#I just feel like I’m such a blackhole of a person

[toastspirit]

This sounds really stupid but I genuinely feel guilty just being alive sometimes

[drabblesdrabbles]

“The Art of being Painfully In Love”

There’s this guy in my class, I did not like him one bit.

He’s loud, and obnoxious, and he likes to throw a fit.

Everything about him annoys me indescribably,

From the way he talks to the way he walks to way he laughs at every stupid thing we see.

He lights up the room whenever he’s around,

When he smiles it’s like everyone is spellbound.

He speaks so highly of himself, like he’s the greatest the world has ever seen.

And whenever he’s near me, I feel so serene.

Wait, what? Have I grown soft for him? I wonder.

No, that can’t be. I’m supposed to hate him, remember?

But I guess I’m not immune to his charms.

I guess, like every other person, I’ve fallen directly into his arms.

So I let him stick around me as much as he’d like.

Let him annoy me with his presence as I watch,

Watch as he glows under the moonlight

And blooms like the beautiful flower that he is under the sunlight.

I tell myself I’m not in love, that’s what I tell other people too.

But good lord how come I notice everything about you?

From the way his eyes crinkle when he grins,

To the way he cowers when things get too intense.

Everything, I’ve noticed and learned everything.

His favourite movie, food, and the lyrics to the songs he sings.

His existence is like a blackhole, forever swallowing,

And I will forever be falling.

When I came to the realization, tears prickled at the corner of my eyes.

I can’t just tell him how I feel, what if it ends up in a mere goodbye?

But god, I am in love with him, and painfully so.

So, so, deeply in love that I don’t ever want to let go.

But I must. For he is such a saint, and I a mere sinner.

I have given up on everything while he still dreams that life will get better.

He is simply so lovely and I’ll only keep his greatness at bay,

But I will not let that happen, I will not get in the way.

Someone said to me once that love is the most twisted curse of all,

And perhaps that is true

Because you should never love me the way that I love you.

———

(a poem i made while thinking about how tragic and beautiful satosogu is [and also how tooth-rottingly sweet iwaoi is])

[murkystarlight]

Hey, I just asked sillysnaildraws and whataboutsimple this because I’m trying to make it a thing: If you were a MCSM style admin, what would you look like/ represent/ have as your symbolism/ whatever else?

I have never thought about this either-

I never actually made an oc before(that's not true- but I haven't made one for a fandom before.)

I also am not very crispy on the knowledge on the Admins(or the entirety of season 2)

But I'm willing to give it a go

Her main color would be purple (cause I like purple) but like.. I'm thinking the skin would be like.. a deep blue? Navy color? Her hair, clothes and other stuff(if I add them later-) would probably be purple though.

She has long hair. Like really long. She likes to play with the gravity and make her hair look like it's underwater. And same with her clothes. Very flowy

She has like- some glitter? Star dust thing around her. I saw how the Admins all have like.. body suits? They have a dark body suit looking thing with different designs on top I think(I need to look into them more-- I'm sorry). So I thought, let's give her a black body suit, and make glowing dust float around the suit. But, she likes covering herself. So she has like.. a big dress(cloak maybe?) on top of the body suit(which is also what I meant with flowy clothing). And since the glowing substance isn't stuck onto the body suit, it all kind of spills out and float around her dress(and her everything else) now. But you know what's the biggest thing about glitter? It gets EVERYWHERE

You always find it. No matter how hard you tried to get rid of all of it. So I like that to be the case. She doesn't mind it. But the others... they mind it a lot

Her eyes are white. Just white. The sclera, iris and pupil. Just white. And y'know, it glows and stuff

And my idea for the star dust thing is because, I thought it would be nice if she represent like... nether stars? Or just stars. (Like I said. I have no idea-)

And for the reasoning of that... she's like some sort of.. watcher. Spectator? And since stars are always in the sky(even at morning though you can't see them) I thought it would fit pretty well

She doesn't like getting involved into things. But don't get it wrong, she loves drama. In fact, she makes drama. Then steps out, relax and just watch the drama unfold.

So I would think that she doesn't like standing out too much. But still wants to be in the spotlight- if that makes any sense

So instead of staying in Admin form, she stays in like.. a makeshift human form. Since, then she would stand out when between the other Admins, but doesn't attract much attention onto herself in other occassions since she looks like a normal player(I think her Admin form kind of has a blackhole effect? Since it's flowy and her colors are very dark and all that she kind of- Well, either doesn't stand out much and becomes one with the background or overwhelms everything around her a bit)

Enjoys being alone, but will come out to meet you whenever you ask her to. She doesn't mind leaving to meet people or just have a nice walk.

Her personality- the righthand man who is planning a secret plot to overthrow the leader type. She's an ambitious one

But most of the time, she's rather childish and playful.

She's a free spirit but often doesn't know what to do. So she stayed at the other Admins towns for a while before she left to the overworld.

Once in the overworld, she started moving from town to town, making a few friends here and there. Since she stays in her human form it wasn't much of a problem. She likes rabbit(bunnies?), because of some silly legend in my country about rabbits living on the moon- and often goes stargazing. She likes to Uh- feel like she's one with the night sky. All her colors in her admin form are dark(except the sparkly stuff. Cause it sparkles)(and maybe her hair is a bit of a brighter purple than the rest of her outfit) so she could just pass by as the night sky. Makes her easy to watch things from above or not get disturbed. Or both. Both works

And this is just a silly thing I thought of(not considering to actually put this in, but thought it'd be funny) she went to the moon. She even made a small civilization there!

But jokes aside, I feel like before she started settling into different towns, she's tried to make a lot of her own. Just small towns. But they never kept her intrested enough. And she easily got bored of them. So like the free spirit she is, she just- left. Had some fun with them and just left.

I also had a thought, since she... I'm not sure if she fits in with one of the Admins. And she has a makeshift human form(not a human form of what she looks like without powers), maybe she was made by the Admins? They could do that, right? Create a living, talking... thing(Idk-)

I think I got everything I thought of written down here. As well as the answers to your question. If I understood them wrong- please tell me. And I'll try again(or just fix a few parts) after learning more about the admins-

This is just a bunch of random thought I had squished into one so- yeah... this is all over the place

[ladyodium]

I’m feeling strangely poetic today.

TW: Domestic Violence

Lestat is such a blackhole. He’s a chaotic mess with an abusive backstory from which he never really healed from. Lestat is a lot, he knows that and he loves very deeply. Louis to him is His. His creation, His sun, and His Saint. Louis is everything Lestat isn’t, he’s the human quality that he lost so long ago. Lestat believes that Louis is his saving grace, finally someone just like him. In this Sun he’s found there is a deep underlying darkness. He wants Louis so desperately to accept himself as a vampire. He’s constantly angry that Louis denies this dark gift, this blessing he’s given him. He wants Louis to act out, he’s constant pushing Louis to react like him. He cheats, he lies, and he manipulates. He does everything in the book to get a reaction out of Louis and sometimes it works! He gets that reaction he wants, the vulnerability that Louis shows in his anger delights him. He’s a blackhole sucking the light away from The Sun, he’s the darkness that devours light, he’s this all consuming being who wants so desperately to be loved for who he is.

Louis is The Sun, The Saint, The creation. Louis meets Lestat and he’s instantly sucked into the vortex of him. He’s intrigued by this man who seems otherworldly. He finds him so fascinating, so attractive and alluring. How could you not be pulled in? Louis also is someone who is a victim of abuse. His family, his mother, Lestat, and now Armand. He isn’t always a good person but he tried to be. Louis is so traumatized that his mind just blocks out certain memories. Even before Armand messes with his mind. He loves Lestat and he’s ashamed to admit that. He loves Lestat so much but he hates the way Lestat makes him feel so unwanted. Louis really suffers from these severe moments of depression. He struggles with the concept that he is no longer human. He can’t have his business anymore and he can’t see his family. He’s afraid of his own vampirism, he can’t stomach the guilt of killing someone. He’d rather just drain animals and Lestat can’t stand this. 

I feel like Louis is the perfect example of a domestic abuse survivor. Before Lestat never hit Louis, he never raised a hand to him. However, he would humiliate him, cheat on him and then turn a child into a vampire just to keep him shackled in the “marriage”. Louis was happy that Claudia was there for a brief period in time Claudia was his light. They were a happy family until they weren’t. Lestat was jealous of Claudia, they were too similar to each other. Lestat saw himself in Claudia and how Louis was so happy with Claudia. Louis never judged Claudia for eating humans. Louis wanted Claudia to have everything he couldn’t do or wouldn’t do. He (for a time) respected her choices. Claudia really loves Louis, she loves him so much that she wanted to save him from himself. Louis let Lestat do what he wanted, just like how a victim will agree with their abusive partner to keep the peace. Lestat was good at making such good promises to Louis, he whispered honey in Louis ears and he never did them. He was jealous of Claudia having Louis love and attention. He could handle that, so he went to Antoinette.

I’m really grateful with how the show kinda incorporates Louis being black to his situations, it’s very subtle, but you can pick up on it. Lestat could never understand how Louis being black in a very dangerous New Orleans contributed to some of his choices.

The whole fight scene was really graphic and so well down. Lestat had finally snapped because Louis was thinking about leaving him for real. Louis would talk about it, think about it, but he had no one to turn to. His family turned away from him, he doesn’t have his business, and Claudia was gone. I feel like Claudia gave him the courage to finally remove himself from Lestat. Claudia wanted to save Louis from his own abuser like she saved herself. The way Lestat dropped this man from the sky?! Then he comes back just like an abuser and tried to cover it up with gifts. “You are not cruel, Louis.” And he isn’t. Louis isn’t cruel, he’s a survivor. That’s why he’s so quick to deny that he’s Armand’s. He doesn’t wanna be someone else’s anymore, he knows what it’s like to be owned and shackled. He’s free and he doesn’t wanna be tied down.

There’s a whole lot else I wanna say but that’s another post. Thanks for listening to my TED talk.



[firemandeanbuck]

Stars

HC Hob has this kind of ceiling in his bedroom, vibrant, glittery and spectacular. He painted it himself. He is crafty that way.

After their first time, spent and sticky with sweat Hob and Dream lay in bed, talking lazily, giggling and caressing each other's skin. Dream's skin is smooth, cold, and soft. Hob's skin is scarred, warm, and rough. It's perfect. Dream mouths Hob's throat, drinking the sounds coming from Hob's lips.

Hob had waited for this moment for over 500 years. He had hoped that one of these days, his stranger would be his lover. At last. It was true.

Hob did not sleep that night, he held Dream and talked and talked. Asked him endless questions, what he is, how he came to be, how the Dreaming is a part of him. In return, he told him all about the new age, the changes. Even when his arm fell asleep from being under Dream, he didn't move.

"Are you asleep?" Dream asked at some point.

"No", came the sheepish reply.

"That's a wonderful ceiling you have", he comments, just like the first time he saw his room a few weeks ago.

"Thanks. I painted it", murmured Hob, clearly fighting to remain awake.

"You can sleep", Dream reminds him,"I'll be here when you wake up".

“No, I’m fine”, Hob ran his hand on Dream’s jaw and kept it there, gently pressed against it.

“Your eyes are…beautiful”, Hob breathed, he didn’t dare to even blink.

They were beautiful, Dream’s eyes, they reflected the cosmos, the borning stars, the winking stars, the bursting nebulae, the damning blackholes, all of it. It appeared as if his eyes were windows to the universe themselves.

“You flatter me”, his cheeks went pink, his red lips tilted in a small smile.

“I love to see you red”, he brushed the back of his fingers against his cheek,

“Storyteller, tell me a tale”, Hob requested promptly,

Without taking his eyes off Hob, who was completely hypnotised with his eyes, Dream waved a hand to the ceiling, “I can SHOW you a tale”, delicately, Dream grabbed Hob’s chin and turned it to the ceiling.

Hob was stunned to say the least. It was spectacular, mind blowing, intriguing and celestial, to say the least. He personally felt like he was flying across the cosmos, like he can touch the stars, so close and intimate. He felt the stars dancing around him, the immortal basked in their company. It was almost like he could hear their heavenly laughter and siren-like voice, calling out to him to join their never ending celebration of life, universe and just being bigger than life.

The colours, oh, the colours, they were more beautiful than anything Hob had ever seen. Red, orange, green, blue, violet, pink, even the simple black stood out so much. So rich and vivid were the colours, no picture can compare. The way the nebulae move around, swimming freely like a mermaid in the deep sea. So many colours. Hob was sure there are more than his human eyes can comprehend or translate.

“It’s amazing”, Hob’s breath hitched. He reached out his hand to touch them. 

For a moment, he felt tiny, microscopic even. What or who is he in the grand scheme of things?

“Thank you”, Dream muttered, “I’ve crafted them”,

“I know”, Hob chuckled.

“I mean the actual stars. The Night is my Mother, but she wasn’t as decorated as she is now”,

Hob blinked and turned his gaze to Dream, who was still staring at him, unblinkingly. Such adoration and love in his galaxy eyes.

“She is beautiful”, Hob managed, before his words got stuck in his throat.

“Aye. But I rather look at you”, Dream smirked at the open mouthed shock on Hob’s face. He brought his hand to Hob’s hairy arms, “Universe is a vast thing, you can be easily lost in it. So are your eyes. And I have been there. I prefer where I can feel your warmth and sweet touch”, Dream carried on the stroking to his hip and thigh, “You show me humanity that I’ve long forgotten”, the Endless blinked, now caressing his neck “Trust me when I say, the stars and planets holds no candle to your brilliance, my heart”

It’s safe to say Hob’s mind short circuited that moment and they didn’t get ANY sleep that night.

MY FIRST (hopefully not last) CONTRIBUTION TO FLUFFBRUARY <3

inspired by @staroftheendless starting a war against angst and dedicated to Fluff Princess @immacaria

[hyuukais]

6. Buildup

warnings: none

word count: 1.0k

a/n: this isn’t the best but i was really struggling with it for some reason

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The heavy bass thump and low lighting of the arena feel reminiscent of a club. You can already tell you’re not far off from a migraine, as strobe lights flash dramatically around the padded ring. Next to you, Jooyeon and Seungmin are both munching away on their pretzels, the former having successfully tracked you and Bea down through the crowds. Jeongin arrived not long after him, flocked by a pack of men you didn’t recognize and Beomgyu. They came with cups and snacks in hand, apparently having stopped at the concessions as well. You all were quickly introduced as they sat down. Vaguely familiar with their names, it was nice to pair them with faces.

Yeonjun, with his bloody hair, was the first to greet you—oozing with charisma. Soobin seemed a bit quieter but polite nonetheless, especially as he commented on enjoying Jooyeon’s content with a bright smile. All you could really discern about Hueningkai was that Jeongin was right for calling him hot unprompted. He ended up in the seat next to you, silently snacking on some popcorn. It looked and smelled buttery and amazing. The thought of something salty makes your mouth water, yet the expanding pit in your stomach grows nauseous at the thought of eating.

It was like a looming blackhole of dread was eating you from the inside-out; all morning plagued by a familiar despair. The same one that had been following you for the past week. Beyond the notion of meeting new people spiking your anxiety, it was this overwhelming yet indiscernible feeling; most similar to depressing amounts of self-loathing and anger. Thoughts of that stupid rejection had been eating you up all night; over some guy you only went on a single date with. How dumb you felt about caring so much only made the feeling worsen, a vicious cycle so to speak. Bea had been completely on the nose when she called out your tendency to overthink, but you certainly wouldn’t tell her that. Hopefully, a fun night with friends would pull your mind out of its pit; or you could at least pretend one of the guys getting punched is someone you hate and find some enjoyment there.

“Would-would you like some?”

“Wha-”

Your eyes come back into focus on Heuningkai holding his popcorn container towards you. Even in the dim light, you can see the flaring red bathing his ear and neck. Perhaps you were looking at it too long, lost in thought, and made him uncomfortable.

“Oh, I…” Your stomach stirs at the sight, caught between craving and disgust. It smells so delicious though. “Sure, thank you.” You take a small handful. Popping some in your mouth, the kernels melt into your tongue, warm and buttery, absolute heaven on an empty stomach. You can’t stop the soft moan that slips out at the taste.

“That good, huh?” Kai chuckles beside you, you just happily nod in response, savoring each bite. A smile grows along with the red on his cheeks. “Um—I…I actually wanted to say, I’m a really big fan.”

“Oh?” Suddenly, the odd looks and comments his friends had given him after you two were introduced come back with much more clarity. They had all spoken about Kai sitting next to you with this odd lilt you can now tell was teasing.

His hands wring in his lap, but he face betrays nothing but a smile. “Yeah, so is Taehyunie, though I’m the one that introduced him to your content. We both think your stuff is really fun and cool! Your commentary is really funny and personable. You have this kind of atmosphere that…I just, I wish I could create with my content, I guess.”

“Oh, thank you!” Happiness bubbles in your chest, spreading its heat up your neck with a grin. You received words like these everyday from hundreds across the internet, yet something in the way he spoke made you feel so giddy over the praise. “I-I actually checked out a lot of your guys’ stuff after Jeongin mentioned we’d be coming today, and I really really liked it! Um–I watched the vod of one of your music streams—oh my god! You’re so talented, it’s crazy!”

“Oh–haha–thank you!” His head dipped as a shy laugh took over his body.

“And, I mean, I was a little hesitant about coming here. I guess I just didn’t know what to expect, but watching some stuff of Taehyun’s matches was like–wow.”

“Ah, yeah, Taehyun’s really talented. He always gets me to help him practice, and sometimes, just watching what he can do with one punch gets a little scary. He’s tried to teach me so many times but…I’m not built for those sports.”

“Oh god, Jeongin has this specific workout regime that he’s tried to get the rest of us to join so many times. It’s like he's really just plotting to kill us or something—it’s genuinely crazy. I’m like 90% sure it’s just because he developed it by working out with Changbin, but like—just thinking about it makes me want to vomit.”

His laugh is deep and airy as you go on about your friend’s. You both continue to swap stories back and forth, easily falling into casual conversation. Connecting with strangers was never an easy feat for you, but Hueningkai made it seem so much simpler. You could’ve probably talked for hours if not for the booming voice of the announcer ringing out to signal the start of the fight.

Cheers fill up the audience as the introductions proceed with both men standing at opposite corners of the ring. Everything is so loud and intense, you miss most of what is said about Taehyun. It’s easy to spot him against his opponent's bright green hair. His hands are clad in red gloves which match his shorts. From your seats so close, it's easy to see the steely look in his eye, brows shadowing his cheeks. Tension is thick in the air, beneath the harsh white now spotlighting the ring, everything burns up. Your heartbeat builds in your ears with unease, your breath held tight until the final signal goes and the match finally begins.

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WHAT YOU DESERVE

: ̗̀➛ Y/n is beloved by thousands on the internet, being a popular streamer. However, they’ve never been able to find nearly as much affection in their love life, despite searching for years. Just when they’re close to giving up on love all together, they suddenly find their romantic prospects on an upturn.

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[momobani]

Wilson!

THE WAY I hate YOU - Chapter 3 - 16.3k

&team Nicholas x fem!reader - arranged marriage AU

SERIES MASTERLIST

Sum: most people would die to stay in their honeymoon phase, you on the other hand might die from being in the honeymoon phase. 

Warnings: swearing, sarcasm, mention of food and alcohol, Nicholas (i feel like his existence is a warning in this one, you’ll see what i mean), mentions of sex 

Soundtrack rec: Hold Me Tight or Don’t - Fall Out Boy

Taglist: @nichoswag @seokka0o

A/N: i personally was having a delightful time writing some of this, like more than usual lol that i went overboard with the word count, i hope you enjoy it too <3 (again ft some fun cameos! don’t take it seriously lmao)  

This is so not how you had imagined spending your Friday night.

The hot pot machine bubbled quietly in the middle of the table while you tried to simultaneously pay attention to what Nicholas was saying and fight a piece of meat that just kept disappearing below the surface of the broth. 

“So, what do you think?” Nicholas concludes. He’d just finished his side of the debate on which apartment you should choose to live in. The two of you had been meeting to organise your lives and had finally come to make a decision for where you’ll live. 

You finally manage to snag that piece of meat and bring it to your plate quickly. 

“Well, I agree about how much nicer it would be to have a laundry room but I’m not too hot on the location.” you reply.

“What do you mean?” he asks. “The location is perfect!” 

“What’s so perfect about it?” you inquire, looking down at the tablet between you. The map just showed it was some distance away from your current apartments, although closer to the supermarket you went to and the boba cafe you liked. 

“It’s pretty central to where we need to go,” he says, flicking through the photos again. “and there’sabasketballcourtafewblocksaway.” he speedily finishes. The slew of words don’t quite hit your ears in real time and your eyebrows scrunch together as you try to decipher what your husband just said. 

“There’s a what?” you ask. 

“And there’s a park so nature, yay!” he grins, trying to move on but you weren’t born yesterday. You raise an eyebrow combatively - he either tells you or you’ll veto this entirely. Nicholas sighs. “There’s a basketball court nearby and it’d be nice to play with my friends. Happy now?”

“What really is happiness?” you hum in thought, avoiding sinking into a philosophical blackhole, instead thinking about his revelation about the court and to some extent, the park. It might be a way to get Maki to come over to yours and hang out - you barely got to see him lately and you wanted to see how he was doing.    

“Hey, save the existential crisis for later and tell me if I can play basketball or not.” Nicholas pouts over a piece of tofu puff.

“I’m not about to choose an apartment based on that. Give me better reasons.” you shrug, coming down with a verdict that you were sure Nicholas wouldn’t like, but you weren’t about to just indulge him.

“Okay, let’s review; our own laundry room, underground parking, central location,” he lists, taking a moment to think between each one. “reasonable mortgage - hmm?” he wriggles his eyebrows the way you think those old school teleshopping people would but right now it feels more like the way a shady conman might. “Oh, and the park and the court.”

You purse your lips, weighing up the pros and cons. The place you’d chosen had some of the same perks - in terms of parking and location but there was no laundry room, just a machine in the kitchen and you didn’t love that. You mentally added the boba place to Nicholas’ list and the possibility of persuading your little brother to visit you so he wouldn’t forget you exist. 

Unfortunately, it made logical sense to pick the place with more perks and better price for value, but the whole thing sounded like Nicholas was fishing for a way to avoid you at home. 

On second thought, maybe that’s how you should consider it - it might give you opportunities to be independent of each other and not be constantly stuck together. You clear your throat and munch on a piece of rice cake for a moment.

“Fine, let’s take that one. I like doing laundry.” you say whatever nonsense that comes to mind. Nicholas is suddenly far too happy to pay attention to details. 

“Really?” his eyes are wide in surprise. “Okay, we better move fast then. I’ll send them an interest inquiry right now.” he forgets about the food and starts tinkering away on securing the apartment for you. 

You watch him, busy hands and roaming eyes. He pushes up the sleeves of his olive shirt - a comfy and clearly beloved cozy sweater - and focuses. You notice the details of his existence; his tense forearms, the tongue that swipes across his lips unconsciously, and the chain that hangs around his muscular neck. 

Sometimes it was hard to understand that you weren’t really strangers any more. 

You’d been married for two weeks already and had been seeing a lot more of each other than you thought you would before you lived together. There’d been several family and business dinners that had needed your presence but you went to each other’s places to eat occasionally while you looked at new apartments or planned your move.

So much for strangers. 

Nicholas was your husband now and you were his wife. It had already happened and you just needed to get used to it.

“YN?” you snap out of it, realising that you’d been spacing out while looking in his direction so he probably thought you were staring at him. 

“Yeah?”

He gives you a once over and goes back to his tapping on the screen. “Nothing, just checking you were still breathing.”

“I am.” you confirm, taking a deep breath in and exhaling. “See?” 

“Yeha.” Nicholas barely responds because he seems to have made progress on the inquiry. “And done. We should hear from them soon.” he smiles, pretty proud of himself. 

“Cool. Now we just have to somehow pack up our lives and smush them together in one place.” you say. 

“Don’t stress, it’ll be fine.” Nicholas says dismissively, getting back to his meal. 

“Let’s hope so.” you mumble and do the same. 

You had lived by yourself for a little while now, so living with someone else again all of a sudden was going to be a bit of shock to your system. 

The two of you had agreed to have your own rooms and your own space within the apartment, essentially cohabiting like roommates because nowhere did it say in any document you actually had to sleep in the same bed like a married couple would. 

You were married legally and in name only, as far as you were concerned. 

You drew up rules to keep the peace, basic things like keeping it clean, respecting each other’s space, and minding your own business, but you weren’t too worried about it. You were a great roommate, even if you did say so yourself.  

The apartment was secured over the weekend and you were free to move in from the following Thursday onwards. 

Several days later, your apartment was all packed up except for the bare minimum living essentials, which would come with you later. You helped the movers put your stuff in their van, telling them that they’ll meet your husband at the apartment while you hung back and sorted things out there. 

It’s sluggish to put the last few items in a box and double check your suitcase. You get a text from Nicholas that the movers have finished and are away already and you realise you’re moving slowly subconsciously; you didn’t want to leave yet.

You didn’t want to accept that you weren’t going to be the way you were any more. 

There was an echo of your footsteps that resonated through your now empty apartment, the space far too barren for your liking. In some ways you were glad, because you’d been able to negotiate which of your furniture you would keep and which you had to sell on since you had no need for it. 

Your precious couch and coffee table had survived and you were taking it with you, whereas Nicholas was bringing the dining table and chairs from his place with your somewhat enthusiastic approval. (The dining table was tastefully furniture to die for.) Your bedroom stuff had survived for the most part since you weren’t going to share any of it, but apart from that, you had to sell several things. 

You looked over your shoulder one last time at what used to be your place, before closing the door with a quiet click for the last time. It felt solemn; like the end of an era, so of course you were feeling a little sentimental. 

The drive to your new apartment was marred by heavy rain pouring down, the forecast for sunny clear skies completely wrong, so you drove slowly, putting on a sad ballad to match the mood. You were going to miss that place; it was somewhere you’d learned a lot about yourself, had your real taste of independence in and one that you cherished a lot. 

You get to your new front door, apartment 520* mounted in pretty gold letters against the dark emerald lacquer of the door. 

It felt like a betrayal when you entered the passcode for the first time and opened the door.

“Surprise!” you heard a yell as soon as stepped into the hallway. You jump slightly, suddenly snapped out of your thoughts. “Hey, roomie!” 

Nicholas was standing there grinning, all alone, blowing one of those annoyingly brightly coloured party blowers. The noise scratched a very specific part of your brain, and not in a good way. You moved to shove your shoes off.  

“Not exactly a surprise since we agreed to live here together, but okay.” you say shrugging and drag your suitcase into the corridor. 

“I guess,” Nicholas says. “but I just wanted to get one of these.” he holds up the party blower. 

“Great.” you move past him and look around for your furniture. You spot the stuff in your room and your couch is deposited randomly with your coffee table but what surprises you is that Nicholas’ stuff isn’t here yet. “Did something happen to the dining table, or?” you ask. 

“Ah,” he hums, thinking for a moment. “well, I’ve still got a few things to move since I was using Fuma’s van and it didn’t fit everything, so I sort of sacrificed the table. Sorry.” he finishes sheepishly. “Besides, isn’t it classic to eat on the floor the first night you move in somewhere new?” 

“It doesn’t matter if it’s a thing or not, I guess we’re doing it on the floor.” you say. 

“Huh?” Nicholas seems startled for a moment. “Doing what?” 

“Eating, duh.” you say. You wonder why that would have confused him; surely he wasn’t thinking you two were going to- oh my god, did he? No, you were just tired and imagining stupid things. You shake your head, “Whatever. I’m ordering. What do you want to eat?” 

And so you did eat on the floor on your first night in your new apartment, ignoring the perfectly good couch and sitting on a random blanket like an indoor picnic. 

It wasn’t all bad but there was a certain awkwardness being there, a little like the first time you’d met Nicholas. You just hoped you could get used to the apartment like you were getting used to him. 

* 

“No. I simply refuse.” you state as you stir your morning coffee. Nicholas sighs deeply, hunching over the kitchen counter. 

“But it’s a really good deal! We should go.” he argues. Instead of a debater, he sounds more like a kid trying to convince their parents to do something. You shook your head.

“I have things to do, you go if you really want to.” you say. Nicholas looks dubious - it’s the first time you’ve seen that expression on his face. 

“Mrs Wang-” you’re about to interject at the name calling but he doesn’t let you. “did you just tell me- your husband- to go on our honeymoon alone?” he asks, scepticism rising with every syllable. 

“You’re right. That sounds pathetic.” you concede. “Go with your friends. Make it a dude-bro-cation. Take Jo and Euijoo and…” you think hard, trying to remember names. “Fuma!” you snap your fingers, having remembered another one of Nicholas’ friends. 

“Don’t hurt yourself if you don’t know.” he says sarcastically.

“Hey! I met them one time,” you can’t help the defensive pout that you feel like came out. “and you have a lot of friends.” you mutter. 

“Not the point, YN. I’m not going without you.” Nicholas says. “This is practically a direct order from management, a.k.a the parents! And they’re offering to pay for everything.”

You sip your coffee, thinking. 

Your parents had dropped this bomb on you last night, telling you to go on a honeymoon while you were having dinner at your parents’ house. Both sides offered to pay for everything like they did with the wedding and call it a honeymoon for the two of you. 

It sounded fair enough.

You just didn’t feel like going though.     

You could go on vacation whenever you wanted to - you made enough money by yourself that you could splurge - but going now and officially calling it a honeymoon? It felt silly, like the cherry on top of this whole crazy arranged marriage business. 

“It’s just a vacation, why make it sound so - I don’t know.” you think out loud. 

“YN, please don’t make me beg you.” Nicholas’ shoulders slumped. “It’s a free vacation, for crying out loud! Who says no to that?” 

I would, you thought. You didn’t know what the situation in Nicholas’ office was, but in your office, department, part of hell, whatever you wanted to call it, you had to stick around if you didn’t want to be left behind or get your ass grilled by everyone else. 

You were already scrutinised enough for being the boss’ kid, but disappearing to go on a holiday with your husband just when the merger was really getting underway? You would get roasted con fuoco.

“You know what, I will beg,” Nicholas resolves, getting up. “I’m getting on my knees, I’m not above begging.” he announces before sliding off his slippers. It’s almost comical and you think he’s joking but he starts to bend down.

“Okay!” you exclaim, putting a stop to his buffoonery. “We’ll go on our stupid honeymoon.” 

You decided that whatever happened at work was better than having to hear him begging and bugging you about going until you agreed.

“That’s more like it.” he stands up straight, grinning. “I’m no fancy lawyer, but I know how to win in these situations.”

“You sure do, but do you ever think you’ll win your dignity back?” you say to him before leaving for your room. You leave him gapping after you in your kitchen.

“Who needs dignity? I’m going on vacation!” Nicholas calls after you, just before you close the door. 

*

The PA system crackles overhead and you fasten your seatbelt, getting ready for takeoff. 

Nicholas sits besides you, neck pillow already in place, as well as a fuzzy wolf sleeping mask placed over his forehead, the image of a travel diva personified in your husband. Of course he would be so extra for like a three hour flight.

You ignored him while you got comfy, pulling on your cardigan when they started to blast the AC down on you. 

“So, how remote is this island anyway?” Nicholas asks, sending one last text before switching his pone to flight mode. You pause to remember details on what you’d read. 

“Hmm, I’d say a lot. Something about limited signal and wifi.” you answer, shrugging. You’d fought tooth and nail about where you were going on vacation- no, honeymoon- and you’d compromised on the island since it had a beach, which is one thing you both wanted. 

Suddenly the air around you swishes. Nicholas whips around to look at you, desperate. 

“Are you sure about that?” he says with all but the zest of John Cena’s original delivery.

“Yes,” you say, silently edging away from him. “there’s this thing called ‘research’, ever heard of it?”

“Don’t patronise me.” Nicholas pouts, sitting back. You crack a smile.

“Ooh, big word for wittle Nichowas.” you chuckle, starting to think this vacation might actually be a good idea. You were going to watch your city-boy husband practically lose his mind in the jungle; it was going to be great. 

“Can’t you speak nicely?”

“No.” you say. 

“You are so incredibly frigid.” he shoots back. 

“Aha, I was born this way.” you take the opportunity to reach a quick hand and pull the fuzzy sleeping mask over his nose and mouth, snapping it lightly. He splutters slightly as he fights the wolf off his face. 

“Do you have a sarcastic reply to everything?” he huffs, putting the mask back in its place before you decided to redecorate his accessories. 

“Probably. Guess we’ll find out.” you hum, reaching into your pocket for chewing gum. You take a piece out then offer the pack to Nicholas, who also takes a piece in the most begrudging way. You smile to yourself, chewing as the plane takes off. 

This was going to be interesting.

*

Upon arriving, you felt two things: 

Firstly, the sweet smell of not answering work emails for ten days, and secondly, the colossal, mind-melting, soul-snatching humidity. It was horrific. As if you could practically taste it if you stuck your tongue out (you didn’t, though it crossed your mind).

You’d shed your cardigan, stuffing it into your carry-on bag and Nicholas had unbuttoned one more of his shirt’s top buttons. 

You make it out of the tiny airport, if you could call it that and not a helipad, and follow the signs to the shuttle bus that would take you to resort where your hotel was. 

After getting off the bus, your clothes sticking to your skin from the heat, you finally see the hotel up a short path. There was a lot of what you presumed was jungle or rainforest just outside the resort and it loomed majestically overhead behind the light chainlink fence that seemed to be placed there just for the thought of having it. 

“I could totally run away and live off the land, Robinson Crusoe style.” You muttered to yourself.

“What?”

“Intrusive thought. Nevermind.” you snapped out of it, continuing to walk. 

“Oh god,” Nicholas groaned miserably. “this island is literally in the middle of ass fuck nowhere!” 

You didn’t know what he was whining about, you’d both picked this place. “Your point?”

“We’re completely marooned - there’s like no signal, no wifi…” he complains while hoisting his phone up in the air as if it was the Lion King. 

“Don’t tell me you were actually planning on spending your vacation just watching TV in your room all day?” you throw a semi-judgmental glance at your husband over your shoulder. 

Nicholas pockets his phone silently and adjusts his shirt slightly from sticking to his body. You side-eye a couple of girlies that walk past you and gawk at Nicholas, obviously staring at the way the white fabric outlined the defined lines of his torso. You ignore the image and bulldoze forward to the hotel’s entrance.  

“Well, not all day, but now I can’t do it at all.” he says, disappointment evident in his voice. 

“Boo-hoo, the whole point of vacation is to chill. You can still do that perfectly fine.” you point out.      

“I like chilling,” he huffs. “Netflix and chilling, but now there’s no Netflix. Do you not see this may be the end of humanity as we know it?” he asks dramatically, eyes wider than a conspiracy theorist’s. 

“Hmm, not quite the crisis you imagine.” you reply. “Fortunately, there are these magical things - books - which have survived many millennia, and they seemed to have worked just fine for our ancestors.” 

“So what I’m hearing is, our vacation is, in fact, doomed.” Nicholas states as you walk into the hotel lobby, breathing in that delicious, stale air-conditioned air. You stop to bask in its coolness, breathing out in relief.    

“Your vacation,” you correct. “I’ll be paying my respects to my ancestors by reading.” 

“Ugh, well we can’t stay here. What are we going to do for ten days?” Nicholas asks. You wonder if he even heard what you said, but in his current state, you somehow doubted it. 

“You got a better idea?” you raise your eyebrows.

“I’ll build a raft, we can swim off the island.” he suggests. You’re about to lay down the most sarcastic, hard line of the century but the sound of thunder rumbling stops you. 

It was the loudest rumble you’d ever heard in your life and you suspected the lightning that preceded it might have struck not even several meters out of the door you’d momentarily walked through. The thought almost made you faint. 

“If you walk out of that door, Nicholas, so help me god.” you warn, wheeling your suitcase further into the building and away from the windows. 

“Noted.” he replies sheepishly, following your lead away from the windows, almost scrambling after you.  

Needless to say, it starts pouring torrential rain after that and while you check in, you can see the rain drops hammering violently on the window panes behind the concierge desk.

The lady there hands you a small card holder, telling you the keys are inside and you can’t really hear much else of what she says to you but it sounds like the standard if-you-need-anything-ring-the-phone mumbo jumbo so you thank her and go.

Little did you know, she’d warned you.   

You get up to the correct floor in search of your rooms, looking around while you navigate the soft-carpeted hallways. 

“One four three.” you mumble, trying to find the right number. You stop at the end of a corridor and take out the key card. You buzz the door open and push it forward. “Wait a minute-” you walk in several steps and circle back, thinking you’re losing your mind. 

“What is it?” Nicholas walks in, relaxed pulling in both of your suitcases. 

“I think there must be a mistake,” you say. “The suite only has one room. I thought we’d asked for two?” 

“Really?” Nicholas takes a few steps in, sweeping his eyes over the place and sure enough there is only one room. “That’s weird. Let me check with Jun-ge, he’s the one that booked our honeymoon.” Nicholas fumbles around with his phone for a bit, trying to find a signal for a minute. 

You vaguely remembered meeting Jun at your wedding; he was one of Nicholas’ big bro types at the company but you had no idea if he’d known about your marriage being arranged or not. 

Nicholas finally gets the phone to ring and the line crackles when it’s picked up on the other end. 

“Hello?” you hear Jun answer when Nicholas puts the phone on speaker. “Nicho, what’s up?”

“Hey, Jun-ge, quick question, do you remember booking our honeymoon suite?” he asks tentatively. 

“Yeah, is something wrong?” 

“Well, uh, we got here and it’s got just the one room, didn’t I put a note to find two rooms?” 

“You wrote ‘honeymoon suite’ and that’s what I got.” Jun replies, obviously not sensing that that was what was wrong with the whole situation. 

“Yes, Jun-ge, but I also wrote two rooms on the note, right?” 

“Dude, two-room honeymoon suites don’t exist.” you can hear Jun chuckling on the other end of the line. You were starting to regret not booking the rooms yourself. 

“Oh.” Nicholas says dumbly. “Okay, that’s cool, thanks Jun-ge.”

“Alright, kid, don’t have too much fun!” Jun laughs before hanging up. You look at Nicholas, attempting to hold your glare but you reckon it slips out regardless. 

“You wrote what in the note?” you ask, voice steadily quiet. 

“Two rooms.” Nicholas avoids your eyes and scratches the back of his neck, with the guiltiest look on his face.

“‘Honeymoon suite’!” you state, jogging his memory. “You couldn’t just leave that out, could you?” 

“Yeah, my bad.” Nicholas admits. 

“Right, well,” you walk into the actual bedroom part. There’s a super king sized bed that takes up most of the room, and it looks very comfortable. “I’ll gladiator fight you for the bed.” 

“That’s not very civilised of you, YN.” he muses. “Rock, paper, scissors-” Nicholas thinks he can take you by surprise, yelling out RPS unexpectedly, but you throw out your hand as a reflex,

“Shoot!” you finish, giving him a paper to his rock. He groans at the loss. 

“Best of three!” 

You roll your eyes before playing again, throwing out scissors this time intuitively. Nicholas threw paper and then sunk to the ground.

“Hah!” you grinned at your victory. “You should have taken your chances in a fight, but I think I would have won that too.” you shrug, faux sympathy coating your voice. Karma’s a bitch, but so were you. “Enjoy sleeping in the bath.”

“Bath?” Nicholas snaps up and runs off to check. 

Indeed, there was no couch in the suite, only a dinning room set up in the small living space, complete with a TV mounted to the wall and a grand bathroom that separated from the master bedroom. Besides a generously spacious shower cabin, there is a huge white bath in the middle of the bathroom, practically the size of a jacuzzi and though giant by nature, Nicholas would probably fit in it. 

He comes back to find you getting comfortable sitting on the bed, legs crossed gloatfully as you watched your husband lose his mind and it was only day one. 

“Fine. Be cruel. I’m fine. It’s fine.” he says, sounding less than convinced. 

“Is it though?” you smirk, loving the way he’s trying to stomach the loss but failing. 

“Yes. Totally. Fine.”

You don’t press it further but lie back on the bed, letting the mattress swallow you up. Vacation wasn’t so bad after all. You might not have Netflix, but you had a personal drama king right in front of you.  

You didn’t get to do anything for the rest of the day since it was storming outside but you had dinner down at the restaurant and eventually went to bed, or in Nicholas’ case, to the bath.

The next morning, you wake up naturally, blissfully rested and stretch with all the grace of a cat. You slept like a rock on this gorgeous bed and you really had to thank Jun for booking this particular room. 

You get up, quietly, and pad over to the bathroom, the door still closed. You pause, then knock on lightly. “Nicholas?” you ask. 

There’s a sleepy groan on the other side of the door, and then a thud. You panic for a second.

“Hey, I’m coming in!” you warn and work the handle. You find Nicholas in the bath in his pyjamas, blanket half-thrown off and the pillow lying on the floor. That explains the thud. “You okay?”

“Hmm,” he grunts, eyes still closed. He shuffles slightly, pulling the blanket and curling up on his side. 

“Alright, well, good morning to you too.” you mutter and leave. 

A while later, a disheveled Nicholas emerges from the bathroom. It must have been the smell of coffee that got him moving because you’re about to drink your first and hopefully only cup of the day. 

“About time, Sleeping Beauty.” you glance at him. You note he most certainly is not a happy ducky in the morning; there’s a deep frown on his face and his posture is giving an uncanny resemblance to a deflated balloon animal. 

“Hmm.” he responds with another grunt. You weren’t sure when exactly, but some time between last night and this morning, your husband seems to have been replaced with a cave man. The two of you hadn’t crossed paths too often in the mornings, so it was kind of news to you to see him like this.  

You sigh and put your coffee down, getting up to go to the pot and pour him a cup. Nicholas sits down stiffly in the opposite chair and you deposit it in front of him. Instead of trying to make conversation with a prehistoric species, you go back to your book, but you see he drinks the coffee. 

Twenty minutes later, you swap the location and find yourselves downstairs having a late breakfast (you refused to call it brunch), munching on whatever to start your day. 

Nicholas looks more like himself now, but you can sense the obvious discomfort from the way he keeps trying to massage his neck and shoulders discreetly, or stretches to try and work the muscle there. He’s wearing a loose fitting, linen button up and every move seems to expose a lot of skin but while you’re trying to ignore it, it doesn’t mean everyone else is. 

People who are sitting at the neighbouring table are throwing occasional slightly suspicious glances. There are some not so discreet wives checking your husband out and not minding their own and even some pretty waitresses smiling as they pass by. You roll your eyes as one in particular can’t seem to look away as she brings you a plate of fruit.

“What?” Nicholas notices that you’re making a face. He himself seems to be oblivious on the other hand. 

“Nothing. Eat your strawberries.” you say quickly, keeping a poker face. You could almost see the smug look that would appear on his face if you told him people were checking him out, so you stayed quiet.

“Right.” 

Back upstairs, Nicholas perches on the vanity table on one side of the room while you rummage around in your suitcase looking for some clothes. You’re aware of how he’s shifting awkwardly and you stop and turn to him. 

“I’m listening.” you state. Nicholas doesn’t say anything for a moment, his tongue poking the inside of his cheek and then the other side. 

“Please can I sleep in the bed?” he asks finally. 

“Hey, you lost fair and square.” you go back to looking for your swimsuit. Nicholas tilts his head.

“I’m not hearing a ‘no’.” he hums. 

“No.” you say for good measure. “Happy?” 

“Not at all.” he replies. You think he’s going to give it a rest but then a second later he speaks again. “Fine, if I have to sleep in the bath, then give me a massage.” 

“Why me?” 

“Because you’re here.” he says like it’s obvious. “Ooh, better yet, buy me medicine and rub it on my shoulders.” he smiles, hopeful. You knew what he was doing but despite that, it was working. 

You scrunch your forehead, the idea less than appealing to you. You look from Nicholas to the bed, then to Nicholas again, weighing it up in your head. The bed was big enough, you were just going to have to stay on one side. You didn’t want to cause permanent damage after all. (It might scar you for life to massage medicine over his shoulders. And you guess it could do something to his posture or whatever.) 

“Ugh,” you spit out. “alright. You can sleep on one side of the bed.” you specified. “I’m not giving you the whole thing.” 

“Pleasure negotiating with you, Mrs Wang.” Nicholas grins and disappears before you can tell him off for the name calling. 

You get dressed, slipping on your one piece swimsuit and throwing on some shorts, and take your book down to the pool. The weather had cleared up completely compared to yesterday’s torrential downpour and the sun is shining brightly. The pool itself is located in a slightly more sheltered area and it doesn’t look like there was any damage from the rain.

You smile to yourself and find a nice lounge chair to camp out at. You adjust your sunglasses and open your book again to continue where you’d left off. 

“Are your ancestors proud of you yet?” you hear a voice ask before you feel a weight settle near your legs on the lounge chair. You don’t look up at Nicholas, before replying. 

“I don’t know, maybe you should go ask them.” you retort. 

“Oh, I will,” he says. “in like hopefully seventy to eighty years.”

You hum in response, not particularly feeling like playing along right now. Nicholas shuffles about, and you finally look up. 

Big mistake. 

You find him unbuttoning his shirt and shrugging it off his frame. You blinked twice, trying to tear your eyes away from him. 

“Look after this, please.” he says after a moment, indicating to his discarded shirt. It lay half folded next to your bare leg. 

“Sure.” you mumbled. You watched as he threw you an acknowledging half smile and got up. You couldn’t help yourself for a moment; you stared after him. 

It was ground breaking actually. 

You’d not really given it much thought since your predicament was rather serious - life sentence married to a man you didn’t love and all that - but you had eyes and you noticed that your new husband was actually quite hot. 

Who would have thought? 

You clocked the well rounded muscle of his shoulders and back and his toned biceps, and though you avoided really looking (as in, you didn’t pull your shades down), the modest set of abs that graced his torso.

“How novel.” you observed out loud then went back to your book. You didn’t need to ogle at your husband; you weren’t a horny teenager any more. Moreover, this information changed nothing in your life whatsoever. You were still shackled together and sinking to the bottom of the ocean.  

You hear your name being called some time later.

Putting your bookmark in place, you look up to find Nicholas resting on the edge of the pool, his arms crossed and chin resting on top. 

“Yes?” you inquire, taking off your sunglasses to see him better. 

“Can you help me get out?” he asks, looking a little shifty, glancing side to side but there’s no one in your immediate vicinity. Just some people down the other end. You figured it was probably lunch time so it was quiet. 

“Huh?” you’re confused at the request. 

“It’s the deep end. I’m tall, but I’m not that tall.” he admits sheepishly. You guess he must be embarrassed to ask you for help. 

What doesn’t cross your mind is why a) he didn’t go to a shallower part of the pool, b) he didn’t cross to the opposite side and use the ladder!, or c) someone of his stature would struggle getting out of a pool. 

You get up and walk to the edge, extending a hand to him. Nicholas takes your hand in his wet one and you start to pull. 

Except you’re pulling but it’s not working. In fact, the world is suddenly tilting and you’re diving head first into the pool, gravity and Nicholas taking you in with him. You would have yelped but you close your mouth on instinct as you go down so you don’t get a mouthful of water.

The coolness of the water engulfs you suddenly and you struggle to orientate your way up to the surface again. You break through with an angry gasp for air. 

“Wang Yixiang!” you sputter loudly, venom filling up your veins. You hear his laugh somewhere nearby and you wipe your eyes, trying to locate him. He’s a foot away, also drenched, wet hair hanging in his face but smiling widely.

“Here, Sergeant!” he gives you a silly salute and you start toward him, eyes full of vengeance.

“Come back,” you demand after he starts swimming away from you. 

He’s not particularly fast and you manage to grab his hand and yank him back toward you. There’s a lot of water resistance but you’re adrenalised to you manage to get him to change direction. 

“Hey, c’mon, don’t be mad.” he says, well aware that today might be his last day as an alive person. You ignore him and do your best to try and dunk him. It doesn’t really work because he uses your strength against you and the two of you just spin around. You’re off balance and trying to just tread water even though here Nicholas could stand up, which was quite unfair. He stills suddenly. “Oh my god, look!” 

“Not falling for that one, dude,” you say, thinking he was trying to distract you from trying to dunk him. 

“No, really, two o’clock, it’s that man, uh, what did he do again?” Nicholas wracks his brain for a moment. 

“My two o’clock or yours?” you realise he’s being serious and you think to check. 

“Yours. The man with the moustache, we met him at the wedding.” You think back and try to place the description. You’re floating so you manoeuvre around to be able to glance in the right direction.

Sure enough you spot the person Nicholas was talking about. You saw him but he hadn’t spotted you yet.  

“Shit, it’s the tyre guy.” you say. 

“Right, that’s the one.” Nicholas agrees, as if the answer is now clear to him. 

“You had no idea who that man was, did you?” you ask.

“Not a clue,” he admits. “I was grasping at straws. He seemed familiar.” And you realise that it had worked. 

Yet, also it was that man; what was he doing here? Was he on vacation too? From what you remembered he was some business partner on your parents’ side. Your father had introduced you once before and then once at the wedding. 

You freeze, forgetting to tread water. 

Nicholas seems to notice you stop moving and grabs your waist, holding you up so you don’t start to sink. Your hands come up between you as a buffer and slap gently against his chest but you ignore what’s going on in front of you, deep in thought. 

Why was he here of all places? Was it a coincidence? What were the odds of that happening? 

What if your parents had sent him here to spy on you? That was possible right? Surely they wouldn’t do that though, you’d agreed to go on the honeymoon, that was enough, wasn’t it?

Wasn’t it?

You close your eyes, feeling like your sanity was slipping away; it sounded like the type of thing they’d do. Just to make sure you were behaving. 

“Hey, YN, what’s wrong?” Nicholas squeezes your waist, trying to get your attention. You snap back to reality, seeing his concerned face a few inches away from your own. You hand’t noticed how close you were so you let go of Nicholas, breaking out of his grip gently. 

“Nothing,” you say as you swim toward the nearest ladder. 

You were definitely annoyed, your parents couldn’t just leave you alone, could them?

*          

After your early dinner, during which you constantly looked over your shoulder in case you spotted the tyre man, you go back to your room to continue reading. You hadn’t run into that man after all, but it was only a matter of time.  

Nicholas takes the opportunity to shower first after being in the pool, not that you were picky or going to fight him for it. 

The door of the bathroom opens some time later and he emerges with a towel around his head and one around his waist. You try to mind your own business but he’s rummaging around his own suitcase for ages, so damn loudly, might you add, humming and hawing at what to wear. 

You glare in his direction, but his back is to you, and all you see is the excess droplets on his skin snaking their way down his back-

“You having a good time there, Mrs Wang?” he turns around and catches you staring. Your eyes narrow at the name calling and you decide he does it to get a rise out of you, so you don’t give him the satisfaction.  

“I would have a better time if you had the capacity to make faster decisions.” you retort, looking down to your book as he straightens up. 

“No can do, you’d rather me wear clothes in bed, wouldn’t you?” he asks inquisitively. 

“If you dared do otherwise, you would find yourself in a very comfortable chair-” you pause. “in the lobby.” you finish curtly. 

Nicholas raises his hands innocently, giving you a quiet ���okay’ before going back to the bathroom to get dressed. A minute later you hear the hair dryer come on and another minute he’s back to bug you. 

“Didn’t you finish that book yet?” he asks, trying to see the cover as he went past. 

“No, I started this one an hour ago.” you say. 

“What?” he stops in pure shock. “How many books did you bring?” he exclaims. 

“Ten.” you look up, giving him a tight lipped smile. “One for each day.”

Nicholas looks at you in awe, shaking his head. “YN, you really are something.” he says. “But this cannot be. Your eyes will glaze over, we’re watching TV, c’mon.” he prompts you to move over a little where you’re leaning against the headboard of the bed. 

You shuffle slightly to the right, but don’t let go of your book even as he grabs the remote and switches on the TV. It’s a decently sized flat screen mounted on the wall in front of you, adjacent to the small dinning table. 

Nicholas hops on the bed beside you, mimicking your stretched legs, crossed at the ankles. The noise starts to distract you only because he’s channel flipping for a minute before he settles on something. 

“Perfect.” he mumbles and puts the remote down. You glance up at the screen and see the film name. 

“Really?” you ask, closing your book with a loud smack. “You’re going to watch Cast Away while we are on a remote island on vacation?” 

“No,” he replies. “We’re going to watch Cast Away while we are on a remote island on our honeymoon.” 

“Yes, because that makes all the difference.” you mutter. You give in regardless since the movie keeps playing and you may as well pay attention. 

It’s kind of a long film but it’s not bad. You do at one moment overthink it and imagine what you’d do if you were in the same situation - you were halfway there anyway on this island - but you stop yourself because that kind of thinking was not a good idea. It would scare you unnecessarily. 

It gets to the part where Tom Hanks is trying to get off the island on his raft and loses his beloved friend, the volleyball. You watch as he yells, trying to stay afloat. It made you a little emotional and you look away for a moment only to notice Nicholas is watching intently, his own eyes glassy and lips tight. 

It fascinates you for a moment to see him like that since it was a wholly new side to him but you will yourself to look away, reaching to the bedside and pulling a tissue out of the box, handing it wordlessly to your husband. 

“Thanks.” he says under his breath and you hum just as quietly.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, just thinking about the wifi signal.” he sniffles. “I miss it so much.” he admits, raising a fist to his mouth. You nod, as if understanding, when in reality you’d basically popped the champagne when you found out there was no wifi.   

After the film finishes, it’s starting to get late so you pop off for a quick shower, wanting to get the chlorine off your body before sleeping. 

You brush your teeth and put on a t-shirt and sleeping shorts and get to bed. Nicholas joins you after brushing his teeth and turning off the big light. 

“Right,” you say, getting Nicholas’ attention. “Here is a line, it’s invisible but it exists, so stick to your side of the bed, please and thank you.”

“No problem. You won’t even know I’m here.” he nods obediently. “So shall we get to bed, Mrs Wang?”

You stop fluffing your pillow at his silly question and turn to give him a stink face. 

“You’re never going to stop calling me that, are you?” you ask. 

“Nope, not until death do us part.” he shows you a toothy grin. 

It suddenly occurs to you that while you had shared your reasoning for giving into the marriage, Nicholas so far hadn’t really commented on the topic. You frown. Why hadn’t he mentioned that yet?

“That’s weird.” you say, continuing on your train of thought.

“Not really, it’s pretty standard for marriages.” 

“No, not that.” you shake your head. Starting to overthink it.  

“What then?” Nicholas asks as he lies down on his side. 

“Don’t think I didn’t notice there must be something in it for you to agree to this union.” you say sceptically. 

“Pfft. Union. You make it sound so formal.” he replies sarcastically. You notice he isn’t offering any insights.  

“Well, we are legally bound together, unfortunately. I suppose it’s serious.” you reason.

“Yeah, so serious. Like donkeys pulling on a cart.”

“Don’t change the subject.” you quip. “I don’t know what it is you want, but I will find out and hold it over your head like a guillotine.” you warn, annoyed at the sudden suspicious toward the man now in your bed. 

Was this a defence mechanism - getting suspicious as soon as someone got close to you? 

“Can’t wait, ma cherie*. I hope your revolution works out.” Nicholas sighs, turning off the lamp on his side. 

“Impeccable attempt at humour, mon ange*.” you roll your eyes before reaching to your bedside lamp. “And by the way, donkeys pull their own damn carts.” you say, flipping the switch and turning your back to him. 

You fall asleep faster than you expected but it certainly has its drawbacks. 

For one, every once in a while you wake up because Nicholas has somehow managed to roll to your side of the bed and is hogging your area with his giantness, limbs splaying all over you, waking you up. 

You manage to shoulder him off you gently, using your strength to roll him back to his side and it seems he’s a heavy sleeper because he doesn’t wake when you end up pushing him away with your knees. 

You go back to sleep, satisfied that he’s far away enough from you that you can sleep in peace, only to wake up the next morning feeling incredibly warm and suffocated. 

That’s because Mr You-Won’t-Even-Know-I’m-Here has a vice grip on you; one leg thrown over yours and one heavy arm thrown over your waist while his face is tucked into your hair, as if you were one of those long, huggable body pillows.

You open your eyes and reach for your phone to check the time. It was 9-ish so you decide that’s enough anyway. You were going to wake him up. 

“Nicholas?” you say, voice croaky. You shuffle slightly, managing to drop his leg off of yours but the arm stays around your waist. “Nicholas?” you try again, patting his bicep gently. This time he stirs slightly, a low hum rumbling in his chest. You feel the vibration on your back and think you’re making progress. 

It’s difficult but you shimmy out from under his loosened grip and sit up while he automatically rolls on his back, eyes still closed. 

“Unbelievable.” you shake your head, looking down at his sleeping figure, before getting up. He looks way too peaceful and it makes you a little mad. You make no effort to be quiet since he was still out cold and probably won’t wake up for ages so you get ready for the day, make some coffee and sit with your book. 

Some time later, your husband finally decides to open his eyes and you look in his direction when he sits up and stretches, yawning like a cat. 

“Ah,” he exhales gruffly. “this bed is dope, oh my god.” he comments. “Did you sleep well?” he asks nonchalantly. You send a death glare in his direction, making him shrink back slightly. 

“I would have,” you start through gritted teeth. “if you weren’t trying to strangle me.” 

“Huh?” he has the nerve to look genuinely confused. “Did I do something?” he asks, meek all of a sudden. 

“I don’t know if anyone has ever told you,” you get up, getting closer to the bed. “but you are a heinous koala when you sleep!” you say pointedly, before going into the bathroom to get some sunscreen out of your makeup bag. 

“Nuh-uh,” you hear Nicholas call out. He has the audacity to disagree. You’re back out in a split second, listening expectantly. “Apologise to koalas, that was uncalled for.” he finishes. You’re taken aback; you thought he’d call bullshit and say you’d imagined it. 

You huff but ultimately concede; the creatures had never done anything to you personally. “Sorry, koalas.” you mumble and sit in front of the vanity to apply sunscreen on your face.

“Listen, I’m sorry,” Nicholas says, getting up. “I know I’m practically an ogre in the mornings, but I can’t help it.”  

“At least you’re self-aware.” you reply. “I’ll tolerate it for eight more days, but you’re on thin ice.” 

“Alright.” he says, closing the bathroom door. 

*

The next few days, the weather improves significantly and the two of you end up going to the beach or chilling by the pool. You even go to do this snorkelling lesson with an instructor and swim near some coral reefs, enjoying the beautiful crystal clear ocean. 

You also end up going to a spa for some random treatments out of boredom and a massage, which you weren’t too hot on but Nicholas begged you to join him since he didn’t want to go alone. (That and he said that you wouldn’t go because you were comfortable being a tense control freak. So of course you had to prove him wrong by sticking around. It was worth it.)

Another day you end up going out in a boat and fishing with some other guests at the resort. You had to admit, you were definitely having fun despite not having wanted to even go on vacation. Going fishing wasn’t something you’d ever thought about doing, yet here you were.

It’s then that you run into the tyre man for the first time. 

Fishing; you should have known that’s where you’d meet the middle aged businessman.

“Mrs Wang!” you hear a hearty voice greet you when he spots you. You almost grimace - you wished you’d told people to keep calling you by your own family name. Nicholas seems slightly startled next you while he holds his fishing rod. 

“Hi, Mr Lee, what a surprise!” you say, lying shamelessly. You’d been expecting to bump into him before he left. “How are you doing?” 

The man stops next to your spot at the rail of the boat, his own rod in hand and some bait in a bowl in the other. A woman joins him and you remember that’s his wife, whom you’d also met at the wedding. You greet her politely too. 

“Ah, well, we’re just out for some relaxation. You know how it is, can’t be cooped up in the office all the time.” Mr Lee replies. He doesn’t seem suspicious and you sense it could be possible that this was a coincidence and not a conspiracy. But you intuition doesn’t let up.  

“Right, of course.” you nod along. “We’re just here on our honeymoon.” you say, nudging Nicholas beside you. 

“Aha, really wanted to spend this special time in a special place.” he adds smoothly. 

“As well, you should. You’re young and in love, you shouldn’t waste away in an office.” he commends you. Was he testing you? Why mention love at all? What did he know?  

“Very true.” you say. “So, how long are you staying?” you ask casually.

“Oh, um, until Thursday.” he says, and you latch onto the slight air of awkwardness when he says that. You were staying until Friday, which was a little too close to your liking. “We really like it here but there’s no place like home, right?”

“Indeed,” you smile artificially. “Well, we should let you go. Enjoy the rest of your trip, we’ll see you back at home, Mr Lee. Mrs Lee.” you say politely, greeting each of them in turn. 

“Yes, thank you, we will. Y’know, there is a special event being held by the hotel on Wednesday, you should come along.” Mr Lee says. You wonder for a moment if that was bait. If it was then you were going to make him think he could hook, line and sink you. 

“Oh really?” you say, exaggeratedly fascinated. “Well, I guess we’ll have to think about it. No promises though; you know how hard it is to leave the bedroom on your honeymoon.” you drawled with a straight face. 

You hoped he would give that direct quote to your parents and make them as flustered as he looked right now. 

“Right, see you.” 

And with that you exchange some more polite nods, and separate, the Lees terrorised and Nicholas wide eyed to your left as he cast out his fishing rod.

“YN, I gotta hand it to you, you’re really scary sometimes.” he says so only you can hear him. 

“Only sometimes?” you reply, putting the bait on your line. “Guess I should work harder then.”

“Remind me to not get on your bad side again.” he says. 

“Oh buddy,” you sigh. “after using me as a body pillow, you have a reserved spot and VIP access.”

*

The next couple of days, the humidity is unbearable and if it isn’t, then it’s the heat. 

You’d been trying to sleep, but it was just too damn hot and the air con wasn’t doing much to help it. You’d shed any blankets and just had sheets instead, but even those got thrown off. 

Eventually Nicholas pokes you hesitantly in the middle of the night.

“You sleeping?” he whispers. You shift, then answer. 

“I was trying to.” you reply. 

“YN, it’s really hot, can we take off our clothes?” he asks. Perhaps the question would have flustered you if you weren’t completely baking right now. You don’t open your eyes but you nod.

“Yeah, I don’t want either of us passing out from excessive heat.” you agree and shrug off your shorts but realise that you needed to get up and put on a bra or cami since there was nothing under your t-shirt. “Damn it.” you mutter and get up, in search of something to wear. 

You settle on a thin camisole and hop back into bed. Nicholas has shed his shorts and shirt and is lying, just staring at the ceiling in his underwear, his hands behind his head. You don’t let your eyes linger, mostly because they’re too tired and you want to close them again. 

You read the clock on your phone, finding it was just past 4 in the morning. You sigh and lie back down.

Neither of you seems to be able to fall asleep again, the dawn light getting more intense past your curtains. 

“You awake?” Nicholas asks, shifting slightly. 

“Yeah.” you say, turning to face him. You spot the silver chain around his neck and the way it reflects the early morning light.

“What if we’re married for a long time?” he asks in the darkness. “Like for years?”

You wonder what sparked that thought. “We’ll just have to deal with it.” you reply. 

“Yeah, but eventually we’re going to start having needs.” Nicholas glances at you. “Like I’m going to want to sleep with someone and you’re going to want to sleep with someone. Then what? Do we sleep with other people? Do we sleep with each other? How do we get around that?”

The whole train of questions catches you off guard, however with even a second of consideration, you realise he’s raised a very valid concern. What would you do? It made you realise your marriage was more doomed than you’d thought. 

“You’re right. It’s a hard question that I don’t have the answer to.” you lament.

“Right,” he says, pausing for a while. “I guess, for me, I wouldn’t want to sleep with other people - I’d feel like I was cheating on you even if we agreed to go out and do that.”

“Really?” you’re genuinely surprised at the revelation. “You would feel like that even though you have no feelings for me?”

“Well yeah, we’re married and all that. And we’re friends right?”

You find yourself nodding in the darkness. “Yeah, I guess it wouldn’t feel nice to do that to a friend.”

“Would you sleep with someone else?” 

You take a moment to think. “Probably not. I’d keep thinking about you, waiting for me at home, in our house. I wouldn’t be able to do it.” you tell him honestly. 

It strikes you that this was possibly the deepest conversation you’d had so far, fittingly left for the middle of the night. 

“‘Our house’.” he repeats, tasting the words and letting them float up above you and into the early dawn gloom. 

“Strange, right?” you muse. 

“So, what are we concluding on the topic?” he asks, looking at you.

“The jury’s still out.” you shrug, unconvinced. 

“So diplomatic, Mrs Wang.” Nicholas laughs quietly.  

“Will you stop calling me that?” you yawn.

“Nah, it’s fun. You get so worked up about it.” he tells you. 

“So you like raising my blood pressure?” you inquire.

“Well, if we’re going to be married for years, I gotta find a way to entertain myself, don’t I?”

“You are a menace.” you state, no force behind your words. 

“Thank you. Right back at you.”

“Hah, I got news for you. This town is only big enough for one menace, and if it’s gonna be one of us damn it, it’s gonna be me.” you say stoically, but burst out laughing a split second later after hearing yourself back. You were feeling goofy; it was 4am. Nicholas finds it equally funny and laughs with you. 

It was then that you felt like you were finally comfortable around each other, at least enough to be staying up until morning, laughing about bullshit while lying around in your underwear.

Because that’s totally the sort of thing married friends did, right?

*

You wake up, barely conscious and notice your arm is slightly trapped. Then you realise why; you were tucked into Nicholas’ side, your head on his shoulder, hand on his bare chest, feeling his steady heartbeat under your fingers. It would have been a surprise and you would have scrambled off, but your limbs were too tired and too comfortable for any excessive movement.

Your eyes close again, and you let yourself drift off even though you had half the thought about what kind of dramatic reaction Nicholas might have to find you in that position after you’d given him a mouthful about being a koala. In your defence, it was his arm around you keeping you smushed together. 

The next time you wake up, you’re lying on your back, Nicholas still right next to you. You get up quietly, starting to get ready for the day. 

You’d agreed to go to that event thing the Lees had told you about because you’d mentioned to Nicholas that this could be some kind of ploy by your parents and you wanted to investigate. There was ice cream and booze so he didn’t need much convincing really. (Neither did you, if you were honest; you could use a bit of both).

Just as you’re putting the finishing touches of your makeup, Nicholas stirs and yawns loudly before sitting up. He spots you before the vanity, basically ready and checks the time. 

“Jeez, why didn’t you wake me?” he asks, swinging off the bed and hurrying to the bathroom.

“I’m sorry, did you just hear yourself?” you call out to him. “Wake? You up?” you cap your mascara and get up, walking over to lean on the bathroom doorframe, arms crossed. You see Nicholas scrambling about, large form folded over the tiny sink, to brush his teeth at a furious speed. “I would rather go wake an actual sleeping lion up.” 

“Fwine, bwut you clould at weast teth am aalarm.” he says through a mouthful of toothpaste.

“I’m not even going to dignify that with a response, dude.” you walk away, letting him struggle with the mint foam. 

When you get down to lunch (it was far too late to even attempt calling it brunch), you find that the event the Lees mentioned was going to start in just over an hour (it really was late thanks to your middle of the night joint existential crisis). 

After you finish eating, you make your way to the large garden of the hotel where the thing was going to take place. You were walking in blind pretty much, having no idea what on Earth was going on. 

There are at least ten or so tables set up and about twice as many guests, mostly couples by the look of it, seated within the area. There’s a small square mat or something of the sort in front of the tables, supposedly like a makeshift stage. Was this going to be some kind show? 

You spot the Lees just as promised at one of the tables and you start to look for another place to sit, but they notice you and call you over. 

“Shit,” you mutter, automatically reaching to your side to find Nicholas’ hand. 

“Double shit,” he says, taking your hand and lacing your fingers, and you look back at him. “look.” he motions to a poster propped up on an easel. 

You feel like you’re about to find some harder expletives when you read the words written in big bubble letters: 

COUPLES CONTEST 

“Oh my-” you can’t even finish the sentence.

You’d just walked into the adult version of those awkward middle school events that teachers would try to entertain students with.  

“We could still leave?” Nicholas suggests quietly. You want to agree but Mrs Lee is smiling from across the garden at you, sipping on her drink. 

“Too late.” you conclude and start walking to the half-filled table. 

“Well, you don’t know they’re spies for your parents.” Nicholas mumbles unhelpfully. “We might just hang out politely.” 

You reach the table and greet the Lees. You take a seat closest to Mrs Lee and Nicholas away from both of them. You felt like you were acting like protective buffer between him and them. 

“Oh YN, I just got off the phone with your mother-” Mrs Lee gushes to you immediately. “you remember we’re both part of that book club?” she says, as if it’s explanatory that she would be close to your mother. “Anyways, we were talking about how maybe you should join too, it might be fun. You could make friends with the other ladies there,” she suggests, “and between you and me,” she leans closer as if the men at the table can’t hear you. “it’s where we go to get away from our husbands, but shh!” 

You’re having a multitude of reactions under the surface (including searing rage towards your mother, wanting to sink into the ground out of awkwardness, and disappointed smugness that you were right that they were in cahoots with your parents) but you give her a polite chuckle and smile. 

You know she was just trying to be her version of friendly, for some reason that being recruiting you into some kind of married-women-who-don’t-want-to see-their-husbands exclusive club, so you don’t get too mad. 

“Well, I do like reading, but I think I think I like my husband more.” you reply, lightly rejecting the offer. You turn to look at Nicholas, giving him an ‘I-told-you-so’ face while he sighs contemplatively. You were also hung up on the fact that this woman called your mother more than you did, so who knows what other wack ideas she might have. 

“Darling, I don’t think Mrs Wang wants to go to that stuffy book club.” Mr Lee cuts in awkwardly. “Besides, these two are much younger than us, they should go on dates and enjoy themselves instead of boring themselves with books.” 

Oh boy, this was going to be a long afternoon. 

You had a lot to say but you weren’t going to utter a single syllable. Nicholas looks down helplessly, and you guess he’s trying to keep himself from laughing.  

Fortunately, at that pause in your conversation, you spotted two people walking up to the square ‘stage’. They looked like hotel employees, judging from their Hawaiian style shirts, one with a loud tiger print and the other with a large flower pattern. They were carrying microphones and tapped on them to check they were working. 

“Hello?” the flower guy said. His voice came out through the modest speakers set up on either side of the segregated area. He seems satisfied and so does his friend. “Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to our monthly couples contest!” he paused for a polite round of applause. “My name is Boo and I will be one of your MCs today.”

“And I’m Hoshi, your other MC this afternoon. We have a great few rounds of fun lined up for you and an exciting prize for the winning team.” the guy with the tiger print continues. 

“That’s right,” Boo says. “there are three games where each of our teams will compete head to head in an attempt to do the impossible - be the best couple!” 

“Firstly, if you take a look around, you will find our lovely assistant Dino coming around with some name tags; please take one and write your names on them.” Hoshi says. You did notice a guy in a regular employee shirt walking around and depositing said name tags on each table swiftly. 

“Alright, to start off, we have a game that will test your communication skills.” Boo announces. “The game is called ‘scream in silence’; here are the rules…”

You listen carefully as he explained it, even though you had seen this game played before. It was fairly simple so you thought you and Nicholas might do well at it. You just couldn’t believe you were trapped in a middle school dance on your honeymoon. 

“Okay, firstly, we’re going to need to split you up so that we can get through the game faster. Each of us will conduct a round and tally up the scores for you.” Hoshi takes over. Two of them split up the crowd into two and ask for the first teams to come to two chairs facing each other set up by Dino on each side of the area. 

You get split up from the Lees (thankfully) and end up sitting on Hoshi’s side of the garden. 

The game starts and you watch as one person out of the couple starts trying to mouth the correct word to the other as they both wear a pair of large noise cancelling headphones. It’s pretty fun since people are really awful at lipreading. 

You’re the third couple in your half of the crowd and you sit down in the opposite seat to Nicholas, the two of you putting on the headphones. It almost blows your mind how much you couldn’t hear through the headphones, and that was before Hoshi turned the music on. He held up the first word. 

“Lawn mower.” you said, trying your best to enunciate to Nicholas. His face immediately scrunches up, squinting at you from seven feet away. “Lawn mower!” you repeat. 

He mouths something that looks a lot like “Slower!” back to you and you shake your head, sure it was wrong. He tries again but you cut him off, starting to feel yourself becoming competitive. 

“La-wn mo-wer!” you try to break it down but he seems more confused. “Pass!” you shake your head. 

“Fishing.” you say as Hoshi shows you the next word. Nicholas blinks at you.

“Kissing?” he replies, frowning at the word. You weren’t sure how you managed to lip read it but you were sure that’s what he was saying. 

“No, fi-shing!” you attempt to break it down. “Fi-shing!” you were starting to get frustrated, your voice rising in decibels. “Fi-shing!” 

“Missing!” Nicholas tried again. You sighed.

“Pass!” you requested again. The next one was a phrase and it made you hesitate. “I love you.” you called out, just focusing on reading the phrase and not thinking about it. You felt so flustered saying it out loud, your face warming up and blood pressure rising. You didn’t think you’d ever actually say those words, especially not to your husband. 

Nicholas shook his head and shrugged. “I don’t know.” you think he said. You steeled yourself, growing frustrated again, mostly with the appearance of the phrase and the way it mocked your situation. 

“I love you.” you tried again, saying it louder this time, as if he would hear you.

“Above you?” Nicholas said. You looked up, rolling your eyes at his denseness. 

“I love you, you bastard!” you screamed out, lying aggressively, noticing that people in your group were pissing themselves with laughter. 

Nicholas paused for a moment, mouth slightly ajar as the cogs turned in his head. The eureka moment came finally and he clapped his hands together. That got your attention and you perked up expectantly. 

“I love you!” he yelled back. Hoshi gave you an approving sign, telling you you secured a point. 

“And the time is up!” Hoshi declared, raising a hand and doing a slicing action at his neck to let you know since you couldn’t really hear him. You were more than happy to take those humongous headphones off and return to your seat. “That’s one point for YN and Nicholas!” he says while there’s a scattered round of applause. 

You go sit down and try to ignore what just happened. Nicholas does too, watching the game ahead of you.

There’s only one other couple in your group that manages to score a point, one Hanbin and Hao, who were just as tragically terrible at the game but very cute while they played it.

“And that’s the first round over,” Boo announces. “Let us tally the scores - oh my! This was not your lucky day every one, but we do have two couples who scored and are therefore in the lead.”

“Don’t be discouraged everyone, it’s still all to play for.” Hoshi says. “The next game might be somewhat easier. It’s a game to test your couple chemistry; the peppero game!”

You sit there trying to discern what that actually constitutes. 

“What is the peppero game?” Nicholas whispers to you, just as confused. There seems to be an excited buzz around you though because apparently people know what that is or think they might do better at it than the other one. 

“Don’t look at me, I’m just a corporate lawyer.” you whisper back. You never thought that some random game may become your greatest intellectual obstacle. 

It’s when Boo calls up the first group and explains the rules that it sinks in. You watch as each couple takes a peppro stick snack and holds it between their lips, starting to munch on it from both sides, slowly making their way to meet in the middle. The objective is to have the smallest length of peppero stick remaining at the end.  

“So that’s the peppero game.” Nicholas says, dumbfounded. 

“You shouldn’t have asked dumb questions.” you scold him quietly. 

“I can’t help it sometimes, okay?” he hisses back.

Once the first group is finished and the MCs take measurements, they don’t disclose the results before calling the rest of the couples up. You and Nicholas reluctantly step up and face each other. Boo comes around and offers you the pack of peppero and you pick one out, holding it up. 

You have to get quite a bit closer to Nicholas and his hands comes up to rest on your shoulders to hold you in place as you bite on one end and offer him the other. Due to his struggles as a giant, Nicholas has to lean in a fair distance to make it work and you try your best to rise to your fullest height. 

“And begin!” Hoshi calls out, getting the game started. You take tiny bites of the snack, forced to stare at your husband up close because your eyes could go nowhere else. 

Your mouth focuses on not dropping the stick but your eyes focus on Nicholas; there’s the colour of his eyes, they way his eyelashes become more prominent when he blinks at you, and the way you can see your own reflection in his eyes as you get closer. 

Nicholas looks you straight in the eye, your noses just shy of touching and you accidentally bite down harder on the stick, severing it cleanly. 

“Ah,” you breathe, realising your mistake. “Sorry.” 

He lets go of you and takes the stick between his fingers, examining it. There was a lot left, at least 3cm or so. 

You wait for the rest of the couples to finish and hand in your pathetic peppero remnants to Hoshi, who immediately makes a face. 

“Oh guys,” he says then raises the mic. “well we know who definitely lost the game. Sorry, you two.” he smiles apologetically. 

“Now that everyone has had a go, we can reveal that there was actually a penalty for the losers.” Boo says, basking in the crowd’s laughter. 

“Oh lord, here we go.” you mutter. Before you can leave, Boo stops you.

“I’m afraid you’re staying, guys.” he says. “This game was supposed to check your couple chemistry and sadly you had a less than favourable result.”

“Since we don’t want to send you away feeling crappy about it, the penalty is simple and sweet; kiss and makeup for losing the game.” Hoshi tells you. 

You have a serious déjà vu back to your wedding where a crowd was watching the two of you kiss. It makes your stomach twist with eminent embarrassment. Not again, you think. 

“Oh come, don’t look so glum!” Hoshi continues. “Cheer up, let’s give them a hand everyone!” he encourages a round of applause but in your mind it gets worse. 

You’d avoided looking directly at Nicholas but you found him watching you expectantly and you turn to him, leaning in to initiate the kiss. The faster you did it, the better. He seems to catch on and leans to peck your lips half-way. Your mouths barely touch but you did it and smile in what you hope appears a natural way. 

You look out to the crowd, seeing they’re looking back at you awkwardly. Judgmentally even.  

“Now what was that?” Boo questions. “That might have been more pathetic than your peppero, you guys.” he taunts you gently. 

“Aren’t you newly weds?” Hoshi asks, surprisingly observant of the wedding rings on your fingers. “This is your honeymoon, you gotta have more passion than that!” he says excitedly, as if he was the one getting kissed. You glance at him, finding something in his eyes that may or may not suggest madness. You were also starting to think he might have a voyerism thing.  

“Hey, this is peer pressure!” Nicholas attempts, trying to get you out of the MCs grip. 

“It’s for your own good, bro, we’re trying to save your marriage.” Hoshi says to you, microphone not quite picking up all of that.  

“Just a quick kiss,” Boo pleads. “or we’ll feel like we failed you.” 

You can’t help but laugh at his logic. It’s clear that they’re just trying to have fun so you give in, stepping up to Nicholas again, who gives you a reassuring nod. 

You lean in again, eyes closing, willing yourself to tune everything out. One of his hands comes up to cup your cheek, holding you steady as your lips mold over his. You kiss your husband for the nth time; you were losing count but you were well aware that it was a finite number that you could count on your fingers. 

Ignoring everyone seems to help because you relax into the kiss and pull yourself closer to him intuitively, imagining you were back in that tunnel where you’d tried kissing the first time. It was hard to deny it, but Nicholas was a good kisser, whether he had been before you met or it was just that you’d practised together, and this kiss was no exception. 

It was good. 

Dizzyingly good. 

You pull away gently, feeling that you needed air, your heart beating faster than usual. The two of you look at each, unsure when you should really pull away. There’s a momentary silence and then a loud round of applause and you figure that’s a good cue to really separate and hurry back to your seats. 

“Wow, now that’s what you call a kiss!” Hoshi hollered, smiling widely. “Thank you for being good sports, and good luck on the next round.”

You wanted to call it irony. 

That’s what the strangest moments in life contained. You’d been pushed into an arranged marriage with a man you didn’t love, yet you had grown closer despite your circumstance, to the point where physical acts of affection were exchanged between you in public and you weren’t ready to die on the spot. 

So you did call it irony; the fact that you’d been so ready to resent Nicholas from day one but had become friends with him instead. Did friends kiss like that, you wondered. Married ones did, you supposed. 

There was a part of you that wished you didn’t feel the way you just did: as if you wanted to kiss him again. It was bothering you a little, a tiny voice in the back of your head, telling you that no matter what face you tried to pull and pretend to be angry that you’d had to kiss him, you were deep down glad you’d gotten to kiss him again. 

It felt like you were starting to develop a bad habit; the way one piece of chocolate sometimes becomes another, or one episode becomes three, and five more minutes of sleep becomes an hour. You made a note to avoid kissing him for a while, in case you started to spiral. 

It wasn’t a crime to want to kiss your husband but in your case, it could become dangerous.

For now, you told yourself it was probably just liking the physical intimacy that you’d been missing in your life and nothing more. Purely one of those pyramid needs things you’d read about.  

You can’t dwell on it too long because Boo announces the final game.

“We’ve tested your communication and your chemistry, now it’s time to test how well you know each other in a couple quiz!” 

“That’s right, this is simply a game of knowledge about your other half, shouldn’t be difficult, right everyone?” Hoshi chimes in. 

The thought occurs to you that you might be slightly disadvantaged this round since you’d met not that long ago but also weren’t a ‘real’ couple so to speak, but then you remembered the few basic notes you’d swapped between yourselves and change your mind - you might be better equipped than the other couples. 

Boo and Hoshi get each couple to write down five questions and their answers on a different piece of paper and invite each couple to do the quiz in front of everyone for fair judgment. 

You don’t need to tell Nicholas what kind of questions to write down because it was obvious - the stuff from the memos you’d shared. Was it cheating? You wouldn’t think so; technically nothing could have ever stopped other couples from doing the same thing as you. Besides, you were certain other people aimed for questions they were certain their partner would know. 

It was so obvious, it was practically an unspoken rule of the game. 

As expected, most couples do very well, only missing one or two answers, or if there was more, probably because they knew each other way too well and had a wider margin for mistakes and overthinking. 

You sat around waiting for your turn, but you ended up going last out of the whole group. You and Nicholas took to the floor, picking up the A4 whiteboards supplied by the MCs and getting ready to answer the questions. 

You did Nicholas’ questions first.

What was his favourite meal? You could have answered that just from living with him for a few weeks but you knew the official answer. 

If he could eat one fruit for the rest of his life, what would it be? It was so easy, you rolled your eyes as you wrote it down.

What style of dancing had he practiced during high school? Your pen started moving before Boo even finished asking the question.

What was the name and brand of his favourite cologne? This one annoyed you slightly because it wasn’t something you’d explicitly talked about but you had noticed in your shared bathroom at home. 

And finally, what was his birthday and star sign? You gave them the sun, moon, and ascendant just to be sure, memories from your memos. 

You finessed the challenge, giving the audience in front of you a smug finger gun and wink because of them had really struggled with answering their spouse’s questions. While you’re up there, you spot the Lees giving you a subtle thumbs up and you smile at them, genuinely for once. You’d almost forgotten they were there and also spying on you for your mother. 

You hoped they would relay everything they saw today and get her off your back. 

It was Nicholas’ turn to answer your questions and you’d really tried to keep them as simple as possible, asking things like your own star sign, hometown, favourite school subject back in the day, favourite colour (were you in kindergarten? today you might as well be), and your coffee order, which was one of the first memos you’d given Nicholas. 

He aces it just like you did, and you’re a little proud of him for remembering even this much about you. 

“Well, you saw it here first folks, we have another perfect team.” Hoshi announces. “We’re going to ask our other top scorers, Hanbin and Hao to get up here for a tie-breaker.”

Uh-oh. You started to panic at the prospect of more questions and especially because they would be of the unseen variety. 

“You did so well that we’re going to need to get some bonus questions in there, stuff that will make you think on your feet.” Boo informs the four of you. You’ll go first since you’re already sitting there. “We’ll do three questions each.”

This time you’d both write an answer down on the whiteboards instead of the hosts fact checking on the piece of paper. 

It was in that moment, that you accepted you’d already lost. There was no way you’d beat anyone when you’d known each other for like two months.  

“Nicholas, what is YN’s favourite time of day?” Boo asks. You think carefully about what Nicholas might say and try to write an answer down to match it. 

You think simply and thank whoever that it was an easy question. 

You both hold up your answer and check. A wave of relief washes over you.

Nicholas had written 4am on his board, matching yours. It was an obvious one since you’d stayed up that late just this morning. 

Nicholas manages to get another question right (it was about your job title, which almost makes you laugh because could they have picked better questions for you?) but misses the third one because it was simply impossible for him to know. 

“We’re going to get a little spicy now for the final one, if that’s okay.” Hoshi begins. “Where on her body, does your wife like being kissed?”

“Please do keep the answers moderately PG.” Boo pleads you before you write. Your heart is racing because you know this will be wrong.

You write ‘cheek’, hoping it’s generic enough to get you the point, but Nicholas writes ‘neck’ and you throw him a glare. He shrugs innocently. 

“Oh no, what a shame!” Hoshi exclaims. “Very close to perfection, but not quite. Now, let’s see if YN can match or better your score.” 

You’re asked about Nicholas’ shoe size and you think hard, trying to remember if you’d ever seen an actual number. By some miracle, you guess the correct number after taking a little longer to answer the question.

“Right, so far so good.” Boo says, leading up to the next question. “What is Nicholas’ love language?” 

You freeze. 

Not good, very not good. 

You wracked your brain, trying to figure it out on the spot. In the end you write ‘physical affection’ because of the way he never leaves you untouched in bed and hope for the best. Nicholas turns his board around and you sigh at the ‘acts of service’ scribbled there. 

“Oh disaster strikes again!” Hoshi squeaks. “YN, you have one more question before we hand it over to your competitors.” 

“We’re going for another spicy question, as is customary.” Boo continues. All you hear is ‘game over’ in your head, flashing in big red letters. “If given the chance, what is the freakiest public location Nicholas would want you to partake in the act of coitus?”

You felt like throwing yourself down a flight of stairs. 

Translation - where does he want to fuck?

Low key it was a super personal question but also awkward since you were in a group setting, even if you were all adults here. 

You had no idea, so you just wrote down the first thing that popped into your head: ‘balcony’.

“And now, the big reveal…” Hoshi trails off dramatically. You’re so over this and just want to go back to the comfort of your hotel room and hide from the world until you left the island. 

You turn the boards and your suspicions are confirmed. You lost.

Nicholas had written ‘conference room’. 

For a moment, you think about why he wrote that and then it sends you spiralling; you could have easily answered that question with just an ounce of thought. The war room, of course. Why didn’t you think of that? 

“Ohhh, so close yet so far!” Hoshi says. “I’m sorry guys, but that’s three out of six for you, if Hanbin and Hao can get four or more, they win. Thank you for playing, good job!”

You thank the MCs and sit down, watching while Hanbin and Hao got question after question right. They won the round so easily, that it was laughable. 

“Welp, at least we tried.” Nicholas nudges your arm.

“Sorry I messed up.” you say.

“It’s fine, it’s not like we knew any of the answers.” he says simply, absolving you of blame. 

In the end, Hanbin and Hao are the overall winners because they had managed a point in the scream in silence game, a good score in the peppero game and a complete sweep in the quiz. Their prize is pretty fun too - a free twenty-four hours renting a yacht around the island.

“Congratulations! Now, a speech from our winners, please guys, say a few words.” Boo asks. 

Hao seems too stunned to speak so Hanbin takes over, a big smile on his face. 

“Woah, well we didn’t expect to do so well. We only got married in April and we’ve been too busy working to get a vacation, so it’s really amazing to get such a nice surprise. Thank you for playing everyone and thanks to our wonderful MCs!” he wraps up nicely and you applaud, smiling as they both sat down. 

“Lovely!” Boo says when the clapping dies down. “Right, everyone, just before we go, we do have one more thing to announce. We have a runner’s up prize too; a romantic dinner and stargazing experience for two.” 

“Sounds like a treat, right?” Hoshi chimes in. “We can now reveal that our runner up couple is…YN and Nicholas!” 

You hear your names being called and you find yourself confused.

You had scored in the first game, completely failed the second, but managed to get runner up in the third, so it did in fact add up, but it still felt strange. 

“Congrats, you two. See us afterwards so we can fill you in.” Boo instructs. “Well, everyone. Thank you for a delightful afternoon. We hope you enjoyed yourselves as much as we always do. We’ll wish you a pleasant evening and another congratulations to all our winners! This has been Boo…”

“And Hoshi! See you later, folks!” they finish in unison. You had to hand it to them, they’d been very fun hosts and you had had a good time despite thinking you’d be stuck making awkward small talk with the Lees all afternoon. (You were almost sure that being separated from them had been the stroke of luck that had saved your day.) 

“I can’t believe we actually won something. What a weird day.” Nicholas muses as the crowd slowly disperses. 

“There are stranger things in life, are there not?” you reply, tempting him into a philosophical discussion. 

“Nope, no more thinking. We got a dinner to claim.” he smiles.

*  

In some ways it was fitting that your last night on the island would be so special. 

The dinner you’d won was really amazing and you enjoyed the food thoroughly on the balcony of the largest restaurant in the resort. 

You could see the stars between the clouds when they became clearer as the night grew darker. It was worth any momentary embarrassment you’d felt yesterday while competing in the couple contest.

It was getting late by the time you finished your meal so you decided to go and get some sleep since you’d be waking up early tomorrow for your flight home. 

By the time you left the restaurant, a dark cover of dense clouds had converged in the sky and hid the stars from you as you slowly strolled back to the hotel. 

“Aren’t you glad we came?” Nicholas asks suddenly. He’s moving with some energy despite having mirrored the way you stuffed yourself with food. You, on the other hand, were half a step behind, feeling the weight of your decisions, you had no intention of eating again for at least another day. 

You thought for a moment, assessing the collection of good times you’d accumulated over the past week and a bit, then considered for a moment how the hell you were going to deal with getting back to work. Somehow, all the fun you had outweighed your incoming stress. 

“Yeah, I’m glad we came.” you admit. Nicholas is smiling when he glances at you, a little proud he convinced you probably. 

You seem to have spoken too soon because in the next split second you feel a series of rain drops falling on your face and then a rapid succession which gets starts to drench you before you can even react. 

“Shit, you really know how to jinx things, don’t you?” Nicholas comments, squinting as the rain gets harder, but you see him smiling. You’re in the middle of a narrow street and nowhere to take cover.

“You started it!” you reply, infected by his smile. You raise a hand to shelter your eyes from the rain as you look around. There was no one else out.  

“Come on!” he grabs your hand and starts running, dragging you behind him. Your legs start moving against your will and you follow him, hoping you’re headed in the right direction since it’s difficult to see in the rain.

The heavens open up torrential rain on the two of you but as you run in between the rain drops, your hand secured in Nicholas’, you can’t help but laugh when he does. 

You felt so liberated for a moment.

You didn’t think about work, or the fact that the only reason you were here was because your parents had decided to derail your life, you just ran, as carefree as a kid, splashing through puddles, ruining your sundress and sneakers. 

You thought about how you’d only ever seen this happen in movies; how it was some big romantic moment where the leads run and laugh and look all in love as they get drenched, but the reality was that it was exhausting, even if still a little fun, as you tried your best not to lose Nicholas in the curtain-like rain. 

It only takes a minute to get to the hotel and you burst through the doors, startling the nightshift staff at the desk and you chuckle at their stunned then relieved faces.

You’re both panting, you more than Nicholas since clearly only one of you worked out, and you will your lungs not to explode as you catch your breath. 

Nicholas turns to you, face lit up despite the end to your night. “You look like you just swam here.” he says, bringing a hand to your forehead to move the wet strands away. You pause for a moment, surprised by how tenderly he brushes his finger tips against your skin, pushing the hair away. 

“Yeah, well, you look like a wet dog.” you retort sassily despite being short of air. It was true that you both did, drenched from head to toe and to the bone. 

“Okay, I’ll acknowledge it, let’s go shower before we catch a cold.” 

You get back to your room, feeling a little guilty that you’d been dripping all over the hotel’s plush carpets, but you had no choice. 

“You can go first.” Nicholas says, already unbuttoning his soaked through shirt.

“What about you though?” you ask, taking off your shoes. “You should dry off at least, you might get cold.”

“I’ll be fine, just go.” he insists. You’re about to let it go but he sneezes, trying to cover it up with clearing his throat.

“Fine, my ass.” you sigh. “Okay, this is a simple problem so there must be a simple solution.” you say and think for a moment.

You have an idea when you spot the wolf sleeping mask peeking out of Nicholas’ toiletries baggie.

“How about this:” you start. “you take a bath and wear the mask while I take a shower? That way we both get warmed up.” 

“You’re so determined to make me return to that bath, aren’t you?” Nicholas shakes his head but agrees. “Alright, I know my place by now, Mrs Wang.” he finishes by throwing off his shirt, then trudges to the bathroom, swiping the mask in passing. 

You wait for a minute, hearing the water running and the sound of a belt buckle hitting the floor. 

“Okay, you can come in now.” Nicholas calls out a moment later. 

You creak the door open and close it behind you, eyes sweeping over the scene to make sure he was wearing the mask. Nicholas was sitting in the bath obediently, his broad back to you but you could see the mask was over his eyes. 

Satisfied, your hands got busy removing your dress and underwear quickly, leaving them to hang and dry. You padded across the bathroom and hopped in the shower, starting the water.

Neither of you says anything, a less awkward silence than you thought hanging between you but you barely notice because you rush yourself to finish as quickly as possible. You stop the water and open the cabin door, stepping out so you can reach a towel off the shelf. 

You glance in Nicholas’ direction in paranoia and freeze when you notice the mask is sitting on the ledge of the bath. In the process, you drop the towel, which in turn makes a moisturiser fall on the floor with a thud and the noise makes Nicholas turn around.

You lock eyes, his widening in panic.

“Ah!” you both scream when you realise what just happened, Nicholas throwing himself to face forward and you scrambling to throw the towel around yourself. 

“What are you doing!” you huff, incredibly flustered as you clutch the towel to your body. 

“What are you doing!” he demands, just as freaked out.         

“Why aren’t you wearing the mask?” you ask, picking up the fallen moisturiser. Damn your self-care diligence.

“I was washing my hair, I had to take it off.” he explains, sitting rigidly with his back to you. 

“Oh,” you get it now. “fine. Nevermind.” 

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to turn.” he says, clearly a bit embarrassed. 

“Whatever, it doesn’t matter.” you shrug, forgetting he can’t see you. 

“Nice tattoo, by the way.” you hear the smirk in his voice and you close your eyes. How did he manage to see that of all things in a split second? 

“You better forget what you saw, or else.” you warn him. 

“I’ll try but no guarantees.” he replies. That was good enough for now. 

“Okay. I’m going now.” you open the door. “I hope you prune up like a raisin.” you say over your shoulder and shut the door.  

You wanted to shrivel up too; become but a speck of dust, not because of embarrassment necessarily, but more like because you didn’t like what you were thinking about. There was a fraction of a second when Nicholas’ eyes widened, that you felt like you wanted him to keep looking. 

You shudder at your own deprivation, blaming your busy schedule for not going out and hooking up with more people. Now you were a mess at the slightest incident. 

You just hoped at least Nicholas would forget…

~

*apartment 520 cuz it sounds like ‘i love you’ in chinese and i couldn’t miss an op. also ‘ma cherie’ = my dear/darling and ‘mon ange’ = my angel literally in french

ALMOST FORGOT TO ADD THIS!!!! for all your meme needs <3

A/N: thanks for reading, feedback is always appreciated <3 I gotta say, i felt just a little unhinged writing some of this, Nicho's too much y'all, i'm not normal about this man. i hope this chapter gave you whiplash cuz same <3

*copyright 2021- © momobani 

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[jasntodds]

Petrichor Chapter 8 Teaser - Full Chapter coming 08/29

Pairing: Jason Todd x Fem!Powered!Reader (little bit of fwb) Teaser Words: 1,117 Chapter Warnings: Swearing, angst, blood, violence, reader goes a little off the rails, a whole lot of arguing Summary:❝Pylades: I’ll take care of you. Orestes: It’s rotten work. Pylades: Not to me. Not if it’s you.❞ Gotham is home, not just for Jason but for you, too. And now that you’re both finally back home, together, you’re ready to see where this next chapter brings the two of you. He’s your best friend and you’re his. And you both might want a little something more with being back home, the place you both feel most comfortable. Surely, nothing could possibly go wrong now. A/N: A teaser because last chapter was a lot I'm sorry lol I have written through episode 6 though!! You can add yourself to the tag list below, ask me to be tagged, or you can follow my library blog @jasntoddslibrary  and turn on notifications if you prefer that!! I love feedback, I swear it keeps me posting on a weekly basis 😭

Gar trails after you. He can't let you keep doing this. If this is your plan, some sort of revenge filled with grief, that's not you. He knows you, too and he swears it's not. You're the one who always said you weren't violent. It sucks and it hurts. It's always going to hurt, he knows that, but this isn't going to make the pain any less for you. So, he follows you.

“You can’t do this!" Gar yells, you keeping your back to him as you reach the bike. "You can’t kill people because you miss Jason! That’s not gonna bring him back!”

You look down and let out a hollowed, venom-filled chuckle. It's never going to be about missing him and that's the thing. He'll never get it. But, it's like this void has opened up in your chest, right where your heart used to be. A blackhole, sucking everything inside of it but never being full. It's just a vast of nothingness and it's not about missing him.

“I’m not doing it because I miss him! Fuck.” You scream, spinning around with your helmet in your hand. “I’m doing this for me and for him and for Dick and Molly and Diego and every other fucking kid that Bruce fucked over and the system fucked over because Bruce said that's fucking justice!"

"And do you think this," Gar gestures around him to the warehouse. "Is justice?!"

"It's better than fucking nothing, Gar!" You let out a harsh breath. "We’re the people left behind to suffer at the hands of people with bad intentions! Because we have no other choices! I’m doing this for all of us! I’m doing this for the life Jason should have had! For the life he deserved to have but never got the fucking chance because of bullshit circumstances! Just like me and Molly and Dick and Diego and all the others! So, you can either shut the fuck up and the fuck on board, or try to fucking stop me.”

Gar shakes his head and it's like he's losing you, too. Donna, Jason, and you. This is going to get you killed. You're going to go after the wrong person and it'll be the end. And this isn't you. You're mad and in the middle fo grief. Grief is messy, it explodes and it always touches more than just the people in the thick of it. He can't just let you do this and end up regretting it.

"We don't kill people." Gar's voice is soft this time and for a split second, you actually feel bad. He wasn't even supposed to be involved but Dick insists on a babysitter. "And I-I don't want to fight you."

"I'm not a we anymore." You shake your head and shrug your shoulders.

Your teeth grit and it's so painful, it's almost numbing to everything. Every day, it's hard and it isn't getting easier. And maybe you think you deserve the pain and numbness from all of it. If anyone should have known Jason was up to something, it should have been you. You put all of this blame on Bruce, but it eats at you, too. You both missed it. Everyone missed it. And the one fucking time he needed you to see it, you missed it and it got him killed.

"I don't want to fight you either but I will if you try to stop me and we both know I'll win." You suck in a breath knowing Gar wouldn't have it in him to actually stop you.

And maybe you're hoping it's a false sense of confidence. Maybe you think you deserve to fight him, have him not on your side anymore. Maybe you don't deserve it anymore.

You turn back around and get on the bike before putting your helmet on. It's not going to bring him back, you know. And it's not going to make you feel better. But, it's better than letting someone else go through what you and every other kid has so far. This city eats people alive. It takes and takes and takes and that is all it has ever done. You're tired of it. You're willing to live with the guilt of blood on your hands if it'll help even a few kids who've been left in the cold. Maybe you deserve it anyway.

“Dick is gonna be pissed.” Gar sucks in a breath as he takes a few steps towards you.

“Kory kills people sometimes. Rose killed Deathstroke. I killed people from CADMUS when they attacked the tower. You killed someone once. Why is it such a big fucking deal right now? Why is so fucking bad right now?”

Honestly, you wonder how it's always Gar caught in the crossfire. Maybe it's just because he's too empathetic, always seeing the good in everyone. It's still something you admire. But, he can't stop you and you desperately wish, he'd just understand.

“Because this isn’t you.” Gar's brows furrow as he stuffs his hands in his jacket pockets.

You look down and clear you throat, feeling the guilt start to eat at your chest. You're not sure what the guilt is though. The guy you just killed or for making Gar give you that look that screams desperation and disappointment.

“Maybe it always should have been though.” You shake your head. “You know, he was bad, right?" You ask. "Like, working with the Joker. Joker had a few guys trafficking kids. Was gonna go after one, Pete Hawkins, but uh, someone beat me to the punch so, next best I guess. So, he wasn't just some guy doing something bad."

"That doesn't make it better." Gar states. "Maybe we could have helped him get out of that."

"Nope, rap sheet five pages long. You don't have to agree with me. But, you can either get on and come with me or call Dick to come get you because I'm not actually going to leave you here alone." You grab the other helmet and extend it towards him.

You're done arguing. Your throat hurts and the day has only just started. Sure, you don't want him with you and you could leave him but that's not very fair to him. If something happened because you left here, that would actually be the end.

Gar moves forward and takes the helmet. "Dick is gonna kill you."

"Eh, he'll bitch about it for awhile and then get over it because I'm grieving." You roll your eyes. "Make him a hypocrite if he did something about it."

"Not funny." Gar scolds as he gets on the back.

"Wasn't a joke." You quip. "Hold on."

prev. chapter

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A/n: Trust me, I'm going somewhere with this and we do see Jason a little bit in this chapter I just didn't want that part to be the teaser lol

Tag list: @fairyofshampoo // @italiana-20 // @jasontoddsmentaldisorders // @purplerose291 // @lovelessamai  // @makaelaseresin // @lenidaslenchen // @mayfieldss  // @ghostkingblake // @im-done-with-this-im-out // @velvetskies // @lilylovelyxo // @cryinghotmess // @yesimwriting // @vivian-555 // @stainedstardom // @baebeepeach // @legend-o-zelda // @harleycao // @somehow-lovable-trash  // @xx-all-purpose-nerd-xx // @deyja-the-duck // @jasontoddslover //  @captainmarvels-blog // @totallynotkaibiased // @scarlovesyou // @whydoyoucare866 // @littlemeowmeow1000

[takitakidancetillthesunriseyea]

Madness and Emotion - A Halateez Coded Song Analysis.

It’s been rolling through my head for a while that Crazy Form could be Halateez. That perhaps Will (or at least the first half of it) is from their perspective. It would be in line with the color schemes and the general dark theme of the of the album. That and some of the concept photos seem to really lean that way.

Like, look at these concept photos & tell me they’re not Halateez coded

It really got me thinking though, if Will is Halateez then a lot of the lyrics we’re used to seeing in other songs would mean different things. There are a lot of lyrics and themes we can easily connect to Feverteez and their story arc, but not nearly as many we can connect to Halateez. It’s been years since we’ve been introduced to the concept of Halateez, and yet we still don’t know much about them other than they’re from Strictland and we’re leading a revolution until they were captured.

I know many people debate if Halateez and Feverteez are the same people or different people. Generally I think of them as different people, because even if they were the same originally their different life experiences would’ve made them different on the inside. (Although I admit, this album made me wonder if perhaps the theories ab them merging/being the same person at some point, are true.)

I’m not necessarily saying that every song on the album is Halateez, because we can’t know that one way or the other for sure. (You have no idea how long I’ve been tearing my hair out over this.) But what I can tell you is that Will feels different. Outlaw is crazy! Outlaw is chaos! But Will is different. Will is desperation to the point of madness.

Something I don’t think Feverteez is capable of right now.

So without further ado, here’s my vaguely Halateez perspective song analysis. (We Know/Emergency/Arriba/Silver Light)

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧//✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧

WE KNOW

This song is by far a favorite of mine on the album. It comes on strong. It’s powerful. There’s desperation and challenge in it, as thought it’s the beginning of something bigger.

It’s The Comeback. It’s their comeback. Halateez.

One thing I found interesting as I was reading the lyrics is how much it seems as though they are both the hunters and the hunted. They’re back and they’re coming after you. But who is you? The government? Z? The brainwashed citizens of Strictland?

I swear, “I’m the morning,” always gives me chills. It’s so perfect for the role they’re playing because it connects both to the idea of waking up and also to imagery of the sun rising in the darkness. Dawn. In Wave, the concept of ‘the wave’ is that of a challenge a trial. They’re sending a warning because they are the challenge.

When I think of a wave I imagine something huge, overwhelming, something bigger than just them. Halateez is back, but it’s not just them. Feverteez is still a symbol of hope sure, but Halateez is the og. I would guess that even though many people are willing to join the revolution while Feverteez is spearheading it, many more would show up to follow Halateez especially if they pull a Jesus and come back from their ‘presumed deadness’. That would make sense connected to the title of the album. Will. A word that makes me think of the phrase ‘the will of the people’. As the Crazy Form MV suggests, they’re assembling their own little army of progressively growing number. Their own Wave made of the citizens of Strictland.

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧//✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧

I see this as a threat to Z & anyone who’ll stand by him, but also as a message of hope to anyone trapped so deep in the blackhole of emotionless existence that they don’t think they can escape. However…I wonder if part of it is directed towards Feverteez too, as a warning not to get sucked into the false dreams as they have a habit of doing. (Which would be kinda funny if the unit songs are Feverteez in dreams again ToT)

Even if Feverteez has been doing their best to help people, in the end it’s still Halateez’s world. In the end they’re the ones with the most power in the revolution. They are back and they are coming for you. ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧//✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧

“-thunder will turn the lights on…” I’m going to assume that this reference to ‘thunder’ is supposed to mean Thunder the undercover organization within Prestige Academy. So Halateez (and Feverteez) have teamed up with Thunder (as in the Diaries) and are trusting them to “turn the lights on”. My theory on that is very much connected to the Will diaries. At the end of the Will diaries Thunder’s leader, (the Be Free girl) is sent in to meet Z, an undercover mission that would bring her to very center of the Strictland regime. If she is caught showing emotion everything will be blown, but if she manages to stay hidden, she’ll be able to relay information straight from the government’s head office to Thunder and the Black Pirates (Halateez’s revolutionary group that Feverteez has been working with). My guess is that turning the lights on is supposed to mean shedding light on the terrible things Z has done. Releasing information that no one else should know and making it clear who’s really the bad guys.

Halateez is finally ready to reveal themselves to the world, they’re no longer waiting or hiding. It is the right time to come out and stand as they are. (Likely alongside Feverteez somehow.)

I’d also like to mention how cool the last line is, because it comes through with very real world implications. “My mic’s on” is a very kpop thing to say, (for obvious reasons) at concerts etc. BUT it’s also very applicable to the idea of ‘be careful I’m not afraid to say what needs to be said’ it’s a thinly veiled threat about revealing the truth. ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧//✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧

Emergency

Frankly this song is so concerning. The first time I read the lyrics I was a little bit scared for the tone of this whole album. This whole song is just pure Dionysian madness. No matter what iteration of Ateez you think Will is, Emergency is concerning.

This whole chunk of lyrics could be connected to irl Ateez, (five years since mainstream, etc…) which would be pretty depressing, but also something which is necessary to think about. Even when looking at things from a Lore™️ perspective, realizing how it applies to real life is important to understanding the perspective. From an irl perspective, lore aside, this song is about getting lost in fame. Endless parties, endless emergencies, and a life you can’t go back to. The pressure closing in. Losing yourself in the game.

Which, though not exactly what Halateez/Feverteez is feeling, it’s pretty darn close. This song, lore perspective, is still about the pressure closing in and losing yourself in the game. The biggest differences is that Halateez is infamous rather than famous, and the pressure is quite literally the fear of death. So, uh yea. This could be Feverteez, sure, finally crumbling under the pressure of having to save a world that isn’t their own. But I really, really, believe it’s Halateez. Why? First, overall Halateez is rougher around the edges than Feverteez. Second, (and most important) how long has Halateez had emotion? If we assume The Real is their backstory we can say they’ve had emotion since Highschool….right? But if it’s not, then how long has it been? 5 years?? More???

Is that really enough to feel the depths of despair and come back from it? Is that really enough time to learn to control how you feel? Sometimes do they wish they’d never woken their emotions?

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧//✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧

I’m going to agree with Tiny Bug Ink on this one, that the Light is another reference to their treasure. (their video here) But what is their treasure. We know what Feverteez treasures are from the first diaries. But do we know what Halateez’s are? Are they the same?

“A wish I’ve fervently desired from the beginning of the explosion.” This isn’t something Feverteez would say. The explosion is the revolution, but Halateez is the only one who saw the beginning of the revolution, they started it, they got the ball rolling.

Why? Why did they start the revolution? They wanted Freedom.

Freedom is their treasure.

It took me a week to realize this, but the phrase “Who is gonna play?” along with the “You better run, hide & seek.” from We Know and Yeosang’s hopscotch part from Bouncy are all probably supposed to connect to the idea of The Game. (Something Tiny Bug Ink pointed out in this video)

Throughout the whole World Series (yet another phrase associated with games), Ateez has consistently referred to the world as a game. These lines are just a few of the many that connect the concepts, and I’m not quite sure their meaning in the long term, but it is really interesting. As of this song they’ve lost their hope. They’ve lost their trust in the world and maybe even each other. They’re stuck in emotional limbo drowning themselves in alcohol. Thinking of the events of the Will diaries I don’t really blame them. Somehow the events of the diaries seems so much worse if it was the world you came from, not some dreamlike parallel universe.

I also wanted to point out “Party never ends”, because it’s just yet another usage of the word End which they seem to be throwing in everywhere this comeback. Party never ends.

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧//✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧

Crazy Form

(For sake of length and my sanity I’m going to skip Crazy Form rn. I do have a separate post on it though, here.)

I would like to say though that the phrase “Ateez go!” doesn’t necessarily have to be self referential. It could be encouragement. Like arriba.

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧//✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧

ARRIBA

This song was frustratingly hard to analyze. It has a very similar vibe to Emergency when it comes to lyrics and general theme, but unlike Emergency it’ no longer a cry for help, they’ve just let everything go.

I thought it was interesting that Arriba, (assuming google isnt screwing with me) is essentially Spanish slang for Up! (encouraging) So it’s probably supposed to be an equal equivalent to;

“We go up.”

(I love the stage it’s so silly! And cowboy! The lyrics on the other hand-) ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧//✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧

For the chorus, the words ‘dirty night’ we (as in me) almost immediately connected to sex, debauchery, etc… And while yes there is plenty of evidence in the song to make that connection, I feel like it has a double meaning. For violence. It’s a dirty night not just because they’re letting their inhibitions go and partying hard. It’s a dirty night because of the fear and hopelessness that even drove them to that point. For the threat of death hanging over them.

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧//✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧

I don’t have too much to say here about these lines. Though I would like to point out the obvious mentions of time, madness, and most importantly the end. This whole album constantly seems to reference the end of something. Which is both concerning, and not because of the whole ‘beginning is the end, end is the beginning’ thing.

I’d also like the add the comments of this blog here, because they make a good summary of why La cucaracha is important. vv

(Plz go check out their blog I love it.)

Their sets for the stages also seem to reinforce that connection to the Mexican revolution.

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧//✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧

“My nose grows longer like Pinocchio’s” I think this line is particularly important, simply because it’s not instantly connected to the other lyrics. Ok so, he’s lying. But to whom? The people around him? Or himself?

I really like the context of the word dreamers. Irl a ‘street of dreamers’ is someplace someone goes to achieve their dreams, but contextually it could also mean a street of dreaming people. It’s the road of the people of the revolution. Dreaming of freedom literally and figuratively. I love the addition of Picasso and Salvador both as Spanish artists, but additionally, on top of that, they were both part of the Surrealism movement in art. A movement in art that emphasized the power of dreams and subconscious.

(Quotes taken from here, bc they summarized it better than I could.) Tbh I wasn’t expecting their actual work to be connected to the theme, but here we are. HJ & production appreciation hours.

“Blood spreading up and down.” As of the diaries Z has moved on from imprisonment and secret executions to public hangings. Like, just the idea of that is just…so fked up. Even if, as of Arriba, they’re in their safe little dreamworld they created in Crazy Form to give the citizens hope, they’re still in the same places. Even if they’re in a dream, they’re partying where people died. Like….ehh.

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧//✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧

Silver Light

Let me just start off with saying that this song breaks me almost every time I listen to it. There’s just something so intensely emotional about it that it always makes me want to cry. Silver Light is the moment where the insanity of the last four songs melt into a single ray of hope. It’s perfect.

And it was also the hardest to analyze. ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧//✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧

The very first line of the song has the word chain in it, and it’s sung by Wooyoung. Which makes me instantly connect it to two things; The Fever Diaries and the Wonderland MV.

In his very first diary entry, Wooyoung talks about stage fright. This is the final paragraph of his entry. (Read the full thing here)

In his diary Wooyoung uses the word ‘chain’ to represent his fear. What was holding him back. I think, in Silver Light it’s being used the same way. The citizens of Strictland are afraid of emotion, afraid of feeling, afraid of being in pain and showing it. I wasn’t expecting to relate so fully with these lyrics, but as I was turning them over in my head I realized something…It’s the same as when you want to cry but can’t because you’re afraid of being vulnerable. Afraid people will judge you. It’s that feeling, isn’t it?

Being afraid of showing emotion…Chained by fear…huh.

I’m sure there are more times they use the word chain in their discography. Times that aren’t related to Woo. But I can’t think of any off the top of my head, so for now he just owns that word.

Now, I can’t talk about the word wings without mentioning Seonghwa’s (super fking amazing) dance break on D1 of their tour. It lives in my mind rent free and I’ve thought about nothing else. It’s so- *screaming/crying*

But it’s also related to wings and the concept of freedom. The Strictland guards ‘take his wings’ a metaphor for taking his freedom. They leave him because he’s already broken, not physically, but mentally. They stole his freedom of thought. (I’m not crying no)

I could talk forever about this dance break. I won’t, but I do want to talk about how it relates to Halateez. If they lived in the emotionless void that Strictland is for their whole lives and then one day discovered feeling. If they learned how to feel and sense and hope and yearn. How to live alive. Could they go back?

They were captured, locked up, away from their friends in glass boxes, and forced to watch people being tortured. They had their freedom, which is probably their only treasure, ripped from them. They were sent to hell after they first learned how to feel. Don’t you think they’d want to go back to how it was before ? To embrace emotionlessness? To give up? The stealing of his wings can mean a lot of things. Not being able to go back home, losing emotion, losing hope, giving up, the moment of despair. But look at him and tell me that’s not what despair looks like.

(Ngl I added these bc I love them and everyone needs to appreciate actor Hwa.) ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧//✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧

This verse gives me heart palpitations, and not just bc I love HJ’s rapping.

“This is the last chance, maybe.” This line makes me think of the breaking of the cromer in the Crazy Form MV. Assuming the scene isn’t a reference to when Yeosang broke the first cromer to save them, they broke the second cromer. Maybe there’s a third artifact they can use to time/dimension travel. Maybe that’s what the cube is. But if that’s true, if they break it they can’t go back home. It also made me wonder. Was that how Halateez felt when they first found the cromer and first used the it? They were desperate enough to summon Feverteez from another dimension. A plan that sounds like a last ditch effort if I ever heard one. As though they’d lost all hope in themselves.

Throughout the whole album there are constant references to the end, the last, the final. Will is the end of something. It could be the end of the uprising whether winning or losing, the end of Halateez hiding their identities, or even the end of Feverteez dream and adventure in Strictland. Really, we won’t even know what was the end of until next comeback. (It could pick up anywhere, I’m scared.) To be honest, this was the hardest set of lyrics to analyze. Specifically these lines: “There’s no law saying die. The trigger at the edge of breath.” Like excuse me what. (Genius.com really let me down on this one ToT) So I looked up other translations and they were equally confusing. But I did find this vv

I don’t pretend to know Korean, so going strictly off these translations I’m guessing it roughly means: We can’t die yet. So there’s that.

“Whether I want it or not this is my life.” “In the time of regrets I’m going. Here is the last man standing.”

HJ gets his mic drop. (Imma go cry) ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧//✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧

In irl sense the “radiant light” and “countless voices” are Atiny. There have been countless times Ateez has referred to us as their Light, Lights, or Stars. (Excuse me I’m sobbing.)

In a lore sense though, it probably means the citizens of Strictland. The people who are slowly waking up and desperate for freedom, desperate for someone to save them from meaningless existence.

Which, really. Isn’t it the same? Living our boring lives, to work, to school, to sleep. A lot of us these days are really living in a grey world. Ateez music, their performances, are loud and bright, emotional and spectacular. They motivate and inspire us to wake up. To find our treasures. To feel our emotions. To dance.

Ateez started small, like really small. But now they’re able to inspire us to dream big, to hope. I like to think this song says the opposite is true as well. We inspire them, to hope, to continue going forward. And as idealistic as it sounds, I believe it. Because I’ve been inspired by fellow Atiny’s creations time and time again. ❤️

Now, for the final piece. In typical me fashion I looked deeper than I needed to and found something interesting on the concept of Ego. (So it connects to Crazy Form too)

In Freudian psychology, Ego is the conscious part of the mind that keeps your Id (instincts/monkey brain) in line with your Superego (morality/ideals). Without a strong enough Ego you lose control of yourself and descend into a kind of insanity characterized by blindly searching for pleasure. Ego is characterized as the realistic part of the human psyche, including rational thinking, planning, and self-control. (More info here.)

In this context “My ego’s in this show.” Likely is supposed to mean; ‘I’ve thought this through’, or ‘I’m doing this of my own will’.

Will

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧//✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ This post took 2 months to write bc I kept updating it as they came out with more stuff. (So some of it is better written than others ToT)

I almost didn’t even post it, but here we are… So if you made it this far, thanks for reading!!! ❤️

I know that I am going hard on my Halateez agenda, but their story is incredibly vague for how important it is. I feel like, even if they’re dead/gone/merged, Feverteez’s journey is still related to them more than it’s not. That’s why I go so hard on my Halateez shenanigans. Because they’re important dammit.

As always, feel free to add your own ideas and comments. I by no means think I’m right about everything (or anything) but the more ideas out there the more connections we can make. In the end, theories and speculation is part of what makes the story so fun. Atiny Fighting!! \ (＾▽＾\* )

[daeryn]

a kiss beneath the mistletoe

hiiii @bulle-blackhole!! here’s your gift for the @onepiece-blorboexchange! i wanted to get this out for you before or on christmas, but things have been crazy for me this month and things obviously didn’t go as planned, so please excuse the lateness lol.

i couldn’t help but combine two of your requested scenarios since i thought they’d fit so nicely together. i hope you enjoy!!

prompt: first kiss under the mistletoe with smoker + softly touching your cheek with his hand as you look at each other softly.

word count: 1.3k

contents: gn!reader, fluff, “humor” as a result of my sleep deprived brain, christmas party/ball, unnecessarily detailed descriptions of muscles, some brief descriptions of anxiety, can be read as either canon universe or modern au

You tugged insistently at the collar of your formal attire, feeling slightly suffocated by both the fabric and the atmosphere around you. You had yet to enter the main room, simply standing off to the side, and still the small niggling fear inside you lingered. 

What was there to be afraid of? Oh, only making a fool out of yourself in front of your long-time crush and the entirety of the organization he works for, no biggie. 

When Smoker invited you to this Christmas party, you agreed before your brain could catch up to your mouth. With the way he said it– all low and personal like it was just for you– it made you jump at the chance. But now, all you wanted to do was go home. 

You watched in awe as Smoker’s fellow officers twirl about the dance floor in a suspiciously rehearsed waltz that you clearly hadn’t gotten the memo about. Honestly though, how would soldiers in the navy have the time to learn dances like that? It was clearly a waste of time and resources. 

Mustering your courage, you stepped further towards the end of the hallway and glanced into the room to get a closer look at the dancers– the women in their glimmering gowns and the men in their sharp suits. With each downbeat of the music, you felt your eyes flitting to a new location, searching among the crowd for the man who was able to get you to come in the first place. 

He spotted you first. 

He called your name as he approached you, but you barely registered it because of course he wouldn’t even wear a shirt to a formal ball. 

His bare chest was, like always, exposed and put on full display on center stage, framed by the curtains of his naval jacket. You couldn’t help but glance at his defined abdominals, admiring the view. You wondered just how much training earned him such rippling muscles. Seriously, those things could replace any household cheese grater. 

“I’m glad you came,” he said, breaking you out of your reverie. “You look…” He trailed off, gesturing at your outfit as he sought for the right words. A faint blush was overtaking his face. It looked foreign on him.  

You ran a hand through your hair as you looked down at your feet. “I didn’t really have anything that was on par with the dress code, but…”

He cleared his throat. “You look amazing.” He adjusted his cigar, fiddling it between his lips. “‘M not very good with this whole thing.” 

“What?” You teased. “Words? Speaking?” 

Smoker rolled his eyes at you. “Compliments. It’s easy with a crew of soldiers. Just tell ‘em they suck or they don’t suck too bad.”

You stifled a laugh at his frankly abysmal show of praise. 

“But with you, I never know what to say. What you want to hear.”

You reached up to place your hand on his shoulder, something you wouldn’t have even thought to do any other time. He initially flinched at your touch, tensing in a way only someone hardened from battle can do, but as soon as it happened, it was done; his shoulders relaxed and accepted the sensation. 

“Anything you have to say, I would be happy to hear, Smoker.”

He smiled, a soft, subtle thing that was just barely an uptick of his lips. If you didn’t know the man so well, you might not have caught it. His hand reached to the back of his neck in an awkward show of embarrassment. “And I you,” he responded in a reverent whisper, eyes glowing from the candle-lit chandeliers of the ballroom. 

You couldn’t help but think back to the very first time you met Smoker, when he had first been stationed in your hometown. He was gruff and rude in his brief interactions with both his subordinates and the locals, but there was something caring and kind within him that you wanted to find, to excavate and keep all to yourself. 

And in that moment, as the music crescendoed in the background and his calloused hand caressed your cheek, you felt as though you had achieved that. 

From behind you, lazy footsteps clicked against the marble floor until you felt a rather large back collide with your own. It jolted you forward towards Smoker, just narrowly missing his cigar from burning the skin on your face. He caught you in his arms, glaring at the figure behind you. 

“Oh~” Admiral Kizaru drawled as he turned around to see the two of you. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.” He glanced up above your heads before smirking. “Have fun you two~”

You took a moment to readjust yourself and your outfit. “How do you deal with him? He’s so…”

“Infuriating?”

You huffed. “Yes.”

Smoker breathed out something between a chuckle and a sigh. “Sadly, you get used to it. Believe it or not, they get worse.”

You stewed in your thoughts, unconsciously mumbling your words of distaste for the laidback admiral aloud as Smoker followed Kizaru’s previous gaze up above his head. His eyes widened. “Oh,” he whispered. 

“What?” you asked. 

His face was red. If you didn’t know any better, you’d have thought steam was puffing out of his ears. (It was just the smoke pluming out from his lips. The lips you would actively avoid looking at or thinking about in just a few short moments.) He wordlessly pointed up and as you followed it up, up, up, you felt a cross between hope and dread lodge itself deep in your throat. Mistletoe.

“Oh indeed,” you said. 

He let silence settle between you for a while before he cleared his throat. “Did you want anything to drink? I can go get some champagne or something–”

Of course. The attraction between you two was obvious to anyone with working eyes and ears, yet every time there was an opportunity, you would both shy away from it, casting aside any feelings that had bubbled to the surface, allowing them to settle like flat soda. This game of emotional cat and mouse had been going on for months and frankly, you were sick of it. 

You grabbed onto his arm before he could walk away. “I’m not thirsty.”

“Well, do you want me to get you something to eat instead?”

“No, I want you to kiss me, damnit!”

You were tempted to slap your hand over your mouth, but you refused to. You meant what you said. It wasn’t a mistake. 

“You do?” Smoker asked, unsure yet hopeful. 

“Yes. Plus,” you pointed up at the mistletoe “it’s the rules.” 

He shook his head, laughing softly. “Of course. The mistletoe holds the highest jurisdiction.” His hands made their way to the back of your head, cradling it like you were something precious, rare, and valuable. Though to him, those were all objective truths. 

You took the cigar from his lips with one hand while the other rested atop his forearm, drawing him in closer. “And you are a man of the law.”

“I must uphold justice,” his breath ghosted across your lips, just mere inches away. 

“Please do.”

The violins swelled as his lips finally met your own. Each and every note the dancers out in the ballroom waltzed to sounded fuzzy and unfocused as your senses were overloaded with the feeling of Smoker’s lips– rough, unpracticed, and slightly chapped– against your own and the lingering taste of his cigar on his tongue as you eagerly accepted it into your mouth. 

When you reluctantly pulled away from each other, he touched his forehead to yours as he stroked his thumb across your jaw tenderly. 

“I lied,” you admitted. “I am very thirsty. I would love some champagne.”

He groaned as you let out a melodic giggle. 

You received a light flick to the forehead before he wandered off to get you that drink. You chased after him with a smile on your face and a laughter-filled apology on your lips. 

[meraki-sunset]

Okay, this two questions are conected so i’ll answer them together. I had multiple reasosns not to save dad crocker

1.       Acording to the postcredits, he never replaced dad egbert in john’s life (even tho they show us how they hug eachother in homestuck when they meet) and John eventually got (aparently) depressed about not having his dad around, but someone who looks like him 

2.       In the prologe, the epilogue and homestuck2 Jane reestablishes Crockercorp, the evil baking corporation, with the epilog and HS2 covering her coruption into the condesce’s true heiress even wearing full red, the empire’s signature color instead and the oposite of cyan, her true color (it might not be 100% canon but it’s canon enough for me) and like they said in the comic, csau Jane could end up the same if she has Dad Crocker as her guardian enableling her to become like hs2 Jane

3.       Also, i really think losing your guardian is a rite of passage in the game, and players are suposed to lose them in order to become true gods

4.       A reason i can’t just exclude is the fact neither one of the dad’s have a face and one of the ways i tell the story is through facial exprecions. I tried to give him a face so i could work with the character but it wasn’t working for me and people didn’t like him.

5.       Nanna is also another reason for dad crocker’s death, through the story nanna became John and Jade’s new guardian, her arc culminating on her getting back her youth and now simbolicaly (and actually for real) taking the role of John and Jade’s mother. On top of that, in the future epilogue, the Harley-egbert’s basically become a big assembled family and dad crocker playing basically the pathernal rol when nanna already was fullfiling the mathernal rol would have been weird as fuck since, Dad Crocker is sort of a clone of Nanna’s son 

In short all the reasons listed below meant i had to delete him from the story 

When it comes to Dad Egbert and Mom Lalonde, John never saved them in canon with the power of retcon probably because he didn’t wanted to change any events terezi didn’t specify on her list and risk dooming the new timeline. And while on csau he DID changed things beyond terezi’s plan (stealing the troll’s bodies and slab beds) taking dad and mom’s bodies may have had unintended consecuenced down the line.

Dad Egbert would have also been a problem to integrate to the story like Dad Crocker for all the same reasons, artstyle, losing your guardian being nescesary, being weird having him a round in the new integrated harley egbert family, not to mention he would also take nanna’s guardian role that she gained during all the comic. It would undo the whole story.

I do regret not being able to save Rose’s mom, i feel like she could have had a lot of growth and i wouldn’t have had any problems integrating her to the story. She could have had really interesting interactions with everybody and be Good Friends with nanna, mirroring Jane and Roxy’s friendship.

But if i saved her with retcon i would have had to save Dad Egbert and that was a big no, so mom had to stay dead.

I’m still playing around with the idea of her coming back but don’t count on it

Another person i wish i couls have saved is Alt!Calliope, but due to the nature of CSAU, it’s explicit that the Alt!Callie we see is the canon one, from canon homestuck, and we only encounter her twice before she causes the blackhole and flies to the HS Epilogue. I can’t change her fate, because she’s just a borrowed character. (another borrowed characters from canon are Ghost!Vriska and Ghost!terezi who end up in the blackwhole with the dancestors, since canonically we don’t know what happened to them, just that they found eachother and got probably sucked by the blackhole eventually)

Aside from that, i found a way to everyone i needed/wanted to save in csau (not to mention whatever happens in the epilogue)

[sadnesslaughs]

One day you're arrested for trying to escape from prison. When you ask what they mean, apparently you were sentenced to 12 consecutive life sentences in your past life.

(A response to a writing prompt)

“You.” The alien guard pointed their single thin finger at me, directing me out of the spaceport’s line. I threw up my hands in that typical annoyed fashion that most customers gave after being inconvenienced, making a small song and dance out of the situation. Inside, I was shitting myself. Why was I being singled out? Did I accidentally pack a teleporter in my suitcase or leave a Blackhole ray rolling about in it? Even if those two things didn’t exist, my anxious mind was still convinced they could have somehow materialized just to get me into trouble.

“Yes?” I asked, standing by his side. Ew, The Vapia’s were always hard to look at. Tall, thin alienoids with fat palms that held only a single finger that they waved around like a magic wand. Their silver skin grainy, looking like sandpaper. I would usually have felt rude for thinking something like that, but I saw his finger retract back into his palm, clearly as repulsed by me as I was by him. Guess that’s what happens when you’re dealing with a new alien race. Humans and Vapia’s had only met fifty or so years ago, so neither party had gotten used to this whole interaction thing.

“You’re leaving your designated prison. Do you have an exemption pass?” He impatiently tapped his foot on the floor, as if I was the one ruining his day. What prison? Last I checked, Earth wasn’t classified as a prison, only as uninhabitable. Which wasn’t a prison, technically.

“I’m a human. This is my home.” I said sharply, before feeling my tone might have been a little too much. “It’s ok, I forgive you for the misunderstanding.” I tried to be as friendly as possible, offering my passport to the man, who only leaned into the microphone by his neck. “We have a code 204. Going to need a superior officer. Someone that has notes on Subject 20S2’s file would be appreciated.” After that quick conversation, he gave me a nod. “Wait, a little longer.”

“Seriously? My flights in like four hours! I need to get in there and grab lunch.” Sure, four hours wasn’t really rush time, but I hoped the alien might have just felt awkward about my urgency and let me through. People sometimes didn’t think too deeply about things when a person looked stress.

“Plenty of time.” He murmured. So, we stood there, not even engaging in small talk. As aliens and humans passed, they gave me dirty looks. Like I was some space pirate who had been caught mid raid, rather than a poor soul that got caught up in some accidental incident.

The superior officer sauntered over before studying me. After a quick stare, she pulled out a small scanner. “I’m officer Atioa, Open your mouth.” She gave the order and waved her finger. I had forgotten all about their telekinetic abilities, my mouth being forced open as she pressed the scanner against my tongue, waiting until she heard a chiming beep! Pulling the device away, she discussed the results with her other officer in their own language.

“So, can I go?” I asked, rubbing my jaw, feeling a little sore after that. I wonder if I can sue them for that? Might at least get a free lunch voucher or something from the spaceport for the harassment.

“No, prisoner 20S2, you cannot leave. You were sentenced to twelve life sentences, don’t you remember?” She stated, as if that was something I should remember.

“No? What do you mean, twelve? How can I serve twelve? You only live once…..”

“Not with our race. It seems you tried to cheat the system by reincarnating into a human body. Did you think you would be able to avoid our detection by hiding amongst the humans? In a way, it was clever. We kept you imprisoned on our planet for eight life cycles. So, you moved to Earth, assuming we wouldn’t track you. We did, however, track you, and we altered your prison sentence to be undertaken on Earth. You really don’t remember this?”

“That is a really fascinating story, but I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Perhaps the change into a human body removed his memories? He seems far more dense than Blood Hand.” The other guard muttered.

“Blood Hand? That sounds cool. Maybe I am Blood Hand? I have that bad boy attitude. You know a Trixqlian said I was the baddest human she had met. Weird thing to say at a shooting range, but I think she was totally into me.” I puffed my chest out, remembering that day fondly. It had been going so poorly, too. I hadn’t made a shot all day, and she flirts with me. Guess I made one shot after all.

“Blood Hand murdered over two hundred people.” Atioa grimly stated, glaring down at me.

“Ah, then I’m not him. I’m a bad shot, can’t hit anything. I can’t even find my gun half the time. It’s a hunting gun too. Not a killing people gun, although I suppose you could kill people with it. BUT I DON’T.” I was sweating, feeling the two aliens peering down at me before muttering again amongst themselves.

After their discussion, they turned to me. “We don’t know what to make of you. You don’t look like a threat and we don’t believe this is an act. Blood Hand would never allow himself to look this stupid. If it’s true you lost all your memories, then perhaps we will need to review your sentence. As it stands, you cannot travel until that process is finalized.” Even if Atioa’s words weren’t ideal. It was better than being dragged away to some secret alien interrogation facility.

“Sure. When should I expect an update?”

“Fifty years at the earliest.” The other guard said, clearly not understanding human lifespans.

“I’ll be nearly dead by then. Can’t we speed this up?” I asked, hoping to clear up this misunderstanding.

“If we find something substantial in our investigation, we will inform you earlier. Until then, remain on your prison planet.” Atioa left, and the other guard returned to his duty, leaving me standing awkwardly in the spaceport. I doubt I was going to even get a refund for this, since being an alien criminal in a past life wasn’t on the insurance policy. Still, it was better than any alternatives. At least I still had two weeks off work, even if it was now going to be spent lounging around the house, watching alien dramas on tv.

[honeysugarchocolate]

hi i commented on the art of hanging by your toes like a fruit bat by this same user and just wanted to say that i hope you're healthy and happy right now :) read some of your recent fics and i'd probably fill this message with memories scraped from my marrow so all i want to say is that you somehow grow with each line; your writing is just so beautifully haunting. that said i am obsessed with the way you capture the fleeting, withering years of one's youth. what it is to grow into a body, a body, not a soul. augh you are a gem thank you for being here

hii omggg i remember you if only because you wrote me something so personal it felt like a conversation over coffee. somewhere in the fourth dimension, a few quasi meters apart. it’s so sweet of you to reach out again <33

idk about happy tbh but im buoyant and will wait out this flood until it dries as all things do. saying i grow with each line is just… thank you. i love you so much for this. bc i do crumble and every poem/essay i read is a revolution and i do like to think not one word leaves me quite the same after reading it. i always write in an attempt to dip into that which makes me human, and in hopes that it’d pulverize me under its weight. at first it was a means of escape bc at the time i thought no one was sadder than me, no one could possibly be feeling heavier than this, it felt like i was a breath away from turning into a black hole. but you grow a little older and realize the real blackhole is life, and no one escapes it. to quote glück whose poetry i’ve been revisiting for the past days,

“It is true there is not enough beauty in the world.

It is also true that I am not competent to restore it.

Neither is there candor, and here I may be of some use."

so, as of late, i try to write bc i want to be open and i want to be more than my hurt and more than the years i’ve lived. bc i’m in love and i seek more love in all things and from all people. and obviously love isn’t salvation nor is it enough to carry us through the infinite ruin that is this life (at least to me who’s grown out of her rose-colored glasses) but on some days it feels like it is, and in my writing and in my characters i definitely make sure it is, somehow, between the lines. the small moments. w.h auden, who’s one of my fav poets, says,

“There is no such thing as the State

And no one exists alone;

Hunger allows no choice

To the citizen or the police;

We must love one another or die.”

i didn’t mean to ramble so much i’m sorryyy but you give off the feeling that you’d listen attentively and that you care. you’re so kind, stranger. i hope you know that, and i hope you’re doing well and that you’re warm and happy and loved. thank you so much for this. pls feel free to message me if you ever wanna chat about this or that, or have a stray thought you think i might enjoy chewing on too. in my mind we’re friends already :)

[ldouble]

Unsure | Sam Wilson x Reader

summary: fluff with a conflicted sam

“I find you extremely frustrating.”

Sam looked up at you from his spot on the couch. While your statement was off-putting your tone was even more so.

In an healthy as a relationship as the two of you had, rarely was there anything other than content and relaxed tones. Except when he was like this.

“Annoying.” You answered as he questioned what the cause of the frustration was. “You’re annoyingly prideful about figuring it all out on your own.” “Is this because I wouldn’t let you load the dishwasher, honey?”

“Shut up.” You whined, throwing the dish rag on the counter. “I’m talking about you sitting over there just mulling.”

“Mulling?”

“Yeah jus sitting there in your own blackhole of thoughts and not asking for help.”

A light chuckle escaped his lips and it took everything in you not to join him. No, he was not getting off this easy. One sexy laugh wasn’t deterring you from the conversation you’d been wanting to have for months.

“You’ve looked through your old files more in the last 30 days that you did when you were first handed them.”

Sam glanced at the stack of papers he’d been sorting through. An array of stamps labeled them - Stark Industries, SHEILD, Avengers, and even the old U.S. Air Force logo made an appearance.

You watched him sigh into the couch. Dressed in his grey sweats from his Para Rescue days he almost blended into the couch. He wasn’t escaping that easy.

You dropped the accusatory tone and asked thoughtfully across the room. “What’s on your mind?” As annoying as not knowing what was going on with him was...it was more painful to watch him stir.

“I don’t know,” He said more so to the stack of files than to you. “I just...I feel like I’m forgetting to do something.”

You found your way over to him. The files sat between you two on the couch and they dipped as you sat. The air was thick as we both thought quietly. He hadn’t been this uncertain in all the time you had known him. Back to the days before he got his wings for the second time.

“You didn’t leave the stove on when you left this morning.” You mused. “And I know you paid the electric bill.”

You were messing with him and he knew it. A small grin encapsulated his face for a moment before he sucked his bottom lip in. Always thinking. That was Sam.

But never before had you seen him this despondent.

“Something work related.” You suggested. A small nod on his part encouraged you to keep going. “Something you haven't finished. Hence the look through old files.”

You grazed one of the manilla folders, tracing the Avengers logo. It was etched in your head, as most people’s old business logos were. You’d worn your own uniform with it sewed it. It looked gray on the paper....historic.

“Yeah, but it’s not that.” Sam picked up the files and placed them on the coffee table. He sat closer, his hand finding going to tuck hair behind your ear.

He would never admit it but physical touch was his favorite love language. He insisted it was quality time or words of affirmation but it wasn’t. After such a long time flying solo...literally and figuratively...he longed to be anchored down. You were happy to be that person.

Except for now. And after you said your peace he’d probably agree.

“Is it because you gave up the shield?”

You had been holding the thought in ever he handed over the vibranium piece. And that was months ago.

The two of you didn’t keep secrets. And this was big. You stayed up at night, staring at who you knew was the next Captain America, wondering how he couldn’t see it.

The look of disappointment you had towards him was now directed towards you as Sam moved away.

“No.”

“Sam-”

“I’m not defined by some shield.”

“I’m not saying you are.” You quickly said, standing up with him. “I’m not.”

Sam took a deep breath. He hadn’t raised his voice but he was definitely furthering himself from the happy tone he always used. Gentle was how you would describe him. Even now you could see him choosing the right words and delivery.

“It was his.” He expressed finally after some silence. “It wasn’t right to keep.”

“Was it any more right to give it away?”

That caught him off guard and that’s when you knew this was the cruz of the problem. Still, it wasn’t a solution to the issue. The shield was gone and Sam was left without it.

While undefined by it, it still was a part of him. I knew it, Steve knew it. Sam did too. You were sure of it.

“You should go on a run.”

“Honey-”

“Ok, I’m going on a run.” You were already putting on your shoes and grabbing your keys. “Because watching you beat yourself up about this is of no value to me. And I know I think better after a run.”

“Just wait-”

“I’m done waiting.” You declare, your hand on the door knob. “And I think you are, too.”

Your breathes are the only thing sounding in the apartment. The fridge churns ice but you two are frozen as its creation.

“I can’t get it back.”

You shrugged as he made his way over to you. While his hands found your hips you pretend to busy yourself in thought. “You also said you would never get me out on a date.”

You let his chuckle pull you in this time, your hands finding his shoulders. “It wasn’t until a buddy of yours showed up at the VA office and had me swooning over you.”

“I did all the swooning, Steve just made an appearance.” Sam defended.

“Yeah, well Steve did that.” You fall silent as you mention him. It always shook Sam a bit. It was still fresh. “But you,”

You take his head in your hands to look at you. “Us,” You corrected yourself. “Can do this.”

His forehead leans against yours and all of the frustration and anger dissipates in a second. You seal off the content air with a kiss to his lips.

“First one to the Capital gets to call heads or tails to ask for the shield back.”

“That’s not-”

“Sorry, halfway down the mall!” You called down the hall. Looking over your should you saw Sam tripping to put on his shoes. For the first time in a while he seemed determined. Certain.

Whether it was about what he needed to do or the idea of beating you in a race...it didn’t matter. Sam was sure again. And that made you sure you two were going to be ok.

[aylieheals]

If you fall in love with me, don’t.This isn’t some cliche poem about my childhood suffering from the lack of a male role model because that would be a terrible lie. And my mum raised a daughter with a guilty conscience, not a liar. Anyways, I’m here to warn you about what you might be getting yourself into. I smile by habit, not by choice. I giggle out of empathy, and humour, or embarrassment, but never to purposely spike. I get jealous when I see that someone can provide for other people in a way that I can’t. And I go through phases just like the moon, but I always complete my lunar cycle and return to my bright self again. And you should probably know that I’m emotional. Like really emotional. In fact, I may even think I have you fooled about I’m feeling, but because my mum didn’t raise a liar, I am forced to unintentionally wear my big sobby heart on my sleeve. Oh and I’ll let something slide 1,016 times, but after that, I don’t give second chances. I’m also an incredibly all-or-nothing person to a fault. But when I am invested in something, I’d rather lose everything good I have before I even consider declaring bankruptcy. But remember : there’s two sides to every coin, so if you fall in love with me, don’t. Because in every lunar cycle, the moon disappears for a while, and it has a dark side too. I will keep filling and filling your glass until it’s overflowing and my pitcher has gone empty, and I realize it’s left me drained. When I’m drained, I’ll get frustrated, and sometimes I’ll go into hiding. I’ll either take a solo hike or get on my bike just to get my distance, peace and alone time. But don’t you worry because I’ll eventually turn around and come home again. Oh and I’m obsessed with galaxies and stars, but it depresses me to know these things will either get swallowed by a selfishly hungry blackhole or explode and die in a supernova or whatever. But that’s beside the point. The point is : I’m a tangled mess of contradictory things. But I’m not saying this to scare you.I’m saying this to warn and protect you and to properly love you and to tell you not to worry about a thing. Because remember I am an all-or-nothing person, so if I fall in love, I am all in for you and that if you somehow fall in love with me, don’t.  Because I won’t be limited to loving you, but I’ll be head-over-heals for your smile, your giggle, the face you make when you’re embarrassed and the look in your eyes when I know you’re jealous. I’ll fall in love with the way you endlessly try to please people and how it drives you crazy that it’s never enough. Or how you selflessly pour your pitcher to hydrate someone despite the fact yours is partched. I’ll fall in love with your phases, both dark and bright, and how sometimes you might go into hiding when you’re frustrated. I’ll fall in love with how you pretend you’re not emotional despite the fact your feelings are trying so hard to escape your eyes. And that special way you recharge yourself when you feel drained. I’ll even love your heart after you’ve given your last second chance to someone for the 1,016th time because I know you’re a tangled mess of contradictory things. So please don’t just fall in love with me, because I’m not going to fall in love with « just you ». You’re too complex and complicated for it to be that simple, and so all I ask is that if you fall in love with me, you’ll fall in love with my infinite complexities too. 

[ddaeng-angmoh]

Okay, okay, so, I knew what I was getting into with this fic. It’s dark, it’s mysterious, it’s got occult horror, but WOOOW~! I WAS SHOOK READING THIS! Seriously, the perfect blend of demonic thrill to taunt the theme of the story. Like, fam, you don’t go doing them spells and not expect something to come at you 😭 that’s like, lesson ONE of spiritual affairs.

WARNING: I became thirsty af, and my daydreams took hold. If you don’t know my interests are, uhhhh, well, you will if you read this—-

Seriously though, I am drooling over Jungkook in this fic. I mean, I may be ot7 but he’s not in my top 3 (sorry bae, but I’m weak for your hyungs 😩). I could just sense his vibes when I met him, and it’s my type. He’s my type, Jungkook is my type- I’m usually not into being a noona, but I would for him. He’s brooding, but witty (I see you JK, you may think you’re avoiding socialness well, but I see you 🤏🤨), and my mans drank a whole ass stock of Constantine. Like, a dash of Keanu, a sprinkle of Legends of Tomorrow, and a spritz of Catholic angst. I just hope his background isn’t as tragic, now is not the time for me to get into my conniptions about Catholicism on a public online forum 💀.

I was seriously ready to drool when he pulled her onto his bed with him. Like, it’s my dream to be manhandled by hottass tattooed man like that. Him being an elk too?? Like, fam, elk are dangerous af. I don’t care that they’re prey, Like, they can 75 km/h???? Huge af??? Territorial??? Aggressive?? (I still believe Emus are the scariest animals alive, but I digress). It totally suits him. No matter what universe he is in, A/B/O, hybrid, werewolf, superpower, he is guaranteed to be dangerous as he is soft. Let’s just be real here. It’s Jeon Jungkook afterall. This fic really helps me appreciate him in another way though, and I liiive for the dynamics being made.

SERIOUSLLLY.

Everytime I review this, or reblog it, I just can’t say enough about the dynamics. Dana is sooo talented with weaving realistic dynamics into the story. Subtle hints like body language, or expression are hinted at (making them as subtle as they are irl lmao) but still clear enough to follow. The reactions are just so natural too. With my own writing I get frustrated because I feel like everyone is the same person and reacts the same which makes me appreciate this talent even more. Instead of jealousy, I just highkey stan. I can’t express how soothing it is to read these dynamics as they form. It’s like listening to a really good asmr, frfr. Yoongi especially is a trooove of emotions and teases. I seriously can’t handle how much he teases the FL. Hoseok too? Ugh, my man.

Hoseok. Jung Hoseok.

This man just stalls my brain everyday.

If I read a fic, I always pay attention to how he is written. I tend to be very particular with his character as well. I search ferociously for darker renditions of him because I only find happy sunshine rainbows Seok. Which, he is. But he also isn’t. Hoseok is a person that I think a lot of people take for granted when it comes to depth. Not for their own faults, it’s rather societies. It’s common that loudness/rambunctiousness instantly makes us think immature/shallow/childish or other synonyms along that line. (Not that people think he is such, just that it’s a common perception to have to work through with characteristics like his. It’s a personal pet peeve of mine as I suffered a lot from this societal stigma.) Because of this a lot of fics fail to address his darker side. Hoseok to me, is someone who chooses to be positive, which is different from being naturally positive. Early interviews revealed a lot that he used to be the emotional blackhole in the dorm, but he still worked to be the sunshine we know. (Someone doesn’t choose the theme of Pandora’s box without some kinda emotional trauma, let’s be real). The fact that he chooses to be positive says a lot about his natural state of mind.

I view Hoseok (personally, this is all a matter of opinion rn. I should not be taken as an authority on this due to my own bias and perceptions lol) as someone who is intelligent, hardworking, but also realistic. He’s able to problem solve, take control, and be serious when he has to. He just doesn’t take that responsibility unless he wants to. I would think he has a high emotional intelligence as well, which makes sense with his darker angst. But I think he is also someone who not only has to have control (though he exerts this over his own emotions, and lifestyle), but has to have order. His happiness to me doesn’t come off as fake, but sometimes feels competitive in that I think he actively combats the negative influence of his realistic mindset. He is able to brush everything off and laugh because he’s used to it. I wouldn’t say he is masking, or bottling his emotions. Instead, I think he values positivity after his own emotional journey. This control he keeps tells a lot about him to me. I think he’s actually quite stern as a personality. He doesn’t always have expectations, but when he has them, he wants them done his way. This comes out more in his dancing, and housekeeping than anything else. (The way he loses his temper when he asks someone to do something and they don’t kills me lmaooo, he really is a control freak. Run! BTS avatar cooking ep was a STRUUUGGLEEE for him).

I went reallly in depth with that because these things to me aren’t shown a lot in the fics I run into. It’s why I reblog so much stuff with Hobi when I find it. This nuance of a stern, controlling, intelligent male that tempers his darker self with a bright persona is so hard to find. Not only is it something I crave, but it’s something I am seeing develop in this fic as well. We’re not too far in, but as I said earlier, the dynamic writing is just gorgeous and I can see the developments of this in it. This chapter itself portrays it super well with his not so subtle reactions to the event, and Yoongi’s subtle comments about him. I am really looking forward to how he develops as he gets closer to everyone. Being so tight reigned with his negativity is something that I believe impacts his reactions. As in, developing those thought processes and regning himself in takes up enough energy that he doesn’t control his reactions themselves as much as the rest. (This is my perception of irl BTS, not in the fic). So I’m curious if this aspect will be used as well because I would be all for that one moment when he cracks and is dark af and (PLEASE KABEDON ME, TOSS ME TO THE WALL, I DON’T EVEN CARE 😭) I feel like not all of the characters would be shocked, but some might be more so on the depth/extent, or attributes of what he holds onto.

Honestly, Ik I’m thirsty for dark powerdom Hobi. I’m not looking for that in this fic (though if it pops up I won’t complain sjdfhfdso), and I don’t want it to sound like I am from my above paragraph. I trail off easy sdhnfodjksn. More so, thats the first examples I think of, and I want to describe the energy I feel has potential in the story.

With this writing, I seriously feel like the characters have so many secrets. (Which, ofc they do, cause this story is bomb af). They also all hold a dark potential that I can’t wait to see developed. Part of why I love the hybrid aspect of this so much is it can really play into the dynamic and presentation of these traits as well. The animalistic sense, and feeling that they would be more likely to lose control is so thrilling. I really can’t wait to see how this presents.

I want to say, on that animalistic side???

HOT DAAAAMN, NAMJIN.

LIIIKE.

FAM REALLY WENT ALL OUT!

I loved how scenting was presented in this and I found it so interesting that the humans react to it as well! In a lot of fics humans are sensitive to the pheromones, but not the bites. I love that in this, the humans are actually sensitive to the bites though. That euphoric high from being scented is sure to be dangerous in the wrong hands. (I also have an obsession with power loss/transfer, so like, daydreaming about possessive af hybrids using that on their owners not used to it that thrill is in my head and, SOMEONE PLEASE SEND HALP.) The fact that the chap ends with FL in euphoric bliss with Seokjin is gonna start the next chap off so well. I mean, even the ending line about her being prey??? OMMML

I know the hybrids aren’t oblivious to all the scenting stuff, that has been made clear. But they’re all still pretty much strangers so I wonder how tensions might flow with how exactly Jin bit her, and how the possible after actions were. I mean, the man has her locked on his lap, licking at her neck while she has gone into a euphoria pushed nap. I mean, despite their reluctance, they must have some etiquette for it. Namjoon may have bit harder, but his wasn’t as possessive as Jins feels either. Jaguar hybrid indeed 😩

This was not meant to turn into a thirst review, but, we have what we have ksdjfhnfha.

ON A MORE WHOLESOME SIDE

I love that she made colour co-ordinated pouches for each of them, thats sooo cute. Loved how eager Tae was to help too, he seriously is so precious. Also, how the Delivery kid assumed he was her bf instantly despite him being a hybrid??? Why can’t ppl be that wholesome irl?? Like??? I really hope this kid stays a good one, and doesn’t get corrupted dksfjbhsdf.

I live for savage Yoongles, so I loved his trolling to Namjoon and FL this ep too. Like, he is so soft, but so mean. The sharpest marshmallow ever— he really does show his love by being an asshole, and it’s just my vibe.

UGGGGH AND JIMMINIE GETTING HIS STABLE?!?! I MELTED, HE GOT SO EXCITED! I really hope they fix it up and get to watch over some equines so he can have that piece of home again. My babyyyy 😭 😭 😭 I could just see his cute face beaming, and his floofy hair, and I just can’t handle it- He needs it, and he needs it now 😭 anyone that gets in the way is obviously a monster and a villain, no doubt-

I dunno if this month will have the additional update or not, but as always, I’m going to be STRUGGLING waiting for the next 😭

Trouvaille - Chapter Five

Pairing(s); BTS OT7 x Reader

Genre/Themes; Hybrid!AU, themes of the supernatural and the occult, religious themes, violence, hurt/comfort, horror, romance

Rated; 18+ for swearing, violence/gore, future sexual themes. Reader discretion is advised.

Word Count; 20.5k

Trouvaille Masterlist

Trouvaille playlist

Updates on the 7th of each month

Hi everyone, it's Dana! Hope you had a lovely April, I'm so excited to share this update with you all! This chapter will involve discussions of the paranormal, a bit of angst, and SCENTING - the scenting scenes are a bit heated, I'll give you a heads up ;) The taglist is still open, and as always I love to hear reader's thoughts, theories, and comments 💜 Enjoy and thank you for reading and supporting Trouvaille!

Previous Chapter

The pain shooting up from the site where her ankle bone had torn through her flesh was insignificant in comparison to the pure terror taking over her senses. Desperately, she tried to drag herself under the remains of a fallen tree, though the trail of crimson pulsing steadily from her torn skin left evidence of her presence in its wake. Even now, she knew it was for naught– the creature could no doubt smell the scent of her spilled blood, and was closing in at any second. In fact, she felt her chest tighten at the sound of a twig snapping somewhere nearby, the crunch of footsteps approaching. Whimpering, she shakily pressed a hand over her mouth, able to spot a cloud of breath just paces away from her hiding spot. In the howling winds of the blizzard, a gut-wrenching growl cut through the noise as the predator closed in on its prey. 

Y/N felt herself fading in and out of a disturbed sleep. Pieces of fragmented memory passed through her mind fleetingly; being lifted off of a cold surface by a pair of strong arms, her head pressed against a rapidly beating heart. Panicked shouting, her body shivering and convulsing, the soft fabric of her quilt. The ghost of a hand brushing the hair off of her forehead, flickering candlelight and perfumed smoke, gentle mumbling… prayer?

As consciousness came to her bit by bit, her fingers flexing and relaxing in their grip on the fabric of her sheets, the hushed voices in the room grew louder as her senses returned to her slowly. Her throat felt like sandpaper from the scented smoke filling the room, a thin whine ripping from it as she attempted to peel her heavy eyelids open. Y/N felt like she had the world’s worst hangover, stomach turning over uncomfortably and skull throbbing. As her eyes opened, she stared blearily at the ceiling, the moldings around the Tiffany chandelier coming into focus as her eyes adjusted to the low lighting. It was still nighttime, or very early dawn, judging by the darkened walls of her bedroom. The voices she heard while she was waking up were silent. 

Groaning, Y/N squeezed her eyes shut, steeling herself to sit up and try to recall how she had gotten to bed in the first place. As she lifted her head, the spot she had smacked on the marble floor throbbed in agony. Suddenly, two tattooed hands swiftly landed on her shoulders, firmly pressing her back down into her pillows with a curse. Reeling, Y/N painfully turned her head to look at Jeongguk, who was sitting on the side of her bed, appearing both exhausted and vaguely annoyed. Just beyond the elk hybrid’s silhouette, Y/N saw Jimin, who was biting his fingernails down to the nub, staring at her with grave concern. 

“Wh-what happened?” Y/N croaked after a few beats, Jeongguk finally removing his hands from her shoulders and leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. A rosary, one with dark red beads, was wrapped around one of his wrists. 

“You passed out in the hallway. Hit your head,” Jeongguk replied, his voice hoarse as if he had been speaking for a very long time. 

Tentatively, Y/N lifted her hand, gingerly poking at the site of her injury above her left eyebrow. Wincing at the tender flesh, her hand stilled as she felt the fabric of a butterfly bandage  someone had applied to the wound. Shifting her gaze from Jeongguk, Y/N noticed Taehyung sitting at the foot of her bed, expression grim. Hoseok and Seokjin were lingering by her dresser, damp washcloths in the jaguar hybrid’s hand and both of the hybrid’s ears turned downwards in distress. 

“And upstairs, what h-happened upstairs?” Y/N squeaked, feeling terrible that the hybrids all looked so disturbed. Further, with the Poltergeist twist to the evening, she was anxious to learn about what had unfolded after she lost consciousness. Namjoon and Yoongi weren’t in the room, from what she could tell, which formed a pit in her stomach. Had something happened to them?

Jeongguk sighed roughly, running his hand through his tangled hair and placing the rosary on her nightstand. Taehyung looked away from her, though Y/N realized his hand was wrapped around her ankle, likely in an attempt to soothe her. Seokjin made his way to the bedside, the corners of his mouth turned downwards as he scanned the site of her injury. Carefully, he found one of her hands gripping the sheets, wrapping it in his much larger hand and brushing his thumb over her skin. Shuddering at the contact, Y/N stared at Seokjin pleadingly for any type of explanation. To her surprise, Jeongguk answered her. 

“I got rid of it, eventually. Son of a bitch tried to attach itself to you when I drew it out from the second floor. It’s gone though,” Jeongguk stood from his spot on her bed, moving to snuff out the herb bundle he had left burning on a plate on Y/N’s desk. Seokjin tightened his hold on her hand as she shimmied up on the bed as best she could with Taehyung’s grip on her ankle. 

“You got rid of it? Did anyone get hurt? What was it?” Y/N pushed damp hair out of her face, wondering if Seokjin had cleaned up her face with the face cloths he was holding earlier. “How did you even know that there was something here in the first place?” 

Jeongguk chuckled tiredly, stubbing out the herb bundle Judy had given her, his little notebook sitting next to it. The room, while considerably lighter spiritually, still felt tense. Hearing a floorboard creak, Y/N gasped in relief upon seeing Yoongi enter the room, his hair tied up messily and a steaming mug in his hand. Eyebrows pinched, he approached the bed, placing the fruity-smelling cup of tea in Y/N’s free hand. 

“Is that pomegranate?” Jeongguk nodded towards the mug in her hand, eyeing Yoongi with suspicion. 

“Yes, I heard you the first three times you insisted I make her pomegranate tea, Father Karras,” Yoongi narrowed his eyes, motioning for Y/N to take a sip with his lips pursed. She didn’t even know she had pomegranate tea in her cupboards, let alone the reason behind Jeongguk insisting she drink it. 

“No one was hurt,” Seokjin murmured by her side softly, still holding her hand. Relieved, Y/N squeezed his fingers with a small smile. 

“As for what it was, I’m not exactly sure. It was a malevolent entity for sure, but I wouldn’t go as far as to call it a demon,” Jeongguk explained, rubbing his eye with a fist. Y/N wondered if he was up all night trying to banish the spirit. “I used to hang around with a group of paranormal investigators. We did cleansings from time to time.”

Y/N’s mouth dropped open upon hearing his revelation, Hoseok scoffing from across the room. She didn’t think Hoseok wholly bought into subject matter surrounding the occult, however, she remembered that he seemed significantly perturbed during the incident the previous night. Taking a sip of the tea Yoongi brought her, Y/N felt Taehyung’s hand on her ankle grow tighter. 

“So what, you can sense ghosts or something? Like a fortune teller?” Hoseok jabbed, his arms crossed over his chest. Jimin, who migrated to her dresser where the fox hybrid was, stomped on Hoseok’s foot while he opened up one of the dresser drawers. Y/N watched Jimin pull out a fresh change of clothes, Jeongguk muttering under his breath as he tucked his notebook under his arm. 

“I’m gonna get some sleep now that you’re fine,” the elk hybrid announced gruffly, avoiding eye contact with her once again before exiting from the room, fumbling with the notebook in one hand and a pack of Marlboros in the other. Seokjin released Y/N’s hand, pushing a lock of damp hair off of her forehead while she pouted at Jeongguk’s departure. She felt it was the first time the elk hybrid trusted her enough to tell her a little about his past, and lamented his absence immediately. 

“Miss Y/N, here’s some new clothes. You’ll probably want to shower, Namjoon was applying oil to your arms and such,” Jimin gently placed the new outfit on her bed, Y/N suddenly feeling self-conscious as Jimin’s golden eyes flitted across her bare clavicle, which she now realized was coated in olive oil. Yoongi cleared his throat awkwardly, bouncing his leg from Y/N’s desk chair he had perched on. 

“Mm, you’re right. I feel sticky,” Y/N grimaced, allowing Seokjin to help her slowly sit up in bed with a hand on her back. The pain was slowly starting to ebb away from her wound above her eyebrow, Y/N entertaining the idea of Yoongi slipping an ibuprofen into the tea. 

Reluctantly, Taehyung let go of her ankle, teeth worrying his lip as he watched both Jimin and Seokjin helping her out of the bed. The sun was starting to rise, filling the room with peachy light, capturing mahogany strands of hair on Hoseok’s head while he stood by the window, looking out at the backyard absently. 

“Where’s Namjoon?” Y/N asked Seokjin quietly, knowing Hoseok could hear her, but not wanting to startle him too much by saying the wolf hybrid’s name above a whisper. Seokjin frowned, orange eyes turning stormy as he watched Y/N stretch out her stiff limbs, using Jimin’s arm to keep her balance. Jimin was right, the skin of her arm was streaked in oil, her shirt dappled with several greasy stains. 

“In his room. He helped Jeongguk with whatever ritual he was doing, and when you started to stir, he bolted from the room and has been locked away with that new book he got yesterday afternoon ever since,” Seokjin informed her, turning his head to gaze down the hall in the direction of Namjoon’s bedroom. Shrugging, Y/N assumed he was probably trying to look up what kind of entity had been in the home in his new encyclopedia. Distantly, she wondered if he was suffering from a hangover for the first time. 

“We’ll leave you to it,” Yoongi made his way to the threshold of the door, motioning the others to follow. Taehyung seemed rooted to his spot on Y/N’s bed, still chewing on his lip with pointed incisors, before hauling himself up and making his exit from her bedroom. “I’ll make some breakfast, Jimin, could you help me out?” 

Nodding, Jimin left her bedside, Seokjin close behind, both hybrids giving her a wistful smile before following Yoongi and Taehyung down the hall. Sighing, Y/N inched towards the bathroom with her new clothes, forgetting that Hoseok was still in the room for a moment until he shuffled his feet behind her by the bathroom door. Craning her neck up at him in question, she tried to decipher the emotions flashing through his eyes. 

“When I said that one of us was going to have to scrape you off the floor last night, I didn’t think I’d actually have to,” he began, his mouth in a flat line. Looking remorseful, he placed his hand on her shoulder shakily. “That scared the shit out of me. The sound when you fell… it was awful…” 

Hoseok’s eyebrows pulled together, his ears turning down while Y/N frowned. He squeezed her shoulder, as if he was checking that she was truly standing there in front of him. Placing her hand over his, she felt the strong urge to comfort Hoseok, who was more shaken from the whole event than she originally thought. After all, if she was more gravelly injured, who would be left to take care of him and the other hybrids?

“Hey, I’m okay now, Hoseok. I’m patched up, the situation has been, uh… handled. My head doesn’t even hurt that much,” Y/N cheerfully assured him the best she could, his expression still crumpled even after she spoke. 

After several moments, and before she could overthink it, she tentatively stretched her arms out, inviting him in for a hug. She watched his mouth open and close, her eyebrows lifting, and just as she was going to drop her arms and laugh it off, Hoseok’s grip on her shoulder tightened, pulling her firmly to his chest. Shocked, Y/N felt Hoseok’s hand shift from her shoulder to the back of her head, cradling it to his chest, his other arm winding around her waist securely.

 By instinct, she pressed closer to Hoseok, her own arms wrapping around him and soothingly rubbing his back. Sensations from the previous night came back to her as she held the fox hybrid, Hoseok’s heartbeat racing through his chest like it had hours ago, the scent of rosewood coming from his skin comfortingly. After a few moments, Hoseok seemed to relax, the tenseness in his back muscles melting away under her hands, and he gave her a final squeeze before pulling away. 

“I’m glad you’re alright,” his hands fell from her body after ruffling her hair, his dimples appearing on his cheeks as he began to leave the room, leaving Y/N stunned and red in the face as he shut the door tightly behind him.

Moving robotically, Y/N frantically tried to calm her erratically beating heart, shutting herself in the bathroom and shedding her oily clothes. It was as if she was utterly possessed, the urge to comfort each of the hybrids since she first laid eyes on them was so strong, all reason had fled from her mind. She had only met Hoseok days ago, and Y/N was already prepared to hold him for hours if that was what he needed– she knew it was the same for the others, as well. Y/N hadn’t expected to grow attached to all of them so quickly, even Namjoon, who she had barely exchanged more than a handful of sentences with. Shaking her head, she blindly turned on the shower.

 Pretty quickly, she noticed the bathroom was missing the drafty chill that had been pestering her for a couple of weeks, as she walked over to the window to assess the gap between the sill and the glass. Making a noise of surprise, she discovered a screwdriver on the windowsill, the drafty gap completely repaired. Floored, she speculated about who could have fixed the window amidst the chaos, but her bets were on Taehyung. He had mentioned he was handy. 

Returning to the mirror in a daze, she winced at the nasty wound above her forehead, the skin already turning a mottled purple and the cut jagged. However, it was nicely cleaned up and tended to decently, which was more than she could have hoped for. Feeling a warmth bloom within her, Y/N was grateful that the hybrids had cared for her so well after her fall, even more so that Jeongguk and Namjoon had managed to rid the house of whatever was causing disturbances for so long. Of course, a seemingly endless string of questions looped around in her brain– surrounding Jeongguk’s time with paranormal investigators, Namjoon’s apparent wealth of knowledge on the occult, and the entity that caused the incident in general. 

While hot water washed the oil from her skin, Y/N felt a lightness in the atmosphere that had been absent from the house for several weeks. In the years she had spent focused on her career, stepping away from the realm of the supernatural and spirituality, Y/N supposed she had achieved her goal of becoming desensitized from it– she didn’t even realize how badly things had escalated with the entity that had come in from the grounds. Rinsing her hair, Y/N frowned; now that she had the hybrids, was it really so wise for her to continue turning her back on something so deeply woven into the fabric of her life? It was clear that she had only succeeded in ignoring who she was and how she connected with her spirituality, but she had neglected to put up the proper protection for herself and those around her in the midst of all that denial. 

Her heart was heavy, realizing if she had simply cleansed the house once a month and maintained protection spells her mother put up ages ago, she likely could have spared the hybrids from witnessing such a dramatic event so soon after moving into their new home. With the pity, Y/N also found resolve– she knew she never wanted something like that happening again in their home if there were measures she could take to prevent it. For the rest of the day, she planned on upping the protection on the entire house, perhaps crafting some charms for the hybrids to keep them safe. Hissing as hot water hit the cut on her forehead, Y/N screwed her mouth up in concentration, trying to remember where she had tucked away the trunk of her tools and herbs, likely somewhere in the basement under the stairs. 

Toweling off, Y/N hummed softly, picking up the ancient tee shirt Jimin had selected, the one with her high school’s name printed across the front. It was the softest tee shirt she owned, to be fair, and paired with her well-worn leggings and fuzzy socks, Jimin picked out the perfect outfit for her to recover in from the previous night. Letting her hair drip-dry, Y/N shuffled out into her bedroom, detecting a sweet scent coming from the hallway cutting through the smoky scent of burnt cedar. Searching for her phone, she found it sitting on her nightstand beside Jeongguk’s rosary. Carefully, she scooped up the ruby beaded necklace, curiously passing her fingers over the smooth beads, the silver embellishments and cross. Tucking her phone into her pocket absently and cradling the rosary in her palm, Y/N thought it best to return it to Jeongguk once he woke up and placed it back on her nightstand gingerly. She wondered where he had gotten it, as it wasn’t one of the purchases he had made at Judy’s store. 

Rolling her stiff shoulders back, Y/N left her bedroom, the hallway bright with morning sun from the skylight above the grand staircase. Someone was singing softly in the kitchen, the sounds of pans clattering mixed between the sweet voice– Y/N guessed it was Seokjin. As she passed by Namjoon’s door, the creaky wooden scrape of her old desk chair across the hardwood within his room had her pausing, waiting for the wolf hybrid to undoubtedly seek her out. Within seconds she watched the door creak open, Namjoon cautiously sticking his head out into the hall to glance towards Y/N’s bedroom. 

Clearing her throat, Namjoon’s ear flickered, head snapping in the other direction to locate her. An awkward sensation washed over her as he scanned her face and body with his aloof expression. She recalled how soft his face had become the night before, but now it was void of that softness, as he stepped out in the hall and firmly closed the door behind him. He was wearing the blush pink thermal she had picked out for him.

“Morning,” Y/N greeted, trying her best to match his steady eye contact. “Jeongguk said you helped out last night. Thank you,” she continued upon his silence to her greeting, his arms across his chest. 

“I’ve been trying to find out what it was in that encyclopedia. I have a couple of theories, but nothing that matches up completely with what went down last night,” Namjoon admitted, eyes shifting to the wound on her forehead. Subconsciously, she reached up to touch it, biting down on her lip at the stinging of the flesh. 

“If I didn’t pass out, I would have been able to help you… sorry,” Y/N murmured sheepishly, a short grunt coming from the back of Namjoon’s throat. “I’m going downstairs to look for my old tools and books. Maybe something in the chest can help you narrow down some of your theories.”

Namjoon appeared intrigued, promptly following her to the basement door that was left ajar. She knew Hoseok was already in the kitchen; she had heard him whistling along to Seokjin’s song, so she didn’t have to worry about Namjoon frightening the fox hybrid in his own space. 

“I need your help to haul the chest up here, anyways,” Y/N attempted to break the silence as they trudged down the stairs, shrugging as she was met with no response when they reached the bottom. 

Determinedly, she rifled through unmarked boxes beneath the stairs, pushing past Yule decorations and the file cabinet of her elementary school artwork. Namjoon hovered behind her after checking out the gym area with curiosity, hefting a large crate filled with old bottles out of the way for her when she unsuccessfully tried to push it with her foot. After a few moments of blowing cobwebs out of her face from under the darkened steps, she found her old trunk filled with supplies for her craft. Covered in fine dust, a pang of sadness rocked through Y/N, especially when she brushed her fingers over some of the sigils she had etched into the wood of the chest as a teenager. 

“This is it, I’m assuming?” Namjoon questioned from over her shoulder, having to hunch down quite a bit to fit under the steps. Nodding with her mouth in a flat line, Namjoon hummed, wordlessly hooking his hand around the handle closest to him and pulling it out into the hallway of the basement with ease. Squeaking with surprise at the sheer strength Namjoon effortlessly displayed, Y/N scrambled after him. 

“Oh, it’s heavy, hold on! I might have to go get someone to help us bring it up the stairs,” Y/N worried as he dragged it to the stairs and lifted up one end of the trunk, Namjoon scoffing in response. It had taken her father and two older male cousins to drag her chest full of books, bottles, and metal tools down into the basement– she thought to at least find Taehyung or Jeongguk. 

“It’s fine, Y/N. Just grab the other end, I’ll walk backwards up the stairs and carry most of the weight. Just watch your step,” Namjoon rolled his eyes, pushing up the sleeves of his thermal. Gawking at the wolf hybrid, Y/N nervously grasped the other handle, hoisting it up as quickly as she could to avoid Namjoon having to bear the entirety of the weight of the trunk. 

Namjoon moved slowly up the steps, whether he was accounting for Y/N’s efforts or not. His face was serene, as if he was simply meditating rather than hauling an 80 pound chest up a flight of stairs. He truly was bearing most of the weight, Y/N feeling like she was lifting hardly anything at all as they moved, trying not to stare at the muscles straining the material of Namjoon’s thermal. When they reached the top of the steps, Namjoon took over, placing the trunk into the foyer with a thunk. 

Catching her breath with a hand braced on the wall, Y/N eyed Namjoon with envy, his breathing even as he kneeled on the floor to unlatch the metal fasteners on the trunk. Peering over his shoulder as he pried open the chest, Y/N took the chance to check out the torn area of his left ear; it almost looked like the piece missing was bitten off. If that was the case, that must have been extremely painful for him– Y/N had read about how sensitive a hybrid’s ears were when she was reading about “scenting”. Jutting her lower lip out in a pout, Y/N watched the damaged ear twitch, Namjoon craning his head upwards to look at her questioningly. 

“What are you staring at?” Namjoon narrowed his eyes suspiciously, making space for her to kneel beside him. He certainly didn’t miss much, and it was not like she could lie and say she was leering at her old copy of The Farmer’s Almanac. 

“Your ear, the left one,” Y/N mumbled, heat burning her cheeks as she pawed through the chest to find a proper book to give him. Namjoon made a small noise of surprise, hands stilling in the process of turning pages of a moon ritual book. Teasingly, she cocked her head at him. “Were you expecting me to lie?”

“Uh, yeah. Actually,” Namjoon went back to flipping through the book absently, occasionally peering at her from the corner of his eye. Y/N spotted the thick leather bound book of spirits that she had been searching for, leaning into the chest to retrieve it for the wolf hybrid. 

“May I ask what happened to it? You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, I’m just curious,” Y/N offered Namjoon the book, his body stiffening as he took it cautiously. Y/N went back to nonchalantly searching through the trunk for some fabric pouches to make the protective charms. 

“It was a long time ago, there was a fight I was involved in. You don’t have to worry about it,” Namjoon finally spoke in a soft voice, his eyes far away. 

Shocked that Namjoon had actually answered her, Y/N composed her face into a neutral expression, though she was puzzled by the cryptic response he offered. Namjoon fell quiet, stacking a few books beside him, which Y/N was assuming he’d take back to his room. She had gathered all of her materials for the charms, shoving them into a small wicker basket she found inside of the trunk holding several types of twine. 

“I’ll drag this into your room for you, then I’m going to try and figure out what that thing was. Hopefully one of these books has a clue,” Namjoon announced, getting to his feet with the books tucked under his arm. 

With the basket in the crook of her elbow, Y/N peered up at the wolf hybrid prepared to tell him not to bother with the trunk, blinking dumbly at the sight of his outstretched hand offering to help her to her feet. Her hand moved before her brain could protest, sliding against the roughened skin of Namjoon’s palm, his long fingers wrapping around the entirety of her own hand. Surprisingly, Namjoon’s touch was tender and gentle, pulling her up slowly with care. Once she was stable and upright, Namjoon released her hand, tearing his eyes from hers as she stuttered out a “thank you”. 

“Go get something to eat. You need to regain your strength,” Namjoon murmured, crouching to grasp a handle of the trunk, already beginning to drag it down the hallway towards her room. Opening her mouth to protest, he shot her a disapproving look from over his shoulder, using his other hand to point to the kitchen sternly. Clamming up, Y/N felt her legs move on their own accord towards the kitchen, suddenly having no intention of disobeying Namjoon after all of that. 

“Miss Y/N, are you feeling a little better? How’s your head?” Jimin’s voice, on the raspier side with sleepiness, snapped her out of her daze as she made her way into the sunny kitchen.

Her eyes widened as he, Seokjin, and Taehyung sped into her personal space at lightning speed, each with varying expressions of thinly veiled worry. Embarrassed, especially at the sensation of Jimin brushing hair off her forehead to look at her wound, thumb tracing around the bruised skin with a featherlight touch, Y/N’s eyelids fluttered. Breathing stuttered, she wished that Jimin would stop looking so sad– jolting at the feeling of Seokjin’s tail winding around the back of her thigh as he watched Jimin inspect the cut on her forehead. 

“I feel much better, you guys! And don’t worry–” Y/N started, grasping Jimin’s hand softly to remove it from her face, squeezing it softly for reassurance, “I’ll heal in a flash, because someone tended to the cut so well.”

Y/N was surprised at how seemingly attached most of them had become to her in such a short period of time, seeking out comfort in her touch and proximity, worrying over her well being. When she had first made the adoptions, she had predicted it would be weeks before they’d speak to her, let alone touch her in any way; but perhaps she had underestimated their need for someone who actually cared about them, many for the first time. Y/N knew that hybrids, by nature, were often affectionate and became almost devotional to their adoptive human, however, she figured that dog and perhaps cat hybrids were more likely to display that kind of behavior. For some reason, because her hybrids were spliced with undomesticated animal DNA, she came to the previous conclusion that they’d be a bit more standoffish; though apparently she was wrong. The more she thought about it with her prior experience treating exotic animals, many of them did, indeed, form close bonds with humans. How were her hybrids any different?

Taehyung, to her left with his lip bitten raw, didn’t seem entirely convinced by her words of reassurance, pulling the basket from the crook of her elbow into his arms as if carrying the three-pound load would send her to the floor again. Brightening up the best she could while shaking off her internal monologue, she guided Taehyung over to the island to put down the basket with her hand on his back, deciding she could just get to work on the charms there so the hybrids would be put at ease by her presence in the communal space. 

Taehyung grew stiff at her touch at first, swiftly relaxing once she smoothed her palm towards his shoulder blade. Both him and Jimin sat on either side of her at the island, Y/N meekly waving hello to Yoongi over by the stove, who was uncharacteristically quiet. He had found her old waffle iron in the pantry, standing over it silently as he waited for a waffle to cook with a bowl full of sugared strawberries in one of his arms. 

“What’s all of that?” Seokjin mused while scanning the strange contents of the basket, leaning over the island from the sink, nonchalantly sliding a goblet of water in front of Y/N. Unpacking items one by one, Taehyung picking up the jar of black salt she placed down to examine, Y/N was unable to contain the giddy smile that had forced its way to her face. She was actually excited to be getting back into the craft?

“Herbs, mostly, some salt. I’m making some protective pouches for everyone to carry around. I want to prevent something like last night from happening again,” Y/N replied, counting out eight little velvet drawstring bags in front of her, striking a match to light a tealight as she spoke, tone suddenly becoming serious. “I also want to apologize. I should have been honest with you all from the beginning, with the haunting. When I was a kid living here, I dabbled in stuff I didn’t understand, and probably attracted whatever that was to the property.”

The room was quiet, waiting for her to continue, Y/N concentrating on using the flame from the candle to light a small stick of incense to cleanse the spell ingredients. Mostly, to avoid eye contact with any of them, as cowardly as that was. Setting the burning stick on a small clay stand, she sighed, gathering her thoughts before speaking again. 

“The other night, with the ‘spider’?” Y/N made air quotes, catching Yoongi’s ears perked up from where his back was turned to her, arranging waffles on a plate. “I saw the entity that I first accidentally summoned as a teenager. It was lurking in my bathroom, and I’ve never seen it so clearly before. What I should have done, instead of lying about a stupid spider, was come clean and try to get rid of it with the knowledge I have now, after years of studying the craft… I guess I was worried you’d all think I was nuts or scare you away. But that’s besides the point– last night didn’t have to happen. I could have protected you all, myself, had I not been so stubborn about trying to turn my back on my past and my mistakes.”

Y/N heard her voice begin to shake; the more she spoke the more she realized that she was entirely to blame for the whole situation. The reason, the true reason she had packed up her candles and spell books was not to pursue a “normal” life as a veterinarian, but to try and escape the mistakes she had made as a teenager attempting to do magic she was not ready to perform. In consequence, she attracted something malevolent to the land, to her, that had followed her around on and off for years. Subconsciously, she must have thought that by simply abandoning her craft, the entity would lose interest in her, therefore freeing her of any more frightening incidents within the home. Unfortunately for her, that wasn’t how it worked, and the life-changing event of adopting the hybrids may have triggered a possessive response in the entity. Angered with herself, she tried her best to stay centered so she could carry out the protective spells successfully, though the realization that she had made things so much worse by pretending to be oblivious was painfully sobering. 

Her pity party was interrupted by Yoongi, placing a gravy boat of maple syrup and a plate of waffles in front of her, smothered with butter, whipped cream, and the sugared strawberries. Jimin, gingerly, moved some of her bottles of herbs and the items that were burning away from her, leaning across the island to pluck a knife and fork off of a place setting Yoongi had assembled and handed it to her, his eyes full of some kind of hard-to-read emotion. 

“Wow, uh, thank you, Yoongi…” Y/N sniffed, feeling extremely awkward that the hybrids hadn’t said anything in response to her lengthy speech. She supposed, with her deceit in the first place, she didn’t necessarily deserve an answer. “Smells yummy.”

“Eat up, you’ll feel better,” Yoongi sighed, returning to the sink, divvying up the large stack of waffles he’d made between the other plates he’d laid out for the others waiting for breakfast. “It’s not like you planned last night on purpose. Some of us have never witnessed anything like that, so I guess the possibility of being written off as ‘nuts’ wasn’t a baseless assumption had we not all seen it happen.”

Considering Yoongi’s reply, she appreciated the way that he validated her previous anxieties without totally dismissing her share of the blame. Y/N was aware that he was likely skirting around his clear disappointment in her lack of transparency about the night she had spotted the apparition in her bathroom, considering the leopard hybrid had been able to see through her lie most obviously at the time. Aware of being inspected from all angles, Y/N picked up her fork and hastily tossed a strawberry into her mouth, the juicy fruit melting on her taste buds sinfully.  

“I think Hoseok was the most… disturbed, during the whole thing. You know, Y/N, how animals can see or sense things that humans can’t?” Seokjin suddenly volunteered, distractedly pushing a sliced piece of waffle around on the plate Yoongi had offered him. Nodding, Y/N chewed on another strawberry, knowing that Yoongi was keeping an eye on her.

 “Animals can often see what humans call ‘spirits’ or ‘ghosts’, whatever you might name them– us hybrids can see them as animals do. It wasn’t my first time seeing something similar to that, but I’m certain Hoseok hasn’t. That’s why he’s been acting strange, I think,” Seokjin continued, Y/N hanging off of every word. 

Y/N, who had heard Hoseok in the kitchen while she was in the foyer with Namjoon, suddenly wondered where he had gone. After he had left her bedroom earlier, Hoseok was definitely still a bit shaken up, though less so after the hug, but he didn’t seem like the type to hide from her. In fact, it came as a great surprise to her that he wasn’t in the kitchen when she got there, unless he had snuck through the entrance to the kitchen from the parlor to escape the very conversation she and the others were having at that moment.

“Foxy is about as open minded towards the occult as your average math major. Still, he wouldn’t have laughed at you if you told him what you thought was going on,” Yoongi added matter-of-factly, setting a plate in front of Taehyung while shooting a pointed look at Y/N. 

“You’re right, Yoongi. I shouldn’t have let the fear of being judged– which is meaningless to begin with– get in the way of just being honest… And no, I didn’t make that connection, Seokjin. Truthfully, there is a lot I still have to learn about hybrids, I’m just thankful you’re all giving me the grace to learn as I go,” Y/N admitted, pushing her half-eaten waffle away so she could cleanse spell items with the incense before it went out, her stomach queasy with guilt. 

Beside her, Jimin exhaled slowly, reaching out with his left hand to rest on her shoulder. As he squeezed her shoulder with encouragement, Y/N peered at the coyote hybrid solemnly, his eyes soft and lips upturned in a gentle smile. Relaxing a degree, Y/N melted into Jimin’s solid grip, feeling like a lifeline. While slowly munching on another piece of waffle, Yoongi pushing the plate back in front of her with a frown, Jimin’s fingertips drummed a melody on her shoulder soothingly, though doing little to prevent her from flinching when the slider door to the patio scraped open. 

“Jinnie, can you toss me that bottle of water I left in the fridge?” Came Hoseok’s voice, bringing the scent of the outside with him. Breathing labored, Hoseok caught the frosty bottle Seokjin sent sailing in the air with a cackle, beads of sweat rolling down his neck and temples. Shaking his head, Jimin withdrew his hand from Y/N’s shoulder, moving to the coffee bar for a fill-up. 

“How was the run?” Seokjin asked, appearing grateful for the fox hybrid’s interruption of the conversation. Hoseok had gone on a run after staying up all night? The thought made Y/N simultaneously jealous of the hybrid’s seemingly endless energy and worried that he was going to collapse from exhaustion at any second. 

“Nice. Almost got lost, there’s a lot of land. Hey, Jiminie, did you know there’s an old stable way in the back?” Hoseok slapped the coyote hybrid on the back harshly, Jimin yelping and spilling hot coffee on the counter. 

“J-Jiminie? Wait, what? Did you say stable?” Jimin stuttered, his features lit up with bewilderment. Jimin definitely displayed his emotions on his face clearly, whether he was aware of that or not, Y/N didn’t know. 

“Yeah, a stable. You know, for horses?” Hoseok teased before greedily gulping down some water from his bottle. Y/N felt her eyes glaze over as she noticed some of the water escaping from his lips and sliding down the sharp angle of his jaw, rolling down his throat and into the material of his tee-shirt. 

“Of course I know,” Jimin scoffed, using a cocktail napkin to wipe up the spilled coffee. “Miss Y/N, you have a stable? Did you have horses as a girl?” Jimin inquired with an edge of excitement in his tone. 

Smiling bittersweetly as she spooned some black salt into the pouches one by one, Y/N shook her head with minor regret, Jimin’s ears flickering with curiosity. 

“There’s a stable, but there haven't been horses in a long time. At least not since before I was born, my grandmother used to ride, but as she got older she wasn’t able to anymore. It’s fallen into a bit of disrepair, I’d love to start fixing it up as soon as I’m done with the rest of the house… maybe some of my neighbors or folks around town could use it to board their horses closer to home,” Y/N speculated distractedly, plunking shards of clear quartz in each pouch she was working on. 

Taehyung had scooched closer to her, watching her create the charm bags with rapt fascination. Jimin appeared to be trying to locate the stable from the slider door, even though trees and hedges were totally obstructing it. She made a mental note to ask him to join her on a walk of the grounds later, like she had been intending to do for days. A piece of quartz slipped out of her fingers, clattering onto the counter, Taehyung swiftly plucking it up for her and dropping it into the pouch she was holding. Shooting him a sweet smile in thanks, she nearly fell off of her stool as he returned the smile, his face splitting into a pretty grin. Y/N had never seen him smile with his teeth, the gesture completely changing his gorgeous face into the purest expression she had ever seen on the Kodiak hybrid. Feeling herself grow hot in the face, she resumed her task, even when Taehyung took up the responsibility of placing the crystal shards into the pouches all by himself. 

“So, this is witchcraft?” Yoongi suddenly leaned across the island, removing her plate from in front of her, an eyebrow cocked as he watched Taehyung take a bag of lavender buds Y/N handed to him to sprinkle in the pouches. She figured if he wanted to help, there was no reason to refuse him, as he screwed up his face in concentration to sprinkle the lavender into the pouches as evenly as he could.

“Yeah, protective magic. Were you expecting chanting and Ouija boards?” Y/N chuckled, determined to keep things light after the heaviness of her apology had dispersed with Hoseok’s arrival in the kitchen. 

Yoongi smirked inches away from her face, collecting cream on her plate with his pointer finger, and booping her on the nose with it. Squeaking at the action with great surprise, Y/N used the napkin on her lap to remove the cream from her face, hearing Seokjin’s snickering from across the room. 

“Silly girl,” Yoongi shook his head, rinsing her dish in the sink with a smile. Reeling, she hardly registered Taehyung, nudging her shoulder with his own, softly asking her what went in the pouches next. Absently, she placed some dried rosemary leaves in his wide palm, sprinkling a few leaves in the pouch she was holding herself. 

As she and Taehyung worked on the pouches together, Seokjin, with half a waffle sticking out of his mouth, assisted Yoongi with the clean-up of the kitchen. Hoseok had bid them all a cheerful adieu to shower, followed by Jimin who mentioned wanting to test out the sauna. Y/N, enviously, wished that she could relax in the sauna for a half hour, but felt odd about joining the coyote hybrid. The thought of sitting in just a towel beside a very similarly bare Jimin sent a shiver rolling down her spine. 

As Yoongi turned his back on Y/N, scrubbing a stubborn grease stain on the stove, Y/N snuck a peak at his form, pleased that he already seemed to have filled out a little since she brought him home. Oddly enough, from behind, the slopes of his shoulders, feathering of his hair, and curve to his ears struck her as extremely familiar again, only if for a moment. She wondered if there was any chance Y/N had ever crossed paths with Yoongi before; if not at the bar she had no memory of ever patroning, but perhaps in the busy streets of Boston, maybe at a grocery store or something. She was positive she would have remembered someone as lovely as Yoongi, especially with his unique spotted ears and tail, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d seen him before while she watched his graceful movements at the stove. 

She was in the process of tying up the charm bags, Taehyung closely copying the knots Y/N was showing him, before taking each pouch from him and passing them through the dwindling smoke of the incense. Her thoughts suddenly drifted back to scenting, as Taehyung’s shoulder pressed into her’s– he was becoming increasingly clingy. On her other side, Seokjin had taken Jimin’s previous spot, picking lint off of Y/N’s shirt sleeve placidly, his fingers occasionally brushing the skin of her bicep making her shiver involuntarily. 

As she had read in the article, hybrids prior to scenting would seek out ways to get physically close to their adoptive humans, though would continue to grow uncomfortable if they do not scent them promptly. In fact, the more the hybrids sought out touch, the more the discomfort grew for them, which is what concerned Y/N. Between the paranormal incident and the fact that none of them had even brought up the scenting, her hybrids definitely were pretty good at handling discomfort, as much as she wished they wouldn’t suffer in silence, if they were. Y/N had the feeling they were reluctant to spook her considering she had admitted there was a lot she didn’t know about hybrids, but it wasn’t like they could put it off forever. 

“Hey, Yoongi, remember the other night when we were talking about my, uh… lack of knowledge when it comes to hybrids?” Y/N began nervously, glad that only the four of them were in the kitchen, and Jeongguk wasn’t there to make faces at her. Yoongi hummed, cocking his head at her to continue. “Can I ask you a question?” 

“Go ahead,” Yoongi encouraged slowly, seeming to have no idea what was coming his way. Taking a deep breath, she set the final tied pouch down on the counter. 

“You mentioned ‘scenting’. I looked it up yesterday because I didn’t know what it was. So I guess my question is, when should I expect that to, um, happen?” Y/N bit the bullet, looking Yoongi square in the eye. 

The leopard hybrid’s mouth dropped open, apparently not expecting that turn in the conversation, freezing his movements wiping down the counter. Seokjin’s hand had stilled in picking the lint off of her shirt, and Taehyung had gone ramrod stiff beside her, eyes wide as he stared at Yoongi in equal shock. Attempting to cover up his surprise with a cough, Yoongi ran a hand through his hair, appearing to be trying to choose his words carefully. 

“Shit, uh, wow. I forgot I even– I mean, sorry. I–” Yoongi stuttered, exhaling slowly and tossing the rag he was using into the sink in frustration. Seokjin’s hand dropped from her arm, looking out the window to hide the flustered pink blush over his cheeks. Quickly, Y/N tried to clarify her reason for catching them so off guard. 

“Well, I really just brought it up because the article I read said that hybrids can start to get sick if they don’t scent, and I’m just worried, that’s all. I don’t want you guys to be in pain or uncomfortable at all,” Y/N jut her lower lip out, knowing that far too many of them had experienced enough pain to last a lifetime, and would not allow more if she could prevent it. 

“I mean, yeah, that’s right. I guess I wasn’t expecting you to just…” Yoongi began, cutting himself off with a sharp laugh, covering his mouth. “I can’t speak for the others, but I’ll certainly let you know before it happens. I’m not just going to attack you or anything. You’re sweet for worrying, though.”

Taehyung put his head down on the counter, his back shaking with what Y/N assumed was laughter. 

“Of course I’m going to worry. I’m supposed to take care of you all now, I want to do a good job,” Y/N whined, feeling like Yoongi had turned his embarrassment onto her, the crafty bastard. Seokjin, from next to her, made a choking sound in the back of his throat, burning a hole in the side of her face with his wide-eyed sunset stare. 

“Sheesh. Don’t get mushy,” Yoongi groaned, able to return to his counter wiping task. Tsking at the leopard hybrid, Y/N gave Taehyung a pat on the back, muttering an apology as his spine pretty much arched into her palm. Sheepishly, he lifted his head with a subtle flutter to one of his ears, slowly accepting one of the finished pouches they made together– the midnight blue one. 

Sliding off of her barstool, Y/N delivered a pastel pink pouch to Seokjin, who was still gawking at her unabashedly. He cradled the pouch in a cupped hand, mouth dropped open like he wanted to say something. 

“Okay, just so we’re clear, you’ll seek me out before you feel any pain?” Y/N confirmed, siding up next to Yoongi and nudging him with her hip playfully. Yoongi gripped the countertop he was holding onto tightly, shooting her a disbelieving look, nodding as she offered him his charm bag. Taking it from her, Yoongi tucked it safely into the pocket of his linen pants. 

“You two will do the same?” Y/N spun on her heel, eyeing Seokjin’s stiff posture and the way Taehyung avoided meeting her gaze. “As soon as you feel discomfort, I want you to come find me.”

“O-okay,” Seokjin murmured, fiddling with the strings on his pouch nervously. Taehyung offered her a weak thumbs-up, staring at Yoongi with widened eyes. Thinking she had done enough to assure them of her seriousness surrounding the topic, Y/N swung the five remaining pouches around in her fist lightly, ready to drop them off to the remaining hybrids and place her own somewhere safe. 

“I’m going to ferry these to the others! I’ll see you all in a bit, yeah?” Y/N called over her shoulder, smirking as she realized Seokjin and Taehyung were so shocked they forgot to shadow her all over the house, rooted to their seats. 

Humming a tune, Y/N skipped to her bedroom, carefully placing her own protection pouch on her vanity that she decided would eventually serve as her altar, once she cleared away some old perfume vials and dusty books. Ruffling her hair in the tarnished silver mirror, she giggled softly, vaguely delighted she was able to fluster the hybrids in the same way they had been doing to her since they started living with her. She knew it was perhaps a little petty for her to be enjoying the looks of total shock that blossomed over each of their faces; Yoongi’s fumbling for words, Taehyung dissolving into nervous laughter. In a way, though, it was thrilling– maybe she hadn’t totally lost her game. Further, she knew that the other hybrids elsewhere in the house could hear the conversation– so she didn’t have to worry about repeating herself. Instead, she could enjoy seeking them out momentarily, and watching them try to pretend they didn’t eavesdrop. 

In the mirror, a sparkly red glint reflected by the sun coming from the window washed over her face, Y/N spotted the source of the light by her nightstand. The ruby beads of Jeongguk’s rosary, still sitting in the spot she left it last. Jeongguk had been napping for about four hours, and Y/N wondered if he’d be up any time soon. She supposed she could simply walk upstairs and listen for any sign of life. She knew Hoseok and Jimin were likely still bathing, the pipes bringing water to the basement humming beneath her feet, and something told her Namjoon wouldn’t be keen on being disturbed quite yet. 

Shrugging, she scooped up the rosary, making her way to the staircase towards Jeongguk’s room. As she ascended the stairs, Y/N frowned at the state of the half-stripped wood, vowing to herself to finish up the job after she handed out all of the pouches. Restoring the house completely had never been more important to her, wanting it to be totally comfortable and fresh for the hybrids to relax in. 

Heaving herself up the last step, Y/N passed by Seokjin and Taehyung’s rooms, as well as the dimly lit music room that she curiously peered into. The piano had been wiped clean of dust, the record player dragged out from its wooden tomb and neatly placed on a stray antique table with vinyls strewn about the vicinity. Tracing her fingertips along the fraying wallpaper of the hallway, she followed the familiar path to one of the old tower rooms Jeongguk claimed as his own. 

To her surprise, Jeongguk’s door was left mostly ajar. Stopping dead in her tracks, Y/N listened for any sign of movement within his room, only hearing the gentle rustling of curtains from the window he had left open. Curiosity got the better of her as she peered into the room as best she could, inching into the very threshold of the room. 

The elk hybrid was in bed, comforter messily thrown over his lean form as he lay on his back, an arm thrown above his head. He was asleep, from what Y/N could tell, as he didn’t immediately curse her out of the room; his eyelashes resting gently against his high cheekbones, chest rising and falling slowly with rest. Unable to get a proper look at Jeongguk prior to that moment without him distancing himself from her, Y/N realized that Jeongguk also had a small set of tapered furry ears beneath his antlers. Chalking it up to the fact that the antlers were so strikingly show-stopping to begin with to even notice his ears, Y/N basked in the opportunity to really get a good look at the elk hybrid.

 It was astonishing just how angelic Jeongguk appeared while he was asleep. Y/N traced the inky lines of the tattoos along his bare forearm through the cracked door with her eyes, only feeling a little bit creepy as she stared at him while inching her way to his nightstand. Her plan was to simply leave the rosary and pouch beside Jeongguk for when he woke up, slipping from the room undetected. 

As silently as she could, she laid the rosary on top of his leatherbound notebook, selecting the maroon pouch she made to nestle beside it. She stole another look at Jeongguk, his hair swept off of his forehead, the labret threaded through his eyebrow perfectly visible without his bangs obscuring it. Biting her lip, wishing she could sincerely thank him for everything he had done the night before, Y/N began to tip-toe her way out of his room. Her breath caught in her throat, the sound choked, as a powerful hand gripped her wrist before she could remove herself from Jeongguk’s bedside. Whipping her head around, she was met with Jeongguk blearily blinking up at her, his fingers overlapping on themselves as they wrapped around Y/N’s wrist. 

“What are you doing?” Jeongguk’s sleep-riddled demand shot through her like a lightning bolt, temporarily forgetting he was restricting the blood flow in her left hand. Cringing that she had foolishly invaded his personal space so recklessly, Y/N began to sweat. 

“Fuck. I’m sorry– I wanted to return your rosary! And I made a protection charm, too, just wanted to drop it off… I’m so sorry I woke you,” Y/N exclaimed, feeling his grip relax at the sound of her voice, the blood rushing to her fingertips with a tingle. Humiliation flushed through her as he released her wrist, his eyes traveling her form from head to toe. 

“A charm bag?” Jeongguk clarified groggily, sitting up with great effort, “Judas priest– do you have Tylenol?” The elk hybrid pressed two fingers to his right temple, eyes squeezing shut. Y/N, her mouth hanging open, tried to ignore the way he bit at the silver hoop encircling his lip. 

“U-uh, yes! Tylenol? I’ll get that for you right now, hold on,” Y/N stumbled over her words, mentally locating the medical kit she had stowed away in the broom closet under the grand staircase. 

Again, before she could move, she was stopped, this time by the elk hybrid grasping the hem of her tee shirt making her stumble backwards. She toppled onto his bed, her ass making contact with the mattress as she let out a surprised oof. 

“Forget it. I’ll come down for some later, need to shower,” Jeongguk yawned, letting go of the fabric of Y/N’s shirt. Y/N wondered if he was delirious, tugging her down onto his bed and exchanging so many words with her, staring at Jeongguk’s sleepy face with bewilderment. “About that charm bag…”

“O-oh! Yeah, I just made it, Taehyung helped a little, too. If you keep it on you or in your space it should do a good job of warding away bad spirits,” Y/N explained, wanting to distance herself from Jeongguk’s proximity, able to make out some foreign words tattooed around his bicep. 

“Hm. Hope you made one for yourself,” Jeongguk muttered, pushing his quilt off of his legs. Scoffing, Y/N scrambled off of his bed with a scowl, ready to ditch him in favor of finding Hoseok. 

Chuckling at the look on her face, Jeongguk stood, stretching his arms over his head languidly. He was quite disheveled, his tee shirt crumpled and hair sticking up in several directions. Rounding the bed towards his bathroom, he shook his head at her with minor amusement, Y/N blanching as she realized his bottom half was only clad in a pair of boxers. She had to get out of that room, she concluded, making her way to the door as fast as possible. 

“Um, I gotta go give the rest of these out! Um, just find me later for the Tylenol!” Y/N called out, voice strained. 

Jeongguk, from his bathroom, grunted in acknowledgement, Y/N catching the reflection of his back in the full-length mirror as he pulled off his shirt while turning the shower on– a large tattoo covered most of the skin. Feeling like she saw entirely too much of the elk hybrid’s body, Y/N sped out of the room with her heart hammering around in her chest. 

Fumbling with the pouches in her hand, Y/N raced down the stairs to shake off whatever the hell had just happened. She couldn’t believe Jeongguk had just strolled past her with a smirk on his face in nothing but a flimsy tee shirt and boxers, not even waiting for her to leave the room before stripping for his shower. Spluttering as she nearly tumbled down the last step, Y/N attempted to compose herself, not wanting to appear scandalized; God forbid one of the others were traipsing through the hall at the same time. 

Y/N had an inkling Jeongguk had heard her discussing scenting with the three in the kitchen, the only logical conclusion she could come up with explaining his sudden cheeky behavior. Starting to get the feeling that she wasn’t entirely prepared to get bitten by any of them, Y/N fanned herself on her way down to the basement. 

A fast-paced pop song pulsed through the speakers as Y/N reached the bottom of the stairs, furrowing her eyebrows in preparation for what she was about to witness– walking in on Hoseok working out would set her straight over the edge. Nervously, she rounded the corner, holding the remaining pouches behind her back and praying they could somehow protect her from the hybrids affecting her nerves. 

From where she was standing, she could get the entire view of the gym area with additional help from the large mirror covering one of the walls, a few stray dumbbells lying around and Hoseok’s bottle of water from earlier sitting on the weight bench. On the floor, sitting on a yoga mat cross-legged with his back turned to her, was Hoseok with his eyes shut. Knowing that Hoseok was aware of her presence, Y/N bravely stepped into the room, relieved he was fully clothed. 

“Whatcha doing?” Y/N perched herself on the seat of the stationary bike, grinning at the way Hoseok’s tail swished on the floor at the sound of her voice. Snorting, the fox hybrid cracked one eye open to glance at her sideways. 

“Meditating, or attempting to until I heard you coming down,” Hoseok replied, extending his legs into a straddle and melting his torso down to stretch his back and hips. 

“Sorry to interrupt,” Y/N chuckled, glad that he seemed to be faring better compared to earlier in the morning. “I didn’t know one could meditate to Lady Gaga.”

She felt like testing just how good Hoseok’s hearing was, tossing the purple pouch she selected for him in the air and catching it in her palm, watching one of his ears flutter as he continued to stretch his arms forward with his head down. Giggling, Y/N tossed it again, this time sending it sailing towards Hoseok, her laughter cut short as his hand flung out instantly to easily catch the pouch before it could hit him in the head. 

“Hey, are you messing with me?” Hoseok whined, sitting up straight and pouting at her. Curiously, he turned over the pouch in his hand, even giving it a little sniff as he raised it to his face. 

“Only a little,” Y/N sighed happily, before explaining to him what the pouch was. If Hoseok thought the concept of the protection charm was silly, which Y/N half expected him to, it didn’t show on his face. 

“So, what are your plans for the rest of the day?” Hoseok asked, lazily stretching his arms upwards as he stood, fumbling for his water bottle. “I might join Jimin in the sauna. He’s been in there forever, hopefully he hasn't passed out or anything.”

“Christ, he’s still in there? Shouldn’t we check on him?” Y/N jumped from her seat, alarmed. Hoseok waved her off, making his way towards the ajar pocket door of his room with a grimace. 

“He’s fine. I heard him go in and out a few times, he’s probably enjoying himself. Doubt he had a sauna when he was a cowboy,” Hoseok sang, sending her a wink. “I’m gonna change and head in there myself.” 

With that, Hoseok shut his door, the sound of his dresser opening and closing. Even with Hoseok brushing off her concern, Y/N found the worry that Jimin had passed out in the heat was still festering within her. Feet moving before she could process it, Y/N pushed the door to the large bathroom open, steamy air from the shower smacking her in the face. The bath and shower stall were empty, as well as the rest of the bathroom area, the sauna door shut tight. 

“Jimin?” Y/N squeaked, not necessarily wanting to barge in on him if he was perfectly okay. Y/N swore she could hear Hoseok’s laughter from his room, but shook it off as her imagination. 

With no answer, she crept further into the bathroom, the counters littered with Hoseok’s products from the drugstore. The mirror was fogged up, and checking the temperature dial on next to the sauna door, Y/N found that Jimin had really hiked it up. Panicking, she grasped the handle of the door with a gasp. 

“Ji–” Y/N began to exclaim, the door swinging open with a gust of hot air before she could finish. Stumbling backwards at the rush of heat clinging to her skin and clothes, she yelped, noticing a perfectly conscious Jimin standing in the doorway with a cocked brow. 

“You rang, Miss Y/N?” Jimin, his voice sounding relaxed, hands adjusting the towel tied around his waist. 

Wanting to die at the sight of Jimin’s very bare chest, the skin glistening with condensation and muscles corded and lean, she found her words were stuck in her throat. Hoseok, from the other room, was definitely laughing at her now, the sound like an annoying buzzing fly in her ear in the midst of her humiliation. 

“Oh my God! I’m sorry, I thought you passed out in here or something!” Y/N rushed out, resisting the urge to cover her eyes with a hand and bolt. Jimin’s honeyed hair was slicked back, a few strands sticking to the sculpted side of his face, a rough chuckle coming from him as he processed her reaction. 

“Jimin, she has something for you,” Hoseok appeared in the doorway with a cat-ate-the-canary grin, in a similar state of undress. Feeling the walls close in on her as both half-naked hybrids stared at her expectantly, Y/N had no doubt they could hear her heart trying to break free from her ribcage. “Don’t you, darling?”

“Hoseok, please,” Y/N scolded, somewhat patronized but mostly turning to mush. “Here, Jimin. This one’s for you,” keeping her hand steady, Y/N passed one of the remaining charm bags, the fuschia one, to the coyote hybrid.

One strong hand on his towel, the other extended, Jimin took the pouch cautiously, his yellow eyes flashing from her to Hoseok. The fox hybrid began to whistle, brushing past Y/N to head into the sauna, giving Jimin a pat on his shoulder. Overwhelmed, Y/N felt out of place all at once, Hoseok’s bare lean back disappearing from her view as he settled on one of the benches in the sauna. 

“This is your protection ‘charm’ I’ve been hearing about?” Jimin inquired, leaning his hip against the sink vanity as he shook the bag gently. A drop of sweat rolled down from the nape of his neck to pool in the dip of his collarbone, Y/N’s mouth drying up at the sight of it.

“It is. I better get used to that excellent hearing you all have… pretty soon there’ll be no secrets in this house!” Y/N nervously joked, averting her eyes from Jimin’s body before she combusted. Again, Jimin throatily chuckled, wiping the dewy skin of his forehead with his free hand. 

“Isn’t that a good thing? Secrets can be hard to keep track of,” Jimin mused, finding a clean towel to wipe down his damp skin with a wry grin. “Thank you, by the way, Miss Y/N.”

“O-oh. Don’t thank me, I mean– you heard me, I suppose. It’s my job to protect you all, now,” Y/N watched Jimin make his way to the shower, a neatly folded pile of his clothes beside it. She wondered if now would be a good time to escape, and catch a few moments to collect herself. 

“Mm-hmm, I heard…” Jimin responded distractedly, frowning at the pile of crumpled towels on the floor Hoseok likely left there. “Though respectfully, Miss Y/N, you did adopt several predatory male hybrids. I think we’re better suited to protect,” Jimin scratched his chin, turning the dial of the shower on. 

Y/N knew Jimin, ever the polite gentleman, didn’t mean the comment as a confrontational statement, but she grumbled nonetheless. Balling her hands into fists, she stood her ground. 

“Okay, fair. That doesn’t mean I can’t try to do the same,” Y/N insisted, realizing that Jimin also had a tattoo across the left side of his ribcage, too dazzled to notice it earlier. It was script; reading Nevermind. “Not to change the subject, but I wanted to ask you something. I’ve been meaning to take you all on a walk around the grounds, and I think it would be nice to do that later. Would you be up for that? I’ll take you to check out the old stable.” 

“I’d like that. I’ll freshen up and find you later, how does that sound?” Jimin grinned, Y/N elated that she could finally make good on a promise she had made ages ago. Feeling like it was the perfect time to take her leave, Y/N headed for the door. 

“Wonderful! Thanks, Jimin!” Y/N called, although unsure of what she was thanking him for. With that, she barreled up the stairs, ready to take her frustration out on stripping the rest of the staircase. 

For safekeeping, Y/N slipped Namjoon’s charm bag into the pocket of her leggings, rummaging through the closet under the staircase for the scraper. Pausing, she spotted the medical kit, retrieving the bottle of Tylenol for Jeongguk and placing it on the table by Namjoon’s shut bedroom door. 

Y/N got to work quickly, settling herself on the landing and scraping up the hideous varnish vigorously, as if to clear her mind of the scandalous images she had in her brain of Jeongguk, Jimin and Hoseok she had haunting her inner eye. Wondering where her portable speaker had ended up, Y/N settled for humming to herself, wishing that Yoongi was in the music room playing the piano while she worked. Losing herself in the mind-numbing task, Y/N felt herself begin to calm down from all that had happened that morning and the night before. 

Y/N didn’t see much of the hybrids until late in the afternoon just before twilight, besides Jimin, who had come up from the basement to head to his bedroom for a quick nap. She had to shoo him away, as he had offered to help strip the staircase with her, but Y/N could tell Jimin needed a good rest, his eyes nearly shut when he came up from his shower. Finally, she had completed her task with the staircase, deciding to seal everything nicely with a proper finish the following day so the entryway would look nice for the upcoming cookout. 

Every so often, Y/N peeked at Namjoon’s door; he hadn’t come out once to eat anything the entire day. A bit salty, especially considering he had all but demanded her to eat that morning, Y/N grumbled, hauling herself off the bottom step of the staircase and tossing the scraper into the closet. Gunshot sounds from the TV from the parlor made her jump– Yoongi, Seokjin, and Taehyung had been in there for a good portion of the day watching action movies. Judging from the dialogue, it seemed that they had gotten their hands on her John Wick DVD collection. 

Creaking of the steps behind her had her spinning on her heels, pleased to see Jeongguk making his way downstairs already in his pajamas. Trying not to giggle at how cuddly he looked, his hair fluffy from his shower, Y/N smiled brightly at the elk hybrid. Regarding her suspiciously, He leaned his hip against the banister before descending the last two steps. 

“What?” Jeongguk demanded, although not rudely. Grasping the bottle of Tylenol, Y/N passed it his way, grinning further as he caught it without hesitation. With furrowed brows, he examined the bottle, realization dawned on him. 

“Oh shit, I forgot I asked for these… I was just going to have a stiff drink instead,” Jeongguk admitted, unscrewing the top and tossing two capsules into his mouth. Grimacing as he swallowed them dry, Y/N winced, knowing there was no way she could ever swallow capsules like that without any water to chase them down. 

“What’s for dinner?” Jeongguk asked, once Y/N tucked the bottle of pills back into the medical kit. Flinching at the sound of his voice so close to her, Y/N sighed, not exactly sure what to make at all. 

“Good question. Anything you want in particular?” Y/N retorted, hoping he wouldn’t detect her obvious deflection towards making a decision. Jeongguk appeared startled by the question, his features settling quickly into contemplation. 

“Pizza?” Jeongguk volunteered, Y/N rejoicing in the fact that he selected something she could have delivered. Nodding fervently, Y/N was rewarded with the tiniest half-smile from the elk hybrid. 

“Miss Y/N,” Jimin appeared from behind Jeongguk’s shoulder, looking much more revived in energy after his nap. Rolling his eyes, Jeongguk stepped to the side. “Should we go for that walk before it gets dark?”

“Jimin, when are you going to drop ‘Miss’ from your vocabulary? You sound like a butler,” Jeongguk complained, an insulted expression shadowing Jimin’s face immediately. Without thinking, Y/N lightly swatted Jeongguk’s forearm, the elk hybrid swearing and staring at her with utter shock. 

“Knock it off, he’s fine,” Y/N scolded, eyeing Jeongguk reproachfully. “We can go now! Jeongguk, why don’t you come with us? You can do your perimeter walk or whatever it is you like to do out there.”

“Perimeter walk?” Jeongguk enunciated, Y/N enjoying the shock coloring his handsome features. “Unbelievable,” he breathed, frowning at Jimin’s soft snickering from behind him. 

“How about you two wait for me on the patio for a moment. I’d like to invite Namjoon, too. It’s been a while since I’ve seen him last,” Y/N gestured towards the kitchen, watching the two hybrids go, Jeongguk muttering about having a smoke. Y/N had half a mind to buy him a box of nicotine gum. 

Steeling herself, Y/N marched to Namjoon’s door, knocking softly. She knew that Namjoon had been aware of her presence in the hallway, subjected to her incessant humming for the past few hours. 

“Come in,” came Namjoon’s muffled gruff voice through the door, Y/N pushing her way in awkwardly. He was hunched over her old desk, the little lamp on the surface illuminating his tired face and ruffled silvery hair. 

Hesitantly moving further into the room, Y/N stood beside him, taking a look at the open book he was still scanning, hardly looking up at her. Namjoon had found some old parchment to scribble notes on with shockingly beautiful handwriting, a couple of crumpled up pages scattered around the desk. 

“How are your theories faring?” Y/N questioned, peering over his shoulder curiously. He had her book of spirits open, poring over a page about shadow people. Namjoon pulled a hand through his hair, sighing deeply as he craned his neck up to look at her. 

“They’re crumbling. I’m starting to think I’ll need more information about how the spirit got here, in the first place, in order to get anywhere,” Namjoon confessed, pinching the bridge of his nose delicately. 

“I think I can fill you in, at least a little bit…” Y/N answered, her guilt from earlier returning with his comment. “You’ve been cooped up in here all day. I’m about to take a walk around the backyard with Jimin and Jeongguk, why don’t you come with us? I’ll do my best to answer any questions you might have.” 

As usual, Namjoon searched her eyes like he was trying to find something he could dissect and understand, the amber honey color of his irises striking and oh-so-familiar to Y/N. She found it was easy to lose track of time and space locking eyes with the wolf hybrid, forgetting she was waiting for his response. Namjoon pushed the chair back so he could get to his feet, shaking out his legs. 

“Alright, let’s go then,” Namjoon said simply, switching off the desk light. “I’ve run into another dead end, anyways.”

Satisfied that Namjoon had agreed to join her, Y/N hurried to keep up with his strides towards the kitchen. Curiosity still pooled within her regarding Namjoon’s apparent experience with things surrounding the supernatural, though she still hadn’t gathered the courage to ask him about it. Really, there was not much she knew about the wolf hybrid at all, even less so than all of the others, which only increased her curiosity tenfold. 

Ushering Namjoon out to the patio, Y/N told him to wait there with the other two patiently sitting on the lounge chairs, rushing into the parlor to tap out pizza preferences on her phone with the input of those still preoccupied with the John Wick films. Luckily enough, Hoseok had snuck into the parlor while she had been in Namjoon’s bedroom, so she was able to take everyone’s requests down without a problem. 

“Alright, shall we?” Y/N chirped, shutting the slider door behind her, taking a deep breathful of the warm August air as she stepped outside. Jeongguk stubbed out his cigarette in the standing ashtray, still grumbling like he was when Y/N scolded him. 

Namjoon and Jimin flanking her either side, Jeongguk trailing closely behind, Y/N followed the beaten-down grass path towards the hedges past the picnic table. While the late afternoon was beginning to cool down, it was the perfect weather to go for a nice stroll outside, crickets singing and gentle breeze rustling the leaves on the willow trees. The grounds were quite untamed, due to being neglected by both her aging grandparents and Y/N herself preoccupied with her former work schedule, but still retained a sort of magical charm the land always possessed. 

“By spring, I’m hoping I can get some of this brush under control, maybe build a garden and fix up that old guesthouse and make it into some sort of fort. That way, we can all spend more time outdoors comfortably,” Y/N thought aloud, bringing the three hybrids past a maze of hedges towards the edge of the glassy pond. 

At the edge of the pond was the ‘guesthouse’, which was originally some kind of storage house in the heyday of the estate, converted by her grandparents into a three-room space for their grandchildren to spend time away from the adults during holiday get-togethers. Like the main home, it had some work that needed to be done on it, and Y/N couldn’t even remember where the key had gone to gain entry to the space. As she gazed at the round structure, akin to an enclosed gazebo, she envisioned it as a place to have movie nights with the hybrids during the summer months. 

Pausing at the pond, Y/N watched Jimin skip a rock across the mirrored surface of the water, enjoying how peaceful the backyard was. Jeongguk, as she expected, had wandered off on his own, already on the opposite side of the pond, sticking his face into one of the windows of the guesthouse. 

“So, about those gaps you can allegedly fill in?” Namjoon murmured, interrupting Y/N soaking up the moment. Gazing upwards, she was met with Namjoon watching Jimin with narrowed eyes, excellent at appearing nonchalant though the eager edge to his tone gave him away pretty clearly. 

“Right. Ever the forward one, aren’t you,” Y/N teased, motioning for him to follow her as she began to walk the perimeter of the pond while Namjoon rolled his eyes. “You’re already aware that I practice witchcraft, so does my mother. You also seem to know my mother pretty well, so I can only assume you’ve become familiar with how uh… easy-going she can be?” 

Namjoon made a noise of confirmation, urging her to get to the point. 

“She taught me most of what I know about the craft. As a child, it was whimsical, easy charms and harmless glamor magic. Of course, a child becomes an edgy teenager… Well, I wanted more. My mother tended to skirt around spirit work and more aggressive forms of magic, and I guess I wanted to test out what I could do as I got older and didn’t think that I needed to hold her hand anymore,” Y/N brushed her fingers against the soft leaves of one of the hedges beside her, Namjoon silent while he listened. 

“When I was sixteen, I came out here and performed a ritual. Honestly, I can’t remember the exact ritual I conducted, but I know it was to increase psychic power for myself. The ritual required calling upon spirits, ones I had never heard of before. Doing spellwork with my mother, we often called upon angels or our own personal spirit guides, even ancestors– never ones that we were unfamiliar with. I guess it was part greed, part the thrill of the unknown, that motivated me to go through with the ritual, but that’s where it all started. After that ritual, these horrifying recurring nightmares began, and I saw glimpses of the entity everywhere I went,” Y/N explained, finding it pretty easy to lay her cards on the table with her eyes trained on the beaten-down grass. 

“So, you packed up everything regarding your practice in hopes that the entity would leave you alone?” Namjoon mused after a few moments, taking his time to process the new information Y/N offered. Sneaking a peek at the wolf hybrid, she found he was staring right at her intently. Blushing, Y/N nodded, tearing her eyes from his.

“Exactly that. Not a very wise plan, in hindsight, but for a while it actually worked. The nightmares stopped, and I didn’t feel like I’d catch the reflection of the entity in every mirror I looked into. It wasn’t until a few days ago when I had another nightmare and saw it in my bathroom; I have a theory as to why,” Y/N felt Jimin at her side again, the three of them making their way to the elk hybrid waiting by the bridge behind the guesthouse. 

“And what’s that?” Namjoon urged, his ears perking up in her direction. 

“The entity appeared to me as an old hag… It never really liked when I’d bring friends around, I believe it wanted me to feel isolated. I think when I adopted you all, that life-changing event triggered a possessive response, and the activity resumed,” Y/N waited for Jeongguk to join them when they reached the bridge at the edge of the overgrown shrubs, carrying them across a brook and into the flattened area of land with the stable in the distance. 

“It was a nasty old hag alright,” Jeongguk commented, kicking a rock off of the bridge and into the brook with a grimace. “I don’t know, I’m starting to think maybe it was demonic.”

From beside her, Namjoon scoffed, moving aside so Jimin could get by him and excitedly make his way to the stable, tail swishing quickly as he went. 

“What, wolf? It’s not like you’ve produced any of your ‘theories’ for us to pick apart yet,” Jeongguk made air quotes with two tattooed fingers, leaning over the railing of the bridge. “At least you weren’t totally useless in trying to get rid of it, I can admit to that much.”

“If it was a demon, I doubt we’d be going on an evening stroll right now. Even with the two of us, demonic entities are not easy to banish; and it isn’t like you’re a priest,” Namjoon sounded irritated, his beautiful face twisting into disdain. 

“You don’t have to be a fucking priest to get rid of a demon, wolf,” Jeongguk groaned, producing a cigarette from behind his ear. Y/N was surprised he even had any left, at the rate he smoked. Cupping his hands to light it, Jeongguk continued with his voice somewhat muffled, “What else could it be? Not a shadow person, as it had a distinct form, which also rules out the possibility of a poltergeist. Human spirits don’t have the kind of energy to cause that amount of activity. Are you thinking it was a genie or some shit?”

Insulted, Namjoon growled beside Y/N, his fingers brushing her wrist as he curled them into a fist. Cursing under her breath, both hybrids eyeing her as she did so, Y/N prayed she didn’t have to break up a brawl, especially with Jimin several yards away placidly gazing at the crooked weathervane atop the stable roof. 

“I don’t think you have the slightest idea about all of the things that are out there,” Namjoon bit, jaw tense with annoyance. “Just because you ran around with some sort of ghost-hunting crew, doesn’t mean you’ve got it all figured out.”

“Never claimed that I did,” Jeongguk retorted, though seemingly backing down once assessing how pissed the wolf hybrid had become. “I just think you should entertain the possibility that it was a fucking demon, instead of tearing through books until your eyes bleed.”

“Hey, can we just dial it down with the hostility here? You two worked so well together to banish whatever it was from the house, can’t you focus on that for a moment or two instead of bickering like a couple of middle schoolers?” Y/N placed her hands on her hips, frowning at the two of them like a disappointed teacher. Jeongguk, rolling his eyes, blew cigarette smoke in Namjoon’s direction, the wolf hybrid too busy to register the action by staring down at Y/N with astonishment. 

“Let’s go join Jimin. I gotta call in the pizza in a minute, too, so tell me what you want while we walk– you can sort this out later, in a civil manner,” Y/N added, fed up with the petty arguments. 

Really, she had little interest in finding out what exactly was haunting her in the first place; she was just glad it was gone. Truthfully, while Namjoon and Jeongguk were discussing it out in the backyard like that, Y/N began to feel paranoid it would return, which in consequence made her eager to change the subject. Besides, she had promised Jimin a pleasant walk around the grounds, not one rife with tension, occultish conversation subject matter, and bickering. Marching away from the two on the bridge, Y/N sought out the coyote hybrid, who was ambling into the stable’s open door. 

Sheepishly, Jeongguk and Namjoon followed behind her with the sound of their sneakers squelching against the soggy grass. They reluctantly gave up their pizza topping preferences, Y/N shooting them the occasional expectant look from over her shoulder. Realizing with a jolt that she hadn’t walked that far back through the grounds in quite some time, Y/N stood before the old stable wistfully. 

It wasn’t in horrible condition, just a tad rickety in some places of the structure, a peeling and weathered chicken coop attached to the side of the stable itself. The actual fenced-in pen to exercise horses if she had them was actually in worse condition than the stable; the wooden stakes making up the circular area crumbling and overgrown with moss, several prickly weeds poking up from the beaten-down dirt within the pen. When she entered the stable in search of Jimin, she was greeted with a damp hay scent coming from every direction, though the stalls for the horses were swept out completely. She spotted Jimin at the far-back wall, gazing up at the mounted saddles and reins absently. Approaching him slowly, she watched the coyote hybrid carefully take a rein into his hand, his thumb brushing over the worn leather with reverence. 

“This is the longest I’ve ever gone without riding,” Jimin murumed to her, releasing the rein hanging from the wall and turning to get a wider view of the stable. “The stable at Yellowstone ranch was a lot different from this one; of course, it had to accommodate dozens of horses, ranch equipment. But still, it brings me back.”

“Do you miss the ranch?” Y/N asked quietly, saddened that Jimin seemed so far away. With a sharp intake of breath, Jimin paused before shaking his head. 

“It was my home for my whole life, but I dreamed of seeing the world, meeting new people– it started to feel like a cage, being there. There’s parts I miss, my friends, riding, the wilderness. But I left for a reason, so I don’t have any regrets,” Jimin explained slowly, taking time to sort out his thoughts while he circled the stable. Processing his words, Y/N kept an eye on Namjoon and Jeongguk through the open door, the pair leaning against the pen, having a hushed conversation. 

“You know, Miss Y/N, I can help you repair the stable, and with maintaining the landscape. I’m sure Taehyung would be happy to pitch in, as well. He fixed the window in your bathroom, when we noticed it was bringing in a draft last night,” Jimin suddenly mused, a twinkle of excitement in his eyes as they stood by the rickety stable door. 

“I thought that might have been him,” Y/N hummed fondly, already missing the Kodiak hybrid though she had seen him not even an hour ago, lounging on the recliner lazily. “Jimin, I’d love that– honestly, I wouldn’t know where to start here. Having your expertise would put me at ease when I think about restoring something I know so little about.”

“If you have equipment, maybe a lawn mower, hedge clippers, I could start clearing stuff away as soon as tomorrow. Perhaps we should wait until spring to work on the stable?” Jimin pondered excitedly, citrine eyes roaming rapidly over the fauna of the backyard. 

The equipment Jimin was referring to was left untouched in the garage, Y/N always too nervous to figure out how to operate the ride-on mower. There was a large part of her that wanted to tell Jimin not to worry about it, but as he continued to chatter on about perhaps putting a flower bed in one spot, a garden bed in another, Y/N realized that he was genuinely enthralled by the possibility of spending time outdoors. It made sense, since Jimin spent most of his life in the wilderness– being inside all day was probably a nuisance to him. 

“Autumn here is typically pretty mild. There doesn’t seem to be too much we have to do to the stable, so we could definitely work on it before the winter. Now that I think about it more, if we can get it functional again, people could board their horses here for the winter. It could be another helpful source of income now that there’s so many of us…” Y/N thought aloud, making a plan in her head to contact the grandchildren of some of her grandmother’s friends and see if they’d be interested in boarding their horses there. 

With her words, Jimin grew even more eager, stars in his eyes as he considered the possibility of being able to work with horses again. With the look on his face, Y/N nearly squealed with glee. She never thought making the hybrids happy would bring her an equal amount of joy, if not even more. Jimin pulled out his phone from the back pocket of his jeans, tapping out a bulleted list of tasks to complete as he began to walk through the stable again. Glowing as she watched Jimin smile to himself, Y/N fumbled for her own phone once she realized the sun was starting to set so she could order dinner. 

As the line rang in her ear, Y/N returned to Namjoon and Jeongguk, the two of them examining Jimin’s pacing back and forth in front of the stable. Thankfully, during her conversation with Jimin, the other two hadn’t ripped each other’s throats out. 

“Sal’s, what do you need?” The raspy-voiced Italian woman working the counter at her favorite pizza place answered the phone, the sound of it as familiar as breathing. 

“Angie, it’s Y/N. Can I place a take-out order?” Y/N replied, putting her finger up as Namjoon attempted to speak to her. Namjoon’s mouth flattened into a line at the action. 

“Y/N! Didn’t hear from you this weekend, I almost sent Anthony in the delivery van to check for a pulse! Go ahead hun,” Angie guffawed, Y/N snorting at the thought of Anthony, the seventeen-year old grandson of the owner, pounding on her door to see if she was alive. She did order pizza most weekends. 

“I’ll have a large cheese, large pepperoni. One medium veggie, a small BBQ chicken, a small Hawaiian. Can you throw in a couple of the garden salads, too, please?” 

“Having a party or something?” Angie exclaimed in between shouting the order back to Sal and Sal Jr. in the kitchen. Jeongguk was waving in front of her face with urgency, Y/N mouthing ‘what’ with mild annoyance. 

“The wolf wanted mozzarella sticks!” Jeongguk all but shouted, peeved that she was ignoring the two of them. Eyes shifting to Namjoon, he was shooting Jeongguk a dirty look, though his turned-down ears gave him away. Chuckling, Y/N gave him a thumbs up, interrupting Angie’s shouting into the kitchen. 

“Ang, can I also get the large order of mozzarella sticks as well?” Y/N wondered if they could possibly finish all of that food, but with the way they had all devoured the rice bowls the previous night, she wanted to err on the side of having more than enough for everyone. 

“You got it, hun,” Y/N could hear Sal’s muffled voice through the receiver, Angie yelling back in Italian. “Sal’s sending you a tray of tiramisu for the size of the order on the house. Anthony will be there in half an hour.”

Before Y/N could thank her, Angie hung up, likely to answer another call coming in. Her stomach growled right on cue as she thought of diving into the order of mozzarella sticks she hadn’t ordered in quite some time. Y/N smiled at the two hybrids in front of her, still fuming that she hadn’t given them her undivided attention during the phone call. 

“We should head in. It’s going to get dark soon, and I have to replace the in-ground lights,” Y/N sighed, able to make out the illuminated house from off in the distance. 

Though it was silly to admit to herself, she was already beginning to miss the others. Flagging Jimin down, Y/N jumped as a hand reached out to smack her bicep somewhat sharply, coughing out a choked ouch as she stared at Namjoon’s hand on her with shock. 

“Mosquito,” Namjoon immediately dropped his palm, brushing the bloody remains of the mosquito from his hand onto the grass as he bent towards the earth. 

“T-thanks. You just startled me, that’s all,” Y/N squeaked, still feeling the light sting of the strike. Jeongguk lifted his pierced brow at the wolf hybrid, tutting at him before heading back the way they had come by himself. 

Jimin by her side, he regarded Namjoon with minor aggravation, apparently having witnessed the whole exchange with the mosquito. Shaking it off, Y/N grew cheerful again, with pizza on the way and a new plan for more money to come in. She’d definitely need the cash, especially when the first credit card bill arrived for all of the hybrid’s charges the following month. 

“You’re from Montana, and worked at the Yellowstone ranch,” Namjoon suddenly directed his attention towards Jimin, both hybrids sandwiching her in between themselves snugly. Y/N grinned to herself, finding the interrogative way Namjoon phrased questions endearing. 

“Yes,” Jimin replied stiffly, as if preparing himself for another cowboy comment. 

“I lived in Wyoming, in the park. Close to Madison Junction,” Namjoon revealed, Y/N amazed that he was giving away some personal details. Jimin’s eyes widened in confusion. 

“You lived in the park? How could you possibly– You can’t just live in the park,” Jimin stuttered, stopping short once they reached the patio. Namjoon, apparently unwilling to share anything else, shrugged, opening the sliding door for Y/N to head inside. 

Swiftly, Namjoon sped into the kitchen behind Y/N, leaving Jimin looking like he was solving a complicated equation in his head. The coyote hybrid entered the kitchen shortly thereafter, breezing by Jeongguk at the island and mumbling something about retrieving the whiskey. 

“Hey, how was the walk?” Whipping her head around at the sound of Yoongi’s gravelly voice, he was leaning against the entrance into the kitchen from the parlor, his tail curling around the lip of the wall. 

“Hi Yoongi! It was really nice, Jimin and I were talking about plans to fix up the stable and the yard. It’ll be more pleasant to hang out back there once it’s a bit more, uh… manicured?” Y/N searched for the right word, gazing up at the ceiling. 

Yoongi squeezed his eyes shut, laughing silently at her choice of words, slinking into the kitchen gracefully. He had softened considerably compared to his sobered state earlier in the day, much to Y/N’s relief, his arm moving past her to reach for the wine glasses. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Namjoon uncorking a bottle of wine successfully, pride washing over her as he recalled the steps she’d shown him to use the corkscrew the night before. 

“Wine goes well with pizza,” Yoongi hummed from beside her, eyes narrowing in on something behind her. “Though you should be careful with the red. You’re a lightweight. You too, Namjoon.”

Both her and Namjoon scowled at the leopard hybrid, though Y/N could tell Yoongi was only half-serious in his teasing. As Namjoon poured a glass for her first, she felt Yoongi’s fingertips at the back of her head, her entire body locking up at the sensation of her hair being touched. Bewildered, she nearly dropped her glass of wine turning to look at the leopard hybrid. 

Yoongi smirked, pulling his hand from her hair, a brown maple leaf pinched between his long fingers presented in front of her face. He moved away from her all too quickly, following Namjoon around to get his own glass filled as the wolf hybrid ignored him spitefully after the lightweight comment. Under her nose, Jeongguk had left the room, likely in search of that ‘stiff cocktail’ he was referring to earlier. 

Sipping her wine, Y/N heard the familiar three-beat car honking, announcing Anthony’s arrival with the food. Skipping into the parlor, she spotted Jeongguk mixing up a gin cocktail by the bar cart and Jimin getting comfortable on the couch. Dropping her wine glass off on the coffee table and greeting Hoseok, Taehyung, and Seokjin fondly, she headed to the front door for the pizza with the Kodiak hybrid following close behind. He was avoiding her eyes, apparently still scandalized from the scenting conversation, though it was nice that he had resumed his habit of shadowing her. Swinging the front door open, Y/N barked out a laugh, Anthony standing on the porch almost completely obstructed from view with the stack of boxes in his arms. 

“Hey, Tony! I could have helped you make a couple of trips, strongman!” Y/N teased the teenager. Because she was a reliable regular of Sal’s, she had gotten to know all of the people working there pretty well, and treated Anthony like a younger brother.

“Aw, come on, Y/N! You know I started weight training for football months ago!” Anthony complained, his thick Boston accent heightening her amusement. 

Hurriedly, she rushed to take the foil tray of tiramisu, salad boxes, and the mozzarella sticks, revealing Anthony’s rounded face. Anthony grinned at her before spotting Taehyung, who hesitantly reached for the remaining boxes of pizza. Digging around in the pocket of her leggings for the cash she stuffed in there before the walk, she counted out twenties with one hand while Anthony relayed his anxieties about his senior year at the local high school. 

“So who’s this, Y/N? Your boyfriend?” Anthony asked as he placed the cash in the pouch strapped around his waist, eyeing Taehyung suspiciously. Heart slamming up into her throat, she shook her head vigorously. 

“O-oh! No, this is my friend, Tae,” Y/N explained nervously, thoroughly embarrassed and unable to even look at Taehyung beside her. Anthony’s face innocently cleared of any suspicion, offering Taehyung a smile. 

“Nice to meet you, Tae! Hope you’re going to the cookout Friday, I’ll be there with the rest of my family. It’s more fun when there’s lots of people,” Anthony extended one of his hands for a shake, Taehyung dazedly grasping the kid’s hand and shaking it robotically. 

“I’ll be there,” Taehyung murmured, the expression crossing his face one Y/N had never seen before; melancholic?

Anthony’s work phone clipped to his belt began to beep incessantly, the teen rolling his eyes at the sound. 

“I gotta fly. The Ramseys on the other side of town are going to want their calzones,” Anthony called over his shoulder, jogging back to the van he parked on the street. “See you Friday, Y/N, Tae!” 

Hurrying into the house, Y/N heard Taehyung shut the door tightly. The look that had crossed his face had vanished, replaced by the composed stoicism Taehyung intrinsically possessed. Biting her lip, Y/N slowly made her way down the hall towards the parlor, shifting into apology mode. 

“Sorry about that. I’m at this pizza place all the time, and I’ve grown pretty close to the family. That was Anthony, the owner’s grandson… he’s kind of like the younger brother I never had,” Y/N explained, Taehyung making a noise of acknowledgement softly. 

“Why are you apologizing? He was nice, I could tell he was just worried about you,” Taehyung returned, bending down a few inches to get a good look into her eyes. Startled, Y/N’s felt heat rise up her neck, the Kodiak hybrid closer to her than she was ready for. “You called me Tae again. I really like when you do that.”

With that, Taehyung flashed her a sweet smile, speeding off in front of her to drop the pizza boxes on the coffee table and leaving her reeling in the hallway. Moving slowly, Y/N entered the lively room, everyone already attacking the boxes like a bunch of wild animals, Yoongi and Jimin trying their best to establish some order. Dropping her own armful of takeout on the table, Y/N sunk to the floor by Hoseok’s feet by the couch. Slice of pizza in one hand, wine glass in the other, Y/N settled in to catch the middle of The Mummy that one of them had put on, enjoying the various conversations between the hybrids around her. 

Stuffed to the gills with tiramisu, Y/N sluggishly brushed her teeth in her bathroom after an evening of action films and way too much pizza. One of the highlights of the evening was the passionate argument about whether or not The Mummy was corny (it was) between Seokjin and Hoseok, Seokjin declaring it ‘epic’ and Hoseok lamenting its quality overall. She had to admit, it was corny, but she loved the film, the chemistry between the two leads undeniable and spellbinding. 

Ready to crash face-first into her pillow, Y/N yanked a comb through her hair, turning off the light in her bathroom without fear flooding through her for the first time in weeks. Changing into a light tank top and shorts pajama combination, Y/N could hear Jeongguk stomping around in his bedroom, the elk hybrid perhaps one gin cocktail over his limit. She wasn’t about to stop him from pouring them, even as he began to sing along to the soundtrack of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World during the tail-end of the movie marathon, as he was one of the primary reasons she could sleep with the lights off that night. For someone that looked like a member of a nu-metal band, Jeongguk had the voice of an angel. 

Considering she had taken it easy on the wine, not only because Yoongi and Hoseok were monitoring her intake, but because she didn’t want to be drunk if God forbid the entity returned and she would have to jump in and protect the others, she still felt woozy. Y/N knew that she was being paranoid, being somewhat convinced that the entity would return. It wasn’t like she didn’t trust Jeongguk and Namjoon in their confidence that it was gone and doubted their efforts, but because it had been haunting her for so long, it was hard to believe it was truly banished from her life. It was as if a huge weight had been lifted from her shoulders, the ability to move easier than it had been in ages. As Y/N went to toss her leggings in the hamper, she felt a lump in one of the pockets, furrowing her eyebrows. 

Mouth dropping open, Y/N fished out the forest green protection pouch she had made for Namjoon out of the pocket, internally scolding herself for not giving it to him earlier. Too preoccupied with the walk of the grounds, exciting movies and pizza, she totally forgot that he was the only one without a pouch, growing nervous. Because he was one of the two that performed the actual ‘mystery ritual’ that got rid of the entity, Namjoon having the pouch was a priority to her. Chewing at the inside of her cheek, she debated whether or not to simply drop by his room and hand it off if he was still awake, but it was pretty late and she felt funny about disturbing him at that hour. 

She left the pouch on her nightstand, clambering onto her bed with a groan. Her limbs were aching; she had a full day considering the disturbed sleep she had gotten the night prior. While she physically felt bone-tired, her brain was going a million miles per minute, trying to process every single interaction she had with each hybrid during the day. Embarrassingly enough, she felt that she hadn’t seen nearly enough of Seokjin, who kept a bit of a distance from her since the discussion between herself, him, Yoongi and Taehyung over breakfast. Her thoughts floated from Seokjin to Hoseok, the fox hybrid’s uncharacteristic clingy actions flooding into her mind. 

As she lounged over her made-up bed, she recalled how lax Hoseok became in her embrace that morning, comparing it to the way Taehyung had arched his spine into her hand when she soothed her hand down his back. Most of the hybrids had begun to seek out physical touch with her, apart from Jeongguk, who tended to keep his space. Even then, when she had tiptoed into his bedroom, Y/N could swear she could still feel the strong grip of his hand wrapped around her wrist, hours later. 

Running a hand through her hair, Y/N took a deep breath once she realized her heart began to race once more. At this rate, she thought, she would suffer from a heart attack. She couldn’t wait to see Laura and Alice at the cookout, perhaps whisking them out of earshot to describe the kinds of emotions that had begun to blossom within her. It had been a long time since Y/N had felt frazzled in that way, and she knew Laura and Alice would be able to offer her a little bit of insight once they met the hybrids. 

Y/N’s thoughts were interrupted by rapt knocking at her bedroom door, her features pulling into confusion as she hauled herself off of her bed. She couldn’t guess who would be on the other side of the door as she grasped the handle, hoping that whoever it was didn’t have a paranormal sighting. 

Pulling the heavy door open, Y/N allowed her eyes to adjust to the low lighting of the hallway after being used to the lamplight of her bedroom. Before her was Namjoon, dressed in his sleepwear and hair mussed as if he’d been pulling at it. Swallowing thickly as she searched his face for signs of distress, she found unsurprisingly that his emotions were difficult to decipher. 

“What’s up? Are you okay?” Y/N whispered, trying her best not to disturb the others in the household. Namjoon pressed a palm to his face, his body language stiffer than usual. 

“No, I’m not,” Namjoon admitted roughly, his eyes looking more dangerous than ever. Shifting from one foot to another with anxiety, Y/N began to panic that the entity had returned, assessing the dewy sweat that was accumulating across his forehead. 

“What’s wrong, Namjoon?” Y/N all but begged, hating the expression of thinly veiled discomfort settling over the wolf hybrid’s entire form. 

“I– I have to…” Namjoon pushed his way past her bedroom door, making Y/N stumble backwards towards the foot of her bed as he towered over her. “I can’t push it d-down. My head’s splitting.”

Her breath quickening, Namjoon continued to stalk towards Y/N in a predatory manner until her ass hit her mattress, her knees buckling as she landed on the soft surface. Gulping, her mind began to go to several different places; Namjoon’s profile on the database, Laura and Alice’s concerns, scenting. Namjoon appeared possessed, his constant restraint absent as he kneeled on the floor before her, eyebrows pinched in pain. Skin burning as he grasped one of her knees, Y/N gasped at the contact of his strong hand on her bare flesh, unable to break away from the way his eyes had turned devilish. 

“N-namjoon, what are you–?” Y/N breathed, the wolf hybrid shuddering as she said his name, halting her from speaking further by bringing his face inches away from hers. 

“Have to. I need…” Namjoon slurred, his eyes dropping down to the exposed skin of her throat. His grip on her knee tightened, his fingernails digging into the flesh sharply, the situation suddenly dawning on Y/N completely. 

“O-okay, Namjoon, it’s okay. Do what you need to do,” Y/N encouraged shakily, stunned that the night had taken such a turn, and all too curious to find out what scenting was like. 

While she was expecting one of them to initiate what was about to happen soon, her near last guess as to who was first to do so was Namjoon. Upon hearing the words that left her mouth, Namjoon growled from the back of his throat, using his free hand to wrap around the nape of her neck and yank her forward. Bracing herself against his strong shoulders by instinct, Y/N squeezed her eyes shut, feeling Namjoon’s hot breath against the junction of her throat and collarbone. She heard the wolf hybrid inhale deeply, his body trembling under her fingertips with the heady scent that spilled from her neck. 

“S-shit,” Namjoon groaned, the hand around the back of her neck growing firmer and the other traveling from her knee to the small of her waist to bring her closer to him, Y/N’s torso going flush with his own. Namjoon’s heart was practically beating out of his chest, Y/N’s hands migrating downwards from his shoulders to his biceps as her breath began to come out in tiny gasps. “'S’gonna hurt, I’m s-sorry.”

Curling her fingertips into the thick muscles of Namjoon’s biceps, Y/N felt the eager press of Namjoon’s plush lips to the sensitive skin of her throat, a quick flick of his tongue tasting the flesh. Before she could process the jolting sensation, Namjoon bared his teeth, the two pointed incisors nicking the thin skin before sinking into it like a hot knife through butter. The pain was sharp, intense, Y/N yelping as her fingernails dug into Namjoon’s arms, the wolf hybrid stiffening as he latched onto her.

As quick as the pain came, a euphoric numbing sensation replaced it even with his teeth still in her neck, her body growing slack in his grip as her blood flowed into Namjoon’s mouth. A whine came through her throat involuntarily, Namjoon’s teeth pulling from her flesh swiftly. Replacing his teeth came the heavy drag of his tongue laving over the punctures thoroughly, the action clearing every thought from Y/N’s mind. With the action of his tongue soothing the wound, Namjoon’s muscles began to relax under Y/N’s hold significantly. So this is scenting, Y/N thought dazedly, completely bewildered. 

With a final brush of his full lips over the site of the mark, Namjoon reluctantly pulled away from her neck, coming eye-level with her. Y/N giggled stupidly, feeling lightheaded as Namjoon rose from his knees, both arms curling around her waist gently to lift her from her seated position. Carefully, Namjoon shifted her weight to one arm, using the other to draw back her quilt and bed sheets, lowering her down onto the mattress gingerly. After covering her quaking body with the quilt, Y/N already missing the heat that radiated off of the wolf hybrid, Namjoon bent over the bed, pushing hair off of her forehead softly. 

“Are you okay?” Namjoon whispered, seeming more at ease than Y/N ever remembered him to be. All signs of distress had melted from his features, an air of relief clinging to him strongly as he stared down at her.

Trying to nod weakly, Y/N watched a strange smile dance across Namjoon’s face, a drop of her blood still clinging to his bottom lip. Tiredly, Y/N reached up, swiping her thumb against his lip, collecting the drop and letting her hand fall limply, Namjoon’s pupils blown wide. Pulling away from her proximity, Namjoon reached to switch off her nightstand lamp. 

“Wait! The charm… that one is yours,” Y/N mumbled, limblessly pointing to the pouch beside the lamp. Hand stilling, Namjoon scooped up the pouch, expression sobering.

“G’night, Namjoon,” Y/N murmured, her eyelids beginning to become heavy as she tracked his movements towards her bedroom door. She swore she heard a response, regretful that he couldn’t stay as she immediately fell into a dreamless sleep. 

The next day passed in a blur. Y/N was called away by her mother early Wednesday morning to spend the majority of the day taking her and her grandmother to brunch, the botanical garden, and then shopping at the plaza nearby. Y/N hadn’t left anyone in charge when she departed in the morning, though she eyed Yoongi in particular for leadership when she stressed to everyone to remain civil with one another as a handful of them saw her off in the foyer.

That morning, Y/N hardly remembered the events leading up to her falling asleep until she looked in the mirror while brushing her teeth– Namjoon’s mark left from his scenting appearing starkly in her reflection. Grateful for the blustery weather, Y/N covered the mark up with her large Ghost sweatshirt she picked up the last time the band was on tour, scrambling out of the door before any of the hybrids could suspect something awry. Namjoon was not one of the hybrids present upon seeing her off before her outing, much to her disappointment and surprise.

Throughout the day, she was comforted by the fact that she could stay in touch with the hybrids she had left at home through text. Jimin had sent her several articles on stable restoration, and Hoseok had asked how she had slept with several emojis. She found it odd, however, that her mother hardly asked her a single question about the hybrids, even with her grandmother out of earshot– concerning her for some small reason she could not place. 

As she trudged through a stuffy department store with her mother and grandmother, absently Y/N was comforted that her sleep was dreamless, free from the horrid nightmare that had plagued her since she had adopted the hybrids. Admittedly, she was nervous about leaving them behind, thoughts surrounding Jeongguk’s abrasiveness between everyone who met his eyes, everyone’s obvious avoidance towards Taehyung, and Hoseok’s fear of Namjoon in general, occupied most of the afternoon with her mother and grandmother. All that she could do was trust that they would get along until her return– they’d have to get used to it anyway, when she began her part-time job at Judy’s. 

Y/N expected herself to be more shaken up once she remembered how Namjoon had scented her the night before. Truthfully, she found herself feeling more at peace when she woke up than ever before, the hazy memory only coming back to her once she saw the bite in the mirror. In truth, the ritual was a lot less painful than she was expecting. If anything, the pain lasted for half a second, the agony immediately replaced with an addictive soothing effect; and the closeness of the situation was the most overwhelming sensation of all. 

With her eyes glazed over, Y/N stared at a cashmere sweater on a mannequin for several moments, trying to recreate in her mind how Namjoon had grasped the back of her neck with need, pulling her in by her waist into his proximity. She was totally unprepared for Namjoon to be the one to seek her out first, her whole body flushing from head to toe as his blissed-out expression filled her imagination. She was ripped from her reminiscing by her mother, asking her if she was feeding her hybrids a well-balanced diet. To her relief, her mother hadn’t brought up Namjoon, almost as if she sensed Y/N knew less about his situation than she did. 

She thanked the sky that her mother had spared her grandmother the information that Y/N had adopted the seven hybrids, once they dropped her off back at the house. Y/N knew that she’d have to tell her unnervingly brilliant grandmother the truth come Friday, but the fact that her mother allowed her to put it off until then came as an unexpected gift. As she heaved herself up the steps of the front porch, Y/N could hear several of the hybrid’s voices from the backyard, likely enjoying the first sunny day since they had arrived at the house. Her insides warming up, Y/N unlocked the front door hurriedly, eager to both join them and check to see if Namjoon was faring better than he had been when he knocked on her bedroom door the previous night. 

It was later in the afternoon, the house somewhat darkened as she let herself in. She could smell something spicy stewing away in the kitchen; likely Yoongi’s dinner menu. Kicking off her sneakers, Y/N yawned, a bit drained from having to explain to her grandmother three separate times why she had decided to leave her job at the animal hospital. From upstairs, she heard an object crash to the floor loudly, making her flinch a foot into the air. 

She was on the second floor before she knew it, eager to know what had caused the sound. If it was the hag spirit again, Y/N wanted to be the one to not only see it, but confront it as well. Heart racing, she tore through the common spaces, briefly peering into Yoongi, Jeongguk, and Taehyung’s rooms without so much of a clue as to what had fallen. Puzzled, Y/N frowned, pausing by the shut door of Seokjin’s room. Cautiously, she paused to listen for any further movement, but heard nothing. 

“Seokjin? Are you in there?” Y/N called, though she was fairly confident she heard his voice in the backyard when she was dropped off. In response came a pained groan, one most definitely coming from the jaguar hybrid as she had heard it once before. Unhesitatingly, Y/N shoved the door open, worried he had somehow injured himself. 

Beside the door to his bathroom, Seokjin had collapsed on his side, the wavy tips of his blue-black hair damp with sweat as he gasped for breath on the floor. Swearing colorfully, Y/N flew to his side, kneeling beside him and grasping one of his hands to squeeze securely. His cheeks were pink, gazing at her through heavily-lidded eyes. 

“Oh my God, Seokjin! What happened, honey?” Y/N panicked, using her free hand to cup the shape of his sweat-dewed cheek. 

Seokjin murmured something incoherently, his thick eyebrows pulled together in agony. Feeling an anxiety attack about to come on, Y/N moved her fingers down his cheek to check his pulse at the base of his throat, the jaguar’s eyes rolling back into his skull as she did so. Y/N could hardly count the beats per minute, his pulse was racing so quickly, sending her further into frenzy mode. 

“Seokjin! Can you hear me? Honey, hey, look at me,” Y/N pleaded, her hand returning to the side of his face. She knew she should try to get help from some of the others, but had no intention of leaving his side, a heavy moan tearing from his throat. “Seokjin!”

Her name forced its way out from between his teeth, his weak hold on her hand tightening a degree. Scanning his crumpled form for any obvious injuries but not able to detect one, Y/N swore once more. Beginning to hyperventilate, Y/N released his hand, using her arm to snake around his back and sit him upright, not knowing what else to do in that moment but cradle him close and try to calm both him and herself down. With his quivering body pressed close to her own, Y/N ran a hand down his back, feeling fever chills begin to rock through him. 

“Y-Y/N. Didn’t know it would h-happen so soon,” Seokjin miraculously choked out, Y/N stilling completely as he spoke. “You l-left, and I got s-sick…”

It crashed down onto her, realizing that Seokjin was experiencing what Namjoon had the night before, but his condition had worsened since she wasn’t around the entire day. Seokjin had likely gone throughout the entire day feeling the intense discomfort Namjoon had displayed the night prior, the delayed relief only making him feel feverish and weak. Feeling sick with guilt, Y/N pulled Seokjin’s face draped over her shoulder with two cupped hands, attempting to look him square in his clouded sunset eyes. 

“Seokjin, listen to me, I know you can hear me,” Y/N urged calmly, her anxiety dissipating now that she knew what was going on. “I’m here now.”

Gently, Y/N pushed Seokjin’s head into the crook of her neck, on the opposite side where Namjoon had left his mark. Seokjin’s body began to shiver more violently in her arms due to the concentration of her scent at the base of her throat, the jaguar hybrid making the first bone-chilling growl she had ever heard from him. The jaguar hybrid’s arms snaked around her body, pulling her into his lap securely. Holding onto his broad back for dear life, Y/N braced herself for the inevitable sting of his incisors piercing her flesh. 

The plump petals of Seokjin’s lips parted on her skin, searing the flesh as he mouthed at it mindlessly, before he sunk his teeth into her, Y/N grasping a fistful of his hair at the feeling, spots clouding her vision. While Seokjin was gentler than Namjoon even in his feverish delirion, Y/N was overwhelmed immediately, the high that came directly after the bite with the soft brush of Seokjin’s tongue over the bleeding flesh hurdling her over the threshold of consciousness, becoming completely limp in Seokjin’s arms. 

The predator closed in on its prey. 

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