#I won’t leave you and we will find a way to give you a torso | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

theorist-fox · 7 months ago

Text

Fair trade

John Price x Reader

Cross posted from AO3.

This one shot deals with heavy topics such as emotional manipulation, emotional abuse from family, and self-objectification.

I'm begging you to read the tags before pursuing the story. Thank you so much for taking care of yourself first. 🦊

If you're looking for some aftersex comfort, recommending this by @/karlachismylife. 🧡

Summary: John helps you out of the toxic pattern your family has woven around you, and finds how utterly gorgeous you are behind it. He cuts your strings, and loves you the way you deserve.

18+

Word count: 10k CW: smut (cunnilingus, blow jobs, sex as a form of self-harm, sex as a way to feel useful), heavy angst, hurt/comfort, dubcon if you squint.

Masterlist 🦊

“No, we can’t come over, darling.”

To have a life planned out must be a dream. No worries nor fears, because everything is already outlined—a step-by-step guide, given to you at birth. A path, a purpose.

To give is your purpose.

It’s been ever since before you hit the eighteen mark; the birthday being only a threshold that signed your legal independence.

But you’ve always been, haven’t you? Shadowed by bigger problems ever since you were a small thing because there wasn't trouble that mattered less than you did.

The difference being that before you were shielded by your naïveté, by the bleeding heart they’ve carefully built for you, so you’d bend and break pliantly, even willingly at times, without ever realizing.

Now you're an adult, they'd implied.

Now they can use you at your full potential, and you won’t even put up a fight. You won’t set boundaries, because this is all you’ve ever learned. This is all they’ve ever taught you. Their perfect mold, kneeling in perfect obedience.

But how much can one take in a lifetime?

“Thanks for the help, love. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“Will you?”

“Of course.”

But staring at the phone won’t make it ring.

When you’ve never had a moment for yourself but plenty of time to dedicate to others—where do you draw the line of this so-called purpose, then?

“Happy birthday sweetheart.”

“It’s next week, mum.”

“Oh. I must have mixed it up.”

This goal—this agonized prize, towering at the finish line you’re desperately running to, the one defined by your family the moment your first cry pierced the air—what is it, exactly?

It’s a cascade of praises. It’s a shower of love that reawakens you from your torpor like a bucket of ice-cold water. It's abrupt but somewhat needed until it slowly becomes fresh instead of freezing, and it hydrates your skin and soothes the thirst. You feel rejuvenated, coming out of your lethargy, and alive and thriving and—

It stops.

Your fifteen minutes of unbridled, limitless love just snatched away in spare seconds.

And you’re parched again. Sometimes, they leave you wanting until you’re on your knees. Sometimes, they never give it back.

And so, the questions arise—what happens when you’re not needed anymore?

What happens when the calls plummet?

When the visits diminish until there are none?

When you're a ghost haunting your own life because your purpose is slowly vanishing. When that prize stands in the distance as a rushing fountain of praises and kindness, but you've already given a hand, an arm, your legs, your voice, your heart. What then?

How do you move, exactly, if there are no limbs to which attach the strings? How will you speak, if they’re not shaping your voice?

How does your puppeteer lift you from the floor? Your ventriloquist—how will it force you to agree to every demand?

“You... met without me?”

“Sweetheart, we thought you were busy.”

“You could’ve asked.”

“You would’ve said no.”

But you wouldn’t have. You’re not even sure you can say ‘no’ to them.

Is there someone who will hoist you up, when you’re nothing more than a torso, and take you to the finish line?

“Uh, darling, mind calling later?”

“I’m not feeling fine, I was hoping—“

“I’m busy, love.”

A therapist for your mum.

A crutch for your dad.

An advocate for your brother, but you’re no one to them.

A child, once. A person, now.

A notification on their phone. A Google reminder of a birthday.

A missed call. An excuse.

A vacant shape in a family photo. A memory, then nothing.

Raised to serve. But what happens when there’s no one to serve?

“What you’re doing to me is not fair.”

“I don’t like that attitude. Don’t forget how much we did for you.”

Your hands are tight around the steering wheel. White knuckled fists and creaking leather. The car smells of stale tobacco, cigarettes you’ve smoked with your offhand limp out of the car window, then stubbed in the portable ashtray.

"We love you, of course we do. How could you ask that?"

It's raining but your window's rolled down, a ciggie snug between two fingers. Elbow propped on the car door, arm hanging out. The sleeve of your sweater is soaked, and the cigarette is sodden. You don't even notice it when you bring it to your lips and take a drag. Nothing fills your lungs.

It’s fine.

It's a habit. It's autopilot. You go. You exist.

“It really doesn’t feel like it. You haven’t called in weeks.”

“It’s just—we’re people too. We’re busy.”

“You’re not busy for my brother.”

“He’s—you’re different, darling.” You’re used. We’ve consumed you.

It’s a feeling of emptiness that spills out of every hole like heavy smoke, clouding your senses. A husk that billows dark tendrils from its eyes, moves mechanically like an alien imitating a human being.

It's fake. You're a dummy. Unhuman. A thing.

“I just need your help. I—I’m not fine. I’m not asking for much. Just an evening toge—”

"So much is happening right now. You can deal with it on your own, love.”

You close the car door once you've parked it in the garage. Up the stairs you go, dragging your feet on every step.

“Like you’ve always done.”

Would this world exist even if you weren’t in it? Would these stairs lead to your apartment, if you didn’t inhabit it?

Is your flat even yours? Sure, you’ve paid for it. The party you threw after your signature was placed on the contract is still a cherished memory.

But what were you even celebrating? Four walls. A roof over your head. A bed to kip.

It’s a lot, you’re aware. Not everyone can say they own all that. But do you?

They’re things. Can you own things?

Surely, you are owned. By them.

But you’re not even sure you need things. You can’t need, because things don’t need. And what are you, if not a thing? Because things are used, not humans. Humans fight back, eventually. Humans hold their pride dear, it's the only character that separates them from animals, from meat. You never bit back, not once. So what does that make you, if not theirthing?

Your purpose is not a choice you made, it’s theirs. You have to give—that is why they made you.

You own, so you can give them.

You earn, so you can give back.

Because who’s given you a roof when you couldn’t afford it yourself? And the food in your belly?

Darling, it wasn’t for free. You were expensive to raise. You were costly to craft, to mold, to perfect.

But they haven’t called. No one has. No one will.

The master left the strings—and what of you, now? Do you just lie limply on the floor, waiting for the next hand that'll hoist you up?

And if they don’t call to ask from you, how do you know you’re doing fine? How do you know if the finish line is close when they took your eyes already? How do you ask for help, if you don’t have a voice?

But that was the point. Their goal. They own you, and without them, you’re nothing but a heap of wood, infested with termites. Wooden rods on the floor, nylon strings cut short. You’ll grovel and beg, they’ll croon at you in mockery, bleeding you dry, but it will be enough for you—anything would be enough for you.

You unlock the door. John hears and his head peeks from the kitchen.

“Hi love,” he rumbles, and you feel it shaking your heart.

Does he need you?

John Price is a captain of the special forces who has gone through hell and back. He's witnessed things you've only heard from the mouths of journalists or read in black-and-white papers, and he came out of each one of them unscathed. Strong. Resilient.

He doesn’t need you.

“Sortin’ out dinner,” he adds, and returns behind the wall that separates the living room from the cooking area. “You’re gonna love this pasta, I’m telling you.”

Of course, he doesn't need you.

The house is pristine. He takes care of it while you’re at work since he’s off deployment. He’s going to be home for a while now, a handful of months. That’s a good thing, you miss him when he leaves.

It’s you who needs him. But you can’t need, so how does this work, exactly?

How do you explain that hole in your stomach that relentlessly craves to be filled? That makes you want to curl on the floor. Turn into dust and seep through the cracks of the hardwood.

Disappear. Invisible. Paper-thin.

Because maybe you're tired of being needed. Perhaps you want to break through that mindset and start needing something.

You chastise yourself for even concocting the thought.

You stand stock still at the door. You hear nothing but the blood rushing in your ears and John moving pans around the kitchen.

You see his head at the doorway again.

“Love?”

Your eye twitches, but you don’t answer.

He doesn’t need you. Then why is he here?

There are plenty of people out there who’d love to bend for him. Mouths he can kiss. Holes he can fill.

That’s what people are, no?

No. That's what you are.

You’ll make him need you. You’ll show him that you’re fundamental, not just another hole. That you cannot be replaced, because you can't afford to lose him. You can't.

It’s selfish, it is.

You cannot be selfish, it’s not what you were taught. But you will. Just today, just now. The first apparent tear into the careful pattern threaded by your family.

But it's not really a hole, is it? If you're carving it to escape a trap, only to fall back into another one of your own making.

You hurriedly toe off your wet shoes and walk with purpose to the kitchen, dropping your bag on the floor as you do. He quirks a brow at you and your silence, but his face soon morphs into sudden confusion when you come to stand in front of him and drop to your knees.

You know how to do it—how to make people smile.

Your empathy is unmatched. You read people's tics, their quirks. Gauge them from the way they move their lips, the words they use, the way they look at you.

And John—oh, he loves how you work with your mouth.

And if he needs your mouth, then by extension, he needs you.

Your hands palm his thighs as you flutter your lashes up to him. He's forced to lean back against the kitchen counter, but he's not looking at you the way he usually does—not with his lidded blue eyes, heavy and wanton.

John looks dubious instead. Even flinches when you press your cheek to the crotch of his jeans, stroking the fabric to your skin. Denim’s rough, and it especially hurts when the plump of your cheek catches the zipper’s teeth.

Good.

Let him take. And let it hurt.

“What’s goin’ on." He states, doesn't ask.

Please, take.

You’re already working through the button and the zipper when you answer, fingers shaking as you do. “I wanna suck your cock.”

Now, John wouldn’t normally complain, but you sound much different from the other times in which you actually do want to suck his cock.

He hums, allowing you to palm him through his briefs, gently but firmly pressing your hand where he’s still soft. You nose him through the cotton, flattening your tongue against his dick—you can feel it twitch under the muscle. Good, means his body is responding how you want him to.

His hands curl painfully tight around the lip of the counter.

It’s so silent except for your heaving breaths warming up his length and the buzzing fire on the stove.

You place tender kisses as you feel him harden under your lips.

He's looking at you to try and gauge the reason behind all this. It's clear to him that you're not being your usual self, there is something in your eyes that tickles him in the wrong place. You know he knows—you know he's gathered something's wrong. He’s ever so attentive, capturing every minimal change in the wrinkles of your face.

You're so akin to him when it comes to that.

You don't give him time to ponder for long, though. You take his cock out of his briefs and force it into your mouth.

John knocks his head back against the cupboard and fixes his eyes to the ceiling, wide open. A heavy breath leaves him languidly. His cock chubs up as it sits heavy on your tongue, and you can feel it fill up your mouth.

“Christ.”

Yes. It’s what you want, to hear him lose himself in you.

You start slowly, pumping your hand at the base along with the movements of your lips, mindful of keeping your teeth out of the way. Tilting your head sideways, you let the tip of his cock push against your cheek while your tongue lavishes the malleable skin around its length.

Your eyes swivel upward, and you're met with the view of his corded neck, tight and straining as he refuses to look at you.

No.

He needs to know it’s you.

He needs to understand that you can give this whenever he wants, that you're not just another mouth. That no one else is as versed as you are when you eat him up. Your tongue knows how to follow the vein along the velvet of his skin, all the way to the slit on the tip. Your hand knows how to cup his balls and brush the seam in the middle—how he shudders, each time you do.

He needs to know that.

He can’t let you go. Not him too.

He has to hoist the limbless torso that you are towards the finish line, where you’ll get your caresses and your praises and your prize: the crumbs of love you’ll lap until your famished heart stops rumbling.

So, you drift your free hand upward and thread your fingers through the curls on his pelvis, gently grazing the skin with your nails. Then, you drum the pads on his soft belly, feeling them dip into the flesh and hit the harder muscles underneath. You splay your palm in the middle of his stomach, where you can feel the blood rushing madly as his heart pumps all the same.

It’s enough for you, the bodily reaction to the softness of your mouth.

But why isn’t he looking at you?

Recognize that is me. That I can make you feel good. That you need me, that you still do.

In the desperation of the moment, you opt for the best you can do: you take him deeper. The hand at the base of his cock moves to flatten on his thigh, and you carelessly widen your jaw to take more, and more, and more.

You flatten your tongue against the underside of his shaft and then twirl it around, all the while hollowing your cheeks without ever daring to take your eyes off him. That way, if he decides to look down at you, he'll find you teary-eyed and wanting—perfectly on your knees, like a devotee, no matter how artificially placed.

Your lips slide so easily up and down his cock, coating it with saliva, teardrops and precum. They swell so beautifully around it like a plump peach being ravaged; he always flatters you for it. Calls you beautiful when you suck him off so fervently, eliciting choked moans from you as you drink up the praise.

You dive in and the head tips at the back of your throat, causing you to gag around it. The muscles of your neck clench and he curses under his breath. Your eyes water in joy and overexertion when he looks down at you at the sudden change in pace. You don’t care if it hurts, let him bruise your throat.

You can give him more. You can give him everything.

You push even further until you're nuzzling against the coarse hair on his pelvis. You choke around his cock, a weak and wet cough that causes drool to dribble at the corners of your mouth. You pull back then, to take a wet gasp around his length, and then push forward to flush your nose to his crotch once more.

The tips of your knees hurt; the tiled floor in the kitchen is hard and merciless against the bone. It'll leave your joints aching and rough. They'll pop when you stand up, they'll hurt tomorrow when you go to work.

Good.

The knot in your stomach is ever so tight, seeking to be released and let go. It contorts in wantonness and, you’ll realize later, mortification. Just because you’re used to giving yourself so freely in exchange for crumbs, it doesn't mean it gets easier every time—to watch yourself bend on a whim, to see your pride shatter into even tinier pieces.

You feel his hand thread through your hair and tears fall down your cheek because yes, now he’s going to fuck your face like you want him to.

Use me. Treat me for what I am. Become the fucking puppet master. Take my fucking strings now that they’ve dropped them and guide me through this fucking shit I was left in.

But instead, he pulls you back, his cock escaping your mouth with the same ease you got it in.

A ragged breath, thick and wet, leaves your lips as soon as they’re free. Your coughs turn into a hack, as you stare at the glisten of your spit coating his shaft. A string of thick saliva tethers your mouth to it. Tears roll down your cheeks as you recollect your breath, nostrils flaring in the attempt to take in the air you’ve deprived yourself of.

“What’s this.”

You swallow down the liquid pooling in your throat, salty precum and viscous saliva like tar, gluing your tongue to the roof of your mouth.

“Let me.” You croak. The thought that you might sound pathetic doesn’t even cross your mind.

His brows twitch, but he keeps his voice even. “No. What’s going on? Spill it.”

Your pleading look morphs into a glare. Bloodshot eyes, tears, and snot. Spit and cum. Clumped lashes and runny mascara.

Whore.

Your chest heaves, not from the strain, but from being caught red-handed, and you don't know how to behave.

No one ever asks why you do it, they’re simply glad you do.

You’re helping, aren’t you? It’s what you were crafted for, brick by brick, bone by bone. Made to change like a chameleon based on other’s necessities.

It’s what you are—so let me do it.

“I want to suck your cock.” You say as crudely as you can manage. “I want you to come down my throat and then I want you to bend me over the table and fuck me until you’re empty.”

He runs his tongue over his teeth, still holding your head by a handful of hair. His fingers aren’t tight, but your scalp stings nonetheless.

“Can do.” He shrugs. “Need to know why, first.”

You’re a heap of wood once again, piled up at his feet. Your limbs are jointless, just lying there, waiting to be thrown in the fire to rekindle its flame, so everyone else can be warm at your expense.

A broken puppet can still be used for other purposes until it's ash.

There's nothing in you, if not how wonderfully soft your mouth would be if only he'd let you wrap it around him again.

“Because I want to.”

He curls his nose, mustache following the stretch. “Hardly.”

“I do.”

He tugs at your hair and says your name in such a commanding manner that you can’t help but deflate. The glare in his eyes snuffs the defiant flame in yours.

"Please let me," you plead, and the way you sound is nothing short of degrading.

You don't care. You don't care if you reduce yourself to a puddle of pleas. You know you're not supposed to need anything, but you need this.

Your hands are sticky with dried spit and precum when they grab his cock again. You start pumping it fiercely, trying to make his orgasm hit earlier than what you had planned. He holds your head out of reach, meaning you can't wrap your lips around it—you'll have to make do with your hands.

Slut.

But it’s okay, you’ll be a slut, if it helps him realize that you can make him feel good with everything you have to offer. That he won’t find another as pliant and willing as you are. That if he wants to be served, you will be his thrall.

Everything you own, it’s so you can give him.

Everything you earn, it’s so you can give back.

He can mold you. He can break you and put you back together the way he likes. He can craft a new puppet out of you, you’ll hand him the strings. He’ll take you to the finish line and love you, then.

Only then.

You see his mouth curl, bile on his tongue, as he reins in his own lust. There’s something wrong about you tonight, and he’s starting to understand what it is.

And so, he leaves your hair, favoring the softness of your cheek. He thumbs the plump of your cheekbone and then rubs a line along your lower lip.

It's then that you take your chance and rush forward, planting a kiss on the tip of his cock. Tongue out to leave kitten licks at the drops of precum you are squeezing out of him with your hands, knowing he likes those tiny shocks it sends up his spine.

And just when you think he’s relented to your pleas, just when you have your lips plump and shiny, ready to wrap around the flushed head of his cock, he takes ahold of your chin and tips your head back.

“I love you,” he croaks.

Words he’s said already, but not as often as he should’ve. It’s his fault, he grievously considers, if you think you have to be on your knees to receive them.

He realizes it when you shock into a stop. When your eyes widen a tick too much.

Blind idiot he is.

"I love you," he says again, more firmly this time.

Your face screws up as if you're trying to wrap your head around this language you don't know. You haven't done much to reach that prize—if anything, you’ve done the opposite. You’ve edged him until the head of his cock has turned an angry red that must be aggravating to handle, impossible to quench without the welcoming warmth of your mouth or that of your cunt.

You blink up at him. Tears fall down your cheeks. “But you need to come.”

If you’d have shot him, he would’ve handled the ache much better than this.

"I need nothing." He supplies gently, tracing the corner of your lips with his thumb, getting rid of the mess he's inadvertently made of your mouth.

His statement hangs in the air, stale and musty and threatening, not as sweet as he thinks. It clogs your nose and tightens your chest, curdling your blood into frozen lumps. The noises around suddenly feel deafening: the bubbles popping on the surface of the boiling water, the wet sound of your skin unsticking from his cock as your hands leave it, their thud as they fall in your lap.

If you’re not needed, then what are you?

Carefully, he tucks himself back into his briefs as he kneels to your level.

He whispers your name and cups your cheek as he does. "I love you.”

You know he does, but stuck in the web woven by your family, you always thought it was a purely transactional sentiment. A fair trade.

He loves you because you kneel prettily in front of the sofa.

He loves you because you let him stuff you up and fill you to the brim with his come at the snap of his fingers.

He loves you because you're a lovely addition to his arm when you doll up for his work ceremonies or other functions.

He loves you because you cook a mean Sunday roast when he comes back from deployment.

And you love him because he's John, because what's there not to love.

With gentle blue eyes framed by bushy eyebrows, and droopy eyelids that give his often scowling look a gentler feel to it. The honey smatter of freckles on his nose, and the sharply trimmed beard on his jaw. Plump rosy lips, how soft they feel when he places them on yours, juxtaposing with the prickly ends of his mustache.

His encompassing heart and the way he's enlarged it for you to fit better, so you're all comfortable and warm in his life.

John gently presses his lips on your forehead as he speaks softly, "I love you."

Your eyes flutter closed. A heaving breath again, one that stutters as you try to inhale it. Fat tears fill the cracks in your lips and flow down your tongue.

John brushes the back of his knuckles across your cheeks. “Don’t need all this to love you.” And then he looks in your eyes, searching for any sign of skepticism, and regrettably finds a considerable amount of it. “You knowthat. Right, love?”

No, you don’t know.

But you don’t have the gall to tell him. Suddenly, it hits how pathetic you look. On your knees, begging for him to stuff your mouth with his cock so you can feel useful, so he can shower you with love once you give him a reason to keep you.

You kneel there helplessly, deflated.

Useless.

You gesture with your hands at him, feeling how limply they hang from your wrists as if you've never used them on your own in the first place.

There is very little you can do to humiliate yourself further, and yet you manage.

“But you need me.” You cry, as your face scrunches in a pain so deeply settled that John has no clue how to work around it. “I need you to need me.”

However, he tries. He tracks your tears with his thumb, stopping their fall right above your cheekbone.

"Don't need you, love." He says tenderly. "I want you.”

He shifts a little closer and cradles your face in both hands so that you cannot avoid his eyes even if you tried.

“Want you.” He breathes hoarsely, “Ain’t with you ’cause I need someone. I don’t need anyone, and I don’t want just anyone—I want you. ‘Specially when you’re not on your knees.”

Your nose is stuffy, and you can’t breathe right. Suddenly, you feel so unbelievably tired. Your face plops in his hands, and the humiliation feels ten times worse. It's hard, however, to interject with a word that would make him understand how deep this pattern runs.

He doesn’t let you, but only because he knows already.

"Like you when you get all chuffed ‘bout your plants sproutin’." He drawls. "Love it when you hop into bed and shove your cold feet against my thighs ‘cause I'm much warmer. Or when you make love to me. But not when you—when you pull this."

His voice is heavy. Your heart aches because you're so tightly wrapped in deadly silk, stuck in your family's cobweb, that you've never noticed how it must pain him as well, to see you reduce yourself to this.

"Bloody hell, love." He sighs, furrowing his brows. "I love you, yeah? I don't need—whatever this is. I don't want whatever this is.”

John's eyes close, his face screwing up in that way that tells you he's thinking. He shakes his head subtly, and you're afraid you've gone and done it now. He's going to go because he already has so much shit to deal with that your puzzled self would only be another broken case to add to his file.

But alas, dread doesn't even manage to settle on your heavy heart that he locks you in place with his blues.

One of his hands drifts to the back of your head. He leans in, enough for you to smell the tobacco on his breath.

You swallow dryly, lips parted in shaky pants. Eyes lidded and tired, nose scrunching in sniffles.

John presses a gentle kiss on your lips, no more than a peck. And then another one, and another, and another, until you can’t discern whether it’s the salt of your tears or that of his skin.

Your breathing becomes heavier and it mingles with his own when he comes to rest his forehead on yours.

"I love you," he murmurs tirelessly.

The hand on your nape guides you to him, and he kisses you again. Unlike the previous ones, this is bolder, yet tender all the same. He holds you in place while the rest of the world falls into impeccable silence.

The gentle smacking of lips is all you can hear, and even if only for a moment, it manages to silence the voice in your head—a mimicry of your family’s cries, their lying coos, their grating, consuming, plastic love.

You feel yourself uncoil under John’s touch and the deft work of his tongue on yours. Hands in your lap, you abandon yourself to him, but it's a different type of surrender; your eyes close and all your feelings, all your energy, flow into that kiss.

“I-I love you,” you venture, breathy voice brushing his lips.

John inhales sharply, and he realizes this might be the first time you said it because you wanted to and not because you had to.

His hand drifts from your cheek to your shoulder, down to your stomach and he guides you to lie with your back against the kitchen floor. His palms flatten next to your head.

Normally, John would have you on a fort of pillows and blankets and would never compromise about it—constantly making sure you’re as comfortable as they come as he ravages you. Beforehand, you'd get ready in the bathroom, having prepped yourself to a T. Shaved and moisturized and seasoned like a prized pig for him to consume, wearing the prettiest, skimpiest lace to frame the petals of your perfectly waxed pussy.

Because it’s a fair trade; he treats you like a princess, so you can be his pretty whore.

Yet tonight you think he won’t do any of that. There is a gentleness in his kisses that, while not uncommon, certainly feels unique. Your hands hover between your chest and his, unsure of where to place them. You hope he’ll guide you through this too, manhandle you into position like he always does.

But again, he doesn’t.

He barely feels like John at all. His behavior is so different that if you closed your eyes, anyone could be in his place right now. But that is only your perception, isn't it? Because John has always been tender with you, you were just too busy thinking about how to repay his kindness instead of living in the moment.

His lips leave yours only to busy themselves with the skin on your cheek, then down your chin and to your neck. You gasp at the goosebumps, and he stops.

His face comes into view and it is so flushed you think he must be collecting all his blood right in the apples of his cheeks.

“Okay, love?”

You blink. Your mouth tastes more like his cigars than tears and precum. It makes you feel less dirty, even if what you did (and have been doing your whole life) hasn’t changed.

You swallow thickly as he gazes into your eyes.

“Y-yeah, just—” A crease forms between your brows, “I should—I left you like that, and—”

He hushes you.

"No need to bother 'bout me." He reassures you.

He presses a kiss between your brows, smoothing the lines your concern has formed. You close your eyes, focusing on how warm he is in contrast to the tiles pressing against your back.

“Tell me what you want.” He breathes. As if you have an answer for that.

His kisses trail down your face and your neck, turning more open and wet. The rising gooseflesh, however, does nothing to stop your mind from running miles ahead.

What do you want?

You must've been posed that question before because it's such a basic one. You try to think of contests in which one might ask that, such as your birthdays, or celebrations, or a teacher wondering what is it that you desire in the future: a career, a husband or a wife, a family.

But to desire is to choose, and you don’t think you’ve ever been given that possibility.

Hence why you're rattled, aghast. On your back on the floor, with John sucking love bites on your neck.

You give the answer you know will make him content.

“Fuck me.”

You’ll moan like a porn star. You’ll dig your pretty nails into his back so he can show off the marks you left on him with pride. You'll pretend an orgasm if yours is taking too long, so that his ego will be kept fed and full, and he’ll still find you appealing. So that he can go tell his friends and comrades how good you are, in and out of bed. What a gem. Wife material.

He’ll doll you up and tie the strings around your wrists. Make you dance and you will—coy smile, pretty eyes and all. A new puppet out of you, just for his sake.

John stills, and he shifts uncomfortably above you. His mouth is suddenly next to your ear, and he leaves a kiss at your jaw hinge.

“You don’t want me to fuck you.” He murmurs, and you swear there is a hint of guilt in the way he says it.

You feel dizzy at the thought of being caught. It’s scary to have your thoughts so out in the open after having spent an entire lifetime locking them up.

John nips at the shell of your ear. You venture with your hands and place them on his chest, still unsure of whether you want him closer or far, far away.

"Can I make you feel good?" He asks hoarsely. Your body responds naturally and it makes heat pool in your lower stomach.

You suck in a breath, eyes fluttering closed at the idea his words have instilled in you.

You reply the only way you know. “You don’t have to ask.”

“Yes.” He says forcefully, almost as if he wanted the answer to stick to your brain for the days to come. The switch is so abrupt your heart skips a beat. “Yes, I have to ask. Of course, I have to ask.”

He props himself up, hips snug between your thighs. He could roll them against yours and seek the friction his chubbed up cock must physically need after you teased it.

But he doesn’t, and it makes you feel both inadequate and nervous.

“So, answer me, love.” He rumbles, as his pupils dance between your eyes. “Can I make you feel good?”

You’re not sure why, but it makes your eyes water and your heart hurt. Your brows draw together in a frown that rips at John’s chest.

“Y-Yes,” you stutter, voice strangled in your throat. “Yes, please.”

John leans in to kiss your eyelids as you snap them closed.

And then he kisses your cheek, your nose, and your lips. His hand trails over your sweater. A gentle tug at the hem makes tears fall down your temple and into your hair.

You give an imperceptible nod at his silent request and he thanks you by pressing his lips to your jaw. He lifts it above your breasts, sitting atop the plain, skin-colored bra you're wearing. You haven't shaved, there's regrowing hair under your armpits and you're flushed to the bone.

You're not the doll you allow him to see. You haven't prepped yourself for consumption this time, and it almost makes you squirm, as you force your biceps flush to your ribcage.

He can't see that you're not the perfect little puppet you've always shown him. If you aren't perfect, willing, and breakable, then he can find a thousand more like you—better than you.

But he presses a kiss to your sternum, ignoring sweat, squirming, and whatnot.

“Beautiful.” He murmurs, tongue out to trace the line of the bone. “Pretty fucking girl.”

You sob. It doesn't deter him, as he lines the plain fabric of your cup until his fingers meet the clasp conveniently placed to the front. With a quick snap, he undoes it, and your tits spill out to the sides.

He hooks your attention back with a look, and you understand he’s asking, once again.

He’s seen you naked a thousand times but you realize he’s never seen you this raw. Your cheeks are flushed and his eyes have never looked so gentle yet hungry.

You nod again and he dives in, wasting no time.

His hands grab the fat of your tits. Push them together. Thumbs teasing nipples as they pebble under his pads. Lips kissing anywhere they can land, latching on flesh until it darkens. His teeth graze the peaks of your breasts, and your back arches off the floor.

Each grunt that escapes him has your spine vibrate. You can't fathom the thought that he likes this, not when you’re tasting like a long day at work and wet rain, instead of buttercream and mango.

You try to snake your leg between his own, to give back what he’s giving you. Carefully, you stroke the curve of your foot against his hard length, but he pulls back with his hips and gently guides your thigh to rest once more around his waist.

“Don’t need tha’, sunshine.” He grunts, a murmur lost as his lips mouth at your nipples. "This 's more 'n 'nough."

His hands hold you by the waist now, fingers gripping the flesh with tenacity. His beard scrapes at the soft skin of your tits as he travels downward with his mouth, following the path lined by your sternum to the gap between your ribs.

He licks stripes as if your skin were covered with cream. His teeth sink softly where your flesh is plumper, causing you to writhe against him, and he chuckles under his breath as he remembers you’re ticklish.

Such tiny things he knows about you, you almost forgot it’s been years he’s known you.

His bites turn kisses, and they're chastely pressed on the line of your stomach, over your belly button, and to the seam of your jeans.

John looks up at you when his lips reach the zipper, and by doing so you notice his brows arching up, causing lines to wrinkle his forehead. Pretty blue eyes take you in and the mess that you've made of yourself. Runny makeup, bitten lips.

You know he can see how undecided you still are. Brows pinched in both pleasure and discomfort because this is so new to you.

But you nod a little sharply for him to go on, as your mouth curls down in the hopefully non-futile attempt at muffling your sobs.

John unbuttons your pants and shimmies them down your hips to your ankles in such an agonizingly slow manner you can’t help but think he’s doing it to give you time to rebut, in case you change your mind.

You don't.

He takes them off together with your socks and brings your foot next to his face. Places a kiss on the side of it, sending tingles up your legs that tip to the apex of your thighs. He leaves small pecks down your ankle and your calf, closing his eyes and sometimes brushing his beard against your skin.

You look away, cheek flat to the tiles, now wet with your tears and the rain soaking your hair.

It doesn't deter John in the slightest, not even when he slowly comes down to a crawl, chest to the floor and nose on your mound. He tugs with his teeth at the cotton of your panties, nothing more than plain white cheeky underwear. So different from the way you always present yourself to him, with your expensive lace and your silks and your soft skin—painfully waxed so it could mimic the feel of your babydolls.

Gingerly, you reach down with your hand and thread your fingers through his hair, smoothing them back from his forehead. You cup the side of his face and brush your thumb to his flushed cheekbone. He leans into your palm and kisses it, uncaring of the stickiness left by your previous activity.

You feel something inside of you crash and break, then, like a glass vase falling from a height. You’re not sure whether it’s a good thing or not, because it makes more tears collect at the corners of your eyes and those are never predictors of a good ending.

He digs the tip of his nose against your slit, following the wet stripe that inevitably formed the moment you dropped to your knees for him.

“Can I?” He asks, sending little spikes of electricity up to your chest when his lips brush against the sensitive skin covered by flimsy cotton.

You feel your chest get so tight someone might as well be curling rope around it.

You feel so pathetic for crying just because you’re being asked about what makes you comfortable and what doesn’t. You’re such an advocate for your friends to go out there and demand for their needs to be met, that you can’t help but wallow in your hypocrisy when someone asks for yours.

He waits patiently for your consent, even if he's a breath away from your private parts, with his hands caressing the back of your thighs. Even if he's done this to you a thousand times already, with your squirming body giving him a show worthy of the cameras, had they been there.

He makes everything around you look so soft, even the tiles of the floor that are uncomfortably sticking to your skin feel like plush cushions.

You wonder briefly if this is how it should’ve always felt, had you allowed yourself to recognize your needs instead of seeing your body as a means to make others happy.

It comes out of your lips as a breath that’s followed by a wet sniffle, your head nodding softly, contrastingly to how tight you’re biting your own teeth.

“Yes.”

No amount of pressure on your jaw could stop the sob that escapes you afterward.

John closes his eyes and a warm shuddering sigh brushes your skin. You’re starting to realize that maybe you’re not the only one who’s being affected by this sudden change in your and his intimacy.

His fingers hook at your panties and he slides them to your ankles, letting them hang down one foot. You swing it carefully and kick them off as he returns his attention to the apex of your thighs, hooking your knees on his shoulders.

He starts tenderly, pressing kisses on the soft flesh of your vulva, paying attention even to the smallest bits you weren’t even aware could feel good. He latches on your outer lips, feeling how puffy they get at the slight suction.

Your thighs are corded and stiff under his grip, arms hooked around each plush leg, and palms flat on your skin.

John’s eyes are closed, although you wish he’d look at you as he travels with his lips along your slit. A kiss on your hole without probing too much, then one along the middle of your slit, which was getting impressively wetter as time passed, and the one on your hooded clit.

It sent jolts up your spine, causing your hips to buck against his mouth. His fingers tighten around your thighs in response, as if he’s trying to rein it in for you.

You appreciate it more than he thinks. You don’t think you’ve ever been placed on top of the queue so blatantly in your entire life.

The tip of his tongue darts out, but it’s obscured from your eyes by the regrowing hair on your mound and from his thick mustache. So, it takes you by surprise when he all but licks a thin stripe over the protruding part of your clit.

You hiss, and your head goes dizzy. You feel tiny pinpricks tingling in your brain, making you lightheaded and more than a little breathless.

During the whole relationship, you’ve been so focused on appearing like a full meal to his eyes, that you forgot how good it felt to be that meal on his tongue.

He laps at you again, eyes now wide open to gauge more of whatever you were giving him. You feel them as bright spotlights aimed at your face, but you can’t find it in yourself to display the act you’ve always given him.

You're already too different from the woman he's so used to seeing. You wonder if he likes you anyway; or if he likes you less, or more. When your eyes lock with his own, a dark flash tells you to go back to your ways. To flutter your lashes and pout your lips in small pleas, whimpering moans that always make his eyes roll to the back of his head.

And just as you’re about to give in to those old habits, John flattens his tongue against your cunt and licks all the thoughts out of your head. You tilt it back in a groan that has never, not once, left your lips in his presence.

He seems more than excited to hear it and starts eating you out like you’re his first meal in a century. This time, there is no plasticity in the ways you move. You’re not squirming away and acting coy about it, meeting his eyes to make sure he realizes that you're his pretty doll.

This time there’s you and the pleasure he gives you. There’s a hand in his hair that shyly tries to keep him still, as he puckers his lips around your nub and sucks it in his mouth. There’s the subtle canting of your hips to press your cunt closer to him, and the way he makes sure you don’t pull away from his tongue with his thick arms coiled around your thighs.

It’s so strange to allow yourself to feel so much. All this time you’ve been oblivious to all this as it happened in your same body because you were too busy focusing on how you appeared to his eyes. Even as he tongued your hole, your head told you it still had to be about pleasing him—because nothing in this world could ever be exclusively about you.

It hits you sharply that your beliefs about yourself, instilled by the callous teachings of your family, had bled through every aspect of your life. You already knew that, of course, but you never realized they had seeped into your intimacy as well.

Yet now you have proof of it, because you're sure John has not changed his tactics, it's you who's finally allowing your body to feel all this.

He twirls his tongue around your clit and you’re seeing stars. It’s such a strong sensation that you think you might have lost a marble or two in the process. Each grunt he emits from his lips vibrates through you and elicits similar sounds from your own mouth.

You’re not even looking at him, and you don’t care. It’s too good. He feels fucking heavenly and you’ll probably end up apologizing later for not having included him more, for not having paid enough attention to him as you should’ve.

But now—fucking hell, now—there's only how his tongue toys with each and every nerve ending of your sodden cunt.

You let him manhandle you, then, like he did so many times in the past. But now he positions you in an unflattering angle you would've never allowed before. He sits up on his knees, carrying your pelvis with him, close to his face.

To help yourself up, you place your hands on your haunches, propping your elbows on the floor. The tiles press harshly against the bone, much like they did on your knees when you’d knocked them down to suck him off not even twenty minutes prior, but now that pain feels so fickle compared to the pleasure he’s giving you.

He locks his arms around your lower belly, soft thighs pressed to his ears, and he dives in again.

Like this, you’re sure he can see every stupid, unflattering thing about you. But there’s the catch—it’s stupid. You’re sure you’re going to rethink all this eventually, but now everything that isn’t John and his lips on you is so unbelievably, fucking stupid.

“Taste like honey, y’ do.” You think you hear him say, as he nuzzles your cunt for all it’s worth.

He delves his tongue into your hole, plunging as deep as he can until he’s nosing your clit too. Facial hair scrapes the inside of your thigh raw, but that only enhances the opposite bliss happening thanks to his mouth.

You whimper, but not for show; it feels criminally good, and John knows it's real because your thighs shake so fiercely his vision goes wobbly too.

He chuckles, but it’s not derisive. His eyes are incensed, the light blue barely a rim around enlarged pupils. He looks in utter awe as he takes you in; face flushed, hair still wet from the rain and now from the sweat too. With an expression he's never once seen before, not on you. The sheer discomfort of the position but also the complete bliss that makes you forget you could have this on a more comfortable bed.

“Look at you—fucking beautiful." He murmurs with his lips to your cunt. "Criminal to hide this from me, love."

Your lips part into an oval, and your eyelids tremble, fighting the need to close your eyes and just feel. But he looks so unbelievably stunning you refuse, categorically, to take your eyes off of him.

And he apparently thinks the same, because his gaze never falters, not even when you tighten the grip your thighs have around his head. Nor does his tongue, as he plunges it again in your cunt, nose nudging your clit just right.

He might be fucking you with his mouth, but he sure is doing it with his eyes too.

And you’ve never felt so seen in your entire life. You’ve never felt so beautiful, so worthy, as right now. You wonder if he’s always been looking at you this way, but you were too lost in your own ways to notice.

You feel tears trickle down your temples again, mingling with your hair.

Jaw clenched tight, you breathe it out with all the strength you’ve got left in you.

“I love you.”

And John breaks into something different. You must have given him some final blow because his eyes shut closed and his brows knit together. An expression you've never seen, equally as pained as delighted.

He doesn’t answer, using his tongue for other purposes, keeping the stimulation both inside and out of you. Strong arms hold you still to his face, squeezing painfully tight around your hips. Thick palms flat against your lower belly, with his thumb tugging at your mons to unhood your puffy clit.

He goes on until you can’t hold yourself up anymore, arms giving out from under you. But he catches you anyway, hooking your legs better above his shoulders. The fact that your thighs are pressing against his ears gives you some sort of relief, knowing his hearing might have been muffled by your flesh.

So, you let go.

You moan loudly, fuck the neighbors, and whatever the world has to say. Fuck your head for sabotaging you, and taking you away from him.

You feel it build up slowly but suddenly; one moment it’s just fully encompassing pleasure, the next there’s a vine that stems from your ravaged cunt and curls around your belly, up to your neck.

Your throat blocks off, breathing shallow and sharp.

And then everything snaps.

John fights against the bucking of your hips just so he can keep his mouth on you and fuck you through it.

Your groan is so guttural you don't even think that was your voice. You don't even think, period. Your mind blacks out. A scorching heat develops from your sternum and coils around your chest like ivy in bloom.

You’ve had orgasms before thanks to his mouth, or his fingers, or his cock.

This, however, it’s so different you might consider yourself reborn.

It’s liberating. It’s new. It’s free and only, completely yours.

You don't even notice, as his tongue slows down, that your eyes are staring at nothing on the ceiling. That they fill with tears. And that you're crying.

You notice nothing, but just how good your body trembles, from the tips of your toes to the conscience in your head.

You don’t notice the sobs that leave your lips, as John gingerly places your body back down. Nor the way your chest heaves as if you’ve just learned how to use your lungs, while he hooks his arms behind your shoulders, and lifts you up to sit butt naked on the floor.

He holds you to his chest and you painfully sob against it. Not a thought about whether this is the right time to cry crosses your mind.

He cradles your cheek to his heart, while wet lips press against the crown of your head.

“Let go,” he murmurs, voice hoarse. “’M here, love. Let go.”

You cry so hard you think you might crack like porcelain on that floor. Your heaving sobs echo against the walls of the kitchen like the cries of a newborn child.

And John has no intention of letting you go through it alone. He is there with his hands, with his lips, with the strong, steady heartbeat against your ear until your wailing abates. Only then does he cup your cheek to lift your face.

You weep under your breath when you notice the bloodshot whites of his eyes and the clumped lashes. The dampness on his cheeks and the redness of the skin.

He smooths your hair back. Kisses your forehead with such intensity that he just might suck away the self-hatred your family has seeded in your brain with his lips.

He looks at you, then. Lips pursed in a tight line.

“You’ve never looked more beautiful than you do now, love.”

It’s inevitable the way your lips stretch in a smile that quivers and shakes in a breathless, wet chuckle.

You dig the heels of your hands in your eyes, sniffling painfully hard to get some air in your lungs. Your mouth is pasty and God, you must smell like proper shite.

But John leans down anyway and kisses your lips, uncaring of the salt of your tears, the snot, and the taste of you still lingering on his tongue.

And you kiss him back, this time threading your fingers through his hair, arms looped around his neck in an embrace you never want to break.

Noses flush against each other’s cheeks, lips parting only for you to take breaths because your nostrils are currently too stuffy for you to use them properly.

You sniffle and kiss and tug at his hair and hold him until you're both sated, but never enough. It won’t ever be enough.

A few beats of silence reign the kitchen as you sit on the floor, tangled in each other’s arms. The water in the pot must’ve boiled away, forgotten on the fire that still buzzes silently. John’s chest is your tiny alcove as you rest your head against it, and he holds you until your heart’s content.

Everything you’ve ever learned shakes before your eyes. Every thread that knitted the pattern carefully woven around you is slowly unraveling. The fabric wears down the more he shows you love without asking for anything in return.

He's making you regrow your limbs, returning the eyes they stole, allowing you to see that at the finish line, there's nothing but lies.

Nothing but missed calls, skipped appointments, and neglect. Honeyed words, saccharine pet names to render you soft as dough, willing to offer yourself to their exploitation. Sucking on every last drop of your sap, until only a hollow marionette is left.

John hasn't refilled you with energy; he made you realize you were never empty to begin with. Helped you see that they never smothered your fire to ashes, but only dimmed it to a flame, one you can rekindle easily.

One he cannot wait, for the life of him, to see ablaze again.

He’ll fight with you, give you the wood you need to keep yourself warm and your heart safe. Cut your strings once and for all, until you can get back on your feet again.

He thrives at the idea of seeing you glow like you did moments before, in your most raw and real form; a woman he's yet to meet.

However, being human, he does feel a temporary disappointment at the thought that you had put up such a blatant front for so long. Anger that he’d never noticed, thinking you were just this pliant little thing.

But he should've never thought of you as a thing. Never should've seen you as this obliging, pretty doll hanging from his lips. He should've dug deeper, like he always does even on the field, instead of falling for lies.

He’s often asked himself how you’ve never seemed to need anything, often pegging the behavior to self-sufficiency. You always took care of everything by yourself and promptly refused any aid when he tried to give it to you.

His mind reels with memories of the times he’s offered a helping hand, and you’ve politely declined it. It shatters him to think that you did it because you were afraid you had to give something back and maybe were too tired to offer anything.

It’s then that his mind deep dives into a place that sickens him.

How many times did you have sex with him and see it as a bargaining chip? Or as a way to repay him for something he’s done for you just because he loves you?

He shuts his eyes briefly, forcing the bile down his throat and deciding to dwell on the subject later. This moment comes first. You come first. So, he takes you in, blinking his eyes open once more.

He blindly reaches back to turn off the stove, before returning his arms around you. He brushes his lips to your temple, and your muscles soften under the way his breath tickles your skin.

You tilt your head back to lock your eyes with his own, gauging the earnestness swimming in his blues.

“I love you,” he breathes for the umpteenth time, that day.

No ventriloquist forces you to say it back. No strings move your arms to loop around his neck, as you lift yourself on your knees to be level with his eyes.

It's you, who rests your forehead on his own, brushing your nose to his in a butterfly kiss.

You feel like flesh and bone, more than polished wood tied to nylon strings. No voice box if not your vocal cords vibrating when you decide it, asking and giving all the same.

“I love you,” you whisper back.

There is no hunger for love, no finish line to reach. It’s not a race, not today.

And with John, you don’t think it’ll ever be again.

704 notes · View notes

xocasper · 1 month ago

Text

Something, Somehow, Someday

Pairing: Frank Iero x Fem!Reader Summary: Mikey and Gerard let you tag along when Frank invites them to hang out at his house. After they've fallen asleep, you find yourself in Frank's bedroom, finally giving into your yearlong crush. Frank isn't used to being with younger girls, especially not ones as sweet as you. (or... "he's a lowbrow, mom's house, all his cash is borrowed / she's the good life, no strife, pills he never swallowed / he's the inked up, bad luck, never wants to marry / she's dressed in white" ... to the tune of something, somehow, someday ofc!) Warnings: NSFW content Tags: fingering, breast play, rough sex, age gap Word Count: 5879 A/N: daddy's home

“We shouldn’t be doing this.”

It’s a brief, breathless break from clashing lips and needy kisses. They’re dripping with animalistic desire, all messy and feverous, tasting and memorizing his mouth through yours. Sweeping tongues, slotted lips, strangled moans, and gasps and whines, all etched into your memory and fueling a fierce lust beneath your skin.

His eyes hardly open, gazing down at you in a daze. The mess he’s created of you, swollen lips that refuse to purse and lashes that won’t lift. No, you can’t even look at him, too focused on filling your lungs, inhaling oxygen and his musky cologne until you’re breathing him too. You’re still so close, enough that he can feel the rise and fall of your chest, noses still brushing. Carefully, one of his hands leaves your waist, leaving an emptiness in its wake.

“Tell me to stop, then.”

His hand is on your chin, urging you to look at him. Through batted lashes, you stare back up, drowning in the carnality in his eyes. He’s captivating, challenging you with soft browns that flick between your lips and gaze. All he can think of are those plush lips, glistening with spit and desire. He watches the way you suck your bottom lip between your teeth, a nervous habit. Then it’s a hard swallow and bated breath, closing your eyes again and he can almost hear your thoughts.

Mikey and Gerard are downstairs. Someone could hear. He’s so much older, and expectedly, more experienced.

Your eyes flutter open again, judgment too clouded to make a sound decision. Darting from his intense gaze to his lip ring, you lose yourself in the idea of just how good this could be. All those tattoos, that silky, dark hair curling between your fingers. Not to mention his hands, proving themselves already with a strong grip on your waist and chin, holding you hostage in his lap.

Ever aware of your overthinking, he starts to loosen his grasp, traveling from your chin to your cheek. “Hey,” he murmurs again. “We can stop. We can go back down and pretend nothing ever happened.”

For a reason you can’t pinpoint, your heart anxiously lurches. It snaps you out of your funk though, spiral halting before you can reason further.

“And if we don’t?”

A smile cracks at the corners of his lips, lifting as he speaks. Maybe it’s your shy disposition when you talk, that sweet concern and naivety, that charms him. There’s something about you… he wouldn’t say adorable, not interested in infantilizing you. You’re too good with your mouth to be deemed innocent either, which piques his interest. Endearing, he supposes. Whatever it is, he’s eating it up.

“If we don’t,” he says, pausing for effect. “Then I’ll give you anything you want.”

Butterflies swarm in your stomach, flustered at his willingness. The idea of him doing anything , taking care of you and all your needs… it’s almost too good. Almost.

His lips are already grazing your jaw, sucking sensual kisses along the way. “I can go fast,” he tells you lowly. “I can go slow.”

From your waist, his hand dips beneath your shirt, leaving a trail of heat in its path. “I can give you everything.”

His other palm is beneath your shirt again, the two of them snaking around your torso and unclasping your bra. It’s slick, you’ll give him that, too distracted by his lips against your ear to notice. His tongue meets your skin next, eliciting a shaky gasp while he smiles against you.

“How’s that sound?”

The words shoot directly into your brain, with Frank smiling mischievously against your ear. Not that you can respond easily, the feeling of faint tongue and gentle sucking sending shivers through you. Man, does he make it hard to focus.

“I dunno,” you reply, hushed, letting your head fall back. “I’ve always wanted you to—”

“Always” is like a buzzword to him. Freezing, you feel embarrassment burn within you. Worse, he’s wearing that cheshire grin, giving your neck a playful bite.

“Always?”

Shit. Freudian slip.

“What do you mean ‘always’?”

Humiliation boils in your stomach, grateful to have a better view of the ceiling than Frank himself. You’d found him attractive since you’d met him, about a year ago in your living room. It was one of the first things you’d noticed upon going downstairs—lean, punky Frank, with that shiny piercing and a couple less tattoos.

Rolling your eyes, you let out an embarrassed sigh. “Doesn’t matter.”

Frank grins. “Sure it does. I gotta make this worth the wait.”

Easing your arms down by your sides, he slides your bra straps off like it’s a casual affair. Despite wanting to believe that it is, the swarm of butterflies in your stomach tells you otherwise. Especially when his hands are beneath your tee again, diagraming your anatomy beneath his fingertips–ribs to breast to pounding heart.

“Jeez,” he snickers softly, concealing the small of your back with one hand. “Am I making you nervous?”

You roll your tongue around in your mouth, contemplating the question. With all the courage you can muster, you let your head fall back down and press your forehead to his. “‘M not nervous, Frank. Just…”

The heat in your cheeks is obvious, the frazzle of your features apparent. That slightly carnal look in your eyes, begging and wanton, that only feeds him further.

“Horny?” he supplies, still smiling as if it’s funny.

You roll your eyes, shallow breaths leaving your lips when his fingers start to travel again. His thumbs graze your nipples, groping at the flesh experimentally.

With a shuddered breath, you respond. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

Frank shakes his head, still eyeing you like a test subject. “Not at all. Just most chicks aren’t…”

“Horny?” you echo, suppressing a grin as you lean towards his ear.

He pinches you playfully, ears perking up as a sharp gasp escapes your lips. The way you shift in his lap doesn’t go unnoticed either, making him snicker. “Nah, that’s not what I—oh, you’re fuckin’ weird, huh?”

At first, you’re mildly offended by his offhand comment. Pulling back and wrinkling your nose at him, you notice the shit-eating grin on his face. Carefully, he does it again—fingers rolling over your nipples, then the subtle pinching and tugging. You try to stay stoic, but the clench of your abdomen gives you away.

He’s giddy, looking at you like his little lab rat. Next, it’s his mouth on your neck. Tender bites, sharp teeth, all soothed by the warmth of his tongue. The way you’re reacting is only turning him on more, if that were possible. Writhing and squirming, gasping softly and attempting to stifle it by biting your lip; it’s almost too good to be true. He wouldn’t exactly mind going slow, not really. Sex is sex—but this level of sensitivity, and how you clearly like it rough? Oh, Frank is gonna have fun with you.

“You’re so sensitive,” he comments, mouthing at the top of your jaw.

Heat rises in your cheeks, but it’s not your fault that everything he does is intoxicating. Your face must’ve given away your vague embarrassment, Frank detecting it and tucking a strand of hair behind your ear.

“It’s not a bad thing at all,” he assures you, kissing you again. “You’re my favorite kinda girl.”

You’re not sure how he can say something like that and then continue kissing you, allowing the words to seep into your brain. Melting against him, you fist your hands in his t-shirt, letting him pull you closer by your waist. It’s so clear that he’s more experienced than you, be it the age difference or his skilled mannerisms. His kisses are rhythmic, and when his tongue darts out, it’s over for you. Gasping, you grind hard against him, eliciting a reaction from him as well.

He pulls away, letting his head roll for a moment, exhaling as if he were blowing smoke.

“C’mere.”

Obeying, you let him lay you down against his mattress. His nimble hands lift your shirt over your head and he situates himself beside you. It’s strange, lying in his bed with your brothers downstairs. Not to mention how exposed you feel, as Frank is still wearing some Affliction tee while you remain half-naked. Under his gaze, you feel a bit more like the Ways’ kid sister than whoever you thought you were. Thankfully, this hint of insecurity goes unnoticed because he’s so captivated by the sight of you.

Frank runs a hand through his hair like he doesn’t know what to do with you. That familiar feeling is spinning inside of him, muscles twitching with arousal.

“Jesus, kid,” is all he can say, tongue darting out against his lip piercing.

It seems to be a good thing, because he’s stripping off his shirt and hovering over you. Too many times, you’ve imagined this—Frank on top of you, vibrant ink adorning his skin, flush against your own. Those intense eyes, lost in your wide, pleading ones. He can see everything in them—the excitement, fear, insecurity. All of it, and he infers that this isn’t exactly a common occurrence for you. The stalling makes you nervous though, interrupting his burning stare with a question that you’d been dying to ask.

“Frank?”

He hums, gaze flickering between your eyes and lips. “What’s up?”

Part of him worries that you’re going to ask to stop. Not that he wouldn’t be cool about it, but you’ve really got him going now and he’s actually enjoying it.

“What’d you mean earlier..?” you start slowly, unsure of how to word it. “What kind of girl am I?”

Frank finds the question cute. A soft smile flashes across his face, cradling your cheek in his palm. He fills up your senses with soft laughter and spearmint, easing the anxious ache in your bones.

“You’re sweet,” he says simply, brushing your bottom lip with his thumb. “And still new to all this. But you’re… kinda kinky, you know? At least that’s the vibe I’m getting.”

You turn your face away, giving a small groan. He laughs softly, guiding your head back to face him. “That’s a good thing. Explore that. Sex gets a whole lot better when you’re doing what you want.”

“What if I don’t know what I want?”

He kneels above you, statuesque, letting his hands run from your breasts to your waist. It feels good to see him so in awe of you.

“Do you want this? ” he asks, staring into your eyes as though he’s seeing right into your soul; his gaze is powerful .

Nervous, you nod, shutting out the “what if’s” and trying to forget who’s sleeping below you. You’ve wanted this for so long—you can’t sell it now over the fear of getting caught.

“Yeah.”

He smiles, pleased. “That’s a start.”

Seeing him smile at that, knowing you want him, makes you swell with pride. You didn’t feel like you were forcing his hand or something, but now you could convince yourself that he was equally eager. Warmth blossoms within you, starting at your collarbones where he’s begun to leave kisses. He had been careful to avoid hickeys on your neck, worried that Gerard or Mikey would spot them in the morning. But as his lips surpass your clavicles, his teeth begin to graze against you, love bites sprouting like violets upon your skin.

All your squirming, rolling hips, and gentle sighs make his blood run south, and Frank tries not to smile at the rarity of this situation. Sleeping with a girl who's dreamed of this is so much different than one-night-stands and post-date sex. He hasn’t had a girl “crush” on him in ages, which almost makes him feel old. Mostly, he’s charmed, finding it sweet that anything he does elicits a reaction. The way you look down at him, twisting your fingers in his hair, eyes swimming with adoration and disbelief… It makes him feel good. Strong. Wanted.

When he starts sinking further, hands pinning your hips in place, he lets his lips graze one of your nipples. It’s cautious, tempting. Your eyes are laser locked on him and your breath is caught in your chest, and judging by your expression, he’s found what makes you tick. His tongue darts out, slow and flat, making you arch into his touch. The simultaneous gasp and tightening grip on his hair blows your cover, mischief and lust flashing in Frank’s eyes.

Part of him wonders how long it’s been, if you’re reacting like this. He’s not used to younger girls, or even more reserved ones. It’s almost always girls his age and in his scene. Everyone’s horny where he’s from—but you grew up with the two nerdiest guys he knows, so it shouldn’t come as much of a shock that you’re like them. He tries not to think about the age thing too much. It’s different with you. More like a favor, he supposes. Frank doesn’t go after college girls—but he knows you. He cares about you, honest. If this is what you want, then he might as well give in.

You must’ve been able to hear his thoughts, running your hand through his hair and scratching at his scalp. It’s soothing, and weirdly domestic. He continues before you can clam up and get all shy on him again, because telling himself that this is for you eases the guilt of banging his friends’ little sister. Besides, you’re really beautiful, and it would be a crime against humanity to not lose himself in you, even just for the night.

It’s all tongue and sucking, hands shifting to grab at the supple flesh. His teeth scrape against you occasionally, just to make you sink deeper into his pillows and moan breathlessly into the night. Watching him comes few and far between, catching glimpses of his heavy eyelids and languid tongue, noting that you’ve never seen Frank look so relaxed. The sight is dizzying, and your mind is reeling—he looks so damn pretty when he’s using his mouth.

Frank always liked to please, really. It was his guilty pleasure, taking things slow and really savoring a girl. While it was rare that he got the opportunity—his previous hookups wanted fast and hard, finding sensuality too intimate—it always seemed to relax him. He’d never admit it, but being skin to skin, feeling and tasting and hearing… it’s otherworldly to him. It makes him feel so connected. So when he pulls away, switching sides and mouthing at you once more, he can’t help but get worked up over you.

Your pitter-patter breathing, unsteady pants and short, high cries that break the quiet are driving him crazy. He can tell you’re more sensitive on this side, biting gently and watching your free hand fly to your mouth. It’s clasped so tight, yet he can feel your shuddered gasps as they tremble throughout your body.

“Yeah?” he asks softly, pulling away with a proud smile. “You’re really into that, huh?”

With the wind knocked out of you, it’s hard to say anything, settling for a rapid nod. Your fingers sink deeper into his hair, eyes barely fluttering open to stare down at him.

“Wish I could hear you,” he says, tenderly kissing your skin. “I bet you get real loud.”

He feels almost guilty saying that to you, typical sexual prowess watered down with the moral battle of knowing that it’s you. Sweet little Way, topless and arching in his bed. Regardless, it leaves you flustered, apprehensively removing your hand. Everything he says makes the ache more insatiable, pulsing to a point of insanity.

“I don’t wanna get caught,” you mumble, both hands carding through his hair.

Frank nods, chin resting on your sternum. “I know, baby. I can tell you’re vocal.”

Should you be insecure about that? You never really thought much of it, unaware that it was unusual to be so reactive.

“Sorry.”

Perplexed, his brows knit together and lips quirk into a bemused smile. “Don’t be sorry. I think it’s hot.”

You shrink, clenching around nothing as he takes you into his mouth one more time. It’s a short, sucking kiss, but it’s enough to shoot sparks through you. His lips find themselves everywhere, beneath the tender curve of your breast and across your abdomen. Carefully, his thumbs brush against your hips, mapping out a spot and nipping one more time until it’s painted scarlet. Proof he was there, he guesses, as if the few blossoming on your chest weren’t enough.

When he pulls away, lips glossy and eyes heavy, he takes a moment to just look. You’re staring back at him, visually tracing the tattoos that color his body in red, black, and blue. Our Lady of Sorrows wrapping around his arm, roses, knives, guns, and stars. The swallows inked above his hip bones, happy trail in between. You follow it down, peeking at the obvious tent in his pants.

Maybe you looked too long, too entranced by the fact that he’s hard for you, but his hands come into view thereafter. They dip below his waistband, shucked off and abandoned on his bedroom floor. The way you look at him makes him feel more exposed, like you’re seeing something he isn’t.

Frank huffs, amused. “Good?”

Nodding, you glance back up at him, begging him with your eyes to do something. A small frown tugs at the corner of your lips, entertaining him further.

“What?” he coos. “I can’t do anything unless you take your pants off for me.”

The way he says it—“for me”—makes your stomach flip, turning your head away with a shy grin. He laughs again softly, unusually nervous and flattered by you. This is such a change of pace for him.

“Oh yeah,” is all you can come up with, fighting the embarrassed smile that threatens to surface.

It’s heartwarming to Frank, who tries to not to laugh out of strange endearment. You’re so sweet; it’s hard not to smile when he sees you.

“‘S alright,” he assures you, watching as you slide your pajama pants off, already soaking through your underwear.

It hugs your hips, snug to your skin, plush thighs clamped together as if the cotton isn’t covering enough. More full body scans and staring contests, taking in the sight of each other, aching and vulnerable. He watches you when he pries your legs apart, searching for hints of hesitation. Instead, you ease up slightly, moving with him as his eyes flutter shut.

Frank just needs to… compose himself.

“Can I?” he murmurs, swallowing hard as he realizes just how turned on you are.

His fingers trace up the fabric, damp and thin, causing your hips to roll against him. His pointers hook around your waistband, waiting expectantly. You nod at him, not trusting your tongue as you catch it between your teeth. For the life of him, Frank can’t figure out why his heart pounds in his chest as he undresses you. The sound of clothing hitting the floor rings in his ears and the sight of you, needy and glistening, burns into his head. Cold air prickles your skin, and your legs instinctively attempt to draw shut, stopped short by Frank’s warm grasp.

He squeezes your thighs gently, palms caressing the rising goosebumps. “I’ve got you.”

Almost apprehensive, his fingers trail up your thighs, two fingers delicately spreading you open. You’re focused on him, studying the way his hair falls in his eyes, lips slightly parted in awe and arousal. His eyes flit up to you for a moment, and he pulls away to lay on his side. Usually, he didn’t get this intimate, rarely building up to the moment. But you, you’re so lovely to him. So gentle, looking at him the way you do. And maybe he’s acting like this because he’s still wrapping his head around the idea of sleeping with Gerard and Mikey’s younger sister. Maybe it’s because if he does it at all, he wants to do it right. Frank’s not treating you like any other girl—he thinks he at least owes them that much.

He’s leaning closer to you, fingers tenderly splitting your lips. “Open?”

His tone is so soft, proof that he’s melting with passing time as it becomes more real. Your lips part, still flush with color, tongue lolling out and enveloping him in warmth.

Oh, he’s so fucked.

He can almost feel your mouth on his cock, lapping at the tip and taking him until your throat threatens to constrict… those pleading eyes that you’re giving him now, begging for him to cum down your throat. The scene plays in his head like a feature film, leaving him insatiably hot as his fingers replace his lips. He kisses you with so much carnality, hot and demanding, as if it’ll satisfy the aching lust that coils hot around his insides. It’s just what you wanted, is it not? The rough passion that has you teetering on the point of breakage, so ruthless that he fears it might shatter you?

It’s all that you wanted, all that you craved. His desperate kisses, biting and intense, slick fingers working their way between your legs. Frank hikes one of them up, limbs tangling and leaving you splayed open for him. It’s a whirlwind of sensation, the way his lips slot messily with yours, broken by gasps as his fingers dip inside of you. One and then two, coated in arousal, leaving Frank hot in the face as he works you open. You’re cradling his face, so gentle in your hands, his spare hand still holding you apart.

When you start to moan against him, arching and reeling, nearly bucking into his hand in an eager search for more, he manages to pull away. Not too far, just a few inches, enough to look down at you and memorize your expression. Knitted eyebrows and blown pupils, mouth agape, escaping stuttered breaths. It’s the deeper strokes that really get you, his fingers curling far enough to touch you just right. He can tell from the way you clench around them, squirming, moaning, and sinking into his mattress.

“Damn,” he mutters, mildly fascinated. “When was the last time you did this?”

Speaking is a challenge, biting your lip to fight the sounds spilling from them. Your thumb caresses the apples of his cheeks, inhaling shakily and shrugging. “A while ago.”

The explanation satisfies him enough, pulling out his arousal-coated fingers to circle your clit. It’s instantaneous, the sound ripped from your throat, sending Frank’s hand flying from thigh to your mouth.

“Easy,” he soothes, planting kisses on your shoulder. “You’re okay.”

He nearly melts as your hands rest on his, over your mouth and his circling fingers. If only you didn’t have to be so quiet, and he could hear every little noise you’re making. The only thing he can hear is himself, talking you through your rising orgasm.

“You’re doing so good,” Frank tells you, working you closer to the edge. “Can you cum like this?”

The words are a blur of syllables and sounds, spinning around your head until you manage a rapid nod. There’s so much adrenaline in your veins, arousal coating your thighs as he speeds up. Your shaking legs try to close around him, muscles winding tight, but he doesn’t let up.

“Keep them open for me.”

He’s so determined, eyes flicking between your expression and his fingers while yours screw shut. Crashing down hard, the orgasm tears through you in waves of bliss and intensity. It’s so much , and you sob into Frank’s hand as he watches, mesmerized by the scene before him. God, he was gonna break you by the end of this.

Hands retracting, he lets you pant in the silence, licking his fingers clean of you. Everything he does is so foreign to you, so thoughtful and experienced, yet he’s so casual about it. Second-nature and rhythmic, his crooking fingers and fervorous kisses, skilled and subconscious as if they weren’t flipping your world on its side.

“You still wanna..?” Frank proposes with sincerity, voice trailing off like it’s a sin to swear in front of you.

It sure felt like it right now, after you managed to make an orgasm look pure. The delicacy you exude makes him feel more like some trashy, piece of shit stoner, with his greasy hair and inked up skin. Opposites really do attract. In fact, it’s everything you can’t do that draws you in further. Your parents would kill you if you got a tattoo, playing perfect so your brothers could get their lives in order. But Frank? He’s so careless, so free. It feels good to get a taste of that for once.

Once you’ve gathered your thoughts, you nod at him, breathing beginning to stabilize. “‘Course, Frankie.”

The nickname makes him smile. You’re really the only person who calls him that other than his mother. It makes him feel good. Good like you.

“That was a good one, huh?” he asks smugly, eyebrows raised.

Playfully, you roll your eyes at him, lips quirking up in amusement. “Yeah, it really was.”

He lets your hand slide down his chest, running along his tattoos until you’re palming him over his boxers. Your touch is light, cupping him over the fabric and brushing against him in soft strokes. The look in your eyes almost has him shying away; they’re so loving over something as simple as his dick. You’re waiting for him to undress, too nervous to do it yourself, giving him that same pout again.

Frank fails to hide his amusement. “What’s the rush?”

Frown deepening, you tilt your head to the side, tracing his outline with featherlight fingertips. “I wanna feel you inside me again.”

He lets out a breath, head lolling back towards the ceiling. How can you be so casual, eyes never leaving the bulge in his boxers before hitting him with the most melodic words he’s ever heard? He runs a hand through his hair and drops his head back to you, watching your face as he tugs the waistband down. His cock springs out less than a foot from you, and it all feels like a dream. A really filthy one, but not unlike others you’ve had before.

Frank just kneels there, shuffling his boxers off while your hand wraps carefully around him as though he’s made of glass. It’s sweet to him, to be treated with so much care. He lets you have your moment of gentle pumping and memorization, Frank moaning breathily as your palm swipes over the head. No one else has ever held him like this, touched him like he‘s some mythical being. He’s Frank—weed-smoking, college dropout, gas station Frank. And you’re you. Dean’s List and John Denver, Gerard and Mikey’s straight-laced little sister. He just can’t get that last part out of his head.

But you’re bleeding affection, and for a moment he can tell himself that you’re old enough to make your own decisions. Maybe not old enough for him, but your brothers certainly can’t tell you off for this. Just Frank—and that’s only if they find out.

He tucks your hair behind your ear, a cautionary sign that he’s ready to move on. There’s a faint ache where your hand once was, missing your touch as he repositions you on the bed. You feel small as he kneels between your legs, still seeing Frank as so much older and cooler than you. It’s hard to believe that you’re here at all.

You don’t feel out of place though, not as he’s leaning over you to grab a condom from his nightstand and tearing it open with his teeth. Oddly enough, it feels kinda perfect. Both of you need something different for once.

Things don’t feel as wrong when he’s lifting your hips and aligning himself, sinking in and letting the pleasure course through him. It could be because you’ve wanted this so bad, for so long, but it’s the closest you’ve ever felt to anyone. The splitting feeling and sudden fullness muddy your brain, body overcome with the sensation of it all. You can only lay there starry-eyed, fingers wrapped around his biceps while he thrusts into you.

“Always wanted this,” you blurt out, moaning as his strokes grow deeper. “For you to do whatever you want to me.”

He groans, your words injecting straight into his bloodstream. You have no idea what you’re doing to him, speaking mindlessly and it’s driving him crazy.

“How long?” he asks again, still curious from earlier.

This wasn’t spontaneous for you, and he knew that. Yet, he couldn’t help but wonder when it all started. Had you come home from Christmas Break and spotted him on the couch, imagination coloring scenes like this? Or was it this summer, Frank smoking with your brothers in the backyard, gathered around a makeshift fire pit? Somehow, it’s wilder than he thought possible.

Blurring the lines of filter and regret, you tell him the truth. “Fourth of July, last year.”

Jesus, you were just a baby then. The confession makes him feel a bit guilty, questioning just how he got here. That was the first night he had met you, still vaguely remembering the way you nervously introduced yourself. Your little wave, his causal nod. Gerard ruffling your hair and Mikey mentioning that there were only “two more months” until you leave the nest. Frank is sure that you remember it all, though.

The part of him that doesn’t feel like a piece of shit is flattered, truly. He tries to channel that, looking down and seeing a girl that wanted him–and she’s beautiful. Your hands are running down his chest, lips perpetually parted, scratching lightly over his tattoos. Once he’s out of his head, he can fall into the feeling of warmth and depth that wraps around him. It’s all encompassing and he’s hungry for more, slowing for a moment to readjust.

Frank lifts your legs up, your ankles on his shoulders, his hands on your waist. “Let me know if this hurts.”

You just nod, sucking in a breath as he slams into you, hard and deep. This is different from before, a desperate search for release in a way you’d never seen. His pace after that is ruthless, face beautifully contorted as he tries to stay quiet. You’re failing at that, and his hand is over your mouth again, almost sympathetically. Not that you didn’t like it though, even more turned on by the power he holds. Naturally, he can tell, and it propels him faster and harder. How much could you really take?

He knows he’s rougher than you’re used to, that every snap adds a twist of pain, but you’re addicted to it. The overachiever in you is satisfied, thriving, knowing that you’re being perfect for him. That’s all you ever wanted, really. Frank can’t understand it though, mind boggled that you’re so placid when you sob into his hand, rewetting his cock every time he pulls out. And you never tell him to stop, even when he starts to worry that he’s actually fried your brain and fucked you catatonic.

“Keep going?” he asks, almost concerned.

His hand barely lifts from your mouth, just long enough for you to answer. “Please don’t stop.”

God, this felt so wrong, but who was Frank to deny you? You’re so polite, and the whine in your voice is making him go insane. It’s the same, brutal tempo until the tightness forms again, muscles clamping down. Frank is crazy for this, throwing caution to the wind as he dips his thumb past your lips and pulls his hand away. Then it’s thumb to clit, with no warning other than, “Need you to be quiet for me, baby.”

Fat chance, you think, but try nonetheless to suppress the mewls caught in your throat. The world is constricting, skin too hot and muscles too tight, twitching as your legs quiver above you. It’s peak stimulation and bliss, washing over you as you constrict around him, Frank nearly falling apart at the feeling. He doesn’t dare stop though, still working you through it, thumb teasing and voice filling the air.

“Atta girl,” he muses, letting your legs down and leaning in, chest to chest.

Disheveled, you blink up at him bleary-eyed. “Don’t stop yet,” you whine, pouty-lipped. “I want you to cum.”

He breathes a laugh, nestling himself inside you for a moment to let you cool down. “I will, don’t worry.”

Frank just… needs a moment. To take it all in, to let you breathe.

Before he starts, he kisses you again and your hands find their way back into his hair. It’s soothing, after how rough he had been, and Frank needs a second to collect himself anyway. This is too intimate to be less than treacherous, and you know that. You’d let him break your heart a million times over if it meant having him tonight.

“Ready?” he whispers, pulling away.

Your hands fall to his shoulders, still delirious as you gaze up at him. Softly, you smooth your hands over his skin, nodding. “Yeah.”

The sweet, tight-lipped smile that you give him burns into his memory as he starts to move. You smile with your eyes, all excited and squinty, and it’s so angelic to him. You’re angelic, lashes fluttering shut as he thrusts, deep and steady. Those soft, swollen lips that had kissed him so tenderly, loose with hushed moans. Frank’s not used to anything this sensual, so it surprises him when words drip from his mouth like honey.

“You’re so beautiful.”

Maybe it’s because they come from the heart, eyes swimming with conviction. They meet yours, heavy lids lifting, so full of emotion. There’s that smile again, flashing across your face for a brief moment. Girls aren’t usually flustered when he sweet-talks them, but you’re different. He means it with you, and you can tell.

Your legs wrap around his waist when he’s about to cum, and he’s locked down as he nestles himself inside of you for the last time. Every sound he makes has your stomach doing somersaults, running your fingers through his hair when his forehead meets yours. He’s panting, eyes closed and forehead perspiring. The room is so quiet now, filled only with faint kisses and quiet whispers, the air thick with the smell of sex.

Frank’s not sure what to do after he’s pulled out, condom tied up in the trash. He’s not sure if you two should go back downstairs, if he can pretend like this never happened. Too many questions beg to be answered—what this means for you, what it means for him. He’s reckless and noncommittal, and you’re a glimpse of the good life. He’s the doobie codependent, and you’re all the pills he never took.

Frank forces down the fear of dragging you down with him. Instead, he embraces the possibility that you’re what he needs, because for the first time in forever, it didn’t take a joint to feel this good.

#frank iero x reader #frank iero smut #mcr x reader #mcr smut

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earthtooz · 2 years ago

Text

x : SLEEPY FAVOUR :*+ﾟ

in which: you've unwillingly become jing yuan's cuddle buddy for his afternoon naps.

warnings: fluff, 700 wc, bad writing lul, established relationship, dialogue-heavy, gn!reader teases a clingy!jing yuan.

a/n: two fics in two days. wow. who am i. enjoy. (i posted an itoshi rin fic yesterday pls feel free to check it out!)

“you cannot keep doing this, jing yuan.”

sitting up to look at the man, your complaint is hushed quickly by the general, who places a hand on your shoulder and pulls you back down into his arms. he wraps himself around you like a vine and you groan at the suffocating sensation. still, jing yuan does not let up, not giving in to your complaints and grumbles as he draws circles on your arm.

“when you messaged me earlier about paying you a visit, i did not anticipate for it to be because you were simply feeling lonely. and clingy,” you sigh and the white-haired laughs.

“then what else?”

“something of value? something that will contribute to the wellness of the luofu?”

“is this not of value?”

“calling me as your cuddle buddy for your afternoon nap is hardly of value.”

“i object. in fact, i would beg to differ. is the wellbeing of the luofu’s general something to take lightly?”

you huff, turning around in his arms to face him. jing yuan looks at you through half-lidded eyes, fatigue evident in them as he smiles softly. instinctively, your hand reaches to tuck a strand of hair behind of ears and at the graze of your touch, he shuts his eyes, seemingly peaceful and content.

“flaunting your title, are you?” you ask. “what happened to your humility?”

he’s quick to reply. “gone if it will prevent you from leaving.”

a smooth talker. your lover, jing yuan, has always had a way with words, laced with carelessness yet drenched in honey, there’s little of him you can resist. even now, you feel your frustration subsiding with one simple comment.

“and why should the general have a few hours of the day just to slack off?” you ask. “your afternoon naps can wait, luofu’s safety shouldn’t.”

“you say that, yet how many centuries of peace have we lived through?”

“why is everything i’m saying only inflating your ego?” then, just to spite him, you pull your hand away and his eyes open at the lack of contact that grounds him to a realm of peace and comfort. immediately missing your warmth, jing yuan finds your wrist and moves it to rest on his face once more.

you don’t give him the satisfaction, hoping to give him a piece of your mind by once again, retracting your hand out of his hold and his sleepy gaze darkens into something akin to displeasure.

“won’t you indulge in me?” questions the cloud-knight. “i have worked so hard today already, i have been looking forward to taking an afternoon nap.”

“and is that not possible without me?”

he shakes his head with the temperament of a child and a pout to match. what will the court think when they see this side of your feared and revered lover? “ever since you rest with me that day, no, and i will never go back.”

where did his perseverance go?

“you suggest these things as if i am not busy myself. i cannot listen to your every request and demand when i have mountains of work to complete too!”

“i have requested that they be pushed back until later. your schedule has been cleared out for the next few hours.”

“jing yuan!” you exclaim, pushing him away lightly. “you cannot do that!”

“i can, and i have.”

before you can even utter another word, jing yuan has rolled over to lie on top of you, placing half of his weight on you to act as an anchor, effectively preventing you from moving anywhere.

the press of his muscles against you and the tightening of his arms around your torso are like cannonballs against your determination, and considering that he discarded his armour the moment you stepped through the door, it’s only fair if you do the same.

“come on, my love, do you not care for your general?” he asks, borderlining a whine.

“fine.” you surrender, finally wrapping your arms around him as well. “only because i want him to be at top performance.”

“what about your lover? don’t you wish for any benefits for him too?”

“he is of lesser importance,” you tease. “in fact, he should suffer for what he puts me through.”

jing yuan chuckles and his laugh reverberates into your heart. “i would hate to be him, then."

"watch yourself, jing yuan."

"of course, anything for you," murmurs the white-haired before he finds purchase in the bend of your neck. surrounded by you, he wordlessly dozes off without a care in the world.

#jing yuan x reader #jing yuan fluff #hsr x reader #honkai star rail x reader #hsr fluff #honkai star rail fluff #jing yuan x reader fluff #jing yuan x gn reader #hsr x gn reader #honkai star rail x gn reader

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theemporium · 2 years ago

Note

idk if you’ve seen it but there’s a trend on TikTok of playing a voicemail of a creepy guy in front of your boyfriend and I feel like brothers bff!reader would have to literally console quinn after trying that prank on him. boy would be murderous.

thank you for requesting!🫶🏽

It was just meant to be a prank.

A friend had sent you it, laughing at the compilation of reactions the video included to the fake voicemail. It was entertaining seeing how these men reacted differently, or seeing how many of them instantly became protective of the woman in their life who played the fake voicemail.

You thought it looked fun to try out.

It was some random week in October when you decided to fly out and spend some time with Quinn. It was reading week back in college and you had worked pretty well at staying on top of your classes, so you deserved the treat to fly out and spend some time with your boy.

And other than the practices Quinn had to attend, he was practically glued to your side the rest of the week which made it easy to pull off the prank on a Thursday morning when you were sitting on the counter as Quinn made you both coffee.

“Oh god.”

“What’s wrong?” Quinn asked, his back still facing you but the disgusted scoff gave him a clear understanding that you weren’t happy.

“Nothing, just an annoying lab partner,” you murmured, pressing your lips together to try and hold back your giggles. “I think he left me a voicemail.”

Quinn didn’t get much of a chance to say anything before the voicemail started. You watched him closely, the way his actions paused as he began to listen.

“This is the final chance I am giving you. You are being ridiculous, and like most women, not thinking logically. Consider this your last chance to put your emotions aside and think with your brain.”

The coffee was abandoned in seconds as Quinn whirled around, looking at you with an expression mixed between shock and disgust. He placed his hands on the counter, stepping towards you as he continued to listen to the voicemail.

“I am a good guy, one of the best you are going to find. So, I suggest you stop playing this hard-to-get game because nobody is believing you. You won’t find anyone better than me, not at college and not in bed. I have reservations for Friday night at the Italian place off campus. I expect you there and—”

“Absolutely fucking not,” Quinn gritted out between clenched teeth, a disgruntled scoff leaving his lips as he reached for his phone. “Give me a name.”

You blinked, almost surprised by the expression on his face. You didn’t think you had ever seen Quinn so angry before, not even on the ice.

“A name,” Quinn repeated as he looked over towards you, eyes darkened and jaw clenched. “That is…he’s a fucking pervert. And a creep. I don’t want him near you. I don’t want him in the fucking college.”

“Quinn—” you started, but he was lost to his own anger now.

“I’m gonna make sure he’s kicked out and sent somewhere far fucking away from you. Better yet, we can get a restraining order,” he continued as he scrolled through his phone, his eyebrows furrowed together as he searched for something. “I don’t want you going back with him just walking around. Does Luke even know? Does anyone—”

“Quinn,” you said again, a little louder this time as you rounded the counter to gently take ahold of his hands. You slowly pried the phone from his hands, a sheepish expression on your face. “He isn’t real.”

He frowned. “What? Babe, you don’t have to protect him—”

“I’m not protecting anyone, Quinn, I—” You took a deep breath before you continued. “It was a prank I saw on Tiktok. People were posting their partner’s reactions and I thought it would be funny.”

“Oh,” was all Quinn seemed to say.

“I’m sorry—” But you cut yourself off when he launched towards you, wrapping you in a tight hug as he clung onto you. Your arms automatically wrapped around his torso, nuzzling yourself further into his chest.

“You’d tell me if something like that was really happening, right?” Quinn murmured against the top of your head.

“Of course,” you answered honestly.

“Good,” he said with a small sigh, his arms tightening around you. “I’d kill any fucker that makes you uncomfortable.”

You snorted. “It was kinda hot seeing you get all protective.”

“I’m glad you think as much because even though I know it’s fake, my body hasn’t caught on yet so I am not letting you go for the next hour,” Quinn murmured, though you could hear the smile in his voice.

“I have no issue with that,” you replied honestly, biting back your own grin as he placed a kiss to your forehead.

#quinn hughes #nhl #vancouver canucks #quinn hughes x reader #quinn hughes x you #quinn hughes x y/n #quinn hughes fic #quinn hughes one shot #nhl x reader #nhl x you #nhl x y/n #nhl fic #nhl one shot

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nightxcreature · 7 months ago

Text

Roadhouse Rendezvous

Summary: Reader and Dean have a little fun in the Roadhouse Bathroom.

A/N: Number 3? For @jacklesversebingo 2024! I’m having so much fun writing these, I hope you enjoy this one! This is for the prompt, “I’ll give you $50 to forget what you just saw.” Prompt is in bold.

Warnings: Slight Smut, sexual innuendos for sure, cursing because I like that, caught in the act

My hands were lost in the flannel around his torso, pulling him hard against me as his tongue danced between my lips. His right hand was wrapped tightly around my throat causing the silver ring on his finger to cut deliciously into my skin. The irony of Ten Seconds to Love by Mötley Crüe playing on the jukebox out front isn’t lost on me when he suddenly shrugs off the flannel and shoves me against the door.

“Want you so bad, Baby.” He mumbles against my lips, the hand formerly around my throat making its way to the hem of my shirt, “Need you.”

I gasp as he nips my neck, slowly running his tongue over the sting, “Take me.”

A guttural groan leaves his lips and his kisses me deeply. I feel a tap on my arm as he instructs me to lift them above my head and my shirt soon finds itself on the floor. His big hands cup my breast and I can’t stop the moan that leaves me, “Hurry, Dean. I don’t have long before Jo realizes I’m gone.”

“She can run the bar alone for a while.” He mumbles into my neck as he reaches around to unhook my bra, “You’ve taught her well enough.”

I gasp again as he lifts me into his arms, placing my back against the door, “Besides,” he starts, a shit-eating grin on his face, “I want to take my time and enjoy this meal. It’s not everyday that I get to fuck my girl in her mom’s bar.” He winks and drops to his knees, sliding the skirt up my legs as he places them on his shoulders.

My hands find themselves in his hair at the feeling of his breath against my core and I slam my eyes shut, “Please.” I whisper.

I hear the chuckle before I feel him shake his head, “Oh, she’s beggin’ now? I thought you had to get back to work?”

With a roll of eyes I shove his face into me and he groans loudly as I snap, “Shut up and eat me.”

“Yes, ma’am” He says with a smile, reaching up my skirt to pull my panties aside, “Gladly…”

He slowly lowers his lips to my entrance when suddenly the toilet in one of the stalls flushes. I rush to jump off of him while he slams into the counter to grab his gun.

“Where the fuck is my shirt?!” I whisper yell, “I thought you scoped this bathroom out before bringing me in here!”

He shrugs sheepishly and hands me my shirt from where it fell under the counter, “The place is dead, who was gonna be in here?!”

I slip my shirt on just before Ash steps out of the stall, “Hey, I’m all for a little lovin’, but I think you ladies should find a room. Preferably, not a public restroom.”

I roll my eyes again and sigh, “Ash, I’ll pay you $50 to forget what you just saw.”

He gives me a shrug and turns to Dean, “And you?”

“And me, what?”

“Listen, my tall, handsome friend, $50 may cover what I did or did not see, but I’m going to need a little extra to cover the things I heard.”

The blush heating my neck is slowly making its way up my face and I could melt into the floor when he quotes back to us, “‘I want to take my time and enjoy this meal’ Really? It isn’t everyday you get to fuck your girl in her mom’s bar, and it won’t be today either if I happen to go out there and slip up to Ellen.”

Dean digs $100 out of his wallet and places it in Ash’s hand, “Just forget we were ever in here.”

“Oh, this moment will live in my nightmares forever. But I won’t tell anyone what I saw, your secrets are always safe with Dr. Bad-Ass.” He says with a wink, “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a pretty lady waiting on me in my office.”

“Your fucking computer doesn’t count!” I yell as he bows out the door with a laugh, “How fuckin’ embarrassing.”

Dean snorts and I hear Jo yelling for help as the Roadhouse regulars start rolling in, “Get out there,” he says smacking my ass and pushing me toward the door, “I’ll steal ya on your break and we can do it in the parking lot.”

I grin and kiss his lips as I head out the door and behind the bar, “Your usual, Bobby?”

——-————————————————————————

A/N: A fun one for Jacklesverse Bingo! I’m working on Part 2 of Don’t call Me and should hopefully have it out tomorrow! 🫶🏼

Taglist: @lmhf1 @whimsyfinny @k-slla

#jacklesversebingo24 #supernatural #spn fanfic #spnfandom #dean winchester #dean winchester x reader #sam winchester #dean winchester x you #jensen ackles x you #jensen ackles x reader #jensen ackles fanfiction #spn smut #spn

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miniwheat77 · 2 years ago

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hiii!!! i’m wondering if you could do a smut about soap finding reader fucking herself with a toy (a dildo or vibrator) and he punishes her by fucking her with it and edging her multiple times until she cries 🙋‍♀️☹️ (i need him so bad)

Okay, I love this.

!NSFW, Smut, unprotected p in v sex, edging, overstimulation, ruined orgasm, NO MINORS!

*not edited*

It’s not unlike you to keep yourself busy while Soap is at work, but he’s made you agree to something.

Do not touch yourself while he’s at work.

Of course you don’t always listen to that, and keep yourself occupied. You spent the day out with a couple coworkers getting lunch and picking up some other stuff you needed, and when you got home you lost track of time.

You have your head tilted back, vibrator pressed up against your clit. You’re right on the edge when you hear the door open. Your eyes widen and you scramble to hide your toy before he comes in, redressing yourself. Trying to act normal when he walks in. Your room is much hotter than the rest of the house, and that was a dead giveaway to Soap. “Hey. Everything okay?” He asks. “Oh. Yeah. I was just charging my phone.” You lie. He smiles. “Gotcha.” He starts to undress himself, work clothes feeling heavy. Your eyes are glued to him as he pulls them off. His fit body flexing in sinful ways as he changes. He slides on a pair of sweatpants, leaving his torso exposed. He makes his way over to you.

“That’s all you were doing?” He smirks, crossing his arms. “What?” You look at him confused. Trying not to break. He’s acting different. “Because.. the room is kinda hot. You’re not usually in bed yet.. what were you doing?” He laughs. “I wasn’t doing anything Johnny.” You breath. You feel small compared to him. He can see you retracting from him. “Okay. Well.. than you won’t mind if I…” he traces his fingertips up your thigh and you breathe out, desperate for any kind of friction.

He slides his hand down the waistband of your shorts that you had just thrown on, and when he brushes his thumb over your opening, you’re already soaked. He tugs your shorts to the side, taking in a good look of you before laughing. “What? What’s so funny?” You breathe. “You’re lying to me. You were touching yourself.” He laughs. You start to defend yourself but he hushes you. “You can’t hide it lass. You’re soaking wet and your clit is blushing and swollen.” He smiles, standing up. Your cheeks heat up. “Give it to me.” He holds his hand out. You stay quiet. “Y/N, you’re really digging yourself a hole here. Give it to me. Now.” You sigh, leaning over to your nightstand and opening up the drawer, passing him the vibrator you had just been using. “Darling.. you’re in a lot of trouble.”

“Wait- wait. I’m sorry. I-I lost track of time and I was just trying to relax an-“ he pushes his fingers up to his lips, making a shushing gesture, quieting you. “You should have just said so. But since you lied…” he clicks his tongue. He grasps your ankles, forcing you down the bed. A gasp leaves your lips at his forcefulness. “We agreed to this, sweet girl. You’re not going back on it are you?” You sigh. Shaking your head.

“Good. Now put your hands above your head.” You look up at him confused, but do as he says. He grasps both of them, wrapping one of his leather belts around the bars of your bed frame, tugging the home tight around your wrists. “Woah- what are you doing?” You breathe. “I’m going to punish you. Because you’re a bad girl.” He chuckles. “What are you going to do?” You ask. “Stop asking, you’ll find out.”

He grasps your shorts, tugging them down your legs. “Poor pussy. So deprived.” He chuckles. He runs his finger over your clit gently, earning a gasp from you. He presses your vibrator up to your clit, letting it rest there. You squirm, tugging at the belt wrapped around your wrists. He circles your opening with it, letting it sink into your wet hole. A gasp leaves your lips, and you rest your hips back. “Johnny-“ you breathe. Your cheeks are already flushed, and the way you say his name makes it hard for him to do this to you, but he knows he has to make a point.

“I got this toy for you to use when I can’t be here for you.” He chuckles. “But what did we agree on darling?”

“For when you’re gone, but not to use it while you’re at work.” You breathe. “Yeah? Why’s that?” He asks. “B-because you will always take care of me- ah!” You cry. “Right baby. That’s right. So you’ve disobeyed me, and you lied about it.” He chuckles. “And I just can’t have that.” He smirks.

Your chest is moving with your heavy breathing and he knows you’re getting close by the way you’re acting. Your legs twitch every once in a while. “Johnny- I- I’m gonna cum.” You breathe. “Yeah? Are you?”

Your eyes widen when he draws the vibrator away from you. You finally realize what he’s going to do.

“Wait- Johnny. I’m sorry.” You breathe. “No baby. You knew what the consequences were.” He chuckles. He lets you squirm for a minute before returning to the vibrator to your opening. He purposely avoid your clit, rubbing it over your exposed flesh. You’re bucking your hips into him. After a couple more minutes, he pushes it back into you. “Do you remember your safe word?” He asks. You nod your head. “Good.” He pulls it out of you, plunging it back in.

He does this for what feels like forever, until you’ve got tears streaming down your face. You’re begging him to let you cum and he’s rock hard. He’s torturing himself too.

“Please Johnny, I’m sorry. Please let me cum- please please!” You cry.

When he draws it away from you once again, you tilt your head back. A sob leaving your lips. He chuckles at you.

He returns it to your clit, circling it. You’re right in the edge. “Johnny- I-“ your eyes widen when he lets you finish, but once you reach your peak, he pulls it away, ruining your orgasm. You squirm and cry, pussy throbbing from the ruined orgasm.

He returns the vibrator again, watching as you flinch away from him. Now you’re overly sensitive. “Ah! No. Too much-“ you breathe. He forces your thighs open, sliding it into you. “You’ll just have to let it be too much.” He laughs. He thrusts it into your pussy, fucking you with it. “This is what you wanted isn’t it? You were having so much fun, begging me for it. And what? Now you don’t want it?” He teases. You’re a mess, body squirming. He tries to hold your still but your thighs shake from the stimulation. “Ah- I’m gonna cum again!” You whine out.

You let out a frustrated cry when he pulls it away from you once you reach your peak, ruining another orgasm. You’re sobbing when he presses it to your clit.

He smirks, sitting up. He pushes his sweatpants down, exposing his cock. He nestles himself between your legs, resting your vibrator onto your sensitive nub, sinking his cock into your blushing hole. You’re throbbing around him.

Your eyes widen, and you try to close your legs together but can’t. “You can give me one more, right?” He smirks. He’s rough. Fucking you sloppy and hard, keeping the vibrator on your clit. He knows he won’t last long, watching you like this and being deprived makes for a fast orgasm from Johnny. You’re loud, moaning out and crying as he fucks his big cock into you. He can’t help but smile. “Give me one more. Just one more princess.” He bites his lip. Your bottom lip is trembling, thighs shaking against him. He can feel you clamping around him, knowing you’re close again. You clench your eyes closed. Gritting your teeth. You let out a strangled gasp when you cum again, wanting to cry even more as he finally fucks you through it. He removes the vibrator from your clit. “Yeah. Now you’ll be a good girl and let me fill this pussy.” He chuckles.

His last few thrusts are rough, sloppy and rough and the squelch from your overstimulated pussy pushes him over the edge and you’ve got silent tears streaming down your face when he cums, cock buried up to the hilt as he fills you up with his spunk.

He halts completely, breathing hard. You’re squirming under him. He can’t help but smile, letting out a small laugh at the gasp you let out when he slides out of you completely.

He unties your hands, smiling at the red marks on your wrists from the tugging you’d done. “Look at me.” He breathes. Lifting your chin to look at him. “This was me going easy on you. You don’t want to see me mad. You don’t lie to me, and that pussy is mine when I come home. Understand?”

You nod your head quickly, “yes Johnny, all yours.” You breathe.

“That’s my girl.”

#call of duty mw2 #soap mw2 #cod mw2 #ghost mw2 #captain john price #price mw2 #alejandro mw2 #captain price #johnny soap mactavish #mw2 smut #john soap mactavish #soap call of duty #soap x reader #soap cod #soap mctavish #cod mw soap #soap smut

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niceboyeds · 2 years ago

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Eddie is very independent until he meets you. after that he’s a clingy little puppy who needs his partner to be with him every second of the day.

when you need to go to the store he’s right beside you, pushing the cart (and adding in unnecessary items). if you have a doctors appointment he tags along, claiming it’s because the check out nurse gives out lollipops but it’s obvious when you leave him in the waiting room that he does nothing except stare at the door until you return from the back.

the only time you said something about it was when you woke up in the middle of the night to pee, leaving him in bed alone to sleep. it was maybe two minutes that you were gone and as soon as you opened the bathroom door, your sleepy and somewhat sad metalhead boyfriend was right outside.

“hey… why aren’t you in bed? did i wake you?” you questioned, taking his hand and rubbing it to reassure him.

“i could tell you weren’t there. got worried so i— i came to find you.” he rubbed the sleep out of his eye with his free hand and gave a soft smile.

“Eddie, baby, i’m not going anywhere. you know that right?”

“yeah i know.” he sighs and you give him a look, as if saying you aren’t sure if he believes his own words. he continues, “i know, i do. it’s just… what if one day something happens and i lose you? i just wanna spend all the time in the world with you.”

“i promise i won’t be leaving, not ever.” you wrap your arms around his torso and he squeezes you back tightly. “can we go back to bed Eddie? we can be together while sleeping.” you tease, knowing damn well he’s going to be up for a while now.

“or… we can be together in another way…” he smirks at you, bouncing his eyebrows up and down.

“c’mon goofball, let’s go.” you answer him, pulling him into the bedroom and crawling back under the covers. “bed. sleep. now.”

“fine, but i’m the little spoon.” you giggle at his request but agree. snuggling into him, you hold your clingy boyfriend as you both drift back off to sleep in the comfort of each others’ presence.

#i wrote this half asleep but #clingy eddie #he’s my favorite #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson #eddie x reader #stranger things #eddie stranger things #eddie munson blurb

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mythica0 · 23 days ago

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epic the musical tickle fic idea, ler!Calypso lee!odysseus

------------------------------------------------------

She would try and convince him to leave Penelope in the sweetest way possible, and that was to wreck him

Is this good?

Hey there, handsome

🎂:Epic the musical

🧁: Odysseus

🍫: Calypso

Summary: a day or so after Odysseus arrives on Calypso’s island, she gets tired of his cold attitude. She decides to make him open up to her.

A/N: thanks again for the request! I changed it up just a tad; so Calypso isn’t trying to convince Ody to leave Penelope, because let’s be real that would never work. But I thought this idea was cute so I HAD to write it. I was also tempted to say ‘hey there, hot stuff’ as the title but thought it didn’t fit with the musical so I changed it XD. Not super proud of the ending but whatever. Anywhom, with that being said, please enjoyyyyy! :3

Cw for swearing!

Hey there, handsome

An entire day.

That’s how long he had been here. The first person Calypso had seen in a very, very long time.

And he was acting like she didn’t exist.

Every time she tried to approach Odysseus, he shrugged her off, walked away, ignored her entirely.

She was getting annoyed by this cold attitude. This was the love of her life, the only person she had seen in a century. She had to do something. Something that wouldn’t bring harm to him.

So, later that day, she approached him. But this time, she had a plan in mind.

“Hey there, handsome.” She called, gentle but determined.

He didn’t respond. He just turned away.

‘No. Not this time.’ Calypso walked up to him, and pulled him into a hug, one he couldn’t get out of.

“Dear, I’m getting tired of the silent treatment. Talk to me, won’t you?”

Despite not being able to get out of the hold, Odysseus didn’t respond, just averting his gaze and remaining silent. She would not have the satisfaction of his attention. That’s what she wanted.

She just sighed. Guess the hard way it was then. “Fine then, don’t talk. But you’re going to make sound, I swear it.”

Odysseus was confused, and his expression matched that, but he refused to look her in the eye to convey it, or to ask what she meant.

She smiled a bit, and leaned in to whisper in his ear. “You’re going to laugh for me, darling.”

Without giving Odysseus time to register what she meant, she started to scratch and spider along his sides and ribs.

Odysseus tensed at the sensation and his breath hitched. That was something he hadn’t felt in a long time. But he held in the laughter that bubbled up in his chest. He was not going to let her get what she wanted.

“Aww, still silent, are we? Well we can’t have that, now can we?” She teased a bit, adding a bit more pressure to the ticklish touch.

Odysseus gasped a bit, but snapped his mouth shut to trap the laughter. His shoulders shook with the trapped giggles, but he refused to let them out.

“You know dear, I know your life has been.. less than pleasant. Maybe it could feel nice to laugh! I’m sure it’s been a while since you’ve had the release of just a good, long, belly laugh, huh?” She cooed a bit, never relenting the ticklish touches on his torso.

Odysseus’ thoughts kind of agreed. He hasn’t laughed, genuinely laughed, in a long time. Maybe it could be nice- but no. He wasn’t going to cave, wasn’t going to give in. If she wanted his laughter she was going to have to take it from him.

“Hmm, still stubborn, huh? Well that just won’t do.” She decided to try and find a spot that would make him crack, break the dam that was holding back the flood of laughter in his chest.

First, she tried scribbling forward to his stomach, which made his shoulders shake harder- but no dice. Then she tried some light touches on his neck. He scrunched up a bit, but still no laughter.

Until she tried his underarms, and he broke.

They weren’t his worst spot, but they were pretty up there, and the laughter fell free from his chest, the dam finally cracked.

“Pfft- dahahamn ihihit!”

“There we go! I knew your laugh would be pretty.” She smiled, continuing to scratch against the sensitive skin beneath his arms.

“Fuhuhuck- stohohop!” He protested, squirming around in the hold but unable to escape.

“No way! I finally got you to speak, I’m not giving that up so soon!”

Odysseus hated how right she was. It did feel good. It felt really fucking good. Each laugh that was forced from him sent jolts of happiness through him, chasing away some of the depression he’s been dealing with for so long. It forced a smile on his face, forced happy chemicals into his mind. He found that now that he’d started laughing, he didn’t want to stop.

“Ahahahaha fuhuhuck- thahahat tihihickles!”

“Good! That means I should keep doing it then.” Calypso smiled, happy to see him smile, hear him laugh.

“Nohohoho- ahahahaha!” He continued to laugh as she drilled into his underarms, frantic protests leaving him. But despite it all, he wasn’t actually fighting back, trying to push her away or make her stop.

He hated how much he loved this. How fun it was. How much it cheered him up from the years of suffering. Calypso could tell how much he was enjoying himself, smiling brightly.

“See? Told you it would feel nice to laugh.”

“Fuhuhuck ohohoHOFF-!” His laughter grew louder as she increased the pressure of the ticklish touch, determined to make him happy even though he protested.

Odysseus could not. stop. laughing. for the life of him. He couldn’t bring himself to fight back, to try and make her stop. Because it felt amazing. He wanted to hate it, but he just couldn’t. He couldn’t bring himself to hate the amazing, fluttery feeling and rushes of dopamine that flooded his mind with every laugh. His face scrunched up adorably in a wide smile, forcing his eyes shut as pure, joyful laughter bellowed from his chest.

“Your smile is so cute, love! You should do it more often~” Calypso teased, genuine affection lacing her voice. She was completely enchanted by the sight of his smile, the sound of his laugh. She was absolutely ecstatic to be the cause of it. Odysseus’ blush grew at the teasing, finding this whole situation incredibly embarrassing.

“Ihihit ihis Nohohot!” He protested, refusing to agree that he was cute in any capacity. He was ruined. A monster. A fearsome warrior. And he certainly wasn’t cute.

“Yes it is~!” Calypso sang in return, “and I’m more than happy to be the cause of that joy.” She spoke the truth, loving that the love of her life was happy, was having fun. She might not know everything he’s been through, but she knew that he needed this. She knew he needed to have fun, to give up control and just laugh for a while, without a care in the world. She moved from his underarms and started to scratch at his belly again, making sure to teasingly trace circles around his belly button without actually touching it.

Odysseus squirmed and giggled, digging his heels into the ground slightly to try and expel the giddy energy building inside him. He was enjoying himself, yes, but that tantalizing touch around his navel was just cruel.

“Cahahahalyhypsoho! Cuhut ihit ohohout!”

“Cut what out? Cause we both know you don’t want me to stop tickling you.”

Odysseus blushed at the tease, still giggling breathlessly, and after a moments pause Calypso pretended to have a lightbulb moment. (She knew the whole time. She was being teasy on purpose.)

“Oh? You mean you want me to tickle this little giggle button right here? Hmm? Well why didn’t you just say so!” Calypso didn’t give Odysseus time to even register what she said before starting to swirl one finger into the sensitive divot.

Odysseus barked out a far more intense laugh, the volume picking up and belting from his chest as he squirmed fruitlessly.

“Ahahahaha-! Fuhuhuck! Thahahats sohoho bahahahad!”

“Aww, what’s the problem? Does it tickle too much, hmm~?”

“Yehehehes! Ahahaha- ihihi cahaha- ahahahaha!” Loud, boisterous and joyful laughter continued to boom from the soldier, squirming around and smiling so much his face hurt.

“You what? Finish your sentences, dear.” Calypso teased, using one hand to tickle his bellybutton and the other to scratch and dig at the rest of his tummy.

“Ihihi cahahahant-! Ohoho gohohods! Ahahahahaha!”

Odysseus couldn’t stand it, It tickled so bad. And he absolutely loved it. Tears of laughter pricked behind his eyes, a pleasant, fluttering feeling radiating through his whole entire being. Because he was laughing. Genuinely laughing. And he didn’t have to worry or think about all his suffering anymore. All he had to do was laugh, and laugh, and laugh. And he couldn’t be happier.

“I bet this tickles real bad, huh?”

“Yehehehehehehes! Ohoho myhyhy gohohohods! Ehehahahahahaha- ahahahaha-!”

“Okay, okay, I’ll have mercy.” calypso teased a little, finally stopping and instead gently rubbing her hand over his stomach to dispel the residual tingles.

Odysseus breathed heavily, panting between excess giggles. “Ahahaha… ohoho gohohods…”

“Did you have fun, dear?”

Odysseus blushed and didn’t answer, far too embarrassed to agree but far too smart to deny it.

“I’ll take that as a yes. I’m glad.”

Odysseus sighed and then spoke a little sheepishly, uncharacteristically shy. “Uh….thanks.”

“No problem. Can we agree that you won’t give me the silent treatment anymore?”

“Yeah, yeah, sure.”

And he never did give her the silent treatment again.

———THE END———————————————————

#sfw tickle community #parrotwrites #epic the musical #epic the musical tickles #lee!odysseus #ler!calypso

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lo-reads · 6 months ago

Text

All I Need

Hello, good morning, good afternoon, good evening. 🙂‍↔️ I am addicted to this Tik Tok trend. God is amazing. Never skip a video.

I can’t link the video, rude. His page is jittadump if you wanna see 🙂‍↕️

The way I could see all my daddies doing this trend to be fucking teases. The Uso’s, JUSTIN, Roman, CeeDee, Ja’Marr????? I don’t want no puppy, I need a BIG DAWGGGGGGG. #needdat

Kinda based off me and needing to be slutted out. Sigh, I should call him

tw: sweet baby tee then not so sweet baby tee, SMUTTTTYYYYYYY

All I Need by Lloyd has been on replay for about 10 minutes. Except it’s a certain part of the song that keeps repeating and has you frozen. Your man has posted multiple videos of himself and his friends showing off their tattoos. All of them being tatted was not a surprise. Tattoos was a way you bonded as you were also tatted.

What has you frozen is how sluty your man looked in said videos. Tattoos on both arms, entire torso, both legs, low cut Cesars with the deep waves, do y’all hear something purring?! The feeling you felt deep in your belly, you could spend the rest of the night licking every single tattoo on that man’s body and that is what you intended on doing.

You decided to share your reaction to the video of just Tee. No acting needed, that’s how you felt looking at him and others in the trend, but we won’t tell Tee that part. As soon as you post the video, captioning it #needdat, you texted him.

You are such a sluttttttttt! Why would you post that?!

He haha’d your text.

Sweet Baby Tee 💕: you liked it didn’t you?

I loved it, you know that 🙄

Hurry up and come home so I can show you how much I liked it

He sent a omw gif which you laughed at. Even in horny moments, y’all would find a way to make jokes.

**********

While waiting for your man to return home from a day with his friends, you watched fan edits of him then decided to something different. Normally you’d post Day In My Life videos, vlogs, our just sit on lives and have girl talk. People who know you, know your intrusive thoughts are going to win every single time. You decided to film a “Get Ready With Me To Slut My Man Out 🙂‍↕️” video. The wig had to be extra secured because it would be getting pulled. Makeup had to be transfer proof because he will be pushing your face down while giving backshots. And the outfit? Well the outfit had to be easily accessible.

Tracking his location, he was pulling into the neighborhood, giving you 5 minutes give or take for him to pull into the garage. You propped your phone up just in time to catch you jumping into his arms as soon as he walked through the door. He put you down and just looked at you, spinning you around. “I get this for posting some videos showing my tattoos?”

“You know what that does to me….”

“And you know what you do to me” Tee closed the gap between the two of you. “You are so beautiful mamas, you are everything I could ever want” thank God you’re still recording, that will be replayed at least 100 times every time you’re missing him.

Wrapping your arms around his, you replied, “I love my sweet baby Tee so much, but right now, I need rough, dom Tee,” his eyes instantly darkened, licking his lips. Next thing you know, he had you tossed over his shoulder and carried you upstairs to your shared bedroom.

Once in the room, you pushed Tee onto the bed. You kissed and licked on his tattoos before working your way to his lips. This kiss was different. It was full of hunger, full of excitement, full of you need to fuck NEOWWWWWWW.

Tee hovered over you, just looking into your eyes. “Baby you know I love you right?” You nodded. “Good, because I’m about to fuck you like I don’t,” Tee immediately got off you and the bed, dragged you off by your ankle and propped you squatting on the wall.

“I want to see you be a good girl and take the whole thing. No hands allowed,” you nodded, pulling down his shorts and briefs. He completely removed his clothes, leaving his rock hard dick, sticking straight up. Tee grabbed it, putting it close to your mouth. You moved so you could catch it.

Slowly, he started moving his hips to face fuck you. You opened wide, sticking your tongue out so it could glide along the base. As his momentum started getting faster, you didn’t kept your momentum. You’re not a punk, you could take it all. You maintained eye contact while he lost it at the spit bubbles forming and seeing his entire dick down your throat. He snatched his dick away, bending down to sloppy kiss you before putting his dick back in your mouth. He used your mouth as a toy, fucking it while you just sat there and let him. Anything for daddy.

“Use your hands now” you wrapped both hands around to stroke him while sucking on the tip. Every time he deep throat, you’d play with his balls. Tee was like putty in your hands. His moans kept rolling off his lips and it only made you wetter.

“Fuuuuuuck. If you keep going, I’m gonna nut and as much as I wanna want to, I wanna save it for that pretty face,” Tee moved, you releasing him with a pop. He helped you stand up and pushed you towards the bed, slapping your ass. “Lay back and open those legs.”

You were gonna take control but at this point, you were the sub tonight. Tee could ask for your one no, anal, and you’d say yes. Is that all it took? A damn video of his tattoos has you with your legs behind your head getting eaten alive. Tee could quit playing football and only post thirst traps if this is how every night was gonna end.

Tee devoured you, he ate you as if he’d hadn’t eaten today. His tongue wasn’t enough, he had to add 3 thick ass fingers which had you screaming and squirting. As you tried catching your breath, he pulled his fingers out, admiring the glistening from your juices. “Gah damn baby, I love that shit” he sucked his fingers then put them in your mouth while he stuck that delicious dick in you. Your tongue swirled around his fingers, cleaning them off while he slowly pumped into you. You maintained eye contact, his mouth open, memorized by the sight.

At this point, you had lost count at how many times he made you cum. You squirted when he folded you up on the side of the bed. You came when you were bent over, getting fucked in front of the mirror. Now here you were, face pressed down by one hand into the sheets, the other hand was either slapping your ass or holding onto your hips, while he pounded into. He showed no mercy, your whimpers turning him on. You were such a good girl for him. You let this not so gentle giant completely slut you out. He was yours, you were his. Neither of you were going nowhere. Ever.

“Daddy I’m about to cum,” you mumbled, unable to take more.

“Me too baby, give me this last one like a good girl” the angle of his strokes never changed, he slowed it to the right speed to get you there, “that’s it’s beautiful, I got you, you did so good for me, I’m so proud of you baby,” you crumbled under him. Even in the rough moments, he’s always taking care of you and your needs.

“Look at the fucking cream baby FUCKKKKKK, get down here now,” he pulled out of you, you quickly turning so you could be directly under his dick. Sticking your tongue out, he jerked himself a few times before thick ropes of his warm nut landed on your face and in your mouth. You wrapped your lips around his dick, sucking it clean. Watching you do so completed the soul snatching orgasm he just had.

“Dirty fucking bitch, come here,” he didn’t even care about the taste from his seed, you were getting tongued down after that.

************

Your voice was playing off Tee’s phone. You laid on his chest, watching his phone with him. Your grwm voice over was ending with “Byeeeeee, time for me to get slutted out insteadddddddd!” Tee started laughing.

“What do you think?”

“What happened to you slutting me out?”

“I saw how good you looked coming in the house and wanted to cater to you instead,”

“And did, you defffff did. Mmmmph,” he is so sassy

“Oh my God Tamaurice”

#tee higgins #tee Higgins x reader #tee Higgins x black reader #need dat

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yoongleboonglepie · 27 days ago

Text

Pechsträhne Chapter 11

BTS x Reader

Series Masterlist

Chapter playlist-Youtube music

Chapter Playlists-Spotify

Word Count Approx 23k

_________________________________________

A/n: Another long one...Good thing its the weekend amiright?

See you on the other side~~~~ Delyn

_________________________________________

Recap

This moment encapsulated their friendship perfectly. Reserved, blunt, neat, with an attitude like a geode that just needs a little extra prodding to open up versus herself: loud, playful, messy, hard-headed and an open book. A whirlwind of traits that shouldn’t be as compatible as they were, yet here they still were.

There it was again.

That stupid feeling that she hadn’t gotten the chance to ask him how he felt about yet.

Only this time, alcohol and the scrambled mess whatever had happened in the bathroom combined to remove nearly all of her inhibitions. Meaning, she wasn’t all in her right mind enough to stop the petals of adoration from spilling from her mouth and onto the floor.

“I love you.”

The confession hung ripe in the air between them, holding them both at a standstill. Jungkook’s arm was left bent at an awkward angle where it had frozen in mid air, trying to hand her the bundle of cloth in his hands. His eyes were the roundest she had ever seen them, a sliding pulse between russet brown and pitch black that would have been mesmerizing to her if she hadn’t felt so mortified over her own lack of self-control. The only good thing that had come from it was the sobering effect that melted over her senses and sharpened the fuzzy edges enough for her to feel embarrassed at what she had just done.

It didn’t help that his jaw was set, coiled so tightly it was ready to crack under the pressure, and his brow quirked a centimeter downward in a way that had it breezed with an air of irritation.

All at once Y/n regained control of her own body, her mouth moving faster than her brain could register in a slew of jumbled phrases–no destination in mind with any of them–just every intention to defend herself. But defend herself from what exactly she couldn’t know.

“I just appreciate you, I mean! You know, how we used to say! You're my friend. I love that…yeah. In a f-friend way…” Y/n stuttered about, her face aflame with humiliation. This would’ve been the millionth time she had said it to him in their lifetime-why was this so hard for her now?

Jungkook remained rigid, his lips parting no more than a few centimeters in search of words he didn’t have. His searching eyes seemed to find something within her that she couldn’t see, and his statuesque stance became fluid once more and his expression softening ever so slightly. Though Y/n could tell he was marginally uncomfortable with how fidgety he had become, her clothes held close enough to his torso to smooth the tag between two fingers again and again. Like if he worried it enough it would straighten out the creases in both the tag and the energy of the room.

“I’m sorry–I should have asked you first if I could say it again. I don’t want to make you feel uncomfortable.” Y/n averted her gaze from him, unable to bear looking at him any longer. “Just ignore that I even said it–I won’t do it again.” Y/n’s voice raised in pitch and she chuckled nervously at his lack of a verbal answer, grabbing a washcloth to sop up the rivulets of water dripping from her face.

“It’s…fine.” He shifted from foot to foot and folded the wad of clothes into a neat stack onto the counter. “I should get going. I don’t want your mom to yell at you.”

His shoes scuffled on her floor towards her door, leaving her to her own devices in the bathroom. Y/n popped her head around the door frame to watch him go, her stomach churning in self-loathing that sent her spiraling into a frenzy of worry.

“I’ll see you tomorrow?”

Y/n’s feeble call after him had him pausing, turning to give her a curt nod before pulling open her door and stepping out into the hall. She managed to send him off with a short:

“Be safe!”

But still he did not answer. He was gone.

Y/n listened to the trickling faucet, the only reminder that what had just happened was real and that this wasn’t another drunken hallucination or slip into an alternate dimension. She wanted to crawl out of her skin, the idea of making him feel uncomfortable too much for her to physically manage on her own.

She took to pacing about the floors of her room, her arms coming around her middle to hold onto herself in a self soothing motion that was anything but. The clothes Jungkook had picked out for her were left to collect dust on the counter for the time being, unable to bring herself to change yet.

Her relationship with Jungkook was everything she had wanted. He was more talkative than ever before with her, expressive, vulnerable…And she may have just pushed their recovered connection too far too quickly.

What if he thought she was mocking him?

She stopped in her tracks, horror-stricken with the sudden thought. Neither of them had ever, under any circumstances directly discussed his childhood crush on her, but it was common knowledge to anyone who had lived on the property since enough of the other children had a habit of teasing him about it–with even some of the adults in their lives joining in on occasion. Y/n realized that her inability to just ask him how he felt about it when she had been sober might have left the proclamation of affection muddy with intention–especially after a night out with all of their other friends who no doubt still make a joke here and there about it.

Jungkook was the only one that had stayed private. He never voiced his opinion about whether or not it made him uncomfortable, nor had he ever jumped to defend himself from the jokes–and he never made her feel pressured or uncomfortable with her strict choice to keep the relationship platonic. What if she had just ruined that trust?

If the pacing was good for anything, it helped alleviate some of the effects of the alcohol–that or she just had no concept of how long she had walked back and forth for. It was long enough for her phone to light up, a new notification stealing away all of her attention from her self-deprecating thoughts and to the rectangular device on her bathroom counter.

“I appreciate you too. Sleep safe.”

Relief wasn’t a strong enough word for how she felt. There wasn’t a single word that she could conjure to encompass how she felt to see Jungkook’s message–a clear indicator that her fretting had been all for naught.

She slipped the dress off in daze, and donned the clothes he had picked out for her, and snuggled beneath the expanse of her blankets to let her mind replay the eventful night. The back of her eyelids lit up with colorful lights, echoes of music, and images of all of her friends enjoying themselves. Their glimmering white outfits that sparkled reflections onto the ceiling of the–

Wait.

None of her friends had worn white.

Y/n shot up to a seated position, ripping off the covers and all but running to her desk to tear out her journal and began furiously scribbling down her experience in the green room.

Bea.

Her name was Bea, and she had told her someone was going to die.

Y/n slammed the journal closed, and ripped her phone from the charger to beeline right out of her room and into the hall. She had no fears of some deranged version of her father mucking about, for he had thankfully stuck to his daily schedule; and she needed to tell someone now.

She bounced on the balls of her feet, waiting impatiently outside Yoongi’s door after knocking nearly a dozen times. Okay, maybe she wasn’t completely sober yet…she grimaced, realizing just how late it was for her to be knocking at his door with a check to the clock on her phone. Though Yoongi must be an honest man, because true to his word, he opened the door anyways and was in a similar state of being awake as she was. The only difference being that he was not slightly tipsy.

“Are you going to make this a habit?” He remarked, wetting his lips and fixing her with a judgemental stare that was outwitted by the smirk growing on his mouth.

“Maybe who knows.” Y/n felt breathless, pushing past him and into his room.

Yoongi gestured with his hands into his room, his eyes still on the place that she had once stood and his voice saturated with sarcasm. “No, by all means, please come in–thank you for asking. What’s mine is yours.”

Y/n rolled her eyes but couldn’t help the small curve threatening to make itself at home on her mouth. He closed the door and gave her an expectant stare, his hands splayed out into the air in confusion.

“You look…lost. What’s all this?”

“I went into the Paralrealm all on my own. I think.” Y/n didn’t beat around the bush, ready to tell the first person she could now that her memory was returning. “And the ghost I talked to said that someone was going to die.”

Any residual sarcasm was wiped from his features, replaced with a wide eyed, open mouth stare of disbelief. “Come again?”

She recounted the experience in its entirety, from the moment she left the table to when she got back to the table. Yoongi made her go over it three times before he let himself sink onto his chair to think.

“I should’ve known…” He mumbled to himself, sucking in a breath between his teeth and holding it hostage in his diaphragm as if not breathing would ease the tension her story had created.

“Should’ve known what?” Y/n prodded, hoping he remained as willing to share as he has been since her return.

He spun on his chair, his dark eyes peering into her perceptively. “Do you know what a Psychopomp is?”

Y/n shook her head slowly, holding his eye contact.

“Okay.” He cleared his throat and rolled his chair over to the bed so they were sitting across from each other, their knees almost touching and his eyes down turned as he began his explanation. “A Psychopomp is a blanket term for any sort of supernatural being that helps cross the door between the living and the dead–often depicted helping spirits cross over–or as a ‘guide’ through specific moments in people’s lives. Transitions.” He looked up from his bouncing knee to make sure she was still following, and she gestured for him to continue. “They don’t come in one specific form, and exist in all different kinds of cultures. Some examples include Hermes, Paritegi, the archangel Samuel, the ferryman, the Grim Reaper, Hebei Wuchang–You get the gist. All of them look and act differently from one another. Some are ruthless, some are gentle and understanding. Some religions even consider spirits of dead loved ones to act as psychopomps, waiting at the foot of their dying descendants' bed to guide them into the other side.”

Y/n was enthralled with each word he said, his gravelly low voice soothing and easy to listen to. He was giving her so much information, yet it was still easy to absorb.

“So what does that mean for us?” She resituated herself on his bed to tug the hem of her shorts down.

“Jungkook and I…” His voice fell off, as if he struggled to find the right words to continue. “This isn’t the first time we’ve ever ‘worked with each other’.” Yoongi made air quotes with his fingers, but Y/n interrupted him.

“What do you mean by that?” Her brow knit in befuddlement.

“Spiritually.” He clarified.

“Oh.”

Yoongi took a deep breath, and willed himself onward. “When he was younger, his…abilities were really hard on him. The guilt from his mom and the sudden barrage of seeing ghost after ghost left him with no peace and quiet. Just imagine being four years old and all of the sudden you’re surrounded by the dead at all times.” He shook his head, his eyes taking on a distant sheen before centering back on Y/n.

“Well–me being me–I could tell something was up. I started having my suspicions about what it could be bothering him after he got really unsettled by something at the pool and refused to swim in it for weeks. This made me suspicious because I had also felt something off in there around that same time. It wasn’t until we both saw something in the living room that my suspicions were confirmed.”

“What did you guys see?” Y/n broke through again, unable to keep her questions to herself.

“Nothing scary, just Ernst sitting by the fireplace.” He waved a dismissive hand. “But it was enough for me to start the conversation, and he just folded immediately. Said how his dad didn’t want anyone to know, but he was tired of seeing them all of the time. Freaked him out. This led to me offering some advice on how to ‘look away’, or create some distance. After that he kind of followed me around a bit, and always wanted me around to–”

“Like when we got married!” Y/n exclaimed, remembering just how odd she had found it that Yoongi had struck to playing with them out of the blue for a couple months straight.

Yoongi threw his head back with a surprised laugh.. “Yeah–like when we got married.”

Y/n flushed at her own outburst, “I meant that time you hung out with us a lot randomly.”

“Yeah around then.” His smile was warm and no longer teasing. “Once he got more comfortable on his own I think it helped a lot. Even with the rise in activity–and angry activity at that–he seemed to hold his own. That was until my–” he was the one who cut himself off this time, ticking his head to the side in mild discomfort and clicking his tongue. His other leg joined in with the first to bounce in its spot against his will.

“My granddad had his stroke.” Yoongi finished, and gave a hard swallow. “Days before it happened, Jungkook came up to me and he was a complete wreck. Told me that something bad was going to happen to him and he couldn’t stop it.” He leaned back on his chair, bringing his hands up to cross over his stomach and fiddle with the thin metal chain on his wrist. “And he was right. Stroke happened and at that point he was pretty much gone–we all knew it. He was still here but it wasn’t him anymore. And well–you know what happened.”

Y/n’s mouth pulled down into a sympathetic frown, taking one hand out from where she had tucked it beneath her thighs to lay it on his knee. “I’m sorry.” She knew that didn’t help what he was feeling, but there was nothing else she could bring herself to say.

Yoongi trained his eyes on the spot where her hand was, and continued speaking. “Jungkook knew he was going to have the stroke, and knew the morning of my grandad’s last day that he was going to die. He knew about his mom.”

Y/n couldn’t stop her mind from wandering to her own sister, had he known then too?

“He didn’t know about Matilda.” Yoongi seemingly read her thoughts. “He beat himself up over it for weeks after, but we hadn’t ever been able to figure out why he didn’t know.”

Y/n began to ponder what he was telling her. Jungkook had helped people through difficult times and transitions–her sister’s death, G-min’s stroke and inevitable passing, his mother’s cancer; hell, even helping her manage through the transition of being back here herself now.

“So…Jungkook is the Psychopomp…” Y/n breathed her statement through a slackened jaw.

“I used to think he had some kind of…premonition abilities, but even then that description left gaps. This title leaves no gaps for us to fill.”

“Should we…” Y/n’s eyes trailed towards the door. “Should we tell him?” She felt ashamed to even ask such a question–of course he deserved to know. But if he really did struggle with his abilities, would this help or hinder him?

“I think so. I would want to know if I didn’t already.” Yoongi admits, pulling himself to sit straight from his reclined position.

Y/n bit her lip, reevaluating the situation again. The overflow of information almost distracting her from the other more distressing information Bea had divulged.

“Jungkook would be able to tell if one of us was going to die right? Why would she say someone I was with was at risk?” Y/n’s heart fell into her stomach, stuttering through her next question. “What if he can’t tell again? Like Matilda?”

Yoongi exhaled sharply, and gave a resolute shake of his head. “Just because her description fits Jungkook, we can’t just blindly trust everything she says.” Looked at her, trying his best to convey reassurance. “Even though I know it's distressing, don't think too much on it. She could’ve been trying to get under your skin–we have no idea what her motives were with you. Sometimes they can be helpful, other times just say things that they know will get a rise out of you. You were vulnerable and she knew that.”

“Yeah…” The words still unsettled her to her core. Bea didn’t feel like a threat, but Yoongi was right–they had no idea what her intentions were with Y/n being in the Paralrealm by herself. Something Y/n still couldn’t wrap her head around.

“Yoongi?” She piped up from her inner dialogue, pulling him from his own with a hum of acknowledgement. “You know how I’ve needed help going in and out of the other side?”

“The what?” His eyebrow twitched with poorly concealed amusement. “You are always saying we need cool names for things and here you are disregarding my creative genius.”

Y/n snorted, his sarcastic tendencies managing to bring her spirits up a bit. “Sorry–The Paralrealm.” She corrected, over enunciating each sound.

That seemed to satisfy him enough for him to give an answer with just as much sass. “Yes, I know what we’ve been up to for weeks.”

Y/n proceeded, ignoring his pertinence. “Well, I was wondering if maybe that works both ways. Like could they pull me in if they wanted to? You said they’d only let me in the first time I tried.”

“I honestly don’t know the answer to that.” Yoongi huffed a reluctant sigh. “The answer could honestly be that with your practice, you’re getting more comfortable and might be able to do things on your own–us and future tea be damned.”

Y/n pushed her lips out at his dissatisfactory answer, her eyes glinting at his, preparing to make a small joke of her own. “I thought you were supposed to have all the answers already?”

Yoongi let his tongue rest between his bottom lip and his teeth, a wolfish smile budding on his face as he leant closer to her to repeat the same answer he had given her weeks prior.

“I guess you’re going to have to help me find them.”

_________________________________________

Sunday evening rolled around, and Y/n took up her previous past time from the night before of pacing back and forth in her room to the point she was worried that her treads would mark the floor in a straight line from overuse. Her and Yoongi had decided on letting Y/n tell Jungkook herself to keep the pressure low, not wanting him to feel overwhelmed by multiple watchful eyes if he needed to process what she was going to say. As much as she wanted to just jump right into getting to walk around in the Paralrealm, they had come to the conclusion that their plans were up in the air depending on how Jungkook handled the information, and she felt more than okay with that.

She had texted Jungkook to ask to meet in her room for a bit first under the guise of needing to ask for a hand for something in her room–which wasn’t a complete lie. Y/n wanted to hang up a rope along the ceiling over her bed with the purpose to hang dried plants and flowers she collected; the tools already waiting on her desk to do so.

Her heart hammered in her throat and made it feel difficult to swallow, and she couldn’t stop picking at the skin around her nails in nerves. Each second that ticked by until their designated meeting time felt like watching a stale bottle of honey that had been placed upside down; its crystalized sugar resisting the gravitational pull downwards, taking it’s sweet time to amble out towards the opening in the name of being a nuisance to whoever had pulled it out in hopes of making anything of it.

In this case the reward wasn’t a warm cup of Namjoon’s Chamomile that would relax her muscles and ease her mind–it wasn’t a reward at all. It was potentially ruining her friend's day.

The time shined back up at her– 4pm. Their designated meeting time that gave them plenty of time to sleep in and recover from such a late night to be presentable human beings. Though at the moment it felt like it was much too late and much too early at the same time.

Her phone buzzed, and she didn’t have to look to know that it was Jungkook letting her know he was beginning his trek through the attic and would be there shortly.

And he was there shortly (much too quickly, similar to how the entire day hour she had fretted over his arrival had passed by), with two swift knocks at her door.

Jungkook’s eyes were as ruthless, as unavoidable as ever, and in traditional Jungkook fashion he was sure to point out her obvious discomfort.

“You’re nervous. What’s wrong?” Were the first words that left his mouth when she had let him in, not even letting her fully shut the door for privacy before interrogating her.

She felt no need to beat around the bush when he would be able to see right through her, and decided that it would be best to just tell him as soon as possible rather than delay the inevitable.

“I remembered what happened last night–in the green room.” She admitted, her voice frail and shaky.

His expression hardened, and he waited silently to receive her explanation with little push back. She had little issue relaying the story up until the part about him–the part about him being a Psychopomp.

The word fell in a clunky, and unruly manner from her mouth and left her significantly lighter but all the more heavier in the wait for his reaction. But his reaction never came–not in the way she expected it to at least.

“I know.”

Y/n’s brain short circuited, chugging to catch up with his words from the place they had rehearsed running to–the words of comfort held at the ready dropped to dissolve while she scrambled for something else. He appeared to sense her malfunction and explained himself further.

“I googled it a couple of years ago after your mom put my rules in place. I just wanted to know if there were others like me.” He brought a hand up to twist at his lip ring, his doe like eyes peering down at her form where he stood from the other side of the room.

“Why didn’t you say anything to us?” Y/n asked incredulously, her body going through all sorts of sensations with the anticlimactic release of her stress.

“I didn’t think the title meant anything. I told you guys what I experienced.” He shrugged as if she had asked him about the weather, not about his psychic abilities being that of mythological notoriety.

Y/n let herself sit down on the edge of her bed, taking her weight off of her knees that had become shaky with the release of adrenaline. “Jesus.”

“Does it…” He hesitated, dropping his hand to his side to toe at the ground with his foot and avoiding her eyes. “...does it scare you to call it that?”

“No!” Y/n blurted out and jumped to feet so quickly she nearly face planted into her closet, and he jerked a step forward to grab for her with a surprised noise in the back of his throat but she was able to catch herself enough to walk over to him. “Nothing about you would ever scare me.” She kept her tone reassuring, inching a hand out to grab the one closest to hers.

In her mind it felt like she shouldn't be doing that after what she had said last night. Like reaching for his hand was inappropriate–scandalous even. Y/n pushed away the ridiculous thought and held his hand firmly in her own.

“Promise.” She gave it a gentle squeeze, and gazed up at him with a gentle smile.

Jungkook’s eyes stayed locked on their intertwined hands, and a miniscule smile wormed its way on his lips. “Okay.”

“Have you ever thought about exploring that any further?” She prodded softly, turning their hands over in the air to inspect them. “Maybe you can do more with what you were born with.”

Jungkook sighed, and used the other hand to scratch at his nose. “Sometimes. But I’m focusing on touch right now.”

“How is that coming along?” She swung his hand back and forth in front of them.

“Too slowly.” He grunted, a small pout protruding from his lips.

“You can’t always be good at everything right away, Jungkook.” Y/n laughed, releasing his hand to gesture to the plastic container of hooks and coiled rope on her desk. “Well I wasn’t lying when I said I needed a hand with something. You mind?”

It was easy to fall right back into normalcy with him, a record playing softly and the window cracked to let in a warm breeze drenched in the smell of wet grass and earthy air. May was only a couple days away, and thus Pennsylvania storm season had really begun, a simmering rumble of distant thunder dispersing overhead proving that point.

He had helped her hang the hooks and tie up the string with ease, his height making it a piece of cake to reach above the windows for it. He even helped her tie up the few things she already had–the dried bouquet ward from Yoongi, the purple flowers from Taehyung, a small bouquet of miscellaneous flowers she had snipped from the grounds and arranged for her desk a week prior, and the single peony she had been gifted by the mysterious woman.

Not letting her do much of any of the actual working part, Y/n had sent a few texts to update Yoongi about what had happened. His only response being a “That kid 🙄”, which made her laugh loud enough for Jungkook to get distracted with his task.

The rest of the afternoon blew by smoothly without any bumps. She was sure to also check in on all of her friends to see how they were holding up from their late night drinking, and thank them all for coming along and being a part of her celebration. After a hoard of positive replies and a post early Sunday show selfie from Taehyung with the caption “Already up and finished with today’s show,” she insisted that they make sure to go out all together more often–especially since Yoongi hadn’t been able to join them.

The storm that had been gentle earlier that afternoon had developed into something more aggressive. It’s claps of thunder booming from right over the roof of the hotel, and the lightning bolts visibly seen striking through the trees and prowling through the clouds in blinding streaks of white light.

Dinner was a fend for yourself kind of situation, with the cooking staff being sent home early to avoid traveling through the oncoming storm. The air was electric inside and outside, each molecule felt charged as it buzzed against the skin and through the air.

Y/n found herself making the great American delicacy: boxed mac and cheese, pouring over the stove with Namjoon seated on a stool at the kitchen island in the process of making a new batch of one of his sweet herbal teas, a serene ambiance taking over the room with it’s peaceful silence.

“What’cha makin’?” Hoseok skipped into the kitchen, his leather jacket and black jeans absolutely drenched from the pouring rain he had come through.

“Jesus–Shouldn’t you change? You’re going to get sick!” Y/n scolded him from over her shoulder from where she stood hovering over the pot of boiling water.

He cackled with animated laughter, and she heard his shoes squeak against the tiled floor. Without warning, she was enveloped from behind by something clammy and wet, Hoseok’s arms wrapping around her shoulders to hold her against his chest.

“No! I’m going to have to change!” She lamented with a groan, trying her best to shake him off with no avail.

“It’s just a little water.” He perched his head on her shoulder to survey her “gourmet” meal. “Can I have some?”

“Only if you get OFF!.” She highlighted her point with a playful shove and he complied with another melodic burst of laughter. “My food is all you wanted, isn’t it?”

Hoseok gave her an innocent look, and an exaggerated shrug of his shoulders. “Maybe.”

“Ugh. Grab another box from the pantry then, will you? Then go change, sicko.” Y/n moved to the sink to add more water to her pot, and taking in the small saucepan she had grabbed, she dumped it entirely into the sink in determining she would need a bigger pot all together. She called back to Hoseok where he had disappeared into the pantry, “Can you grab two boxes? I’ll make extra incase we gain any other stragglers.”

“You got it.” He chirped, muted by the pummel of rain on the roof and the wall of the pantry.

After dropping the boxes on the counter, he excused himself to his room to change upon Y/n’s request and left her and Namjoon to their own quiet devices once more. The sound of the rain embracing the two of them again in its tranquil arms (though the occasional roll of thunder was the opposite of tranquil).

Y/n tore open the boxes and dumped them into the water one after the other, picking up the spoon to give the small shapes a stir. She heard Namjoon groan out from over her shoulder, and she chuckled at his dismay.

“Did you add too much cinnamon again? Or Lemon juice?” She joked, the memories of an overly zested and spiced tea from last week coming to the forefront of her mind, not passing the opportunity to tease him for it further.

Namjoon chose not to respond to her chaffing, but she heard him stirring the jug a few times, the spoon scraping from one side to the other against the resistance of the liquid.

“Alright, what happened?” Y/n turned around, at the ready to comfort him for whatever mistake he had made. A scream caught in her throat, her hands clasping over her mouth to stop it from coming but she wasn’t fast enough. The short burst enough to signal what was before her that she was there.

Namjoon was gone.

In his place was the monstrous, hulking, figure from one of her previous dreams of the basement, bent and a contorted angle to take in the contents of the jug that kept its face from her view. Its pale, long fingered hand was stained with a fresh coating of red tea that dripped from the pointed bony tips of the digits and down into the jug. Each drop breaking against the still surface tension of the drink with tinkling ripples, and left wisps of vapor trailing behind where they had fallen. Their back, a fleshy-pink and gray in hue, was expansive and crooked. It’s torso much too small to hold up its disproportionate size on its own, causing its spine to bow to its weight. Their body looked as though someone had stretched it out, too thin and spindly in most parts, with sections like his shoulders and his legs that were much meatier and heavier than the rest–like he had been stung by hundreds of bees in only those spots and left them to welt.

His back was littered with scars that left indented patterns in the flesh, one looking considerably more fresh than the rest and oozing black ectoplasm down the center of his spine and down the stool. It didn’t stop dripping until it splashed onto the floor beneath the counter in an expanding puddle.

Y/n trembled, her hand struggling to grasp for the flashlight in her pocket with how much her hands were shaking. Finally, she felt its weight in her pocket and eased it from its confines, her thumb perching on the switch.

“Don’t”. The creature rasped, sending globs of black spit from its mouth and onto the counter.

Y/n froze, her thumb stuck mid motion.

“I don’t want to hurt you.” Its cadence was slow. Unbearably slow.

Y/n could only watch as ‘he’ turned his head to face her, and she really wished for her own sake that he hadn’t.

His face was wide and swollen like his shoulders, The eyes were set further apart than they should be, in some sort of middle ground between melted black pits and human eyes–like someone had taken a torch to both of them to burn them from his skull and never quite finished the job. He had no nose, just a hole where it should be; and almost no lips, just cracked gray strips around a wide mouth that dripped black goop from the corners and down his chest. A puncture wound roughly the length of her pointer finger and half an inch wide at the same height as the one on his back leaked a stream of black down its entire bare chest and abdomen, an awful wet sound emitting from the patter they made when it hit the floor.

Y/n couldn’t breathe. She didn’t want to look at this creature any longer, but she couldn’t bring herself to look away–the memory of how fast it had been able to run up the stairs leaving impending fear spreading through her limbs. There would be no out running this beast if it came down to it.

It turned its head away from her agonizingly slowly, and back to the jug of tea. He took both long arms up to either side of it and dunk both hands into its contents, the jug too small to hold both massive hands, which caused the tea level to rise and overflow onto the counter and mix with the black fluid on the floor. Steam seeped up from where it made contact and with his “skin”, and he sighed in a mix of pain and relief.

“I don’t want to hurt you.” He repeated, his voice still the same hoarse, whistling wheeze it once was. “But you make it so difficult not to.”

Both of his hands now scooped the ruby colored liquid into his palms, and plastered it on his chest, mixing it with the black tar-like substance that was already there. This too, sizzled, yet with more intensity than his hands. And he hissed–a horrible hiss that made Y/n want to vomit, but her stomach was empty.

“That feels…” the creature paused, taking a dragging deep breath through the hole in the center of his face, and releasing it with a bare of its rotten, sharpened teeth. “Terrible.” He flicked his gooey eyes to her again and their surfaces jiggled in his sockets, and his mouth stretched wider over his teeth. “I love it.”

The sizzling brought the stench of rotten flesh up into the air, wafting through her senses, and burning her nostrils and eyes. She clamped a hand over her mouth to stop the offense from getting worse–but it had already penetrated her senses and left her defenseless.

Y/n gagged, the fact of her stomach being empty not stopping her insides from spasming in on themselves to remove anything it could from her body in heaves onto the floor in front of her. Nothing but water and bile.

“I would say that I’m sorry–but you deserve this.” He slid from the stool, making his move to rise from his seat.

Y/n struggled to stagger backwards and away from him. Her hand clicking the flashlight on, and reflecting it off of his glistening skin, enlightening the way his “blood” pumped and writhed within its veins beneath the translucent surface.

The creature hissed again, its teeth chattered much like a cats would when it had a toothache, slumping to the floor near her feet with a thud loud enough to resemble the thunder above.

Y/n tried to step further backwards, but its long fingered hand dug into her calf to stop her from getting any further. She fell backwards, her head smacking off the tile and her hand grasping for a hold catching onto something that made the skin sting, tearing a cry of agony from her mouth. Her vision pulsed with black at the edges, and her stomach lurched again, the pain from her head enough to make her feel faint.

His claw-like fingers yanked her towards him, and the weight of his chest settled on her lower legs. She scrambled out for the flashlight, struggling to get her vision to focus enough in any capacity to grab for it. Her finger tips barely scraped the edge of the handle–but she managed to spin it towards herself after a few hits. It was still on, and all she had to do was turn it down her body to where he laid, and it looked as though he was struggling just as much as she was to move.

He yowled out at the contact, recoiling back just barely, but not nearly enough for her to free herself. Their mouth pulled open again, impossibly wide and gaping to her, its panting breath speckling her skin with its black saliva.

“Keep going–I want to keep feeling it.” His words slithered from his tongue. “It will only make me stronger. Better.”

The light wasn’t enough. It was burning sores and lesions onto his skin but he still wouldn’t release his iron grip from her legs. Rather than cower away from the burn, he basked in the scathing light as if it was sunshine on a warm day, and let a torn and shredded tongue emerge from his cavernous mouth like a snake soaking up the light to let the black goop fall away to reveal the purple appendage.

If the light wasn’t enough, then she would make it enough she decided. And in despite her disoriented haze, she focused all of her energy into swinging the light down, striking the side of his abhorrent face with as much force as she could muster.

Black blood splattered onto the cabinets and onto her legs with the force of her hit, but his head sprung back in her direction–boneless and unphased–as if it hadn’t felt it. It heaved itself onto its forearms and haunches, keeping itself hovering near her feet. He tutted down at her in blatant disapproval, narrowing what was left of his eyes on the butt of her flashlight that was dribbled with his blood.

“That wasn’t very kind of you.”

Y/n could almost believe he was actually upset–his enormous mouth downturned like an upside down letter ‘D’, drooping its jaw down to his chest just above his open wound.

“I’m only trying to do what is right.” He advanced, his voice a bewailing moan, starting towards her with a clumsy and disjointed crawl. “I must make things right. If I do they will call me the devil no longer.”

Y/n tried to squirm further away, however he held her in place with his claws digging in her calf so sharply that it must’ve sliced the skin open, for she felt a surge of warmth where his cold hand pressed its weight into it.

His other hand came up, its fingers unfurling over her face and his foul smelling hand pressing down over her nose and mouth and cutting off all of her access to air. She jerked against the force, convulsing beneath the smothering talons that smeared soiled tea onto her face to try and find a way out of his clutches..

The hand on her leg, rose above his head, the action taking much longer than it would have if his limb was of a normal length. His fingers, stained with both the tea and now her own blood, splayed out to tense into a menacing curl that he intended to use strike downwards to maul at her skin.

“You made me do this. Sorrowful I am for such bloodshed; but it must be done.” Mournful. Truly crestfallen and desolate he sounded at the prospect of his actions. Yet his hand still fell, cruel and unkind. Merciless; with all intents and purposes to rip her heart from her chest as a consolation prize for his insensate act of inhumane barbarity.

_________________________________________

“Keep her on her side. Call 911.”

Y/n’s eyes flew open, her eyes frantically searching for the creature who she had been certain was to be her demise. There was still a weight settled against her lower legs and she tried to kick them out from beneath it, but a smaller hand held them still.

She couldn’t see much of anything but the glistening black and white tile. Her shoulder and head ached, and her hand pulsed with white hot pain. There were presences nearby, she could feel them stirring near her sides but could not lift her head to see–she was at their mercy; stuck in the fetal position on her side.

“She’s waking up!” Taehyung exclaimed, and a hand retracted from the pulse point of her neck.

“Thank fuck.” Namjoon breathed between clenched teeth. That was certainly Namjoon, she concluded.

She tried to move her hand, wiggling her fingers seemed to be a good first step. The movement sent more pain shooting up her arm and she choked out a whine, stirring up more movement from her entourage.

“Don’t move yet Y/n–everything is going to be okay.” Namjoon soothed, his warm palm coming to rest on the shoulder she wasn’t awkwardly laying on and rubbing against the skin from where her sleeve had ridden up.

Taehyung spoke next, his voice coming out in an urgent rush. “We need to call an ambulance.”

“No…” Y/n managed to grunt from her lips, trying to use the arm Namjoon had touched to push herself upwards but found it too weak.

“Y/n I mean it. Relax please,” Namjoon commanded, “A hospital might do you some good this time.”

“This time?” Taehyung’s inquiry was biting. “Has this happened before?”

Namjoon ignored him, but someone else spoke instead.

“Don’t start an argument now, pretty boy.” Hoseok snapped, “I vote for the hospital. I can drive if she doesn’t want the expensive metal trap.”

“No hospital.” A whispered plea from her lips that no one seemed to hear.

Namjoon shifted next to her to face where Hoseok crouched on her other side. “Okay. Can you bring the car out front?”

“We can have Jungkook help carry her out.” Taehyung agreed, moving on from the scolding from Hoseok.

“Please listen to me.” She tried again, her begs drowned out by another crack of thunder.

“I can bring one out front.” Hoseok rose to his feet. “Try to keep the party small, I don’t want to have to drive a fucking van through this shit.”

“I’ll call Kook.” Namjoon fumbled for his phone, pulling up his contacts.

“I said no hospital!” Y/n sobbed out, finally able to bring her volume above a wheezing whisper.

The three men stopped in their tracks, frozen from her outburst.

“Y/n–” Namjoon started.

“No.” She stood her ground, her breathing shuddering from her lungs. “I said no.”

“You had a seizure Y/n. You hit your head–you need to see someone.” Taehyung spoke down at her from his spot near her head.

“I’ll call a doctor, but no hospital.” She turned her welling eyes down to Namjoon, his jaw twitching under her beseeching gaze. “Please listen to me.”

“You might’ve hurt your shoulder too. And you burnt your hand on the stove.” Authoritative as ever, Namjoon pushed back with his own hard stare.

“Please.” Y/n flinched, another clap of thunder roaring overhead doing nothing to stop the after shocks trembling through her body and making her teeth clank against each other in her mouth.

Namjoon’s chest was rising and falling dramatically, he was obviously torn between respecting her wishes and doing what he knew was best. He chewed at the inside of his cheek, entrapped within intense thought.

“If that’s what she wants.” He relented.

“Are you serious?” Taehyung scoffed.

Hoseok cut back into view from around the island. “Joon, I will take her–I’m serious.”

“If she doesn’t want to go we can’t make her.” Namjoon’s tone was final. “Now someone grab one of the first aid kits, and someone else get cleaner and paper towels.”

Y/n breathed out a sigh of relief, and let her head fall back onto the tile that had been warmed with her own body heat, and Taehyung's nearby knees. Hoseok and Taehyung moved at glacial speed, still not fully on board with her decision.

“Quickly,” Namjoon barked, “unless you want her to receive no treatment at all.”

That spurred them into action, Hoseok scrambling out of the kitchen to fetch the first aid kit and Taehyung frantically searching the kitchen for disinfectant spray.

“Cleaner is in the hall closet with the cleaning cart.” Namjoon chided, and Taehyung took heed, racing from the room to grab it.

It was just her and Namjoon now, and the look he had fixed on her was nothing short of formidable.

“Give me one good reason why we shouldn’t be taking you to the ER right now.”

“It wasn’t a seizure–it was a ghost.” She croaked. “Can you help me up?”

Namjoon pressed his lips into a firm line and shook his head in disbelief, and came up closer to her. “Tell me if anything hurts.”

He slipped both hands under her torso and heaved her upwards into a seated position against the counter behind her, curses falling from her mouth when the room spun on its axis and he had to use a hand to hold her into a seated position until it stopped. He waited until she nodded to continue.

“Just because it was a ghost doesn’t negate the reality that is you having hit your head.”

Hurried footsteps rushed through the dining room, and a new voice made their appearance.

“What happened? Hoseok said you guys needed my first aid kit.” Jimin was out of breath, his eyes wildly taking in the scene before him: her trembling form, discolored from her encounter and eyes unfocused, leant up against the counter. Spit up splattered on the floor in front of her and down the front of her shirt, and a wearied Namjoon holding her in place to keep her from falling forward.

“I fell.” Y/n shied away from his eyes, already feeling like she had been vulnerable in front of enough people already today.

“Don’t let her lie,” Hoseok shoved through the door past where Jimin stood frozen, grabbing the large duffle bag from his hands and walking it over to Namjoon, “We think she had a seizure, and she whacked her head pretty good.”

Namjoon gratefully accepted the bag from Hoseok’’s outreaching hands, “Hold her up please.” He ordered, and Jimin raced over to take Hoseok’s place before he could even move to a crouch.

Jimin dropped to his knees next to her, one hand pressing her shoulder back against the counter and the other resituating her sleeves back to where they should be. Hoseok lowered himself to sit next to her on her other side, pulling his knees up to rest his arms on–unlike usual though, he didn’t press his side against her–giving her plenty of space to breathe.

Namjoon made himself busy, bringing out wipes to dab at a tender spot on the side of her forehead, the surface coming back blotted with red; she must have bled from where she hit the floor, and now she felt more insecure than ever. No wonder they all kept looking at her the way they were–she probably looked like a shitshow.

Taehyung came back, nodding in greeting to Jimin and dropping to his knees to spray at the mess she had made during her fall.

“Sorry.” Y/n murmured to him, her lips curving downwards in humiliation.

“Enough of that.” Jimin shushed her, his sweet honey eyes catching her attention. “Are you going to go anywhere to get examined?”

“She said no.” Taehyung rebuked, clearly not happy with her decision but still focused on wrapping a few more paper towels around his hand and spraying another round of cleaner.

“Y/-”

“Don’t even bother.” Hoseok cut Jimin off, serving him a look from around her shoulder. “We already tried that.”

Jimin exhaled sharply through his nose and let his eyes scan her face with a look so pure it pulled fresh tears back into her waterline, for it was nothing like the hideous face of the beast that had desecrated all feelings of safety she had felt.

“Hey–it’s alright.” Jimin’s hand on her shoulder grazed it’s thumb from side to side, lulling her into a sense of ease for the time being–not perfect–but better than before. She looked back at Namjoon, hoping to make it easier for him to dab at the wound on her forehead.

The floor was crowded. Much too crowded for what would normally be considered comfortable, though she can’t overly complain as they weren’t exactly using it as intended. Taehyung, having finished cleaning the floor of any droplets of blood and vomit, sat against the island to face her, his arms hugging his knees to make sure Namjoon’s wide shoulders had enough space to maneuver where he needed to.

Hoseok did his best to crack hushed jokes into her ear when Namjoon moved to dressing the burns on her hand, the raised skin sensitive and searing underneath his touch made easier to bear with his wit, Jimin layering his own over top of Hoseok's, both doing a good job to keep her giggling through the pain and the tears she tried so hard to keep at bay. Taehyung remained reserved, chewing at his lip and his eyes flickering between her and Namjoon with an unreadable expression.

“We can check your arm, help stand you up to see how you move around. But I’m not a doctor and I won’t be able to run any tests. Unless there’s anything else you can think of, Jimin.” Namjoon zipped up Jimin’s duffel bag, and slid it across the floor and out of the way, using the counter to hoist himself up into a standing position. His arms stretched out to help her up.

None of them let her make a move by herself, four sets of hands finding somewhere to hold on to while they brought her into a standing position, leaning her against the counter. A rush of nausea surged through her system again once she was upright, but it wasn’t nearly as severe as the first one, thus she was able to settle it down with some deep breathing.

Jimin led Y/n through a series of movements with her arm, checking with each one for if she was experiencing any range of pain only to determine that it seemed to just be bruised–nothing broken or fractured thank god.

He then gave her a list of questions, ticking off his rehearsed list to try and assess her risk of a concussion (the injury treatment and prevention being a core part of more experienced tour guide training coming in handy). He wrinkled his nose playfully at a few of her answers, and by the time he finished his list regretfully told her she likely had a low grade concussion. He used his best flowery customer service voice and advised her to see a healthcare professional, doing his best to elicit watery laughs from her to ease the news he knew she would whole heartedly detest.

She threw her arm around Namjoon, gripping onto his shirt tightly as he led their gaggle down the hall towards the steps, taking them each one at a time even though she protested that she would be able to handle it on her own. Hoseok kept glancing anxiously over his shoulder towards the foyer as they made their way across the landing, but when she would meet his eyes he would break out into a comforting grin, and gesture for her to keep her eyes forward. He was keeping his distance from her–and she hoped it was just the way he was processing the stress of it all.

Half way down the hall she made a terrible, gut wrenching realization that had her stopping in her tracks, a gasp shooting from her mouth before she could stop it.

“What?” Namjoon jolted, his eyes looking in all directions for any signs of danger.

Jimin jumped, the hand that he held on the small of her back grabbing onto the fabric of her shirt. “Are you hurt? Do we need to pause?”

“No…” Y/n groaned out, devastated with her discovery–a kick in the knee while she was already down.

“Then what is it?”

“I never got to finish making the mac and cheese…” She sniffled out with a pout, and Namjoon had to purse his lips to keep from laughing at the absurdity of it.

“I can make it for you.” Hoseok skipped back down the steps, jumping for the chance to get away from the landing and foyer area, speeding away and disappearing into the dining room.

Y/n furrowed her brow in confusion, but let the strange behavior slide. She had stressed all of them out, and she couldn’t really be mad at how he was handling that–the guilt festering back in her belly at the scene she had caused. Logically she registered it wasn’t her fault–It was whatever the fuck that thing was fault–even if she felt like it was somehow hers.

Once back in her room, Namjoon ushered everyone else out, telling them that he would get her settled and they could come check on her later after she had been able to rest. The moment the door hit the latch the tears she had been keeping away fell, and let Namjoon hold her tightly to his chest as the dam broke with what she had seen and experienced at the hands of the abhorrent creature.

Y/n was tired of being tormented. Tired of not making any solid moves. Yet anytime she felt like she was finally going to be making improvements, it felt like either the ghosts or her mother barred that from happening.

“I’m sorry.” He whispered against the side of her head once she had finished, keeping her secure in his hold.

“What?” Y/n picked her head up, bringing an arm up to wipe at her nose. “Why are you apologizing?”

“Because I was right there and I didn’t know, and I couldn’t do anything.” He clenched his jaw, and shook his head disdainfully. “I was right there and they didn’t care. If it had been Jungkook or Yoongi maybe it wouldn’t have–”

“That’s not your fault, you were always enough previously–how could we have known any better?” She scalded, wiping at her cheeks again. “Shit has been changing the past couple days and we won’t always know what that means right away.”

“What does that mean?” He looked taken aback, his face taking on a more scrutinizing look. “What else happened that I don’t know about yet?”

With everything going on, she realized it had completely slipped her mind to tell Namjoon about what had happened the night before at the Adelaide, and gave him a quick debrief with all of the important details–leaving out the part about the smell of death in heed of Yoongi’s advisement that it was just a scare tactic.

“Why am I only finding out now?”

“Well I haven’t exactly had the time to speak to you privately yet today.” Y/n gestured between them. “I was going to tell you tonight after our session but I’m not sure if that's going to happen anymore.”

“I don’t think it should. You really should rest.” He pointed to her bed and back to her. “Like now.”

She rolled her eyes, turning to walk towards her bed but stopped in her tracks when her eyes caught the stain on her shirt. “I need to change first–this shirt is ruined.”

Namjoon’s ears flushed pink, and he cleared his throat. “Oh-yeah right. I’ll leave you to do that then. If you need anything, call or text one of us–I mean it. We will bring up your food.” He turned towards the door, grabbing for the handle but turning his head to pin her with a commanding stare. “Rest. No excuses.”

Y/n shuffled about her room, tugging off her shirt and tossing it into her hamper. She pawed through every clothing item she owned in search of the softest shorts and shirt she could find to pull onto her body.

She had to fight with her mind to keep her thoughts from returning to the melted eyes and gaping mouth of the beast, telling herself she needed to get over it–she had already talked about it with Namjoon–she needed to move on so she could rest. Flashes of the pain and the smell rendered her immobile for seconds at a time, keeping her trapped in his advances long after he was physically gone–the memory of him a monster enough to haunt her every movement.

Maybe it was time to listen to her friends–to ask them for help.

Yoongi had already been pestered enough by her in the past few weeks, so she figured he must need a break. Namjoon she had already cried enough to. That left her with only one viable option…

She plucked her phone up from her bed and drafted up a text that she hesitated to send, her finger sitting in the air above the send button in fear. What if he got angry with her for what had happened, and lost the trust they had agreed to work on building already?

No, she shook her head firmly, it’s not my fault. Don’t let them win.

Hitting send took a spur of the moment confidence, her bowl of mac and cheese had already been delivered and sitting on her desk by then, a curl of steam unfurling from the top and around her nose inviting her to dig into the tried and true comfort food.

[Y/n]: Hi. Are you busy? I know you mentioned going to the gym earlier… Something happened and I don’t feel like being alone. I’m in my room btw.

[Y/n]: Sorry.

She waited, her clunky text message looking dumber to her by the second and making her cringe in her seat at her own pathetic request. Just showing up at someone’s door took out the embarrassing part of having to ask for it. She was far too anxious of his response to start eating, instead fidgeting with a tissue she had pulled from the confines of its box to hold at the ready in her hand just in case she were to start crying again.

The floor creaked outside of her door, and she leapt to her feet, wrenching it open before his fist even got the chance to knock on the wooden surface Jungkook’s arm still suspended in mid air to do so.

The only difference in him now than a few hours ago was that he looked freshly showered, the curly wisps of hair still heavy with droplets of water, and his t-shirt and shorts had been swapped for a black matching hoodie and sweatpants.

She tugged him inside wordlessly, not giving him the second to notice anything out of the ordinary yet on her face before pushing him to sit on the edge of her bed, grabbing her warm bowl and plopping down next to him. She perched the bowl on her knees, still averting her eyes from his completely black ones, their glassy and rounded surface moving rapidly over her with unabashed worry.

She raised a bite to her lips, letting the spoon settle into her mouth and dropping the food onto her tongue for her to robotically chew and swallow. Her eyes felt heavy as they started to water, but she did her best to blink it away. She needed to get better at handling these situations if she were to stay here. She needed to be stronger, and she scolded herself for being so emotional; echoes of her mothers voice singing through her own mind with the chastising comment. Jungkook sat still next to her, unsure what else he was supposed to do but observe the way she moved. Her bandaged hand was not missed by his watchful stare, one of his finger’s coming up to ghost over the edge of the bandage.

She repeated the same lifeless movements with the next few bites, the flavor mellowing out into something she no longer cared for–being choked out by the smell of death and decay that had overcome her senses again. Y/n choked on the bite, spitting it back into the half eaten bowl and frantically grabbing for her water to wash down the flavor and cleanse her senses. The tears spilled over her waterline and down her cheeks and she groaned out in fury, angry with herself as she wiped them away with more aggression than was needed.

Jungkook gingerly took the bowl from her lap and took it over to her desk, taking his seat back at her side if not marginally closer.

“What happened?”

It took one look up to his imploring eyes and face carved with concern for her to crumble, and for him to note the mark on the side of her forehead.

“A lot.” She whined, her voice unpleasantly nasally from crying.

He swallowed, and his brow twitched downwards to follow the way his eyes trailed after one of the tears that tracked down her cheek. “Tell me.”

And she did. She retold again, this time to him and not Namjoon–told him every foul smelling, menacing, and haunting detail of the man in the kitchen. Of his glistening pale skin and black hole of a mouth, how long his arms were and the strength he possessed. The open wounds and burning flesh induced by the beam of her flashlight, it’s borderline human expression of depression that had overcome the beast. She finished, tacking on a few of her final thoughts she had managed to work through.

“Namjoon was there, and then he wasn’t. It wasn’t like going into the Paralrealm at all. It was like an entirely different plane that’s further away and disconnected from us completely. I can usually see you guys but I only saw him.” Y/n felt her breath picking up speed, her hands clawing at her own middle to find purchase in her shirt, but no position felt safe or comfortable. His tattooed hand grabbed for one of her squirming hands, stopping them from wreaking havoc on her shirt and holding it tightly in his lap to moor her to the present.

“I’ve never seen him come upstairs before.” Jungkook muttered, shaking his head with a flair of his nostrils.

“You know him?” She whimpered, her voice cracking mid sentence and effectively tarnishing any self respect she had left. Crying in front of Yoongi felt so much easier than everyone else–maybe it was his energy that made it so. Here in front of Jungkook she felt like an idiot, because what if he concluded she wasn’t strong enough to keep going?

He nodded, an unseen shroud coming up around him as it usually does when he is feeling vulnerable. “He lives in the basement. I can see him at the bottom of the stairs or hiding in corners when I go down.”

Y/n took in his uncomfortable expression, and remembered what Yoongi had said from the night before–unable to imagine that Jungkook is always bearing witness to horrors she can’t see. She pictured a much shorter and lankier version of himself, tiptoeing through the halls on small feet, having to come face to face with that creature's horrible face and others of the same caliber.

“Has he always been that…Ugly?”

“No. Well–kind of. He’s always been big and weird looking and gloomy. Middle school was when they kind of lost it.”

“That long ago?” Y/n gasped. “How long have you noticed all of this?”

Jungkook thought back, his jaw set and his eyes dropping to the floor. “When we were kids. The first M.A.D person–people–I had ever seen were the twins. At the pool.”

“Jungkook–why have you never told us?” She twisted in her seat and brought her legs up to look more closely at him. “This is important stuff.”

“You never asked. And we don’t think the two of them are causing any of this, like you said before.” He defended, “Plus it’s the first sign I saw–that doesn’t automatically mean they are the first ones ever. There’s still plenty that I can’t fully see, just shadows and outlines. Shapes that hide from me.”

Y/n sighed, releasing some of the built up tension from her system. “You’re pretty magnificent, huh?” she breathed out in humored awe, dabbing at her cheeks.

Jungkook’s nose twitched at the unorthodox compliment, and shrugged. “I guess.”

“I mean it. Your superpowers make me feel better–safer even–not worse.” She let her forehead fall against his shoulder, inhaling the fresh scent of his body wash and soap that pleasantly over took her senses, an overtly preferred smell to the one she was haunted by. She felt his torso shift beneath her head, the soft fabric of his hoodie rubbing against her skin while his head tipped her way.

“You sure?”

“Completely.” She nodded against his shoulder. “See? I can do this,” she brought her hands up to press over her eyes, “and not be scared because I know you’ll still be watching out for me.” She giggled at the youthful air the action possessed, but still she kept her hands there to block out the light from her tired eyes.

He hummed in acknowledgement and freed his hand from her grasp, slithering his arm from between them to hover over her, unable to decide if he should place it on her shoulders or her side. Y/n pressed her lips together to fight a small smile from cozying up on her face at his innocent nature, and she lifted her head up to look at him, their faces closer than ever.

“Can I have a hug?” She bit the bullet, saving him from his indecisiveness.

Jungkook did a series of rapid nods, and she bent forward over her crossed legs to wind her arms around him, squeezing him against her and relishing in one of the rare moments of physical affection that he offered. She could feel his heart beating against her, hard and fast; and her own matched in intensity and frequency. He draped the hovering arm around her and let his hand rest on the middle of her back gently.

“I’ll always watch out for you. I don’t care what your mom says–We can go back to what we did before.” He let his cheek rest against her head. “She can yell at me all she wants.”

_________________________________________

They didn’t go into the Paralrealm that night. After catching up with Yoongi they all agreed it would be too risky if she had a concussion, but as a compromise for her disappointment, Yoongi convinced the other half of the party to skip the predetermined route under the reasoning that she was clearly getting stronger faster than they had anticipated, and let her try for her first mission of her choosing: To find her grandmother and try to get more information out of her, or G-min.

The reward felt worthy enough for a week-long wait (Namjoon’s only condition, for if she truly had a minor concussion and refused to see a doctor, then she would at least have to wait a full week). And to elevate their levels of excitement, Namjoon’s tea ingredients had come in the mail, and the break gave him an entire week to figure out how to prepare it without anyone else noticing–leading to an impulsive purchase (that Y/n no doubt was a bad influence for) on Tuesday afternoon of a mini fridge and a hot plate for his room that was set to be delivered by Thursday.

Y/n stayed away from the kitchen if she could help it, and averted her eyes from the basement door whenever she zipped through the foyer. While she was trying to build tougher skin, she couldn’t bring herself to look at either locations for the feelings they resurfaced left her immobilized and panicked. It was easy to avoid them with Jungkook being on high alert, always somehow finding a way to “accidentally” cross paths with her around the estate or on the way to the greenhouse.

Speaking of the greenhouse, to make matters murkier her mother caught wind of her “accident”–no doubt the fault of the camera’s or one of her concerned friends letting it slip–so she was slammed with a wave of sympathetic texts and calls from the rest of her friends and her mother; the latter forcing her take a mandatory week off from work to rest and seemingly trying to set a record for how much she could surprise Y/n with a text on Wednesday morning.

[From The Mother 🙄] Good morning, Y/n. I have a doctor's appointment scheduled for you early this afternoon. Please be ready and waiting out front by 12pm sharp. I will have a driver take us both to the appointment, and there are a few things I would like to follow up on afterwards in regards to the Spring Pop Up.

Unfortunately for Y/n and Hoseok, their weekly Wednesday dancing session had been rain checked, for he was being given an overload of shifts at the store and gift shop inbetween valeting to make up for the all of the college age kids returning home with it being the beginning of May and the end of most college semesters. Which also meant she had no excuse to refuse her mother’s demands.

It was warm and humid, the sky open and spotted with white fluffy clouds that let blinding rays of sun rain down on all of the flora, their faces turning up to welcome it with a blooming greeting. The gravel crunched under her feet, while she bounced on the balls of her heels out front of the hotel in the rounded driveway. Jungkook sat inconspicuously crinkling through a bag of chips on one of the benches a bit of a distance out to keep an eye on her from afar, on one of his 15 minute breaks that just so happened to coincide with the time she would be waiting outside by herself.

Y/n glanced back at him from across the lawn, the sunglasses perched on his nose obscuring his eyes from the glaring sun and protecting anyone from looking at just exactly where he was focusing on. His head rigidly facing forwards but his eyes were surely boring into her–she could feel it. She watched him shake the aluminum bag and inspect which chip would be his next victim, pulling a large round one out and placing it on his tongue to wrap his lips around with a crunch, a few crumbs dusting onto his red scrub shirt that he hastily wiped away.

She had to stifle a laugh at what seemed like an obvious ploy to her–her cheeks aching with a smile that can only be described as when one eats an overly sweet yet deliciously tart hard candy, that is so sweet it hurts the muscles of your cheeks each time you put one in your mouth– but you simply can’t get enough of the taste or feeling.

“How are you feeling?” Her mother’s voice butt into her thoughts, and Y/n made sure to avert her eyes from Jungkook in a manner that wasn’t too sudden as to not draw suspicion.

“Fine. I don’t know if this trip is necessary.” Y/n mumbled, digging the toe of her shoe into the gravel and watching the dust it kicked up float off and down the road.

“I live by the philosophy of better safe than sorry.” Mariah cracked a pacifying smile, and clasped her hands in front of her. The sound of mindless guest chatter, and birds flying overhead took the space of their lackluster conversation.

“You know-”

A car turned into the circle, halting whatever her mother was going to say next. The driver, a middle aged woman she didn’t recognize, got out and ushered the two of them into the back seat and closed their doors for them. The divider had been pulled up to give them much preferred privacy, and the car lurched forward, taking the uneasy energy of their forced interaction with it.

When they passed closer to the bench Jungkook was seated on, she watched him crumple the bag in his fist and move to stand, meeting her eyes briefly through the car window under the guise of taking in the beautiful scenery her and Namjoon had curated over her first week. When she could no longer see him, she faced forwards again, wringing her hands in her lap at the heavy silence that settled between her and her mother.

Y/n couldn’t take the suspense any longer, thinking back to how the cameras had no doubt picked up when Jungkook had taken her up to her room by himself late Saturday evening. She might as well go in first to avoid letting it build into something worse.

“Before you yell at me–Jungkook walked me home from the Adelaide the other night. He was just being a good friend and was the only sober one to make sure I got back safely. Don’t yell at him either, please. It was my fault for drinking so much.” Y/n braced herself for her mother’s reaction, curling her fingers around her knees and waiting for the impact.

“Oh-Okay. That’s…that’s fine.” Her mom cleared her throat. “Thank you for telling me.”

Y/n whipped her head to the side, flabbergasted at how composed she was. “That’s all? No cannon fire and flame throwers?”

Mariah snapped her head to meet her gaze, her eyes scandalized. “I’m not without reason. I’m going to take your words at face value–and if that’s what happened then I have no concerns. I may be older but I’m not stupid; I was young once too and understand that when you go out you’re going to have fun. I’m grateful he was there to make sure you got home safe.” She turned her head to take in the trees that flitted by the window, uttering something so quiet Y/n almost hadn’t heard it.

“He’s become a good man.”

Y/n had to pretend that she hadn’t heard the utterance if she were to keep her cool that day–for if she had really thought that way she wouldn’t have put such ridiculous rules in place, and she wouldn’t have said such hurtful things to him to keep him away from her.

Her doctor's visit was uneventful to her, they confirmed that she had probably received a minor concussion from her fall, and if her symptoms were improving then she was to continue resting for the rest of the week and follow up with them at a later date to schedule imaging for what they had called a seizure; but she knew it as anything but. However she didn’t argue. If her mother was going to pay for the tests then she would just show up and take them to please everyone in her life, and then forget it ever happened.

After her appointment she met her mother in the waiting room, and they filtered back out into the car to head to their next destination–a massive warehouse building that acted as a marketplace chalk full of all different kinds of shops and artist booths.

“We have a couple vacancies on the turf map for the Spring Pop Up,” Her mother explained, stepping out from her side of the vehicle and straightening out her skirt, “Hana and I like to come here and offer them for free to any vendor that catches our eye. We know it's short notice–but some of these up and coming talents' only reason for straying away from us is because of the cost to book a slot, and given the opportunity they jump for it. You’d be surprised how many of them actually have enough product set aside in the event we come by.”

Y/n shrugged, “If it’s such a problem to book I think you should have a day where you don’t charge. Then it would really help boost your average local artist. We are rich enough.”

Mariah quirked her eyebrows up in surprise, but smoothed her features by tugging open the door of the warehouse and holding it open for Y/n. “That is not the first time the suggestion has been made.” She kept her back straight as she stepped in after her daughter. “Since this specific event is where all of our proceeds are donated, that’s why we charge. However I think something could be done with the autumnal art fest.”

They waded through the narrow walkways that gridlocked the stands and a snail's pace, taking in each creation with rapt interest. It became apparent however, after the first two vendors Y/n had taken extra time to explore had received official offers from her mother, that she was letting Y/n’s interest and lingering glances choose who got the free vacancies.

The two of them paused at a small enclosed vendor that had magnificent handmade tapestries draping on all sides, woven animals and floral images of vibrant colors enough to entrap both her and her mother to inspect the selection, their eyes drinking up all they had to offer. Y/n found herself stopping, her fingers coming out to brush against the frayed tips of a green tapestry, a snoozing black cat made of all rounded edges was curled into a ball in the center with two sewn in orange eyes lazily peering at the viewer. Her mom came to her side to see what she was inspecting, her eyes raking over the image and paying strong attention to the detail. Without warning, a gleeful giggle escaped from her mother’s chest and she brought a hand up to cover the sound, but Y/n had already heard it.

“What?” Y/n looked between her mother and the tapestry, unable to draw the same humorous conclusion her mother had from the image.

“It’s just…” Mariah brought her hand up to fiddle with the opposite edge than Y/n was. “It reminds me of something.”

Y/n wasn’t sure if she should ask (nor was she sure that she wanted to ask), but her curiosity was eating her alive. She hadn’t heard her mother laugh like that in years, and she starred her mother down with her eyebrows raised into her hairline in a not so subtle way of letting her know she was interested.

Her mother let her hands run across the surface, stopping over the cat's eyes and feeling the texture of each peach toned iris. “When I was younger I lived at my dad’s farmhouse with my siblings, it had this gorgeous landscaping. Though I think we only took you there once unfortunately–I'm not sure if you can remember much of how it looked in that regard…” She gave Y/n a sideways glance, and Y/n shook her head, sorting through her brain for any recollection of what she had spoken of.

Y/n saw a faint image of a porch coated with powder blue paint that was chipped and weathered, a plate of peach cobbler topped with heaping domes of vanilla ice cream on her lap; and a massive dog slobbering next to her from where she sat with her legs dangling off the edge, one heavy paw nearly the size of her face at the time coming up to paw at the air for a morsel of her dessert.

“Actually I might. Did he have a blue porch and a horse of a dog?” Y/n snorted, recalling how the wrinkling mutt had been taller than she was at the time.

Her mother’s eyes lit up, and a bright smile graced her cheeks. “Yes! Yes, that was Brutus. God–he was huge–you were terrified of him. Spent the whole trip in your dad’s arms because you were convinced he was going to step on you.” She tilted her head back to take in the rest of the picture, reminiscing over the trip in her mind fondly.

“On the side of the house there was this rocky slope that my siblings and I used to play on as kids, and some of them were big enough and stacked just so as to have these holes that we could stick almost our entire arm in.” She turned to Y/n to mimic the action holding her hand in front of them with her hand splayed out. “And one of the days my sister and I went out to play as per usual, daring each other to stick our hands in the crevices in search of treasure or betting our dessert for who could hold their hand in the longest. When it was my turn, I touched something soft! And then out came this full litter of black kittens–oh my goodness how my sister and I begged my dad to let us keep them. Obviously he said no.” She laughed. “Though later that night my sister and I snuck them into the barn, the mother followed after them and gave her stamp of approval over the bed of hay we made for them. They became our resident farm cats–all except one of them I should say. One of them my dad absolutely fell in love with. She would wait outside the door every day for him to come out and do his job, trailing after him until he went back inside for dinner; he named her Tulip. After one week of that, he brought her in and she became the most spoiled house cat I’d ever known.” Her eyes glazed over, pulling the price tag of the piece to look at it.

“I never heard that story.” Y/n whispered wistfully, roaming her focus over her mother’s peaceful face, alight with the ghosts of her youth and soft at the edges.

“Ah well,” Her mother smoothed the tapestry down and took a step back from it, a forlorn look as she scanned it from top to bottom. “I suppose I never really talked about my family as much–your father's was always more exciting.”

“You should get it.” Y/n remarked with a jerk of her thumb to the tapestry, ignoring her final comment and keeping her eyes on her mother's face.

“What?” Her mother stuttered, taken aback by such a suggestion. “I shouldn’t. It doesn’t fit the interior of the Estate I’m afraid.”

Y/n blew a burst of air through her lips with a flippant wave of her hand. “Who cares? You like it.” Mariah still hesitated, stuck between her daughter’s advice and her self doubt, so Y/n pushed harder. “Plus, it’s about you. You live there too–and I like the story. So what it’s not as grand as owning a hotel or tales of battle?”

“I…” Her mother pressed her lips into a thin line, swallowing hard.

“I’ll get it then.” Y/n huffed out. “Happy early Mother’s Day.” She unhooked the tapestry from its spot and waltzed over to the short older woman seated comfortably behind the counter, smiling politely at Y/n as she approached.

“Is this all?” The older woman looked up, her brown eyes amicable and folded beneath weathered aging skin, her smile still kind even though her hands tremored while swiping Y/n’s card and folding up the tapestry neatly into a hand stamped paper bag.

Mariah was speechless, stepping next to Y/n in modest resignation to watch the woven cat disappear into the bag and out of sight.

Y/n observed the other ornate tapestries dangling around her, and brought her eyes back to the woman in front of her. She probably had just as interesting a story as her dad’s family, smile lines dug deep into her cheeks and sun spots speckling across her skin from presumably long days outside doing who knows what. A story that she was telling through string and a loom, and deserved to be seen just as much as the rest. Y/n snatched one of the business cards from her mother’s hand and held it out to the older woman across the counter.

“How would you like to have a pop up at the Wörner Hotel and Estate Spring Pop Up next weekend?”

_________________________________________

They returned to the hotel in the late afternoon with all of the vacant vendor spots filled, and several different paper bags worth of purchases dangling from her wrist when she returned. Jin met them out front, a bag of games in his hands and a welcoming curve of his plush lips, an invitation to join him at the guest house once more falling from them the moment she was in ear shot.

Even though Hoseok had been unable to join them, they sat hunched over Battleship and two player card games for the rest of the evening, the screen door of the sun room propped open to let the cool breeze leave a layer of goosebumps on their warm skin. She was sure to keep her group chat updated at all times, Jungkook implementing check in’s for each hour ever since her run in with the creature of the basement when he couldn’t be around to watch her from afar.

Jin sighed confidently, leaning back on his palms from behind his Battleship board, and opened his mouth around an exaggerated fake yawn. “Better luck next time, I’m just the undefeated champion of this game.”

Y/n scowled down at where he sat on the floor, “Uh huh. I think you’re cheating.”

“I am not! How would I cheat right now?” He defended himself with a childish pout.

Y/n looked around the room at all sides, and found nothing reflective that he could logically use to cheat, and fixed him with a skeptical glare. “Okay I don’t actually know how, but I still don’t trust you.”

Jin rolled his eyes. “You and Jimin are both such sore losers…”

“That’s funny–I seem to recall you admitting to me that you cheated while playing this very game with him…” Y/n feigned being deep in thought, and brought her pointer finger to tap against chin.

“Okay so one time I cheated,” He yielded. “But as I said, he sat right in front of something reflective. It's not my fault he didn't think through his strategy.”

Y/n smacked the lid of her case closed and dropped it into the box. “Sure, sure. I’ll take your word for it.”

“What time do you need to be back?” He put his board away next to hers, sliding it in with more care than she had, and got to his feet with an exuberant stretch of his arms into the air. “I should’ve asked beforehand this time if you had any plans.”

Y/n pursed her lips and shrugged. “Anytime. I’m no in a rush.”

Jin hummed and strode into the main space of the summer home, disappearing behind the half wall that led to the family room of the main space. He peeked his head back around the corner, addressing her quietly.

“I’ll be right back. I just have to use the bathroom and then I’m going to grab something.”

He disappeared once more, and Y/n was left to her own devices much to her discontentment. She held onto the flashlight firmly in her pocket, even though it hadn’t fully protected her from the beast, it had definitely dealt damage against him and would surely harm anyone not as gigantic.

Y/n made sure to keep her back to the couch, and her eyes moving from one corner of the room to the other at all times. She wasn’t sure if the ghosts would follow her down to the guest house, or if any were still present here on their own accord; but she wasn’t going to let them have the element of surprise if she could do anything about it.

During her fourth rotation around the room, something barely visible above the lip of the door frame back into the main space caught her attention. She glanced quickly around the room once more, and waited for the sound of a few seconds to tick by and keeping her ears peeled for Jin’s return. When she heard no sign of his footsteps, she hoisted herself to stand on the edge of the couch to see up and over the ledge, pushing onto her tiptoes where they sunk down into the cushions to get a better look.

The lip was scattered crumbled dried leaves and petals, ground down into pieces so small it would’ve been hard for her to tell if she wasn’t already familiar with things of its kind. The only thing unfamiliar was a thin silver cross tucked flat against the lip and out of sight, its surface dusted with particles of rose buds.

She heard Jin’s footsteps approaching the sun room, and leapt down from the couch, barely getting back into her seat before he came into view carrying something oblong and dark in one hand.

Upon closer inspection it was clearly a guitar case that came through the door first, a patterned tote bag swinging from his wrist that bumped against the hard leather casing and Jin’s leg.

“I don’t want to be that guy–but you did request that I play for you. Do you still want me to, or do you think the noise would bother your head” He gestured to the black case with his free hand.

“No, by all means!” Y/n scooted close to the edge and patted at the spot on the couch next to her enthusiastically.

He nodded, and rounded the table to take the offered seat, placing the case on the ground and unclasping the lock. Guiding the lid open, he gingerly lifted a sleek acoustic guitar from its indented spot and swung it onto his lap, wasting little time to begin tuning it to his liking.

“What have you been working on lately?” She asked, Trying to cover just how excited she was to be played for.

“Ah–a few things. I’ve gotten some requests from friends that I've been working on learning–but I won’t subject you to the clumsy sounds of me practicing–I’ll try and play you stuff I know pretty well.” He shied away from her entranced stare.

“I’m not bothered by practicing, that’s how you learn.” She leaned in a bit closer, and an earnest smile lighting up her face. “Plus now I’m curious as to what songs they are.”

“If you say so.” Jin’s ears flushed pink, and he pulled a battered cream colored folder from the tote bag, thumbing through a few printed packets of tabs, chord charts and sheet music. “If you get bored, I have advanced coloring books, markers and a few books in the tote bag. I won’t be offended if you want to pull any of them out to mess with while I play.”

Y/n took notice of his nerves, and rummaged through the tote bag on the floor between them, shimmying out a mosaic coloring book and high quality alcohol markers onto the glass top table. He seemed apprehensive about her just watching him, and coloring seemed like a relaxing enough activity for her brain to manage and a solid middle ground to bring him comfort.

He tugged out a packet that’s title was entirely in Spanish, placing it down on the table in front of him. “I’m not good at singing this one so don’t have high expectations. I’ve just been working on the instrumental part for now.” He gave her a nervous half-smile.

“Whatever you have is good enough for me.” Y/n returned the smile, popping off the lid of a purple marker and going to town on the page. Jin, once satisfied with her level of distraction on her coloring sheet, started with striking the heel of his sneaker against the hard floor, setting the steady tempo for the piece.

It took about five seconds into his first song for Y/n to realize two things: number one was that the guitar he had in his lap was expensive, and of a quality that was not made for beginners; thus number two was inherently connected to number one–that he was definitely not a beginner.

Even though he had said he wouldn’t sing, he graced her ears with a hummed melody by the time the first chorus had come around, and his voice was just as smooth as the strings he was manipulating beneath his fingers. Y/n let him play onwards song after song without interruption. Sometimes he would play one twice, or play through a phrase multiple times in a row until he had successfully played it to his liking–though like she has reassured him before, it didn’t bother her. All the while Y/n worked on bleeding color into the pages, her body and mind at complete ease.

She recognized one of the songs a few in, the strumming pattern an exact replica of how she had heard it replayed on one of her records in her room on multiple occasions. This time he sang the words with practiced proficiency, each one rubbing from his vocal chords as if it was as natural as breathing. She didn’t dare look in his direction in fear that he would stop if she did, doing her best to train her eyes on the abstract fish she was coloring and willing herself not to hum along.

He played until the sun settled itself to sleep below the trees, blanketing them in shades of navy, and awakening the crickets to sing from the other side of the screens that separated them from one another. Y/n didn’t want to admit that she was beginning to grow tired, enjoying listening to him play in tandem with the sounds of nature far too much.

As if reading her thoughts, the sound of his strums and plucking abruptly stopped, not bothering to finish the song he had started. This jerked Y/n from her artistic endeavors with an unexpected jolt, and turned to watch as he tucked the guitar back in its case and latched it closed

“We should head back, it’s getting late and we should get you something to eat.” Jin gave her a bashful tilt of his lip, walking the case just into the main house to prop it against the wall.

“Oh–yeah.” Y/n stifled a yawn, and snapped the lid on the marker she had been using. “I liked listening to you play a lot.” She looked up at him with tired eyes, while he kindly aided her in sliding the markers and coloring book back into the bag for her.

“If you mean that, you are welcome to join me anytime.” He offered her a hand to help her up off of the floor where she had dropped to, and she took it gratefully.

“I’ll take you up on that for sure.”

The walk back across the dirt trail was slow, Y/n tugging out her flashlight to use for its normal intended purposes while they walked along the shadow drenched path to enlighten the darkness. Y/n was in a daze, watching her beam of light bounce with each step, her head feeling light and void of any thought.

A branch snapped to their rear, and Y/n’s breath hitched. She spun her head around to make sure Jin was still there in the flesh, and thankfully he was, but he seemed utterly unbothered by the sound–just startled by the beam of light she showered him with. She swung the flashlight around to shine it into the treeline but found nothing, just the continued rustling of the trees in a gentle breeze.

“Do you just carry flashlights around now?” Jin joked a few minutes in, his hands tucked into his pockets.

Y/n prided herself for being quick on her feet to come up with an answer that made sense. “Well we were here after dark last time, I figured it’d be better than my phone.”

Jin made a face of impressed acknowledgement, “Smart.”

“I try to be.” Y/n chuckled.

A chillier breeze than the last blew by, making goosebumps rise to the surface of her skin and a shiver go through her system in its wake. She brought her empty hand up to rub at the skin of her exposed arm absentmindedly, not willing to move her attention from the treeline.

“Are you cold?” Jin inquired, raking his eyes over her figure with mild concern.

Y/n made a dismissive noise in the back of her throat, her eyes locked on their path ahead. “A little bit, but I’m fine.”

Jin made an affronted face, and slipped off his oversized jean jacket to drape over her shoulders, leaving him in only a blue long sleeve shirt.

“Jin, really it’s fine.” Y/n moved to take it off and hold it out for him, but he took rapid steps to dodge from her reach.

“Oh no–It looks like I’m suddenly deathly allergic to denim.” He raised his voice up into a playful high pitched whine, and he skittered just out of arms length “You must take it from me or it will kill me!”

Y/n giggled, and lurched forward towards him again. “C’mon Jin–I’m serious.”

“So am I.” Jin leapt out of the way again, a fake pout taking over his lips. “And it’s a shame too because I loved that jacket.”

Y/n surrendered, letting the jacket rest on her shoulders for the time being. “I’ll get you back for this.”

“For what? Being a gentleman?” He scoffed, a hand shooting up to grab on nonexistent pearls around his neck. “How terribly are Hoseok and Namjoon treating you for you to mistake my otherworldly kind gesture as evil?”

Y/n rolled her eyes, and wet her lips. “Because you deserve it.”

“You’re only saying that because I beat you at Battleship again, aren’t you?”

“Maybe.”

_________________________________________

Y/n roused late into the morning on Thursday, giving herself plenty of time to rest against her pillows and relish in the secure environment of her room and catch up on much needed rest.

Because she was still in a mandatory recovery period, she had to decide if she were to wait in her room until her scheduled “date” with Jimin that afternoon, or follow Namjoon around the greenhouse but be forbidden to do any work. Staying in her room granted her the opportunity to sleep in, which she greatly appreciated, so that prospect alone won her over. Plus it meant Jungkook and Namjoon could have a break from guard duty–even though they repeatedly reassured her they didn’t mind, she was sure they must get tired of it sometimes. But alas, as noon crept closer her rest was disturbed, and she rolled out of bed to get herself freshened up for whatever he had planned.

With all of her prying efforts, the only thing he had been willing to tell her was to: Wear whatever she wanted, and to come hungry. Both of which were easy suggestions to follow.

What he hadn’t warned her of was the bouquet of fresh flowers in one of the vases from the kitchen left on her doorstep with a sweet, hand written note accompanying it. She blushed, and perched the breathtaking arrangement on her desk.

Even though he had told her to wear whatever she had wanted, she figured it would make him happy if she wore the dress he had purchased for her if his previous actions were anything to go by–he seemed to enjoy the prospect of putting together her outfits. So she slipped the clothing item over her head and tugged it down into place, padding over to her mirror to check how it looked: a perfect fit. Another point for him and his thoughtfulness, she tallied.

Y/n found herself taking some extra care in the bathroom to primp herself up a bit, unable to help the obligation that she should. There was a pressure within to make herself look presentable, like it was a real date.

She paused, her hands dangling over the clasp of the necklace she had already fastened as she gave herself a good long look in the mirror.

Did she want it to be a real date?

No, surely not. Y/n shook away the absurd thought and brought her hands down to reach for her perfume. It’s perfectly normal for friends to get dressed up and enjoy each other’s company, she scolded herself, spritzing some onto her wrists to rub onto the skin of her neck. Friends do that stuff all of the time. So what if Jimin had bought her a nice outfit, planned a nice outing, and gotten her flowers.

An outing for just the two of them.

Alone.

Where they will probably hold hands.

And her heart fluttering in her chest like it was going to break out of her ribs and flop on the floor was normal.

Absolutely not. Y/n slammed her perfumed bottle down and smacked aggressively at her cheeks to rid herself of such preposterous thoughts–they weren’t rooted in reality. Not on her watch.

Jimin knocked at her door, right on time like he said he would, and Y/n scrambled around her room in a panic to gather her bag with her flashlight and phone tucked into it. She blamed her rush for her warm cheeks and pounding heart when she opened the door, taking in just how nicely he had also dressed for their da-outing.

It’s just an outing, Y/n commanded her brain to control itself at the sight of his angelic smile, and melodic voice, and forcefully willed her eyes to stay on his face and not his loose fitting, silky smooth white button down that had almost half of the buttons left undone.

It didn’t help that his eyes took her in with so much fondness it seeped from his irises and into his voice. “You look beautiful as always.”

Y/n floundered, her mouth opening and closing quickly. It took her so long to come up with anything to say back, that he looked down to hide a growing smirk from her eyes with a swipe of his tongue across his lips, and replaced it with a teasing smile when he glanced back up at her with his hands clasped behind his back.

“I’ll take that as a thank you.”

“Yes. Yeah–you look great too. Like always.” Y/n wanted nothing more than for the floor to swallow her whole and spit her out underground, so she could hide away from the embarrassment that was herself.

Jimin chuckled and held out his hand for her to grab. “Ready?”

Y/n didn’t trust her vocal chords to hold their own, and settled for a nod instead.

His plan was just as unavoidably romantic as Y/n wished it would be–No wait– wished it wouldn’t be, she corrected. A car similar in build to Yoongi’s was parked outfront with a wicker basket buckled into the back seat next to a neatly folded blanket, and he held the door open for her to help her in and observed that she was securely buckled in before closing the door and getting into the driver's seat.

“I had originally planned to take one of the walking trails up to the lookout, but with you getting yourself into trouble I figured going to the park might be a bit more reasonable for your current predicament.” Jimin gestured to her head with his chin, a playful pointed look staring through her.

“I would’ve been fine walking.” Y/n rebutted, crossing her arms over her chest.

“I figured you’d say that.” He started the car, a quiet rumble beneath them. “That’s why I made the executive decision not to because you are much too stubborn for your own good.”

The drive wasn’t long, the windows cracked open to let in a sliver of warm outside air, and the radio played at a low volume from the speakers. There was never a better day to spend outside, Y/n thought to herself: The clouds, opalescent plumes on a sleepy march across a crystal blue sky; the air warm yet not unbearably so; and the canopy of plant life alongside the roads was lively and vibrant–painting a picturesque image of the transition of the late stages of spring.

Jimin reached across the console and slipped his hand into hers, bringing them to rest on the leather cushion between them while he drove. A completely natural and normal thing for him to do. Wholly natural. What wasn’t natural was the jittery feeling that erupted across her skin that borderline pissed her off. She must’ve hit her head harder than the doctor thought.

Fortunately they had chosen a week day for their outing, for the park was nearly empty–save for an elderly couple moseying about one of the dirt trails hand in hand; and a young mother enjoying the nice day with a child not a day older than a year–a small hat on their small head to keep the sun from their eyes and a scattering of brightly colored toys discarded around their legs from where the child had left them to instead rip at the grass that tickled their sides.

Y/n smiled softly at the scene as they passed, Jimin’s hand tugging her forwards past the stragglers and down one of the flat walking trails to a grassy area vacant of human activity and dotted with trees that bent their branches down to offer shade onto the turf below them. Y/n helped him spread out the blanket, tucking the corners down underneath a few rocks they managed to find before settling down on the green fabric.

“Is this alright?” Jimin broke through the silence, hopeful and sweet.

Y/n realized she hadn’t spoken nearly as much as she usually had, and furiously nodded. “Of course!” Her voice was a touch louder than she had anticipated, and coughed once to cover up the outburst. “This is really nice.”

Jimin made a pleased sound in the back of his throat, and snapped open the basket between them. “I hope you came hungry like I suggested.”

Y/n’s mouth began to water, taking in the goodies he had packed: Delicately wrapped sandwiches, containers of fresh cut fruit and cheeses, a plethora of different drink options, and plenty more that lay hidden beneath the surface–Even as she leant forward to try and get a better look.

“Trust me, I very much am.”

He let out a full belly laugh at her ravenous expression, and quickened his movements at pulling the rest out. “Good. I may have prepared too much, so please help yourself.”

Y/n didn’t need to be told twice, taking the sandwich from his hands and peeling back the cutesy patterned beeswax paper to take her fist bite, savoring the flavor on her tongue as the first drop of food in her empty stomach since the night before.

They kept the conversation light, and Y/n chastised herself for her strange behavior that morning. This was no different than all the lunches they had shared as teenagers during the summer months on either the estate or hotel lawn, and she had nothing to be nervous about–nothing that should be making her heart sit in her throat like it was.

Surely not the way he scooted closer so their legs were pressed together, and the hands that supported them were feathering against each other–the constant almost hold of her hand making her heart flip. And definitely not when their meal had finished, a box of chocolate covered strawberries opened to one side for them to make lazy grabs for, and the two of them had reclined to match the shapes of the clouds that trickled by with silly descriptions, her head grazing his shoulder.

Jimin’s hand found hers again, and her heart swelled in her chest so uncomfortably that it made her release a small cough. She wanted the feeling to go away–it irked her more than anything. Maybe she had laid down too quickly and that was the cause of her spike in heart rate.

“That one looks like a penguin wearing sneakers.” Jimin pointed to a blob that was nearly straight over them, drawing the lines of the edges with one pointed finger.

Y/n scrunched her nose up, inspecting his suggestion and lifting her head up to get a better look.. “Hard disagree,” she countered, “That is for sure a fish wearing a party hat. What you had thought were shoes is actually its fins.”

“What?” Jimin denied, using the opportunity to get to her eye level as an excuse to move even closer to her so that her head would have no other choice but to rest on his shoulder when she put it back down. “No–it's definitely a penguin. But I guess art is the eye of the beholder.” He served her a judgmental side-eye framed with a disbelieving raise of his brow.

Y/n hesitated for a moment to relax her head on him, but decided to just let it fall into place against his arm. Her lungs constricted at the close proximity that used to be so normal between the two of them. A fixture in their lives to the point that if they weren’t pressed against each other on the couch during estate-wide movie nights, then it was assumed they were bickering about something by everyone else in attendance. It was normal.

Nothing to bat an eye over.

“One second.” He commented off-handedly, gesturing for her to lift her head back up. Jimin let his hand fall from hers, and situated his arm to come around her shoulders so that she was tucked into his side. A much more comfortable position for the both of them physically, but emotionally Y/n was a hive of angry buzzing bees and she thought she might throw up from how it made her insides quake. All at once the tension snapped, and she bristled.

A gorgeous outing for the two of them.

Completely alone.

Her insides churning into warm goo and billowing up steam into her brain, making it fog up her vision and blind her judgement.

Oh no.

Oh dear god–no.

“Are you alright? Do you need to resituate yourself?” Jimin tipped his chin down to look at her softly, his voice even more so.

“No–Yes! I mean–” Y/n attempted to swallow down her nerves, Jimin's face altered with a touch of amusement at her flustered state. “I mean,” she corrected, “yes I’m alright, and no I’m comfortable.”

He nodded, and returned his gaze back to the sky. They stayed pressed close to one another for the next hour, hushed conversations about his finals, how she was feeling, and anything else he could think of asking her. Jimin never seemed to run out of things to ask her about herself–intent on learning everything about her that he had missed out on in the years they were apart.

Y/n managed the conversation well–somehow hiding the fact that she was having an existential crisis about their friendship, suddenly rethinking looking at every interaction in a new light in an impressive feat of control. His playfulness, his kindness, his sugary sweet behavior appealing more to her at that moment more so than ever. And she didn’t know how to handle it–the thought of ruining their friendship was enough for her to force the thoughts into the back of her mind. They made her feel like a creep for looking at him differently when he was treating her just the same as he always had.

Unless–

“How has your head been?” Jimin’s fingertips fiddled with the fabric of her dress absentmindedly, drawing her back in.

“It’s been alright. I’ve been a bit more tired than usual and sometimes I get a headache here and there–but nothing I can’t handle.” Y/n let her hand come up to sit in the crevice where their bodies met, unsure where else to put it at the moment. Putting it on his chest felt too intimate–too real.

“You should make sure to rest more when we get back then.” He clicked his tongue, and shifted directions. “Is the family tree working well for you?”

Y/n nodded against his chest “Yes, thank you. It’s exactly what I needed.”

Jimin hummed, but it felt distant and far away–like he wanted to say more.

A mourning dove flew overhead, stealing Y/n’s attention to follow the gray streak of feather and wing where it plopped down on the grass several yards away from them. It tracked through the blades, stabbing its beak down to nibble at the bugs beneath the dirt to enjoy its own afternoon meal.

“You know Y/n–You can always talk to me about anything.” Jimin started, his voice taking on an air of forced indifference. “I won’t judge you.”

Y/n snapped her gaze back to the side of Jimin’s face studiously, but he kept it tilted towards the sky. “I know that…” She shifted onto her side, and they were closer than before. “What brought this on?”

Jimin’s eyes followed the trail of a smaller cloud, keeping them away from hers. “I just wanted to remind you.” There it was again, the end of a phrase lilted with no closure. He wasn’t saying all that he wanted to.

Y/n bit her lip, not yet having looked away from his profile. How could he say such things when it was blatantly obvious that he was withholding something from her? He appeared to sense her unease, and turned his nose so that it was almost touching hers. His eyes sweeping across her face, a plea clouded behind a mask of obstinacy.

“You know–there’s things a lot of us hide from each other. Maybe for good reason, but maybe out of fear. Perhaps some people aren’t able to say them outright in fear of what may happen to others as a consequence of speaking up.” Jimin’s plush lips moved to release the words in swift tandem. “Sometimes we all need a reminder that there are people that are here that will listen.”

Y/n pushed herself up with her elbow to look down at him, trying to get a read on him. “What are you implying?”

Jimin sighed through his nose, but kept a modest smile on his lips. “I’m saying exactly what I mean.”

Y/n was besides herself with how puzzled he made her. Her jaw clenching and unclenching in unbending waves of both irritation and worry.

“Y/n.” He took in her confused expression, and sat up to face her, her head slipping off of his arm commanding her to follow his lead. They engaged in a stiff staring contest, Jimin trying to pull her to say something–to understand. But she didn’t know what he wanted her to say, nor did she understand.

“Jimin.” She mimicked his tone, returning his anticipatory stare.

Jimin ran a hand through his hair and surveyed the park around them, bringing one knee up to drape an arm over. His other hand came up to meet it, spinning one of the gold rings around his fingers pensively.

“Jimi-”

“Taehyung is a good egg, isn’t he?” He blurted out, cutting her off and regarding her heavily over his shoulder.

Y/n was taken aback by such a strange question, the unexpected turn of conversation knocking her thoughts off track to assess it.

“I guess so? What does he have to do with anything?”

Jimin heaved a sigh, and moved to close up the half eaten box of fruit, clearing out the remnants of their lunch and packing it away in the basket.

“Jimin I’m serious–you’ve been freaking me out lately–can you please just speak clearly?” Y/n hissed through her teeth, both frustrated by his secrecy and the tainted mood it left on a wonderful date.

He ignored her as if she hadn’t spoken at all, feuling her frustration into a rolling boil.

“Jimin.” She repeated, a stern tone taking over any politeness she had left.

The man in question clasped the basket closed, and made his way to his feet while averting his eyes all the while.

“Please don’t ruin this–”

“I’m not trying to! You think I want to be this way?” Jimin snapped, his eyes wild. “I wanted to–I’m trying to tell you! Why can’t you understand that?” His chest heaved from his outburst that had Y/n flinching away, crawling to her feet and off of the blanket.

“I’m sorry–I didn’t mean to–” He groaned out, tousling his hair and letting his hand stay there to tug at the roots while he took a few deep breaths. Jimin shook his head and folded the blanket up, tucking it beneath his arm with labored breaths.

He looked up at her, eyes glassy and pleading. “Please listen to what I’m saying. I’m trying.”

Sweeping up the basket in his hand, he took a few timid steps closer to her. “I’m sorry for yelling. I’m frustrated with myself–not you. I want nothing more than to be clear with you, but I can’t. If it was up to me I would’ve told you already.”

Y/n didn’t know what to feel.

She found herself nodding, and letting him lead them back the way they had come. Past the now sleeping child, into his car, through the canopies of trees, and back down the winding road to the hotel and estate.

The ride back was silent, as were the few moments he sat with her in the car after removing the keys from the ignition while he tried to think of what else to say.

“Y/n, I had a great time. I wish it would’ve ended differently, and I’m sorry for that.” Jimin stepped out of the car, pausing to pull open the door to the backseat and rummage through the basket for something of importance.

Y/n didn’t wait for him to open her door and let herself out, stepping out onto the gravel and trudging up to the front steps of the estate. She felt stupid for getting all dressed up and having her hopes up for something good–something maybe more than what she should’ve expected. She wanted nothing more than to take the dress off and throw it across the room, its floral pattern a reminder of her foolishness that made her heart act so blindly. Of course it would end this way.

“If it was up to me…” Of course it all came back to her mother. How stupid was she to even think for a moment that she could have something nice that had nothing to do with her.

“Y/n–hold on.”

She heard the backseat door slam close, and his footsteps coming up behind her.

“Please take these with you.” Jimin held out the last of the chocolate covered strawberries, and her hands robotically moved up to grasp them, her fingers curling stiffly around the sharp edges.

“Thanks.”

Jimin looked absolutely torn up inside, fighting against something within himself that she wished he would just spit out. He seemed to find a middle ground, his jaw setting with determination and his eyes blazing into hers so brightly it made her breath hitch.

“I’m going to figure this out. I promise.” He leaned forwards, grazing his lips against her cheek before pulling away from her entirely. “I really did want this to end differently. Try and get some more rest tonight.” He took two fingers and tapped them on the box of strawberries. “Enjoy the rest of these.”

Y/n filtered inside by herself in a complete daze, the kiss having caught her off guard and shooting her up past the point of no return, igniting suffocating feelings from when she was pressed into his side enjoying his company. Feelings that were completely unknown to her, and foreign to her body and mind–something she was going to have to sift through another time for she had company the moment she walked through the door.

Jungkook was already waiting impatiently at the dining room table, his knee bouncing and his eyes barely focused on the book split open down the middle on the table while he waited for her return. She had barely three seconds to catch her breath and calm her racing thoughts before he was by her side and tugging her up the stairs to her room. He opened the door for the two of them and nudged her inside first, following in shortly after.

“You look upset. What did he do?”

Y/n made a series of confused and distressed squeaks and groans finding herself unable to decide on just one that accurately depicted her mood, her hands pulling at the sides of her face. “I don’t know. I’m so all over the place.” She slammed the box of (probably partially melted) chocolate strawberries onto her desk so forcefully the lid jumped off the top and landed crookedly over the fruit, the gorgeous floral arrangement towering above it that Jimin had given her another reminder of her trainwreck of a mind.

Jungkook looked from her, to the box, the flowers, her dress, then back to her face.

“Oh.”

“Gah! Don’t say it like that!” She wailed, pacing from one end of her rug to the other.

“Like what?” He shoved his hands in his jogger pockets.

“Like that!” Y/n gesticulated wildly in his direction with one of her hands. “Like…”

“Like you like him?”

Jungkook said it plainly, his tone void of any emotion. And she couldn’t understand why it made her heart clench as if he had shouted it at her.

“I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore. He pissed me off.” Y/n folded her arms across her chest and picked at the threads of her sleeves. “I’m just confused–that’s all. I just need to get used to everyone again. Don’t worry about anything.”

Jungkook shuffled awkwardly from where he stood near her bed, content with inspecting the patterns on her rug and sticking his foot out to nudge a corner back in place. “I’m not worried about anything other than you.”

Y/n paused her steps, an all too familiar flickering in her chest like the strike of a match, blooming flowers riddling her airways and through the gaps in her ribs. Absolutely not, she commanded herself from within for the second time today, the words intended for only herself falling out of her mind without her consent. “Stop that.”

He looked up at her incredulously, his brown eyes still holding unconditional care. “Stop what?”

“That was–Ugh!” Y/n stomped towards her bed and flopped onto its surface still fully clothed, burying her face in one of her pillows.

She heard the floor creak under his weight, and then felt the bed dip at her side where he lowered himself to observe her.

“Are you alright?”

Y/n kept her face in the pillow, muffling the sound of her words and slurring them together. “Do I look like I’m alright? Maybe I need another good bonk on the head to set myself straight.”

Jungkook stifled a laugh and ripped the pillow from her grasp. “Don’t say dumb things. Do you want me to get Namjoon for you to talk to?”

“Namjoon? Why Namjoon?” Y/n pouted, and grabbed for the next throw pillow to shove her face into.

“Because you seem to feel better after talking to him.” He snatched the next pillow from her hands again. “Don’t suffocate yourself, you still have a concussion.”

“Barely.” Y/n looked up at him, putting on her best scowl she could muster even if she knew she didn’t look as threatening in her current state. “Maybe. But I like you being here too.”

“Talk to Namjoon for a bit and I can come back later.” Jungkook swiped all of her throw pillows off of her bed in one fell swoop, tossing them one by one into the basket nearby. “You’ve lost pillow privileges.”

“‘Lost pillow privileges’?! Since when did you become so mean and bossy?” Y/n face planted back into her mattress, just wishing she could wallow out her confusion alone without any other pretty faces to confuse her weak heart.

“I always have been, remember? I’m only nice to you because I want to be.” He shrugged matter-of-factly, his slight monotonous tone taking on a lilt of humor.

“Well then be nice to me and give me back my pillows so I can suffocate out the stupidity from my doomed heart and dastardly mind.”

“Woah–What’s with all of this melodrama? Trouble in paradise?” Yoongi called in from her open doorway, still in his workman's suit and boots.

“Oh shut up.” Y/n kicked one of her feet out in petulant defiance. “Let me have a temper-tantrum in peace, will you?”

Yoongi let out a low whistle. “Allllrighty then. I was going to check your wards but if it's a bad time I can come back later.”

“Namjoon will be here soon–he can help then.” Jungkook piped up, rising from the edge of her bed to meet him at the door. “I texted him to come talk to you, Y/n. You don’t have to talk to me but at least talk to someone.”

“Why do the three of you insist on being so–”

“Caring? Devilishly handsome? Reliable? Chivalrous…” Yoongi listed off, doing his best (and succeeding) to get under her skin.

Y/n lifted her head from her pillows to glower at him through her lashes. “Annoying.” She plummeted her head back down. “I just want to isolate myself from the world and my problems in an unhealthy manner–is that too much to ask?”

“You should know that annoying comes with the package. It’s been what–nearly a lifetime together?” Yoongi joked, turning to head back into his room. “I can excuse a lot of unhealthy behaviors, but as your resident psychologist I think I’m going to have to prescribe you a good chat with the teddy bear.”

“Get out of here or close the door before someone sees you two.” Y/n rolled her eyes, calling for an end to his teasing.

She heard Yoongi cackle from the hall and say something quietly to Jungkook before the door shut behind them, leaving the rest of their discussion out of earshot. At least they finally gave her a moment's peace–though she couldn’t deny the small smile that crept up on her face against her will–Yoongi somehow never failed to make her laugh.

Y/n stayed taking deep breaths, laying on her stomach with her face pressed to the bed, the sound of the outside air filtering through the window the score to her absolute drama fest. Namjoon shuffled through the door shortly after, two steaming mugs of tea in his hands and an innocent smile on his face.

“Heard you were in desperate need of some TeaLC?”

“Who told you that–the pillow stealing traitor, or the unlicensed quack?” Y/n huffed, grabbing one of the mugs and taking a slow, deep sip of the sweet herbal remedy, smacking her lips a few times to take in the flavor. “You’re approved to stay.” She gave him a sharp side eye. “For now…”

He snorted, and pulled out her desk chair to face the edge of her bed, where Y/n balanced herself on. “Jesus–are you manic right now?”

“I don’t think so.” Y/n took another sip, eyeing him over the rim of her mug.

“Then what’s got you all tied up?” He crossed one of his ankles over the other, shoving the strawberries out of the way and propping his elbow on her desk.

“You won’t judge me?” She raised an eyebrow over her mug at his patient eyes.

“When have I ever?”

“When I suggested we put the oregano in the blue pots instead of the orange.”

Namjoon pointed an accusatory finger at her, forcing down the next swallow of his tea. “That’s because it made no sense. ‘Orange’, ‘Oregano’. They just go together.”

Y/n mocked his words into the surface of her tea as she brought it up for her next sip. Namjoon let the disrespect slide just this once, and moved onwards.

“Alright, spit it out.”

Y/n handed him her mug to place on the desk next to him, and slid her palms up and down her thighs through the fabric of her dress anxiously. “I think I’m screwed.”

“How so?” He prodded, an eyebrow raise of his own directed at her.

“I think it might…like…Jimin. But I’m not sure.” Y/n confessed, the words left her mouth dry and chattering with nerves. There were a few beats of silence while she waited for him to interrupt, but he didn’t, so she spoke up again. “I don’t know–it’s just wrong. Because I’ve been feeling similar feelings for other people and I think it could also just be me re-adjusting to being around everyone again. Maybe I’m confusing platonic feelings with romantic ones because it’s just been so long.”

Namjoon pinched his lips together tightly, his eyes looking down at the ripples of his tea as he messed with the handle, spinning it from side to side while he contemplated her words. “Now,” he started, “I’m going to say something–and please don’t take this the wrong way–but…” he shifted in his seat, the corner of his pinched lips doing their best to stay still. “Are you only just now realizing that your feelings might not be platonic?”

Smiling, there was spasm on her lower lid, She is going insane and he’s almost smiling.

“Excuse me?” Y/n blinked, her hands freezing in place.

“Y/n–we can joke about Jungkook being clueless sometimes but you really aren’t that much better.” He lost the fight with the muscles in his cheeks, and they sprouted upwards towards his eyes. “I mean really–you and Jimin were practically dating in high school. You and Jungkook were inseparable. And don’t get me started on you and Hoseok–”

“There’s never been anything between me and Hoseok!” Y/n’s voice cracked, and she found herself growing hot. “We were always just friends!”

“If you say so.” He rolled his eyes. “Look: romantic doesn’t always mean something bad, and it doesn’t remove the aspect of friendship you guys had and still have–those terms aren’t mutually exclusive. Did you ever toy with the idea that the opposite of your assumptions might be true?”

“I’m not picking up what you’re putting down here, Joon.”

He sighed and leaned forwards, using his hands to emphasize his point while he spoke. “You said you think that you are re-adjusting to affectionate platonic friends and are having trouble with that. Do you perhaps think that maybe they weren’t ever platonic, and since you experienced true platonic relationships up at school, you now have to readjust to the fact that these aren’t?”

Y/n remained stuck–struck by his words and the power they held over her head; the gears of her brain processing each word individually by plucking them apart and putting them back together like an assembly line of mental gymnasts.

“I didn’t–that’s not possible.” Y/n felt like she was floating outside of her body, and watching her head shake from side to side like a stranger.

“Can I ask you a more personal question?” Namjoon pushed further, keeping his tone neutral and even.

“Might as well while we are tearing about my entire existence on a Thursday afternoon.” Y/n muttered.

“On your Instagram, you made a post a few years ago about how love was something unique–not a finite resource–something that could be given freely to anyone and everyone all at once. And then you went on to talk about communication, respect–it was a long read. What was all that about?” He fixed her with a knowing gaze.

Y/n flushed, bringing a hand up to scratch behind her ears. “Well, I had tried out a rather….non traditional relationship…and found that I kind of liked it.”

“What kind?”

Y/n suddenly felt nervous, like she was exposing something vulnerable to someone she really respected. What if he didn’t like her anymore?

“I already promised that I wouldn’t judge.” Namjoon reassured her, picking up on her apprehension without her having to say it out loud.

“It was a multi-person relationship. There were three of us–it didn’t last very long but it didn’t end badly, thank god. Just moved on once we realized we weren’t compatible.” Y/n suddenly felt the need to explain herself further, terrified of being misunderstood. “It’s not some weird sex thing and I’m not a cheater! I can be with one person just fine! It all comes down to respect and communication and honesty and–”

“Y/n,” Namjoon held his hand up to cut off her impending ramble, “I think you forget I did half of my schooling in California. I’ve seen relationships of all different shapes and sizes during the time I was there.”

Y/n sighed out in relief, her shoulders sagging forwards. “Oh.”

“Yeah, so don’t worry about me.” Namjoon scratched at his nose and continued on. “I’m only asking because I wanted to know how you discovered that. Was that something you just knew, or something that didn’t show up until college?”

“I think I always just knew. I just didn’t know it had a name or anything.” Y/n felt shyness erupt from within, thumbing at a loose thread of the comforter below her. “Actually, I think I first noticed it as a kid when I was reading all of those love triangle romances from the 2010’s. I never understood why the main character had to pick one–why couldn’t she be with both?” Y/n shook her head dismissively, a humorless chuckle tumbling from her mouth. “But then I realized that wasn’t what everyone else thought, and it made me feel like I was wrong. So I just never really talked about it.”

Namjoon hummed, and gulped another sip of his tea. “Now my final question,” He put the cup down, wiping his mouth on his arm. “Do you think that has any correlation between how you view your relationship with, say, Jimin or Jungkook?”

Y/n glared at him but it wasn’t filled with any malice. “I never said anything about Jungkook.”

“Whatever.” He waved his hand to disperse the daggers she sent his way. “But do you?”

Y/n stopped for a moment, giving him the benefit of her actually trying to mull the question over. “I’m actually not sure.”

“Maybe you should think about it. Stew on it for a bit.”

Y/n wrinkled her nose in distaste–not liking the idea of turning her life upside down anymore than it already had been–but still she at least gave him the pleasure of a nod. “I’ll think about it.”

“Good.” Namjoon gave an encouraging nod, bumping the box of chocolates again when he reached over to grab his mug. “Now is that all?”

“Not quite.” Y/n pursed her lips and jumped to her feet, a chocolate covered strawberry sounding like a good support for the trouble of having to go over Jimin’s strange behavior. One of her hands reached for the mug of tea near Namjoon, and the other pushed the opened lid the rest of the way off.

“Oh my god.” Y/n gasped, her mug slipping from her fingers, and her other hand coming up to save both the mug and her floors from an unfortunate demise.

“What? Did I break them?” Namjoon spun in his chair, hands frantically coming up to look over her shoulder.

Y/n didn’t need to answer. The answer was written clear as day on a torn napkin resting where the eaten strawberries used to be in swirling neat penmanship.

“They’re listening to me. I’m sorry.”

_________________________________________

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