#I will still my hand and finish this current wip first I will

[alchemocha]

(Looking at all my current wips) but what if I started a new project and learnt how to do basic animations

[kalmeria]

btw i originally read obbligato right after ariadne so if you are someone who has just read ariadne bc of the english release but havent read obbligato yet.. why not do it right now? come cry about tatsukana with me

[jjunieworld]

#WIP ⟢ THE SALT UNDER THE SEA ˒˒ 심재윤 ⨾ 박종성 ▸  part two of the player’s game series⌇playlist & series tag

the death of your grandma has you returning back to your mother’s seaside hometown—the same town you left jake in a year ago—for good. now that you’re back, so are the feelings you really desperately wished to leave behind. it doesn’t help that now you’re caught in the crossfire of two guys with a rough past who want to be with you.

pairing ‎⸝⸝⸝ sim jaeyun x reader, park jongseong x reader 𓄵 iηcℓudᥱs 𓈓 cousin jungwon, bestfriend!jay, player!sunghoon, and oc hana (jake’s ex)

genre﹙📓﹚⸝⸝⸝ exes to lovers, bestfriends to ???, angst, smut, fluff, lifeguard!jake, ex player!jake, bestfriend!jay, lifeguard!jay, lifeguarding inaccuracies, love triangle, slice of life, some h2o references, beach au, summer romance

warnings ‎⸝⸝⸝ if you didn’t like reader in the first part then you won’t like her in this one, reader’s grandma passing and mentions of reader’s dad passing, multiple unprotected sex scenes, soft dom!jake, mean dom!jay, toxicity, jayke constantly one-uping each other, arguing, semi-public sex, size training, corruption kink full smut tags in actual post . . . !

kipo’s note ‎⸝⸝⸝ this was a long time coming lmao i’m so so sorry to everyone who has been waiting (◞‸◟；) with my month long break and adjusting to writing again i’m finally ready to start working on this series again! this is my main priority so i will try to get it out as soon as i possibly can!! this post will be updated as i work on it! ^^ all feedback and asks on suggestions are welcome! ♡

release date ⸝⸝⸝ sept 20th, 2024 ⋆ progress updates here!

∿ [ teaser wc: 0.7k ] ∿ [ current wc: 26.1k ] ⋆ [ continue to . . . wips , masterlist ]

send an ask or reply to this post if you want to be tagged when finished! minors and ageless/blank blogs will not be tagged. please have a visible age. my permanent taglist will already be tagged!

⟢ READ HERE!

your heart beat fast as you looked out the plane window to your mother’s seaside hometown—your new home. there was no need for your mom to nudge you awake since you weren’t able to sleep for the entirety you were on the plane, the nerves were eating at you.

you never thought you’d be back here, never thought that you’d ever say goodbye to your own hometown—which was also your late father’s—but here you were.

when your mom told you that you’d be moving here permanently you didn’t know how to feel. one one hand, you understood your mom’s decision. it was just you and her out there miles away from your family and everything must’ve reminded her of your father. it reminded you of him too. on the other hand, you desperately wished she would change her mind.

it was enough seeing that one glimpse of jake nine months ago, but to see him over and over and over again? you didn’t think you could take it. he still texted you, even more now since, and you still haven’t answered. things between the two of you still remain unsaid.

but you also couldn’t help but count down the seconds until you laid your eyes on him again. it set your skin alight and you couldn’t help the small smile on your face and the giddiness you felt. was it selfish, yes, but after everything you think you’re finally ready to face him again.

to give your relationship another chance. to give him your heart again and not be fearful that he would break it, that he’d keep it guarded and safe. after all, he said he would wait for you.

and if he didn’t protect your heart, you’d pull back and it would be as if you never had anything to do with him again.

“y/n? are you listening?” you heard your mother’s voice call out. you snapped back to reality, blinking a couple of times to get your wits.

you were no longer on the plane. now you were lugging suitcases into your aunt’s house. your aunt was delighted to hear that you and your mom would be moving here. there was plenty of room in the house until the two of you got your own place.

“mhm,” you mumbled, though you definitely weren’t listening.

your mom sat the suitcase she was carrying in front of you and grabbed your shoulders. “is it that boy from last summer?” what was his name? jacob?”

“jake,” jungwon answered for you as he walked out the front door to grab more boxes.

your mom snapped her fingers. “jake! that’s it. listen, i know you had some problems moving here because of him, but use this as a way to put yourself out there more than last summer! there’s more wonderful people here than just jake.” she gave you a sympathetic smile and continued carrying stuff inside while you remained planted to the same spot in the driveway.

it wasn’t “just jake” that worried you. it was all of his friends and hana. you didn’t want another summer full of drama, especially if you and jake did start dating again.

getting all your boxes and suitcases into the house went quick and relatively easy. you decided on unpacking all of your things later, right now your mind was too clouded.

jake’s letter sat carefully in your anxious hands. you must’ve read it a million times over now and still you could barely wrap your head around it.

“two people who are meant to be will always find a way back to each other. and we are meant to be. no matter how long it takes, i’ll wait for you.”

it was now or never. you grabbed your phone and opened your messages up to your conversation with jake. his last message was from this morning, hoping that you had a good day today. he must not know that you’re back and for good. with a shaky sigh, you let your fingers move across the keyboard.

you: meet me at our spot.

⟢ READ HERE!

taglist 1﹙ OPEN! ﹚⸝⸝⸝ click here for series taglist! 🏷️ @jjunberry @gothgyuu @gyuuberries @beargyuuzz @kittyhyuka @dani-is-tired @riaawr @yeonjunsfox @nxzz-skz @rapmonie2047 @soobieboobiedoobiedaboobie @aaa-sia @jeonghaniehaee @todorokiskitten @onlyhyunjin @un06 @nenesz @branchrkive @dreamiestay @lilyuwon @ghstzzn @kaykay11sworld @kirinaa08 @cherlv @zl-world @cloud-lyy @sunpov @samouryed @immelissaaa @y4wnjunz @who-tf-soddhi @minaateez @jajenoric @lilactangerine @chaconadine @americanojake @in-somnias-world @bobaikeu @cupidscourt @inkigayocamman @nctsshoes2 @helenngxz @jakeswifez @usnve @tasnim10 @deobitifull @won4me @zeeloveshee

send an ask or reply to this post if you want to be tagged when finished! minors and ageless/blank blogs will not be tagged. please have a visible age. my permanent taglist will already be tagged!

∿ [ continue on to . . . masterlist , wips , taglist ] all feedback and asks on suggestions are welcome! ♡

© jjunieworld - all rights reserved. please do not repost on any social media sites, translate, or modify any of my works.

[lumi-nescentt]

Heaven Is A Place On Earth With You

Pairing: Max Verstappen x Reader

Warnings: slight sexual joke at some point

Words: 1.8k

Summary: The Max everyone knows is a lot different from the Max he is behind closed doors. That's even truer when he hasn't seen you in a while and all he wants is to spend time doing nothing with his girl.

A/N: I'm procrastinating for my finals so I'm going to try to finish all the WIP I currently have :) hope you like max being hopelessly in love bc that's what you're getting here

Max was known for being blunt, sometimes rough which on track made him almost unstoppable. However, the Max you knew was way different. He treated you with such care and delicacy, it was sickeningly sweet. From the moment you two had started dating, he had done his best to show you that he wasn't what the rest of the world portrayed him to be. That he was worthy of the affection you felt for him.

Slow mornings with Max were your favourite moments. He always woke up before you but he never dared to leave the bed before you wanted to. He didn’t particularly liked laying around but there was something about being close to you that made him want to stay there forever. You looked so peaceful cuddled up against him, he wouldn’t have dared to wake you up anyway. He much preferred admiring you until you woke up and he could finally talk to you.

When your eyes started fluttering awake, the first thing you were aware of was the arm around your waist. Max's hand was on your naked back, keeping you as close to him as possible. The weight of it was comforting and it was always the first thing you noticed when he came back late at night while you were already asleep, from races you couldn’t have gone to. You liked knowing that even when he was exhausted from all the travelling, he still took the time to nestle your body against his before falling asleep with you between his arms. 

As soon as he realised you were awake, Max started peppering the side of your face with kisses which made you giggle and look up at him. There was something really special about the look you gave your boyfriend when you were slowly coming back to reality that he loved. It always looked as if you were falling back in love with him all over again in a matter of seconds. You had the softest look on your face and as far as heart eyes went, yours were probably the most intense someone ever had until Max looked at you with the same intensity and his entire face lit up, his eyes twinkling with pure adoration before he broke the silence and finally spoke.

-" Good morning schatje" he greeted you with a kiss on your forehead

-" Hi Maxie" you mumbled, still sleepy

-" Did you sleep well ?"

-" I alway sleep well when you're here so yes. How about you ?"

-" Great, I had the best human heater next to me."

-" Do you have anything planned today ?"

-" Nope, I'm all yours. Did you want to do anything special ?"

-" Just wanted to stay with you."

-" Do you want me to make breakfast and then we can go walk on the beach ?"

-" That sounds good."

-" Lets go then." Max said, trying to stand up from the bed but you had moved your body half on top of him

-" Schatje, if you want breakfast you're gonna have to get off me."

-" I thought you liked me on top ?" you winked, making the Dutch man blush

-" I do but I also like you alive and well fed so hop off please."

With a groan, you turned on your side, liberating Max who stood up. He tried to convince you to follow him in the kitchen but you needed a few more minutes so after kissing your forehead, Max went to cook breakfast alone. He didn’t mind doing it on his own. Taking care of you when he was here was one of his favourite things to do just to see you smile at him and have you kiss his cheek as a thank you. It was all worth it for your reaction alone. 

Five minutes later, Max felt a pair of arms snake around his waist and your face pressing against his back. He still hadn’t put a shirt back on after sleeping in boxers all night. He never wore much to bed since you were always warm enough for him to sleep almost naked and not freeze. So when you pressed small kisses against his shoulder blades, he almost let go of the coffee cup he was holding, your breath tickling his skin. 

-“ Behave please, schatje.” Max smiled, patting your hands that were resting on his stomach

-“ ‘m not doing anything.” you answered, tightening your grip around him

-“ Not yet but I know you might try something so if you want to eat decent food please wait until I set everything on the table.” 

-“ Can’t promise anything.” Max laughed at your answer before going back to what he was doing. 

Since you had moved in with him, Max found out that he actually didn’t hate slowing down for a bit and enjoying the little things. He just never had someone he loved to do it with until you came along. Now, he loved just hanging around in the apartment, bodies dancing around each other in the kitchen when you were both doing your own thing but still enjoying each other’s presence. He found solace in doing the most mundane things with you. He wouldn’t dare to say it out loud but as long as you were together, everything felt like an adventure. 

Enjoying breakfast together while looking out the balcony was a great way to start the day according to him, maybe even his favourite. You were apparently in a good mood too judging by how playful you were being, stealing bits from his plate with a grin and teasingly nudging his shoulder with yours. If it had been anyone else, Max would have protested a little but there was not much he would get angry at you for so he let it slide, stealing something back for good measure. 

He could have completely forgotten about the walk on the beach he had promised if you hadn’t rushed to get ready as soon as you had finished eating. He followed you with a laugh, trying not to blush at the sight of you in a pretty sundress with your hair falling down your shoulders. You looked radiant with joy and it suited you all too well. Max was glad his actions made you feel this way. In fact, he wasn’t just glad, no. Max was proud to be able to make you happy in a way no one else did because if at first he hadn’t thought himself capable of fully giving you the love he thought you deserved, he now knew that you wanted whatever he was willing and capable of giving you. 

You were more than content with the amount of love you received from your boyfriend and you made sure to make it known and to return the attention because despite his tough exterior, you had been around the Dutchman for long enough to know that there was nothing that touched him more than being loved openly and freely, without conditions. 

The car ride to the beach was spent in comfortable silence, Max’s hand on your thigh as you looked out the window, feeling the wind caress your face. Max tried to steal a few glances your way while he drove but his eyes never stayed long. He was way too careful when he was the one responsible for your well-being. You had tried teasing him about it to make him relax but he was adamant that as your boyfriend, he had to make sure you were as safe as possible. 

You couldn’t really argue with that so you let him be, knowing that as soon as he’d be done driving, you’d be able to play around again. So the moment the car was finally parked, you were bolting out the door, screaming that the last one in the water would be a terrible loser. It didn’t take long for Max’s brain to compute but by the time he started running, you already had a good lead.

However, you hadn’t considered the fact your boyfriend was a literal athlete and that his cardio was considerably better than yours. Before you could even reach the water, Max had catched up to you and effortlessly picked you up, still going towards the sea with a grin on his face. 

-“ Please Max, put me down. Don’t throw me in.” you screeched as he kept jogging lightly

-“ You should have thought about that when you cheated, you little minx.” Max responded, poking your side with his finger as you laughed 

-“ But I had to, otherwise I had no chance of winning. You’re too quick for me, Mr. World Champion” 

-“ Flattery won’t get you anywhere now, schatje. It’s too late”. Max smirked before dropping you in the water, jumping right behind you as you swam further away, your boyfriend close behind

-“ I hate you so much.” you lied, wrapping your arms around his neck, trying your best to swim at the same time before Max wrapped your legs around his waist, bringing you even closer

-“ For the record, I might have let you win if you hadn’t cheated or made me watch you undress and run at the same time.” the Dutchman smiled, pecking your lips 

-“ Who said I lost ?” 

-“ You were the first one in the water, baby. That makes you the loser of your own game.” 

-“ Maybe it was my plan all along…”

-“ y/n, you’re the sorest loser I know. There’s no way you’d plan to lose.”

-“ Well, I don’t care. I’m in your arms right now and we’re at this beautiful empty beach. I intend to make the most of this situation I definitely planned for and kiss you until you get sick of it.”

-“ Sure, whatever helps you sleep at night.” Max chuckled, his whole face lighting up “ We’re going to be here for a while then because I don’t think I could ever get tired of kissing you.”  

-“ Alright then, the first one to stop is a terrible loser.” you smiled with a toothy grin

-“ Schat… Are you sure you can handle another loss today ?” 

-“ Bring it on, lover boy. Less talking, more kissing.”

-“ You don’t have to ask me twice.” he mumbled before pressing his lips against yours, brushing your wet hair away from your face

Maybe you lost the first game but when a family arrived at the beach and their little boy somehow recognised your boyfriend from afar and practically screamed that Max Verstappen was here, Max had to let you go. He wasn’t a fan of PDA, even less when it was around fans but in that moment, he wished he was just to erase the smug grin on your face when he lost the stupid challenge you had set. 

Before heading over to see the boy, Max made sure to peck your lips. He bit your lower lip slightly, not missing the way your face flushed when he did before asking for a rematch when you were back home. You already loved how the day had started but now you were sure that the rest of it would be just as good, if not better. This was just another thing to add to the list of why being home together was your favourite place to be.

[jeonstellate]

my future in your eyes

mingyu still holds onto you, even after all this time.

๑彡 kim mingyu x gender neutral!reader

๑彡 divorced!au/ex-husband!au, post-break up!au, exes-to-lovers!au — fluff

๑彡 paragraph format — 1.1K words

masterlist

[gif’s full credit belongs solely to its owner]

๑彡 title is taken from zack tabudlo’s as you are.

๑彡 i’m lowk proud of this ngl bc— it’s fluff, but it took me relatively quick to finish?? usually i get stuck for weeks if the wip’s fluff ><

Kim Mingyu is a man of confidence.

Not that he uses his confidence to swindle strangers, as the dictionary suggests the title means. Rather, he exudes confidence — regardless of what he does.

There is always an air confidence around him. He can be in clothes that don’t fit the event’s theme and he’ll still seem perfectly dressed. He can be barely conversant in another language and he’ll still sound like he knows what he’s saying. He can just be standing there, doing nothing, and he’ll still appear like he’s doing something right.

Some people mistake his confidence for arrogance. Most find it admirable. But, in truth, Mingyu hardly cares.

Especially if his so-called confidence vanishes whenever you are in the vicinity and within his line of sight. Just like now.

He sees you in a table with Seokmin. Your back is towards him but he recognizes you, anyway. Despite the distance, he has no problem witnessing how animatedly you talk with your common friend.

It’s almost like he is back in college: you and Seokmin in one row, him and Minghao a few rows back. He can almost hear Minghao state matter-of-factly, "You’re staring," like he often does back then.

Really, all that’s different is Minghao’s currently preoccupied being the groom to comment on his staring. (There are definitely more things that are different now, but he doesn’t want to even begin thinking about them.)

Seokmin catches his stare. Not soon after, specifically before Mingyu can even look away, he sees him leave the table. Seokmin throws him a familiar meaningful look before disappearing into the dance floor.

Truth be told, Mingyu’s confidence comes naturally. It isn’t something that he purposely channels. It’s just always there . . . unless you are involved. Then, suddenly, he has to painstakingly gather the confidence to be near you.

"Is this seat taken?" He tries his hardest to mask his awestruck look with one of kind politeness as he waits your response.

He almost forgot how to breathe when your eyes lock into his. "You may sit if you wish," you offer him a small, polite smile. "I don’t think he’ll be back anytime soon."

"Thanks." He effortlessly returns your gesture before situating himself on the chair your common friend abandoned. "How are you enjoying the party?"

"Really well, actually. I didn’t expect to recognize a lot of people from college." Your eyes don’t leave his as you answer. He tries not to stare back too intently, to look within your eyes to see something . . . anything. "And you?"

Mingyu waits for a beat, gathering enough confidence to say what he wants to. "Better now that you’re here." With me.

He lets out a barely audible embarrassed laugh. He has half a mind to take it back, but quickly changes his mind when he sees you biting your lower lip — an obvious attempt to stop yourself from laughing.

A ghost of a smile plays on his lips. There’s pride in knowing he’s still able to make you laugh, despite it being your first meeting in literal years.

You look down in a presumable attempt to calm yourself down. He doesn’t take his eyes off of you, though, as he refuses to lose you from his sight. As such, he immediately notices the sudden shift in your expression.

"You’re still wearing it." Mingyu follows your line of sight — and ends up looking at the source of your comment. His hand on the table, specifically the band of gold adorning his ring finger. "Our ring."

Our wedding ring.

You and Mingyu married soon after graduating from college. It had been a blissful marriage, one that filled a home with nothing but love and support.

Your divorce was on the basis of irreconcilable differences. It was a mutual decision, for the interest of your career paths diverging too far. There was never a bad blood.

"Ye— yeah." Mingyu stutters involuntarily. He clears his throat before continuing, "It’s a great conversational piece."

Although the divorce has been finalized years ago, Mingyu still plays the faithful and loving husband role in front of strangers. He uses the ring on his finger to his advantage: may that be to wordlessly signal that he’s already taken or to gain the favor of a potential sponsor.

Likewise, even if he knows the ring might be a disadvantage, he refuses to take it off — nor to purposely hide it from sight. The same way he never tells a stranger that he is no longer tied to someone else.

"Does it work?" You ask in wonder.

"We are conversing now, aren’t we?"

You chuckle, "Touché."

Mingyu wants to tell you that he hasn’t taken the ring off since you slipped it on his finger during your wedding. Not even after your divorce has been finalized all those years ago.

He wants to tell you his ring finger is thinner near his palm because of his adamant refusal to take his wedding ring off once in a while. Not willing to separate from the only physical reminder of your marriage, not even for a second.

He wants to tell you the ring is more than a conversational piece. He wants to tell you it’s his lifeline, something he can’t bear to lose. But he doesn’t.

Instead, Mingyu uses all the confidence he has gathered to ask you a simple question. "Dance with me?"

He offers you the hand adorned by his wedding ring. He tries not to show the uncertainty he feels by masking it behind a smile.

He almost lets out a relieved sigh when you place your hand on top of his. But he stops breathing momentarily when he catches sight of the sole jewelry adorning your hand.

"You’re still wearing it," Mingyu echoes your comment breathlessly. "Our ring."

He snaps his eyes back to your face, just in time to witness your smile widen. "Yeah," you say. "It’s a great talisman to ward off potential suitors."

He leads you to the dance floor, silently marveling at how your hand still fits perfectly with his. "Does it work?"

"It’s very effective," you assure him. "Although I don’t think it works well against ex-husbands."

Another slow song starts playing right when you reach the dance floor. You and Mingyu unconsciously claim your respective hand placements during your first dance — and for any waltz you danced after.

Then, suddenly, it’s like you traveled back in time.

Mingyu pulls you closer, a ghost of a smirk is at the edge of his lips. "I think it works well attracting ex-husbands."

[ladybyakuya]

| HIGH IN LOW PLACES + natsuki seba & yoichi nagumo.

+cw. — fem!reader, headcanon + scenarios format, canon typical themes and elements, mention of alcohol and drinking,ex.plicit smut{ mention ofunprotected, oral acts }, slight angst and fluff.

+wc. — 2k.

+syn.— how do they generally spend their off day ? Is it any different when you're with them?

+notes. — my sk days debut post. yay! yay! i just caught up with it and im still making memes in my head ( yeah, its that bad </3)tap the banner for better quality </3 cuz tumblr made it so whack after upload. the title is from a song by beach weather ( one of my recent favs ). i have some more wips on sk days but lets see if the starts align or they go against me. wanted add two more characters but i got carried away while writing. so next two for next weekend ig. if you catch my favoritism, then good. go ahead & exploit it ;) | redirect to blog navigation.

✦ natsuki seba : 

The sun has not even kissed the horizon yet. It is still afternoon. Natsuki was busy building one of his work-in-progress weapons as usual even though it was an off day. The JCC is not exactly asleep but is surely a little doused today. JCC never sleeps. You are in his dorm room, waiting for him to finish his work at least to a certain stage and then have lunch with you but you doubt he is barely aware of what time it is. You are not exactly hungry, at least not for those wet soggy noodles but you do miss him even though he is right in front of you. There are times when you have to feed him lunch so that he can keep working. The dorm room is small for two but given the habits of you two, it always works out, somehow. You sleep when he is working while he sleeps when you are busy or out to get something. But currently, sleep is nowhere to be found at the banks of your eyes.

“Natsu, come eat with me,”

Seba turns his head at first and gives you a look; a look that clearly states: “Are you mad?” Do you know how ridiculous you sound? His eyebrows grow closer while his lips pucker forming a pout and then he goes back to working again. He is mocking you. He is working while you sit idle and flip through a porn magazine from his collection. It’s funny because the porn magazine is not his. It is from Shin. He was just looking out for him. Shin thought it was highly uncanny how a guy could make weapons all day and night, and be obsessed with something so odd that one forgets to masturbate. Doesn’t even have the urge? Or better does his curious side not think about such self-pleasurable prospects? Well, what would Shin know?

“Natsu, come eat me out,” 

At first, he looks up from the device he was working on and then spares a glance at you.

You make yourself busy flipping through the pages of that lewd magazine. He is staring. You can feel it.

He goes back to work again but a second later he puts the miniature parts from his hand beside the device and turns his chair towards you rubbing his chin as his elbow stands on the hand-rest of the chair. He is considering it. Holy Shit. You did not mean that.

“Really? Can I?” There is a thin layer of sneer laced underneath his voice.

You closed the magazine and stood up, keeping it on his table. He looks at the cover and a chuckle escapes from his chest probably remembering how he got it or why you ordered him to eat you out; not that he would mind . . . his eyes are back on you again. “Now that I’ve your attention. Finish your lunch and then work on your project.”

“I’m going out to meet someone,” You try to leave but he grabs your wrist pulling you back in front of the bed. 

“You're lying.” he snorts out a chuckle.

“You know,” Natsuki gets up and takes slow steps towards you as you back away cornering you as he still holds your hand. “eating you out . . . that might just be the thing I need to finish my project.”

Wait. what?

Before you can ask anything he just puts you on his shoulders, walks to the bed throwing you on the mattress. For someone who is a weapon engineer, who does not spend time on fieldwork he sure has a lot of strength.

“I didn’t mean it. I just wanted to get your attention that’s all.” you try to protest but it does not faze him, not even a little.

“Well you did a good job.” Grabbing your ankles he pulls you towards the edge of the bed before getting on his knees. He points to the cup noodles. “And, i’m not eating that.”

He pulls down your panties and shorts simultaneously. You do not stop him because you crave him as much as he needs this to de-stress or that’s how he would put it. Spreading your legs he places a trail of tender kisses along your thighs threatening your sanity, threatening the urge to push him away but you simply do not want to do that. You want this: him worshipping you like he used to. The moment his lips graze your entrance you arch back, hands resting on the mattress and crumpling the sheets as Seba gets more devoted to the cause. You put one of your legs over his shoulders as he buries his face deeper inclining his face a little to lap his tongue against your pussy lips. You bite your lower lip roughly before a whisper of words comes out of your mouth, “Ya know, you should return those magazines to Shin,”

“What?” he asks; nose glistening with your arousal, wet lips, cherry cheeks, and excited eyes. A curvature appears along your lips as you run your fingers through his hair and tug at it revealing his forehead forcing his eyes to close just for a second. He is still waiting for your response. 

“Nothing. Get to work,” you say and he listens to it like a good boy.

✦ yoichi nagumo.

“Is it that tasty?” Nagumo asks drinking an o-choko full of sake from your share. His face distorts feeling the strong fizziness. “How can you drink this?” his voice spikes up as he gulps it down. He hates it, hates this, that how you on every weekend would to go Sakamoto stores and buy liquor to drink out your misery. What a waste! He does not understand why you would spend your weekends drinking, especially when he is here. Sakamoto would often tell you to stop drinking but what’s the point? You nod like a good girl, buy some cup noodles and chips and after the store closes Shin arrives with the booze. Shin is knocked out on the floor already. But he is still keeping up with you not that he enjoys it but he is looking for an opportunity to make you stop and in that process, he ended up taking a few shots. He hates it, he hates this. He hates how you make drinks. It stings on his tongue. This is not because he wants to spend his off day with you. He rarely gets a day off and he can not go that to waste, can he now?

“Wanna fuck?”

You look at him with heavy eyes and a flustered face for a few seconds. “No.”

He is stone-cold sober. He is not even that drunk, to begin with. You are. You are still so dizzy and slumber threatening your eyes but you force them open divulging, “Too much work.” Ah! The slur. The slur in your voice. His head tilts as a smile breaks on his face like a plague.

“I’ll do the work.” Nagumo insists. “All of it.” His voice is low, slow. He wants to get through to you. “I’ll make you feel so good.” He does not want you to dismiss his words as just a drunken haze or something like that. He is already neck-deep in guilt for being unable to give as much time he wants, as much as the time you demand and crave from him. He can not sabotage your security but he would not deny that he likes meeting with you in secret; gives him some sort of thrill he thinks. “I promise,” he mumbly adds.

But he does not want to overdo it or wear you out. He can’t. He won’t. He is a good when he is with you. “Woah, careful.”

After moving the bottles and cups aside, now you are all on your fours crawling towards him like a cat. He can see your boobs, the nipples— everything. Wait, is that his tank top? He must have left it when he came to you here last time. He can’t remember when but he remembers he lost that one black tank top.

As you reach, your face inches away from him you lean for a kiss but he sways away. It instantly ruins your mood. He is smirking now as you are pouting. It turns into a snort. “Shin’s still here,” He points at the boy sleeping on the couch. You glance at the boy and then look at Nagumo. He is confused. You are impatient. Fuck it.

You hold on to his shoulders trying to get into his lap, legs sprawled apart and as you make yourself comfortable your legs get clamped around his waist. He does not lose his balance but rather helps you with it.

“Babe, Shin’s still here,” Nagumo repeats making you remember.

“Don’t care,” you shout and Nagumo covers your mouth with his palm while his index finger stills over his lips shushing you. You nod. It seems he got through to you.

You do not allow him to dodge him anymore.

You lean into his hand that is still over your mouth, nuzzling against his palm. He shoves his fingers into your hair, his index finger grazing behind your ears igniting your skin with goosebumps. His thumb roughly stretches across your bottom lip before you kiss the tip of it but he swats his hand away before you could suck on it; grabbing his other arm and you slide it under the blacktop. Nagumo does not squeeze your boobs. Not yet. He does not want to do it, not like this. Last time, both of you were sober and now both of you are drunk: you on alcohol and him on you. You buck your hips trying to get closer to him. 

“God Nagumo, why are you being like this? You said you'd do all the work. . .”

because it's amusing. The fact that you are scolding him with a whispering tone is making him tremble in mirth. He is barely holding it; you are frustrated, drunk, and horny. God! What is he going to do with you? Can he really hold himself back? Maybe he should not have proposed the idea in the first place. His hands are stretched, settled on the floor as he watches you: intently, nervously.

“Kiss me.”

And your lips instantly dance against his in a frenzy yet his hands are still on the floor. Even in this state, you manage to unbuckle his belt with one hand as the other works on the buttons of his shirt. It turns him on how swift you are too. You would be very skilled in his line of work. Maybe you are, too skilled that he did not even notice. Nah! you can't be a spy.

“Put it in” you command this time breaking the kiss. Nagumo was just starting to get to the good part of the kiss only to get deprived of it. He does not waste a second to abide by your said words. If he did, he might have to walk out thinking out the possibilities of how odd it was for a first meeting with you.

Strong hands against the plush of your hip as he adjusts his cock to your entrance. He pushes aside your panty before rubbing it against your entrance. Your hands squeeze the muscles of his shoulders.

“Without . . . condom?”

So, is that why he was delaying it? You thought he didn't want this but mentioned it for the sake of pity and now he is trying to get on your nerves to wake Shin up.

Your brain freezes after such a flow of info. You give him a nod.

Nagumo swallows before his cock goes inside without rubber. It's electric: the feeling of your flesh around his.

“Take me to that room,” you gasp out the words.

“What?”

“I said what I said.”

You become so handful when drunk not that he minds. He takes you to the room kicking back the door behind you to close before crashing onto the bed.

The next morning Shin has to buy a pair of black trousers for Nagumo and he does it without even questioning. He really does not wanna know what happened after he took you inside the room.

@underratedcharactercorner

@interstellar-inn

[ugh-yoongi]

the very last thing i decide | pjm

(or, the one in which a love exists that's easy and instinctual as much as it is painful and self-destructive.)

✘ PAIRING jimin x f. reader ✘ SUMMARY you learn what it means to love with blood on your hands. ✘ GENRE hitman/assassin au; angst, smut ✘ RATING explicit. minors dni. ✘ WARNINGS they are both hitmen (hitpeople?) so there's all the content that goes along with that: violence, death, mentions of blood (a lot) and weapons, murder, but no explicit gore. everyone is morally grey at best and downright psychotic at worst (especially yoongi). reader gets stabbed. no one knows how to be a functional human being. swearing, smoking, light smut (penetrative & oral sex), miscommunication and unrequited love but not really, i drop a classic tumblr meme in a line of dialogue. ambiguous/hopeful ending!! some of the themes here are kinda heavy and i am not entirely sure how to tag them so if you have any questions pls don’t hesitate to ask! ✘ WORDCOUNT 12k ✘ LISTEN TO manchester orchestra - telepath ✘ THANK YOU i cannot remember everyone i’ve showed this to over the years. @the-boy-meets-evil for looking this over and brainstorming with me today. @hot-soop for always being a help. @effortandmore because you told me an embarrassingly long time ago this was worth finishing. and i’m pretty sure i also sent this to @jihopesjoint at some point too. i did a quick edit of this on my own, but after nearly three years i just wanted it posted and out of my wips so i'm sure i missed things. pls ignore them. ✘ AUTHOR'S NOTE fic drops two days in a row?? who am i?? i started this in may 2021 and it was supposed to be a simple pegging fic. i abandoned it bc i was convinced no one would want to read it. between today and yesterday i have written thousands of words and made it across the finish line. i hope you like it. the violence is a metaphor for love or whatever.

[37.5665° N, 126.9780° E | Seoul, SOUTH KOREA]

Jimin’s hair had been red the first time he met you.

How fitting, he thinks, considering he’s currently bleeding out on a table.

Well, there’s still a bit of fight left in him. He hasn’t lost consciousness yet, which he assumes is a good sign; he can still hear Hoseok barking out orders quite clearly. The edges of his vision are fuzzy and the pain in his abdomen is sharp and unrelenting, but he still has enough brain power left to wish he’d died instead.

Because you’d saved his life. And now he’s further indebted to you.

(Jimin never leaves a debt unpaid, but he’s not sure how to make even on something like this.)

Jungkook and Taehyung are fetching supplies faster than Hoseok can ask for them. Two pairs of frazzled, spaced-out eyes. Four sets of trembling limbs. Namjoon’s wearing burn marks into the floor, his cuticles bloody and nearly worried to the bone since he can’t keep them out of his mouth.

And then there’s you.

Sitting cross-legged in a chair as you scroll through your phone. Jimin’s blood is still drying on your hands, leaving smears as you drag your thumb back and forth across the screen, and this doesn’t seem to faze you one bit.

Behind you, Yoongi takes a seat at the piano and starts playing Toccata and Fugue in D minor, and Jimin simply cannot die like this. He can’t die on a wooden table in a room with a piano on which Min Yoongi is playing Baroque organ pieces.

“What is this, a fucking funeral?” Hoseok snaps, though there’s a desperation creeping into his tone that Jimin does not like, does not want to hear. “Cut it out, Yoongi.”

Said man staunchly ignores the doctor, transitioning flawlessly into the fugue. Jimin barely hears the tinkle of your laughter but he hears it all the same, and he wants to pretend it doesn’t calm him, bring him back down to earth when he starts drifting too far away. But you do, and it does, and all he can think about is: will you miss him if he dies? Will it take you long to wash his blood from your hands?

Hoseok’s absolutely incensed, pushed to the limits of his stress at the thought of not being able to save Jimin’s life, and Jimin appreciates this, really, but not when Hoseok pushes two gloved fingers deep into the wound in his stomach so hard all he can do is cry. “Yoongi—”

You snort. You don’t even look up from your phone.

Namjoon, for all his leadership and stoicism and poise under pressure, is just as frantic and panicked as the rest. It’s not everyday one of his people is inches from death ten feet away from him. Most people usually die in the shadows. Kim Namjoon has faced down death more times than most, yet watching the life slowly fade from Jimin’s eyes is too much even for him. “Yoongi, please—”

But the fugue keeps going, tempo change after tempo change, the two pillars of this organization spiraling completely by the time the coda starts, unfocused and sweating and praying. To gods they don’t believe in, to hope, to chance—whatever and whoever might be listening. Jimin usually loves hearing Yoongi play. It’s the only thing that humanizes him, and Jimin had spent so many restless nights shoulder to shoulder with him on that exact bench in the blue hours of the early morning, hypnotized by the way the older man’s knobby fingers moved across the keys.

This is it, he thinks.

Jimin’s going to die with Toccata and Fugue in D minor playing in the background.

He’s imagined his death so many times. Stupid not to in this line of work. Violent, quick and painless, in his sleep, drawn out and gory, a message. And in all of those scenarios, it’s either jarringly silent or there’s someone screaming. Usually him, sounding much like he is now, two fingers stuck in his gut. In all of those scenarios, Min Yoongi is never playing Bach as everything fades to black.

You sigh. “Shut the fuck up, Yoongi,” you say, your tone as blasé and inconvenienced as ever.

Shocked at your audacity, one of Yoongi’s fingers slips and hits the wrong key, something dissonant and metallic as it rings out. But the music stops all the same, the silence nearly giving Jimin whiplash. Now he can hear the clinkof Hoseok’s tools, the squelching of his wound, Jungkook’s desperate pleading for him to just be alright, please God, just hang on. He wants the music back. He doesn’t want Jungkook’s crying to be the last thing he hears. Doesn’t want the sound of his own organs imprinted into his memory.

“What’d you say?” Yoongi asks, because no one talks to him that way. They wouldn’t dare. Most people try not to talk to him at all.

But you do.

And, inexplicably, Yoongi listens.

You roll your eyes. “You go deaf in your old age? I said shut the fuck up. Hoseok’s two knuckles deep in Jimin’s fucking stomach and you’re over there having your little Amadeus moment.”

He bristles. “Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to?” Yoongi repeats, and Jimin can’t see him, but he knows his eyes are narrowed, lips pulled back in a snarl, fists clenched at his side.

“Oh, princess,” you coo, and Yoongi’s fury is palpable, permeates every inch of this place, overrides all the fear and anguish. “I’m talking to you, baby. I know Jiminie’s busy trying not to die and that’s stressful for all of us, but please do try to keep up.”

Jimin hears the flick of Yoongi’s switchblade. Then he hears him say, “Please let me fucking kill her,” in that lazy Daegu drawl of his, like forming full words are beneath him. Not worth the effort when they’re directed at you.

Still seated, you uncross your legs and, through blurred vision, Jimin watches you grab Yoongi by his belt loops to tug him closer, grab the wrist that holds his knife and press it to your own throat. “Don’t threaten me with a good time, Yoongi. Be a good boy and make it hurt.”

Jungkook’s near hysterics at Jimin’s side. “What the fuck is wrong with you two? He’s dying!”

Jimin tries to say I’m not, Kookie, I’m okay but the pressure on his abdomen is too intense. He can barely breathe, and Hoseok’s still digging around, still looking for that stupid fucking bullet, had to do something and do it quick so there’d been very little anesthetic and finesse, and he’s silently screaming for someone to just comfort Jungkook, tell him everything’s going to be okay, but instead—

“Serves him right for being a fucking idiot,” you say, words muffled by the knife still pressed to your throat. “What a painful, permanentlesson in not forgetting your fucking vest.”

“Stop it!” Jungkook sobs, fingers ghosting along Jimin’s matted fringe.

Yoongi’s still scowling. “Just say the word, Joon-ah. I’ll make it quick.”

You actually laugh at that. The kind of full-belly laugh Jimin would kill to be able to produce. “You wanna fuck me so bad it makes you look stupid.”

Someone snarls. Probably Yoongi. “You’d look so good gutted on the floor like a fish,” he replies, and if Jimin knows him at all, he knows he’s got that dreamy, faraway look in his eyes. The one he always gets when he’s about to kill—the one that makes him so unhinged and dangerous. “Left there to bleed out and die all alone like the trash you are.”

No one’s survived that look before, but you just grin, as if being on the receiving end of it is nothing more than another simple inconvenience. “Do it, then,” you prompt. “You’re so big and bad, yet here you are, waiting for Namjoon’s permission like some kind of pathetic fucking dog.”

“I’m no one’s dog.”

Your eyes slowly flick over to Namjoon. “No?” you ask, smile widening as Jimin watches you drag your heeled foot up the inside of Yoongi’s calf, his thigh, stiletto coming to rest in the center of his sternum. “That’s a shame, princess. That pretty neck of yours was just made for a collar.”

There’s no doubt in Jimin’s mind now that he actually died back in that penthouse and is now residing in whatever level of hell is watching you give his associate a semi despite him being a millisecond away from murdering you.

Yoongi would do it, too. No hesitation. You’ve been on his shit list for as long as Jimin can remember, and you’ve been daring him to put his money where his mouth is and just kill you already for just as long.

Taehyung groans. “Can you two just fuck already so the rest of us can be spared of this?”

You click your tongue, tone melting like butter. You’re fond of Taehyung, soft on him. “No can do, angel. Yoongi here knows I only have eyes for our Jiminie, and god does that hurt his little feelings.”

Your wicked smile gives away nothing—whether you’re telling a bold truth or just unnecessarily needling Yoongi further—but Jimin’s caught off guard and chokes on your words nonetheless.

Hoseok’s forceps still digging around in his stomach, there’s a quiet hurrah of triumph as he finally locates the bullet. Jimin feels nothing as he retrieves it and plucks it out, a reverberated clank! as he drops it into a kidney dish, your words the anesthetic he’s needed as they play on a loop in his head.

When he finally blacks out, either from the pain or the adrenaline or both, it’s your face that greets him. He never gets the chance to tell you why he forgot his vest.

[64.1466° N, 21.9426° W | Reykjavík, ICELAND]

Jimin’s hair is blue when it happens the first time.

It’s November. Namjoon has sent the two of you to Reykjavik and it’s dark all the time, the midnight hue of his hair blending into the impenetrable nighttime that surrounds you. Jimin works best like this—out of sight, part of the shadows. He’s light on his feet, lithe in ways no one else is, not even you, and he’s impossible to anticipate under the cover of darkness.

That’s why Jimin always takes care of the appetizers.

It’s your job to clean up the main course.

The two of you are two halves of the same lethal coin, working together flawlessly after years of carefully honed practice. Jimin slams an unsuspecting man’s head into a wall and you’re right behind him to put a bullet in it.

It’s just how it goes.

And he trusts you. He has to, otherwise he would’ve gotten taken out years ago. You’re not always in his line of sight, but he always feels you, senses your movements before you’re even on your feet. The times it’s gone wrong—and it’s gone wrong so many fucking times, despite how cautious and skilled the two of you are—you’re always right there to catch him before he even hits the ground. Just like a ghost, as if your only purpose in life is keeping Jimin safe and alive.

(It isn’t, but it sure feels that way.)

Tonight it’s another hit carried out in an overpriced penthouse overlooking the northern shore. You’re in and out, don’t waste a second more than you need to. Jimin doesn’t spare a glance at the carnage left behind. Nothing he hasn’t seen a hundred times before. All blood bleeds the same, but he still wonders, foolishly, if his looks different to you. If it feels wrong when it stains your hands and seeps into your clothes.

Jimin has never been covered in your blood before, but he likes to think it would.

The two of you don’t speak until you’re in the quiet safety of yet another hotel room, chain lock thrown across the door, deadbolt secured. A small arsenal of weapons is retrieved from ankles and waistbands and cleaned and packed away meticulously. Jimin’s the one who makes the call to Namjoon, tells him in code that the job’s done. You’ve barely broken a sweat, but under the fluorescent light of the bathroom, Jimin can see a small smattering of blood just along your temple when he closes the distance between you.

Someone else’s, of course.

Anyone who made you bleed your own blood wouldn’t be a quick, clean kill. Jimin would make sure of that.

There’s less to be done about the half-inch scar in the hollow of your throat—a pearlescent reminder of the twin scar he has just below his navel; a callback to the day your devilish mouth said the words Jimin can’t stop thinking about.

“No can do, angel. Yoongi here knows I only have eyes for our Jiminie.”

Maybe it’s stupidity. Maybe it’s the feral, years-long build up that’s been simmering between the two of you—low enough to keep warm, contained enough to never evolve into a rapid boil. Maybe Jimin’s just finally desperate enough to go seeking out answers to questions he’s far too scared to put a voice to.

(Really, Jimin knows it’s adrenaline. Nothing more than chemicals. The two of you high on it, heads floating above the clouds. Powerless; or, at the very least, indifferent to stop the very clear path that’s unfolding on the ground below.)

But, god, he needs to know.

Needs answers.

Needs to know if there’s even a chance you feel it, too: the magnetic ebb and flow the two of you have been dancing around for years. If you see how fondly he looks at you. If you have any idea how easy it is for him to get lost in you. If you know he’d let someone put a bullet between his eyes before he placed his life in the hands of anyone else.

Jimin knows he loves you. He’s known it for a long time, just like he knows all those other things that are second nature to him. Loving you is easy and instinctual as much as it is painful and self-destructive.

At least that’s what he’d thought. Until your devilish mouth said those devilish words and sent him into a tailspin he’s yet to recover from.

You have to feel it. God, can’t you? The way the air crackles between you. The way his skin ignites with a simple look from you. The trembling of his fingers at his sides, desperate to just reach out and touch you—fingers that have been bathed in blood, that have taken life. Fingers that now just want to graze softly across your cheekbones, catch on your bottom lip. Fingers that want to hand you the world on a silver platter. Jimin would do anything for you, give you whatever you wanted. You wouldn’t even have to ask.

Can’t you feel that?

He needs to know.

Jimin is composed, elegant. He kills with grace and still maintains as much of his softness as he can. Isn’t ruled by emotion the way Yoongi and Jungkook are. But now, as he teeters on the edge of the unknown, all he wants to do is jump. Wants to buck all his training, all his resolve and forethought, and jump.

“Did you mean it?” he asks, voice thick. Fingers curl into the expensive silk of his shirt just so they have something to do—something to keep them from reaching out and touching you. “Back in Seoul.”

You’re the smartest person Jimin knows. When you ask, “Did I mean what, Chim?” he knows you’re fucking with him. Dragging this out. You know exactly what he’s asking and he knows you’ll never give anything away so easily.

“What you said to Taehyung,” he answers.

You tsk, eyebrows raising in intrigue. As much as Jimin trusts you, as well as you know him, know all those dirty, dirty secrets he’d never tell anyone else, he’s never been so bold with you. “That those long fingers of his would look good wrapped around my throat? Yeah, I meant that.”

Jimin’s jaw clenches at your taunt. “Don’t play games with me.”

A smirk graces your lips. “Trust me, sweetheart,” you say, voice sickly-sweet as the affection starts popping at the last seams holding him together, “if I wanted to play with you, there’s nothing you could do to stop it.”

With Jimin pressed into the wall behind you, you turn to meet his eye in the mirror. Another smile, teeth bared as you run your tongue across your lips, and this one is his undoing. Makes his cock twitch in his dress pants. Makes him bold. “Do you want to, then?” He takes a step forward—close enough to smell the gunpowder stuck to your clothes, your hair. Close enough for the sulfur and metal to sting his nostrils each time he breathes you in. “Do you want to play with me?”

You love Jimin. Maybe it’s a trauma bond or the implicit, unwavering trust the two of you have in one another, but you know you love him limitlessly. But you also know you can’t love him the way he loves you, the way he deserves to be loved by someone, which is why your mask slips as you say, “I can’t give you what you want, Jimin.”

You try to make him understand that. Really, you do—because Jimin is the smartest person you know, and you know he’s thought about every possible consequence down to the most minute detail and has decided this is worth it anyway. You want to believe in something the way Jimin believes in you, even though he’s wrong. You want something worth throwing all of this away for.

Maybe it’s Jimin, maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s just been so fucking long since someone has looked at you with any gentleness in their eyes at all that when Jimin meets your gaze and says, “I don’t want anything more than you’re willing to give,” you take his hand and jump, too.

And there’s nothing gentle about the first time.

It’s all raw, urgent need, Jimin trying desperately to convince himself it’s more than it is while you convince yourself it’s less.

It’s the two of you finally giving up and giving in, letting yourselves be pulled taut by that invisible string tying you together.

It’s Jimin’s sharp intake of breath when you fully step out of your clothes, the sight rendering him immobile. Whatever plans he’d had before seeing the curves of your body, all the scars from years of working by his side, the mottled yellow-greens and purples from the bruises lining your skin—he has no plans now. Can barely think. Wouldn’t be able to tear his eyes away from you with a gun to his head.

It’s the final bricks of the wall he’d built around himself—around his heart, around all those words and feelings he’d never put a voice to—crumbling into ash at his feet. Now he knows he can’t go back. Can’t return to a reality where this isn’t his truth. Where there’s no you and him, him and you. Where it’s just a physical exchange, a give-and-take, tit for tat.

And god, he knows he shouldn’t think like this; knows he’s keeping the truth buried somewhere deep behind lock and key.

…But now that he knows how it feels to move inside you, what else is he supposed to do?

You’re everywhere. Clenched around him. Your taste on his tongue. The feel of you on the pads of his fingers. The smell of you making a mockery of all logical thought. No—no, he can’t do a goddamn thing to stop the avalanche now it’s started.

“Fuck,” he whines, fingers digging into your hips. The soft skin he finds purchase in such a contrast from your hardened exterior, but Jimin knows. He knows you, knows the person behind the mask, sees straight through you each time it slips.

What stared back at him had always been just out of reach.

Taunting him.

Screaming come and get me, come make me yours, come and fucking take what you want.

Until now.

Now it’s tangible. Now it’s breathy, fractured moans that echo off tile walls. Now it’s the sound of his name thatleaves your lips like a prayer. Now it’s the sheen of sweat that covers both of you. Now it’s nails scraping down his back, tangling in the hair at the nape of his neck.

(And Jimin won’t tell you this, but those red welts are proof that this is real, this happened, and later on when he’s alone, when his mind is working overtime, he’ll look at them and he’ll smile. Because they’re real. Because this happened.)

Now, it’s the way blue becomes his favorite color. Because he can see his reflection in the mirror as he unravels and comes to his own demise as he spills inside of you; can see the fluorescent lights reflecting off the hue of his hair.

Jimin’s hair is blue when he realizes he’s in love with you.

[34.6037° S, 58.3816° W | Buenos Aires, ARGENTINA]

Jimin is blond when Namjoon sends you to South America.

The details had been scarce: a diplomatic advisor with a rap sheet of human rights violations that have been continuously swept under the rug and his equally-corrupt lawyer. A candid photograph paperclipped to another manila folder, Namjoon a fan of all those old cliches. Likes being a little cheeky that way when he can get away with it, because god knows he can’t get away with much, doesn’t have much of a sense of humor.

It’s a simple job. You and Jimin will have it dealt with in a matter of hours. Less if you’re lucky and the universe is agreeable. But the humidity sticks to your skin, has sweat seeping into your clothes and rolling down your temples, and if there’s one thing you can’t stand it’s the heat. Makes it hard to think. And Namjoon—Namjoon, who makes sure all of his agents want for nothing—is a cheap bastard. Rarely approves nice lodging, says it’s too risky despite your arguments to the contrary, that people don’t care what you do when you have money, so you’re stuck in some shithole motel room with an aircon unit that keeps blowing out stale, warm air.

And maybe you shouldn’t, maybe you should be more cognizant of Jimin and all his feelings, but it’s fucking hot, so you peel your shirt over your head and undo the button of your pants. Sit on the edge of the bed and try to think about anything other than the temperature, how it’s starting to prick uncomfortably at your skin.

Jimin clears his throat, keeps his eyes glued to the disgusting carpet. “Got a text from Seokjin-ssi,” he says, words strained. “Looks like they’ll be solo jobs.”

You groan. Leave it to Seokjin to change the plan at the last minute. “Tell Kim Seokjin he’s a useless piece of shit.”

“Done. Anything else?”

“Tell Kim Namjoon if he ever sends us to South America in the summer again I’ll kill him myself.”

Jimin has a laugh like an anodyne. A laugh that takes all those broken, bleeding parts of you and soothes over them like a balm. “Seokjin-ssi says he’s not passing along that particular message.”

“Tell him he’s a bitch, then.”

“He’ll kill me if I say that.”

“He hasn’t done field work in years and he’s probably too vitamin D deficient to leave the basement. He couldn’t even kill a fucking rat.”

There’s another laugh. More forced, less tinkling. You recognize it right away, the sound of anxiety. Solo jobs aren’t common for the two of you. For Yoongi and Taehyung, sure, but not you and Jimin. You’re a team for a reason, and though you’re more than capable of getting this done and out of the way, it doesn’t feel right. Settles in your gut like something rotten, knowing you’ll be without Jimin.

And you know he’s thinking it, too. How he turns the burner over and over in his hands, as if there’s some combination of words he can send back to Seoul to get Seokjin and Namjoon to reconsider. Plans don’t change often; not like this, anyway. These have been declared solos for a reason, and that’s a thought you can’t linger on too long.

“Are they leaving it up to us?” Jimin nods, still not meeting your eye. “Do you have a preference?”

He shrugs, tossing the phone on the small table in the corner. Nothing else to be done. “Not really. What do you think?”

“Nah, don’t care, either. Just toss me one.”

Santiago Aguirre… 47 years old… Resides in a high-rise luxury apartment in Retiro…

Your eyes skim the file, study the black and white photograph of the lawyer. Read over the list of all his high-profile, degenerate clients and all their high-profile crimes. You read about the previous attempts on his life, the seemingly never-ending list of people who want him dead. Your eyes go back to his photograph, frowning at the smug look on his face. What stares back at you is a man who thinks he’s invincible, who thinks a penthouse apartment on the top floor and a security team in the lobby means he’s impervious to harm. A man who has made money off people just like him: dirty, corrupt, hands stained red.

“Okay?” Jimin asks, looking up from his own file.

He’s so striking. So safe. And you know what he’s done, giving you the hit he thinks is easier, willing to risk himself on a solo mission to ensure you make it out. There’s no guarantees in this line of work, in life in general, but Jimin’s brand of selfless love is certainly one.

So you just nod, knowing someone slimy like this can quickly go sideways, and decide you can do the same.

“I’m gonna get ready,” you say. “The plan is the same as all the other solo jobs. Get in, get it done, get out as quickly as possible. Lay low. Don’t come straight back here.”

Jimin rolls his eyes good-naturedly. “Anything else?”

You exhale. Try to quiet the nerves roiling in your stomach. Barely resist the urge to press a lingering kiss to Jimin’s forehead before you swallow hard and say, “Yeah. Stay alive.”

It comes out more like a plea.

—

You’re good at your job.

Rarely feel much guilt over it, either, which—well, you’re not sure what that means. That something is permanently broken in your psyche, probably. Being able to take life so easily and without remorse. It’s not natural.

Kim Namjoon is a man who plays God, is the one who decides who gets to live and who has to die. His word is the only law you adhere to. And that’s… that’s something. Makes it less burdensome, takes some weight off, because Kim Namjoon wouldn’t accept a morally-ambiguous job. He wouldn’t ask you to put your life on the line for some petty bullshit.

This is how you’ve lived for the last four years. Four years of blindly following Namjoon’s word, of being a good little soldier and doing whatever is asked of you. Four years of being responsible for not only your own life, but Jimin’s as well, just as he is for yours. Four years that have served you well, all things considered.

Until now.

Something about this job hits you hard. Doesn’t settle quite as quickly as the ones that have come before. For the first time, you’d looked down at the lifeless body at your feet and couldn’t stop the trembling, could barely quell the nausea. Thought what the fuck am I doing, what kind of life is this for the first time. Thought back to that day four years ago when Kim Namjoon saved your life and offered you a job and wondered, for the first time, what would’ve happened if you’d said no.

Now, as you suck on a cigarette, legs dangling off the roof of a building looking not far from collapse, a new thought:

Would Namjoon let you go if you asked?

He’s taken care of you. For four years you’ve wanted for nothing. Have socked away more money than you’ll ever be able to spend, even if you live to a thousand. You could go anywhere, become anyone, and no one would suspect a thing. There’d just be you and a million lifetimes’ worth of transgressions, alone under the weight of all that burden; alone, except for all the ghosts that come to greet you every time you close your eyes.

Doesn’t matter. Namjoon might be willing to let you go, give you the chance to salvage something from this life in the name of normalcy, but Yoongi would gladly put a bullet in your head before he let you disappear with all his secrets.

Doesn’t matter.

You stub out the cigarette and put the butt in your pocket. Make your way down to the street. Stay under the shadows—just visible enough to redirect any suspicion shot your way. You pretend to take a call, flawless Argentinian Spanish falling from your lips as you tell the imaginary person on the other end all about your fucked up day at work. How your manager never gets off your ass, doesn’t trust you, thinks you’re too fucking stupid to run a simple executable.

No one spares you a second glance.

Not here, on this nondescript street in a nondescript Argentinian neighborhood, and not when you stumble into the tiny lobby of your shithole motel. The poor kid behind the desk doesn’t even glance up, just mutters a good evening, miss under his breath that you return in a voice far too high-pitched to be your own.

Better to be seen and be unremarkable than draw attention to yourself trying to stay invisible, you figure.

The cameras in the stairwell are broken so you take the steps two at a time. Pull the room key from its place inside your boot, happy to no longer have it digging into your skin. Pause just long enough to make sure you don’t hear anything on the other side of the door before you’re unlocking it with your free hand wrapped around the trigger of your gun.

It’s empty.

Of course it is.

Jimin stashed the burner in a place no one but you would think to look. You text one simple word to Seokjin—Hey!—and you get two in return: Who’s this?

You know who it is, you fucking dickhead.

It takes a few seconds, but the reply is a simple—

Sorry.

Then you toss aside the phone and float in the darkness of the room. There’s nothing to do but wait, because you don’t dare to do anything alone. There’s sweat and blood and fuck knows what else stuck to your skin, your hair, but you can’t risk taking a shower. Can’t risk the water dampening your senses. Can’t risk being cornered in a moldy bathroom, only one way out. Can’t risk doing anything alone. Can’t take a fucking shower.

It’s this thought, more than anything else, that has your body flushing with rage.

What kind of life is this?

Namjoon had never mentioned repaying your debt. He’d never insinuated you owed him anything at all for saving your life, but you know something like that never comes for free. Namjoon doesn’t do anything just because. Has no goodness in his heart to do anything in the name of it. Watching Jimin nearly die in front of him had been the exception to his usual nature; a rare slip-up by an otherwise detached, uncaring man.

Still, whatever you owe him has surely been repaid by now. Tenfold, if the bloodstains along your collar are anything to go by.

It’s time for Namjoon to let you go.

—

Something is wrong.

Two hours have ticked by and there’s no word from Jimin. No word from Namjoon or Seokjin, either, which is the only reason you’re still in this nauseating motel room and not out on the streets searching for him. Solo jobs don’t go like this. The two of you are always in and out, tragically efficient. Back to where you started and then back on a plane, nothing left behind except a singular bullet hole and another fragmented piece of your conscience.

You’ve had a lot of jobs go wrong, but never two hours.

You’re about three minutes from coming out of your skin. Sick to your stomach with worry, anxiety weighing you down like an anchor. You wouldn’t be able to go out searching for Jimin like this even if you could, and there’s no point in dwelling on that, examining it further. All you can do is wait.

It’s another hour before you hear the click of the lock. You’re nearly on your knees in relief, but you stay rooted to the flimsy mattress. Try not to think about how you’ll have to sleep on it, even though you’ll be up half the night with residual worry. All those lingering ghosts.

Jimin doesn’t say anything, so neither do you.

[55.6761° N, 12.5683° E | Copenhagen, DENMARK]

Jimin’s hair is orange when you go to Copenhagen.

Not for a job, just to breathe. You wanted to see the city at Christmastime; Jimin’s never been.

You crack a joke. Point out buildings of similar color, have him stand in front of one as you take a picture. Everyone smiles when they pass the two of you on the street, Jimin’s eyes fond even though he rolls them as you pose him how you want. Still stands against an apricot-colored wall and flashes a smile and a peace sign, cheeks pink from the cold. Does a good job of pretending the two of you aren’t here just for fun, that this is something more.

It’s not.

The two of you fucked in a hotel room in Reykjavik and haven’t spoken a word of it since.

You nearly lost your mind over him in Buenos Aires and haven’t spoken a word of that, either.

Instead, his hand finds yours as the two of you walk around Tivoli Gardens. You marvel at the lights and Jimin marvels at you. You share mulled wine and spiced doughnuts. Jimin tries to drag you on the swings but you plant your feet and refuse, laughing through your refusals. As dangerous as your lives are, motion sickness might be the most. He gets his revenge and poses you in front of a giant nutcracker, then again in front of one of the endless Christmas trees.

Jimin pays for the two of you to decorate honey cakes. You’re surrounded by families with shrieking children and palpable adoration, and it’s all you can do not to wonder if anyone you’ve taken out had ever had something like this. Something that makes your soul warm; something that still lingers in your bones years later.

The two of you take a selfie when it starts to snow. It stings when you have no one to send it to, so it just lives in your phone. Maybe it’s enough.

On another day, Jimin holds your hand through Torvehallerne. This time you marvel at him while he marvels at all the food, eyes wide each time he turns to ask if he should buy something. You always say yes and he always shares, and it’s all you can do not to think about why you don’t have to budget yourselves. Why you’re able to walk through the market and buy whatever you want; how you could buy every item for sale and it wouldn’t make a dent.

(You pick up small trinkets for Taehyung and Jungkook. Not because you want to, but because it feels nicer than remembering that you have no one to buy gifts for. Not really. Not anymore.)

Jimin wants to ice skate, so you do. He holds your hand then, too. More out of necessity than anything else, and he has none of his usual grace. Someone hands you a free cup of hot chocolate, just because. Jimin pouts and then it’s his hot chocolate. It’s all you can do not to kiss away the whipped cream on the corner of his mouth.

Back in your lavish hotel, after countless days have blurred together and Jimin’s fresh from a shower, skin flushed, you finally ask yourself if it’s worth putting up such a fight. If it’s really all that bad to care for Jimin and be cared for in return. If it’s all that bad to be someone else, just for a little while: someone with a normal life who makes a normal living and has a normal capability to love. Someone who isn’t damaged beyond repair.

That will never be you. Not fully, and certainly not in this lifetime, but maybe it could be, a little.

“Jimin,” you say, because you need to try. Jimin loves you in ways you’ll never understand, and you want to be better for him. “We should talk.”

Your voice is small and hesitant, and Jimin hates it. Sees trouble where there’s only vulnerability, so he misreads. Shakes his head. Takes a risk and stands between your legs at the edge of the bed—yours, because there’s two—as he tilts your head back, thumbs pressing into the contours of your cheeks. The scar still sits in the hollow of your throat, and that version of you feels so far away. That life feels so far away.

There’s no violence here. There’s no blood, no fugues. There’s just you and Jimin, whose voice is small like yours when he shakes his head and says, “You should kiss me instead.”

The second time is nothing like the first.

Jimin moves delicately. Feels like silk lace, tastes like spun sugar. Moves both his mouth and his body fluidly, no hesitation, yet he still takes his time. Still pauses to look at you with endless devotion; with awed reverence. Makes a map of your body and marks all his favorite places with his lips.

“Tell me what you want,” he says. Speaks the words against the skin just beneath your ear. “Anything. I’ll give you whatever you want, just have to ask.”

What you want isn’t tangible, isn’t possible, so you stay quiet. Thread your fingers through Jimin’s hair, gasp when he mouths along the column of your throat. Jimin reserves all his softness for you. Bathes you in it. Would kill anyone to keep it that way.

So you say, “Want your mouth,” and let slip a quiet moan when he gives you what you’ve asked for. When he situates himself between your thighs and sucks and licks until you’re writhing, making a mess, grasping fruitlessly at the sheets, his hair, his shoulders, only calming when his hands find yours and your fingers interlock.

Jimin mouths at you until you’re trembling. Until you’re needy and desperate, hips moving on their own, fucking yourself against his face. Until nothing exists except the heat in your belly, the stars behind your eyelids, the heady, fucked-out sound of Jimin’s voice as he talks you through it, murmurs praise against your cunt.

Jimin mouths at you until you forget.

This isn’t your life. This is not something you can have.

But, in the grand scheme of things, what does it matter? You’ve made peace with death, and there’s only one of two ways it’s going to come for you in the end: by Namjoon’s hand or someone else’s. So what does it matter?

This time, Jimin fucks you slow. Kisses you with your taste still in his mouth. Thumbs over a hardened nipple just to see what earns him a reaction, and what you truly want is more time—something else that’s impossible.

Jimin’s hair is orange when you think you might be in love with him.

[ 48.8566° N, 2.3522° E | Paris, FRANCE ]

Jimin’s hair is pink when—

“Sit,” he says, gesturing to the toilet.

Soaks a washcloth in warm water. Wrings it out. Stands in front of you, and there’s water dripping onto the floor and Jimin doesn’t care, doesn’t seem to see anything in this moment except for you, your hands covered in someone else’s blood, and he reaches out, gently grabs your wrist. Palm up. Someone else’s blood. Everything smells like copper and iron. Looks too surreal beneath the fluorescent lights of this hotel bathroom for your mind to make sense of it.

There is care in the way Jimin cleans your hands. There is tenderness in the way he both refuses to see what you really are and the way he’s the only one to ever see you so entirely, when you look down at the blood he’s washing away and all you can see is stigmata. When all you see is sin.

“I know you don’t love me,” he says, and there is a conviction in his words that stuns you into silence. “Not the way I love you, anyway.”

That tenderness is still there as he says this. As he presses the wet fabric into the meat of your palm, wipes the stains away, and the warmth is as calming as it is undeserved. It feels like something forbidden. It feels like salvation and condemnation all at once, like whatever sick depravity permeates you is contagious, will take over Jimin, too, just from touching you.

Jimin is close enough to reach out and touch. Close enough to see the violence that he exists in alongside you: the rips in his clothes, the scars that decorate his skin. Close enough to know he smells sickly-sweet, just like death. Your hand shakes as it reaches for him and never follows through. Doesn’t want to contaminate him.

“I do,” you finally say. Whatever is in your voice is not conviction. “I can’t.” You suck in a breath, try to steady your breathing. This is where it all comes crashing down, you think, because in all the years you’ve done Namjoon’s bidding, you’ve never cried. You can take life so freely and without thought, but you cannot love Jimin. “Someone like me isn’t capable of it.”

Jimin pauses, the washcloth stuck in the space between your ring and middle fingers. “And who is someone like you?”

Water is still dripping to the floor. Serosanguineous: blood tainting something untouched. Not something one thing or another but both, watery-pink. Looks like Jimin’s hair. “I’ve killed a lot of people,” you answer. “More than I can count. More than I can name. More than the ones that come to haunt me at night.” Your free hand moves to your chest, covers your heart. “There’s nothing here, Jimin. I’m not sure there ever was.”

The washcloth drops to the floor, and all that blood belonging to a man whose name you never bothered to learn before you put a bullet between his eyes finds a new place to rest. “I think,” he begins, clasping your unclean hand in his own, voice dropping to a whisper, “you forget, sometimes.” You gasp as he places your palm to his cheek, drags it across his face, smears a stranger’s blood across his skin. “That we’re the same.”

Jimin is always overwhelming, but the love he has for you is even more so. It consumes you entirely, embeds itself beneath your skin, makes a home, would tear you apart, body and soul, to return to him.

[ 47.4979° N, 19.0402° E | Budapest, HUNGARY ]

Jimin’s hair is lavender when it all goes to shit.

“You’re being followed.”

Seokjin’s voice is garbled through the earpiece, tinny and metallic, and you roll your eyes. Some things don’t need to be said, because you’ve known someone was following you for the last three blocks. Average height, black peacoat, close-cropped haircut. Not the kind of person that’d stand out here, and that’s exactly why you’d sent Jimin in the other direction.

“No shit,” you respond in Hungarian, because you already know the man following you doesn’t speak or understand it. “Give me somewhere to go.”

It takes Seokjin a few moments to run the translation. “There’s a side street up on your right,” he answers. “It’s tight, but there’s an alleyway at the end. You can buy some time if you’re quick.”

“Where’s Jimin?”

You pass a vendor selling lángos and duck into the street behind the stall. Just as Seokjin had said, there’s a small alleyway up on the left, and your footfall is near-silent as you break into a sprint to reach it. “Safe,” is all Seokjin says.

You take a second to steady your breathing, knowing you’re good on time—the man following you was close enough to know where you’d turned, but, if you’re lucky, not much after that. That plays on a loop: if you’re lucky, if you’re lucky, if you’re lucky. What is luck, what does it look like, in a life left entirely to chance? In a life with no guarantees?

You tuck yourself away, focus on Seokjin’s metallic breaths. Think about his basement in Seoul, why he’s in it. Ask, “What happened in Addis Ababa?” because it feels important to know.

There’s not much you know about Seokjin’s life. Whatever happened in Ethiopia had been before your time, reduced to hushed whispers and gossip fodder after your arrival. No one spoke of it, Seokjin especially, but every now and then something would slip in the same way weeds grow in sidewalk cracks.

A job gone wrong. A bombing at the consulate with Seokjin inside.

His reply is simple, words spoken carefully: “I loved someone once, too.”

He can’t see it, but you nod nonetheless; an answer that doesn’t require a response, because you know. It’s enough to fill in the rest. What Seokjin’s trauma looks like. Why he doesn’t do field work anymore. Why he prefers the solitude of the basement, rarely a sound beyond the electric thrum of the server racks.

Who had gone in to retrieve him, and why Yoongi has the scar over his eye.

“You loved someone,” you conclude, “and he would’ve been willing to die for you.”

“Yes,” Seokjin says, and it’s like the word’s been punched out of him. Sounds like something repressed, something left to rot in the darkest corner of the world.

Love, to Seokjin, looks and sounds the same as death.

“I think most people spend their entire lives searching for a love like that,” he continues, and if you could see him you think he might look dazed, off-kilter. You think he might be an avatar. Seokjin is prying his ribcage apart, unwrapping the barbed wire from his heart, saying I once was in love and this is all I know of it. “But, to me, in this life, it’s a prison. Once someone is willing to die for you, how do you keep them alive? How do you—I kissed that skin. I worshiped it. I pressed my lips to it with whatever softness was left in me. How do you look at that same skin and know you’re the reason it’s mangled?” He exhales, all tremor. “You can’t. You can’t.”

You know this all too well. You know what it feels like to look at Jimin and know, intrinsically and subconsciously, that you wouldn’t even hesitate. You’d take and give life to keep him alive and safe. You know that when you exit this world at someone else’s hand his face is the last thing you want to see.

You know it’s a liability.

You know it’s a target painted on your back. Between your eyes.

You know there’s nothing left to say, that this particular conversation has run its course. The two of you sit in an amicable silence, and you hope Seokjin can hear the life that surrounds you, however mundane. Hope he can hear the lángos vendor trying to hawk his goods; hope he can hear a city 8,000 kilometers away; hope he can hear these regular, everyday people going about their lives and remember there’s hope beyond his four walls.

I think you’d like it here, you think, but you don’t dare to say it aloud.

Time passes in a meaningless blur. Could be minutes, could be hours. No one’s come to kill you, so you reckon you’ve long since been in the clear. And maybe it speaks to Seokjin’s idea that love is a prison, because you know something’s happened to Jimin long before Seokjin speaks it into existence.

You’re up and out of the alleyway before you’re told to move. Have no idea where you’re going, but you’re racing through the streets of Budapest with a panic you haven’t ever felt in your life. Feels like quicksand; feels like molasses; feels like you have to wade through all the blood you’ve spilled, now congealed, to get to him.

“Where am I going?” you demand. Your lungs are on fire. In the split-second of silence it becomes a desperate scream. “Seokjin, tell me where the fuck I’m going!”

“The—fuck, the wa-warehouse up on your right.” You can’t think about why he’s crying. “I don’t—I don’t know wha-what’s there, you need to be careful. Please, you have to—”

Twenty seconds and you’ll be there, you’ll be with Jimin, you just need to keep running. You need to keep your head on straight. Remember your training. Remember you’ve built a life in a viper pit.

A man in a uniform is unloading a shipment around the back of the building. Faces away from you, bent at the waist. Takes very little effort to smash his head into the stone exterior and knock him unconscious, pocket his badge. You can’t get stupid now. Tell Seokjin to make sure all the cameras are cut, ask what floor when you shut yourself inside the freight elevator, unwilling to take the stairs and run into anyone who might be waiting. All the way to the top, he says, so all the way to the top you go.

—

Over the course of your life, you’ve made peace with death. Have stared it in the eye more times than you can count. Have dealt it out, evaded it, shook its hand.

You are wholly unprepared for the sight that greets you.

Red. Everything is red—the walls, the floor, what used to be a beautiful parquet pattern in the wood. In the center of the room: two bodies, maybe three. Not much that’d be able to identify them beyond a pile of teeth, no saying whose is whose. Slaughterhouse scraps.

And this is not—Jimin doesn’t work this way. Isn’t his MO. Jimin’s kills are elegant and neat, topped with a bow. What you see before you is ultraviolence. It is unhinged, it is fury, it is a complete loss of control. It’s what love looks like to Jimin, because he sits at the very edge of a rotted chair, legs crossed. Face streaked with blood, clothes covered in it.

“Jimin,” you say, because what else is there?

He tilts his head to the side, smirks a little, looks at you beneath his lashes. Eyes that used to find you across a room and calm you. Eyes that have locked onto you in the throes of pleasure. Eyes you’ve seen yourself reflected in, bathed in love and adoration.

Eyes that now contain nothing.

“Jimin, what the fuck happened?”

He removes his gloves with his teeth and doesn’t flinch away from the taste of iron. “They said they hurt you,” he states simply, “so I did what needed to be done.”

“What—” Nausea claws at your throat; for the first time, it’s all too much. This isn’t Jimin. This isn’t your Jimin, who smiled as you posed him against apricot walls in Copenhagen, who took a bullet to the stomach to protect you and never, ever told you. This is not the Jimin who wasted the last of his goodwill on loving you. “What did you do?” you whisper.

He rises to full height and it makes you flinch. You are scared of Jimin for the first time in your life: scared of who he is in this moment, what he’s capable of. And he sees it, lets that brand of anguish overtake him. Reaches for you before he decides against it and lets his hand drop to his side. Says, “I would never hurt you,” as if the words could brand themselves into your skin so you’d never forget.

“No, you’d just—” You squeeze your eyes shut. Don’t think about how one of the men nearly embedded into the floor was the one trailing you earlier.

Instead, you think about Seokjin: Once someone is willing to die for you, how do you keep them alive? You think about: How do you look at that same skin and know you’re the reason it’s mangled? You think about: In this life, it’s a prison.

You drop to your knees. Let the blood seep through your clothes and into your skin, undeserving of shying away from it.

Namjoon should’ve let you go.

You think about the men in front of you. Who they were, who they loved. The grief all of this is going to leave behind, and it becomes impossible to breathe. You grasp at your throat, think about all the times you’ve been strangled and who’d been there to cut the rope. There is no limit to Jimin’s devotion, and you understand now, how it drove Yoongi to madness. How he loved someone so much he would’ve retrieved their corpse from a building and how that same person can no longer bear to look at the damage they’d caused.

“This isn’t love, Jimin,” you choke out.

He stands in front of you. Stigmata. You’re worshiping at the altar of some kind of devil. At least his hands are clean when he places his fingers beneath your chin, forces you to look up at him. “What is it, then?”

“Destruction.”

A quiet huff of cruel laughter. “See, this is the difference between me and you, darling.” He takes back his hand, runs it through his blood-streaked hair, and your chin sags to your chest without his support. “Because I already knew that. Because I have destroyed myself every single day loving you.” He squats down, eye-level, and he says, “I need you to listen to me when I say this, sweetheart: you do not love me the way I love you, because I would do worse. When it comes to you, there is nothing on this earth I would not destroy to keep you safe.”

He clears his throat. Collects whatever’s in his mouth and spits onto one of the bodies. “If this is enough to have you tucking your fucking tail between your legs, then go, because this doesn’t even scratch the fucking surface.”

You can’t bring yourself to say anything, and sometimes that says it all.

Jimin presses a kiss to the top of your head. Makes a call. Cleaners will be here soon, he says, better get going.

You watch him go.

[ 37.5665° N, 126.9780° E | Seoul, SOUTH KOREA ]

Jimin’s hair is black when Namjoon calls the meeting.

He takes the seat across from Namjoon’s desk because they don’t meet like this often. Assignments are usually manila folders slipped under doors, hushed whispers in hallways confirmed with a nod or a text on a burner phone. Assignments are not last-minute assemblies in conference rooms and offices.

But the way Namjoon is looking at him, with his clenched jaw and a gaze that’s meant to look barbed to anyone who doesn’t actually know him—Jimin doesn’t need to ask what this is about.

Had he bothered to look, he would’ve known by the way you stood in the far corner of the room, face obscured by the mid-afternoon shadows. Yoongi’s close to you, for some reason: dressed head to toe in black, perched on a lateral file cabinet, using a metal corner to sharpen his switchblade. Just like a harbinger of death. Some sort of fucked up omen, a warning that’s come too late.

Didn’t I tell you this would end badly, he hears Yoongi taunt in his head. This is what happens when you lay with trash.

Easy for Yoongi to say when he doesn’t know what it means to be cared for by you. Doesn’t know how it feels to give in to the freefall and plummet at your feet, stripped back and laid bare. Doesn’t know how it feels to kiss secrets into your skin like constellations, to map his tongue along every unspoken confession.

Easy for Yoongi to say, because he doesn’t have to survive the aftermath. Doesn’t have to feel the heartbreak, the agony of having you and watching as you slip through his fingers. Yoongi doesn’t have to struggle just to breathe, doesn’t have to endure the nights staring at the ceiling, watching as the daylight creeps into the corners of his vision. Doesn’t have to watch you looking so unaffected.

“Jimin.” Namjoon’s tone is flat, needlelike.

Behind him, Yoongi chuckles lowly. “What?” Jimin asks, his gaze trained on the painting behind Namjoon’s head. Looks like one he’d seen in Berlin, the time the two of you had gone just because and spent an afternoon ducking in and out of museums to escape the rain.

When he closes his eyes, he still sees the raindrops stuck to your eyelashes. The beads of water rolling off the sleeves of your leather jacket. How blinding your smile had been. The laughter in your voice as you ordered beer after beer after beer for the two of you in flawless Berlinisch. A brief, fleeting glimpse at normalcy. At the kind of life the two of you could have if you were just… different. Lived different lives. Were different people.

“You’ve gotten sloppy.”

Namjoon’s words are a cold bucket of water. Snap him back to reality, yank him back to the present where he’s forced to leave those river-lined streets behind. You’re silent and Yoongi’s still snorting laughter. “Okay,” is all Jimin can bring himself to say.

Jin had gotten sloppy once, too, and Namjoon stuck him down in the basement to work logistics. Might not be so bad, Jimin reckons. He’d be away from you, spared of this fucking misery. “So you know that’s unacceptable.”

Jimin just shrugs, resigned to his fate, whatever it may be. “I’m reassigning the both of you,” Namjoon continues. “You’ll both have new partners for your next assignments, since you clearly can no longer be trusted together.”

“Who?” Jimin manages to choke out.

Namjoon raises an eyebrow, clearly having expected an argument. “You’re being sent to Shanghai with Jungkook. You,” he says, turning his attention to you, “are going to Moscow with Taehyung.”

She’s fond of Taehyung, Jimin wants to say. But you’d been fond of him too, once upon a time, and that’d only ended in heartbreak, so who fucking cares.

They’re cruel, the tricks Jimin’s mind plays on him. How he convinces himself you look pained. How his fingers wring together at the thought of entrusting his life in the hands of someone else, someone new. At your life being just as at stake; at Taehyung being tasked with keeping you alive. Would you die for him, too, the way you’d always told Jimin you would for him? Would Taehyung take a bullet to the stomach to keep you safe the way Jimin had?

Even more cruel is the way you scoff, pushing yourself off of the wall as you fold your arms across your chest and say, “That’s bullshit, Kim Namjoon.”

No one talks to Namjoon that way except you.

Yoongi’s knife stops twirling. Just like a bird sensing a storm, senses on high-alert as he flicks his gaze over to you. “I’m sorry?” Namjoon says. “What part of Jimin losing his mind and nearly outing all of us seems like bullshit to you?”

“Hm, let me think,” you retort, a manicured finger tapping against the hollow of your cheek. “The part where you’re reassigning me for someone else’s mistake?”

Which part was the mistake? Jimin wants to ask. Needs to know how much you regret. Was sleeping with you the mistake? Falling in love with you? Getting too caught up in all these daydreams and letting reality get away from him?

“This organization is more important than Park Jimin getting his goddamn dick wet,” Namjoon snaps. “Keeping all of you safe—keeping you alive—is more—”

You scoff. Take an entire container of gasoline and pour it right on top of Namjoon’s flammable ire. “Then perhaps you’d be so kind as to explain to me why Min fucking Yoongi can fuck damn near everyone in this establishment, yet I have to sit here and listen to your goddamn mouth—”

Jimin doesn’t think Yoongi even knows his arm is moving.

There’d just been the trading of barbed words. His own name being spoken into the ether. Yoongi’s arm moving away from his body, switchblade clasped tightly between his fingers as he plunges it into your flesh.

Jimin watches it puncture your arm in slow motion. Feels the bile in his throat, the heat in his belly. Looks first at Namjoon whose jaw has gone slack, skin pale, as he stammers over words that won’t come. Then he looks at Yoongi—expects to find shock or guilt but finds only a muted disinterest and flared nostrils.

Finally, he looks at you. Watches the white cotton sleeve of your shirt slowly turn red and sticky-wet. Watches as your lips move around syllables and vowels and consonants Jimin can’t decipher.

“—fucking piece of shit, this is my favorite shirt! I’ll never get all this goddamn blood out of it—”

Jimin thinks he hears Yoongi say you deserve it. But Jimin isn’t really thinking much as he clambers out of his chair and moves in Yoongi’s direction. Doesn’t think at all as he lets instinct take over, lets adrenaline steer him headfirst into yet another bad idea.

He’s always known there’d come a day he’d be face-to-face with the sight of your blood. Had always known it’d come from someone else’s hand. Had always promised himself that hurting you would be the last thing anyone ever did.

Jimin has his fingers wrapped around Yoongi’s throat and he finally understands it—the joy Yoongi finds in taking life.

“What’s the matter, Jimin-ah?” Yoongi taunts. Jimin tightens his grip. Suddenly hates that fucking scar across Yoongi’s eye. “You’re never on clean-up duty. Always make your girlfriend do the dirty work. Finally grew some fucking balls, huh?”

“Fuck you,” Jimin says stupidly. Can’t think of anything more to say. Not that he needs to. Wrapping your hands around someone’s throat sends enough of a message, he thinks.

Namjoon’s still tongue-tied as you yank Yoongi’s blade from your arm, immediately pressing your other hand over the wound to stem the bleeding. The sight of your blood is making Jimin dizzy; the smell of the iron hanging in the air. All he wants to do is choke the life out of the man in front of him, but more than that, he just wants to hold your hand. Wants to comfort you, even though he knows you don’t need it. Not from him, not from anyone, but he still wants to. Wants to press his lips to the sweat at your brow.

And Yoongi can see it, too, because he starts laughing. It’s an odd, fractured noise. Jimin isn’t sure if he’s ever heard him laugh before, decides he also hates the way it sounds. Feels all wrong watching it leave his crooked smirk. Makes Jimin’s stomach plummet to the ground.

“Oh, you’re fucked, aren’t you?” Yoongi teases around Jimin’s slackened grip. “You weren’t just fucking her, you’re in love with her.”

Weird how Jimin is the one with his hands around someone’s neck and feels like he’s the one suffocating.

[ 31.2304° N, 121.4737° E | Shanghai, CHINA ]

Jimin watches the life drain from an innocent woman’s face and feels nothing.

Jimin watches Jungkook cut a man down and feels even less.

When it’s over, he cleans up wordlessly and doesn’t eat for three days.

[ 37.5665° N, 126.9780° E | Seoul, SOUTH KOREA ]

Jimin’s hair has faded to brown by the time he returns from Shanghai.

The more complicated job had gone to you and Taehyung. Jimin had tried not to take it personally. The Russian hits are always unnecessarily violent and Jungkook still isn’t fully trained. There’s still a phantom pain in Jimin’s stomach that warns him of the consequences of taking on more than he can chew. So, sure, Shanghai had gone fine, but his mind had been nearly 7,000 kilometers away the entire time.

Good thing he’d returned to Seoul unscathed, too, because he’s sure Namjoon would’ve eliminated him without a moment’s hesitation if he’d fucked up again.

But Shanghai had only served to prove the leader right. Jimin can’t work with you anymore. Can’t focus, can’t stomach the violence, can’t keep his goddamn head on straight.

He sighs as he glances at Jungkook to his right. Jimin had watched him murder two men in cold blood not even thirty-six hours ago and now he’s doe-eyed and sucking down his third banana milk of the morning. It really makes his head spin, being paired with this grown-up infant of a man now instead of you, but for all of Jungkook’s apparent shortcomings, he’d kept Jimin alive. He isn’t dead.

And then you walk in with Taehyung and he wishes he was.

Because you’re laughing and Taehyung’s got his arm slung around your shoulder and you look happy. It’s the kind of happiness that should be contagious, bloom warmth in his chest, but it doesn’t. It just takes the last frayed strand of hope he has and sets flame to it.

You don’t look like you miss Jimin at all. Don’t look like you’ve lost sleep or skipped meals.

“Didn’t take you long, did it?” Jimin says, because he’s wounded and lashing out. Not because he means it.

You must know he doesn’t, too, because you don’t react. “Watch your mouth, Park Jimin,” Taehyung warns, because he doesn’t know, and this only sets Jimin off more. You don’t need defending. Or had you, and Jimin had simply thought it wasn’t his place to provide it? That you wouldn’t want it?

“Or what, Kim Taehyung?”

Taehyung is cherubic. It’s part of his charm, one of many reasons why he’s so effective. If you’re looking to die, you look for the guy who looks like Yoongi, not the one who smiles wide and warm like Taehyung. So when he sets his jaw and pokes his tongue into his cheek and says, “Or I’ll cut your fucking head off, you stupid fuck,” your attention is finally piqued.

“I’m so sick of this,” Jungkook wails, banana milk tossed carelessly in the trash. “All of you need to get your fucking shit together!”

Taehyung rolls his eyes at the same time you pretend to inspect your nails. “Is that why you’re so temperamental, Chim?” Taehyung prods, looking every bit the pretentious, murderous angel he is. “Because you got sent to China on a babysitting mission while the grownups did real work?”

“Fuck you,” Jungkook snaps, rising to full height. “I’m not a fucking child.”

“Oh? Could’ve fooled me.” Taehyung’s words are razor-sharp and smell like kerosene. “Tell me, then: were you on babysitting duty? Had to look after our precious little Jiminie while he nursed his broken heart?”

You sigh, full of faux-exasperation, and place a gentle hand on Taehyung’s forearm. Dig your nails in just enough to be a warning, and if Jimin hadn’t been looking he’d miss it: the way Taehyung deflates instantly, anger dissipating like smoke, back in control. Just because you’d touched him. Just because you were there. Jimin knows that touch, how it feels to be under your control, and it makes his chest ache. Makes everything feel like it’s sitting wrong in his stomach, and he’s either going to be sick all over Namjoon’s overpriced fucking rug or wrap his hands around Taehyung’s throat the way he’d done to Yoongi.

He’s out of his goddamned mind; he feels untethered. Helpless. Like it was always going to end like this, and maybe Jimin knew that and had just ignored it. Maybe now he’s paying the price—maybe he’s finally found something he can’t afford.

Jungkook’s still going off, nasty gaze set on Taehyung because he’s the only one playing along. They’re exchanging words Jimin can’t make heads nor tails of. Words he doesn’t care about. Words that ring empty and hollow because they sound nothing like the way you say his name. Shapeless, unlike the way your lips move around those syllables.

“Jimin,” you say, the sound finally registering and bringing him back down to earth. All he can do is stare. “Can we talk?” Taehyung and Jungkook are still trading barbs.

Wonders how he got here. Looks around the room and wonders if each and every one of them is destined for this same fate, this madness. Wants to tell you why he forgot his vest, why he was three hours late in Argentina. Wants to grovel and beg and leave this place and never look back.

More than anything, he wants to know what it feels like to actually be human.

So he shakes his head. Tries not to be haunted by the way your face falls at the rejection.

There is a scar on his abdomen and a scar on your arm that both tell the same story. There is a man in the basement who is in love with a man above ground and is too weighed down by guilt to do anything about it. There is a man here who plays god, has soldiers to do his bidding, and there is very little here that Jimin has only for himself.

The two of you will have that conversation, but he needs to be human, first.

[ 34.6901° N, 135.1956° E | Kobe, JAPAN ]

This is a waste of your fucking time.

Whatever Namjoon had thought would be here doesn’t seem to exist. Yoongi can barely tolerate you on a good day, threatens to stick a dagger in your neck at least twice an hour, but the more time the two of you waste chasing ghosts, the closer he comes to unraveling entirely.

“Stop fucking staring at me,” he snaps, blowing the smoke of his cigarette right in your face.

You tut. “But you’re so beautiful, Yoongi, I just can’t help it.”

He digs his switchblade from his boot. Makes a show of flipping it open. “I can cut your fuckin’ eyes out of your skull,” he intones. “Maybe that’ll help.”

In your ear, Jimin’s laughter rings like crystal.

Ricochets off of all the corners of Seokjin’s basement, makes the echo sound warped through the earpiece. “Please tell Yoongi-ssi to keep an eye on the man with the shaved head. In front of him, roughly sixty degrees to his right.”

You relay the message. Watch as Yoongi transforms—sharpened gaze, rigid posture, disappears into the shadows. More apex predator than man. “And me?” you ask.

“Backup,” comes Seokjin’s voice. “We haven’t found your mark yet.”

You hum. Pick up the cigarette Yoongi left behind and stick it between your lips. Smoke it nearly to the filter. “You got it, boss,” you tease, just because it flusters him.

“I’m—that’s not—knock it off.”

Exhale. Stub out the cigarette. Butt in your pocket. “Anything else?”

“Yeah,” Jimin says, and his voice is soft, sounds like spun sugar. “Stay alive, all right?”

Jimin’s hair isn’t dyed at all.

if you've read this far: thank you so, so much! i am more appreciative than i can put into words. this is very different from what i typically write, but i hope you enjoyed it nonetheless.

i would love to hear your thoughts if you have any. &lt;3

[dollsorwhatever]

More Cleo

Some more Cleo updates since my last post about her on here! I mostly post on twitter nowadays but I like to keep this account somewhat up to date, especially since I can be more long-winded here lol "Casual" Cleo (rerooted Ghoul Spirit Cleo) is finally finished! She's been mostly finished for a month or so but I dragged my feet doing the hair rings lol.

They're inspired by a set of wig rings found in the tomb of Sithathoriunet (Middle Kingdom, 12th Dynasty), shown here at The Met and here in an earlier Met exhibit, displayed on reconstruction wigs.

I couldn't find any metal beads in the right sizes or color (and I wanted them to be the same shade of gold as her accessories) so I made these myself with a handful of coffee stirrers that I painted and cut into little rings lol Other than the hair rings, she's been given a pair of shoes since my last post (Goreganizer Cleo's shoes with the Skullettes dremeled off and painted), a new choker that I made by cutting MB Cleo's ponytail holder into separate pieces, sanding off a few parts and reassembling it (the cartouche on it actually spells her name btw!), a Gloom and Bloom Cleo purse that I painted to match her shoes and a new clasp on her kilt made with a G1 Cleo vanity bracelet. Also, it was pointed out to me yesterday that the hieroglyphs on this top (from G1 I Heart Fashion Cleo) spell out to say "oh my Ra" phonetically lol. A nice touch that I never noticed! And I also finished up this Cleo a while back but never posted her here lol

Her headdress is a heavily altered and repainted Monster Ball Cleo headdress; I just wanted the "core" of the headdress so I removed everything but the cow horns and sun disk with my dremel, then drilled a hole through the back and pinned it to her head lol. The bracelets are all g1 Nefera bracelets that I repainted (as well as Nefera's necklace) and her shoes are from Skulltimate Secrets Cleo but repainted to match the rest of her accessories, and the hair rings are repainted G1 sig/Howliday Cleo bracelets. The first two 'tiers' of hair are her original rooted hair, but the longest tier is an extension that I made and pinned to her head. My general idea is that this is something she'd wear for temple ceremonies or religious events, or as a model for portraiture and statuary that represents her as an embodiment of Hathor? Not sure! My SS2 Cleo custom got some small updates shortly after my last tumblr post about her, mostly just her new headdress and new fishnets that actually fit her lol

And finally a group shot of my current Cleo lineup:

Skulltimate Secrets Cleo (far left) and Goreganizer Cleo (second to the right) are still WIP but they look good enough to be part of the shot! I also have a partially rerooted Monster Ball Cleo waiting for a new fit too, but there's no room on this display for her and she's barely dressed anyway lol

[fiveht]

Proof of life (Adore pt 3)

Hello my sweet angel babies ♥️

I'm not going to be able to adequately express my gratitude for the steady stream of love (and concern, sorry) I've been receiving over the past couple of months. I'm so sorry I've been AWOL, it will definitely happen again. Because see, for me, I usually have to make a choice between social and creative fandom participation. My battery is small, and takes a long time to charge.

Thank you to everyone who's left comments and asks and DMs since I've been gone. I don't think I can respond to all of it, but rest assured those messages ping my cold, dead heart every time I see them.

So I'm gonna go out on a limb here. I did this same thing months and months ago, when I was working on Head Over Feet, and let me be clear: posting even a single word of a WIP goes against my every instinct and principle as an author. I am someone who likes to finish an entire story before I post any of it, and on top of that, I am NOT a fast writer, so the expectations that I'm setting up here might not be advisable. But I did it before and managed to finish the thing, and I want to give you guys something in exchange for being so unbelievably awesome, so here I am again.

This will probably be the only time I mention this story in public until it's finished and posted, and inquiries about my progress are unlikely to help with the writing process, I'm just saying. I reserve the right to change every last word of this before the final draft, and I also reserve the right to fall off the face of the planet and simply never finish it, as much as I will strive to prevent that from happening. Please be patient with me.

Anyway, here is my paltry offering to say thanks for the love: the (VERY rough) first ~1300 words of the third instalment of The Adventures of Soft Daddy and Danger Twink.

Sirius secures his handheld shower head to its holder at the edge of his clawfoot tub, and steps out carefully onto the bathmat. He shivers in the cool air outside the shower curtain; it's about twenty degrees below zero outside, so even if he could afford to run his ancient radiator at full blast, it probably wouldn't help much.

He dries himself off and checks his reflection in the mirror, turning his face this way and that as he tugs his hair out of the bun he'd piled it into to keep it dry during his shower. There's no need for makeup tonight, not when he's not even planning to put on clothes.

It's incrementally warmer when he steps out into the main room of his apartment. He gathers an array of splayed text books and notes from his bed and dumps them carelessly onto the couch, then closes his new laptop and places it delicately on the coffee table. It's the most expensive thing he owns, save for the Gucci backpack currently sitting in his wardrobe with a three-inch berth around it like his shoes and other bags might somehow contaminate it. It's weird owning rich-people stuff when you are still, objectively, broke as fuck.

He perches on the edge of his bed and sets his phone to charge, because his battery doesn't even last a day anymore, and he's going to need it this evening. He tucks it in next to his pillow and picks up his new toy.

The plug isn't much larger than the one he already has. A little longer, which is appealing, but no wider, so it shouldn't be a challenge to get it in comfortably. He disconnects it from its charger and hefts it in his hand, feeling the added weight from the electronics inside.

He picks up his phone, and hesitates when he sees the notification waiting for him.

Rieka: let's go out tomorrow

Rieka: the fact that we haven't been drunk since the term started is criminal

Rieka: we've had two chem labs and zero drinks

Sirius purses his lips, thumbs hovering over the keyboard. There's a fine line here, and he hasn't quite found it yet.

Me: got plans

Me: raincheck?

So complete avoidance is the best strategy, right?

Rieka: booooo 👎

He sighs, but at least she's not asking for an explanation. He opens a different conversation then, pushing all thoughts of Rieka Lupin into a tidy, sealed compartment, not to be opened during certain activities with a certain relative of hers.

Me: i'm ready

Me: are you in your office?

Daddy: Yup, I've got a few minutes

Daddy: Want me to call?

Instead of answering, Sirius hits the call button himself.

"Hey baby," Remus answers. His voice is already smooth and honey-sweet, and just from that, Sirius knows he's planning to lay it on thick tonight.

"Hi daddy," Sirius says with a smile. "Should I put it in now?"

There's a low chuckle over the line. "Are we feeling eager?"

"Always," Sirius says, laying back on his bed.

"Use the good lube I got you, it's gonna be in there a while."

He switches the call to speaker, and snags the bottle from his nightstand. "I threw out the old stuff, you've got me ruined for cheap lube."

"Only the best for that ass," Remus says, and Sirius can hear his smirk.

He gives the plug a liberal coating, running his fingers along its shape, his dick twitching just at the feel of the silky-smooth silicone, at the anticipation of what's about to happen. He spreads his legs wide, drawing one knee up to give himself easier access.

"Take it slow," Remus says, succinctly heading off Sirius' impulse to just shove the thing inside himself in one go. "Rub the tip against yourself, so you're nice and wet."

Sirius shuts his eyes as he obeys, sliding the slick end of the toy over his entrance. "Okay."

"Are you going to be a good boy for daddy tonight?"

"Uh-huh," Sirius says, teasing the very tip of the plug in and out of his hole.

"Tell me how."

"I'm not gonna touch."

"You're not gonna touch, and you're not gonna come."

"Yeah," Sirius says. His cock is starting to harden as his body tries to draw the plug inside. "Can I put it in, daddy?"

"Slow," Remus reminds him, "Slide it in nice and slow for me, baby."

Sirius catches his lip between his teeth and tries to push the plug in slowly, the way he knows Remus would do if he was here. 

The shower has left him relaxed and more than ready, and it's hard not to take advantage, just press the toy in to its limit because he can. But he's working on his patience -- under Remus' careful tutelage -- so he shuts his eyes and tries to savour it, the tease of the plug's rubber tip at his entrance, the slow stretch as he eases it past the slight resistance before he sighs, and his body eagerly accepts the intrusion.

"Mmmm," Sirius sighs as he settles the base of the plug flush against his entrance, shifting his hips and feeling the constant, dull pressure against his prostate.

"How's it feel?" 

"Good," Sirius says, splaying his legs out and just enjoying the pleasant fullness. It's been almost a week since Remus last fucked him, and that's just way too long. Christmas really spoiled him. He tugs the blankets up around him, because it's going to take some time before his body temperature is high enough to fight against the chill in his apartment.

"Have you tried out the settings at all?" Remus asks him, and Sirius picks up the phone, switching off speaker and holding it to his ear.

"No," he says, grinding his ass down against the bed to test the plug's reach inside him. "I thought you'd rather do the honours."

Remus hums, and Sirius hears the phone shifting in his grip. "I'm gonna turn it on, okay? Lowest setting."

"O--" Sirius stutters as the plug buzzes to life inside him, nestled snug against his prostate and sending little zings of pleasure down his legs. "Fuck that feels good. That's the lowest setting?"

"It is," Remus confirms. "Want to run through them all, see how high it goes? Or would you rather be surprised?"

"Mmmm, surprise me."

"Surprise it is," Remus says, and Sirius hears shuffling papers in the background as he prepares for his night class. Psychology 1001, Thursdays, 7-9:30PM. Two and a half hours of a lecture that Remus swears he's given so many times he could recite it in his sleep, so why not give himself something fun to focus on while he goes through the motions? 

Being privy to all of this brilliant, upstanding man's secret perversions is a privilege Sirius does not take lightly.

"You can turn it off from the app if you need to," Remus is saying, "Or you can call me and I'll switch it off. My phone's on vibrate, so I'll see it right away."

Sirius smiles to himself. "Got it," he says, though this is a rehashing of the rules that Remus had laid out when he'd brought the plug over last weekend. He'd called it a "late Christmas gift", as if he hadn't already given Sirius several thousand dollars worth of presents on Christmas morning.

There's more rustling over the line, the squeak of a chair. 

"Tell me again how you're going to be good tonight."

"I'm not gonna touch myself, and I'm not gonna come." The toy is still buzzing away inside him, making everything a little fuzzy at the edges. 

"Tell me why."

"'Cause daddy's in charge, even when he's not here."

"Good boy."

Sirius squirms with pleasure, his cock smearing a little drop of fluid on his belly as the toy hums insistently at his prostate.

"I have to head out," Remus says. "How do you feel?"

"Good," Sirius says, his abs tensing as he shifts his legs and the angle of the toy changes. "Excited."

"Me too," Remus says softly. "I'll talk to you soon, beautiful. Send me some pictures." With a low beep, the call disconnects.

[jules-writes-stories]

The Night Court Lounge | Tribeca, NYC

I forgot to post my WIP...Thursday? | Azriel x Eris AU |

“Perhaps I might have resisted a great temptation, but the little ones would have pulled me down” ―The House of Mirth

There was nothing like spotting one’s mother at a BDSM club. 

The ink was still wet on his parents’ divorce papers, but there she was for all to see, sprawled across Helion’s lap. After all, the Vanserras could always be counted on to feed the tabloids and gossip columns. 

Eris planned to finish his whiskey and make a discrete exit. But then, his heart leapt into his throat and his dick hardened at first sight. 

He’d been expecting Thesan in his usual get up. Eris occasionally came to The Night Court to support his ex. The man could still turn him on like no one else. They’d never been good at long-term relationships, but they could be each other’s confidantes, a soft place to fuck and forget for a spell. 

Eris had hoped to get that from his ex tonight, and was taken aback when something, someone, completely different entered the main stage. 

The man looked younger and Thesan’s lithe body and smooth brown skin was replaced by a lighter, golden tone, covered in scrolling Arabic across a sleek muscled chest. In place of white feathers were black leather bat wings. 

Eris found the whole thing to be absurd and had teased Thesan about it incessantly. But this man, his broad tattooed shoulders, the planes of his abs below the leather harness, those wings did something to him. He needed to go to fucking sleep or get laid.

Black lined eyes like topaz gazed out at the crowd. Eris wanted to smell those black curls, to test their silk between his fingers. He was being absurd. 

The beautiful man got to his knees in the most submissive prone position in the cage, and Eris watched him lean, like an overgrown house cat, into the auctioneer’s hand as she stroked those curls through iron bars. And fuck if it wasn’t the hottest thing he’d ever seen. This man was dangerous, even caged, and Eris wanted that creature purring between his legs. 

Then Helion made a spectacle of himself, announcing his intentions, and that sealed the deal. Eris would win. He hadn’t made the Wall Street Journal’s “30 Money Makers under 30” lists three years in a row for nothing. He was an apex predator in every boardroom, could dominate every corner of the market. But what made him dangerous was his discretion.

The Wall Street wolves of Beron’s generation were past their prime. They were showy hunters who howled at every win, too certain of their supremacy and too concerned with pack politics. Thanks to a twenty four hour news cycle and social media, the current global market was volatile, and one must be ready to strike silently and with sudden force. For Eris Vanserra was no wolf. He was a snake. 

He watched the kneeling figure, whose eyes traveled the room. Eris needed them on him. Look at me. See me. And almost as if the beautiful, dark creature read his thoughts, his head turned and hazel locked with his own. Fuck. Eris watched those gorgeous eyes travel along his face, lingering on his mouth. He smirked. Then, lower, down to his shoulders, to his chest, and lingered, once more, on his fingers. Eris moved them, ever so slowly, along the wet rim of his cocktail glass. 

As those glittering eyes followed them, Eris swore he saw the man’s pupils blow out further. This beautiful stranger wanted him. And Eris had to possess this caged creature, needed to steal him away from Helion, from the pretentious Lord Winters, from Donna Suriel, the most sadistic bitch on this side of the Hudson. But mostly, Eris just wanted to watch that gorgeous face unfold with pleasure. Wanted that perfect body prone beneath him, before him, begging for release. 

He was coiled in position and ready. And then Eris clocked it: a shadow of discomfort passed across the man’s face. He shifted and this time, it was not with arousal. His legs were cramping and he was tired. He gave three taps to his leg. He saw it for what it was. The sub had used his safe signal. Feyre, the auctioneer, almost imperceptibly, picked up the pace. She’d seen it too. 

Those hazel eyes locked with his once more, as if to say, Don’t you want me? Eris kept his face impassive. He would reveal nothing. It was how he got this far, how he'd survived twenty-seven years as Beron’s son, and had made his name as the Viper of Wall Street. 

“Forty thousand,” Helion called out in his bombastic voice. 

Feyre called out quickly, “Forty thousand. Going once, twice and—” 

He struck. “Fifty thousand.” Eris was sure to keep his voice level, his timbre smooth. It did no good to sound desperate or overwrought. 

Hazel eyes locked with his, and it took all his will power not to stand up and take what was his. Because the caged, leashed, beautiful man, there on his knees, literally leaned forward, subtly arching his back so perfectly, as if his body couldn’t help but move closer to the sound of Eris’s voice. The auctioneer must have seen the same thing, because she didn’t give anyone a chance to counter. 

“Sold to Eris Vanserra for fifty thousand dollars.”  

[diazsdimples]

Several Sentence Sunday

Tagged by my love @hippolotamus who shared a devastating Mirrorball snippet. Go check it out!! On this weeks agenda we (once again) have some Eddietommy Mechanic Fic, which I really need to rename because there's currently 150 words of actual mechanic, and another 6.3k of pure smut (and only one of them has finished 😭 I fear we're in for the long haul here boys). Anyways, pls enjoy.

“Fuck, I’m getting close,” Tommy warns breathily, a barely perceptible break in his voice. He combs his hand through Eddie’s hair, tilting his face up so their eyes meet. His balls slip out of Eddie’s mouth and Eddie whines, mourning the loss. “Where do you want me to come?” The question makes Eddie’s brain come back online, pulling him back to reality rather than the pleasant, buzzy space he’d been in, and he considers, lazily stroking Tommy’s cock as he does so. It’s not something he’s ever had to consider before, with any of his other partners. There’s always been something so satisfying about them coming on his tongue or around his fingers, feeling their rhythmic clenches as they squirm and thrash above him. With a man though, he feels like it’s more. The idea of having Tommy’s come on him - marking him and claiming him – sends a bolt of hot and shivery desire up Eddie’s spine. As much as he’d love to take Tommy into his mouth and milk each and every drop from him, he thinks he might need a little bit more practice before he can pull that off without gagging. On his face, then? As hot as that seems, the practical side of Eddie says that getting come in his eye the first time he sleeps with a man would set a bad precedent, and he doesn’t want the cleanup that would come along with it. Although, the thought of long, thick ropes of come landing on his cheek, dripping down his chin, maybe even in his hair, definitely has an appeal to it. Eddie shivers at the thought, his neglected cock throbbing between his legs. Next time. “Eddie, baby, I’m going to need an answer soon.” Tommy sounds wrecked, like he’s holding himself back, and it’s then that Eddie remembers he’s still playing with Tommy’s cock.

@theotherbuckley @hippolotamus @watchyourbuck @buckera @bidisasterevankinard

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[mentally-in-northern-italy]

how did it end? — e.r.

Pairing: Evan Rosier x fem!reader

Summary: Estranged after graduating from Hogwarts, you haven't seen Evan in years when he finally elects to find you again — but his timing isn’t quite right. It never really is.

Word Count: 2.2K

A/N: Do I have 56789 assignments due over the next week? Yes. Did I still choose to finish this year-old drabble up? Also yes. Is it still a drabble? Not really. Not sure if people read for Evan, but here is the drabble that was promised a while ago. Reader and Evan's relationship at Hogwarts is open to interpretation. I really hope I can get my Cedric fic out bc it's rotting in my WIPs.

—

It was tolerable, you suppose, but only just. 

The stench of booze mingled with sweat far too often, and the air carried a perpetual weight to it that was hard to ignore. The warmth was nice, yes, but the heat frequently bordered on oppressive on autumn nights such as this one, when the pub was full of bearded wizards and graying witches, boisterous and loud. 

Working the bar at the Leaky Cauldron, you had long deigned, was a wholly mindless pursuit, though, and for this, you were glad. At this time of night, no one cared enough to engage in small talk, much too drunk for anything civil. Plus, most were regulars, with orders plainly memorized and simple, satiated often with a glass of Firewhiskey or a Butterbeer and at times, an easy—

“One cup of tea, please.”

The sentence carries a lilt much too familiar, playful and teasing, an amused smile concealed somewhere in between and the request just as odd. You don’t have to look up to know who it is, and he can tell. He revels in it, his undeterred smugness radiating off of him and spilling over the counter he’s currently leaning against. 

“This is a pub, Rosier, if you haven’t already noticed.” You don’t look up, unwilling to give him the satisfaction. Though, you can’t do much to hide the slight quiver of your hand as you pour out some Firewhiskey and his small, exhaling laugh tells you he has taken note of it immediately, as subtle as it may have been.  

“I have noticed actually,” you can feel his eyes linger on your hands before darting to your face. “Unfortunately.” He adds, with a furrow in his eyebrows and a slight grimace as he looks around the pub with poorly concealed distaste. 

It’s much too late now – your peripherals have betrayed you – and your self-control has long since run dry. You catch his gaze as it settles back on you.  

The first thing you take note of is how different he looks since you saw him last — the blonde hair has lost a fraction of its luster, though still gorgeous, and his eyes have circles beneath them, telling of his exhaustion he does well to hide otherwise. His shirt is unironed, though tucked into his trousers neatly, and his jacket is thrown haphazardly over his shoulder. It’s oxymoronic in the most infuriating way possible and so Evan.

His grin, you notice with weary eyes though, remains the same, unwavering: blinding, almost to a fault, its shine reflected in his eyes as he takes you in. It’s a feeling long-forgotten, to be looked at this way by him. 

“You’re still as pretentious as ever, I see,” you say with a raise of your eyebrows. “Did you miss high tea this evening with your elitist friends? Or have they finally come to their senses and declared your company entirely dreadful?”

He doesn’t say anything for a moment, as if lost in thought, his eyes drinking you in slowly. “Oh, how I missed that sharp tongue of yours.” 

Your face grows hot at the implication. “You’re still just as insufferable.” 

He only grins as he leans forward, eyes sincere but mouth plainly amused. “And you're still just as beautiful.” 

You ignore the praise with a pointed determination he doesn’t quite like. He opens his mouth to say something again when a loud cheer erupts in the background and the simultaneous turn of heads is almost automatic, identical grimaces on both of your faces. An old wizard has fallen onto his arse in the most untoward manner in his drunken stupor. You blink as if it’s the tamest thing to have happened tonight and Evan shakes his head in what can only be described as disbelief. 

“Charming place you’ve got here,” he notes, tone thick with sarcasm and a hint of condescension that you’ve come to expect from him. You can see his arms resting on the counter now, as he sits, his jacket thrown somewhere behind him. The white fabric is rich but revealing as the warm glow of the overhead light shines on the skin underneath. You divert your gaze.

“Isn’t it?”

“Though it’d be infinitely more so if you could, indeed, fix me a cup of tea, love.”

You don’t spare him another glance as you uselessly dry off a cup. “I’m sure your house elves will do well to put aside their contempt for you for a few minutes and fix you a cup or two, if you were to ask nicely enough, love.”

“I prefer asking pretty barkeeps for my cups of tea, thank you very much.” 

“And I prefer denying such requests.” 

He goes quiet finally, his ring-clad fingers drumming on the counter as he sits. He wears an infuriatingly perfect smile still – you don’t think he has stopped smiling since he’d stepped foot into the pub – and his eyes are holding yours, as if in silent challenge. After a moment, he speaks again.

“Edmund!” He calls to the other barkeep, covering the far end of the counter. He knows his name. You try to act unsurprised, though you’re anything but. “A cup of tea, please?” 

“Coming up, Rosier!” 

He turns back to you, smirk smug and victorious. You grip your washcloth tighter. 

“You’ve been here before,” you remark plainly. 

“Very perceptive.” He rests his face on his hand, propped up on the counter and smiles wryly.

“And yet, you’re back,” you mock, a mirthless hint of a smile on your face. “You must’ve found the establishment thoroughly enriching.” 

He pretends to be deep in thought. “Well, I could never quite find what I’d been looking for all the times previous.” 

“Cups of tea? Yes, I’m sure they’re hard to find in London.” 

“Pretty barkeeps, actually. You don’t work many shifts here.” 

You scoff, though your cheeks burn at the astute observation. “Edmund isn’t pretty enough for you?” 

“Oh, he is,” His gaze only shifts when a cup of tea floats to him and he winks at Edmund in thanks. What an obnoxious gesture, you think. “But he’s not nearly as difficult.” 

“And you prefer them to be difficult?” 

“I prefer them to be you.” His sincerity catches you off guard, unsure eyes snapping to him at once. He hides his amusement in the cup as he sips slowly. “So yes, excruciatingly difficult.” 

You hum, as if in agreement. The poorly lit interior of the pub doesn’t possess the capability to dull the shine of his eyes, or conceal his handsome – albeit tired – face, as much you would’ve liked it to. There’s a new scar, you notice, that he’s acquired just above his lip and you have to bite your tongue to stop yourself from asking useless questions you would regret verbalizing later. 

“You look well,” his eyes follow you as you work, warm and curious. You don’t hate the feeling as much as you should and you try not to bask in the feeling – as short-lived as it may be.

You huff, now blatantly aware of the stains on your work blouse, your unkempt hair that is a stark contrast to his perfect locks. “I wish I could say the same for you.” Even posed as a jest, the statement sounds ridiculous uttered to someone like Evan. 

He decides to indulge you. “No? Less handsome than before?” 

“There wasn’t much to start with, so I must evaluate accordingly.”

A chuckle that feels too much like a reward. “Cruel, as ever.”

“Honest, more like.”

“I’m something of a masochist, I suppose,” he stretches, leisurely and cat-like. “I quite missed your jabs in Paris.” It’s a plain-enough admission. He missed your jabs, not you. You remind yourself of that over and over. He’s clamant in that way, lazes in attention from wherever he can get it. You’re not special. You never were.

Paris, though. You savor the bit of detail he has provided you on his endeavors, something he has otherwise elected to keep quite secret ever since graduation. There isn’t much you know about him anymore – who he spends his time with, what he’s up to. Though, there are rumors. It’s a time of war, after all, and he’s a Rosier.

“I’m sure you didn’t miss them for long. I hear the French are revered for their candor. Did they also call you a bumbling idiot every chance they got?” 

He traces the rim of his teacup slowly, as if he’s coyly willing you to take note of the movement. You oblige involuntarily. He’s satisfied with the quick flicker of your eyes enough to give you a smirk. “Not quite. ‘Devilishly handsome’ were the exact words used, I believe.”

An amused exhale from your lips. “Your mother may be French, Rosier, but she doesn’t count.” 

He laughs and its sound hangs in the air around you in a way that makes it hard to breathe. “You know, I’m not sure you’re very good at the ‘customer service’ bit. Are you this rude to all your customers?”

“Just the unwelcome ones.”

He hums. “You’d quite like Paris, I think.” He changes the subject with all the nonchalance of flipping a page of a book you haven’t quite finished reading but have become bored of nonetheless. You note the redirection with interest. 

“What were you up to in Paris?” You oblige as your curiosity trumps your ego. You’re aware of the staunchness of the question, of the sudden heaviness that now hangs around the two of you in the pub.

“Familial obligations, and the like.” Automatic, much too rehearsed for your liking, but you can tell it’s true, at least in part. He has a tendency to look away when he lies and so far, his eyes have been set stiflingly steady – on you. He rubs his forearm absent-mindedly. “I didn’t want to come back.”

You bite back a bitter laugh. “Why did you?”

He looks down into his cup. “The tea isn’t the same.” 

“I’m sure.”

“And I searched far and wide, believe me.”

“A valiant effort.” You scrub the grimy countertops absent-mindedly. 

“Oh, I’m anything but.” He sips his tea again. Offhandedly, he adds, “If I had been more brave, perhaps I would’ve stopped your engagement sooner.”

Your eyes snap to him at once but he remains indifferent, glancing into his cup and reading the leaves as if he’s in Divination. You try to hide your surprise but you can’t do much to mask the break of your voice. “What– How did you–”

He finally meets your eyes with a smile that borders on bitter. “Congratulations, by the way,” he says slowly as if he’s letting the words mull in his mouth and turn sour. Another cheer erupts in the background, a stark contrast to the absence of a celebratory cadence in his own voice.

You breathe shakily. “Is that why you’re here then? To bend me to your many whims and tell me not to marry him?” The drumming of your heart is steady and disturbing.

“Would you like me to?”

Yes. “No.” 

“Why aren’t you wearing your ring?” He asks, as if the question had been lodged inside his throat the whole night and has finally broken free. You avert your gaze. He’d always had a knack for asking questions you couldn’t quite voice the answers to.

“I think you should go,” you breathe.

“Is this to spite me?”

“To spite you? Who do you —” Anger envelops you. Only he would assume that your marital arrangements were solely to spite him.

“Do you love him?” He presses, abandoning the feigned nonchalance and speaking with an urgency that unsettles you.

“Leave.”

“Do you?”

A pause you’re not sure how to fill. “What does it matter?” 

His eyes search yours and seem to find the very thing you’ve worked so hard to conceal. His gaze softens. “Don’t marry him.”

The soft admonition knocks the air out of your lungs. You only gape at him, hurt and angry at his audacity. “How dare you?”

He stays still, unspeaking and unmoving, as if he, himself, knows he has stepped over a line. He purses his lips to stop himself from saying anything else. Pushing the empty tea cup aside, he stands and dons his coat. “I’m going to go,” he says quietly. 

You grit your teeth further. You should’ve expected this by now. Of course, he was going to leave after completely derailing your life. “What–”

“I’ve said what I needed to say,” he speaks again, shoving his hands into his pockets like a petulant child. “Don’t marry him.” He repeats, expression serious and solemn for the first time tonight.

You open your mouth to reprimand him but he interrupts you.

“Please,” he exhales and his plea is almost too quiet to hear amidst the bar chatter. But you hear it all the same and something twists in your chest at the uncharacteristic ask. He turns to go before you can say anything else. You can only watch him leave, gripping the counter until your knuckles turn white.

Only after he leaves the pub do you see a napkin perched on the counter, where he sat just moments ago. 

9568 Highfield Road, London, W69 1QB

In the case that you change your mind.

Love, E.

The napkin crumples in your hand with unprecedented force.

You deliberate.

With a huff, you shove it in your pocket.

[bamsara]

A03 Questions Tag Game

I got tagged by: @kagedbird I tag: @onethirdofimpossible, @coffincrows, (first two that come to mind) and anyone else who wants to do the game

1 – How many works do you have on AO3?

At the time of writing this post, currently 30 fics. (Not including any fics or written works that are not posted to AO3)

2 – What's your total AO3 word count?

1,066,633

3 – What fandoms do you write for?

Formerly: Don't Starve, FNAF, Dragons Dogma, Invader Zim

Currently: Cult of the Lamb

4 – What are your top five fics by kudos?

Solar Lunacy, Celestial Omens, Bytes of Lunacy, The Rehabilitation of Death, Saturday Insomnia

5 – Do you respond to comments?

I try to but I also get very nervous responding because I often don't know what to say back and I feel like it's almost rude or disrespectful to respond to a comment, esp the very nice ones that are long and in-deph with just a keysmash or a bunch of emojis, but I do read every single one since I have email notifications on for them

I'd like to sit down and respond to many but I really don't want to make it awkward so pls dear god readers forgive me

6 – What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

I don't like unhappy endings. I enjoy angsty stories but I like when it's at least ending happy to me

7 – What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Not posted? Solar Lunacy

Ongoing? TROD

8 – Do you get hate on fics?

Not really? Most adults (in my experience) know the 'don't like don't read' rule and know basic online etiquette. I've gotten some for discontinuing a fic or switching fandoms though

9 – Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

I don't write or draw NSFW! I like to make some suggestive themes sometimes, but I'm a very ace person, it's not something I do often. (I do have a current running goal that if my friend reaches their donation goal for their medical bills that I would give NSFW a shot, but again its not really my cup of tea)

10 – Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written?

Nah I haven't written any cross overs, but I do draw them sometimes. Recently I've been spinning a Alice in Wonderland x COTL crossover in my head.

11 – Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Yep. I've had people copy and paste my work, go in with a thesaurus to change a few words (like changing 'angry' to mad, 'upset' to 'sad', and so forth) to try and avoid detection and re-posted my written work under a different title name. AO3 staff took them down for violating their policy against plagiarism though

12 – Have you ever had a fic translated?

No. I wouldn't mind it so as long as I'm asked before hand, though not on anon so I can actually work with the person to prevent any mistranslations or mishandling, and that I don't want my work posted to other websites

13 – Have you ever co-written a fic?

I think I did when I was a teen but I cannot remember now

14 – What's your all-time favorite ship?

Eh I don't have any favorites, just ones I really focus on for a long while

15 – What's a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

Pass.

16 – What are your writing strengths?

I can sit down for hours or several days and work on a writing wip completely in the zone. I cant do it on command but its at least something I can do

17 – What are your writing weaknesses?

Spelling and grammar, and sometimes long running sentences. I just kinda write, theres not really a goal for it to be perfect though so as long as the story gist and vibe is right, im fine with it

18 – Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

I've done it before but only minor, had a friend help me with it (one or two lines of dialogue) Aside from that, I'm not comfortably fluent enough in anything to do it again without assistance

19 – First fandom you wrote for?

Soul Eater, when I was wayyy too young to be posting anything on the internet. My fanfics I wrote are still on fanfic.net to this day

20 – Favorite fic you've written?

It's inbetween TROD and EE&E right now

[wonwoonlight]

Through the night, through the day - Seungcheol (unfinished)

A/n: a little something from my discontinued wip that i really wanted to finish but no longer has it in me to. Happy three years to this blog, here's to writing for yourself and not validation of others 🍻 thank you for all of you who have been reading my stuff up until now.

Loosely inspired by: AKMU - Last Goodbye, Adele - All I Ask

Seungcheol isn’t sure who’s to blame for the current situation he finds himself in.

Is it his because he fell out of love first?

Is it yours because you refused to break up with him even after he honestly told you what love he had left for you is barely romantic at this point?

Or is it his because he had let you refuse the break up simply because he felt too bad about forcing it on you?

But he believes as much as it’s a mutual decision to start a relationship, it’s also a mutual decision to end it. He certainly still loves and cares for you enough not to simply leave despite your refusal to end the relationship; but what he has for you is not something he thinks he should be feeling for a girlfriend.

He misses that spark. That thrilling sensation and the way his heartbeat would pick up at the sight of someone’s–your–smile.

And, unfortunately, it’s practically nonexistent now and, at some point, he hates himself for losing it because you still look at him like he holds the universe while he simply feels a pinch in his heart because he feels bad.

His phone lights up with notification, a picture of you and him grinning at the camera flashing before the screen turns black again. He sighs as he takes another sip of his drink, the alcohol burns his throat the same way your smile burns his heart.

Jeonghan’s right. He needs to be stern and stop dragging this more than necessary. The both of you deserve better; him, to finally stop feeling guilty because he can’t leave you behind, and you, e to find someone that will love you like you deserve to be loved.

At some point, Seungcheol knew the role was his to fill, but that’s no longer the case and prolonging this would only hurt the both of you in the future.

Like the two of you aren’t hurting on your own already now.

He bites his lip as he imagines the hurt in your eyes and the forced smile you’d give him.

Fuck.

He downs the shot and orders another.

*

Seungcheol imagined you’d be pressing your lips together as you suppress your tears, shoulders tense and jaws tight when he tells you once again he thinks it’d be better for you two to break up.

After all, that was your reaction the first time around.

What Seungcheol did not imagine, however, are your empty eyes and the way your hands limply stack against each other; your shoulders hunch in defeat and a corner of your lip twitch a faint smile for a millisecond before it turns straight once again.

Like you know it’s coming.

Like you’ve been bracing yourself for it.

There’s a painful squeeze in his heart at the way you’re not meeting his eyes, and he fights fights fights the urge to take your hands and apologize because he’s the one that’s ridding himself of that right.

How is he supposed to handle you like this?

Then again, isn’t this an attempt to let go of that responsibility? Because he doesn’t know anymore how to handle you without the romantic filter over his gaze towards you?

He’s starting to think it would be much better if you had been crying instead.

“Okay.” You say softly, voice barely even a whisper. But it doesn’t matter because he’s heard it and his eyes widen because he doesn’t think you’d agree so easily after the fight you put out last month. “But… Can I ask you one last favor?”

“Yeah?”

“Can you take me to that camping ground we went to two years ago?”

He blinks, not expecting it at all.

“The one we went to for our first anniversary?”

For the first time in so long, the smile you give him doesn’t make his heart lurch with guilt.

He suddenly tries to think back when was the last time you actually, genuinely smiled at him with happiness in your eyes.

You always have that fond look in your eyes–something so soft and full of love–even after he asked for the break up last month. You still look at him that way after that and even right this second.

But happy?

When was the last time you laughed happily in his presence?

“Yeah. I’ve always wanted to go back but don’t really have any reason to…” You frown to yourself, your lips purse in a way that makes him want to squish your cheeks like he used to. “A farewell trip… if you will. Is it okay?”

“Sure.” He says without thinking. That’s the least he can do for you; he hasn’t exactly been the best boyfriend nor even person in general the past month, and the fact that he’s staying with you out of obligation because he doesn’t know how to break it off after your argument has been eating him inside out. If this is what you need to finally let him go, he doesn’t see why it would be a bad idea.

He still cares for you. Just not in the way people in a romantic relationship should.

For you, he’d still do anything if it’s within his reach.

For you, he'd still do anything to make sure you're happy again.

You’re still his friend before anything and Seungcheol always always tries to do his best for his friends.

“When do you want to go?”

“This weekend is fine if you’re free.”

“It’s Mingyu’s birthday, I already promised we’d go out for a drink. Is next weekend okay?”

“Sure. Do you want me to make the booking?”

He shakes his head. Perhaps it’s him wanting to compensate, but if this is going to be a farewell trip, might as well do everything for you so he can convince himself it’s okay to let go of the guilt he’s been holding over himself if only a little.

“I’ll do everything. You just wait and be pretty, okay?” He smiles cheekily, which you can only smile back in return despite the way your heart cracks little by little at how easy the words tumble out of his lips.

And he wonders why you find it hard for you to let go.

*

“Why are you brooding like your screen has personally offended you?” Jeonghan asks, plopping on the sofa next to Seungcheol.

It’s game night, something he and his friends promised to hold at least once a month. It’s Jeonghan’s turn to host the night, and Seungcheol has come almost two hours early only to focus on his macbook and barely even says anything to him, the owner of the place.

Not that it’s a rare occurrence, Seungcheol does have the tendency to do this from time to time. Just barge into his place, grunts a greeting, and leaves after an hour or two.

“I’ve been trying to book this spot in the camping ground but it’s not available.” He sighs.

Jeonghan tilts his head, interested. Seungcheol hates planning with passion, yet he's apparently doing a very thorough research for some reason.

He looks at the amount of tabs open on his laptop, and when he asks about them, Seungcheol simply says he’s making an itinerary and is currently checking all the possible places he might visit around the camping ground. He points out some places, says their pros and cons and where he currently stands about visiting them.

“Who’re you going with again?” When he mutters your name, Jeonghan can’t help but get more interested. “Didn’t you say you’re breaking up with her?”

“Yeah. She said she wants to go there one last time… I don’t know. For old time’s sake, maybe? Anyway, I don’t see anything bad about it so I guess why not.”

“You’re breaking up with her.”

Seungcheol sighs and puts away his laptop. His best friend can get like this sometimes and, at the wrong times, it really gets on his nerves.

“I am. It’s a goodbye trip of some sort, okay? She said we’ll break it off after that. Just one last trip, that’s what she asked; how can I not give her that?”

“Why would you go on a trip with someone you’re breaking up with? Isn’t that kind of the point? To stop seeing each other?”

“Look, I’ve been with her for three years, almost four, even. And it’s not like we’re breaking up because we’re fighting or what–I fell out of love. It’s on me. And I still care about her and treasure the time I’ve shared with her. If there’s anything I can do to make this breakup bearable for her, I would.”

Seungcheol clenches his jaw at the way Jeonghan is looking at him; his eyes calling him stupid and pathetic at the same time without his lips saying anything.

“You’re just compensating because you feel guilty, then.”

“And it’s wrong for me to do that?” He fumes, not getting where his best friend is going with the talk. If he thinks this is one of those days when it’s fun to push all his buttons just for the sake of it, Jeonghan definitely chose the wrong topic to do so. “Why are you complaining, anyway? It’s not like I’m making you come with me. Do you not like the idea of me giving her closure? Do you secretly dislike her all this time?”

Jeonghan looks at him sharply, daring him to say more about how he feels about you. He knows Seungcheol threw the last sentence just to spite him, because of all his friends, you’re closest with Jeonghan and the feeling is pretty much mutual. Of all the partners Seungcheol has had, you’re the one that clicks with him the most; you seem to care about Seungcheol’s friends the same way you would your own friends. If there’s anything Jeonghan appreciates, it’s loyalty.

Always loyalty.

He’s sure he would also be devastated due to your break up with Seungcheol if it means he might lose someone he treasures as much as you.

“It’d only be harder for her, you asshole.” He grits his teeth. “Why would you give her hope by doing this much preparation for a fucking goodbye trip?”

“Because she asked for the trip!”

“What you’re arranging is a romantic getaway not a goodbye trip!”

Seungcheol falters a little at this, and before he can say more, the intercom beeps, signaling the other guys’ arrival. They share one last look with each other before Jeonghan gets up and opens the door, Mingyu’s rowdy voice followed by Wonwoo and Seokmin immediately dissipates the tense in the living room.

A few hours later, it’s still a little awkward between Seungcheol and Jeonghan, Wonwoo and Seokmin approaches them separately, and when the only thing they get is a set of reassurance that they simply had a disagreement, they let it go and decide it’d be best not to bring it up for now.

“By the way,” Seokmin opens the talk as Mingyu puts down cans of beer on the table. Seungcheol immediately reaches for one and the others wait for Seokmin to continue talking. “Is your girlfriend okay? I saw her in the hospital today.”

The way Seungcheol immediately chokes on his drink would’ve been funny otherwise. He wants to make sure that it’s his girlfriend Seokmin is referring to, but he’s currently one of the only two people with a partner in this room and one of them is Seokmin himself.

“I–what?”

“Oh… you didn’t know?” The younger guy winces, though he thinks it’d be best to tell Seungcheol anyway. No matter how small it might’ve been, he would want to know if his girlfriend somehow had to visit the hospital. “I was visiting a friend and I saw her walk out of the building but she didn’t see me and she was already too far away for me to call for her.”

“She didn’t say… I didn’t even know she went to the hospital.”

Jeonghan holds back a snicker, of course he wouldn’t know. Seungcheol hasn’t exactly been attentive to you since the moment he realized he’s falling out of you, head too deep in guilt and his own thoughts that he forgets to actually take a look at what’s in front of him.

The conversation goes elsewhere, and once Seungcheol is sure the attention is no longer on him, he whips out his phone and texts you to ask if anything happened.

[20:31] did you go to the hospital today? seokmin said he saw you

[20:44] 💜: oh, yeah. severe cold case, no worries tho! Is seokmin ok?

[20:45] you literally said severe, how am i supposed not to worry?

[20:35] why didn’t you tell me? I would’ve gone with you to the hospital

[20:47] 💜: it’s still just a cold haha. i simply got checked just in case. but they made sure it’s nothing but cold.

[20:47] Calling 💜

“Please stop trying to make it look like you’re not sick.” Seungcheol cuts immediately into the case, standing in the kitchen where it’s less noisy. “Why didn’t you tell me? I was with you a few days ago.”

Huh. Wait.

Was that why you looked a little out of it?

He closes his eyes in contempt and curses himself for not noticing. No wonder you looked so lethargic. So much for a boyfriend.

“It’s really just a cold, Cheol.” You try to reassure him, though your strained voice nor the cough that follows right after aren’t really doing a good job doing so. “You know the weather has been crazy these days.”

“Still. Why would you go to the hospital alone?”

It’s not easy for you to blink back your tears as you press your lips together, hoping Seungcheol would mistake your heavy breathing is due to your cold. You wonder if Seungcheol does all of this purposely. What a cruel man he is, asking you to break up with him and then scolding you for not telling him you’re sick, that he’s worried and asked if you want him to come over tonight.

Does he or does not want to cut ties with you?

“Cheol… Look–I… I simply thought you’re busy and it’s no big deal. I should be fine after a few good night sleep, they didn’t even prescribe me that much medicine and that should say something, right?”

Something stirs in him at how exhausted you sound, and he imagines you’re laying down in your room by the sound of rustling he hears across the phone.

“Have you had dinner?” He asks instead, looking at the digital clock on Jeonghan’s fridge.

“Not yet. Maybe later.”

“Alright, I’ll just wrap it up here and come over.”

“What?” You immediately sit up, not exactly pleased with the way this conversation is going. “No, Cheol. Just hang out with the guys, I’ll be fine.”

“You’re sick, why would I be here?” He argues.

You sigh, not sure anymore the cause of your headache.

Is it your cold?

Is it him?

Probably both.

Why is Seungcheol so adamant in taking care of you when he has asked to break up last month and then asked once again not even a week ago?

Why couldn’t he be a jerk and just leave you alone?

Why does he feel the need to make sure your feelings are still intact when he has, according to himself, no longer felt the same intensity he thought one should have when they’re in a relationship?

It’s really your fucking fault for asking for him to reconsider. But, then again, you didn’t expect him to accept it at once–what was even the point of asking for a break up if you’re going to crumble after one refusal?

You didn’t know what to say the first time he asked for it. Because you know… you know it’s coming. You’ve felt the way he’s been pulling away, the way he’s been less and less interested in what you have to say, and how he’s been enjoying his time not talking to you than the other way around.

It hurts.

It hurts so much because this is the person who used to listen to you like you personally hang every single star in the universe by yourself, one that used to stare at you and pay attention to everything you say because he said he doesn’t want to miss anything only to miss half the things you’re saying because he’s too busy staring at you.

And when he asked the second time… you pretend to cough to hide your sniffle, wiping the tears that have managed to escape your eyes before you try to hurriedly hang up the phone.

“Cheol, I need to–”

“I’ll be there in forty minutes.”

He arrives in thirty, fusses over dinner and your air conditioner system and forces you to rest even after you relay what the doctor told you; that you should be okay in a few days.

It’s 1 in the morning when he leaves your place, and he only does so after you pretend to be asleep in hope he’d go home instead of staying over.

You feel him caresses your cheek softly and pats your head before he leaves, and you’re pretty sure you can feel him staring at you for a good three minutes before you hear your front door click.

You fall asleep an hour later because you’re too exhausted from crying and your head is pounding because of the same reason.

Fuck Choi Seungcheol.

[froggiewrites]

Masterlist

Hello, I'm Froggie, and I write reader inserts for One Piece! I only started watching a few months ago, so I'm still working on catching up (beginning egghead!), but hopefully I'll keep making good progress so I can write more! Some of my work is NSFW, so minors DNI!

Requests currently closed, I'll open them again when I finish what I have, or when I hit a milestone, whichever comes first!

Halloween Special 2024

Current WIPs

Sanji

Picture You - NSFW (1) (2) (3) (4) Wanting - NSFW Instruction - NSFW Jealousy, Jealousy - SFW Two For One - NSFW Heat of the Moment - NSFW

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Zoro

Picture You - NSFW (1) (2) (3) (4) Insomnia - SFW Two For One - NSFW Playing Rough - NSFW A Bridge Too Far - SFW

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Ace

Follow Through - NSFW Did I Say That Out Loud? - SFW Do I Deserve It? - SFW Blinders On - SFW Pain Relief - SFW Third Wheeling It - SFW

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Trafalgar D. Law

Bloody Hands - NSFW A Helping Hand - SFW Fanboy - NSFW

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Donquixote Doflamingo

Possession - NSFW Coup D'état - NSFW

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Red Haired Shanks

Unknown / Nth - NSFW

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Monkey D Luffy

Need - NSFW

[sabrondabrainrot]

🌦️Dark Sun and 🔅Servant Sun

I tried my hand at designing Servant Sun and Dark Sun.

I'm getting more caught up on the lore!! Click underneath for art closeups and more Lore rants and AU idea! Plus, I have sketches and a comic WIP I've been working on.

😉

There will be rambly spoilers to where I am in the Lore.

For Dark Sun I was inspired a lot by the thumbnails, they give him red eyes a lot in the thumbnails and I like the smarmy red eyed look of the guy. Tried to capture his 'regal-holier then thou' attitude in his design. He's still Sun though, so I used OG Sun's palette (my first Sun design!) to reflect the fact they have the same beginnings. I don't trust anything he says but I know something has totally happened to his Moon (I'm really banking on the idea he ATE him/ ATE his intelligence chip) so he carries his Moon's bell and he also repurposed the star pattern of Moon to parade it around as like a symbol his Moon is at his heal. I don't know if I like his final look but I think it's because I gave him dramatically darker shading vs the other Suns.

Servant Sun! Here's my take on him. He's been suffering for over 10000+ years under Lord Eclipse abuse. We saw how he was being punished just because Lore Eclipse was bored! I feel really bad for this Sun, it was hard to draw a design for him. I think despite his servant title Lord Eclipse just keeps him around not only to keep himself sane but also a trophy/slave to show off to Moon and the others in the afterlife. I had this like monologue for SSun basically, "The sound of bells long ago stopped ringing for the daycare attendant turned servant but Lord Eclipse still can hear the sound of metallic chimes when the neurotic servant cleans thanks to his fanciful additions." (aka the chime of chains) He's also got an apron that's falling apart and SSun used random old fabric to patch it up (it wasn't random it was his old clothes). I was really inspired by Meagancandraw's design of Servant Sun!

Here's my AU sketches. I'm planning to clean these up and maybe color them? This is basically just the AU idea that I think Sun is going to somehow get reborn but be a being reborn from star power and negative star power? I don't know if it's possible? He becomes a mix of the two in my AU. I know some current spoilers and basically I know he may be immune to negative star energy? He can also hold Star Power uniquely and it 'taste good to him'. I will never let go of the fact he told Moon it taste nice like dried watermelon. His untrained magical outburst was also compared to be as powerful as Golden Freddy's. There's big theory he's going to die or be sacrificed but I have this idea what if he's essentially remade? idk just rambly thoughts. So yeah, he has a cool new look to go with his magical transformation.

BTW he is very sad cause he can't be near his family in this AU my brain cooked up. He's basically radiation incarnate now <3 His eyes are cracked because they're intensely pouring out Star/Negative Star power. Just a constant pull and push of power circulating in him.

this is the comic idea I have currently. I don't have a ton of motivation so any encouragement to finish this comic idea would be super appreciated! I'm not a comic-type artist so this is out of my comfort zone (I've made a few comics but usually they are pretty janky)

ON TO THE RAMBLES - spoilers BEWARE:

NEW MOON MY BOY PLS YOU ARE HIDING STUFF FROM YOUR FAMILY. BOY NO. HE IS GONNA USE RUIN TO BRING BACK SOLAR?

Blood Moon just took Ruin. Also Dark Sun repaired Ruin after Molten took him to die in the dead dimension?? BOY??? Also, Dark Sun did something to Eclipse??? Bro is plotting. I wish I could get a read on Dark Sun but I don't even know how much of the truth he's been sharing thus far. He has no reason to tell anyone the truth and so far he hasn't hurt anyone just stole a bunch of data from Moon and built a bunker to escape total dimension collapse...He's just a big wild card for me.

Then there's New Moon, He's just actually going crazy after meeting Old Moon. Sun can tell something is wrong with his brother!!! I hope he can help him but spoilers tells me otherwise. The family is trying! Earth heard out Eclipse and Eclipse is getting Earth proof that Moon is currently cray-cray. Lunar is kind of hanging near Sun and Earth because the creator is now actively trying to kidnap him. So much spicy drama.

I don't pay attention much to the Freddy side of the plot but he's also dying?? bro??? What about Francine? The missing mom/wife? Poor Francine's suffering, she needs her mom and dad! I like that Puppet is hanging around her grandchild more it is very sweet. Foxy also got his 'bestfriend' Puppet a house/condo. hmm-Mmmhmm. Definitely no romantic tensions there. Definitely not.

(side bar, I don't ship Kidscove but I do ship the Foxy and Puppet do they have a ship name? Also no hate to Kidscove I just think Foxy treats Sun like a kid a lot. I like the gooseworld Kidscove. Sun laid eggs, so wholesome.)

Lunar is just waiting for news on his trial and I am in suspense hoo boy...Then the stuff with FC being put in a new body and Frank is not happy about it. I def can tell there's big lead up to the astral bodies making a big move I just wonder what the move will be. I feel like now Lunar and FC are going to end up being more intwined then they might think.

Also I love Dazzle!!! AAAGH! She and Jack are so cute! I loved the ep Sun took Dazzle and Lunar to the store that was so sweet. Can't wait to see more of them! They're such a cute dynamic! I like seeing Lunar put his best foot forward to help Dazzle too.

I can tell Moon is slowly distancing himself from the others but it's like this odd thing where he's no longer obsessed with Solar being back per sei...but he's obsessed over how HE has to be the one to bring Solar back in his way because HE promised and he wants to be better then Old Moon and yeah...he's got a very warped perspective I feel like? But Molten and Ruin BOTH pointed out Moon is being possessed by something so I think he's definitely sick? Or something is keeping him from seeing the error of his way.

Rambles over :)

I do plan to draw Solar and Eclipse and Lord Eclipse next but I'm stuck on what I want to do for Solar's design :P I might make a poll in the future!