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jensthwa · 1 day ago

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mountebank chem pt. four (JYH x reader).

part of the love's an uncharted path universe ★.

SUMMARY:

* 𝐦𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐛𝐚𝐧𝐤: 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐞𝐠𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐞 𝐨𝐫 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦 𝐛𝐲 𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐤𝐞𝐫𝐲. The first time you met Yunho, you knew he was going to be part of the biggest tragedy of your life: the loss of your freedom, of your free will. You didn't know why back then but what you did figure out is that you and Jeong Yunho were going to, eventually and very publicly, date each other at some point. Is that reason enough to hate his guts? Well, of course! Now, when the time comes to fulfill the prophecy, how the hell are you going to pull it off? And, most importantly, what do you need to do to not fall in love with him in the process?

PAIRING: rich!yunho x afab!rich!reader.

GENRE: enemies to friends to lovers.

WORD COUNT: 24.1k.

WARNINGS & TAGS: SMUT ☽ (MINORS DNI) attempt !!! at comedy, dual pov (both yunho's and reader's), use of fem pronouns sometimes, angsty angst that angsts in the form a verbal fight, tears, unresolved feelings and denial, tension, a heartfelt conversations with bro and lots of yearning!, a time jump (three months or so), mingi and love being unhelpful but helpful at the same time, yeosang being a cutie pie and a little bit of his story gets mentioned!, the L word, confessions, apologies, mentions of body dysmorphia and body related insecurities, soft!dom yunho (he's a little bossy), switch!reader (oc hates to let him win i guess), reader has breasts and a vagina, mirror play, teasing, light choking, messy kisses and makeouts, masturbation (f), just the tiniest bit of voyeurism, praise kink if you squint oh my god, fingering, multiple orgasms, love making (who else cried), the post-sex convo and more feelings and dreams are discussed.

NOTES: hi everyone! WE MADE IT!!!!! here's part four of this mini series that is PART OF THE LOVE'S AN UNCHARTED PATH. after this, there's an epilogue/little part five to let everyone know sort of what happens after this + to set up the next story in the universe. i also just want to adress that one of you kindly suggested to change up some of the terminology i use in the warnings and for some other things in the fic itself and i thank that person a lot! but i also want to encourage you, if you feel something's missing or if i can do anything to be more inclusive in my stories, to let me know! i hope you all enjoy it part four of mbc, we've come a looong way and i'm happy on how this turned out. this is 100% self indulgent, as all fics should be, and i think i've re-read it so many times that if you find a typo or something that just doesn't make sense, you can blame it on english not being my first language i guess lmao. i hope you enjoy it and if you do feel free to send to my askbox/reblog/type in any feedback or thoughts! <3

POSTED: february 2nd 2025.

taglist: @kyunlov, @tinyelfperson, @0115degrees, @daniela-f-uwu, @ultrapinkvoidbouquet, @kyeomooniee, @fairylover68, @sushiinmidnight, @qveenbunni, @calmoistorm, @potatomountain, @svintsandghosts, @lemonkait00, @blue5ummer, @fancypeacepersona, @hyukssunflower, @i-love-ateez, @alsomimi, @e3ellie, @st3ft0n3s, @hotteokkay, @xylatox

masterlist - part one - part two. part three.

You dream about him. Every night.

His mouth on yours and his hands handling you with care fill the gray matter of your brain and rots it. It fits you.

A rotten brain for a rotten person.

The scenario repeats in a loop in your head even when you're awake, alone in your house office, accompanied by staff at the main office building. It doesn't really matter what you're doing, who you're with or if the task at hand requires your full attention, Yunho still invades your mind and makes you feel like you're leaping, flying through skies and then falling, falling, falling, before hitting the ground hard.

Because at the end of the memory, it plays what you did.

The way you pulled away, the way you left him there without a proper explanation.

You didn't have dinner with your brother, it was over nine o'clock at night. You needed an escape goat, a plan, an excuse to flee from the happiness you grasped with your sticky, messy, disgusting fingers.

Everything you touch seems to turn to shit.

So you can't touch Jeong Yunho even if you want to.

You shan't, you won’t, even when he’s so close to you it takes a lot for you to hold back. He’s a message away, a meeting away from you. And his messages on your phone kept piling up this week until they didn’t.

And now, as you watch him enter the meeting in a suit and tie, you do your best to pretend nothing happened between you even though it's supposed to. To everyone else's eyes, you’re still a couple.

You’re grateful for that. You don’t sit together, you can’t sit together. Of course you can't, that would be very unprofessional. You can't voice your opinion about any decisions made by his team (or rather, his brother's team) today because that would look like you're doing it to either spite him or to be on your boyfriend's side, it would look like corruption!

God bless the stupid societal and corporate norms. You won't even have to speak to him today, if you're lucky. You know he's shadowing his brother today, learning his way through these meetings you've been attending for years or at least pretending to do so.

There's absolutely no reason to speak to him today.

Yay.

Soohyun sits at your left, at the head of the table, and Yunho sits with his brother at Soohyun’s left. Neither your father or his are here today so everyone’s shoulders are a little less tense and the meeting is a quarterly one, which means people are going to be explaining graphics and reading numbers you have to stay focused on.

There's things you have to write down, there's statements you have to whisper in your brother's ear so he can say them out loud instead of you.

But Yunho looks way too good in his suit and tie and it's a little distracting.

And he's looking right at you, too.

You can hear your co-workers immediately gossiping about it, you can see your brother turn to you, then to him, then to you and you can faintly see how he raises a brow. Faintly, because you're pretending to read over some papers in front of you by the time he bumps your leg to try and catch your attention.

You step on his foot under the table, he mutters an offended ouch and pinches your arm in retaliation, which causes you to stop pretending to eye the documents and turn to him.

“Stop it.”

“You started it,” he says and then Soohyun gives you that look that lets you know he knows something you don't, although it can possibly be like that because he's a clueless little shit. “Did something happen between yo—”

Well, maybe not as clueless. Good thing you wore great heels today, the face he makes as he's trying to pretend that the sharp end of your Louis Vuitton is not stabbing him in the leg feels like a victory.

“Keep quiet, the meeting is starting.”

Oh, how you love winning.

The thing is, you can't even enjoy it now. Yunho’s face pops up on your mind again and it serves as a reminder of just how close he is.

As someone from the sales team starts their presentation, your eyes drift to Yunho in a way that feels oddly familiar.

There, trying to stay upright even though you know he's zoning everything out, there's this memory from your junior year in highschool that never tortured you the way it does now.

Although he's always been very tall, Yunho used to sit near the window, in the second row of the classroom you both shared that year. Not his decision, certainly whoever made that decision was not the sharpest tool on the shed because all he did was look out of the window and close his eyes when the teachers were not paying enough attention to him.

And you used to stare at him just like you're doing now. Through the corner of your eye, with your back straightened and ninety percent of your attention on the topic at hand. He held the other ten percent, tenderly, softly, without realizing what he was doing.

Just like he held you that night.

At the time, you wondered what went on in his head every time he drifted away from the class. New ways of making your life impossible? A new insult to your integrity, maybe? Highschool Yunho was everyone's dream but, for you, he meant nothing but nightmares and headaches.

Nothing has changed much.

But instead of wondering if he's thinking about new ways of pestering you with his presence, now your heart races at the possibility of him thinking about the kisses you two shared last week.

You hope no one notices the sudden shift on the chair or the gulp you make to keep your emotions buried deep down inside of you, where no one can reach them.

Trying to regain focus and ignore Yunho completely, you look at the projected graphics in front of you. The person doing the presentation turns to the next slide as soon as you're beginning to understand what the hell they're talking about. Surprisingly, your brother turns to whisper at you about it.

“The new company sales are lower than expected.”

When you turn fully to him, you can see he's biting his cheek in concerned concentration. You want to roll your eyes.

“I told dad no one would care about this company and you were the one who approved for us to go forward with it.”

“I know.”

“Dumbass,” you whisper, scrunching your nose and turning to the presentation again but your brother nudges you slightly and you have to look at him again.

Only for your eyes to completely bypass him and land in Yunho.

God fucking damnit.

Is this what having a crush is like? Is tortuous and you hate this even more than when you couldn't stand seeing his face out of pure annoyance.

This is why you probably never had a crush on anyone before. But it's strange, because it doesn't feel like something new. Yes, Yunho attending meetings is new but the feeling is familiar and grossly nostalgic of something you feel like you left behind.

And now has come back in full force.

You never had a crush on Yunho, at least not that you know of.

But this feeling is telling you otherwise and it's maddening and disgusting and—

“Something definitely happened, hm?”

Eyes flicking over your brother's sudden concerned expression, you push back on the seat and sink in it a little. This way, when you look up to him, Yunho is nowhere in sight. When you speak again, you make sure only Soohyun hears you.

“We can save it, don't worry about it. I'll write up a proposal of how we can market the concept of the company in a way that it at least piques people's interest.”

Your brother huffs, unsatisfied with your deflection and the way you visibly close up at the mere thought of telling him if something did happen between you and Yunho.

But he says nothing. It stings that you know he's going to leave it at that, the support you're supposed to have slipping through your fingers as you do your best to keep your feelings to yourself. It's not his fault, not really.

He doesn't know any better.

You don't know any better, either.

But your focus on the meeting comes back and you end it with thirteen pages of virtual notes and a list of things you need to do today to keep this shitshow of a company afloat.

There's a split second when you get out of the room that you feel Yunho’s eyes on you. You're afraid he's going to take the opportunity to talk to you, so you look up and around trying to find something, someone you can use as a distraction, as a shield.

But then there's like four pairs of hands dragging him away and you see that annoyed glint in his eye, usually reserved for you, as they turn him around and away from you.

Yes, of course they wouldn't let him speak to you right now. He's shadowing his brother, he has important things to do!

Yay.

You ignore the beating of your heart as you move quickly through the halls. Soohyun and Gunho are already aiming for the elevator so you opt for the stairs, knowing you won't have to speak to anyone at all if you get to your office like this.

Well, Soohyun's office. You have yours on a lower floor, not as unnecessary space-taking as his, but you usually work there because you enjoy the view.

So when you finally close the door behind you and the view is blocked by thirty piled up boxes you start thinking that the universe is upset with you. Is this your karma? Everything and everyone against you just because you walked out of a kiss before making a mistake?

Is not like Yunho cares that much about you anyway!

Huffing, you look around the room until your eyes land on that stupid tree you started painting when Soohyun told you he wanted to redecorate his office. Its branches extend just a little more than what you remember and there’s a part of it that was unfinished the last time you saw it. You can only assume either Seonghwa or your brother had something to do with it.

Which sucks.

Because you’re so painting over the stupid tree one day.

You stare at it while your mind wanders. Head slowly filling up with noise, you finally feel at ease when your thoughts are nothing but work: You need to write up a proposal to that stupid vintage-esque focused company to see if there’s some salvation for it. You need to speak with marketing, get one of them to go along the process with you. You need to sit down with your brother and kindly tell him to never allow something like this to ever happen again.

Making a mental list to organize and prioritize everything you need to do, you barely register footsteps echoing in the long hall. You should’ve, because it’s lunchtime and there’s no one on the floor, but you don’t.

And so when the person you least want to see comes through the door and lets out a heavy sigh, you turn to him like he grew a second nose over the course of the twenty minutes you last saw each other.

“I hate it here, I truly do.”

It almost makes you want to laugh, but you remain stoic as you move through the office. You take a few boxes and you put them down on the floor until there’s some light leaking through the window and illuminating the space enough for it not to give you a headache as you work.

Sitting on your brother's chair, barely sparing him another glance before turning on the desk computer and pulling up an empty document. You click and tap a few meaningless things: You pick the font, you mess with the font size for a second before setting it back to its default. Anything to help you look busy and not like your heart is going a million miles per second.

“Can I help you with anything, Yunho?”

Blurry, in the background, you can see him look around the office, probably taking the mess in. He moves too, walks until his expensive shoes are tip to tip with a literal mannequin resting against the wall.

You stop paying attention as you write the date and the proposal title. Something simple, something that both your father and the CEO of the dumb not-approved-by-you company that has you in this predicament can understand. You hate to say that you assume they’re not very smart if they put out such a dated and non profitable idea for their company.

Still, you try to address Yunho like nothing’s bothering you and like you’re not nervous you two are in a room alone after everything that went down.

“You can ask Seonghwa what that means,” you start, sighing like his friend and your brother are hopeless. Because maybe that’s what they are. “They’re not running any ideas by me even though I’m the one that spends the most time in this office, so.”

“Hm,” he starts and you can hear him walking around, but your focus is now on the first few words of the proposal. You realize there’s really nothing you can start before speaking with marketing and so you open the notes app, to have a list of ideas to run through them at least. “Thought you worked from home.”

“I do. I have an office three floors down, too.” It’s easy sharing information with him now, especially if it means there’s something to talk about that’s not… Well, the kiss. “I hate it, it’s in a corner and people can see into it. It’s easier to work here.”

“And Soohyun hyung doesn’t mind?”

“Considering he’s never here, I doubt it.”

“Cool, cool.”

There’s something in his tone that makes you want to look up, lump in your throat growing in size enough for you to cough it away. You don’t look up, you can’t look up even if you’ve misspelled the word rebrand like four times already.

But then the light you managed to cast onto the space disappears completely. You feel something besides you, the soft material of an expensive suit blazer grazing your arm and cheek. You see veiny, masculine hands secure themselves around the arms of the chair before he’s turning you to face him.

You gulp.

He’s leaning down close, closer than he should be, closer than what he’s allowed to be considering anyone can walk in on you. You’re flushing, you can feel the redness creep up your neck and heating your ears and face before you gather the courage of raising a questioning brow. Yunho stays silent, his eyes scanning your face and briefly landing on your lips before returning your stare.

“Can I help you with anything, Yunho?” You ask him again, quieter this time, voice trembling a little.

“Princess,” he starts, the corner of his lip raising just a little, like it’s funny he has to say what he’s about to say, “are you ghosting me?”

Shit.

“Why would you— Why would I—,” a nervous chuckle abandons you and then you huff, trying to seem offended at his accusation, “W-what do you mean by that?”

Leaning into your space a tiny bit more, he repeats “Are you ghosting me?”

Creasing your brow, you straighten in the chair but do nothing to pull him away “No.”

“Then what about the ten messages I sent you and you left on delivered?”

Faking a surprised gasp, you move to take your phone out of the pocket of your jacket and unlock it to swipe through your messages “You did? Oh, my God, I’ve been soooo busy.”

“You’re shit at lying to me.”

“I’m not lying to you—”

“Are you okay?”

Your eyes snap from the phone to his face, genuine annoyance creasing your eyebrows this time.

“You don’t have to ask me that everytime you see me, Jeong.”

“But are you?” He asks as you finally find his chat and open the messages you dreaded to see the entire time that passed. There’s a few of them practically begging you to speak to him, one apologizing for the kiss and the other ones you don’t even see because Yunho is taking the phone from your hand and placing it on the desk next to you. “I mean, what happened didn’t trigger anyth—”

You hate he’s this considerate with you, even after you clearly walked out of the situation with a poorly formulated excuse.

“What happened was a mistake.”

Yunho physically deflates and lets the chair go, the tension on your shoulders lifting a little now that he’s not as close.

“What?”

“It was a mistake, we shouldn’t have done that. We’re professionally obligated to work together, fake all of this together, so it shouldn’t…” You pause and consider for a bit before doing something you never do: take the blame “I shouldn’t have. I apologize.”

Letting out a breath, you turn the chair and delete the misspelled rebrand to write it the correct way, heart too weak to even look at his reaction. It doesn’t matter anyway, you’re never doing anything like it again.

You hear him shuffle with the boxes at both your feet and, from the corner of your eye, you see him turning away from you and then back, hands on his hips “I don't think it was a mistake.”

“Well, it was.”

“I liked it.”

That brings out a genuine, short lived laugh out of you “Thank you, I’m a great kisser.”

You open your brother’s email and pretend there’s an urgent matter inside the contents of one of them until Yunho’s hand closes over yours, over the mouse.

“Y/N.”

There’s a lot of things about Jeong Yunho you hate: The swoop of his hair when there’s no gel on it, the free aspect to his nature you’re never going to get even if you try to, that one time he called you an ugly giant after wearing platforms for the first time ever.

And the sweetness of his voice when he says your name, the plea you hear on it and the shudder it brings to your spirit. It shakes you, it moves you to look at him again, to actually take his feelings into consideration.

He’s staring at you with so much hurt, it makes your heart sink into an abyss of guilt.

“Hm?”

“I think I like you.”

Oh.

Oh, no.

Your heart drowns deeper, your resentment towards the situation grows branches like the tree on the wall. They hug your pride and your ego, they poke you on your side for reciprocating Yunho’s feelings just a little.

Well, a lot.

“You think?” You ask him and your voice sounds far away. He nods. You stand up from the chair, hand squeezing his before letting drop. “Stop thinking then.”

His eyes closing shut and his jaw tensing is the last thing you see before you busy yourself with the boxes against the window. You pick up two at a time, heavy and the cardboard smelly as you walk to the other side of the office, away from him.

“I’m being serious, Y/N.”

You sigh “So am I, Yunho. You don’t like me, you liked that I kissed you.”

“Oh, I forgot you know exactly what goes through my mind and my heart, thank you for the remainder!”

Looking at him over your shoulder, you drop the boxes against the corner wall “Lower. Your. Voice.”

“No, no. Because that’s not an appropriate response to what I just told you!” He walks towards you and you meet him halfway, heart beating with annoyance at the way he’s speaking to you. He towers over you again, jaw clenched and voice a mere murmur when he speaks again “You have no say in what I feel, how I feel it, when I feel it.”

“I know I don’t, you idiot. I was just providing you with a bit of perspective.”

“Perspective?”

“What do you like about me?” Chin up and nose scrunched in a way it only does when you’re really angry, you insist “Why now? Why do you suddenly care? Is it out of pity? Is it because it’s convenient, because we’re already pretending? Is it because you want to fuck me?!”

“Watch it, Y/N.” His tone is laced with clear offense at what you offered just a second ago.

“You don’t like me,” you start, shaking your head, “you can’t like me.”

“Why not?!”

He’s breathing hard, walking backwards, offering up his palms to the sky and looking around the room like any of that is going to give him an answer to his questions.

“Why not?” He repeats and there’s that hurt in his voice that, for some reason, makes your eyes water. Are you having a panic attack? A heart attack? Everything hurts. Liking Yunho hurts, wanting him hurts. He comes back, his eyes searching yours even though you can’t do anything but cast them down, to your shoes and his shoes and the boxes and the carpet “Why can’t I like you, princess? What’s not to like? What kind of self-deprecating ideas do

you have in your head that makes you think I can’t care about you like that?”

Shaking your head again and closing your eyes, you are barely able to stifle a sob and force your tears back. You want to tell him that that’s not the reason but you would be lying to him if you did.

That’s part of the reason.

Behind the whole letting your mother’s win argument, there’s an undeniable amount of self hatred that can’t let you feel like there’s any truth behind his words.

Why would he like you? Why would he care about you?

Your hands are dirty and sticky and your being is way too clumsy, so everything you love drops and breaks and turns to dust before your eyes. The fact that there’s this whole fake relationship deal in the middle of it and you can place the blame on your mothers is a blessing in disguise.

It’s a weapon you can use.

Even if you don’t want to: His hands are cradling your face, his forehead dropping against yours and drawing a surprised gasp out of you because you didn’t even feel him get him close.

“I like you, I care about you,” there’s certainty in his tone, like he made up his mind, like he’s confirming his feelings to both you and himself, “I… I—” He takes a breath when you open your eyes and beg him to not say what you think he’s about to say. He takes the hint. “Do you not like me back, Y/N? Are you trying to… Is that what’s happening?”

You say nothing, but swallow back your feelings and brace yourself on his forearms, nose budging his as you move a little.

He reads your silence wrong “Y-you do?”

You think it matters if you do or not. Your heart is already breaking by the time the words are on the tip of your tongue.

“We can’t,” you whisper to him, letting your tears wet your cheeks and squeezing his forearms when his thumbs start to move in trying to dry them, shaking your head to signal him to stop. As your eyes catch his, you prepare yourself for the gentleness you’re about to lose, with the care you’re about to push away for his own good. “Because if we do, they win.”

You didn’t know your heart could break this way, as you watch his expression morph from confusion to pain to utter, genuine anger. It’s the same face he made last week, in your living room, as he yelled at his mother for even daring suggesting that you two should be together.

There’s a time when hurting Yunho brought you some sense of vengeance, a time where you considered it payback for being that person literally planned and made for you.

Now, you want to hit your head against the wall for even daring filling his eyes with tears, for being the reason frustration descends and wets his shoes as he looks down.

“Oh.”

He lets you go and you miss it. You immediately want to take your words back, push him closer to you, hug him, kiss him, whatever it may be to keep him next to you.

You start to mourn the loss of the bond you were able to form with him right away.

And it hurts.

He nods again. And it hurts. “Oh, that’s what this is about.”

It fucking hurts. When he laughs, hands on his face as he wipes his tears away, you feel like you’re going to pass out.

“And you don’t care about me enough to tell them to go fuck themselves.” He says, a resentful statement that leaves his lips before a breathy laugh does.

Opening your mouth, you attempt to contradict his words. That’s not true at all, he has to understand, he understands you, he— He raises his hand to stop you from speaking, he shakes his head like he doesn’t want to hear it.

Like your excuses, even if he hasn't listened to them at all, are not worth his time.

“I get it.” No, you don’t. “I understand.” No, you really don’t.

But you say nothing. As he’s slipping through your fingers like sand, at your own doing, you just stare at him with sorrowful eyes and an apology on your teeth.

He looks at you like he’s expecting you to stop him as he reaches the door. You want to, you really do.

You don’t.

“Thanks for letting me know.”

When the door closes behind him and leaves you alone in an office that’s not really yours, feeling like you’re not yourself, you finally allow the reality of what you just did to hit you.

Hand shaking, you cover your mouth and let out a sob as you let yourself cry what you just lost. But, as you do, you remind yourself that you don’t really deserve Yunho’s care.

You don’t really deserve his love.

Hurting him is probably the easiest way out he has of whatever he thinks he’s feeling for you.

Walking slowly to the desk, you wipe your tears away and nod to yourself. Yes, this is exactly what needed to happen. Good. Yes. What were you doing before he came in?

You grab the mouse.

Ah, the proposal. Of course.

The noise comes back, louder this time. Unbearable and ear-piercing, it forces you to close your eyes and listen to the beat of your heart before you push the sound away. You can’t afford to crash right now.

You skim through your tasks in your mind and, as you do, the reminder of a little notification you saw on your calendar this morning, with Yunho’s name on it, is what finally lets the panic break through your senses.

“No.”

And you spend the rest of the afternoon typing your escape plan away.

By the time your brother remembers he has an office, it’s dark outside and the proposal is

printed and in a folder placed neatly in the middle of his desk.

He closes the door, raising an eyebrow at the way you’re resting your shoulder against the window behind his chair, the boxes blocking them all piled up in the corner you initially started moving them to this afternoon.

“You’re still here.” He muses and you turn to him, scoffing at the obvious.

“Well, somebody has to work.”

“I was working,” he sounds a little bit offended, but when he passes in front of you and pulls back his chair to sit on it, you faintly smell whisky and cigarettes. “I was at a meeting in the gentlemen's club with Gunho.”

“That’s hardly working, Soohyun.”

Looking over his shoulder, he’s face to face with your unimpressed expression. Of course he went to the stupid club with Gunho, of course he didn’t do shit today.

“Let me remind you that I am, in fact, older than you.”

“And?”

“I deserve respect and zero questioning.”

You hum, slightly amused this time. You know he’s goofing around, you know he’s hardly mad at the implication that you do all the work he’s supposed to do plus yours but there’s this slight worry in his face that’s unusual.

“Is Gunho oppa okay?”

Your brother frowns “Of course he is.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yes, I’m— Why are you asking?”

Shrugging, you turn away from him to look at the city through the window again. You can see the river and the buildings that encapsulate it perfectly and it brings you a strange sense of comfort everytime you zone out and just people watch those who feel free enough to walk along the bridge at this hour, with the cold and the rain and the mess that the leaves leave behind as they fall.

“You look distraught.”

“Well, you’ve been crying, of course I am.”

Interesting. You didn’t think he could tell, which means your face is puffy and you look ugly. Great.

“The mess in this office made me tear up when I got in this afternoon,” you say, swerving around the accusation with ease because there’s no way in hell you’re telling your brother what’s up with you. “I’m going to need your help when it comes to explaining that to dad.” And then you use your chin to point to the proposal sitting in front of him.

“You didn’t have to do this today, I know sales are low but-”

“Oh, that’s not it. That one is sitting on your email. This—” you take two steps, tap the front of the folder with your nails, “is a new thing. A thing he won’t understand nor approve unless you understand it and approve it.”

And then you move back to your position by the window, staring at the lights and the buildings one more time without explaining anything else. When you hear the flick of the pages being turned, you know he understands how serious you’re about it. No space for debating, no time for complaining: you need him to get it done now, and so he will.

Because your brother can be a lot of things but he’s not dumb.

And he can read a room like no other except maybe you.

Seconds turn into minutes and then the clock ticks and blends together as you wait, shoulder hurting by the time your brother lets out a heavy sigh.

“No, I won’t approve this.”

Definitely not what you wanted to hear.

“Excuse me?”

“You want to—”

Defensiveness floats you, over-stimulates your senses and makes you see red at the rejection of your proposal “I want to expand our market, our clientele, our opportunities to keep this company on top. Can you relate?”

“Y/N…” He scowls at your attack, at your tone “You’re running.”

“I’m doing something for the company!”

You think your roar is heard all the way to the first floor. Soohyun stares at you wide-eyed, mouth agape for a second before he closes it again. He has to fix his tie, his suit ironed for once as he takes the jacket off and discards it against the chair.

Brat, princess, annoying little sister. You know that’s what he calls you, he has called you that ever since you were a child and in the most endearing way possible. You have yelled at him before, you have stomped your foot and cried and moaned until you got your way, until he agreed to let you do something.

You have never screamed at him like this before, though.

It shows in the way your chest rises and falls quickly, in the way he has to take a calming breath to not yell back at you. Your eyes are full with tears when he looks up and the crease of his brow disappears because, even though you both could be closer and understand each other better, he still is your brother.

Your brother, who loves you and cares about you in his own way.

It proves more difficult to let him see the real you, more difficult than what it felt with Yunho or with anyone else.

So when the tears fall down your cheeks, you wipe them away quickly and pretend they were never there.

“I don’t know what the hell happened,” he starts, calm, taking a step into your direction and raising his hand and you recoil a bit out of habit. He hesitates for a few seconds but then he’s squeezing your shoulder and pulling you into a tight hug that feels unfamiliar, unusual and weird until it doesn’t. You melt into the embrace because you need it, because it allows you to let go of your frustration and cry it out on your brother’s chest, “but you’re going to explain it to me whether you like it or not. And only then, I will consider saying yes to your proposal.”

When you pull away to look at him, it’s with a pout and a scowl that draws a breathy laugh out of him.

“Stupid.” He pushes you away a little before pulling you back in for a hug, “Always keeping things to yourself instead of letting me take the weight of it all. Stupid.”

It takes a few minutes, but when the hug doesn’t seem necessary and your usual disgust for physical touch comes back into your system, he allows you to take two steps back and clean your face with the back of your hand.

“Haven’t seen you cry since you were a child,” he whispers and you shrug, ignoring the fact that your heart stings at the comment. “What happened?”

You tell him everything that night.

Yunho hasn’t seen you in three months.

Which, at first, came as relief. He didn’t want to see your face ever again after the things you confirmed to him back in your brother's office. Who needed you, right? He told himself his mother loved enough to understand the sudden change of heart, although she doesn’t exactly know what happened between you in the first place.

Maybe he should’ve been honest when he got the chance, back in your house, the afternoon they told you both about the pr relationship.

He was so close to telling the truth, too, when he walked out of the living room and into the hallway to clear his head and not scream at his mother in front of yours. It was there, at the tip of his tongue, and then his mother appeared in front of him with that spark behind her eye that could only mean one thing: it didn’t matter what the truth was, he was going to do this even if it killed him inside.

Her words the next second confirmed it and he wondered right then if his freedom was worth the suffering:

“Either you do this or I’ll make sure you’re never able to dance again, Jeong Yunho. No more public university, no more friends, no more staying at the dorm, just your father’s company,” and he was about to refuse, yet again, she raised her finger as a warning. “I mean it. Y/N is perfect to clear the company’s image but if we can’t use her then we’ll have to work twice as hard as we do now to clear it.”

And Yunho would rather fake an entire life with you than work for the man who single handedly ruined his life the second he was born. He didn’t hate his father, he thought about him like a concept he would never understand even when he desperately tried to, but he would never become part of his company.

Not in the way his mom suggested, anyway.

He just needed to get through college, pretend to be interested in the family business and then land a freelancer job elsewhere, in a foreign company maybe, one who didn’t seem a threat to his father’s and then move on his own when he had enough money saved.

Independence. He needed independence. Strangely enough, he needed you to gain that independence even though you meant the exact opposite to him, in his head.

So he doesn’t know why he yelled at you that afternoon. To take it all out, maybe? He thought he hated you back then, too.

He had already agreed to it in the hallway, to his mom.

He had already agreed to it the second he was born.

Which is crazy because that’s not a normal experience to have. And if you were born a boy or him a girl, none of this would’ve happened in the first place. You’d be friends, like Gunho and Soohyun, and maybe he’d be forced to be with someone that wasn’t shoved down his throat for so long.

Imagine his surprise when he kissed you back that night in his dorm. No, scratch that, imagine his surprise when he started liking you the second you showed your true colors to him.

You’re not perfect by any means, but neither is he and it only took you allowing him to enter a little bit into your mind, into your heart, into your soul, for him to fall for you hard. Or maybe he always liked you? His mind didn’t allow him to sleep at all when you left, but it didn’t allow him to go and follow you that same night either, so the conundrum continued to torture him until it didn’t.

After the fight in the office, he went home and sat in his childhood bedroom for a while. He had dinner with his brother when he came home to look for some documents in his father’s home office and then he went back to his dorm and stared at the ceiling until Yeosang came back from wherever he’s been disappearing to these days.

He pretended everything was fine under Yeosang’s scrutinizing gaze but his friend and roommate knew him so much it only took less than a week for his sudden mood to reach the ears of the rest of the friend group.

Not so subtle messages started entering his phone. He answered all of them and then used the excuse of being on the app to check your chat in case you sent a message and it didn’t notify him for some reason. He told them everything was okay, that he was feeling a bit under the weather.

And he managed to convince them until he checked his calendar one day (the one he shared with you) and realized all foreseeable events had been cancelled. You had another meeting where you two needed to coexist, a company dinner with both your team and Gunho’s team that he needed to go to as your plus one and, surprisingly enough, a paparazzi session scheduled by your mother that you needed to first prepare to and then do.

All of this was explained to him by his PR assistant. It surprised him to see that many postponed and canceled the app. It angered him to assume you canceled everything just because you didn’t want to see him.

He didn’t want to see you either, but he had to. Weren’t you the one who more than once scolded him for not being professional enough?

Ha!

It was his opportunity to tease you about it. And so, when he was told to go to your brother’s office the next day, he had this whole speech ready to go. He would tell you to stop being so dumb, that a kiss and his feelings is something that can be ignored. That he needed you both to forgive and forget.

Yunho needs to continue his plan, even if his own heart breaks in the process. And as he got down the elevator and walked the hall to reach the office, his heart desperately asked him to reconsider. Because there, while pushing the door handle to enter the space he dreaded to be a week prior, Yunho realized he wanted to ask you to be his again.

When he found nothing but Soohyun on his chair, his conviction deflated and his ego sank to the ground.

“Yunho!” Your brother sprung out of his chair, excitingly rounding his desk until he reached for him. Arm around his shoulders, Yunho raised a brow at the sudden animosity. “Were you expecting someone else?”

“N-no.”

“Right.”

He knew Soohyun could call his bullshit from a mile away. But it didn’t matter, he was already sitting down in front of him in the new couches facing each other. He wanted to point it out, but Soohyun beat him to it.

“Your friend Park Seonghwa has amazing taste.”

“Ah,” he breathed out a laugh, a nervous chuckle that made him gasp for air a second after, “yeah. He, um, was top of his class before he graduated.”

“I can tell,” Soohyun nodded and looked around, scrunching his nose in a way that reminded Yunho of you. “Y/N is not going to be available for the next few months.”

What?

“W-what?”

“I know you came here looking for her and we’ve known each other since you were born, Yunho, I think we can skip the shitty formalities.”

“Hyung…”

Soohyun shaked his head, laughing with a relaxed sincerity that is such a Soohyun thing to do “There’s never not been a moment in my life where my sister doesn’t surprise me. I know you know her and I know you two have grown… Closer since this whole PR thing started but I don’t think you can grasp the full Y/N effect until you live with her, you know?”

He didn’t. Not at all.

“She crafted in four, maybe five hours a project that would’ve taken me at least a month to sit down and write,” he explained and Yunho swallowed thickly, the lump on his throat going down. “And she wanted to get it done as soon as she got the approval from dad. So, I hope you understand that she couldn’t exactly give you a notice before postponing and cancelling your shared schedule.”

Ah. So you didn’t want to speak to him at all. He scoffed, annoyed. “So she asked you to tell me?”

“Nope. In fact, I’m pretty sure she would kill me if she knew I’m meeting with you at all.”

Yunho blinked, confused.

“Oh.”

“But I love you like a brother, Yunho. You’re my family, you’re her family even though she hates it and I realized recently that the four of us need to stick together. If everything else goes to shit, we’ll still have us.”

The four of you. Including him and Gunho.

“And as a family, we owe each other honesty. We owe each other loyalty and forgiveness and understanding. You see where I’m going with this?”

“No,” he admitted, frowning a bit. “What does any of that have to do with me and Y/N? We don’t like each other, I know you and Gunho noticed at some point. It’s the way things are supposed to be.” The words had a bitter taste, but he pushed through them.

He sounded like you.

Soohyun let out a sigh and he got up from his seat to squeeze Yunho’s shoulder “She comes back in three months, Yunho. She’s doing something from the company but she has to come back, right?”

Yunho shrugged, pretending the information didn’t spark something close to hope inside of him.

“Understanding. That’s what we owe each other: Love and understanding… And lunch. Your brother actually owns me lunch, feel free to join us.”

Your brother is the weirdest guy ever. However, he realized that as Soohyun walked out of the office and left him to consider his words, that he was already planning on telling you when you came back.

He missed you already, too.

And yet, he didn’t find the courage to tell you at all. It tormented him, greatly, vastly. It consumed him through his classes, his dance rehearsals, his performances. It tugged on his heart the days he had to go to the office and pretend he cared about the company, and through his hang outs with his friends.

They asked about you all the time. He had to remind them you were on a business trip, he had to make up a story, he had to tell them the details were apparently confidential when he didn’t even know where you were.

He could’ve just called you. He could’ve just asked you.

His finger over your contact on his phone while he sits in Wooyoung's room during a house party, in the dark.

He could just ask you.

He–

“Okay, what the fuck is going on with you?”

He drops his phone, the light of the screen going out as it lands down on the bed.

“Holy shit, Mingi!”

A light turns on and he squints his eyes at the sudden intrusion.

“You scared the shit out of me!”

“I walked in here like five minutes ago,” his best friend deadpans and Yunho pouts like a child. “You know, I’m starting to feel like I don’t mean that much to you anymore.”

That offends him deeply and he scowls before tossing a pillow in his direction “What the hell are you even saying?”

“I’m a patient person, Yunho,” he catches the pillow and tosses it back, “and I’ve been waiting for you to tell me what's been going on for the last month and half but you keep saying everything’s fine.”

“Because everything’s f—”

“No, it’s not!”

Mingi is tired, he can tell. He’s been holding his worries inside since the day he told everyone about his relationship with you and Yunho feels awful. This is that part of his life that’s hard to talk about. He only explained to Mingi about the dreadful desire that his father has of making him work for him around a year ago and he’s known Mingi for so long at this point that it does feel a little like he doesn’t trust him enough.

But it’s hard and he has kept his feelings and desires buried for so long he thinks he might’ve accidentally dragged his feelings for you along with it and now they’re all mixed up and scratching the walls of their enclosure, begging to come out of him.

“I’m not used to push people around to tell them about their feelings but you’re my best friend and—”

“I kissed Y/N.”

Mingi stops mid sentence, blinking a few times before moving to sit beside him on the bed. Yunho hopes, as he faintly hears the music outside of the room getting louder and Wooyoung screaming something that he can’t exactly make up, that Mingi doesn’t think he’s suddenly confessing his afflictions out of pressure.

Instead, the words came out of his mouth like he couldn’t resist telling them in the first place. After keeping it to himself for weeks, nearly three months, it finally feels like breathing a little.

“O… kay.” He says as a response and it’s Yunho’s turn to blink at him in disbelief, Mingi laughs a little. “So you kissed the girl you like. Isn’t that something to be happy about?” Yunho gapes at the insinuation of Mingi knowing he likes you, except, it doesn’t come as a surprise. His friends are very observant, to his absolute horror they can’t be fooled. “Did she reject you? Is that what’s going on?”

“No! I mean, yes. We… She kissed me first!” He defends himself, taking a quick inhale before cursing softly under it. “And then I kissed her. And then we kissed and she left and she ghosted me for a little, actually. And then I saw her in her office, that's not actually her office but her brother’s, and I… I kind of confronted her? And then she rejected me.”

By the time he finishes his rambles, Mingi looks amused and a little worried.

“You have to be in this… Fake relationship with her and that’s tormenting you, then? Because she rejected you?”

“No, that’s not… We’re not— I am, we are still in the fake relationship, it’s just that she’s gone.”

“She died?!”

“What? No! No, she’s,” Yunho closes his eyes, laughing at the assumption because he knows Mingi said it to get that exact response in return, “she’s not dead. She, um, she’s on that business trip.”

“Oh, that’s right! You told us—”

“I lied.”

“What?”

His poor best friend looks confused beyond belief and that guilt of not telling him everything creeps in once more, threatening to shut him up until he reminds himself Mingi is trustworthy and deserves some clarity.

“She is on a business trip, I just don’t know why or how or where she is,” he finishes softly, his lips in a line and revealing just how uneasy that makes him feel. “I don’t know where she is and I think that she left because I— Well, when she rejected me we didn’t end up on the best of terms.”

“So you think it’s your fault.” Mingi finishes with a nod, letting out a sigh a second after. “Well, it’s not.”

“It kind of is, though.”

“Yunho, it’s not. She’s a grown up, if she decides to run away from her feelings instead of facing them she’s kind of a dumbass.”

“Mingi!” Yunho’s pushing him a bit with his hand on his shoulder before he can help it.

“She is!” Laughing, his best friend takes no offense at the push and instead pushes him back, teasingly. “Remember that one party you had at your place, when your parents were gone on that business trip with your brother?”

“Oh, that party?”

“Yeah, that party,” Mingi nods, looking away for a second, something shining in his face Yunho realizes he’s longing for. He wants that to shine on him, too: the security that being with the right person brings you. “Love tried to run away from an argument that night, too. I just didn’t let her.”

“Are you calling your girlfriend a dumbass?”

“Yeah,” and instead of saying it with a grudge, the confirmation comes out of a place filled with, well, love. “She was a dumbass back then, at least.”

“Y/N is not like that at all,” Yunho says after a bit, “she’s not a dumbass for running away from this. Our thing… It’s kind of different. We’ve been put in this situation since we were kids and we hated, like actually hated each other for a while. We treated each other so badly, Mingi, you have no idea the way she gets under my goddamn skin sometimes,” and despite saying it like it’s a bad thing, he can’t help but smile. Mingi notices this, too. “You know I don’t have the best relationship with my parents, right? Well, hers is way worse.”

“Wait, you told us that this relationship was something to clear your company’s image?” Mingi recalls and Yunho feels another pang of guilt against his ribcage.

“It is! It totally is, it’s just… Well, she was born a girl and I was born a boy and our parents have a very, um, old-fashioned concept of love and what it’s supposed to look like. It was decided a long time ago that we were going to end up together.”

There’s a few seconds of silence before Mingi bursts out laughing so hard it drowns the noise from outside the room.

“That’s funny to you?” Yunho asks, light-hearted and smiling at the sound of his best friend's laugh.

“No, no, it’s just… Your parents are forcing you two together for some weird legacy, bloodline reason and you fell for the girl you’re in a fake relationship with and you’re supposed to hate?”

Now that he hears it like that…

“Basically, yeah.”

“Oh, San’s girl is about to have a field trip with this information.”

“Dude!”

“What? It’s dumb! Y/N is a dumbass, you’re dumber for not just calling her and telling her you miss her and you’re both really fucking dumb for not telling your parents to fuck off. You’re grown!”

Yunho sighs, shaking his head. “She doesn’t like me like that, Mingi.”

“Yes, she does!” He laughs again, covering his mouth with his hand once he realizes Yunho is getting annoyed with it. “Yunho… Ugh, is this how you all felt those few months where I was crying over Love?”

“I didn’t feel anything.”

“Because you’re a puppy,” Mingi’s shoulder brushes against his in a not so subtle way of teasing him and his eyes blank in pretend annoyance. “You are. And you’re a pretty great guy, Yunho. If she doesn’t like you back it’s not the end of the world.”

Yunho nods, but he’s suddenly not as convinced as he should be.

“And you’re also one of the strongest people I know, in here.” Mingi’s finger taps over his heart on his chest. “But you don’t have to carry your burdens on your own. This is all… It all seems pretty dumb to me but it must be really hard on you, hm? Especially since you want to live a life separate from your family, right?”

That, Mingi knows. “Mhm.”

“And so does Y/N?”

“No, I’m not so sure about that,” he murmurs back and his heart aches when he thinks about you and the way you’re treated home, in the way your mother has treated you in front of him. “I think she thinks she’s nothing without her family but I also think she was raised to believe that. They… Well, even her brother has a hard time seeing how fucking amazing she is.”

“Is she?” Mingi drops his head to the side, doubt and a little prejudice on his expression. “Is she fucking amazing, Yun?”

“She’s… She’s such a good person. Which is really crazy for me to say, because I thought she was a spoiled brat for a long time. And she is! But she’s also… She cares so deeply and she’s enjoys painting and she’s so great with kids and—”

“And you have it bad,” Mingi laughs again, shoving him against the mattress with a push and standing up from the bed. Yunho laughs, recognizing the amount of pushing as tipsy Mingi behavior and nothing else. “So bad. Were you about to call her?”

He feels called out and a little shy about it. He blushes and all.

“Maybe.”

When his focus goes back to his phone, it’s when he hears it.

And his heart drops to his ass.

A distant curse and the sound of a call ending is enough to send his mind into a new, different spiral.

“Was that…?”

Yunho picks up the phone, checks the last call he made and your name appears next to the nine minutes and a half his conversation with Mingi lasted.

His mouth runs dry, his throat closes as he turns to screen to show it to Mingi.

“Holy fuck.”

“What do I do?”

“That’s insane. San’s girl is going to have the best night of her life.”

“Mingi!” He blocks the phone, tosses it on the bed and gets up to shake his best friend's shoulders. “What. Do. I. Do. Now.”

Your heart still beats like the day you not-so-accidentally listened to a conversion you shouldn’t have.

There’s the distant memory of your phone vibrating under your pillow at the hotel you were staying at for the night. It happened only a few weeks ago, near the three month mark into your trip around the country, looking for businesses worth the investment in little towns. That far into your adventure, you had met at least a dozen small companies worth every penny inside your father’s pocket, more so than the one’s already signed. You had met wonderful people who didn’t exactly know who you were and you had been treated so kindly it made the ache in your chest go away.

At least for a little bit.

So when you sleepily read Yunho’s name on your screen at two am in the morning, the sting of the pain was unfamiliar and the first thing that crossed your mind was that something bad happened to your brother. Or his brother. Or him.

What other reason did he have to call you when he left that office hating you all over again?

“H-hello?”

Nothing. Just silence and maybe a distant melody, the ruffling of the phone against something.

“Yunho? If you called me to piss me off I swear to God—”

“Holy shit, Mingi! You scared the shit out of me!”

Mingi?

There’s a deeper voice you can hear on Yunho’s end and that’s when you realized he didn’t mean to call you in the first place.

And you should've hung up there. But you didn’t and so you listened to their entire conversation and realized one thing:

Mingi was right. You are a dumbass.

And Yunho is even dumber, but that’s something you would have to rub on his face when you gather the courage to see him again. That day is not today, you made sure of it.

You see, you’ve changed just a tiny bit these past three months. It’s not like you went to a spiritual retreat but by crafting that proposal while fleeing your feelings and the mess that you made with just one kiss, you came around something you never experienced before. Not fully, at least:

Freedom.

You spent Christmas and New Years all alone, with no one dear to you around and you saw the fireworks from your hotel window and you felt and suddenly you understood what Yunho sees in in sleeping in that tiny dorm with a roommate and a pile of dirty clothes in a corner, with no pushing their way into the room to pick his messes up and no one making sure he eats at the correct time, the correct meals and the correct porcelain for the day.

No rules, no conditions, just a place where he can be free and himself.

You did all of that while also making sure you didn’t abandon your priorities. You went to sleep late because you wanted to and then you went to bed early the next day because there were no rules, no events you needed to attend to, no photographers asking you to smile.

There was no one to tell you that you looked fat after eating one delicious, non dietetic meal. There was no devil (your mom) whispering in your ear how everyone would notice the carbs, the bloat and the tiny zits.

There was no one there to stop you from cutting your hair. And so you did. What once was kept long and straight in order to keep a traditional, clean look, now rested in waves on your shoulders,

It makes it so much easier to walk out of the shower, in less time too!

And although your heart yearned for Yunho everyday, especially after hearing his conversation with Mingi at two in the morning when you weren’t even supposed to, it was the first time in years you felt happy enough to drop the mask, the pretences, the good posture and even the makeup.

Yup, you went out without makeup three times! That’s some information that would send your mother into cardiac arrest at the very least.

So now, as you try to move fast through a college campus that’s not yours, with a box that contains something you call an apology and it might not even be, your heart is beating with the same amount of strength just at the thought of all this backfiring.

Because you’re not ready to see Yunho, not yet. You want him to come and find you, to come and tell you if he wants to accept you back into his life, under his terms, after you so insistently kicked him out of yours.

You sneakily checked his calendar. You bribed your assistant, who bribed his assistant, so now his schedule for the week is in a screenshot on your phone and you have checked it four times to confirm this is a good time to be here.

He has dinner with his family and yours (who don’t even know you’re back yet) at his house, on the hill, which is forty minutes away from his campus. That’s exactly the window of opportunity you’ve been waiting for since coming back.

And you came back a week ago.

You may or may not have memorized the code for the door from that only time you came to his dorm and so it’s not really a surprise when you quickly enter it and hear a screech behind you when you are busy closing the door.

When you turn around, Yeosang is shirtless and covering his chest with his hands “Y/N!”

“Yeosang.” You say with a small bow, struggling to not laugh and turning your face away, looking at the postered up wall. “So nice to see you here, in your room.”

“W-what are you… I mean how do you… Should I call Yun—”

“No!” When you turn to him again, eyes wide with worry, he has a shirt on and his phone in his hand. “Please don’t… Let me do something real quick and then you can speak to him, okay?”

You start to fumble with the box, placing it at the end of the bed and opening it up fast. You throw the lid on top of Yeosang’s bed and then get to work, pulling everything out.

“Oh, I don’t know. I hate lying to my friends, Y/N.”

“And you’re such a great friend for that but you won’t be lying to him because I’m not asking you to do that.”

“I wouldn’t even if you did ask me to.”

“Well, I don’t know about that…”

Okay, so you changed a little bit. Not a lot.

You sigh, struggling with the placement of your gift/apology because Yunho changed his sheets and so the color scheme it’s not perfect anymore.

“What’s all of this?”

“Yunho enjoys dancing,” you start and you see him nod from the corner of your eye, so you smile. “He told me he did it to have this dorm but I didn’t buy it at all, and so when I was on my trip I… Sort of thought of him a little bit, not a lot.” You clear your throat, a slight heat creeping up your cheeks. “But I didn’t want to wait another day without giving this to him. I just… I can’t exactly be here when he sees it.”

You finish, turning back to Yeosang and you realize you’re out of breath, nervousness creasing your brows.

“Would you please let me know how he reacts to it the next time we see each other?” You ask softly, almost shy and Yeosang visibly relaxes at the tone. It makes you feel understood somehow and so you relax a little bit, too. “If you’re here when he gets here I mean, um, you are all dressed up.”

When you point to his outfit, he seems to remember that he was, in fact, getting ready to go out when you walked in. His hair is wet but styled and all.

“Oh, I was… I was just going to the club.” He points to a camcorder on his beat and you raise a curious brow, but don’t really ask anything. “I’m making a dance documentary for one of my classes. Yunho is in it, too.”

That peaks your interest and he laughs, possibly at the way you light up at the mention of your fake-boyfriend-possible-love-of-your-life name. “He is?”

“Yes, he’s… A big part of it, actually, but I go to this club to get footage and… You should ask him to explain it to you.”

Now, at that, your smile sure turns sour because there’s no actual way of knowing if he wants to see you again or not.

After all, he didn’t attempt to contact you after that phone call.

You don’t know if he noticed that he called you, either.

It’s kind of killing you inside, all the space you need to fill with assumptions instead of facts.

“Sure, um…”

“I can stay until he comes back.”

“Oh, I don’t want to ruin your plans for the night, Yeosang. You should go and—”

“I want to see it. I want to record it,” he explains, looking over your shoulder and into the gift in Yunho’s bed. “He says he’s not sure, but I think he wants to dedicate his life to it, you know?”

“To dancing?”

Yeosang nods.

Your voice sounds very small when you ask him “Do you think he’s going to like it?”

He smiles, softly, endeared almost.

“He’s going to love it,” he assures you, “And your haircut, too.”

You chuckle at that, touching the ends of it that rest on your shoulder “You think?”

“Yeah! It suits you, actually.”

“Thank you, Yeosang.”

This time, and after making small talk with his roommate, you leave Yunho’s dorm with a smile on your face instead of tears running down your cheeks.

There’s exhaustion pouring out of Yunho by the time he reaches his dorm door. He closes his eyes, rests his forehead against the cool wood of it and lets out a sigh to collect himself. He needs to have the energy to take a shower, after all.

It’s not as late as he expected it to be, the digital clock on the wall glows blue and neon and lets him know it’s around nine thirty. Good, that’s great.

He misses you.

And it’s hard not to think of you when he’s surrounded with people who know you, who bring you up when it’s time to talk about positive results for the company, or the time you organized an event for you mother because your brother had no taste to pick the venue or catering or whatever the fuck they were going on about tonight.

It didn’t escape him that Soohyun glanced at him every time your parents brought you up and he wonders if it shows in his face just how much he longs to see you again.

He’s thinking about your face when the room unexpectedly lights up and Yeosang is standing on his own bed, in the corner, smiling like a creep. Yunho almost falls as a curse slips past his lips and he stares at his friend like something is deeply wrong with him.

Because it is.

It’s almost comical how breathless he is as he asks him: “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“Hey!”

“—Standing in the corner like a serial killer.”

“Turn around, Yunho.”

“What?”

“Turn,” he repeats, slowly, as he climbs out of the bed, the camera pointed in his direction still. “Around.”

So he does.

And what he sees… Confuses him. Until it doesn’t.

There’s a few things on his bed: There’s some polaroid pictures lined up, different people he doesn’t know in them, all in different traditional attire and Yunho can see there’s inscription in them, the dates all read from early november to two weeks ago.

There’s tickets to a competition that’s supposed to be sold out. He knows, he tried to get a ticket the second they announced it but couldn’t. The top dance teams are going to battle for some bucks but, most importantly, they’re going to battle to keep the dying scene alive.

A book titled Why Dance Matters next to a golden retriever plushie with a suit that makes him giggle out of the pure weirdness of it.

There’s a copy of grease with some signatures in the front. He can make out something that reads as Barry Pearl in it, he thinks. His mind reels at what that means.

A cd in a clear case with a beautiful sunset and a building he recognizes immediately as the orphanage you took him to. Six silhouettes he can only imagine symbolizes him, Jaemi, Hyunjoon, his brother, Soyi and you.

But what confirms it’s something you did, it’s the envelope that sits in the middle of it all. It's waxed and sealed with something that looks regal, elegant and, when he picks it up to see the seal up close, he smells your perfume.

He turns to Yeosang, eyes watery, in request of an explanation.

“Open it! I’ve been dying to read it but I’m a great friend,” Yeosang almost wiggles with excitement and Yunho’s eyes water a little. “Or so she said.”

“She was here?”

“Y/N?” His friend asks in return, weirded out. “Well, yes.”

“When?”

“An… hour and something ago.”

“Where did she go?”

“Are you okay?”

He’s speechless, envelope shaking a bit in his hand as he pushes the need to run to you away. He doesn’t know what this means, he doesn’t know what the letter says either. His heartbeats are thumping on his ears and muffling Yeosang’s words a little bit.

He needs to calm down.

He needs to read the letter. He’s–

“You’re crying,” Yeosang turns off the camcorder, closing the screen and tossing it softly on his bed before taking a few steps in his direction. Concern is written all over his face, a little bit of guilt too. “I shouldn’t have let her in, right? I knew something was off with you but I had no idea that you two had fought or—”

“You didn’t do anything wrong.” Yunho quickly dries off his tears, shaking his head at his friend’s anxious apology. “I just… I missed her so much, Yeo.”

“Oh.”

“So fucking much.”

“Yunho…” He closes his eyes and jumps a little a Yeosang’s sudden embrace, but he’s grateful for it. Envelope trap between his chest and Yeosang’s rib, he takes a bated breath filled with things he can’t quite burden his friend with.

He remembers Mingi’s words loud and clear, but the only thing Yunho wants to do right now is find where you are so he can see you again. Hug you again. Kiss you again.

That night, after he realized he had dialed your number by mistake, he had a full on breakdown in Wooyoung’s room and it took Mingi and Mingi’s girlfriend to talk him out of fleeing the country out of embarrassment, out of guilt. He thought back then he had definitely lost you, because the consensus the three of them came to was a ‘let her reach you if she wants to clear things out’ instead of a ‘call her and explain it yourself before she has the chance to reach out to you first’.

Mingi said you had to at least prove you had any interest in making things right, in fighting to at least keep your friendship with him.

As he opens up the letter, he immediately knows he should’ve just called you.

He even forgets Yeosang is right beside him, looking away to give him some privacy to read your words without actually letting go of the embrace, just in case he needs it. Yunho knows this, he’s thankful, his legs shaking with need to go after wherever you are.

And he’s about to ask again but, as he turns his head to regard his friend and explains the letter a little, he’s one step ahead of him.

“She’s staying in a hotel, not her house.” Yunho opens and closes his mouth, about to ask him the name of the hotel when he shakes his head. “The luxury one in Itaewon. What? Did you think I would let her go without getting the information first?”

Yunho shrugs, Yeosang clicks his tongue in disappointment, letting go of him and putting, at least, ten steps between the both of them.

“She’s very talkative when she’s not with a big crowd, Yun. Now move.”

“I think I—” He starts to say but stops midway, looking down at the letter and then at his friend again.

Yeosang gives him a soft smile, the one he curves on his lips when he’s endeared with something, with someone. Yunho went clubbing with him once, he knows the smile very well.

“I know,” he says in a murmur and then sighs like it’s a task to be around him. “Now, let’s go. We’re going to the same area anyway and I could use the ride. There’s the box.”

In the car (one he ordered from an app, not his family car), his leg moves up and down and his hands tremble with anticipation and, as the imposing structure of the hotel comes into view while he stares at the window, he swears he feels at ease.

For the first time in months, he feels like he’s home.

And it’s all because he’s about to see you again.

Yeosang is not a very discreet person. He’s soft spoken and he looks like he cares about his friend’s a great deal, but he has that clumsiness of a person who’s used to being transparent about things.

He asked you if you just got home with a spark of hopefulness in his eye, like he couldn’t wait to clue in Yunho about it, like he knew what he was going to do when he read your letter and saw your gift.

Yeosang asked you like Yunho had already forgiven you and that had filled you silly head with warmth and hope and expectations you shouldn’t have because, as far as you noticed, Yunho is not the most honest friend to have.

So you asked yourself if Yeosang knew about the fight, if the rest of his friends knew.

And you still told Yeosang where you are staying.

There’s only one lamp helping with lighting up the bedroom, the city outside of it alive and busy like it always is. The amount of lights beyond the river bring you comfort, something familiar spreads on your chest when you take them in and you admit, for the first time in three months plus the week you’ve been staying here, that you love this stupid city even if it makes you feel trapped most of your days.

But here? In this space that you have made yours over the last seven days? You love it.

Your hair is wet and your face is clean of any product. You told yourself to go about your night routine like you weren’t expecting something else to happen. That way, when it doesn’t because you feel that what you did is unforgivable as much as it is cruel, you won’t be as disappointed.

So your face is moisturized and you have your nightgown underneath the silk bath this hotel provides and you’re totally not thinking about Yunho being in the same city as you, you are totally not freaking out over the reaction to your gift, you’re chill.

You’re chilling, you’re cool.

And the way your heart leaps when you hear a knock at the door means nothing, because you ordered room service like thirty minutes ago. It’s fine.

He’s probably not showing up.

So why the hell is he there when you open the door? And where’s your room service when you need it?

“Yunho!”

“Y/N…”

The atmosphere turns weird and tense right away and you grab onto the frame of the door as he stares at you with indecipherable emotion in his eyes. Is he happy to see you? Is he here to curse you out?

Is he mad? He’s totally upset at you. He is, he’s… Skinnier, just a little bit. His hair is lighter, too, like a brownish blond that suits him and his skin tone and he looks so good even if there’s dark circles under his eyes.

You missed him so much.

“Come in! Um…” You say after what feels like hours of silence, of you two just staring at each other with a little disbelief, opening up the room door wider and stepping aside so he can pass right by you.

His cologne makes you a little dizzy, drives you a little crazier but there’s not enough time to focus on that because he has the box you left earlier in his dorm in one hand and your letter in the other.

You close the door, taking in a little calming breath that does nothing to appease the erratic beat of your heart.

The eighty two square meters of this room suddenly feel like ten and when he puts the box down on the coffee table of the immediate tiny living room space of this suite, you feel like it’s over.

He turns around, a hand on his hip and the shade that the lamp casts on him doesn’t allow you to determine if he’s clenching his jaw or not, if he’s upset or not, if he’s—

Yunho raises his hand, the one holding your letter.

“What’s this?”

Oh, he’s so upset. Okay, good, you foresaw this the moment you decided to give him something. It’s okay, you tell yourself as you walk the steps separating you and take the letter from his hand, you can deal with this.

And, although you have changed a little in the months you didn’t see him, there’s a long way to go before your defensiveness stops being the only way you know how to approach a situation targeting you and your ego.

“If you didn’t like it, you could’ve just thrown it away or burned it, Yunho, you didn’t have to come all the way here—”

“Read it to me.”

You look up at him, blinking once and then twice at his request.

“Didn’t you—”

“Princess,” he says, letting out a tiny breath in between his words, “read it to me. Please.”

Now that you’re physically closer to him, you can pick up this gentleness in his features that you know well. It’s the same expression he had back in the orphanage, when Jiwoo took Jaemi in her arms and he was left staring at you with his cheek pressed on his forearm while he rested on the table. You think about that exact moment a lot, late at night, when the only thing overwhelming your thoughts it’s him.

You swallow the lump on your throat down as you take out the letter from the envelope. It’s a little dark but there’s really no need for you to read the words when you know them by heart. You wrote and rewrote them at least a hundred times before deciding the letter looked good and that it wasn’t too long, too obnoxious, too sweet, too cringy. Just the right amount of emotion in case it came to bite you in the ass, like now.

“S-sure,” you let out a sigh, past caring if he sees you’re a little affected by the situation as a whole. “Yunho, I’m sure you’re reading this after seeing the gift layed out in front of you. Take it as an expression of gratitude for all the times the mere thought of you got me through a day, even in this time when we’re supposed to be upset at each other. I think about you a lot and I think about what I did, too. I’m— This all sounds to stupid and formal,” you criticize your own work without thinking it through, frowning and looking up at him. “This letter is supposed to be an apology and it reads like an email.”

Yunho shakes his head, a tiny smile tugging on his lips. “Go on, please.”

Sniffing because you feel uncomfy and vulnerable, you continue.

“I’m sure you’re wondering why now and not three months ago. Well, it takes a lot for me to defy the expectations people put on my shoulders. As you know, my last name is laced with success I didn’t work on and letting go of things you’re used to is hard, but I did. I went away, I learned, I grew up a little bit and in my journey the only constant was you. Not the fight we had, not the way we have treated each other throughout the many years I’ve known you. I’ve always seen your life from the outside even if I was a part of it, I’ve seen your social media posts and wondered if I wasn’t deserving of the same kindness you display to your friends on them but, as you proved to me that I am deserving of it, I understood that it wasn’t your voice in my head telling me I didn’t, it was mine.

“Not my mother’s voice, not anyone else's, but mine. Accepting that was hard but I did it and I did it on my own but as a result of the impact you had on me the second you turned around and held me with the care I now think I deserve.” Something drops on the paper, wets it and blends the ink of the pen you used together and you realize there’s tears running down your cheeks. “I can’t ask you to forgive me for what I did. But just know that I kissed you because I wanted to, not because you were being kind to me. And I pushed you away because, out of everyone that has come and gone from my life, you’re the only person who has the possibility to break my heart and mend it the times you seem fit…”

You look up and to the side to wipe your tears. You’d pat yourself on the back for how you read this to him, without any stutters or mistakes, but the truth it’s that melancholy swallows you as you reach the end of the letter. It’s more emotional than what you’d remembered, too, now that you’re reading it outloud and in front of the man you love.

There’s no need for you to read what comes next because you want to say it looking at him.

“And I’m sorry. I love you and I don’t love you just because we kissed or because we are forced to be together. I love you because you’re part of me, because you’ve always been. I love you and I can’t stand to lose you. Again, I’m sorry,” you repeat, looking down at the words again before finishing in a whisper: “Yours, Y/N.”

There’s this pregnant silence that follows that makes you fidget on your feet. It takes a second for you to gather yourself together again, wipe your cheeks and look up at Yunho. There’s disbelief in his expression and you wince in preparation for what’s about to follow.

“Like I said,” you start again, extending the letter to him so he can take it, “I don’t expect you to forgive me. I don’t expect you to do anything, really, a-and I understand if this is all too childish or too cringy for you to say something back. I don’t need you to say something back! Really, I don’t,” you laugh amidst the sudden verbal vomit and shrug, not even looking at him anymore. “I j-just wanted you to know. And I mean it: If you don’t want me that way, it’s completely fine, Jeong. I also settle for being your friend, i-if that’s easier for everyone— For you, if that’s easier for you,” you correct yourself, “because I don’t really care what anyone thinks anymore, including my mother, she can go fuck herself and she can win all she wants if that means keeping you in my life and—”

He grabs the letter and in a second he uses the tight hold you have on it to push you closer, tearing the paper in the process.

“Kim Y/N, you big dummy.”

He lets go of the letter and you do too, hands resting on his chest as you stumble forward a little, the paper falling to your feet as his right hand settles on your cheek, the left one on the nape of your neck.

“Excuse me?”

Yunho laughs, breathy and pointed while his eyes scan your face. “You heard me.”

“Are trying to piss me off, Jeong Yun—”

This time, when Yunho kisses you, it doesn’t feel new. It doesn’t feel like defiance, it doesn’t feel like you’re breaking the rules or letting your mom win.

It feels like coming come.

The ache in your soul stops the second his lips move against yours, deliciously slow and firm while he holds you close. His hands shift, they move the satin robe as they descend and find their place on your back, on your hip. Your chest collides with his with a soft nudge forwards and you sigh against his mouth, welcoming the way his hands tighten on you, feeling finally at ease in his embrace.

You thought, when preparing his gift, writing the apology letter and then earlier at his dorm, that your self control was something to be admired. Yeah, you love him deeply and all, but you had the restraint to give him the opportunity to decide what he wanted to do with all the things you told him.

Now you think that there’s nothing in the world that could stop you from kissing his lips raw, from pulling his hair a bit when your fingers tangle in it, from drinking the sound you get in return.

Fuck your self control. You want Yunho like you never wanted anyone or anything before.

That’s why you’re grateful when he pumps the break, lips leaving yours and breath on your lips. When you open your eyes, he’s already staring at you. With the way he’s holding you, you barely have to get on your tippy toes to nuzzle his nose against yours with care and the action reminds you of that day at the office, before you fucked up, but the feeling is way different.

This time, your gut tells you that whatever is about to happen with the two of you is something that’s going to linger, that he’s going to stay one way or another and your heart thumps loudly at the thought of having Yunho in your life forever.

Four months ago, the thought would’ve given you a headache.

Now, it heats up your cheeks as his hands return to your face.

“I’m sorry, I had to kiss you. I also should’ve gone after you that night, in my dorm, I— I’m also sorry, Y/N,” he lets go of you softly, putting a step in between the two of you so he can take your hands in his. “I’m sorry I cornered you in the office and I’m sorry I expected you to just… Drop all of your beliefs and convictions for me. That’s the most delusional thing I’ve ever done.”

“It’s okay—”

“But I love you,” he breathes out and you feel like the air it’s been knocked out of your lungs. “I’m a big pretender, you know? I… I try to be as positive as someone can be, I try to be aloof and I ignore a bunch of things in order to let myself be distracted from what my family expects of me, so I couldn’t understand when you didn’t want to do the same. I do now.

“And I don’t let myself enjoy a bunch of things either, Y/N, but I do allow myself little moments of happiness. When I’m with my friends or when I dance, I tend to have those little moments and then I allowed myself to see you in a new light and I… If I thought those two things brought me some sort of respite from my sorrows, I had no idea you of all people could feel like… Like…”

“Home?” You offer, your voice a sweet whisper full of understanding.

“Like home.”

He swallows tightly, averting his eyes to the floor for a second.

“I’m sorry for not returning that call,” he says, his brows creasing a little bit, “I took advice from drunk people in love, so I thought I was doing the right thing by letting you come to me.”

“I was doing the same,” you whisper back, shrugging his worries away. “Letting you come to me, that is. I couldn’t even— I mean, I should’ve given you all of this in person instead of dropping it off like a scaredy cat.”

“You did hear the conversation though?”

“Yeah. Mingi called me a dumbass and I’m not going to forgive him.”

He laughs, shaking his head in disbelief. “He was right, a little bit.”

“He called you dumber,” you return, frowning at his jab even though you know he didn’t intend any ill with it. “So yeah, you could say he was right.”

There’s a few seconds where he just stares: at your hands, twined together with ease and familiarity. At your face, a loving smile lifts the corners of his mouth up before he steps closer again and lets his thumbs trace the curve of your mouth, your cheekbone, your nose.

“I missed you so much, my love.”

Oh.

Fuck.

You warm to the pet name immediately, its significance running through you like a shudder and making you gasp softly, almost imperceptibly. You guess it shows on your expression, the smile on Yunho’s lips widening as his knuckle presses on your cheek gently.

“You liked that I called you that?”

“Shut up.”

“My love,” he repeats, pecking your lips, “I love you. I’ve… I actually don’t know if I’ve loved you this way all this time, but I’m sure I loved you to some degree. I cared— I care about you.”

You tear up again.

That voice that tells you that you don’t deserve him comes back, a distant murmur of it this time, but it’s still there.

For a good reason, too.

“Forgive me for being so horrible to you all these years,” he makes a face, like he can’t believe you’re apologizing for that right now. “I wish I could say I did it because I was a vain, stupid child but it was all very much thought through.”

“I know.”

“And I was horrible. I’ve been thinking about it for weeks now, I—”

His lips press softly against yours again. “Stop it. I was horrible to you too, we were both stupid and childish and we had our reasons.”

“Did we, though?” Your nose scrunches while you truly think about all the times you could’ve been nicer to each other and chose to be mean instead.

His eyes water a little. You frown, fingers tightening around his wrists, you turn to kiss his palm.

“What’s wrong?”

“I just love you a lot,” he sniffs and you catch with your knuckle the tears that roll down his cheeks. He closes his eyes, letting out a breath and untensing his shoulders at the same time. “And it feels so good to be able to say it.”

“When did you figure it out?” Curiosity takes over you for a second, you allow yourself to wonder about it without any guilt now.

He hums, thinking about it with a pout on his lips “Like I said, I think I’ve always loved you to some degree. I just… Didn’t know it. I’ve never loved anyone like this before but I think that when I saw you with Jaemi and my heart felt like it was about to come out of my mouth, I kind of knew.”

“So when I kissed you…”

“I knew,” he nods, “and I should’ve been more insistent when I was trying to talk to you. Go to your house, do something, but I’m… A little inexperienced in this type of stuff.”

“Because you have no bitc—”

You’re already giggling before he interrupts. “And you love me like I am, so now what?”

The smile on your lips is so wide you have to look to the side, focus on the shadow of the chair in the tiny living room space for a second to compose yourself.

It doesn’t really work, because he’s smiling as hard when you turn back to him.

And then, for the first time since he got here, he seems to notice the length of your hair. He brushes it back with his fingers, the strands barely damp now, and gasps when he reaches the tips at your shoulders. “You cut it!”

With a nod, you laugh at his sudden surprise. “I did, I’m about to get disowned.”

“Oh, your mom is going to pass out at the very least.” He agrees right away and you laugh again before he joins, his teeth nipping at his lower lip for a second. “She’ll forgive you, though.”

“You think so?”

“You look too beautiful to stay mad at you for long.”

Oh, your poor heart. You shake your head, diverting the attention from you by brushing the strands of his hair that rest on his forehead back.

“Blond?”

“Kind of, yeah. It’s this… Honey something that my hairdresser suggested.”

Humming, you let your fingernails scratch his scalp gently as they go down, hands resting on his shoulder when you’re done. “They did a great job,” you say before you click your tongue, cocking your head to the side. “Are you sure they weren’t just calling you honey and you misunderstood?”

His brow lifts, the corner of his lips does as well and he’s ducking his head so he can speak in that cocky tone of his you’re so used to. Only this time, there’s an edge to it that sends a shiver down your spine.

“And If they did?”

You know what he’s asking, you know why he’s asking. You find yourself curious about this type of teasing on his behalf, so you allow it to happen.

In your own terms.

“Did it happen?” You return, leaning even closer, hands grasping the lapel of his suit jacket and tugging on it, pretending to smooth it out with your palms afterwards.

“Princess…”

When you look at him, there’s this fiery energy that crosses his expression and it makes your imagination run wild with possibilities.

Now that you both got through the emotional part of your reunion with tears, with overdue confessions and very necessary apologies, what’s left to resolve is this pent up tension that’s always been something more. With the way Yunho behaves sometimes, so proud and tough, you have a vague idea of what it could be like.

And it makes you giddy with anticipation.

You would like to turn your assumptions into facts. So you play dumb, fakely perking up when he calls you, blinking with pretend innocence a few times to sell the act. “Hm?”

Catching the way his jaw ticks at your behavior, you realize that the rush that went through your body every time you got under his skin was not out of the pleasure of winning.

It was because you liked it.

Very much so, that the way his eyes scan over your body like he's deciding what to do with you and your attitude make you let out a tiny puff of air that he drinks right up when he crowds you again, hands on your hips and lips on yours once more.

His mouth doesn't move with any trace of carefulness anymore. Before, you were able to tell he needed to kiss you, longingly, with all the things he couldn't say before on his lips against yours. Now, his tongue makes its way past your teeth and swipes against yours in a way that makes you stumble backwards, almost leaving the tight squeeze of his hands behind.

Yunho catches you, walks with you until you feel the arm of the tiny couch supporting your weight as well.

He leans in a little bit to help you up on it, his body immediately in between your legs, his palms making their way downwards. One is on your lower back, thumb absentmindedly caressing the area, and the other one is pressing right next to your leg on the couch so he can bite your lower lip and give both your lungs a bit of a break before diving into your mouth again. You wrap your arms around his neck and keep him close.

Closer, closer, closer. You need his body pressing against yours as you try to keep up with the intensity of his kisses. You've never been kissed like this before, never with so much love and passion and want and need.

You've been kissed while drunk and touched while high in the past, you've been fucked by people you don't remember the names of and you had dropped the sleeping around once you graduated college.

There's so much of your youth you wish you've done sober. Because now, when his tongue catches a soft moan and his hand moves from your lower back to your leg, under your robe, you don't know why you freak out.

No, you know exactly why.

Breaking the kiss, you take two seconds to look at the plush of Yunho’s lips after being deliciously smothered with yours. You're both breathing hard, chests rising and falling in tandem and gasps for air filling the room.

His hand moves higher, measuring your reaction and you know he's about to ask if it's okay to touch you when you grab his wrist and stop his movements.

“We don't have to—”

“Is not that,” you say right away but you're both speaking over each other.

“I mean, there's a lot we need to talk about. I want you to tell me about your trip and—”

“Sure, we can do that later,” you nod. “Right now, I'm— I mean, let me turn off the light and you can touch me all you want.”

He frowns.

“What?”

Heart picking up for a different reason now, you clear your throat and try to cough the anxiety away. You can talk to him about these things, it's okay. It doesn't really matter how embarrassed you feel once the words come out of your mouth.

“Um, I went up a few pounds while on the trip and— And that's a good thing!” You say when he looks at you like he's about to tell you that it's okay. “I ate whatever I wanted, it was great, really. I just…”

“You did?” He asks in a soft, excited whisper.

“I don't know if you'll, um, i-if you're going to like it.” You finish, blinking the shame away.

Yunho’s expression softens and you take it as an agreement. You've only been touched in the dark, anyways, so you push into his chest a little bit and off his embrace (even if you don't really want to) and start moving towards the only light casting shadows on the room.

Only to be tugged right back by a firm hand on your arm.

With his chest against you and his lips grazing your ear, you can barely help the way you shudder. There's something hard poking your ass and the apparent size of it has you gulping, salivating even.

But you have to turn off the light.

“Come here,” he murmurs and softly moves the both of you to stand in front of the mirror that's next to the entrance.

Even if you tried not to, it's something you've been avoiding the whole time you've stayed here. The mirror is huge, floor to ceiling and its position it's very elegant, very fitting for the purpose of this suit that's supposed to be reserved for people who need different outfits for different events.

You haven't really used it other than quickly checking your clothes earlier today, before leaving to go to the dorm and, even then, it was only a quick ten seconds.

It stings a little that, although you've made progress, your body and the way you perceive it still have such a grip on you. When you add the man your heart desires to the mix? Well, there's little to nothing you can do to let go of your insecurities.

The heat of Yunho's body leaves you for a second and he's turning another light, the one closest to the entrance, adjusting its intensity so the ambiance is not broken by the bright glow of it.

You gulp again when he returns, but melt into his chest when he presses his body against yours again.

How can you feel so comfortable with him but so uncomfortable with yourself? It's weird, it's strangely very you but you can't even tell him that because the intensity of his gaze when you catch it in the mirror shuts you right up.

You know he's telling you to listen to him, to notice how serious he is about this as his chin rests on your shoulder.

“I've called you ugly before, right? I've have actively contributed to your insecurities in a way that I'm not going to forgive myself for, ever,” he starts and the direct approach to it makes you teary eyed all over again. He notices, lips finding your shoulder to comfort you. “The thing is, Y/N, that I never actually meant it. I think I was pissed off because you were— and are so fucking beautiful.”

You close your eyes and let out a pleading sigh “Yunho…”

“No,” he says and you feel how he shakes his head, his chin still on your shoulder. “Someone needs to tell you this. You live in your head way too much.”

He understands.

You love him so much.

“Open your eyes, princess.”

You do.

“Look at yourself.”

You don't. You look at him instead.

He's staring at you through the mirror and he straightens his back to rest his cheek against your temple, the height difference at his advantage because, this way you have to look up at him and it will give away the pure rejection you have for your reflection.

“I don't think I've ever found someone as beautiful as I found you. When I realized that, that was what pissed me off… Well, I think I somehow buried the thought away but you are so breathtakingly pretty, Y/N.” He takes in a breath and you lose yours, his hand resting on your hip going up and tracing the curve of your waist. “But it doesn't really matter what I think, it matters what you think, hm?”

Turning his head, his nose presses against your skin now and he leans in, nuzzling softly, with care, until his lips peck your jaw.

“I can assure you that you can go up a hundred pounds, go down, up again and I wouldn't care. It doesn't matter, I have found you beautiful in every version that you have presented yourself in and I will find you beautiful if you change your whole appearance everyday. I love you,” he reminds you, “and I love everything that you bring along with you. Insecurities, panic attacks and clever insults to my clothing included.”

The chuckle that you let out makes him smile against your cheek and he gives you a little peck before putting some space between your face and his. He looks you up and down in the mirror again and you can see genuine want in the way his pupils dilate. You see it happening in real time but then you also see his self-restraint.

You're at a loss for words, but manage to mumble out “Thank you, Yunho.” And then you turn your head, catching his lips in a soft closed mouth kiss that he returns right away.

“Whenever you're ready to let me prove how beautiful I find you, I'll be here.” He says when you let his mouth move away from yours, your lips softly pecking his jaw instead and getting a sigh in return. “I can wait.”

Then, the worst thing happens: His hands leave your body and he starts to step away.

It's a little embarrassing how quickly your entire being protests and you realize that there's a clinginess to you that you're not so sure where it came from. You reach for him, barely turning, and tug him right where he was.

Looking at him through the mirror again, you enjoy the genuine surprise on his expression and the way it turns into desire when you put his hands on you again: on your stomach, on your hip.

When you turn your head to look at him directly, his eyes stay fixated on the reflection. His hand on your stomach turns, knuckles softly caressing you. You want to ask him what he likes about that but don't, instead, you tell him what goes on inside your head.

“Yunho, I do want you. I want you… But I also want to make sure that you like me.”

He looks at you then, mouth ready to reassure you again but you shake your head to shut him up.

“I heard you,” you confirm, smiling a bit and then closing your eyes at the visage that accompanies the concept of your body in your mind. You know it's far from what it actually looks like but that also means that you don't know exactly what it looks like and that's terrifying. “I know you love me but would you like me?”

“I do,” you hear the frown in his voice and take a deep breath before opening your eyes again. “Princess, do you trust me?”

You nod without a second thought and he leans in, nose almost touching yours.

“Would you let me show you how much I like you?”

It takes a second or two, but you nod again.

“And would you let me know if it's too much?”

“Yes,” you breath out, too intoxicated by the closeness, by the way his lips softly trace yours without actually kissing them to think about the implication of his words.

When he pulls away again, you let out a sound that gives away how much you want him. Yunho’s lips curve and when your eyes finally focus on his again, you can see the quick decision he makes as he looks at the mirror again, resolve and purpose in his expression as he takes off the jacket of his three piece, tossing it on the sofa.

There's something magnetic in the way he rolls his sleeves up, securing them in his forearms and your eyes follow the motions and trace the veins that you're able to see before he turns away from you.

He takes one of the chairs he's able to easily mov, placing it behind you both. You realize you've walked a few steps closer to the mirror, and so your back is pressed against it when his attention returns to you, when he takes your face with his hands and crushes his lips against yours without explaining what he just did.

You brace himself on his forearms, nails pressing on his skin because somehow this kiss feels different. Its pace is not hard to keep up with but it feels like you are, the care he puts in his movements as his palms brush your hair back slowly and then go down, down until they're reaching the knot that keeps your robe closed.

This time, instead of panic, you feel your stomach flutter. Butterflies all over, there's goosebumps on your skin when he tugs the robe open and feels the satin of your pajamas with his fingers. He makes a noise and, at first, you think it's out of protest because you're not already undressed for him.

But then his knuckles trace the hem of the nightgown and he makes the noise again, tongue flicking against yours harder, getting a moan out of you.

Yunho’s lips find your cheek, your jaw, nipping at the skin of your neck and over your pulse when he gets to it and you close your eyes, head falling against the mirror and head moving to the side so he can kiss every inch of skin if he wants.

“You smell so fucking good.”

That makes you smile, a droopy curve to your lips before you bite a sound back “I showered.”

“You always do,” he whispers into your skin, lips finding your ear. “You always have. Do you know how many times I had to control myself around you?”

“Hm,” you muse, pretending to think about it. “Do you know how many times you had to?”

“Oh, trust me princess, I know.”

He pulls back and you open your eyes. You wonder if yours are carrying the same intensity as his when they go down your body, taking your sleepwear in.

It's a simple blue v-neck slip dress with some floral lace at the trim lines. It splits on the sides and falls mid-thigh. Something very basic in your opinion, but you don't miss the way his eyes are glued to the skin of your thigh. You're not wearing a bra and your nipples are painfully hard.

“I didn't actually expect you to come to me tonight,” you lie a little, lips turning up into a shy smile. “So I didn't—”

“Is this what you wear to sleep?” He interrupts and you watch him gulp.

“Mhm.”

“Every night?”

“Something like this,” you tug at the fabric, softly, “yes.”

“Fuck.”

You giggle in return at how affected he seems, but the amusement dies when his eyes return to yours. Holding your hand, he takes a step back and then another and another until he's falling with a thump on the chair he brought close.

He takes you in one more time before letting go of your hand and manspreading on the chair “Come here, princess.”

The tone of his voice makes your entire being shake and you take in a breath before following his command. Which is crazy because you never, ever would've followed an order from him.

But now you can't help yourself.

Standing in between his legs, you can see when he holds the arms of it after attempting to touch you as soon as you get close enough for him to be able to reach you and, when you're about to straddle his lap, he shakes his head and clicks his tongue in response.

You understand what he wants immediately and you turn around, watching your reflection in the mirror as you sit down on his legs that he managed to close again in the three seconds it took you to do so.

You're breathing hard by the time he accommodates you both on the chair, his very clear erection pressing against your ass and lower back and making you dizzy at what you're looking at.

The image on the mirror is clear, it allows you to see both your reaction and his reaction when you fidget without thinking about it on his lap and the friction it causes brings you a whisper of pleasure.

“You're a dream, Y/N,” he says and you can tell it came out of his mouth without really thinking about it. Finally, he moves his hands and his nails press on the skin of your shoulders, goosebumps evident and tremor barely concealable when he drags them down the length of your arm and over your hands that rest on top of your knees.

He covers them with his and you stop following his movements in the mirror to look at his face “Can I?”

You swallow and then nod and he giggles, this hard facade he has on slipping as he presses a reassuring kiss to your shoulder “Can you say it, my love?”

“Yes,” you say quickly, your voice betraying you “Please.”

He closes his eyes, a curse under his breath. “Don't beg me, princess, I got you.”

You can't help but be curious and, although this is something you can find out as the night goes on, you end up wondering out loud either way: “Why? You don't like it?”

He shakes his head, that hardness in his expression returns when he opens his eyes to look at you and the curious glint of your expression through the mirror.

“Do you enjoy it when I beg you, Yunho?”

And then you slightly move on his lap, trying to pass it like an absentminded movement.

He sees right through it and the realization shows on his face.

“Ah,” he laughs, back falling against the chair and head lolling back, “are you going to be a brat, princess?”

Your mouth quirks at the quick and accurate read he gives your attitude.

“Of course you are.”

Again, the bravery your amusement gives you is short lived. He uses his hands over yours to open your legs and his, fast, earning a surprised squeak out of you. Your first instinct is attempting to close them but he huffs and perches your legs on his. You loop your feet around them to avoid falling forward at the lack of things to hold on to.

This way, your panties are on full display as well. They're simple cotton white panties and there's a wet patch in the middle of them that grows a little at the display, at the image you see in the mirror.

Yunho curses under his breath again.

“You're my dream,” he says, a little bit distracted again and then he remembers himself. “I don't like people begging me, I don't give them the time to.”

Raising your eyebrows, you're about to protest because you don't want to hear about his encounters with anyone else, but he won't let you.

“One time, I almost had a fight with a friend over teasing. You know her, Mingi's girlfriend,” he says and you don't know if he's smiling at the memory or at the way you squirm under his touch when his fingernails start dragging over the skin of your inner thighs slowly. “I told her the truth: I'm too impatient to tease. She said it's necessary, I said I never needed to tease anyone to get with them and it went on for almost an hour.”

He reaches the plush that has formed on your inner thighs and you can physically feel your centre growing wetter.

“I never got it,” he insists and, when he pretends that he's going to touch you where you need it the most only for his touch to go back down the expanse of your thighs, you let out dissatisfied huff. “Now I think I do.”

“Yunho…”

“You wanted to beg?” He asks, mouth against your ear and hot breath on your cheek. “I can make you beg.”

You give in almost immediately.

“Please,” tongue wetting your lips, you attempt to move in order to get some sort of relief but he's quicker than you. Strong hands hold your hips steady and you puff out some air again. “Please touch me.”

It's clear the whine on your voice affects him because he pants against your cheek, nudges your face with his nose and then dives with his lips to kiss your neck again.

“Be still, princess.” He commands and you stop trying to wiggle against him, only to rest your back against his chest when he brings his hands down in a caress and holds you fully open for him again. “I got you, but do as I say.”

He takes your nod as an answer this time and his lips travel down your neck, to the skin of your back and then your shoulder. You watch in the mirror as his teeth catch the strap of your nightgown and, when he speaks again, it's a little muffled because of it.

“Can I take this off you?”

You take a breath before replying “Yes.”

And then he slips the strap off your shoulder with his teeth and you swear you're ruined for everyone else entirely.

There's no way anyone is going to make you tremble like he did just now.

He goes ahead and does the same to the other strap, hand quick in catching the gown from falling completely.

“Should I?”

“Yunho… Stop teasing me.”

He chuckles and takes his time to redo what he just undone: he pulls the strap on your left shoulder up again, switches the hand that's holding your second to last piece of clothing up, and does the same to the other strap.

“But you look so pretty in it.”

Your skin heats up harder than ever before.

“You look so pretty like this, all breathless and ready for me to touch you… Do you know how happy it makes me that I can touch you, princess? That you’re in my lap and not in my head?”

You swallow back a whine “Y-you thought about me like this?”

“I dreamed about you like this,” he kisses the nape of your neck and then focuses his attention on the shoulder he neglected before, “for months.”

You hum in acknowledgement at his words, but your mind is elsewhere because his hands return to their ministrations on your inner thighs and it's hard to concentrate on anything else but the pad of his thumbs ghosting over your panties as they move.

He finally concedes and lets his hands wander upwards until they get ahold of the hem of the nightgown and, in one swift movement, you're left in nothing but your underwear in front of him.

Well, in front of the mirror. He's watching the reflection of your body carefully and you can barely spare a look at it, breath caught in your throat at his reaction.

When he sees your naked torso, he fully lets out a moan.

You feel slick rush out of you at the sound but don't turn to yourself to verify what exactly about you made him react that way, made him get even harder against your ass.

“God, look at you.”

Breathing hard, you turn your head slightly so that your nose touches his and you think he's about to drop it, give in and kiss you when you feel his thumb and index pressing against your cheek, turning your head to the reflection again.

“Is this okay?”

You know he's referring to the hold on your face and you mumble out a yes, still looking at him through the mirror.

“I said, look at yourself.”

You do.

Legs open and still perched on top of his, white panties turning a little see through due to your arousement and nipples pebbled in full display, you allow yourself to enjoy the two seconds of clarity before your body starts to shape shift in your head, before your thoughts turn you undesirable and before you fall into your dysmorphia.

Yunho is right there to catch you, though.

“Do you know how lucky I am that you're even allowing me to see you like this, Y/N?”

The hold on your face relaxes and you follow the movement of his hand, down until it settles on your throat, relaxed, not even putting any pressure.

“Still okay?”

You nod.

He puts in slight pressure now and, when you moan, he chuckles but doesn't say anything to acknowledge what makes him laugh. Instead, his hand keeps descending until his fingers rests in between your breasts and then he softly cups one of them, thumb passing over your nipple and making you jump at the sudden contact before letting go.

“So fucking pretty. You see this?” His fingers take hold of the skin of your tummy that connects with the curve of your waist and he pinches slightly, making you squirm and tickling you a bit. “Everything you are, everything you have makes my heart beat,” he kisses your shoulder again, “and my dick hard,” and again, “and makes me want to prove to you that there's no one in this world that can come close to you, not in my eyes, my love.”

Oh, my God.

He says it in a way that makes you want to believe him. And, deep down, you know you do.

Even though it's complicated, even though it takes effort to make years and years of self-loathing disappear, you know you can try.

Because you desperately yearn to see yourself from Yunho's point of view.

This time, when you turn to kiss him, he doesn't put up any restraint. His dominant mask slips off of him for just a second when you grab his face, pliant mouth moving at the rhythm and pace yours is marking, a whine getting muffled with your tongue.

He gives your legs rest, closing his legs (and, in consequence, yours as well) and, when you tug at his hair so you can mark his neck down at the weird position you're in, he groans and you want to smile but he's searching your lips before you can even leave a bruise on his skin.

“I love you, I love the way you think about me, I love what you make me want to think about me,” you assure him when you pull back to look at him. His cheeks are red and his lips are swollen and you love the way they're parted as he recovers his breath.

“Lesson learned?”

“Mhm,” you kiss his lips again and take the hand resting your waist, bringing it down to your clothed sex so he can feel how wet you are “now please, would you touch me?”

“Fuck, you really do love to beg, hm?” He says and it's breathy, like he can't actually believe, and he doesn't give you time to respond because he's already kissing you again. “Let's go to bed.”

“W-wait.”

“Yeah?”

The way you glance at the mirror is a dead giveaway of what you truly want. It makes him take in a sharp breath and grab your face in between his hands, fascination written all over his expression.

“Do you want to watch when I touch you?”

You breathe out a moan in response.

“You want to watch yourself while I make you come?”

A little shy but with resolve, you nod.

He curses.

Next thing you know, your legs are perched over his again and they’re wide open. Your arms fly back to hold onto him, onto anything that helps you not fall on your face but then his perfect, veiny hand presses on your torso and you fall back comfortably into his embrace again.

He wastes no time, lips marking a path from your shoulder to your neck and fingers ghosting your clit over your panties and you whimper, impatience making you move against his crotch and making him grunt at the friction.

“I k-know you just s-said you just discovered the joy of t-teasing but can you please do somet— Fuck!”

His thumb presses on your bundle of nerves over the cotton and you can’t help but shake.

It has been a while since you’ve even touched yourself truly, with want and need behind. It’s been a while since someone else touched you there, period, so the sensation feels new and you kind of feel like an overly inexperienced woman with the way you can’t help the immediate build up when he starts moving his thumb.

It’s electric and you notice that your eyes closed the second he touched you, so you remember yourself. You remember what you asked for, what you actually want to see.

When you open them again and look at Yunho, you find him already looking at you. His parted lips turn into a proud smile when he catches your eye and he nods, kisses trailing up to your ear, teeth nipping at the skin.

“Good girl.”

Fuck.

He stops his movements to let his index, middle and ring finger cup your sex entirely, press into the fabric and let it soak with your arousal. You see in the mirror and you watch, with fascination, how he manages to twist the cotton to the side and expose your pussy for you both to see with the same hand.

“You’re so wet, princess, I bet you taste so good…”

Your brain short circuits and malfunctions when he finally touches you without anything in between his skin and yours. His index reaches out and collects the evidence of how much

you want him, of how much you want him and you moan when the fabric snaps against your pussy when he lets go of it.

“Do you?”

He toys with the stickiness on with his fingers, rubs it in between them and then brings his hand up so you’re able to see it without the mirror’s help.

“Look at me,” you do, obedient, “and open up.”

You open your mouth and allow his fingers to get in and rest against your tongue. You suck out of instinct, eyes never leaving his, and he gulps as he watches you taste yourself until your arousal transfers from his fingers to your tongue.

“Let me taste it now.”

Licking into his mouth, the fingers that were previously on yours settle on your throat, not allowing you to fully lean in and kiss him like you want but, instead, letting him have control of it.

You swear you see stars when he sucks his tongue into his mouth and he hums, pleased with the taste.

“You taste so fucking good.”

Letting you go, you’re breathing hard when he pushes you a bit to put some distance between the both of you.

“Get up and take these off.” He snaps the elastic of your panties and the sting against your skin makes you whine.

You can’t think, can’t speak, can’t do anything but wait for him to lead your actions and the consensual loss of control feels so freeing that it makes you dizzy. So you oblige, getting off his lap and allowing him to turn you around so that your ass faces the mirror. When you look at him, he’s looking at the reflection and not you, so you decide, with a boost of confidence because of the hunger in his eyes, to give him a little show.

You bend over, forehead almost touching his chest and proceed to take off your underwear that way. You open your legs a little, giving him a clear view of it when the fabric falls from your legs and pools at your ankles and, when you twist your head to the side to look at his reaction, his tongue is out and licking his bottom lip like he’s starving for it.

For the first time ever, you feel both sexy and desired at the same time.

He reaches for your ass in a way you’re not so sure it’s calculated and you fall fully into his chest with a soft moan when he opens you up for him even more.

“So hot,” he says, low, under his breath, like he’s not even thinking before he speaks and he lets his fingernails drag on your skin (something you’re learning he enjoys doing and that you also like, a lot) until his hands fall to his knees again. “Fuck.”

He still hasn’t even touched you properly and you already feel drunk on his touch. You feel that way, at least, when you prop your hands against his chest and push yourself up. He turns you around quickly, sits you on his lap with your legs open again and sighs.

“I’m not going to make you beg for it anymore when all I want to do is watch you come, princess.”

Arm around your middle, he presses you flush against his chest and takes your right hand in his. It allows you to let go of the grasp you have on him a little and, when he guides your own fingers to your pussy, you get why.

“Show me how you like it.”

You feel lewd, exposed and dirty in a way you never thought you would enjoy. But here you are, craving

“Yunho…”

“Show me,” he insists, “so I can learn.”

Isn’t it a little bit funny that he sounds like he’s the one begging you when he speaks?

You show him. Starting with collecting a bit of your slick, you drag a finger upwards from your entrance to your clit and then, only when you can see it fully glistening in the mirror, is when you press down and caress it in circular motions that send electricity through you right away.

As you do with everything, this is something that, although you don’t really have time to even think about doing most of the days, you have perfected. There’s a science to it, a method that you’ve discovered via need and lust and that has never been so thoroughly explored than right now.

It’s like you have kept your needs like a nasty little secret inside of your heart, just like you did with your love for Yunho, and you’re letting it all out.

You pick up the pace, alternating from circles to side to side motions and the pleasure quickly becomes overwhelming. Or have you been touching yourself for him for minutes now? Time disappears in every sound you unconsciously let out, it blends with the glint of passion in Yunho’s eyes and it dissolves in an orgasm that quickly takes over you and shakes you forward.

“That’s it,” he mutters with his lips against your temple and his hands holding you steady. “Now’s my turn.”

He replaces his hands with yours, bats your fingers away when you try to prolong your pleasure and takes over at a relentless pace, overstimulating you.

It goes on like that for a minute or so where you shake and you readjust in his lap and you shake again when he bucks your hips and you feel him firm against your ass. You desperately want to help him feel this way, too, but there’s only so much you can do when he teases your entrance with his index and finds you relaxed enough to put it in slowly.

Slowly until it glides in and out smoothly and you hold onto your forearm, and whimper and his name spilling from your lips in bliss when his ring finger joins. You hope you don’t look too delirious, you wish you’re not making a fool of yourself for feeling the heat pool on your lower belly so quickly again.

“Oh, yes, yes, I’m—”

“Don’t look at me or what I’m doing, look at yourself.”

Huh?

“W-what?”

“Watch yourself come,” he reiterates, breathless and, when you disobey and look at him through the reflection, he’s already focused on your face, mouth hanging open and brows furrowed with determination. “I want you to see how beautiful you look coming all over my fingers, Y/N.”

He curves them upwards and the sensation somehow intensifies “Shit.”

“Come, Y/N.”

You’re not sure if you’re able to prove his words to be true. When you come undone, you’re looking at yourself and in the mirror is someone you don’t exactly recognize. Someone you don’t perceive as yourself because, yes, the person staring back at you is beautiful. And that person looks sexy and sensual and is glowing with pleasure written all over their face but they’re not someone you have categorized in your brain as you.

And then you understand. This raw, pure, unfiltered state of you is something you hadn’t reached before. Naturally, you had never seen yourself come. And you hadn’t been handled with so much care through an orgasm before, so you lived it fully and then, only when you stop shaking and your legs fall from his and your feet are on the floor, holding your weight steady, is when you allow yourself to look away from your reflection and turn to the man responsible for the best orgasm of your life.

His lips are quivering, his eyes are closed and his chest rises and falls against your shoulder as he holds you to him.

“You… Jeong Yunho…”

He smiles, probably at the way your voice trembles and gives away just how fucked out you already are, but he doesn’t open his eyes “Yes?”

“My turn.”

When he opens his eyes, you’re already standing up in front of him, his hands shifting on your body, the fingers that just made you see stars leaving a wet trail on your skin before they settle on your stomach.

And, although he seemed tough and dominant just a minute ago, he puts no resistance when you grab his arm and make him stand up as well. You get on your tippy toes to nuzzle his nose with yours and he holds onto you again as you stumble backwards, towards the bedroom.

“You’re too dressed, Jeong.”

“Don’t act like you didn’t enjoy me in a dress shirt,” he says, a smug smile in his lips when your back hits a wall and he presses his body to yours, “prepping you to take my coc— F-fuck, princess.”

Your hand teasing his erection over the fabric of his expensive pants is enough to shut him up. Good, you already let him have his fun (and yours, by consequence) and, even if you enjoyed the loss of control, there’s something equal parts rewarding and hot about winning it back with the simple press of your thumb where you believe his leaking tip is.

“You’re too overconfident sometimes, Jeong,” you whisper against his lips and it may be your two amazing orgasms or the way you love to have something over him, a little bit of power at least, that make you overly confident right now as well. He puckers out to kiss you but you don’t budge. “Want to see if you prepped me right?”

It’s a question for consent. You have to make sure he wants you this way, too. That this is fun for him, too. And when he pauses your heart feels like it stops for a second, just like time.

But right after there’s this quiet agreement you both come to and his mouth devours yours as you move in tandem, in coordinated effort to undress him: You loosen his belt and work on the button of his pants while he unbuttons his shirt and both your feet move with synchronized steps until he’s falling on the bed and you’re getting on your knees in front of him.

He, however, stops you with a hand caressing your face softly.

“Later,” he mutters with a soft smile that’s laced with something passionate and lewd you feel you’re about to discover. He leans in, teeth catching your bottom lip and pulling until you’re whining and you taste a little blood on your mouth. “I need to fuck you right now.”

He doesn’t need to tell you twice. You do however make sure to peel his underwear off him while you’re on your knees, the size of him making you wet and ready all over again.

When you stand up, he grabs your tired legs to pull you closer. It feels like a pause in the middle of passionate urgency, but when he takes his time to kiss under your belly button and the expanse of your hips, you feel like it only adds fuel to the fire.

The fact that he’s even taking the time to explore you makes you want to combust.

“Oh.” He bites you right over your hip bone and you take his hair into your fingers, pulling him back. “Y-you said you needed to fuck me?”

“I do,” he laughs against your skin and then leans back, taking him with you and you let him, falling on your side before he pushes you against the mattress, body covering yours and palms touching you all over. “I just enjoy taking my time with you.”

“I can see that, Jeong.”

He’s distracted again within the second, looking down your body and taking you in like it’s the first time he’s seeing you even though he had a clear view of you and your pussy in the mirror five minutes ago.

And there’s this urge that takes over you, you can’t even fight the words that come out your mouth next.

“Make love to me.”

He pauses again and then your words register in his brain, you can see the exact moment they hit him and you think you see him tear up a little before he blinks the deep emotion away to focus on the moment. You have to do the same.

“I will. Every day of my life, if you ask me to, if I’m so lucky to.”

The rest of the night, from the moment he says those words, kisses you and moves you so you’re in the middle of the bed, it all passes in slow motion.

And it all passes really fast, too.

Yunho makes love to you. He enters you while looking into your eyes and whispering how much he loves you against your lips and you say it back. He holds your hand as his hips move and his length drags deliciously inside of you. He marks your chest with his lips and your heart with his love and he closes his hands over yours when his pace picks up and he allows to lose himself in the moment too.

You make love to him as you push him onto his back, his pretty face all flushed, the pink coloring his neck and his chest where you hand rest as you ride him and watch his control slip from him, as you memorize his moans and grunts and as your walls squeeze him in before coming again on his cock and it only takes to firm, hard strides for him to spill himself inside of you as well, the prove of your love making spilling out of you a little when he holds you to his chest and he pulls out of you, both of you sated, both of you in love.

It feels like an hour has passed when someone speaks again, the silence in the room comfortable and accompanied by the beats of both your hearts. In reality, it’s only been around ten minutes where you’ve closed your eyes and breathed the remnants of Yunho’s cologne, cheek pressed against his chest and his fingers drawing random figures on your naked back.

You decide to break the silence when you remember something.

“I think they forgot my room service.”

There’s a pause and then Yunho is laughing loudly and it makes you smile. His chest vibrates and you can see, on your peripheral, how he covers his eyes with his forearm.

“I’m being serious, I ordered like three hours ago.”

“Maybe they knocked and we didn’t hear them,” he mumbles tiredly and you finally look up, chin pressed where your cheek was a second ago. “We were pretty… Busy.”

“That’s worse, Jeong!”

“Why?” He asks, genuinely clueless and then it clicks for him. He brings down his arm and opens his eyes wide with shame. “Oh, my God.”

“Mhm.”

“How are you going to look the receptionist in the eye?”

“She knows me, too. She asked me to take a picture with her when I check out.”

Yunho sighs and says nothing. He looks at you, hand on your back moving until it reaches your face and he lets his knuckles trace your nose in a way that makes you scrunch it.

“I forgot you were famous.”

“We both are,” you w-hisper back, lips forming a thin line as you think. “I mean, if someone leaks that we’re both here, it won’t look weird because we’re supposed to be together.”

“Supposed to?” He frowns.

“Well, yes, to the public at least.”

Yunho pouts.

He pouts and your stomach twists and turns with nerves and butterflies. You’re joking, kind of.

“Are you not my girlfriend, Y/N?”

Oh, he’s adorable. It’s so easy to tease him when you’re both not at each other’s throat.

You wonder if you’ll ever have a fight again, your heart weak for him even when you try to keep the joke going.

“I haven’t been asked to be anyone’s girlfriend…”

The deadpan expression that follows your quip breaks your resolve entirely and you laugh, hiding your face on his chest as he mumbles something you don’t catch.

“What?” You look up at him again.

“I said that you’re annoying and that you are my girlfriend.”

“No, I think you said that you love me.”

There’s something so reassuring in the way the annoyance disappears from his expression and it’s replaced by something sweet and he looks like he can barely fight the words back when he replies with: “Yeah, I do.”

You hum, happy with his response “I thought so.”

Pressing your cheek against his skin again, there’s only two seconds of silence before his hand is on your shoulder and shaking your body.

“Say it back, Y/N.”

“So needy,” you tease and he shakes you again, groaning, so you sigh and pull away from his body to sit up a little. “I love you too.”

He leans into your space, a blissful smile curving his lips before he pecks your mouth in a sweet, short kiss “Good,” he whispers, falling against the pillows and dragging your body with his so that you’re resting against the soft material as well. “When did you come back?”

“A week ago.”

“Hm,” his hands return to your body, fingernails dragging softly up and down your arm, “your family doesn’t know.”

At the mention of them, you close your eyes and squeeze, reality washing over you.

“I’m sure my mother does.”

“She doesn’t,” he assures you, “she would’ve mentioned it by now and she only talks about the project you’re going to lead once you’re back.”

You open your eyes “What project?”

“I’m not sure,” he says softly, “I thought you were already leading one?”

“Something like that,” you nod. “I, um… Was networking in a way, gathering new information on new companies to invest in and help their growth. Small business with original concepts that we can boost or help bring to the city and all of that.”

“Did you have fun on the trip?”

“Yeah,” you answer truthfully, “I did. I met a lot of people, I visited places I never even knew existed, I also learned a lot about myself and about what I want… And I got away from Satan for a while.”

He knows you mean your mom, so he snorts out a laugh and shakes his head at the jab.

“I missed you a lot, though.”

His amusement dies slowly but happiness remains on his face. You’re sure yours is a reflection of his, as well.

“I missed you too,” he answers in a murmur and you nuzzle the hand that reaches your cheek before giving it a kiss. “I’m glad you had fun and it sounds like being away helped but… Never do it again.”

“Oh?” You try to tease but he insists.

“Never leave without telling me again, please,” his whisper sounds like a plea and your heart beats louder. “I’ll miss you too much.”

There’s an impulse, a need that soars through your blood. “I’m not sure when I’ll be able to get away again but, when I do, you can go with me.”

“I will,” he answers right away and at the confirmation that you want him there with you, you see the tension slip away from his features, “my bags are already packed and all.”

“I bet they are,” eyes rolling back in annoyance, you press a palm on his chest and push him a little. “Needy.”

“Shut up.”

There’s a lot of things to talk about. A lot of things you want to tell him, to mention, to bring up and discuss with him. Like what happens after you leave this bubble you’re floating in, if you tell your brother and his right away, if he’s going to tell his friends or wait until you’re a little far along in the friendship to do so.

You have to ask him if he wants to tell your parents like… Ever. You’re not so sure you even want to.

But he shuffles and moves until his naked chest is against yours and his hands are around your body, chin resting on the top of your head as he yawns.

There’s this feeling of calmness that washes over you as you consider that, maybe, this can be the way you fall asleep from now on. No sleeping or sleepless nights, just Yunho’s embrace and his steady breathing above you, the beat of his heart, a lullaby that lulls you until your eyes are closing and tiredness takes over your senses.

This time, you dream about a future together and nothing more.

If you read all the way down here: THANK YOU SO MUCH. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated and please remember the next part it's much shorter and would be the end of this mini series!

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gothamhappiness · 2 days ago

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I love you, my crime lord! (Red Hood x f!reader)

Hi everyone, this the last part of a little series that I ended writing for Red Hood! (If you've got some ideas for this, you can still request them though)

You can read the other parts here:

Don't touch Red Hood, Batman!

I like to flirt with you, Red Hood!

You're my guardian angel, Red Hood!

Hope you'll enjoy: <3

Warnings: no proof reading, overprotective and dark!Red Hood, strong language, reader is taken hostage

The more time you spent with Red Hood and the more you enjoyed him.

The more time the man spent with you and the more obvious he was falling in love with you, and pretty hard. You were the kind of person he needed in his life: you loved him no matter what and yet you didn’t have time for his bullshit. You were perfect.

But at some point, your relationship couldn’t really progress into something more intimate if he kept his identity a secret. Red Hood needed you to love him even when he wasn’t Red Hood. And you didn’t want to be his girlfriend only when he was a crime lord.

Jason had been a little bit worried; he wasn't too certain you were going to love him even in daily life, but he quickly got reassured by the way you greeted him home and the way you acted around him. You became a true anchor in his existence and you quickly became the most protected woman of Gotham. His most trusted spy always had a look on you, just to make sure you were safe and sound.

He also warned the Batfamily and every villains of Gotham to stay the fuck away from you.

You had no idea about it until you got caught up during a hostage at the bank of Gotham. You were terrified, especially because you knew that your boyfriend wasn’t in town that very day. And even if he probably instructed his men to protect you, you weren’t too sure what they could do when a man was pressing a gun against your temple so the police wouldn’t shoot him and his team.

“Look pretty girl, you might not survive today. Hope you told your boyfriend you loved him one last time” the man cruelly whispered to you

“You’re a dead man if you kill me, you know” you said, not really certain it would make a difference, but in your position it couldn’t hurt to try to convince the man to let you go

“Ah yes and why that, your boyfriend is a hitman?” the man chuckled, not believing you

“He’s Red Hood”

At the instant you said that name, the man removed the gun from your head and turned you around to look into your eyes, making sure you weren’t lying to him. He was deeply frowning out of fear.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck” he whispered before looking around for his teammates “We need to let this one go very quickly, she’s Red Hood’s girlfriend” he cried out and all them instantly panicked and hushered you out of the bank, leaving you wondering what the fuck just happened.

Cops quickly rushed to you to know what was going on but before you could answer, a black SUV arrived and you were pulled inside. Jason’s goons were fretting around you to make sure you didn’t get hurt. And they all were really relieved you just seemed stunned.

When you asked where you were going, they answered you were joining Red Hood as if it was the most logical thing in the world. Their boss was already aware of the situation and he wanted you by his side, where you were the safest.

When you arrived in what seemed to be an abandoned nightclub, Red Hood was addressing his troops and giving orders. He asked everyone out when he saw you. Your were his top priority, no matter what the situation was.

“All good?” he asked, his hands wandering your body, and you nodded

“They got scared when I said I was your girlfriend” you finally said

“They better be scared. They should even thank you for telling them who you were to me” Jason said as he guided you to a couch nearby so you could relax. “Gotham is a dangerous place, but it’ll always be a safe haven for you or I’ll burn everything to the ground”

“Come on Jay” you nervously giggled

“No one touch my Queen and they all know it. Isn’t it a simple rule to follow?” Red Hood wondered before sitting down on the couch with you.

He removed his mask so his lips could find yours. You straddled him before leaning against his chest. His arms settled around you. You broke the kiss before looking up at him.

“I love you, my crime lord.” you whispered

“I love you too, my lady” he fondly smiled at you

“But please don’t burn Gotham to the ground?” you hummed

“We’ll see about it” he darkly promised and you didn't know if you should be worried or very horny about it.

Probably both.

Taglist for all my work <3

@blublock404

@wind-canoe

@silverklaus

@couldeatthatgirlforlunch

@tatsuri-zomushiki

@navs-bhat

@randomnamedmira

@winterhi09

@murkyponds

@qardasngan

Taglist for this series <3

@stormz369

#red hood x s/o #red hood x you #red hood imagine #red hood x reader #red hood x y/n #jason todd x y/n #jason todd x you #jason todd x s/o #jason todd x reader #jason todd imagine #batfam x reader #batfamily

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blouisparadise · 1 day ago

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There were some amazing bottom Louis fics posted or completed during the month of January. We really hope you enjoy this list and show these fics love. Happy reading!

1) Lucky Number Nine | Not Rated | 2,706 words

“Elle, I only ever wanted to be two things when I got older, Hot as shit and a criminal.” “Why a criminal?” She asks. “Well, I-” Louis is cut off by a ping on his phone. He looks down at it and reads it. “Shit, Shit, Shit! Elle, hand me my bag please and spritz me. The car is here!” She does just that, giving him four spritz of their shared floral VS perfume. Louis leaves and walks downstairs to find a very nice and very expensive car. He smiles wide and gets in eagerly. The driver greets him and hands him a small bottle of Fireball. What?

2) I Miss You, I'm Sorry | Explicit | 2,871 words

Note: The main pairing is Louis/Zayn Malik.

Louis spends some time with zayn in his hotel room after his LA show. they smoke. they fuck.

3) What A Life We'd Have (I've Got So Much To Give) | Explicit | 3,610 words

They made a silly bet—really, it was ridiculous. Harry had bet Louis he couldn’t learn how to drive Delilah, his 18-wheeler because of the gear shift, so Louis bet him he couldn't learn how to give a good massage. The loser has to do the dishes and laundry for two weeks and well—here they are.

4) The Uni Party | Mature | 10,601 words

“What’s the point of going to a party sober?” he’d said earlier, tugging Harry by the hand into the kitchen of their flat. Harry had rolled his eyes, but he didn’t argue, watching as Louis lined up the tequila shots like he was about to take part in an Olympic event.

5) Time It Right, Ensure the Passage of Youth Bids Farewell | Mature | 12,202 words

Harry and Louis join a frat, and they are like, totally not into each other like that!

6) His Comet | Not Rated | 14,390 words

Everyone, and everything has an origin story; something that defined the way they are now, how they act, and the things they do. There's also an ending to every story, but what about the inbetween? The things in the middle that we don't know about?

7) Pathos | Mature | 26,566 words

In 1760s London, amidst the grandeur of gilded estates and the shadowy intrigues of high society, Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson are heirs to two of the city's most esteemed families. To the outside world, Harry and Louis present a complicated relationship-a bond that borders on disdain, peppered with moments of what could pass as brotherly camaraderie. Yet, behind closed doors, their connection defies the strict conventions of their world. Beneath the facade of disdain lies an undeniable bond, forbidden and fraught with danger.

8) Leave The Light On (I’m Coming Home) | Explicit | 42,793 words

In Louis’ twenty-two years of life, she had never questioned her sexuality. Up until now she had only ever been with boys and never had second thoughts about it. Although, nothing had ever given her a reason to. That is, until she met Harry.

9) Fragments of Forgotten Lives | Explicit | 160,960 words

Louis has been missing for over a year, but the first thing he remembers is waking up just a few weeks ago. Everything before that is a blur - no memory of where he’s been or who he was. Now, trying to rebuild his life in Manchester, he finds solace in therapy and a deepening connection with a fellow survivor. When Harry, a stranger to Louis but someone from his forgotten past, recognises him on the street, everything shifts. Despite the amnesia, something about Harry feels familiar, like a lifeline. As fragments of his lost memories begin to resurface in vivid, unsettling nightmares, Louis clings to the comfort Harry brings. Together, they embark on a journey to uncover the truth of his missing year, unlocking hidden secrets, unspoken bonds, and a past that refuses to stay buried.

Check out our other fic rec lists by category here and by title here.

You can find other monthly roundup fic rec lists here.

#blp fic recs #bottom louis #top harry #blp #fic recs #larry

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livingformintyoongi · 22 hours ago

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Poème | Kim Taehyung

Summary: For centuries, Taehyung has roamed the world, trapped in an eternity he never truly desired. Desperation led him to accept an offer of immortality, a gift that quickly turned into his greatest curse. Once a hopeful young man dreaming of a future with the love of his life, he now wanders through time burdened by regret, forever mourning the one he lost. No amount of power, beauty, or wealth can fill the void left by you. If eternity means living without you, then what is the point of living at all? Author’s note: Hi again! I hope everyone is well ^^ I know I had said I was going to focus on GAS? but…. Tae vampire came to my head and demanded to stay until I managed to bring him to this world :) Soooo, I don't know if most of you read this but I seriously, seriously need your help for this, I really don't know how to move it forward :(( so please, if you have any ideas on how to move it forward or any scenes you'd like there to be, send me an ask or a dm, I'd really appreciate it <3 Pairing: Vampire!Taehyung x Human!Reader (female) AUs: Vampire!AU Word count: 4.6k Status: Unedited Permanent Taglist: @thunderg @minjianhyung @queenv1997 @yoongtism @lizzymizzy-blogg @superbbananananana @drpepperobsessed @themwordsblog @taekritimin123 @bluecloudss @yooglefics @tan-veee @angellekookie @madussthougths Dividers by @the-aesthetics-shop and @strangergraphics

What would you do if you were given the option to live for all eternity? If someone offered you the secret behind immortality and eternal youth, would you accept? Would you be capable of leaving everything behind just to avoid facing death?

Taehyung wished with all his heart that he had asked himself those questions before saying yes to the beautiful woman in the elegant dress who offered him a second chance at life—one without sickness or poverty, a life filled with luxuries and privileges he could never have had as a mere villager in the Victorian era. Something he could have never even dreamed of when he was still human.

When desperation consumes you and you don’t know what else to do to avoid falling into the clutches of death, you… accept the first offer placed in front of you, no matter how risky it may be. That was exactly what led Taehyung to an eternity of regret, suffering, and torment.

He had been blessed with eternal life, but what was the point of living until the end of time if he was alone? What was the use of existing for centuries, watching people be born and die as if they were nothing more than tiny toy soldiers with an expiration date set by a child who had decided it was time to discard them, believing he was too grown up to play with them anymore?

He refused to live an endless life if you weren’t in it.

But you had been gone for so, so long, and he could never forgive himself for it. He could never turn back time and reject the offer from the one who was now his creator. He would never see your smile again, hear your laughter, or smell the soft scent of flowers, of the forest, of you. If only he hadn’t left home that night, if only he had waited a few more minutes… If only you had gone with him, perhaps… Perhaps now, the two of you would be living a long life together, enjoying each other’s company until the end of time.

But that wasn’t how things happened. He left his home that night. He didn’t wait. You didn’t go with him. And now, his fate was sealed. He couldn’t die, he couldn’t be harmed, he would have eternal youth and an ethereal beauty that could make any human give him anything he asked for with just one look. He could have everything—everything except you. And that, without a doubt, was the greatest torture anyone had ever inflicted on him.

That had happened over 170 years ago, and he had spent each one of those years tormenting himself. When he was still human, he had been vibrant and full of life, a social butterfly who, even without the seductive abilities of a vampire, could charm anyone with a single smile. Now, he was nothing but the empty shell of the man he once was.

During that time, he met many like him—those with whom he managed to form something close to what he could call a "family." Jiah was his mentor, the woman who had turned him and helped him through the difficult transition from human to vampire. Chaeyoung was the second oldest, a cheerful and optimistic young woman who had been a vampire for over a thousand years. Sooah and Hoseok came next, both turned in the 15th century. Then there was him, Jiwon, and Jimin—the three of them transformed in the 19th century, all saved from the brink of death by the compassionate leader of their small group.

They had been his family until now, and though he loved them as much as he was still capable of love, his love for them would never amount to even a fraction of what he felt for you. Not even a hundred people could mend the wound in his heart, no matter how hard they tried.

He could still remember his life by your side, when his body was still warm and his heart beat in a rhythmic melody, reminding him that he was alive. The two of you met because of Taehyung’s father’s work—you were a young lady from a wealthy family, and he was the son of a tailor who barely had enough money or resources to live. Yet, you noticed him—his smile, his playful jokes, and his flirtatious charm, reserved only for you.

You weren’t supposed to be together—you both knew that. But neither of you wanted to give up, you didn’t want to lose the only real thing in your lives. So, you ran away. With no money, no place to stay, only the hope of finding a place in the world where you could live without regrets or judgment.

It was his selfishness and foolishness as a teenager that led you both to that situation.

He should have realized it was madness, that there was no way you could survive in the outside world with dreams and hopes coated in sugar and honey. This was the real world—it was cruel and ruthless, showing no mercy to anyone, no matter their age or gender.

The first few months on your own were peaceful. You traveled from town to town on horseback, living freely, loving each other with all your hearts, talking about your dreams for the future, and how exciting it would be to have a family together.

You had managed to stabilize your life—Taehyung making elegant garments for high-society ladies, and you painting beautiful portraits under a pseudonym, which he promoted and sold with his natural charm.

For the first two years, life had been peaceful. Until smallpox arrived. That was when everything fell apart. No matter where you went, how much money you had, or which doctor you saw, once you were infected, there was no escape.

You both caught it at the same time. He did everything he could to keep you both from falling into death’s hands, but it was a fatal disease—there was no cure, especially with their limited resources.

It was on a dark winter night that everything changed. You were starving, and Taehyung was determined to find something—anything—to feed you. Despite his weakened, trembling body, he walked through the dark streets of the coastal city until he reached a shop. But his body was on the verge of collapse, and he fell just a few meters away from home.

He clung to the last bit of strength he had, trying to crawl back to you if necessary—anything to avoid dying far from you. He didn’t want you to think he had abandoned you, didn’t want to make you suffer when you found out he had died in the cold, damp streets, all for the sake of bringing you something to eat. He didn’t want to die without you by his side.

That desperation was what made him accept so quickly the offer placed before him by a complete stranger. “Just one drop, and you will never feel pain again.” And he accepted. He drank whatever she gave him, clinging to the hope of surviving a few more minutes. Then, everything went black for a moment—until he opened his eyes again.

Everything felt new, as if he had been reborn and was rediscovering the world. He felt good, healthy, strong, and maybe a little thirsty—but alive. And that was all that mattered.

When the initial shock passed, he begged the woman to do the same for you, to save you just as she had saved him. She smiled kindly and let him lead her to your small home.

But she stopped before entering, giving him a look of pity and compassion. At that moment, he didn’t know that he could hear a human’s heartbeat from a distance. He didn’t know that, even before stepping inside, she already knew that you were no longer in this world, and nothing could change that—not even her blood.

Taehyung may not have died that night, but his heart… His heart shattered into a thousand pieces the moment he laid eyes on your pale, lifeless body. His body had survived death—but his soul never would.

For a long time, his life had become a series of meaningless events that only served to make his desire to die grow stronger. He knew it was foolish to feel this way when he had what many would kill for; his eternal life was a miracle that tormented him every damn day, and he knew that would never change.

It took him 138 years to get over you—if that was even the right word to use in this context. Perhaps a more accurate way to put it would be, well, trying to forget you through other people. 138 years of solitude, where his only company was six other vampires just as reserved as he was, each keeping the scars of their previous lives a secret, each too afraid to open up to the others and relive memories of a past they all wished to forget.

The first time he tried something with a girl was because of Jimin, who insisted that he should look at someone else besides your portraits—the ones he himself had painted back when he had wanted to immerse himself in your world. He went to a stupid bar, too loud and filled with drunk and high people looking for something casual. But he didn’t want something casual. He wanted something lasting. He wanted you.

Hours passed before a rather beautiful girl approached him. Her shy smile and flushed cheeks seemed endearing, but nothing inside him stirred the way it had when he first met you; her eyes weren’t like yours, her essence wasn’t like yours. He didn’t like her, but still, he forced himself to try.

That night was the first and last time he attempted to move on with someone else. There was only a kiss, a brief brush of lips that the girl gave him as a thank-you for walking her home. That night, he cried like he hadn’t in years, clawed at his lips with his nails until they bled, and his screams were so agonizing that everyone in the house had to check if he was okay, because it sounded as if someone had just run a blade of iron straight through his body.

Taehyung felt that kiss exactly like that—like someone had just plunged an iron sword into his heart and desecrated his body in every possible way.

Sooah called him dramatic. Jiwon even mocked him for making such a fuss over a simple kiss. But it was Jiah who ordered them to be quiet and stayed by his side all night, comforting him as his tears fell ceaselessly down his cheeks.

After that day, he resolutely refused to go out with anyone else for the rest of his life. He didn’t need a replacement—he was much better off living with your memory than trying to forget it.

That was exactly how he managed to slowly overcome his pain—by treasuring your memory through the works of art he created, reliving every one of his feelings for you with each brushstroke on the blank canvas, until there was no trace left of the pain he had once felt. Now, all that remained was peace and a beautiful memory that he would keep deep in his heart for the rest of eternity.

It took him 175 years to achieve that peace—175 years in which he held onto the one thing he had left of you: your last painting, the one of a young wealthy woman standing alone in the middle of a grand ballroom. The soft tones and the contrast between the setting and the woman in her simple pastel dress gave off a strange warmth. It wasn’t one of your best paintings—he knew that better than anyone. You had created true masterpieces, works that your clients back then would have died to own. But this one… this one was simple, more discreet, with much less detail—mostly because you were already unwell when you finished it. But your essence, your touch, the feeling you poured into it… all of it was still there. And that made it the most important piece you had ever created.

That was why, as the last act of love he could offer to you and your memory, he traveled to Paris to present it at the Musée d’Orsay. The meeting with the museum’s curator was far more pleasant than he had expected, and he even considered making a generous donation after they agreed to exhibit the painting.

The inner peace he felt when his eyes saw the painting hanging on those cream-colored walls, among hundreds of other paintings from important figures of his era… was something he could never put into words. For the first time, his heart felt at ease—it did not beat, it did not pump blood, he knew that. And yet, for a second, Taehyung felt as if he had come back to life.

He closed his eyes, inhaling the scent around him. Despite the years, there was still a faint trace of you in it. And though it hurt to think that he would never again hold you in his arms, never again breathe in your scent, he felt happy.

Happy for you—because finally, one of your works bore your real name, because at last, people could see the incredible talent you had. This had been your dream, and somehow, he had made it come true for you.

He wondered if there was something after death, if there was truly a paradise in the afterlife. He knew that if such a place existed, you would undoubtedly be in heaven—in a paradise unlike any other, shining like the brightest star the world had ever seen. If that place was real, were you watching him from above?

What would you think of him right now? Would you be afraid of the fact that he was no longer human? Or of the fact that, in his first years as a vampire, he had taken the lives of many?

Would you still love him from that place so far away from him?

He prayed every day to a god he wasn’t sure existed, just to hold on to the hope that the answer was yes.

"How are things going over there?" Jiwon asked through the phone.

Taehyung’s feet carried him through the museum for the sixth time that afternoon. He still wasn’t in the mood to leave, and it’s not like anyone needed him at home at the moment. He would probably head to a nearby bar, have a glass of wine, and wander around the city until the sun rose again.

"Fine, I guess," he murmured, his gaze fixed on the paintings displayed in front of him. He had seen many of them online, but seeing them in person… it was definitely something completely different. Noticing the brushstrokes, the old traces of a brush over the oil paint, the colors, the size—everything was a new experience. It was like meeting the same person a second time; the feeling and the first impression could never be the same if you only saw them through a screen.

"So expressive, Kim." Taehyung rolled his eyes at Jiwon’s mocking tone. He wasn’t in the mood to be expressive, and it’s not like he was obligated to be.

"Anyway, Jiah is pretty worried. You know how she is, especially when it comes to you."

Taehyung nodded in silence, even though he was aware she would never see the gesture. Jiah was… she was like a mother to their small family. She was the one who turned them, the one who took care of them and taught them how to maintain their composure, always patient and loving with everyone. Taehyung couldn’t recall a single time when she had ever raised her voice at any of them.

He had always known, just like the others, that she had a certain weakness for him, something he associated too much with the fact that she had witnessed him fall apart upon finding you lifeless that night. She was the one who worried about him, who paid to give you a proper funeral, who helped him get through his sleepless nights, and who showed him a completely new world. She was the mother Taehyung never had, and he was grateful every single day for everything she had done for him, despite all the trouble he had dragged her into.

"I’ll be back soon, I just… I just want to say goodbye properly."

He stopped again in front of the painting he had submitted. That small pang in his chest had returned and, although for a few seconds he regretted it, the weight lifted when he saw someone else stop in front of your artwork to take a photo. He had managed to immortalize your memory—that was all that mattered.

At last, he would no longer be the only one completely in love with your art.

There were a few seconds of silence in which neither of them seemed to know what to say. The stillness was broken by Jiwon's soft and—unusually—understanding voice.

"Are you really okay over there, alone? We’re all a bit worried about you."

Taehyung let out a soft chuckle, lowering his head to glance at his elegant brown oxford shoes. When he was still human, he had longed to wear a pair like these, and now that he could afford them, half of his wardrobe revolved around them. You would probably be just as enamored with them as he was.

"I’ll be fine, Jiwon. It’s just a few days, it’s not like I don’t know what I’m doing."

He made his way toward the museum exit, but not before giving the painting one last look. This would be the last time he saw it—this was the final farewell. He sighed, running his tongue over his dry lips.

"Besides… I need to do this alone."

"Alright, okay, I get it. It’s your healing process and all that cheesy crap you love." Jiwon let out a heavy sigh on the other end of the line. Even miles away, Taehyung could feel the worry in her voice. A part of him was touched by it. It was nice to see that, despite everything, she still cared for him.

"Just… call us if anything happens, okay? Jimin is about to lose his mind."

"Jimin is always about to lose his mind," he chuckled under his breath, politely nodding to the guards watching the entrance.

The first thing he saw upon stepping outside was the sky, painted in pastel hues, with a faint trace of stars beginning to emerge, preparing to turn it into a beautiful nocturnal canvas with the moon as its protagonist.

"I’m going to hang up. I need to go somewhere else before heading back to my hotel."

"Alright, I get it, you’re bored of me." Even without seeing her, Taehyung knew she was smiling on the other end of the line.

"See you."

And with that, the call ended, leaving him alone with his own thoughts once again.

He wished that becoming a vampire had meant his emotions—like his heart—simply stopped functioning. Life would be easier that way. Carrying the weight of his emotions would be… probably a little more bearable.

The soft sound of Taehyung’s footsteps echoed through the dark streets of Paris, faintly illuminated by the streetlights surrounding the small, quiet alley he had chosen to escape the bustling crowd—and, in turn, his own thoughts. He had stopped by the bar he had wanted to visit for so long, but after spending a couple of hours sitting at the counter, sipping a drink he could barely taste… it was dull not being able to savor it the way he once did.

He gazed up at the night sky stretching above him, noticing how the stars seemed much closer, as if they had gathered there just to shield his eyes, rather than simply existing as part of nature’s design.

Tomorrow, he would probably buy a ticket back to Korea, still debating whether to purchase a first-class seat or a regular one. Jiah had given him more than enough money to indulge in any luxury he desired, but he didn’t want to take advantage of her generosity. He had his own savings, and not just a small amount—old trinkets he once considered worthless centuries ago were now worth millions, a fortunate advantage for all of them.

A soft melody from a nearby radio pulled him from his thoughts. He hadn’t noticed the old record store beside him, still open for some reason. It had a distinctly vintage, understated charm—exactly Taehyung’s style. He studied its exterior, noting the yellow sign with red lettering perched atop the roof, reading: Le cœur de la musique.

In the display window, several vinyl records from the ’70s and ’80s were neatly arranged, among them the famous Can’t Help Falling in Love with You by Elvis Presley, the very song now enveloping the alleyway with its gentle notes and romantic lyrics.

Taehyung truly loved that song. He closed his eyes, letting the music seep into more than just his ears—letting it settle into his body as well. With graceful movements, ones that seemed almost ingrained in him, Taehyung began swaying to the melody. He had been a great dancer in his youth. When you were both just children, you had asked him to be your dance partner so you could practice. The two of you had ended up falling completely in love with the warm, intimate feeling of it. Even when your bodies had grown cold, even when death gnawed at your bones and drained your souls, neither of you had ever stopped dancing.

His memories of you returned, vivid as always; he could almost feel the soft scent of your skin against his nose, the sensation of your hair brushing against his rough fingertips, your forehead resting gently on his shoulder, your breath against his chest. It was almost as if you were still there with him, dancing in the empty streets of Paris, in front of an old record store, your hearts swaying in perfect harmony beneath the stars.

His feet continued moving across the pavement until a soft click snapped him out of his trance.

Instantly, all of his senses sharpened. He halted his movements at once, scanning his surroundings for whoever had made that sound. He knew it was a camera. And he knew it hadn’t been close—if it had been, he would have smelled the person’s blood by now, wouldn’t he?

His dark eyes flickered with a brief glint of alertness as he surveyed the alley. That’s when he finally noticed her. At the far end of the alleyway, a young woman stood frozen in place, her face still partially hidden behind the camera lens aimed directly at him.

Before he could even think, his feet carried him forward, ready to demand why she had captured such a personal moment without his permission. But then, the delicate scent of strawberries and roses reached his nose. And right after—her blood.

Sweet. Addictive. More tempting than any other scent he had encountered in his 175 years of existence.

For a fleeting moment, Taehyung swore his heart beat again, just from the sheer intoxication of it. His gums began to itch as his fangs pressed against the inside of his lip, the thirst for blood growing exponentially with every step he took. His hands clenched into fists at his sides, the overwhelming urge to feed suffocating him, clouding his mind.

Until she lowered the camera.

Until he saw your eyes.

Large. Bright. Filled with life, staring at him from the end of the alley.

His heart—still lifeless, still incapable of pumping blood—felt like it was being squeezed in a vice. And though he had no need to breathe, he swore the air caught in his lungs.

Did that make sense? Of course not, but you—standing right there, smiling at him as if you hadn’t died in his arms over 170 years ago—didn’t make sense either.

And yet, there you were.

The same eyes. The same lips. Your hair was different, yes, but everything else… everything else was exactly as he remembered. Exactly the same as the day death had stolen you from him.

Was this some kind of punishment? Retribution for the countless lives he had taken in his early years as a vampire?

“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable!” you blurted out the moment you noticed the man standing just a few feet away from you. A soft, warm blush quickly spread across your cheeks—not only from the embarrassment of being caught photographing a complete stranger without permission but also because that very stranger, the one now standing before you, was breathtakingly handsome. And now he was looking directly at you, so intensely that you could feel his gaze burning into your skin.

“I-It’s just that I was on my way back to my hotel, and I saw you dancing alone. You had this melancholic expression that was just so captivating from here and… I’m sorry, that’s no excuse for what I did, I’ll delete the photo right away!”

As you fumbled over your apology, nervously gripping your camera once again, Taehyung took the opportunity to examine you—every detail of your face. You had the same beauty mark beneath your left eye. The same faint scar between your index and middle fingers. Even your voice—one he remembered as if it were his own—was exactly the same.

Your clumsy way of speaking.

The pink flush on your cheeks.

Your long eyelashes.

There was no doubt in his mind. The young woman standing before him was you.

“I…” His voice was quiet, almost hesitant. “What’s your name?”

He watched as your eyes lifted to meet his. He couldn’t help but notice how your lips parted slightly at the unexpected question.

Ah.

He still remembered the way your lips moved against his—soft yet intoxicating, slow yet sensual, always keeping him on edge. He remembered the way you used to smile whenever he playfully nibbled on your lower lip.

He missed it.

He missed you.

“Oh! S-Sorry, how rude of me,” you chuckled nervously, carefully lowering your camera so that it hung freely around your neck. The strap dug slightly into your exposed skin, but it was the safest way to carry it without accidentally dropping it. “I’m Y/N. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“Y/N,” he murmured, savoring every letter of your name.

He knew it. He knew it. It was impossible for you to be anyone else.

His eyes began to sting as the reality of what was happening finally settled in.

After 175 miserable years—

You had come back to him.

Looking exactly as you had the last time he saw you.

“The pleasure is mine,” he said softly, reaching out to take your hand in his own, gently, fearful that the moment his fingers brushed against your skin, you would disappear.

But you didn’t.

You were still there when his lips pressed lightly against your knuckles, inhaling your scent as discreetly as possible.

So this is how you smelled when you were full of life.

Without an illness slowly stealing you away. Your blood had the sweetest scent he had ever known, and he couldn’t help but close his eyes at the steady, rhythmic beat of your heart echoing in his ears, proof that you were alive, proof that you were here.

Taehyung had never believed in God, but now, with you standing before him— he could only describe this as a miracle.

Masterlist.

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darlingpoppet · 18 hours ago

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✨Doujinshi Shop Open!✨

Hello all! I have set up a storefront to handle international orders outside of Japan for Closest To My Heart/だれよりも心を許している男, the pza/patrochilles doujinshi I released at the Japanese Hades fan event, Chthonios Epic 3. (And for the Eruri heads out there, I also have the last few copies of my first doujinshi listed as well!)

If you live outside of Japan and you’re interested in buying a copy of my book(s), please visit ninnananna.bigcartel.com!

Basic book details:

Price: ¥1300 JPY (about $8USD) (+ shipping)

A5 size

110 pages

English and Japanese versions both included in one volume

A limited number of copies will also include a FREE postcard extra, featuring a text-free version of the cover art. Please select Book + Postcard in the Book Options menu.

Some Important Things Of Note!

This doujinshi is a bilingual physical edition of my fanfic, Closest To My Heart, which I originally posted in English on AO3. The new Japanese translation of the fic is currently exclusive to this book.

The cover is drawn by the amazing and talented artist RIPTIDE, who also drew an 8-page comic based on a particular scene in the story. The original English version of the comic, as well as a newly created Japanese version are also included in the book.

This doujinshi is R-18 (Adult Only), so please confirm the nature of the contents before you buy. If you are an adult with a pixiv account, you can look at a collection of sample pages here. Please also feel free to read the original version of the story and comic in their entirety on AO3, which is also where I have relevant tags and content warnings written in more detail. But to summarize here: the story has a few brief references to acts of rape/non-con, as well as references to & depictions of emotional and physical abuse, rough sex acts, and dubious consent. This is a darker, more dramatic, alternate canon retelling of the Patrochilles quest from Hades, in which everyone involved (Achilles, Zagreus, & Patroclus) feel emotionally conflicted with one another, as well as the situation they get caught up in. “Toxic love triangle” is the story summary in a nutshell!

Currently, I am able to ship to countries where the Japan Post has Registered Airmail service available. Luckily, this applies to most countries! However, a big exception right now are: EU countries and Northern Ireland. Since apparently new GPSR requirements went into effect, I am looking into whether or not it is feasible for an individual like myself to comply when shipping to these countries.

For anyone living in the EU or Northern Ireland, the only possible workaround I can offer currently is this: proxy service via the listing on Pixiv Booth. Here is the Booth listing: https://darlingpoppet.booth.pm

Booth normally has a built-in proxy service through Buyee available for overseas customers. However, apparently this service is not extended to listings marked as Adult/R-18. However, it’s my understanding that there are other proxy service companies out there who are more lax about purchasing NSFW products on your behalf. I can’t personally vouch of any of them, but some names recommended to me as being Special Yaoi Book-friendly include Tenso, AOCS (both of whom I believe have official ties with the doujinshi retailer Toranoana), ZenMarket, and Neokyo. Please try them! (And also be sure to let me know if you’re successful, so I can confirm that this option works!)

Finally, if you are someone who lives in Japan, please use the Booth listing!! Shipping is a flat 370 yen via Anshin Booth Pack, so the transaction is done completely anonymously.

Thank you everyone for your kind support! ♡ I had a lot of fun putting this book together so I hope you’ll enjoy it too.

#hades game #hades supergiant #hades fanart #hades fanfic #patrochilles #pza #zagchilles #patzag #zagreus #achilles #patroclus #hades patrochilles #the iliad #my fics #doujinshi #tagamemnon #eruri #rivaeru

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oathkeeper-of-tarth · 1 day ago

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Libations

Fandom: Baldur’s Gate 3 Characters: Dame Aylin/Isobel Thorm Length: ~4200 words Rating: M, sexual content and a bit of canon-typical violence, with very temporary character death. Summary:

Five and twenty words exactly and Aylin feels like she will expire on the spot, divine heritage and immortality be damned. By the time she has composed herself and her mind into something resembling coherence, excused herself from the meeting with her lieutenants, and started counting out the words of If you wish it, I shall leave my armour on, and— Aylin realises with a curse that her window for composing a reply has long gone.

Isobel, Aylin, the Sending spell, and the twists and turns of a century-long romance reflected in 25-word installments.

But for the most part our girls are simply playful and horny.

Written for day 7 of Aylin/Isobel Week 2025, for the prompts: The road to Baldur's Gate - and beyond | Courtship, romance, letters, bloodline.

I wanted to end the week on something (mostly) happy. A huge thanks to everyone who's taken part in this - I have so much to catch up on, be it reading, commenting, or replying, and it is a true delight. I hope you all enjoyed my own contributions, and I hope you enjoy this one as well.

Also on AO3.

—

Libations

The summer Isobel completes her training is one of the longest and driest in Reithwin's recollection. When it comes to be her turn for a field excursion and initiation mission with the other acolytes, Isobel begs and pleads and argues with her father for days. There is no need for the Lady of Moonrise to go, he claims; no point to Isobel putting herself at risk, or dragging herself through the dusty, sweltering inconveniences of a field campaign. But Isobel will not be deterred, and the cold war of the two stubborn Thorms in Moonrise Towers stretches on for a full blistering tenday.

Ultimately and begrudgingly, likely knowing his daughter is bound to simply leave of her own accord otherwise, Ketheric relents - but not without stipulations and conditions. For one, Isobel is to report back regularly using the Sending spell to keep him personally appraised of events and of her well-being. Second, Isobel is to use the freshly-procured and altogether excessive amount of scrolls of the selfsame spell, in order to make sure she is never straining her own magical resources.

And so Isobel sets out, saves a village, combats bandits, prevents a drought, heals more people than she ever thought herself capable of, and neglects to use a single one of the spell scrolls.

The first message is utter torment. Isobel toils over it, scraps so many bits of drafting paper her room starts looking decidedly snowed-in, and as white as her actually ice-locked balcony. At least Squire seems to be having fun batting the crumpled-up balls around the floor.

There is the form of address, to start with.

Dame Aylin seems, to Isobel's eye, proud and honoured by her role and many, many titles, very delightfully certain of her own resplendence, but also not so keen on being singled out for formalities and praise that erred on the side of worshipful. That kind of reverent prayer and supplication, she claimed as she waved it off, was meant for her great divine Mother.

She is striking and intimidating, to be sure - but once one tries it, she is the very opposite of unapproachable. Her smiles are wide, enthusiastic, freely given, and she is just as generous with hands clapped on shoulders or rousing proclamations. It is so easy, standing next to her, to believe yourself capable of grand deeds. A true beacon of hope and the quintessential paladin - Isobel could hardly hide her starry-eyed appreciation after mere moments in her orbit.

And yet whenever the glorious Dame Aylin turns that gleaming silver gaze towards her, when she truly looks at Isobel, all of this is so unmistakably tinged with something else. Something they are both aware of; something that looms, and seems both so unlikely and strange and so inevitable and so right. One of them need only take the first momentous step.

So, Isobel agonises, is this it? Is this the step? It seemed like such a clever idea when it occurred to her, when she knocked over her case of scrolls one unassuming morning, left over from all those years ago. A simple Sending spell: direct, private, with an invitation for the two of them to meet somewhere just as private. Promising a response within seconds, if the recipient is willing. And if not, well… Isobel could worry about that when the time came to face her goddess' literal daughter in the inevitable duty-related context again.

Honoured Emissary, Sword of the Silverlight, Champion of the Moonmaiden, Blessed Moondaughter - Isobel could use twenty-five words and more just getting through the preamble. Nonsense. Missing the point entirely, at that.

So she simply settles for Dame Aylin, not yet feeling quite so bold as to leave the title out, notes down her auspicious beginning on her current and latest little vellum scrap, and stops.

Now: counting out the remaining twenty-three perfect and exact words she wishes to send, to be heard.

Isobel groans and lets her head thunk against the solid wood of her desk.

It started with that fateful meeting in the audience hall of Moonrise, threading the first of its tiny roots through them both. But it flourished with the surprising summons that made Aylin's heart beat like a lively drum, and the brief private audience that turned into a long night of confessions - and rather rapidly growing closeness to stave off the cold - in the frost-garlanded gardens beneath Moonrise.

In the warm months since, it has only bloomed.

Aylin finds herself on the receiving end of many a message from Reithwin's wisest and brightest and most mettlesome cleric, after that audacious first one. The invitations take many forms, from mock-formal proclamations to open suggestions for trysts, and Aylin adores and eagerly answers every single one.

Respected Emissary, starts the latest message, arriving just as Aylin is done cleaning and putting away the equipment she had borrowed for her morning training. The smile audible in Isobel's voice implies this one will be a cheeky mix of her habitual styles. You are hereby invited to attend today's solstice festivities at Moonrise Towers. Following supper, your presence is requested on the topmost west-facing balcony.

The entire whirlwind of the past few months has been altogether exhilarating and so delightfully new. Aylin finds herself wishing to leap into the air to twirl and loop at least some her immense exuberance away; to chase and herd clouds until they spell Isobel's name out in the otherwise clear sky.

Instead, she takes a few deep breaths to calm herself, to slow the blood still rushing through her veins after her drills and stretches and let her ruffled feathers settle back down, then replies: I shall be flying past momentarily, my darling. If my presence is welcome and desired this early, leave your window open.

The window, it turns out, is not merely left open as a signal of welcome. Isobel, leaning out of it, all but grabs Aylin right out of the air to pull her in for a kiss. And then another. And another, until Aylin laughs against her mouth and begs for a reprieve long enough to clamber into the room.

Selûnites, diverse and scattered as they are, have modes of dress and raiments just as varied. Aylin respects them all deeply, and regularly feels her heart both lightened and gladdened when encountering familiar insignia, sometimes with an interesting twist on the moon-and-stars-inspired designs, in some remote corner of the world.

Isobel is a highly skilled, well-qualified cleric, and she has doubtlessly earned her vestments well. She wears them with great pride, and on many occasions - never letting those around her forget she is a servant of Selûne just as much as she is the Lady of Moonrise, and Reithwin, and all the lands around it.

Aylin, of course, likes her best wearing nothing at all. But when needs must, when the time is too short, when the day is full of obligations for them both, she makes do. She ducks her head underneath layers and layers of robes with great delight, presses a trail of kisses up one calf, then all along the inside of a thigh, and prays her Mother doesn't mind Her clerical vestments being worn for a sweeter ritual than the one they shall take part in later.

Another change of seasons comes, then another, but the sweetness of their time together changes not at all - and neither does the enticing tension of their brief times apart.

Isobel grows well-practised in casting the Sending spell, and makes sure to have the bit of clipped copper wire it requires close at hand. Still, she keeps her stock of scrolls replenished, too. They are pricey - but Isobel allows herself this one indulgence, this one luxury.

She supposes she will eventually stop blushing furiously during her morning prayers, when it comes to the preparation of her chosen rituals and spells for the day. Isobel hopes the Goddess is amused, if anything; Her blessings She gives freely and easily enough.

But no amount of flushed distraction or momentary embarrassment can deter Isobel. Not when her beloved is so quick with the replies, so eager to rise to any challenge; not when a cleverly-worded message so often leads to her presence at Isobel's side and sparks such delectable inspiration in her.

Tonight, however, is merely frustrating. An inconvenience at most, in the grand scheme of things, but Aylin being called away on a brief but urgent matter when they'd had an indulgent romantic evening arranged soured both their moods considerably.

Aylin promised to return as soon as she was able that very night, swore the two of them would salvage whatever bit of their plans they could; swore, again, to make up for this ill-timed absence a dozen times over.

So Isobel waits, relieved as the humidity of the day slowly clears, watches the moon steadily traverse the clear summer sky, and indulges in thoughts since all else is out of reach. She hums and contemplates the shapes of a gorgeous, strong neck trailing down to a beautifully corded shoulder, with that one eye-catching line of gold woven across it.

She discards their plans one by one; the dinner, the stroll, tasting the new seasonal ales at the inn, the bath— well, perhaps not the bath.

Isobel goes out onto her balcony, pacing in the blessedly fresh breeze that still fails to drive the nigh-feverish flush from her skin, and sends her message.

I am in no mood for romantic candlelight. I wish to see this firestorm kindled within me illuminate the divinely chiselled marble of your face.

Aylin's reply is as a murmur against her ear, as light as the caress of the midsummer wind on its sensitive tip.

Our Lady of Silver, in all her foresight, has fashioned for my beloved a throne. Soon you shall take your rightful place upon it.

Not an hour later, when the sound of wings finally comes from just out of view, Isobel feels like she could take flight herself.

The winter campaign against an unpleasant alliance of Sharrans and Cyricists is long and arduous, and takes Aylin further north than Neverwinter. The cold is biting and the ground hard, particularly after she has allowed herself to get used to the luxury of a high-born lady's warm bed. But worst of all is the gaping wound that her absence feels like. For all the joy Aylin draws from the loyal comrades she has been fighting with, they are simply not Isobel Thorm. Her darling, unmatched in every aspect.

Another day dawns, another map is unfurled upon the camp-table, another scouting party reports their findings. The dark forces seem to be dwindling, at long last, and Aylin lets burgeoning hope wash over her.

My fierce, fearless paladin, Isobel's sweet voice bursts out of nowhere, rich with yearning and just a touch breathy, pouring like honey over Aylin's mind. I often wonder how it would taste, to have a sip of you fresh from battle, eyes still ablaze, raging. Consider.

Five and twenty words exactly and Aylin feels like she will expire on the spot, divine heritage and immortality be damned.

By the time she has composed herself and her mind into something resembling coherence, excused herself from the meeting with her lieutenants, and started counting out the words of If you wish it, I shall leave my armour on, and— Aylin realises with a curse that her window for composing a reply has long gone.

She misses her sorely, today. Her Aylin, her angel, off on an important quest that turned into a months-long endeavour. And it is not - well, it is not just the enthralling physical proximity, or the delicious skills of mouth or fingers, nor simply her wonderful warmth during the cold winter months. It is the large, sword-calloused hand always ready to envelop Isobel's, the blindingly bright smile, the eyes softened and gentle and wide in their endless attentiveness, the way she makes even the simplest everyday statements sound like poetry.

The world feels just a little bit emptier, because she is not here. So Isobel does the one thing she can, and weaves a bit of magic to let her know.

My precious angel, from the moment I laid eyes on you, I knew you were meant to be mine, and I yours. And then she pauses - Isobel cannot, in that tiny span of time she has to finish her spell, summarise the enormity of this feeling. So she concludes simply: I miss you.

The reply comes almost instantly, the beloved voice effervescent in Isobel's mind and sending delightful shivers down her spine.

Darling, I yearn for your blessèd presence more than words can say. I shall endeavour to show you most ardently upon my return. Eternally yours—

Isobel smiles at the sudden stop, clutches the thin remnants of her little wire to her chest. She wants to throw herself on her bed and giggle giddily like an enamoured schoolgirl. Wants to flee the tower and leave Reithwin behind immediately, running off to wherever Aylin was.

Instead she takes a deep breath in a room that feels slightly less cold and desolate, and prepares to go about another day.

The days have grown long and warm, but the spring showers have not yet begun. Aylin takes advantage of the light and flies back to Reithwin as fast as her wings can carry her - faster, perhaps, as she notes some soreness and a twinge of fatigue that her tireless self is hardly used to.

But it matters little, for she cuts the deliberately unannounced return trip from her long absence by almost half. Awash in self-satisfaction, Aylin sneaks up the stairs at Moonrise on subtle foot instead of flying up by resplendent wing. She reaches the second floor landing when an almost-expected, certainly-anticipated message rings out so musically in her mind.

I have seen this long winter to its bitter end, with nothing but thoughts of you to keep me warm. Will my reprieve come soon?

She knocks at the door, and Isobel opens it, then stares, agape. Aylin smirks, meets her wide eyes shining bright with joyful surprise, and sends her reply, gaze unbroken.

Momentarily, my dearest. I do so love when you spill your sweetness down my throat.

"Aylin," Isobel half-cries, half-hisses, flushed. She yanks Aylin into the room and kicks the door closed in one movement, then locks it in another. Yanks, again, Aylin down for a kiss, quickly followed by several more, frustration and delight mingling delectably.

Aylin grins into the kisses, then chuckles when Isobel nips at her lower lip. "Is vengeance not my most holy duty? Here is but some small restitution, for your… adventurous messaging, darling Isobel. Or is it that you would have preferred me speak the words aloud? I am more than willing—"

"Aylin," Isobel breaks her daze enough to twine her fingers in Aylin's hair and gently pull, urging her downwards. "Put that incorrigible mouth to better use, my love. I'm— it won't take very long."

Aylin follows and obeys, eagerly and happily. On her knees, large hands grasping at the softness of Isobel's thighs tightly, chastised mouth hot and willing and hungry.

Summer comes early that year, and stays late.

And so does Aylin. Perhaps it is her Mother's way of repaying her for a prolonged tour of duty. Perhaps Selûne merely wishes to spoil Her dear daughter. In any case, Isobel has no complaints whatsoever.

Aylin, it seems, cannot get enough of any of it. Not the vagaries of mortal life that she keeps discovering, nor the extended indulgence of this honeymoon.

"I have bathed in the silver waters beneath Argentil," she proclaims, "coasted through the timeless Astral Sea… but this… this is a wonder beyond even my reckoning."

The wonder is a perfectly average and perfectly divine day spent alone together. They are in Isobel's room, all of its doors and windows open to allow as much of the sweet-smelling late afternoon air in as possible. Entangled in each other upon an utterly mussed up bed, gloriously happy and sated.

"Nothing compares to this," Aylin murmurs her conclusion against Isobel's damp, tangled hair, and presses as close to her as plain, mundane, material flesh and skin and bone will allow.

Isobel frowns; the sweetness, unbidden, suddenly developing a bitter aftertaste. Her darling is a being of two worlds and Isobel has anchored her to one. When she is gone, what tether will remain, if any?

But that is not a contemplation for now. Not when Aylin's hands, always prone to wandering, start trailing some rather suggestive paths over her bare skin once more.

"Again?" Isobel laughs, though she cannot find it in herself to complain at all.

"Hmm," Aylin hums against her neck, which she now seems determined to entirely cover with kisses. "Call me a glutton, then. Name me… ravenous and insatiable. Dame Aylin has never shrunk from the truth."

"What else is she, this Dame Aylin?"

Aylin pauses and lifts her head to look at Isobel. Then she smirks, always all too happy to play along. "Proud, to be sure. Though not without reason, I should think."

"Oh?"

Aylin nibbles on the sensitive pointed tip of an ear, before whispering into it - and how delightful, Isobel muses, to face an opponent who knows all your weaknesses. "She does not need to weave spells and convey her words directly into her beloved's mind at inopportune times in order to make her blush, for one."

"Is that so? Well," Isobel smiles, turning to face her with a steely look in her eyes, unflinching in her challenge. "Prove it."

Aylin inclines her head, the picture of respectful obedience, save for the cheeky twist to her lip she is failing to suppress, and the telltale way her feathers have ruffled up. "As you wish. Let me first count the words, in the interest of complete fairness."

Within moments, she bends down to murmur against Isobel's ear again. "My darling, enticing within and without," each word Aylin accompanies by a light trail of fingers - under Isobel's chin, along her rib cage, up and then down the inside of each thigh. "Bids me drip upon her sheets my eagerness to receive whatever gifts she sees fit to bestow upon me."

"Not bad at all," Isobel replies, biting her lip to stifle her grin at the delightful frisson the words have invoked, and pressing her thighs together when Aylin's hand tries to venture further. "But why don't you try again?"

Your counsel is required on a crucial matter. Come to Moonrise at your earliest convenience. It is of vital importance that you do not delay.

It is Isobel's message, of course, but Aylin is struck by the tone of it. No endearments, and no playful teasing - utter seriousness.

I am on my way, beloved, worry not, Aylin replies, simply and swiftly. Then she frowns, turns to the assembly of merchants and tollhouse clerks Ketheric Thorm had drawn her into for incomprehensible and likely petty reasons, and excuses herself.

A few wing-beats, and Aylin has coasted across the breadth of half the town. A turn and a dash and she is flying up the imposing tower of Moonrise along most of its height, until she alights on Isobel's balcony. She herself is standing there, expectant, but entirely unperturbed and blissfully calm even in the chill breeze.

Aylin sighs, understanding what has transpired at once. "My darling, as grateful as I am for your valiant rescue, you cannot make a habit of this."

Isobel does not pout - it would be unbecoming. Instead she raises a clever eyebrow and smiles just so. "Oh? Whyever not?"

"What if you needed me urgently and I thought it merely one of your jests, your sweet games…"

Isobel smirks, maddeningly close, wildly beautiful. "But I always need you quite urgently." Then, upon seeing Aylin's frown, her teasing drops, and she amends with all seriousness. "If it has become uncomfortable, or if you don't like it for any reason at all, I'll stop, of course. Aylin—"

"No! No, no. It is not that. I enjoy it, I do. All of these delightful reminders… as if you were with me, always, even when I am leagues away. But soon…"

"Soon, there will be no need," Isobel finishes, reiterating that most solemn pledge. As soon as the season turns, as soon as the roads clear, the two of them are setting off on long-promised adventures of their own. Then she gives that little smirk again that makes her eyes glimmer with the most exquisite mischief. "But it can still be fun, regardless."

Aylin nods, then raises Isobel's hand for a kiss. "Shall we go inside, then, and see to this urgent matter?"

There are months that pass like days, and days that pass like years, and years that, in their passing, vary their span from decades to minutes.

And there is a period of Aylin's life when she would have named herself blissfully happy. Utterly content, even. But, however long it lasted, it could never have been long enough.

The first dagger comes out of nowhere; out of a darkness so complete the warm, diffused light of the hallway torches right outside the room does not even touch it. The force of it and the pain send Isobel to the ground. Her spear is kicked out of her hands, swallowed by the shadows.

She hears the assassin cry out in surprise, then hears Squire yelp.

Isobel seizes the distraction, drags herself along the floor, towards the brooch she has been using as a spellcasting focus, and the bit of wire clipped to it just in case, that has torn off her robes and skidded under her desk. But the assassin looms over her once more, twists the knife out of her back, and kicks at her hand again, and Isobel's lifeline is lost in the darkness, too.

The contents of her desk are strewn on the floor around her, most of them stained by the growing, concerningly large puddle of blood beneath her.

One of them is a scroll. Isobel reaches for it with rapidly numbing fingers, and starts to speak as it disintegrates in her hand.

"Aylin," she gasps out, just barely, "help."

The rest of the words go unused.

Miles away, Aylin is startled awake from her doze, awash in a cold terror that matches the icy winds outside, and knows it is too late.

Then there is a century of silence. But this, too, passes.

It is a honey-sweet molasses-thick summer afternoon when Isobel finally sees the sea. And as wondrous as it is in all its seemingly endless span before her, at the moment the most fascinating part of it is the droplets and rivulets that cling to and race across Aylin's skin. Gold, gold, gold, wherever she looks.

She presses a gentle kiss to her shoulder, wide, strong, solid, with an ancient oath Isobel herself has sworn: tenderness for Aylin, always, forever, to make up for a century of none and to fill up every crevice of her being. This time it is but a small measure poured from Isobel's lips, in exchange for the salty tang.

The water is a bit too cold for Isobel's taste - she did not go in past her ankles, and swiftly retreated to the sun-warmed sand they'd spread a blanket over. But she still gets a refreshing taste of it when Aylin rushes in up to her chest, spreading her wings and fluffing the feathers, flicking this way and that, working the water into all of her and showering Isobel with a pleasant spray. Her pure, joyful grin is utterly contagious, and her exclamations as she swims out make Isobel's heart swell.

Isobel reaches over to the satchel at her side, plucks out a scroll and sends I love you I love you I love you I love you until the words run out to Aylin, within glorious sight but just out of reach.

Aylin's surprise is evident as she starts, then turns to swim and wade back immediately. Her eyebrows shoot up almost comically as she catches sight of the entire armful of scrolls Isobel has packed away.

"My darling," she begins, as close to hesitant Isobel has ever seen her be, incongruously combined with her ever-impressive broad frame currently on such luxurious display. "Do you not find it beautiful, nay, miraculous, that should you have any desires, you need only ever lean closer and whisper them into my ear?"

"I do," Isobel answers, truthful and heartfelt, and awash anew in appreciation of all their hard-won blessings. "But for the sake of a little fun once in a while, I thought it couldn't hurt. Besides, the young master of Ramazith's Tower and all its endless magical riches owed us a favour, and obliged, no questions asked."

Aylin hums in understanding, and grins. "So," she drawls, in a beautifully and heatingly familiar tone, "does my beloved harbour any wishes of me?"

"Not for the moment," Isobel shakes her head but does not try to hide her sly smile. "Enjoy yourself - I was merely enjoying the view."

Aylin nods, but stays crouched next to her, eyes narrowed, intent. Then with little warning she scoops Isobel up in her arms, and ambles back through the sand and pebbles and into the sea. She effortlessly keeps Isobel above the surface of the chilly water - such casual thoughtfulness - and lets her instead be soaked by the clinging seawater warmed by her own endlessly warm body.

Isobel laughs and laughs and laughs, then throws her arms around her and kisses her sweetly.

Suspended, amber-clad and preserved in all its beauty, the moment lasts forever.

#aylinisobelweek2025 #dame aylin #isobel thorm #aylin x isobel #baldur's gate 3 #bg3 #oathkeeper writes things #my fic

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reginaphalangelobster125 · 2 days ago

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Game Night

Peter Parker, Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanoff, Clint Barton, Bucky Barnes, Sam Wilson, Bruce Banner, Thor, Loki, Stephen Strange, Wong

Summary: The Avengers have a game night.

Warnings: one swear word, lots of yelling, Loki being Loki, fluff, I think that's all

Word Count: 2,020

Notes: I was planning to write a short drabble but it got away from me.....and I let it. I was halfway through an episode of Buffy so that may or may not have influenced me. Thank you so much @soulvtude I LOVED writing this and I hope you enjoy reading it.

Every Friday night was game night. Peter Parker had suggested it and all of the Avengers jumped at the idea, thinking it would be a fun time had by all but they were sorely mistaken. The evening started off fine, Bruce made the popcorn as he was one of the only people trusted around the microwave after the incident. Everyone sat down at the large, steel table in the common room, awaiting the games Tony and Peter had promised to bring. The two thought they had picked out a nice selection but oh how wrong they were. Their first mistake, Battleship. They thought it would be fun, they thought everyone would enjoy playing, they thought wrong. When Sam had revealed three out of the four spots his ship was on Bucky thought he had him.

"C-3" Bucky proclaimed, his voice thick with a certain smugness.

"Miss" Sam responded.

"What?!"

"Miss"

"How?! C-1, C-2 and C-4 were all hits!"

"And C-3 is a miss, Buckaroo"

"It has to be a hit! And don't call me that!"

"Call you what, Buckaroo?"

"Wilson, I swear to God, one more word out that smart mouth of your's and I'll-"

"You'll what?"

"That's it!"

Bucky snapped, he leaped across the table and landed on Sam, pinning him to the floor. His hands wrapped around Sam's neck, almost ready to squeeze just that little bit too tight.

"Buck! Get off him, please" Steve pleaded, to no use.

"Not happenin' Stevie"

Sam was gasping for air, pulling at the super soldier's hair, trying to get him off in any way. Steve ran up and ripped Bucky off of him just in time. The rest of the team looked on in mixed expressions of shock and annoyance.

"Buck, I think you should go to your room and cool down" Steve gently prodded, trying to calm the situation.

"I'm not going anywhere unless he goes" Bucky growled, glaring at Sam, who stuck his tongue out at him.

"Fine, Sam will go too"

"Hey, no fair! He attacked me"

"You provoked him, now both of you, go to your rooms"

"Bu-"

"Uh! Rooms, now"

"Fine, Mom" Sam muttered under his breath.

The two men walked to their rooms, not without some grumbling.

"Now, where were we?" Steve asked, sitting back down.

"M-maybe it'd be good to play a different game?" Peter voiced, still a little nervous.

"Good idea, kid" Steve replied.

Peter rustled through the box of games next to him when he pulled out a deck of cards with the word 'Uno' written on the box.

"Nu uh" Nat stated simply.

"Nu uh?" Tony questioned.

"No Uno"

"Why not?"

"Ask Bird Brain"

"Hey!" Clint yelped.

"What did you do, Clint?" Steve asked in his annoyed mother voice.

"I didn't do anything!"

"Fuckin' liar"

"Language! There is a child present!"

"Oh that's okay Mister Captain America Rogers, sir"

"Y-you can just call me Steve, kid"

"Thank you"

"Back to Uno" Tony interjected.

"No, never again" Nat deadpanned.

"Come on! That was years ago!" Clint whined.

"So you do remember!" Nat accused.

"Okay, yes, fine, I remember. Now can we please move on?"

"Not until you apologise"

"I'm sorry, okay?"

"Like you mean it" Tony teased.

"Natasha Romanoff I am deeply sorry for what I have done to you, will you please forgive me?"

"No"

"No?!"

"No"

"Oh this just keeps getting better" Tony mumbled through a mouth full of popcorn.

"What you did was unforgivable, Barton!"

Clint sighed, running his hand across his face.

"Why don't we just play something else, guys?" Steve tried to cut through the tension.

"Fine" Nat grumbled.

"I have Monopoly" Peter muttered, absolutely terrified of the Black Widow, as anyone should be.

"That could be fun" Bruce mentioned, reminding everyone that he was in fact, still in the room.

Peter set up the Monopoly board and made Tony the banker, yet another grave mistake. The game played out fine for a while, everyone was nice to each other, being fair, until Bruce ended up in jail for the third time in a row. A few veins on his forehead and neck started to pulse green.

"Jail bad!" He yelled in a Hulk voice.

"It is amusing how easily angry the Hulk gets!" Thor boomed through bouts of laughter, not helping the situation at all.

"Not Hulk!"

"Thor, you're not helping!" Clint almost screeched out of terror, being sat next to Bruce was not an ideal position to be in.

"Hey, hey, big guy, calm down okay?" Nat reasoned with Bruce, narrowly avoiding a code green.

"I-I'm sorry, I think I should just go to my room"

Bruce left up the hallway, feeling incredibly guilty and embarrassed. That is for now, before he hears stories of the rest of the night in the morning.

"Why don't we play a video game?" Peter almost begged at this point, trying to salvage the night.

"Sounds great, whatcha thinking?" Tony asked, looking over to him.

"Uh, what about Mario Kart?"

"Good choice"

"What is Mario Kart?" Steve and Thor ask at the same time.

"It's a game where you race cars and pick up little boosts along the way"

"That sounds very amusing" Thor proclaimed.

Peter, Thor, Steve, Tony, Loki, Clint and Nat all move to the TV's, of which there are two, both equipped with the latest gaming tech, Tony's gift to Peter. Peter explains how to play and it seems as though everyone understands.

"Look brother! They have a rainbow bridge that looks just like the Bi-Frost!"

"Very amusing" Loki drawled with an eye roll.

The race started, Nat, Tony and Peter were all very good at it with Clint not too far behind. Thor kept flying off the bridge, Steve could barely work the controls and Loki used magic to get ahead.

"Uh uh, Sabrina, no magic!" Tony called Loki out, still not looking away from the screen.

"Who is this Sabrina?"

"The Teenage Witch"

"I've never heard of her, is she very powerful?"

"Mr Stark, I don't think he gets it" Peter whispered.

"Yeah, I gathered that"

"Do not speak of me as if I am not here!"

"Cool your jets, Samantha"

"WHO ARE THESE WOMEN YOU KEEP REFERRING TOO?!"

"They're for TV Mr Loki"

"They are fictional?"

"Yes"

"Then why do you compare them to me?"

"Because their powers are just a lot of talk too" Tony quipped.

"How dare you doubt the God of Mischief?!"

"Brother, the man of iron is just trying to upset you"

"Well, it will not work"

"Seems like it already has, Willow"

"WHO IS WILLOW?!?!?!"

"I actually don't know that one" Peter said, still watching the screen, and kicking everyone's asses.

"Willow Rosenberg, Buffy The Vampire Slayer" Nat interjected, also focused on the screen.

"You watch Buffy?" Tony questioned.

"Only because someone said that some vampire looked like Clint, then I got sucked in"

"Yeah it does that, did you say a vampire looked like Clint?"

"Yep, but it was in the spin off"

"We need to watch that episode"

"Please don't" Clint almost pleaded.

"After this we are so watching that" Tony smirked.

After that Clint decided to leave, he didn't want to be teased any further later into the night.

A few hours went by without any incidents and Peter thought everything was back to normal, he thought everything was fine and going well but yet again, he was wrong.

"YOU STUPID HUNK OF JUNK!" Steve screamed, throwing his controller on the ground after not being able to make a right turn for twenty minutes.

His outburst set everyone off.

"I am done with this ridiculous machine!" Thor beckoned as he stomped off just after Steve.

"PETER BENJAMIN PARKER! I know you are cheating somehow!"

"I'm not Mr Stark, I promise!"

"I'm with Tony, there's no way you can win every single round without cheating at least a bit" Nat added as she took walked away.

Peter was left sitting on the couch next to Loki, who had stopped playing hours ago.

"Mr Loki?"

"Yes, Spiderling?"

"Is-is there any chance you might have cast a spell to make everyone go crazy?"

"No, but I wish I had thought of it"

"So then, they're just, like this?"

"It appears so"

"Wow, I'm just glad Doctor Strange turned down my invitation"

"Ah, about that"

"Mr Loki, what did you do?"

Loki waved his hand to reveal Stephen, sitting the corner rocking back and forth, muttering incoherently.

"What did you do?!"

"It was just a simple spell for a bit of fun. He has been sitting there the whole time, watching us but no one has been able to see or hear him"

"Why? And why is he such a mess?"

"One, because it was fun and two, because he has no perception of time so in his perspective it could have been days, weeks, months even"

"And you think that's fun?!"

"Yes! And payback"

"Payback for what?"

"The time he had me trapped in a loop, falling"

"Thor said that was only for thirty minutes, not months!"

"That time it was but he did it again a few weeks ago, it felt like I was stuck for 2 months"

"Well that's a bit mean of him, what did you do?"

"Why does everyone always say that? I might not have done anything"

"Mr Loki?"

"I said might"

Peter just looked at him, with those big puppy dog eyes.

"Fine, I took his necklace"

"You what?!"

"I thought it was a harmless joke!"

"You know how weird he is about that thing"

"Yes, it's almost as disturbing as his attachment to the cloak"

Cloak flew over to Loki and slapped him in the face.

"Hey!"

Peter tried to hide his giggles but couldn't for very long.

"Do you think this is funny mortal?!"

"Yes! Very!"

Loki growled before stomping off in a huff. Suddenly a bright orange ring of light appeared in front of Peter and Wong stepped through.

"Where is he?" Wong asked tiredly.

"Just over there Mr Supreme Wong sir"

"Just call me Wong"

"Okay sir"

Wong motioned for the cloak and it picked Stephen up and carried him through the portal.

"Loki?"

"Yes"

"Hmm, I will deal with him in the morning, for now I have to turn this" He motioned at Stephen, still babbling while holding his knees to his chest "Back into a fearsome sorcerer"

"Good luck!"

"I'm sure I'll need it"

With that the portal closed and Peter joined Nat and Tony in the main common room.

"Do you forgive me yet?"

"Sure, sit down, we're watching vampire Barton" Tony said, gesturing for Peter to sit next to him.

"God, no. Please Nat, don't do it" Clint begged.

"Nope, now sit down or get out, either way, shut up"

Clint left, done with Nat's teasing. Peter, Nat and Tony watched the episode and Tony turned to Peter.

"So are you saying, you've never seen Buffy The Vampire Slayer?"

"Nope, but I've heard of it, sounds kinda silly"

"Bite your tongue!" Nat exclaimed, surprising the two.

"Well we're watching it, prepare for your mind to be blown"

"That seems a little over the top" Peter doubted.

"For once, he's not being dramatic"

Tony played the first two episodes and looked to Peter.

"Whatdya think?"

"Oh my God, is there more?"

"Oh yeah"

The three of them watched more episodes for hours until Peter fell asleep. His legs were on Tony's lap and his head was on Nat's shoulder as he snored, fast asleep.

"Do we move him?" Tony whispered.

"Nah, he looks too comfy"

They sat there for a while before they all fell asleep, quite the sight for the others when they woke up. Sam took a photo and ran away just as Natasha woke up. Of course she threatened him but she didn't want to disturb the still sleeping Peter in her lap.

And what did Peter learn from all of this? Game nights with the Avengers were chaotic, loud and sometimes a little murdery but they always ended happily, for the most part and he wouldn't have it any other way.

Tags:

@impetusofadream @goldfishthegr8 @avengers-official-recruit-agent @goreygirl03 @xenasolos @sparklyturtlefox @rios-sythe @nekoannie-chan @ilovemarvel12 @hayneyney @n3ponen @8812-342. @everyonesfriend @pinkthick @craftytacopiecash @meryuniverse @aliljaybird

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communicationthroughlyrics · 11 hours ago

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I Work Too Hard, Can You Fuckin' Pay Me?

Part 13 - Y/N moved to escape some of thier looming troubles from Westview, to the place that their best friend said would make a difference. New job, new digs, will Y/N make a change for the better, or leave another city with their tail between their legs?

TW: Angst is turning up a notch

Word Count: 2.1K

Read Pt. 1 HERE Read Pt. 2 HERE Read Pt. 3 HERE Read Pt. 4 HERE Read Pt. 5 HERE Read Pt. 6 HERE Read Pt. 7 HERE Read Pt. 8 HERE Read Pt. 9 HERE Read Pt. 10 HERE Pt. 11 HERE Pt. 12 HERE

A Prisoner By My Own Hands

You spent a couple of hours going over all that had happened in Westview. From your womanizer habits that got you kicked out of high school, and had you placed into alternative schooling, your parents kicked you out at 16 and essentially forced you to grow up fast. To Carol, your first true relationship, the older woman led you through the trials and tribulations of adulthood unbecoming. When she left you for a 'more mature, fitting relationship' in another country, you were heartbroken.

You began sleeping around, bringing a different girl or woman home every night, hoping to fill the void that Carol had left in your heart. Many parties with Pietro, and finally one of you had settled down. Pietro was wildly in love with the older woman, and you were eyeing her stepdaughter. But amidst the games, Pietro got hurt and decided it was best to leave, knowing he couldn't stay away from Val if he didn't. Val came over to your place, looking for him, but in reality, she wanted you.

She twisted the moments of vulnerability, making it seem as though she was heartbroken, and you were the rebound. You had felt used and disgusting, having slept with the woman your best friend had sworn was the one. In your disgust, you seduced her stepdaughter, fucking her on every surface imaginable in thier house, Val coming home in the middle of your lusty, anger-fueled stupor.

You told Wanda how anticipated Val to be angry, to yell, to scream at you- force you out of her house. But she didn’t. Instead, she sat there, staring at you with an energy you couldn't quite place at the time. You know it now as a challenge. She watched as you fucked her stepdaughter, before quite literally stepping between you both to fix herself a drink. Once you were done with Maria, Val cornered you, forcing herself onto you.

From that day, you were caught between the two, often time fucking one, before sneaking out of the room to the other. Part of you enjoyed it, the thrill of the forbidden, the other part of you felt dirty, like you had betrayed not only your best friend but yourself. It went on for weeks until you got caught leaving Val's room one night by none other than her husband, and her stepdaughter, hickeys adorning your neck, hair mussed, and flush cheeks.

The look of betrayal on everyone's faces, the ensuing argument and boxing match with her husband, the look of disgust on Val's face as you're kicked out of the house, clothing torn, beaten, bruised, and abused. Val had no shame, and she doubled down. She spread the word of how you seduced her and twisted everyone's perception of what happened into her benefit. How she had been completely oblivious to you sleeping with her stepdaughter when often times she would lick her daughters arousal off you as she fucked you.

You had left Westview with no friends, no family, and no self respect. You had moved across the country to get away from the whispers and the glares of everyone who knew what had happened. But here you were, back in her orbit. You had hoped that with enough time and distance that Val would forget about you, move on, find some new toy to play with. But she was back, and she had her sights set on you once again.

Wanda sat, despondent, as you detailed the lies, manipulation, and blackmail that the woman put you through. She knew some since Val had done the same to her brother, lying and manipulating him throughout thier relationship. She had been so deceitful to Pietro that he had no clue that Val was married. When he found out, that is when he left town.

But knowing that Val had played you too, used you as some sort of twisted revenge on her own stepdaughter and her now ex-husband, it brought a new kind of anger to the forefront. "How could you, Y/N?" she whispered, her eyes brimming with tears. "How could you let her do this to you? You watched her, destroy Piet. You warned him, I know you did. And then you decide to fuck her and her daughter? God," she shook her head, her now stressed demeanor and tense frame exuding a nervous energy that honestly could be cut with a spoon. Her lithe fingers ran through her tressed hair, her gaze avoiding yours.

You felt like the wind had been knocked out of you, the weight of Wanda's words like a sledgehammer to the chest. "Wands, I didn't mean for it to happen like that. I just, I was hurt too, and got lost in the feeling of being wanted. At least, that's what I thought it was."

Wanda stood, pacing the room, "But you knew better! You knew what she was capable of!" She stopped in her tracks, whipping around to face you. "You knew the pain she had caused my brother and you still went there?!" Her voice was raised now, echoing off the walls of her living room. "And now," she began pacing again, her hands running through her hair excessively as you watched her. "Now, she is here, to prove a point. God knows what this point is, but she is here nonetheless."

You watched her, feeling like a deer caught in the headlights. "What do we do?" you murmured.

Wanda stopped pacing, her eyes meeting yours, and for a moment, you saw the Wanda you had heard about in high school, and in Piets stories. The fiery, stubborn woman who will torch the earth to protect the ones she loves. "We? No, no, no, Y/N. You. You need to fix this." She spun on her heel, moving away from you. "This is your mess, and you need to deal with it. And the first thing you need to do, is come clean with Pietro."

Your heart sank, "But, Wanda-"

"No," she cut you off sharply. "You need to tell him everything. You can't keep playing these games with everyone's hearts, especially not his. He deserves the truth, no matter how hard it is. He thought he was in love with that woman, and then you fucked her. Then her daughter-"

"Stepdaughter."

"It doesn't fucking matter, Y/N! It's fucked! No matter how you look at this, and no matter how much she fucked with you, this is still fucked up of you."

You felt your chest tighten at her words, knowing that she had a right to be angry, but hoping she could find a shred of understanding. "I know," you said, your voice thick with regret. "I know it's messed up," your voice coming out almost unrecognizable, small, as you tried to talk to the woman you had grown so close to in the past months. You could feel the tears in your eyes building as you thought about losing Wanda and Pietro too. "Wanda, I just need support. I know what needs to be done, but I need help. I need you."

Wanda's expression softened slightly, the anger in her eyes fading into something more complex. "You need help? From me? After all this?"

You nodded, feeling the weight of your own words. "I know we haven't known each other long, but I feel most comfortable, most stable when I am with you. I don't know how to do this without you, Wands. I don't want to go through this alone again, I will lose myself."

Wanda sighed heavily, turning to look out the window. Her reflection was cast onto the glass, showing the turmoil playing out across her features. "I don't know if I can, Y/N," she admitted, her voice cracking slightly. "This is... it's a lot. We are still in a fairly new relationship, if we want to call this," she motioned between the both of you. "That."

You stepped closer, reaching for her again, but she held up a hand, stopping you in your tracks. "I can't, Y/N. I need some space. To think, to process. You can't just throw this shit at me and expect me to be okay with it. You have to deal with this. You have to tell him, Y/N. You can't keep hiding from him. He's your best fucking friend."

Wanda's words were like a knife to your gut, but you knew she was right. You nodded, feeling the gravity of the situation settle over you like a heavy blanket. "I'll tell him," you murmured. "I'll tell him everything."

Turning away from the window, she faced you, her eyes searching yours. "And what if he doesn't forgive you?"

You took a deep breath, feeling the tightness in your chest. "Then I'll accept it," you said, trying to keep your voice steady. "But I have to try. Like you've said, he is my best friend. And the only family I have."

Wanda studied you, her expression unreadable. "Okay," she finally said. "But if he doesn't, you can't come to me, and expect me to change his mind."

You nodded solemnly. "I won't. I'll handle it."

Wanda turned away, moving towards her kitchen, "I need some tea," she murmured, the tension in her voice still palpable. "Do you want some?"

Wanda's 180 shot confusion across your features. "Didn't you just want me out of here?" you asked, unsure if you'd heard her correctly.

"Yes," she said, her voice tight. "But I also know that you're not going anywhere without a plan. And if you're going to tell him, I need to be prepared for whatever happens next."

You followed her into the kitchen, feeling like you were walking on eggshells. The room was warm and cozy, filled with the comforting scent of herbs and mint as the kettle began to whistle. Wanda moved with purpose, her movements sharp and precise as she grabbed two mugs from the cabinet and a box of tea bags. She didn't look at you, and the silence between you was as palpable as the tension.

"Wanda," you said softly, your voice cracking as you watched her move around the kitchen. You watched as she took a deep breath, resting her hands on either side of the sink to gaze out the window before her.

"Yes?" she asked, not turning around.

"I know," you sighed, trying to collect your thoughts before continuing. "I know that I told you I was messed up. I know that Pietro told you the same thing," you began, your breath catching as she spun and crossed her arms over her chest, a dark stare shooting across the kitchen towards you. "But I want you to know that I didn't just leave Westview because of these situations I caused, and what I put myself in. I left so I could become a better person. So I could change. I am not that same person, Wanda. You have to know that."

Wanda's eyes searched yours, the anger slowly draining away, replaced by a sadness that made your heart ache. She didn't say anything, but the way she looked at you spoke volumes. You knew that she was hurt, that she felt betrayed, and that she was trying to understand. You felt like the biggest piece of shit in the world, standing in front of her, but you had to keep going. You had to make her understand.

"I know, Y/N. But with all of this information, it's really hard to believe that." You let out a deep breath, dropping your head as you stared at your feet. You heard a shuffling, looking up as Wanda poured the steaming water into two mugs before grabbing a spoon for the sugar and milk. She walked over to you, handing you the warm porcelain. She stopped, a contemplative look on her face before she turned back to you. Her hand reached out, rubbing your chest before she stepped away.

"Look, I know it's not fair of me to ask you to trust me after this, but I swear to you, on everything I am, that I have changed. I never wanted to hurt you, or anyone for that matter."

Wanda's eyes searched yours, the sadness in them deepening as she took the mug of tea you offered her. "I want to believe you," she murmured, her voice barely above a whisper. "But you need to understand that this isn't something I can just... put behind me."

You nodded, understanding the gravity of the situation. "I know it's a lot to ask," you said, your voice thick with emotion. "But I promise, from the bottom of my heart, I will make this right. And as much as I need Piet in my life, I need you too, Wanda."

#communicatethrulyrics #wlw fanfic #natasha romanoff #natasha x reader #lesbian nsft #natasha romanoff x reader #wanda x reader #wanda maximoff fanfiction #wanda maximoff x reader #wanda maximoff

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mortalstrife · 26 days ago

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a late birthday present for @fisularae based on their amazing marcus/neroon fic allies! thank you for being such a good friend and for singlehandedly populating the marcus/neroon and branmer/neroon tags on ao3 with your amazing fic 🧡 babylon 5 fandom wouldn't be the same without you 🧡

#babylon 5 #marcus/neroon #happy birthday! <3333 #sorry this is so late!#i hope you don't mind that it's not super shippy #ive wanted to do an allies illustration for you for ages #one day ill do one of action hero neroon fighting shadows <3 #it was the fic that got me into fandom and so brought about us meeting #for which ill always be grateful #everyone go read their fic they're both one of the best writers in the fandom #and a really lovely person #happy birthday my friend thanks for being a foundational part of this fandom #(also i hope you enjoy the little drazi who is VERY interested in neroon's crest haha)

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cluescorner · 9 months ago

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I cannot imagine being a Damian stan right now. You've got both Zdarsky's bullshit (where he clearly doesn't give a shit about your boy) and The Boy Wonder (where Juni Ba clearly gives so many shits about your boy) coming out on the same day. The whiplash must be insane. I hope y'all get some nice warm soup for your efforts jfc

#damian wayne #damian al ghul #damian al ghul wayne #batman #batfamily #for all of the issues that come with having Steph as your fave having too much wild shit happening at once is never one of them #btw I quite like The Boy Wonder Issue 1. wow shocker an artist and writer who I have liked everything they've ever done #has once again written something that I am enjoying with art that makes me want to be part of its world.#it's almost like Juni Ba is really freaking talented or something #like I have some problems with it but it seems like many of those are part of the point. Damian is learning that his siblings are more #three-dimensional than he realized and that is part of this 'coming of age' story merged with fairytale #so I can't be mad at the oversimplistic defining of Dick and Jason and Tim until the conclusion of the series. that might be the point.#I hope that the series will address Steph as a Robin but if not then frankly it's not an issue unique to this series.#I'll be annoyed and disappointed but ultimately roll with it like I am with Babsgirl being here. There's too much good stuff here to get #hung up on shit that seems to be almost an editorial mandate at this point. at least that's where I'm at.#I am also very sorry that Chip Zdarsky is massacring your boy. he has 'X (Tim for him) is the best Robin so everyone else must suck' diseas #where a writer really likes one specific Robin and in trying to uplift them demeans all of the other Robins. instead of like...just writing #for that one character only or alternatively not demeaning the other characters in order to make his blorbo look good #it's wild because I actually think his writing for Tim is pretty solid. but he's not writing a Tim series. he's writing a Batman series.#and if you are going to write a Batman series and include other Batfamily members you need to actually write them well.#instead of assigning them like 2 personality traits while Tim gets to be a whole character #I accept that behavior in fanfic where I have lesser standards because it's fucking free. not a comic run that wants me to pay #tens of dollars in order to understand what the fuck is going on. he's been going for a while now it's gotta be a lot of money.#I can buy Steelworks with that money. I can see John Henry and Natasha Irons in a trade. Fuck you Chip.#it's why it takes such a special person to write a good ensemble story/a good Batfamily story. you have to be good at writing a LOT #of different characters. which I don't think most people are. I sure as hell am not. I can write maybe 3 at a time confidently well.#and you also have to give all of them at least SOME love or else people will be upset that you aren't focusing on their fave #and also the writing as a whole will suffer. Chip Zdarsky is a pretty good Tim writer. I'd maybe read a Tim solo written by him.#I would not read a story focusing on multiple characters that I like written by Chip Zdarsky. because every character who isn't Tim #is at least a bit weak/inconsistent/out of character INCLUDING FUCKING BATMAN. THE NO. 1 GUY MOST ARE HERE FOR

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tonberry-yoda · 2 years ago

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Interdimensional Hell - Miguel O'Hara

notes - FOR THE POLL!!!! This has been in the works for a while, but here it is! It's a long ass fic with my whole heart and soul packed into it (+ the beautiful addition of not being proofread lolol) and I am so exited to share! I hope my Miguel lovers enjoy this fic!! <3 word count - 4,060 (omfg this is my longest fic on tumblr LMFAOOOO) WARNINGS - lots of angst, not proofread, f!reader, mentions of a near panic attack summary - you were Miguel O'Hara's wife. You were more than happy to be with someone like him, but was unfortunately taken away from your family when your world was torn apart by what looked like a glitching videogame. Now you travel through dimension after dimension looking for your family and will stop at nothing to do so while also having some fun along the way

“Gabriella!” You were close to tears as your daughter ran to you, jumping into your arms.

“Mamma, did you see that?” she said with a bright smile, sweat beading on her forehead. “When I kicked the ball, it was like BAM and then it went FWOOSH and then we won!!”

“I did see that, baby. I am so darn proud of you.” You pinched her nose, giving it a little kiss as your husband walked up holding an ice cream cone.

“Did you see that, papa?” she asked as he handed her the ice cream.

“Of course I did. You are so talented.” He pressed a kiss to her forehead. She thanked him for the cone and giggled as he threw her on his back for a piggyback ride.

“You got that on video, didn’t you, Miguel?” you asked, scruffing Gabriella’s hair.

“Yup.” he responded, bouncing Gabriella and telling her how proud he was of her. God, his smile was perfect.

You pulled out the camera from its bag and filmed your husband and daughter. Literally nothing could be better than this.

Gabreiella giggled and made fun of Miguel before slamming the ice cream in his face, the two breaking out in laughter. When he set her on the ground, he gave her a five second head start to run out in the field before he would come after her, telling her to be careful with the ice cream.

He looked up at you and you giggled. “Miguel, you’re face, love.”

“What? What’re you–” he chuckled as he wiped ice cream off of his face. “Did I get it?” he asked.

“Hold on.” You set down the camera and pulled a baby wipe out of your bag, dabbing it on Miguel’s face.

“It’s been five seconds now!” Gabriella shouted from the other side of the field.

Miguel kissed your cheek and dashed after his daughter. You smiled at the camera before turning it off.

Nothing lasts forever.

You heard that from everyone, but you hated that it was true.

Even the happiest month of your life can turn to shit really fast.

When the world started glitching, you thought you were losing your mind. You worked from home and Miguel was out with Gabriella for the day. You looked to the corner of your room and it… glitched. Like something out of a movie. You never told anyone, especially when it kept happening. You thought that no one else saw it, that it was your mind playing tricks.

But when it kept happening, you knew something was wrong.

And when the world ended, you were right, and you knew you would never see your family ever again.

You ran out into the streets and saw people running, the world behind them disappearing, and even some of them faded into nothingness. You wanted to scream, cry, anything. But you froze, watching the colossal whatever it was coming for you. And then you saw something else. It looked different than the giant glitching wall. It was small and no bigger than the gap under a bed. You jumped in without even thinking. You were going to die anyway, so why not be a little reckless?

As you felt like you were falling for days, you thought of your daughter. Why didn’t you go after her? You felt like a terrible mother and curled into a ball, crying. No one was coming to save you and you weren't coming to save anyone. The world wasn’t what it used to be a month ago, a week ago, hell, it wasn’t even this bad a day ago. You cried for your family, knowing that you couldn't do a thing for them and then everything went black.

—

“Is she alive?” you heard a voice say, but couldn't see where it came from.

“I sure hope so. I don't get paid enough for someone to die here.”

“Well check!”

You felt cold hands brush your forehead and you jerked awake, coughing and trying not to scream.

“Woah, woah!” you heard the voice from the start say. “Everything’s fine. We’re not gonna hurt you.” You saw that the voice came from a boy with bright blonde hair and a cybernetic eye.

The other one was a man with brown hair, who looked like he could crush you – tan skin and muscles bigger than you.

You went to say something, but glitched, making the two men jump back.

“Woah there!” the blonde one said. “You’re not from here, are you?”

You just shook your head and could already feel a headache forming.

“I don't have time for this,” the bigger one said. “I have a shop to run.”

“At least give the girl a watch! She looks stressed out enough and I think the last thing we need to do is have her glitching.”

“I think the last thing we need to do is deal with someone that isn't from here. That happens far too often, don't you think, Spike? You have too much sympathy for the outsiders.”

“And what if I do?” Spike asked, crossing his arms. “I don't think you have enough, Wade.”

Spike walked away from you and opened a large cabinet from above Wade’s head, pulling out a bright green watch. He slipped it on your wrist and proceeded to click a few buttons and everything tense inside of you strangely managed to slip away.

You took a deep breath and smiled at Spike. “Thank you,” you said to him. “It’s been a really long day.”

“I can tell,” he chuckled. “First time out of your dimension?”

You nodded and adjusted the watch.

“Well, make sure to keep that bad boy locked in place. Don't want to be outside of your dimension without one or else… well, think bad, but worse.” He sat in a rolly chair and spun to his computer. “Can you do me a favor, missy?”

“Anything.” you said. He had been more than willing to help you, so you were more than willing to do the same.

“Stand on that little circle over there for me.” He pointed to a large purple circle in the middle of the room and you tilted your head, but still walked over to it with no hesitation.

“What’s this?” you asked.

“I'm gonna scan you, but don't be scared. This bad boy will help you get home safe.”

You went to speak up, telling him that you weren’t so sure it was a good idea, but he interrupted you.

“Wade, help me out here! Let’s get her out of here.”

“Finally.” Wade scoffed. He walked over to you and held your arms up, strapping them to two mechanical devices on either side of you that then held your arms to make you in the shape of a Y.

“This won't hurt a bit, doll.” Spike said, clicking a button on his computer. A bright light scanned you up and down and you looked at Spike, who held his chin and tilted his head. “Huh. That’s weird. Let me try again.” He clicked the button again and looked at you with confusion. When the cycle finished, he looked astonished. “Babe, where did you say you were from again?”

“That’s what I’ve been meaning to tell you.” you said, shuffling in your spot. “My world was a big glitching mess. And then I found a little hole and appeared here. I don't know if I have a home anymore.”

Wade sighed and rubbed his hand down his face. “Great,” he whispered. “This can't be good.”

Spike leaned back in his chair and looked at the confusion on your face. “This isn’t your fault, love. But bad news, you can't go home. Because uh… I don't think home exists for you.”

All you remember after that was crying. You sat on the floor after the devices let you go and Spike rubbed your back, reassuring you that everything was going to be okay.

Of course, you knew that everything wasn’t going to be okay.

You were already exhausted and you realized it hadn’t even been a day.

“So, what am I supposed to do?” you asked, playing with the watch you were given.

“I would be more than happy to let you stay here,” Spike said, rubbing your back. “We have an extra room, we just have to clean it out a bit.”

“I don't want to be a burden.”

“It’ll just be for a little while,” he reassured you. “Now, I know this cyberpunk city of ours can seem like a lot once you step out of this little shop, but I think after a little bit of time, you can find a job and even your own home.”

You just nodded. You didn't have a clue what the word “cyberpunk” meant, but it sounded interesting enough. After realizing that you were still on the floor, you finally stood up and looked around the little place you were in. There were light up trinkets and soft beeps coming from either side of the room. It was so overwhelming. At home you were able to just sit on a couch and watch TV and in here, it looked like the only place you could rest was a chair that could roll across the floor.

To get your bearings wherever you were, you opened the front door and were immediately overstimulated. There were loud sirens, people yelling, doors slamming, advertisements that were yelling about various products, etc.

You quickly shut the door behind you and Wade laughed at the expression on your face.

“What’s so funny?” you scoffed.

He just waved you off and Spike walked over to you. “Wade and I know exactly how you feel. We were just as overwhelmed when we ended up here.”

“You’re not from here?”

“Nope! So, don't worry, your reaction and overwhelmingness is completely normal. Do you want something to eat?”

You hadn't even thought about food, but when asked the question, noticed how hungry you really were. “Yes please.” you said softly.

Spike walked down a long hall and you followed, not wanting to be left alone with Wade.

“So what was your home like?” he asked.

“Normal.” you laughed. You really didn't know how to answer that question.

He laughed back. “Not like this at all, I'm guessing.”

“Not at all.”

“See, ours was kind of like this,” Spike said as you got to the kitchen. “It was very techy, so we immediately knew what to do when we started ‘glitching’ if that’s what you wanna call it. We also know how to travel interdimensionally. That's how we ended up here. We traveled outside of our home and never found a way to get back. That machine couldn’t even tell us. I think what happened to your home also happened to ours while we were gone.”

“That sounds awful.”

Spike laughed. “Yeah, definitely awful. We’ve traveled everywhere, it feels like, but we just never found home. This was almost the closest to it. It looks like home in the future.”

“That makes sense.” It didn't, but it did. You didn't know how else to share your sympathy with him, especially considering the whole thing felt like an awful dream that you would never wake up from.

“What are you gonna do?” he asked you as he slid over your plate.

“No clue,” you admitted. “Maybe it’s delusional, but I want to find my family.”

“You found a way out. So maybe they did too.”

Just those few words from Spike’s mouth gave you hope. Perhaps too much.

—

Learning new things is really difficult, but you found yourself learning how to travel through space and time to be a piece of cake, to your surprise.

That hope that Spike had engraved in you when you first met years ago was still stuck in you and would always be until you found your family.

Even if you had to search until the day you died, you would be satisfied.

The craziest part of the whole thing though was that you became someone completely different over the years. You found yourself learning how to make your own tech to make interdimensionally traveling easier and buying clothes that made you look much different than you did back at home.

But you were lonely.

You met so many lovely people on your journey through this new life you created for yourself over the years, but none of them would stay like Miguel did. You even eventually drifted from Spike and Wade, getting your own house and having your own machines.

You would curl up and eat dinner by yourself on the balcony, dreaming to be in Miguel’s arms and listen to him hum a song to you in his deep voice.

—

“Hey, Miguel.” Lyla said, blowing on her nails she recently painted. “Whatcha doin?”

Miguel rolled his eyes and sighed. “Working. What does it look like I'm doing?”

“It looks like you're pouting. Not working. Nice try, but you can't fool me, buddy.” Lyla smirked.

“I'm not pouting! Why would I be pouting, Lyla? Hm? Now could you please leave me alone? You’re ruining my train of thought.”

“Now that’s just mean.” Lyla pouted.

Miguel blew a piece of his hair out of his eye and tried to sweep her away, which ended up making her leave with a giggle.

He took a deep breath and ran his fingers through his hair before turning back on his monitor to see your face.

“Miguel!” you giggled. “Smile for the camera.” You turned the camera to a happier Miguel. Someone who actually had a smile on his face.

A stranger.

Miguel quickly shut the monitor off before he would let himself be brought to tears. It was his fault you were gone. It was his fault he was in his current position. If he didn't fuck everything up and pretend he was your husband, none of this would’ve happened.

“Lyla, I'm going out.”

“Huh? Where?” She appeared with a digital Slurpee and tilted her head.

“Just out.”

“Bored outta your mind, big boss man.”

“Sure, whatever, just leave me alone.”

Lyla saluted and faded away. He didn't know where to go, but he would just go. With the power of the entire multiverse at his hands, it was hard to just find one place to go, but even so, it was nice to breathe some fresh air in other places.

Plus with the chance of seeing you…

He pulled the thought out of his mind. He watched his daughter fade away in his arms, there was no way that you were okay too. And god, did he hate himself for it. But even so, he repressed the feelings and journeyed to other universes, meeting other Spidermen and even greater foes – eyebags and all.

—

Where the hell am I? you thought as you ended up in a dimension unlike any you had been to before. It was so different from the others that for the first time in years, you actually had to pause.

You placed your hands on your hips and looked at the world around you. It reminded you of playing video games where you would go to other worlds and you yourself would change textures to match the ones around you. Unfortunately, the texture didn't go with you, so you were left as an actual human in a cartoon world.

The life you were living was definitely a dreamlike state and the thought of it made you laugh as you led yourself through the city.

This was the part you actually loved. You got to see what life was like for others through different dimensions and the struggles they had to deal with. Granted, it wasn't much different from your life when you weren’t forced to live like this, but either way, you still found it fun to see how different, yet similar it really was.

Sometimes you would end up in dimensions you had been to a thousand times or sometimes you would end up somewhere new.

Your favorite part though: everywhere had a Spiderman. And every Spiderman was just as unique as the last.

In this world, it seemed to be some pig, which was both hilarious and intriguing. You had seen a lot in your day, but never a pig Spiderman. You loved it though and seeing posters of him around this odd city made you laugh.

But you knew it was time to leave the moment you stepped in. You liked the crazy stuff, but this was a little too crazy for your liking.

Right as you opened a portal though, you heard a loud sound not too far away from you. You figured it was a fight that Spiderpig had gotten himself into, and were ready to leave, but you turned around to see something much crazier.

Not only was Spiderpig fighting, but there was another Spiderman with him. You couldn't help but stand in awe after you closed the portal you made.

He was dressed in dark blue and red and didn't look at all like the other Spidermen you had seen before. Something about him was not only different, but so so intriguing.

The fight didn't last long since the two were working hard to get it done quickly. So when they did finish, the tall Spiderman put Spiderpig on his shoulders and gave him a fistbump.

You had only noticed you were still just standing in the street and staring when the Spiderman froze.

You giggled nervously and muttered out a quick “good job guys” before turning down an alleyway so you could teleport out of there.

But right as you began down the alley, you felt something grab your wrist. When you turned around, it was that tall Spiderman, who tilted his head at you.

“y/n?” he said.

You took a step back. “S-Sorry?”

“Is your name y/n?”

You nodded and he pulled you into his arms before opening a portal very much like your own.

You ended up in a world with complete darkness, minus the bright yellow computers surrounding the walls. You looked at the place with curiosity, but were quickly pulled from your thoughts when you saw the Spiderman pacing the room back and forth and muttering to himself.

“Hey, are you alright?” you chuckled.

“How are you… How did you… Hold on, I need a minute.” He finally sat down and grabbed his chin. “Were you married?”

You laughed, thinking this was some sort of joke. “Yes, I was. To a man named Miguel. Why?”

“What the fuck?” he said under his breath.

“Excuse me?”

“How are you alive?!”

Just then, you recognized that voice. Everything from your past hit you like a semi and you fell to your knees, tears immediately filling your sockets.

“M-Miguel? Miguel, is that you?” you managed to get out.

The mask of his Spider-suit dematerialized and he looked at you with shock.

You looked at him the same and felt like you couldn't breathe. After all those years. After all that searching…

He ran to you and dropped on his knees, pushing your hair out of your face. “How did you…”

“How did you?” you giggled somehow, grabbing Miguel’s face and looking it over. Despite the eyebags and the new muscular features, that man was definitely your husband.

“I…” he started, but you pulled him into your arms. You hugged him until neither of you could breathe.

When you pulled away, you looked at him with so much excitement that it made him regret everything. He had lied to you for years and you were looking at him the same way you looked at your real husband who died.

“I can't believe you made it out alive, Miggy! Where’s Gabriella? I bet she’s all grown up and–”

“G-Gabriella’s gone.” The words felt like another 100 lbs weighed his chest down.

You looked at him with confusion. “She didn't make it?” you asked softly.

“No. She didn't. This is all my fault.” he buried his face in his hands.

“No it's not. How could any of this be your fault?” you rubbed his back.

“No, y/n,” he scooted back, every regret from his life filling him up and making him on the near edge of a panic attack. “This is my fault. I made this happen.”

“Miguel, I–”

“I'm not even your husband!” he cried out. He never felt like this before. He didn't even feel like Miguel. But something cracked in him when he saw you, and it was going to end up killing him if he didn't talk to you about it.

You laughed. “What? Of course you are.”

“Your husband died a very long time ago.”

“I'm so confused.” you admitted.

“I know. And I'm sorry.” he pulled you closer and sat down on the floor next to you. “Look, I was your husband. At least for a while. A couple months maybe. But your real husband… the Miguel O’Hara from your world… he died. I took his place. I wanted to be happy.” Slowly, the feeling of the near panic attack was going away the more he spoke to you. He explained everything. About how much he truly loved you and about how much he regretted destroying everything, including your daughter. He told you that he was selfish for what he did and admitted that if he could go back and never be with you just so you could have a fulfilled life with Gabriella and no Miguel, everything would be fine. He explained canon events and how the world worked for Spidermen like him and the rest of the multiverse.

Everything was so confusing, but based on everything you had been through, you weren't surprised.

You had seemingly loved a stranger for months and didn't even know it. But… he wasn't, that was the most confusing part. That man, Miguel O’Hara. Spiderman 2099. That was the man you fell in love with, even if you weren't a part of his dimension.

The whole situation shocked you to your core, but there was no going back now.

You laughed for some reason when he was done telling you everything. You really couldn't believe it. But again, you weren't surprised.

Miguel didn't mean to spill everything onto you, but it made him feel so much better. Tears were streaming down his face and he was trying to repress them when he saw how confused you looked.

“y/n, I am so sorr–”

You quickly cut him off by pulling him into your arms. Real husband or not, this poor man had to suffer through everything and now has the whole multiverse on his back to take care of because he feels like it’s his responsibility. He blamed himself for everything for years all because of a stupid accident.

But you weren't mad. He didn't know what would happen and all he wanted was to be happy. You didn't want to put more on him, so you just held him for a moment and let him sit there with you in silence.

Even if you didn't know this Miguel as well as you knew your husband, he was still Miguel.

“Don't blame yourself,” you whispered. “It's okay.”

He just pulled back from the hug and wiped his hair out of his face. “I'm sorry you had to live like you have been.” he told you.

“It was kinda fun.” You hugged your knees.

“The multiverse is definitely something, huh?”

You smiled and cupped Miguel’s face in your hands. You had been traveling for years all for this. Granted, you got a story out of it that you weren't expecting, but still. Miguel was in front of you again and you felt strangely at home.

You pressed a kiss to his nose. “I wanna try this again.” you said. “With us.”

“What do you mean?”

“First.” You pulled him by the front of his suit and pressed a long and needed kiss to his lips. He melted to your lips quickly, but the feeling ended quickly when you pulled away.

“What do you mean ‘try again?’ ” he asked.

“I'm y/n.” You stuck out your hand and smiled at him.

“I'm Miguel.” He took your hand and sighed with relief.

“Nice to meet you, Miguel. Maybe we should go on a date sometime.”

~~~~~

into the spiderverse masterlist | pinned post 2023 @tonberry-yoda – do not repost or claim ANY of my work as your own! likes, reblogs, and comments are not only welcome, but appreciated

~~~~~

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acaciapines · 7 months ago

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rereading random bits of descendants of olympus (as one does) and. vera <3 still soooo obsessed with how she takes lupa's divinity. like MAN.......there is something to how shes had to scrape and claw her way into every single good thing shes ever had. that she's never just been able to KEEP these things, that she is always always always fighting for them. and so of course she takes divinity. she wants to LIVE. and in this world where the fates themselves are trying to control her, its like--yeah. maybe you do need a gods power to finally get like, at least a year of the life you want. the life you werent supposed to have. forever thinking about vera's one line in her chapter thats like 'of course the fates are losing power. because they'd never let someone like leo into my life.' YELLS. FOREVER.

also have we talked enough about minnie I THINK WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT MINNIE--

#chatter #son of sea foam #sosf #yeah fuck it im not scared veraposting in the main tags #unrelated to verapost but also i reread the end of ethans chapters and GOD. GOD.#everything happening to percy here is SO GOOD....like yes at the end of the day im rooting for vera and leo lol but percy....#the way estelle is the only one who can fight for him. the parallels drawn with zeus.#how he doesnt even realize killing lupa will betray jason.#dakota (i think lol) talking w ethan and that whole bit about how like...its the people who are loyal who betray you.#bc percy offers loyalty to so many people but at the end of the day he DOES have a list. and. well. evelyn is pretty high up there #and jason just. isnt.#LITERALLY MAKES ME KDJFGNJDFBGF #god. isnt there a sosf discord what if i was in there veraposting on the daily #tbf i dont usually join discords cause im bad at talking to people if they arent starting it #BUT THERE ARE SOME THINGS I WILL YELL ABOUT FOREVER. NO MATTER WHO WANTS OR DOESNT WANT TO HEAR IT #and vera is one of those things <3 #anyways hi everyone who follows me for Anything Else i hope you enjoy the veraposting #you should read son of sea foam it changes you :3 #and then send me asks about it :333 (<- joking but. what if)#vera love of my life

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starlight-eclipsed · 3 months ago

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SHAKING YOU SHAKING YOU SHAKING YOU BY THE SHOULDERS I LOVE DOPPELGÄNGER AU ITS SO GOOD I LOVE THIS STORY AND ITS CONCEPT I AM FREAKING

Thank you!! <333

I feel like I repeat myself a lot when I talk about how happy I am to hear that and excited to share it, so have this message I wrote the day before I posted the first chapter of the AU.

#this au has so many turbulent emotions attached to it #first from myself #and now from you #from everyone‚ apparently XD #sincerely: it's been wonderful to go on this journey together #as someone who fell in love with storytelling when i was little #this means everything to me #thank you for reading‚ and i hope you enjoy what i have in store for you <3 #starslog #lu doppelgänger au

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gothsuguru · 9 months ago

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#applying to jobs that are way out of my league/paygrade/level but idgaf i need MONEY i wanna attain it #hopefully i can start doing that next week/mid next week #need to update my resume & apply 😭#i’m also genuinely. so drained from these past few weeks i don’t even have the energy to write posts/read simple stories or read fics 😪#hopefully EVENTUALLY i can do that #i don’t like being in this Slump it makes me MAD #grrrrrrr snarl hiss bark #so i fear i may not be on here as much until the Drainingness goes away </3 #BUT ALSO #tbh. may have to sign back into my armytwt acct again i haven’t been on since summer of 23 #but jin is coming back soon so :3 #AHHHHHHHH i hope things look up! i hope i get whatever i apply for and be blessed w lots of money & opportunities #we shall seeeeeeeee :3 hope everything is going amazingly for everyone! i hope everything works out in your favor @ anyone who sees this!#MWAH! :D #another also. enjoy the taechwita gif it’s one of my FAVS.#personal

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confetti-cat · 2 years ago

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Each, All, Everything

Words: 6.5k

Rating: PG

Themes: Friendship, Self-Giving Love, Romantic Love

(Written for the Four Loves Fairytale Retelling challenge over at the @inklings-challenge! A retelling of Nix, Nought, Nothing.)

The giant’s daughter weeps, and remembers.

—

She remembers the day her father first brought him home.

It was a bit like the times he’d brought home creatures to amuse her while he was on his journeys, away on something he called “business” but she knew was “gathering whatever good of the land he wanted”. Her father had brought back a beautiful pony, once—a small one he could nearly carry in one huge hand. One for her, and not another for his collection of horses he kept in the long stables. She wasn’t as tall as the hills and broad as the cliffs like he was, so she couldn’t carry it easily, but she heaved it up in both arms and tried nonetheless. (And—she thought this was important—stopped trying when it showed fear.) She was gentle to it, and in time, she would only need speak to it and it would come eat from her hand like a tame bird. She’d never been happier.

(The pony had grown fearful of her father. Her father grew angry with anything that wasted his time by cowering or trying to flee him. There was a terrible commotion in the stables one day, and when she sought her pony afterward, she couldn’t find him. Her father told her it was gone, back to the forest, and he’d hear no more of it if she didn’t want beaten.)

(There was a sinking little pit in her stomach that knew. But when she didn’t look for the best in her father, it angered him and saddened her, so she made herself believe him.)

The final little creature he brought one day was so peculiar. It was a human boy, small as the bushes she would sometime uproot for paintbrushes, dressed in fine green like the trees and gold like her mother’s vine-ring she wore. He seemed young, like her. His tuft of brown hair was mussed by the wind, and his dark eyes watched everything around him, wide and unsure and curious.

When he first looked at her from his perch on her father’s shoulder, he stared for a long moment—then lifted a tiny hand in a wave. Suddenly overwhelmed with hope and possibilities (a friend! Surely her father had blessed her with a small friend they could keep and not just a pet!), she lifted her own hand in a little wave and tried to smile welcomingly.

The boy stared for another long moment, then seemed to try a hesitant smile back.

“This,” boomed her father, stooping down in the mist of the morning as he waved away a low cloud with one hand, “is what I rightly bargained for. A prince, very valuable. The King of the South—curse his deceitful aims!—promised him to me.”

“He looks very fancy,” she’d said, eyes wide in wonder. “How did the king come to give him to you, Father?”

“How indeed!” the giant growled, so loud it sent leaves rattling and birds rushing to fly from their trees. He slowly lowered himself to be seated on the weathered cliff behind him and picked up his spark-stone, tossing a few felled trees into their fire-basin and beginning to work at lighting them. “Through lies and deceit from him. When he asked me to carry him across the waters I asked him for Nix, Nought, Nothing in return.”

The little boy shifted, clearly uncomfortable but afraid to move much. Her father scowled, though he meant it as a smile, and bared his yellowed teeth as he laughed.

“Imagine his countenance when he returned to find the son he’d not known he’d had was called Nix, Nought, Nothing! He tried to send servant boys, but I am too keen for such trickery. Their blood is on the hands of the liar who sent them to me.”

Such talk from her father had always unsettled her, even if he said it so forcefully she couldn’t imagine just how it wasn’t right. Judging from the way the boy curled in on himself a little, clinging meekly to her father’s tattered shirt-shoulder, he thought similarly.

“Nix, Nought, Nothing?” She observed the small prince, unsure why disappointment arose in her at the way he seemed hesitant to look at her now. “That is a strange name.”

Her father struck the rocks, the sound of it so loud it echoed down the valley in an odd, uneven manner. He shook his head as he worked, a stained tooth poking out of his lips as he struck it again and again until large sparks began alighting on the wood.

“His mother tarried christening him until the father returned, calling him such instead.” He huffed a chuckle that sounded more like a sneer, seeming to opt to ignore the creature on his shoulder for the time being. “You know the feeling, eh, Bonny girl?”

The boy tentatively looked up at her again.

The fire crackled and began to eat away at the bark and dry pine needles. A soft orange glow began to creep over it, leaving black char as it went. With a sudden, sharp breath by her father, a large flame leapt into the air.

“It is good that she did so. He is Nix, Nought, Nothing—and that he will remain.”

—

Nix Nought Nothing grew to be a fine boy. Her father treated him as well as he did the prized horses he’d taken from knights and heroes—which was to say that the boy was given decent food and a dry place to sleep and the richest-looking clothes a tailor could be terrified into giving them, which was as well as her father treated anything.

Never a day went by that she was not thankful and with joy in her heart at having a friend so near.

They spent many days while her father was away exploring the forest—Nix would collect small rocks and unusual leaves and robin’s-eggs and butterflies, and she would lift him into high trees to look for nests, and sometimes stand in the rivers and splash the waterfalls at him just to laugh brightly at his gawking and laughing and sputtering.

Some days she wished she was more of a proper giant. She wasn’t large enough for it to be very comfortable giving him rides on her shoulder once he’d grown. She was hesitant to look any less strong, however, so she braided her golden curls to keep them from brushing him off and simply kept her head tilted away from him as they walked through the forests together.

He could sit quite easily and talk by her ear as they adventured. Perhaps she would never admit it, but she liked that. Most of the time.

“I’m getting your shoulder wet,” he protested, still sopping wet from the waterfall. He kept shifting around, trying to sit differently and avoid blotching her blue dress with more water than he already had. “I hope you’re noticing this inconveniences you too?”

“Yes,” Bonny laughed. “You’re right. I hope there’s still enough sun to dry us along the way back. Father won’t be pleased otherwise.”

“Exactly. Perhaps you should have thought that through before drenching me!” he huffed, but she could hear the grin in his tone even if she couldn’t quite turn her head to see it. He flicked his arm toward her and sent little droplets of water scattering across the side of her face.

Her shoulders jerked up involuntarily as the eye closest to him shut and she tried to crane her neck even further away, chuckling. Nix made a noise like he’d swallowed whatever words were on his tongue, clutching to her shoulder and hair to steady himself.

“You’d probably be best not trying to get me while I’m giving you a ride?” Bonny suggested, unable to help a wry smile.

“Yes. Agreed. Apologies.” His words came so stilted and readily that she had to purse her lips to keep in a laugh. As soon as he relaxed, his voice grew a tad incredulous. “Though—wait, I can’t exactly do anything once I’m down. Are you trying to escape my well-earned retaliation?”

“I would never,” she assured him, no longer trying to hide her smile. “I’ll put you in a tree when we get back and you can splash me all you like.”

Somehow, his voice was amused and skeptical and unimpressed by the notion all at once.

“Really? You’d do that?” he asked, sounding as if he were stifling a smirk.

She shrugged—gently, of course, but with a little inward sense of mischievousness—and he yelped again at the movement.

“Well, it would take a lot of water to get a giant wet,” she reasoned. “I doubt you’ll do much. But yes, for you, I would brave it.”

He chuckled, and she ventured a glance at him out of the corner of her eye.

“Bonny and brave,” he said, looking up at her with a little smile and those dark eyes glimmering with light. “You are a marvel.”

It would probably be very noticeable to him if she swallowed awkwardly and glanced away a bit in embarrassment. She tried not to do that, and instead gave him a crooked little smile in return.

“Hm,” was all she could say. “And what about you?”

“Me? Oh, I’m Nothing.” The jest was terrible, and would still be terrible even if she hadn’t heard it numerous times. “But you are truly a gem among girls.”

If by gem he meant a giantess who still had to enlist his help disentangling birds from her hair, then perhaps. She snorted.

“I don’t know how you would know. You don’t know any other girls.”

“Why would I need to?” His face was innocent, but his eyes were sparkling with mirth and mischief. “You’re the size of forty of them.”

The noise that erupted from her was so abrupt and embarrassingly like a snort it sent the branches trembling. She plucked him off her shoulder and set him gently on the ground so she could swat at him as gently as she could—careful not to strike him with the leaf-motifs on her ring—though it still knocked him off his feet and into the grass. He was laughing too hard to seem to mind, and she couldn’t stifle her laughs either.

“Well, you are really something,” she teased, unable to help her wide smile as she tried futilely to cast him a disapproving look.

That quieted him. He pushed himself to sit upright in the grass, and looked out at the woods ahead for a long moment.

“You think?” Nix asked quietly.

She smiled down at him.

“Yes,” she laughed softly. “Of course.” When he looked up at her, brown eyes curious, she held his gaze and hoped he could see just how glad she was to know him. “Everything, even.”

A small smile grew on his own face, lopsided and warm. He ducked his head a bit and looked away from her again, and embarrassment started to fill her—but it was worth it.

It often weighed on her heart to say that more than she did. She supposed she was the type of person who liked to show such things rather than say them.

She had a cramp in one of her shoulders from trying to carry him smoothly, but the weight on the other one—and on his—seemed far lighter.

—

She remembered the day her father came home livid.

She couldn’t figure out what had happened. Had he been wounded? Insulted? Tricked? He wouldn’t say.

He just raged. The trees bent under his wrath as he stamped them down, carving a new path through the forest. He picked up boulders and flung them at cliffsides, the noise of the impacts like thunder as showers of shattered stone flew in all directions.

She was tending to the garden a ways off—huge vines and stalks entwined their ways up poles and hill-high arbors made from towering pines, where she liked to work and admire how the sunset made the leaves glow gold—and suddenly had a sharp, sinking feeling.

Nix was still at his little shelter-house at their encampment. Her father was there.

Dread washed over her.

“Riddle me this, boy,” her father boomed, in the voice he only used when he wanted an excuse to strike something. “What is thick like glass and thin as air, cold but warm, ugly but fair? Fills the air yet never fills it, never exists but that all things will it?”

There was silence for a long moment.

...Silence. The answer was silence. Her father was trying to trick him into speaking.

Her hands curled around the bucket handle so weakly it was a surprise she didn’t drop it. Her father could crush him if he felt he had the slightest excuse.

Hush, hush, hush, her mind pleaded. Her hands shook. For your life and mine, hush—

There continued to be silence for a moment—and then, Nix must have answered. (Perhaps in jest. He tended to joke when uncertain. That would have been a mistake.)

There came the indescribable sound of a tree being ripped from its roots, and the deafening thunder of it being thrown and smashing down trees and structures.

Her whole body tensed horribly, and all she could see in her mind’s eye was nightmares.

No, she thought weakly.

Her father kept shouting. But not just shouting, addressing. Asking scathing rhetorical questions. She felt faint with relief, because her father had never wasted words on the dead.

I should have brought him with me. The thought flooded her body and left room for nothing else but dread and regret. I could have prevented this.

The stables were long and broad and old. Once, they had housed armies’ steeds and chariots. Now, they were run-down and reinforced so nothing could escape out the doors. The roof was broken off like a lid on hinges at intervals so her father could reach in to arrange and feed his horses.

Her father had seen no reason to keep the stalls clean. When one was so packed with bedding it had decomposed to soil at the floor level, the horse was moved to the next unused stall. There were so many stalls that she barely remembered, sometimes, that there were other ways of addressing the problem.

“The stable has not been cleaned in seven years,” her father boomed. “You will clean it tomorrow, or I will eat you in my stew.”

She couldn’t hear Nix’s response, but she could feel his dread.

Her father stormed away, more violently than any storm, and slowly, after the echoes of his steps faded, silence again began to hang in the air.

That night, it was hard to sleep. The next morning, it was hard to think.

She did the only thing she could think to do in such a nervous state. She brought her friend breakfast. His favorite breakfast—a roast leg of venison and a little knife he could use to cut off what he wanted of it, and fried turkey-eggs, and a modest chunk of soft brown bread.

When she arrived with it, he was still mucking out the first stall. There were hundreds ahead of him. He was only halfway to the floor of the first.

“I can’t eat,” Nix murmured, almost too quietly to hear and with too much misery to bear. “I can’t stop. But thank you.”

The pile outside the door he’d opened up was already growing too large. Of every pitchfork-full he threw out, some began to tumble back in. He was growing frustrated, and out of breath.

Why would her father raise a boy, a prince, only to eat him now? Her father was cunning; surely he’d had other plans for him. Or perhaps he really was kept like the horses, as a trophy or prize taken from the human kingdoms that giants so hated.

Was this his fate? Worked beyond reason, only to be killed?

Pity—or something stronger, perhaps, that she couldn’t name—stirred in her heart. A heat filled her veins, burning with sadness and a desire to set right. Would the world be worthwhile without this one small person in it?

No.

This wouldn’t end this way.

She called to the birds of the air and all the creatures of the forest. Her heart-song was sad and pure—so when she pleaded with them, to please hear, please come and carry away straw and earth and care for what has been neglected, they listened.

The stable was clean by the time the first stars appeared. When she set Nix gently on her shoulder afterward, he hugged the side of her head and laughed in weary relief for a long while.

—

She remembered the lake, and the tree.

“Shame on the wit who helped you,” her father had boomed. He’d inspected the stable by the light of his torch—a ship’s mast he’d wrapped the sails around the top of and drenched in oil—and found every last piece of dirt and straw gone. Had he known it was her, that she could do such a thing? She couldn’t tell. “But I have a worse task for you tomorrow.”

The lake nearest them was miles long, and miles wide, and so deep that even her father could not ford it.

“You will drain it dry by nightfall, or I will have you in my stew.”

The next morning, soon as her father had gone away past the hills, she came to the edge of the lake. She could hear the splashing before she saw it.

Nix stood knee-deep in the water, a large wooden bucket in his hands, struggling to heave the water out and into a trench he’d dug beside the shore.

When she neared him and knelt down in the sand, scanning the water and the trench and the distant, distant shoreline opposite them, Nix fell still for a moment. She looked at him, hoping he could see the apology in her eyes.

“Can I help?” she asked.

He shook his head miserably.

“Thank you. But even if we both worked all day, we couldn’t get it dry before nightfall.” He gave her a wry, sad smile, full of pain. “The birds and the creatures can’t carry buckets, I’m afraid.”

It was true. They could not take away the water.

But perhaps other things could.

She stood and drew a deep breath, and called to the fish of the rivers and lake, and to the deep places of the earth to please hear, please open your mouths and drain the lake dry.

With a tumult that shook the earth beneath them all, they did. The chasm it left in the land was great and terrible, but it was dry.

Her father was livid to see it.

“I’ve a worse job for you tomorrow,” he’d thundered at Nix as the twilight began to darken. “There is a tree that has grown from before your kind walked this land. It is many miles high, with no branches until you reach the top. Fetch me the seven eggs from the bird’s nest in its boughs, and break none, or I will eat you before the day is out.”

She found Nix at dawn the next day at the foot of the tree, staring up it with an expression more wearied than she’d ever seen before. She looked up the tree as well. It seemed to stretch up nearly to the clouds, its trunk wide and strong with not a foothold in sight. At the top, its leaves shone a faint gold in the sunlight.

“He is wrong to ask you these things,” Bonny said softly. Her words hung in the air like the sunbeams seemed to hang about the tree. There was something special about this place, some old power with roots that ran deep. “I’m very sorry for it.”

“You needn’t be,” Nix assured her. His countenance was grey, but he tried to smile. “But thank you. You’re very kind.”

She looked up the tree again. Uncertainty filled her, because this was an old tree—a strong one. Even if it could hear her, it had no obligation to listen. “Will you try?”

He laughed humorlessly. “What choice do I have?”

None. He had none.

He could not escape for long on his own—he could not be gone fast enough or hide safely enough for her father not to sniff him out. The destruction that would follow him would be far more than he would wish on the forests and villages and cities about them.

She, however, bit her lip.

She slipped the gold vine-ring off her hand, and rolled it so that it spiraled between her fingers. It was finely crafted, made to look like it was a young vine wrapping its way partly up her finger.

“This is all I have of my mother,” she said quietly. “But it will serve you better.”

Before he could speak—she knew him well enough to know that he would bid her to stop, to not lose something precious on his account (as if he weren’t?)—she whispered a birdlike song, and pleaded with the gold and the tree and the old good in the world to help them.

When she tossed the ring at the base of the tree (was it shameful that she had to quell a sadness that tried to creep into her heart?), it writhed. One end of it rooted into the ground, and suddenly it was no longer gold, but yellow-green—and the vine grew, and grew, curling around the tree as it stretched upward until it was nearly out of sight.

Nix stared at her with wide eyes and an emotion she couldn’t quite place. Whatever it was, it made her ears warm.

She smiled slightly and stepped back, tilting her head at the vine.

“Well?” she said. He was still staring at her with that look—some mix of awestruck and like he was trying to draw together words—and it made her fold her arms lightly and smile as she looked away. She quickly looked back to him, hoping faintly that her embarrassment wasn’t obvious. “You’d best hurry. That’s still a long way up.”

He seemed to give up finding words for the moment. Nix glanced up the tree, now decked with a spiral of thick, knobby vine that looked nearby like uneven stairs.

“Give me a boost?” he asked with a bright grin. “To speed it up.”

She laughed and gently scooped him up in both hands. “A boost, or just a boost?”

He beamed at her. “As high as you can get me,” he declared, waving an arm dramatically.

She laughed and shook her head. ”Absolutely not. Ready?”

Nix nodded, and she smiled thinly and poured all her focus into a spot a good distance up the tree. With a very gentle but swift motion, she tossed him upward a bit—and he landed on his feet on the vine, one shoulder against the bark, clutching to the tree for support as he laughed.

“A marvel!” he shouted down to her as he climbed. “Never forget that!”

The sun was nearly setting when he descended with the eggs bundled in his handkerchief. He was glowing.

He triumphantly hopped down the last few feet to the ground.

A moment after he landed, a soft crack sounded. He froze.

Slowly, he drew the bundle more securely into his arms against him and looked down. There, by his foot, was a little speckled egg, half-broken in the grass.

She put a hand over her mouth. Nix clutched the rest and stared.

A grievous pain and numbness slowly filled her heart, and she knew it was filling his too.

His shoulders began to shake, and his eyes were glassy.

“Well,” he laughed weakly. ”...That’s it. That’s... that was my chance.” The distress that overtook him was like a dark wave, and it threatened to cover her too. He only shook his head. “I’m so sorry. Thank you for—for helping me.”

For everything, she didn’t give him a chance to add. He was looking at her with the eyes of one who might say that. She couldn’t afford to be overcome with the notion of saying goodbye now.

“No,” she said. Her voice was quiet, at first, but it grew more resolute. “It won’t end this way.”

He blinked up at her, still clutching the other eggs to his chest. She looked down at him, then across the stretch of forest to their home.

Without a word, she gently picked him up and set him on her shoulder. Her jaw tensed as she strode quickly through well-worn paths of the forest, walking as fast as a horse could run.

Once home, she set him down. He was still looking at her questioningly. Her heart beat faster in her chest, and she hoped he couldn’t see the anxiousness rising in her and battling with the excitement.

“I will not let him have you,” she announced firmly. The trees and hills all around were witness to her promise. “Grab what you need. We’ll leave together in the hour.”

—

She‘d barely had time to fix her hair, grab her water flask, and decide it would be best this time of year to go south.

Her father’s footsteps boomed closer across the land.

—

They fled.

They ran, and ran, and struggled and strove, and she called for the help of anything she could think of that would have mercy on them.

Her comb grew into thorns, her hairpin into a hedge of jagged spires. Neither stopped him. Her dress’s hem was in tatters and sweat poured from her brow when they were finally safe.

Her flask lay behind them, cast down and broken, its magic used up.

Her father—her father—lay stretched out motionless in the flooded plain behind them, never to rise again.

—

There was a tiny spark of hope they had that they clung to. A hope of a future, of restoration, of amending the past and pursuing peace—of a life worth living, perhaps far, far away from things worth leaving behind.

(“I’ll go to the castle,” he’d said, his voice brimming with nerves and hope and uncertainty and sadness and an eager warmth. It made her heart try to mirror all those emotions alongside him. “I can tell my mother and father who I am. I’d still recognize them, even if they don’t know me. They’ll take us in, I’m sure of it.”)

He set out into the maze of village streets, assuring her he’d ask for directions and be back promptly. She stayed back by the well at the edge of the town so not to alarm anyone, too exhausted to go another step, but full of hope for him. She would wait until he returned.

(And wait. And wait. And wait and wait and wait and dread—)

The castle gardener came to draw water, and—as if she weren’t as tall as the small trees under the huge one she sat against—struck up a conversation with her about the mysterious boy who’d fallen unconscious across the threshold of the castle, asleep as if cursed to never wake up.

(The spark didn’t last long.)

—

She remembered when he could move.

“Please,” she whispered, as soft as her voice would go. “Please, if you can hear me. Wake up.”

(“Oh, dearest,” the gardener’s frail wife had murmured to her when the kind gardener brought her home to partake of a bit of supper. “I’m afraid they won’t let you in as you are. Would you let me sing you a catch as you eat?”)

The gardener’s wife was frailer by the end of it, but her heart-song could change things, like her own. Instead of towering at the heights of the houses, she was now six feet tall by human reckoning, and still thankful the castle had high halls and tall doors.

(Their daughter, a fair maiden with a shadow about her, had watched from the doorway.)

Nix Nought Nothing lay nearly motionless in the cushioned chair the castle servants had placed him in. His chest rose and fell slowly, like he was in a deep sleep.

He was still smaller than she was, but not by much. He seemed so large, or close. She could see details she’d never noticed before—his freckles, the definition of his eyelashes, the scuffs and loose threads in his tunic.

The way his head hung as if he could no longer support it.

She held him gently—oddly, now, with both her hands so small on his arms and an uncertainty of what to do now—and wept over him. She sung through her tears, her heart pleading with his very soul, but to no avail. He did not wake up.

He didn’t hear her—likely couldn’t hear her. All around him, the air was sharp and still and dead. Cursed.

Still, her heart pleaded with her, now. Try, try. Don’t stop speaking to him. Remember? He never stopped trying.

“You joke that you are nothing," she said, with every drop of earnestness in her being. "But I tell you, you are all I had, and all I had ever wished for.”

There was power in names. She knew that. But was his even a proper name? It really wasn’t—though it was all he had.

It was all she had as well. She had exhausted everything else close to her. There was nothing left to call on, to plead with, but him.

“Nix Nought Nothing,” she said softly. “Awaken, please.”

Her voice, no longer so resonant and deep with giant’s-breath, sounded foreign in her ears. It was mournful and soft like the doves of the rocks, and grieved like the groan of the earth when it split.

“I cleaned the stable, I lave the lake, and clomb the tree, all for the love of thee,” she said, her voice thickening with tears. A drop of saltwater fell and landed on his tunic, creating another of many small blotches. “And will you not awaken and speak to me?”

Nothing.

—

She didn’t remember being shown out of the room. Her vision was too blurred, and her mind was too distraught and overwhelmed. The next thing she could focus on enough to recall was that she was now seated on a stiff chair in the hall. Someone had been kind enough to set a cup of water on the little table beside her.

The towering doors creaked softly behind her, and at last, someone new entered. She looked over her shoulder, barely able to see through the dry burning left behind by her tears.

A man and a woman stood in the door. They were dressed in fine robes, and looked like nobles.

"What is the matter, dear?" the woman asked, looking over her appearance with eyes soft with pity. She came close, and her presence was like cool balm, gentle and comforting. "Why do you weep?"

The gold roses woven in the green of the woman's dress swam in her vision as she dropped her gaze, unsure what to say. These people seemed kind. But were they? Would they send her out from here, unable to return to him?

They would be right to do so. She was a stranger here, and Nix could not vouch for her like he'd planned.

"No matter what I do," she finally said softly, "I cannot get Nix Nought Nothing to awaken and speak to me."

In one moment, only the woman stood there—in the next, the man was beside her. The air was suddenly still and heavy like glass, and it felt as though there was a thread drawn taut between them all for a moment.

"Nix Nought Nothing?" they asked in unison, their voices full of something tense and heavy and sharp. When she looked up, nearly fearful at the sudden change in their tone, their faces were slack and pale.

Something stirred in her heart. Look. What do you see?

Green and gold. Their wide eyes were a familiar warm brown.

—

Now, things are changing.

According to the servant who'd been keeping an eye on him, all from the kingdom had been offered reward if they could wake the sleeping stranger, and the the gardener's daughter had succeeded. It was a mystery how it had happened—by whom had he been cursed? Her father? Then why could she not wake him, but a maiden from the castle-town here could?—but now, with the King and Queen hovering beside her and unable to stay still for anticipation, no one cared.

The gardener's daughter was fetched, and bid to sing the unspelling catch for the prince. (Prince. He was a prince, while she was a ruffian's daughter. She kept forgetting, when she was with him.) It was a haunting one that grated on her ears, as selfishly-written magics often did—and as if bitterness still crept at the girl's heart at the sight of all who were here, she left as soon as it was finished.

Nix Nought Nothing awoke—he awoke! He opened his eyes and sat up and looked at her as if seeing the sunrise after a year of darkness, and how her heart leaps high into her throat at the sight—and true to form, only blinks a few times at her as he seems to take her in before coming to terms with it.

"You look a bit different," he remarks, tilting his head slightly. "Or did I grow?"

She chokes on a snort.

"Hush," is all she can say. What had been an attempt at an unimpressed expression melts into a wavering smile. "Are you done napping now?"

He opens his mouth to retort, but a grin creeps onto his face before he can. He snickers. "Have I slept that long?"

"Nigh a week," the Queen says—and when Nix turns his head and sees her, his eyes grow wide. The Queen's smile grows broad and wavers with emotion, and the King's eyes are crinkled at the edges, and shining. "It has been a long time."

Her own father had never shown love like this—like the way Nix tries to leap from his chair at the same moment his parents rush to hold him, all of them laughing and sobbing and shouting exclamations of love and excitement and I-thought-I-would-never-see-you-agains. So much joy rolls off of them that she thinks she could have stood there watching forever and been content.

The first thing he does, after the first surge of this, is turn and introduce her to his parents, who had barely finished hugging him and kissing him and calling him their own dear son.

"This is the one who helped me," Nix says, already gesturing to her in excitement as he looks from her to his parents. "She sacrificed much to save me from the giant. Her kindness is brilliant and she blesses all who know her."

She tries not to look embarrassed at the glowing praise as Nix comes and stands beside her as he recounts their blur of a tale to his parents.

"Ah! She is bonny and brave," says the King. By the end of Nix's stories of their escapes, they're smiling warmly at her with such pride that she dips her head and smiles.

Nix Nought Nothing glances sideways up at her and raises a brow, a knowing smirk tugging at his lips.

"I've tried to tell her that," he agrees. "I don't think she's ever believed me."

She purses her lips and glances down at him. "I'll believe it the day you believe you are not nothing."

"Alright." Simple as that, he folds his arms and raises a brow at her. "I believe it. Fair trade?"

"Fair enough," she decides, with a crooked little smile. He beams, as if she's done something worth being proud of, and looks to his parents, who indeed look proud of them both.

"We would welcome you as our daughter," the King declares heartily, and both the Queen and Nix brighten, which makes her too embarrassedly fixated on the thought of family? Starting anew? to register what comes next. "Surely, you should be married!"

Nix looks at her, arms still folded, his eyes twinkling. There's something hopeful in his eyes that makes her certain this diminutive new heart of hers has skipped a few beats.

"Should we? Surely?" he asks, as if this is a normal thing to be discussing.

She works her jaw and swallows a few times, unable to help how obviously awkward she still likely looks. A flush tickles her face, and the queen seems to put a hand over her mouth to smile behind it.

"I... don't... suppose... I would mind," she manages, and—with those bright eyes so affectionate, and on her—Nix starts snickering at her expression. It's rude, but so, so warm she can't mind. She only discovers how broadly she's smiling when she tries to purse her lips and glare at him but is unable to. "Oh, go back to sleep!" she chides, too gleeful inside to truly mind, even as she makes a motion as if throwing one of the chair-cushions at him.

"Never!" he declares, pretending to dodge the invisible pillow. He makes broad gestures that she presumes are meant to emphasize how serious he is about this. When he stands straight and tall and sets his shoulders, she thinks that the boy she's explored the forest with really does look like a prince. "I have my family and my love all together in safety at last. We have much to speak of, and much time yet to spend with each other." He's a prince, but of course, he's also still himself. He immediately gets a mischievous glimmer in his eyes and puts a hand to his chest nobly as he does what he's done for as long as she's known him—jokes, when his emotions rise. "I shall never adhere to a bedtime as long as I live!"

My love, her heart still repeats every time it beats—as payback, likely, for her calling it diminutive. My love, my love, my love.

She doesn't let it out, for she doesn't know what it will do. But the words weave a song within her, so vibrant and effervescent and strong, brighter and clearer than any she's had before.

"I am glad to see you are certainly still my dear son," the Queen says, her own eyes twinkling. "I'm certain you both need fed well after such a journey. Come, perhaps you both can tell us more of it as supper is prepared."

They fall into an easy tumble of conversation and rejoicing and genial planning, and her heart is so light she thinks it must be plotting to escape her chest.

On the week's end from when she brought him here, Nix Nought Nothing and his family welcomes her into their home. It feels natural. It feels warm, and homey, and so pleasant and right that she often has to stop tears of weary joy from welling up as she considers it all.

Once upon a time, she thought she'd known happiness well enough without him. She had known what it was like to be without a friend, and without love.

Now, it’s hard to remember it.

#inklingschallenge #four loves fairy tale retelling challenge #each all everything #theme: philia #theme: eros #story: complete #Nix Nought Nothing #fairy tale retelling #And there we have it!! A THING that is now FINISHED #Some changes have been made from the original fairytale #such as: no one’s losing their toes like that on my watch!!#please note that having everyone keep their toes actually improves the story #by letting the characters be happier thanks to having toes #you’re welcome #edit: I forgot it was fingers AND toes #oof??#this is an extremities-safe zone #Bonny and Nix #There are some parts of this I’m not sure are the best they could be BUT it’s FINISHED and that was my main goal!#(I don't finish things I start writing near often enough; so whoo! Small victory!)#wait a minute did I include all four types of love??#I DID #that's hilarious that was not intentional #at the discretion of the contest runner to include; as doing all four sounds a bit extra:#theme: storge #theme: agape #This was supposed to be a friendship/romantic love combination that would surprise no one who has read my writing #imagine my own (retrospectively unwarranted) surprise when it turned into an excuse for me to write all the kinds of love??#Anyway this was so much fun to write! I hope you enjoy! <3 #salt and light

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