenda most African Americans care about—voting rights, jobs, education, health care and equal justice—Graham sees scant progress in some areas and backsliding in others. “Ultimately, the flag is just a symbol,” he wrote. “Its removal must be the beginning of bigger reforms that empower America’s African Americans.”

Or take it one step further. The trouble with focusing on forgiveness in this story is that it might make white society more complacent while denying black victims a measure of their humanity. The Rev. Waltrina Middleton of Cleveland has thought a lot about this in the months since her cousin DePayne Middleton Doctor was murdered.

This is where she comes down: the statements at the bond hearing were genuine and prophetic, she believes, reflecting the religious conviction that “because we live in God, I can live into forgiveness.” But the way the statements were immediately seized on as the true meaning of what happened “took away our narrative to be rightfully hurt. I can’t turn off my pain.” Complex beliefs were flattened and volcanic anguish neutralized as a way of avoiding the ugly implications of racist violence.

“You have people who already look at black people as being uncivilized,” Middleton says, trying to explain why so many African Americans embraced the narrative of forgiveness. So when the eyes of the world swing suddenly to a community like Mother Emanuel, “there’s this great pressure to perform. Behave yourself! Don’t do this, don’t do that—because white people are watching. Look at how the media portrayed the anger of the people of Ferguson.”

Or consider the case, in her own city, of a child named Tamir Rice, killed by police who mistook his toy gun for a real one. “Right here in Cleveland, a 12-year-old child is shot to death. We’re not allowed to be angry?” Middleton asks. “Now you have the spotlight on Charleston and people are watching to see how these black folks are going to respond. Create this image of civility. We don’t want white people uncomfortable.” For that matter, where’s the talk of forgiveness when mass killers strike white communities? “We have to tell the truth: the racism is real.”

His was a world of possibilities. “The path to get him where he wanted to go, he was always changing it. He never had an idle bone—he always had Plan A, B, C and D. Sometimes we’d say, ‘Ty, you’re doing too much. You need to rein it in, have more of a laser focus.’ And he’d say, ‘I can’t. I gotta keep pushing.’”

This is Shirrene Goss, speaking in the past tense about a young man who was all future tense. Her little brother Tywanza Sanders was a handsome man with a dazzling smile; a poet, musician, entrepreneur; a barber who cut hair while telling everyone in the shop that one day the whole world would know his name; a rapper, philosopher; lover of a good argument and a good deed; seeker of God.

He was trying stand-up comedy. Thinking about modeling. He might pursue an M.B.A. He was considering law school. He had a sideline in tattoo artistry. He was headed to grad school in music production. Life, Sanders understood, is a multiple-choice quiz, and his answer was all of the above.

What was certain in the young man’s mind was that he would be rich and famous and at the same time kind and faithful. When Simmons, at the Bible study, advised him to share his future wealth with the church, Sanders replied cheerfully that yes, he would be wealthy, and no, he would not neglect Mother Emanuel.

Wanza, his friends called him. He had his mom’s name tattooed on his chest when she was fighting cancer. Felicia advised him that no girl would marry him with his mom’s name on his chest. “Well, that will be their loss,” he replied. He once walked up to a crying stranger on his college campus, introduced himself and instantly convinced her that things would be all right. He liked to trick his aunt Mabel almost as much as she liked being tricked by him.

Because Sanders was pure hope and possibility and future, because he resisted closing doors in his life—he was still banging them open with infectious enthusiasm—he represents perfectly the crushing loss that is murder. Statistics can be numbing: 26 dead in Newtown; 12 dead and 70 wounded in Aurora; 2,977 confirmed dead in the Sept. 11 attacks. The promise destroyed in each one can be hard to hold on to. All the blessings, trials and victories that will not be experienced and shared. All the hurt for those left behind, whose wounds will far outlast the world’s attention.

Felicia Sanders sits at her dining-room table. Weeks after that day, thousands of condolences from around the world are piled next to picture books and souvenirs of Tywanza’s life. The family has barely begun to sort through it all.

“At the bond hearing, I said my life will never be the same. I was actually speaking from that day forever, and it hasn’t been the same,” she says. Her relationship with her son was unusually close. Tywanza told her everything, even things that make a mom uncomfortable. She never wanted to say no to him. “We were like one person sometimes. And I took him to Bible study, because where is safer than Bible study? And I still lost him.”

She continues: “Time is going to help me in some kind of way. I need time. Other than that, I don’t know what will help. I’m searching and seeking.”

Although she walked out of that room alive, Felicia Sanders took with her an incalculable burden of loss. She lost her son. She lost her aunt Susie and her friend Cynthia Hurd. She lost the freedom to be with her granddaughter without the memory of their time together in the valley of the shadow. She even lost her anchor at Mother Emanuel. Like some others close to the massacre, Sanders now feels estranged from her church. She says she hasn’t met with the interim pastor, and few of her church friends have reached out. Maybe they don’t know what to say. As Robert Frost put it: “The nearest friends can go/ With anyone to death, comes so far short/ They might as well not try to go at all.”

And yet, she says, “I forgave right away.” She had no choice. “If you don’t, you’re letting evil into your heart. You’re the one suffering. You’re the one hating. You have to forgive. For you.”

Hear Felicia Sanders speak at the shooter’s bond hearing

And for those who died. For months in the aftermath of the Mother Emanuel killings, during scores of interviews across dozens of hours, this question of forgiveness was scrutinized and tweezed from every direction. And this is the conclusion. What happened after Charleston was not a matter of snap judgments or ill-chosen words. It was not born of a need to reassure white people, even if it may have had that effect. Nor was it simply the product of oppression, though the past can’t be separated from the present. It was an expression of genuine hearts. The nine lost lives belonged to church folk, Wednesday people, true believers. And their family members—for all their anger and shock and loss—all in their own ways seek to honor that and give them a victory despite the killer’s hatred.

Felicia Sanders asked the FBI for one thing: the return of two Bibles. The FBI said they were not recoverable.

She insisted.

So the investigators sent her Bible and Ty-wanza’s Bible to the Bureau’s high-tech labs in Quantico, Va., where they were cleaned as thoroughly as possible, leaf by leaf.

Sanders has them now. The pages are pink with blood that will never wash away. But she can still make out the words.

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