#I'm just saying what I've been thinking for a while

[earthtooz]

because throwing an apple at someone's head was a sign of professing one's love in greek myth.

fluff, gn!reader, i wrote this in a blip

When you told yourself today was the day you confessed to Phainon, you weren't expecting it to turn out like this.

The very ripe, very red, very ready-to-be-consumed apple was not supposed to fly out of your grasp the way it did. It was not supposed to hit him on the head, silencing his laughter as he dumbfoundedly blinks at the item that broke him out of his giddy stupor. It was not supposed to land perfectly in his hands as he glances between your face and your snack, which has now decided to work against you.

You definitely were not supposed to just mutter a meek 'I like you', and you definitely were not supposed to turn on your heel and run away from him!

And why is he chasing after you? Can't he tell you need alone time to recover from the unfortunate series of events that just unfolded?

"Y/n, wait!" He calls, barely sounding out of breath. Your feet hit cement, grass, climb up and down flights of stairs, they don't stop as you dash through every bit of the Grove of Epiphany, all for the sole purpose of shaking Phainon off your tail.

However, it was your mistake for believing someone like him would be willing to give up, and his stamina outpaced yours by a landslide, so just what were you thinking? Running away like that in the spur of the moment?

"No!" You shout back. "Leave me be!"

"But I have something to say to you!"

"I'm sorry for throwing an apple at your head!"

"It's okay! I don't mind- just, stop running!"

"Maybe you should stop chasing me!"

"For Titan's sake-"

As you round a pillar that lead to a short staircase, Phainon had jumped over the ledge and landed by the time you descended the flight, and with a lunge, his hand had securely wrapped itself around your elbow. You had lost. Lost the chase, the fight, your dignity as you gaze up at him, your stomach stirring with unease at his imminent rejection.

There's an unreadable look in his eyes but you don't try deciphering it because you're certain you seem like a mess right now. Your face felt flushed, sweat stuck to your skin, and your hair was all over the place, and worst of all, Phainon was going to reject you while you were in this state.

Titans, please help. This was not what you intended at all.

"You're too fast," he huffs, chest heaving like yours. "You really know how to steal someone's breath away."

"If you're gonna let me down just get to it already."

"Let you down? You think I was chasing you all this way just to let you down?"

"Or were you going to return my apple? It was my afternoon snack-"

"What? No, it's my apple now, you gave it to me!"

"Well, I... threw it at your head-"

"-I accept your confession!" He blurts boldly.

All you can do is splutter out a pathetic 'huh???'.

Phainon is exasperated at this point, desperate to confess the feelings that's been dwelling in his chest for the entire time he's known you. When he's waited this long, he wasn't going to let the moment go, not when you're the one who took the first step, having the nerve to capture his heart and take off bolting with it.

"I like you- a lot! You're everything I've ever wanted and I've waited so long for this, Y/n, please don't make me suffer any longer."

He doesn't blink as he looks at you, as if stubborn to not miss anything about you, not a single micro-change in your expression, the way your breath hitched at his passion, the tweaks of a small smile beginning to pull at your lips.

"Just how am I making you suffer?"

"You tell me the one thing I've been waiting to hear from you and instead of letting me speak, you run away and have me chase you like a Spirithief, does your cruelty know no bounds? Fine, if you're still unsure about my feelings then-"

He takes a big bite out of the apple, the crisp crunch speaking more than it should have to as you blink at his unwavering will.

Phainon's confession settles in the silence, and the first thing you do is laugh in a way that has him almost crumbling to his knees in relief. It was an ode to something beautiful, the start of a new beginning, and as he split your apple in half and handed you the unbitten part, the dull ache on his head finally began to subside.

© EARTHTOOZ 2025, do not steal, translate, repost my fics and do not recommend my fics onto any other site.

[dokyumms]

seventeen's reaction to you hiding an injury from them !

pairings: ot13 x reader

genre: fluff

word count: 2.2k (lowkey estimated bc word counter isn’t working)

cw: injuries (sprained wrist/ankle, concussions, etc.), blood mentioned but not descriptive (woozi) way too much backstory bc i'm a d1 yapper

a/n: for the record i've never sustained a major injury (thankfully!) besides when i dislocated my shoulder when i was 4 years old so this may not be accurate. SO sorry that this took so long i had a brain fart or smth 😔

scoups - you really didn't think he'd notice immediately, but he does. you accidentally rolled your ankle trying to catch the subway. it wasn't too bad; the doctor said you'd minorly sprained your ankle, but all it needed was a couple weeks in a splint. in some attempt to hide it, you put on some sweatpants and slippers and call it a day.

so deciding it wasn't that big of a deal (and lowkey a win since you got to skip work), you didn't think of telling seungcheol because one, you didn't feel like listening to him scold you for staying up too late the night before, and two, he'd just gotten off tour. he didn't need to spend the next couple of weeks babying you over an injury that didn't even require surgery.

but when he returns home from a day out and catches you instantly put down your leg from where you'd been elevating it on a footstool, he immediately grows suspicious of something. "why were you doing that just now?"

"eh? i think you're being paranoid- oh, um..." you try to play it off, but then he comes closer and inspects your body for a bit before pulling up your pant leg to reveal the splint surrounding your ankle despite your protests.

his eyes widen and he looks up at you from where he's kneeling. "you got hurt? when? why didn't you call me?" he asks rapidly. you sigh, listening to him scold you even more than what he would have if you'd told him earlier, finally promising him to never hide anything from him again.

jeonghan - basically, you slipped in the shower and gave yourself a concussion while jeonghan was at practice. out of pure embarrassment, you didn't tell jeonghan because let's be real, it sounded a little stupid and someone like him would never let you live it down.

and honestly, you thought you'd exceeded. jeonghan had come home and didn't mention anything to you, just complaining about how he hates all his choreography (he says this everytime he has to learn new choreo...). that was until you went to bed.

all is well, but then those massive headaches roll in one by one and now you're stuck with an unbearable migraine. trying not to disturb your boyfriend, you uncurl yourself from him and barely make your way to the kitchen.

the headache only gets worse as you fumble with the advil bottle while cursing your concussion aloud when suddenly a hand takes it and opens it. "here," you turn around, only to find jeonghan offering the bottle with a confused, sleepy look.

"and what were you muttering around? a concussion or something?" you gulp, taking the advil as you try to come up with an excuse. he takes your (literally three second) hesitation as an answer, "wait- you actually got a concussion?" avoiding the question, you attempt to usher him back to bed, but now he's somehow gained consciousness and doesn't back down. "y/n, what happened? and why didn't you tell me?" and when you finally tell him, he's... disappointed?

"baby, you really didn't tell me you got a concussion because you thought i'd make fun of you?" he sighs, shaking his head before putting his hands on your shoulder, "i'm your lover before a jokester or best friend, okay? i care about you more than anything. don't hide things like this from me."

joshua - in this situation, you would say "snitches get stitches" but the only one who actually got stitches was you.

you got a pretty bad arm wound while bike riding with your friend. it hurt and the only thing you really remembered was crying from the pain. anyways, joshua had just gotten off tour, and you'd feel bad for making him worry, so you made your friend promise to not mention it to him.

but the only warning you get when you return home from the hospital is a text from that same friend saying, "sorry y/n...." before you open the door and are greeted by a very worried joshua.

"y/n! i heard about your arm, are you okay?" you try to brush him off, but he doesn't let you. "hey, your friend also said you were going to try to hide it from me. why's that?"

"it's really not a big deal shua-"

"don't lie to me, she said you were crying, babe. why are you trying so hard to keep this from me?"

you don't know what to say and joshua just embraces you, "here, i'll take care of you okay?" and you let him, because it's joshua.

jun - ugh, he's so oblivious yet somehow annoyingly observant that he finds out without trying.

someone ran over your toe with a shopping cart during your grocery trip. it truly didn't hurt that much in the moment, but the hours after that? oh boy were they torturing.

it still didn't seem like enough to tell jun about, so you simply went about your day suffering in silence.

during dinner, however, he asks you through scoops of chinese steamed egg, "did you hurt your foot while shopping?"

taken aback by the accuracy of his question, you literally drop your spoon and he's just like, "what?? you just seem to be lighter on your feet today, that's all."

he takes the whole situation pretty lightly (oblivious i tell you) that he doesn't even believe you when you try to tell him the truth 😭 "okay, okay, you're just trying to make me seem smart now." so then you take off your sock at the dinner table and lift your bruised foot to show him and he looks at you like this: (°ロ°)

hoshi - unlike jun, he does NOT take it lightly. he's almost offended.

yes, you shouldn't be trying to walk around too much with a bad ankle, but you can't help it okay? sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do, like walk hoshi's dog, latte, while he works on his album.

he's been really busy, okay? you never told him about how you tripped around a week ago, so you'd just been living as if it never happened. honestly it's no surprise that you kind of automatically accepted his sister's request without thinking of your ankle (that was praying you'd stop putting pressure on it).

but then you make the grave mistake of posting your walk on instagram with just a sliver of the bandage wrapping up your ankle. he literally hearts the story, removes it, and replies with an angry face.

he calls you, "y/n! what are you doing walking around with an obviously injured leg? and why am i finding out through your instagram story?"

you're not sure what to say, but he talks for you, "i'm leaving practice right now so i can take care of both my babies, don't move. you'll make your ankle worse, babe."

"right, because you'd know-" and he hangs up on you,

wonwoo - silently observant...

you were surprised that you'd been able to go this long with a cast around your wrist, only using hoodies to conceal it, but turns out wonwoo's like those shop employees who wait for people to steal $1000 worth of stuff before dropping that lawsuit on them.

one day, you're both just sitting on the couch when he grabs ahold of your wrist. he literally waits for you to be distracted, doomscrolling on social media, to do it.

but then you feel him roll up your sleeve, and now you're doomed.

"what's this, y/n?" he asks firmly, holding your arm tight enough to where you can't move, but somehow gently as to prevent any discomfort (how cute of him).

"you really didn't think i would notice it? you wearing hoodies when it's 70 degrees, eating with your nondominant hand, taking forever to shower because you have to wash your hair with one arm, why didn't you just let me take care of you?"

you sort of shrink back in shame; wonwoo read you and you were stunned. he simply takes you into his arms, murmuring, "i'm not mad, i just want you to know that you don't have to struggle like that when i'm here. i'll notice either way."

woozi - ouch. you accidentally cut yourself while cleaning up the remnants of a glass cup you dropped. the cut was deep, but somehow still in a sleepy daze, you cleaned it to the best of your ability, slapped some gauze on it, and went back to bed.

whenever jihoon comes home, he follows his normal 2 am schedule, but then notices the blood-stained towel in the hamper. he rushes to your room, only to find you sound asleep.

still, he shakes you awake, "y/n, why's there a towel with blood all over it in the laundry room?" you kind of look at him, confused, before simply lifting your arm to reveal the amateur work you did you bandage it.

at first, he sighs in relief, but then you see his brows furrow. "when did this happen? seems kinda serious..." he inspects it closely as you mumble, "i dunno, couple hours ago? i dropped something."

"what? why didn't you call me? i could've come home earlier to take care of it." he says, feeling guilty about not being there.

"it's really nothing, you've been really busy anyway. this isn't something you should worry about-" but he shushs you. "i'm never too busy to help you, y/n. i don't want you thinking like that."

dk - like hoshi, he doesn't take it lightly. you took a heavy fall while rushing to work a couple days ago. it wasn't a big deal until your arm started to bruise pretty badly.

you knew seokmin would freak out at it, so you planned on wearing long sleeve shirts to cover it up, and it'd been working pretty well.

but unfortunately for you, this had to be the time where you forgot to bring a shirt with you to shower, accidentally bringing two pairs of pants instead.

you tried to dash in and out of your room as fast as possible, but seokmin was plopped on your bed, getting a clear view of your arm (you had a towel wrapped around you okay?).

his jaw drops, you grab a shirt, water is dripping everywhere, and you yell “i’ll explain later!” as you run back to the bathroom.

when you come back, his jaw is still in the same position. “seok, it’s really not that bad.” you assure him, but he barely pays attention, just reaching for your arm. “it looks bad though…” he mumbles, poking at the bruise like a little kid, “that didn’t hurt, right?”

ugh, he’s so cute.

mingyu - you somehow manage to slice your hand open while cooking dinner for whenever mingyu comes home.

do you tell him? absolutely not. you definitely do not need him locking you out of the kitchen after you try to cook one time.

you really don’t have time to go to the hospital (which you definitely should’ve done??) so you opt to put some pressure on it with a towel until it stops bleeding, and because you have terrible timing, mingyu enters the apartment.

at first he says “smells pretty good! what are you-“ he strides into the kitchen to see the food you were unable to plate at the dining table (that actually looks pretty good), your distressed face, and then your hand.

“at least i got here on time,” he says, taking your hand and looking at it closely. “don’t worry, i was like trained for this stuff.” he smiles, heading toward what you used to think was an overstuffed medical cabinet.

“you didn’t even call me. were you planning to take care of this yourself?” he asks, wrapping your hand with precision. “i’m here for a reason, you know? you just gotta let me help you, baby.”

the8 - you had a feeling minghao would notice immediately, but there was a very slim chance he’d miss it this time. he’d just got done filming for his survival show, and you knew he’d be tired when he got home.

you’re a pretty clumsy person, and you always felt bad for making a usually calm minghao worried. so, when you tripped and got a concussion the day before, you didn’t tell him.

it was going fine, painkillers acting as your savior, but then you ran out of them. groaning, you decide to wait for minghao to leave the house to go buy more, but he doesn’t?

it’s like his subconscious knew your plan, and eventually you just can’t take it anymore, calling your friend and asking her to drop some off.

then you go to take a nap on the couch as an attempt to sleep off the headache you have, unaware that your friend’s at the door.

minghao gently shakes you awake, bottle of advil in his hand and a concerned look on his face. “i knew something was up with you. you should’ve just told me, y/n.” he says, explaining how your friend gave him a weird face when he asked about the medication and then dropping how you got a concussion like it was obvious.

“we shouldn’t hide things like this, okay? it’s not good for you.”

seungkwan - let’s just say, you may not be cut out for volleyball.

you were just goofing off with your friends, playing volleyball, when you dislocated your shoulder. seungkwan was hosting a variety show, and you didn’t feel like bothering him, so you didn’t mention it, not even when he video called you during his lunch break.

it wasn’t that bad of an injury, the doctor popped it back into its socket and you were sent home with some medication.

a week passes with no problem, but then seungkwan offers to play some badminton (like the LAST sport you should be trying to play during recovery), and thinking it wouldn’t be too bad, you accept.

it’s only till you’re actually swinging the racket that you realize that your shoulder has definitely not healed, let alone healed enough to really be playing a sport. you suddenly pause, “wait- just give me a minute.” he runs over from his side of the court. “hey, what’s going on? you look like you’re in pain.”

trying to get out the fact it’s because you got a dislocated shoulder, you ramble “it’s fine, just a dislocatedshoulderigotaweekagowithouttellingyou 😄”

and he’s like “WHAT? are you crazy?? why are you trying to play on it?” and proceeds to grab that same arm and drag you out of the court. he definitely scolds you for the rest of the day…

vernon - normally he’s chill, but right now he’s lowkey tweaking out.

while he was visiting his sister for her birthday, you broke your leg. you didn’t tell vernon because you wanted him to have a good time with his sister (how nice of you 😊), but when he comes home, he doesn’t think of it as such.

you’re laying on the couch, watching a show, whenever he enters the apartment. there’s a blanket over you, so he doesn’t notice the leg immediately.

“finally, this jet lag has got me *yawn* out of it.” he says, lifting the blanket just enough so he can slide in next to you.

he still doesn’t notice until his leg touches your boot, yelping in surprise. “why are you wearing shoes on the couch?” and then making another surprised noise when you reveal its a medical boot.

“did this happen when i was gone? you should’ve told me…” he gently scolds you, mainly because you made him so surprised, and then just lays back with you on the couch like nothing happened.

dino - you really wanted to tell him, but he just looked so happy in singapore and you really didn’t feel like ruining his time there.

on the way to class, you fractured your wrist while trying to catch yourself. since then, you’ve been struggling trying to do basically anything: changing clothes, showering, cooking, the list goes on.

but you didn’t tell him, just choosing to get through it until he comes home.

“y/n~ i’m home!” he calls out, walking in with his luggage. you’re in the shower, arm sticking out as far as it can away from the water, trash bag wrapped around that arm, and ultimately, just in a bad position.

“um, in here! can you help me?” you holler. you feel bad for making him help you as soon as he got home, but you’re going through hell and back trying to shampoo your hair.

he walks into the bathroom, “you sure you want me in here?” and all he sees is a fogged up shower with a trash bagged arm sticking out of it. surprisingly, he immediately understands what happened.

“babe, you should’ve told me earlier.” he says, helping you wash your hair properly. “i don’t like to think that you’ve been struggling like this without me there.” he frowns, kissing you on the forehead.

[jamiebluewind]

My favorite part is that there are like 12 different sub categories of executive disfunction (my therapist uses response inhibition, working memory, emotional control, task iniation, sustained attention, planning/prioritizing, organization, time management, flexibility and task switching, goal directed persistence, and stress tolerance), AND EACH OF US ARE GOOD AT SOME OF THEM! So you end up running into the problem of not thinking you have executive disfunction because some of them work and you also found work arounds, hating on yourself because another neurodivergent excels at a skill you struggle in, or completely missing a struggle somebody else has because it's not one of yours. So we all out here smacking into glass, BUT ITS NOT THE SAME GLASS!

My random bullshit yall can skip!

My roommates and I took a test with a therapist last year and it helped us a LOT with how we got along (me examples)

I have the metacognition of a god while Win's is weak, so I give her prompting questions that help her figure out homework and similies to understand new concepts. Meanwhile, I state out loud when my brain is in a metacognition anxiety spiral (thinking about what my thoughts and actions mean/what are all possiblies for others thoughts with probability) which they respond to (at most 2 sentences but usually just "No." XD) which has both decreased my anxiety attacks and increased how much we can all go out together (done it enough that my brain will automatically tell me what they'd say which usually takes care of it).

I'm bad at emotional control so I've been learning coping techniques.

Win used to get frustrated with Sarah about getting stuff done, but while Win is strong at task iniation, Sarah is bad and I'm in the middle, so now we use different systems for each of us. Also, my flexibility is BAD and working memory is meh so my responsibilities each get a specific time slot and day (on top of them letting me finish a task or keeping track for me instead of giving me multiple things to focus on/switch between at once).

I CAN make a really good thorough list, but doing it usually takes an hour or two (plus I'm bad with how long things take), so Win will spend a few minutes knocking out clear REASONABLE lists for us instead.

Meanwhile, my goal direction and sustained attention can keep chugging on things like it's nothing WAY past the point of hair pulling for them, so I stopped listening to my body about breaks for group stuff and let them set the pace and max time a day. I only take a break for every 2-4 of theirs, but it works! They also have my permission to stop me if I've been working an unreasonable amount of time (like spending over 9 hours straight without food researching quality paint brands with asthma safety) which is better on my health.

Side note, my roommate's neurotypical mom took the test with us. Her results showed she was just normal with no weaknesses. Despite KNOWING she's neurotypical beforehand, all three of us were like

followed by overlapping loud questions and noises.

I love talking with neurotypical people about my executive dysfunction because I'm like "yeah there's this invisible wall in my head that I'm incapable of getting past no matter what I do and it stops me from doing things" and they're like what the actual fuck

Meanwhile other neurodivergents are like

[beenreidingaboutyou]

When I'm Down on My Knees, You're How I Pray

who? Spencer x afab! reader

content warnings: NSFW, MDNI, 18+ content, unholy use of bible verses, inaccurate use of religious themes, oral (m), fingering (f), reader has hair that can be pulled, mention of religious trauma, Jesus Reid, please let me know if I've missed anything else!

a/n: Believe it or not, I actually toned down the blasphemy in this fic. Huge thank you to @minswriting for answering my 20 million questions about this because I've never written smut before and that's the majority of what she does. (Also she came up with the title, it's a Lana lyric)

thank you to @cafekitsune for the MDNI divider and @saradika-graphics for the stained glass divider

word count: 1.3k

You’ve spent your adult life avoiding anything related to church and religion. Growing up in an overly religious household and being forced to attend church services twice a week, in addition to the Bible study and choir practice, meant that anything related to religion left a bad taste in your mouth. While you’ve never outright mentioned this to Hotch, he seemed to pick up on it and respected your wishes, never sending you to interview priests or visit cathedrals that had been the scene of a crime. At least, until he had respected your wishes until this case. He paired you with Spencer and sent you both to investigate an older crime scene at a nearby church. Despite your best efforts, you were unable to weasel out of your assignment, so here you were, stuck thinking about the fact that you were going to church with the one person you’d always been attracted to since joining the BAU.

You were oddly quiet as the two of you walked through the building

“So, what are your thoughts?” Spencer asks, breaking the silence.

“Being here brings back all of the religious trauma I endured as a kid and you looking like Jesus is certainly not helping.”

You see Spencer furrow his brows in confusion, his gaze shifting from the church to you, “I-I’m sorry, did you just say I look like Jesus?” 

“Yeah, I did. Except you’d be the one I’d get on my knees for,” you say teasingly, shooting a wink in his direction.

He chokes on air, “e-excuse me?”

“Anyways, let’s go check out the confessional,” you reply, wanting to get out of the church as soon as possible.

As you step into the cramped confessional, you can feel Reid close behind you. You can feel the effect your teasing remark had on him as his bulge presses against your back, though you’re sure the action is unintentional on his part. 

You turn to face him and glance down at the tent his pants, “do you want some help with that?”

His face flushes, “w-what?”

“Shhh, let me take care of you,” you mumble as you get down on your knees in front of him. 

You hear his breath hitch in his throat as you undo his belt. You quickly unbutton and unzip his pants, pulling them down and leaving him in his boxers. You palm his bulge and glance up at him, “Looks like you enjoyed the idea of me worshipping your cock.”

He whimpers and nods. You slowly pull his boxers down, freeing his length. He whimpers as you run your thumb over his tip, collecting the leaking precum. “You like that, baby?” you ask, looking up at him. 

He nods his head pathetically in response. You bite your lip and wrap your hand around his length, giving a few experimental tugs. The sound of his whimpers went straight to your cunt, leaving you desperate to hear more.

“My heart is glad and my tongue rejoices, Psalm 16:9” you recited before you slowly lick the underside of his cock, going from the base to the tip. You can’t help but smirk slightly at the moan that escapes his mouth. You wrap your lips around him, only taking a little more than the tip into your mouth. You look up at him as you swirl your tongue around his length, loving the way he’s reacting to your teasing. His eyes are dark with lust as he looks down at you, enjoying the view, but clearly wanting more. You slowly take more of him into your mouth and you feel him tangle his fingers in your hair as he lets out a loud moan. You keep going until he hits the back of your throat, causing you to gag slightly. Spencer gently caressed your hair, a subtle way of telling you to be careful.

You start to bob your head, going at a teasingly slow pace, savoring the moans and whimpers that he lets out. You hollow out your cheeks around him and he groans in response, bucking his hips slightly. You pick up your pace as he grips your hair, gathering your hair in a makeshift ponytail. He groans and uses your hair to guide you, forcing you to go faster. You moan around his length and something in him snaps. He holds your head still and starts bucking his hips, thrusting into your mouth, causing you to gag each time he hits the back of your throat. You look up at him with tears in your eyes, loving the sight of him with his head thrown back and mouth open. He moaned your name so prettily, the sound echoing around the church.

You feel his cock twitch and he starts to pull out, but you grab his hips and hold him in place. He cums with a loud groan, shooting his seed down your throat. You eagerly swallow his load before leaning back, a trail of spit and cum. You wipe your mouth with the back of your hand as you stand up. You can’t resist the urge to wink and say, “Amen” 

He takes your face in his hands and pulls you in for a rough, needy kiss. His tongue slips past your lips and he groans at the taste of himself on your tongue. His hands move down to your thighs and he picks you up, placing you on the prayer ledge without breaking the kiss. 

“From the fruit of their lips people are filled with good things and the work of their hands brings them reward, Proverbs 12:14,” Spencer whispers in your ear as his hands slowly trail under your skirt, his fingers tracing your thighs as they get closer to your core. You moan softly as his fingers brush against your panties and he starts pressing open mouth kisses to the side of your neck. You let your head fall back, giving him more room to kiss and suck on your neck and collarbones. He smirks and gently sucks a mark on your pulse point as he pushes your panties to the side.

“You’re so wet, angel,” Spencer murmured against your skin. “Did you get all worked up using your mouth on me?” 

You whimper quietly as he uses one of his fingers to spread your wetness around. He doesn’t tease you for long, within moments you feel the tip of his finger brushing against your clit. You moan in response, his touch sending sparks all over your body. He begins to gently rub your clit in a circular motion, working you slowly.

You gasp loudly when he slips one of his fingers inside you, his long, slender finger reaching far deeper than yours ever could. He slowly pumps his finger in and out, letting you get used to the sensation before adding a second finger. His pace increases and he curls his fingers, brushing against your g-spot. You moan his name, causing him to pick up speed. 

“Does that feel good, angel?” Spence asked lowly, watching the way you fell apart under his touch.

 “Uh-huh, so good, Spence”

He smirks as you clench around his fingers. His thumb moves to rub your clit as he continues thrusting his fingers. 

“You gonna cum for me?” 

“Yes, yes, ohhh god.” You moan loudly, shaking as you let go, your thighs squeezing around him. 

“I wanna be inside you, angel,” Spencer mumbled, pushing your skirt up. 

You nod and lift your hips to make it easier for him. You can hear a low moan slip from his mouth when he exposes the lacy panties you’re wearing that day. He hooks his fingers in the waistband to pull them down, but gets interrupted by the ringing of his phone.

He reluctantly answers the call, “Reid.” 

You listen quietly as he speaks, trying to get your breathing back to normal. He hangs up the phone and pouts, “Hotch wants us back at the station.”

“I gathered,” you mumble as he steps back, giving you room to stand up and fix your skirt.

“If you want, you can come by my hotel room later? Finish what we started?” He offers as he pulls up his pants.

“I’d like that. I’d like that a lot.”

[darkficsyouneveraskedfor]

Can't Have One Without the Other 2

Warnings: non/dubcon, marital troubles, body insecurity, and other dark elements. My username actually says you never asked for any of this.

My warnings are not exhaustive but be aware this is a dark fic and may include potentially triggering topics. Please use your common sense when consuming content. I am not responsible for your decisions.

Characters: Bucky Barnes

Summary: your marriage is on the rocks.

Note: I asked about husbands and all your hoes said Bucky (with a few Sy’s in the middle). I wasn’t intending on a whole series but I thnk it would be fun to have husband!Bucky turn a bit desperate.

As usual, I would appreciate any and all feedback. I’m happy to once more go on this adventure with all of you! Thank you in advance for your comments and for reblogging ❤️

The desolation lingers, even with Bucky's return. You shuffle down the hall to your office and set your bag on your desk. He fills the doorway as he watches you unpack your tablet and place it on its tripod.

"Some homecoming," he growls.

You look up, eyebrows rising, unready for his confrontation. As unprepared as you are for him to be there. You're so used to being alone. He feels like a stranger.

"I'm sorry, Bucky, the issue is due at the editor tonight. And Janine sent me the draft ages ago," you avert your eyes guiltily. "It should be too much longer..."

"She sent it a while ago. Meaning, you're the one who slacked," he sniffs.

You nod and sit, "sorry. I messed up. Again."

You swivel to face the tablet and take the pen off the side. You unlock it and pinch with your fingers to zoom. He clucks and marches off as you struggle not to show your discomfort.

You lean in and focus on the work. It's so natural to you, it's soothing. To know exactly what you're doing. Not like this. Not like living. Not like marriage.

He comes back through the open door and smacks his hand down on the desk. You reel back with the pen in hand as he uncovers your rings, leaving them next to your monitor. You glance at him, "thanks. I... thanks."

Your lips twitch and your cheek ticks. You can't stop moving your mouth. That old nervous habit is back.

"Oh, and these might help," he sets down your glasses next to the rings. "Probably more important to you."

You hesitate and take the rings first. You slip them on and admire the shine. The teardrop is just as sparkling as the day he gave it to you. You reach for your glasses and he catches your hand.

"I didn't want to go," he says. "So I'd appreciate if you stop acting like I abandoned you."

You shake your head and shrug. "I don't think that--"

"I saw the Kelly's bag on the counter," he scoffs. "The soda cup next to the bed..."

"I've been busy. I forgot to tidy up."

"And cook," he challenges.

You wiggle free of him. Because he lets you. He could easily keep you in his grasp. He rescinds his hand and exhales heavily.

"Yep," you put your glasses on and turn back to your tablet, overly aware of how much room your ass takes up in that chair. "I'll cook tonight. I have a steak for you."

He clicks his tongue, "I'm concerned, not a tyrant."

"I know, Buck, alright? I'm sorry, I have a lot going on--"

"You do, yeah. Me too," he crosses his arms. "Like spending a month away from my wife. Getting my head knocked half-off. Sleeping on concrete--"

You drop the pen. You can stay up. You had that coffee, it will help.

"I better marinate that steak, make sure that flavour sticks," you move out from behind the desk. He moves to meet you, blocking you.

"I don't want you to fucking act like some trapped housewife. You haven't even kissed me," he sneers.

Your heart drops. You hadn't even thought of it. You look at his belt. It's as if he plunged that knife there between your ribs.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry, okay?" You flutter your fingers nervously. "Oh, I..." your lips slant back and forth.

"What's wrong with you? Why are you acting like this?" He shakes his head. 

"Please, I..." you step closer and reach for him, "I'll give you a kiss--"

He stops you by your shoulders and moves you away from him. It's like he's slapped you. He puts you at arms' length. He grits his teeth as his nostrils flare.

"Kiss me because you want to," he shoves you just a little. "I'll order a fucking cheeseburger. Finish your work." He pokes his tongue in his cheek and spins away. "You don't need to let anyone else down."

He stomps out and you stagger, leaning on the desk to steady yourself. What the hell? You tried. You did. Didn't you?

You swallow and blow out a long, dry breath. You close your eyes and gather up what's left of your strength. You sit and stare at the tablet. The pen sits in front of the stand. You should cry. You want to. Your eyes are barren. Nothing.

You grab the pen and roll close. You focus on the line work for the next panel. You have to stop and ease the tremble in your hand. Your frustration mounts as you can't keep the pixels from wobbling.

You hear a soft thump. You sit up and look toward the door. You hear the clatter of something else. More things tossed around. You get up and leave the pen behind.

You step into the open door and listen. He's upstairs. You go up, a step at a time, following the noise with baited breath. He's in the bedroom.

As you peer inside, he's pillaging your top drawer. He grips your vibrator and gnashes his teeth. It crunches in hand before he hurls it away. Your books are on the floor before the bookshelf, your nightstand is on its side. He continues to tear apart your things.

"Bucky, what are you doing?" You near him and touch his arm.

"Looking for evidence," he opens your jewelry box and spins the hooks that hold your necklaces.

"Evidence? Of what?"

"Him."

"Him?" You echo in confusion.

"The other guy."

"Other... Bucky? How can you say that?"

"There has to be someone else," he grabs the jewelry box and flings it with a crash. He turns to face you. "You're icing me out."

"I'm not. Bucky, I-- I--" You can't find a single fucking drop of moisture in your head. It stings for him to accuse you and yet it's all locked inside you. "I waited for you. I've been waiting. And I would never-- How could you even think--" You stammer through your anger and hurt. "You-- I thought you knew me."

"I thought I fucking did too," he snorts.

He sidesteps you and you turn to watch him storm out. You step on a book and hear the spine break. You look down as his footfalls hammer downstairs. You bend and pick up the journal you forgot. The one with all the postcards he used to send you while on missions. You thought it was cute back then how old-fashioned he was. He hated texting, but he sent you these cards he found in local shops. They just feel like reminders of what you've lost. It's gone, isn't it?

[karikarasuno]

part one | part two | part three | part four

law is a grown man. with a hard job. a tiring one. exhausting even.

so he shouldn’t be embarrassed that he fell asleep on your couch watching your favorite movie like an old fucking man. nor should he be embarrassed that you woke him up mid snore with sleepy eyes and an amused grin.

“you sleeping over, sleepyhead or should i send you home?”

his mouth is dry and he’s comfortably full. and was having the best dreamless sleep. the best sleep he’s had in a while, really.

“I should go home,” he mutters, his voice hoarse from lack of use. he stretches and his spine cracks. you chuckle and smack him on the shoulder lightly before standing up and holding out your hands to help him up. he slaps his palms against yours, doing most of the work getting up but putting enough weight on you so that you think you’re helping.

“i guess this is goodbye,” you say, fingers toying with law’s expectantly. but law is still a little high. and more than a little sleepy. so when he looks back at this moment he can’t help but cringe.

he should have kissed you. you wanted him to kiss you. he wanted to kiss you. but he hugged you instead. one-armed and a touch awkward.

“oh! ok,” you muffle it into his hoodie, but he doesn’t remember responding. not until the next morning when he’s showering away the grogginess before work.

oh, he’s an idiot.

so yeah maybe over the last few days he’s been avoiding you. but he also has been busy. he had multiple surgeries. all very difficult to do. all successful. he shouldn’t beat himself over a kiss. or lack thereof.

he hasn’t been home for more than an hour before there’s a knock on his door. he's expecting company so he doesn't think twice before swinging the door open. but he expects cora to be standing there or even his sister. neither of which are taking up the space in front of his open door. instead you stand there with your hands on your hips and a very determined look on your face.

"you're avoiding me," you say rather bluntly. no hi or hello or how are you doing.

"i'm not," he argues, even though he is.

"you totally are," you point an accusatory finger at him, but he can't tell if you're actually upset with him or not.

"no, i've been busy this week," he shrugs trying his hardest to be nonchalant.

"oh so this has nothing to do with us making out in my kitchen or the fact that you thanked me for it when you left?"

he cringes again. what possessed him to thank you he'd never know. all he knows is that he's slightly mortified that he did. so fine, he's been avoiding you.

"you know, we don't have to make this weird," you continue, talking animatedly with your hands. "i mean we were really starting to become friends so if us kissing made things awkward then we don't have to do it anymore."

anymore. as if the two of you have been kissing this whole time.

"like really, we can forget it ever happened. but if the kiss was bad and that's why you're ignoring me just lie because then i'd have to start avoiding you and it will turn into this whole fucking thing."

he never realized how much you rambled. words are falling from your lips so quickly that he can only get the gist of what you're saying, but even that registers as ridiculous to him. of course the kiss wasn't bad.

"if you didn't like that kiss it would be such a huge blow to my ego because if i'm being honest that was such a great kiss for me, but if you hated it-"

"stop," he interrupts because at no point does it sound like you're going to run out of air. "i didn't hate the kiss. it was a good kiss."

"so then why...?"

"just come inside," he says, annoyed that his ac is being wasted by the open door.

and he doesn't register the way your eyes widen and your jaw drops when he closes the door behind you and pushes you against it. he's just trying to gather his thoughts. he's not trying to make a move. not really anyway. but with his hand splayed out across your stomach and your back firmly against the wood, he notices that you've finally stopped talking.

he sighs with relief.

"i don't regret what we did. i just have been feeling weird about what i said," he admits, almost wishing that he didn't.

"it was sweet," you grin, head tilting to the side.

"it was..." he trails off, electing not to even finish the sentence. "anyway i enjoyed the kiss so you can stop freaking out over it."

"how much?" your grin is growing smug and he hates how attractive he finds it.

"what?"

"how much did you enjoy the kiss?" now your grin is absolutely shit-eating.

"enough to do it again," he confesses. he sees the way your eyes light up, hell he feels the way your excitement builds when you adjust beneath his hand. the hand that he should’ve moved but decided subconsciously not to because he also enjoys the way you feel against him.

“so what are you waiting for then?” your heads cocks to the side and you look up at him with flirty eyes as your tongue swipes across your bottom lip.

“is that what you want?” he steps closer to you, his socked feet touching the toe of your shoes. his hand presses more firmly against your stomach and he watches the way your head thuds against his door.

everything was normal two seconds ago. there was no heat in his home. no tension pulling his muscles taut. but now he’s drawn to you in unexplainable ways. he’s going to kiss you. he has the choice but the way you’re looking at him makes him question if the decision really was ever his.

“come on then,” you whisper, hands sliding up his arms until your hands lock behind his neck, “kiss me.”

you don’t tug him down. you try to but law decides its easier to lift you off the floor so that you come nose to nose with each other. he likes the way you gasp when he uses his body to press you against the door again. he especially likes the way he can feel the exhale of your shock tickle his lips.

“fine,” he says just before his lips meet yours. he remembers kissing you the first time but because of his high everything was a little muddy. the memory tinged with just a bit of fog. like an overcast day.

this kiss though is going to be seared into his mind. you whimper when he kisses you. did you do that last time?

your hands are so insistent as you tug him closer. his tongue is already in your mouth so he doesn’t know how much closer he can really be. but you’re kinda desperate. for him.

it makes his head reel. and when you tug on his hair, the pressure on his scalp makes him groan. fuck, he really wants you. how you could ever think he didn’t like kissing you was beyond him. he’s already hard for christ’s sake.

“we should go to my room.” he hopes you agree. prays for it. because if you keep kissing him like this his knees will eventually give out.

“ok,” you respond with your lips still touching his. “i’d like that.”

he knows you expect him to put you down with the way your legs start to unhook from around him, but he tightens his hold on your hips. reluctant to let you go.

it’s been a while since law was able to touch and be touched like this. so the idea of letting you go now, when you were already so willing to be in his arms, will actually devastate him. a feeling he will have to reevaluate later.

instead he carries you off to his bedroom, not giving you the time or space to look around. not that there’s much to see given how painfully boring his home is. he’s a victim of millennial grey.

he tosses you onto his bed and he watches you bounce slightly before he’s climbing over you. his lips find your neck where he starts to place open mouthed kisses across sensitive skin. you arch into him and he really likes the way your breasts press into him as you do.

“you have a four poster bed?” the question rattles in his brain uselessly until he pulls away to see you gazing up at his bed frame.

“yeah… it was my parents before they decided to upgrade their bedroom furniture,” he says like it’s obvious before moving back down to kiss your neck again, this time trailing wet kisses across your collarbone.

“it would be so pretty if you draped those white thin curtains over it. you know the ones?”

he’s growing frustrated when he looks back up at you and you’re still looking at frame. almost as if you’re already envisioning it.

he tilts your head back towards him by pressing his pointer finger to your chin. your eyes slide over to him and he can tell you’re a little dazed. but he’s not sure if it’s because of him or his fucking bed frame.

“can you focus?” he grits out, eyes glaring into yours. you blink up at him, lips stretching into a salacious smile.

“on you?” you ask, very clearly knowing the answer but taunting him anyway.

“on me, exactly.” but law refuses to wait for an answer from you. he’s hard and his hands are finally on you and he can still taste the remnants of cranberry juice on your tongue. you’re driving him crazy.

he kisses you hard with purpose. the purpose to mostly shut you up. but to also keep your attention on him. he craves your attention. maybe he’s deprived.

none of it matters though because you whine into his mouth when he sucks your tongue. your hands come up to fist his t-shirt and your hips start seeking friction against the thigh he placed between your legs.

his hands push your top over your breasts, the fabric bunching beneath your chin, and exposing the poor excuse of a bra you have on. it’s just thin lace that does nothing to conceal how hard your nipples are. but it still decorates your chest in a way that has him salivating.

law dips his head down to press a kiss to your sternum, dragging his lips across your chest until his lips hover over one of your nipples. you wiggle relentlessly when he doesn’t do anything, instead he rests his nose against the top of your breast and he inhales the smell of your skin.

“don’t tease me,” you complain, nails dragging through his hair in an attempt to get him to do something.

“i’m not teasing,” he replies, his lips ghosting over your hard peak and smiling to himself when your hips stutter where you’re grinding against his leg.

“you are,” you whine, and when he glances up at you your head is thrown back and you’re trying to take measured breaths through your mouth. good, he needs you focused only on him.

“no,” his lips wrap around your nipple and you moan out so pretty for him. his dick twitches.

“i’m savoring,” he emphasizes before sucking your nipple into his mouth and dampening the transparent fabric with his spit. you moan out his name and his skin goosebumps at the sound. he’s thought of this more times than he’d care to admit but it dulls in comparison to the reality.

you’re clingy. and he short circuits at the realization. for all your quippy little comments and playful mocking you have little to no resolve right now. you’re putty in his hands. and your body is positively begging for him not to stop.

“law,” your voice is wispy and distant. your eyes are screwed shut and your lips are parted and you want him. need him. he can just tell.

he moves down your body and your hands follow. always touching him. he can’t get enough. he takes off your shoes rougher than he intends but you’re eager. so eager you start working your pants down your thighs.

“it matches,” he exhales after you kick off your pants and try reaching for him again.

“huh?” you scoot closer to the edge of the mattress where he’s standing, seeking him out again. his hand drifts between your thighs, fingers carefully dragging across your covered center. the lace of your panties is the same as your bra. the hair on his arms bristle when it occurs to him that you did this on purpose.

your hand finds his shirt, intent on pulling him towards you again, but instead he drops to his knees. law spreads your legs wide, massaging your thighs as he tosses your calves over his shoulders.

he kisses the inside of each knee, luxuriating in the feel of your skin against his lips. it really has been too long. when he looks up at you, you’re propped on your elbows staring down at him. your pupils are blown out and your shirt is still tucked beneath your chin and you look so expectant.

he doesn’t miss the way your hands ball up his comforter as he kisses down your thighs. or the way you bite your lip when his breath fans over your pussy.

law’s grip tightens on your thighs the closer his lips get to tasting you. he’s trying so hard to be normal but he finds it difficult when he can see how wet you are through your panties.

he slips his fingers beneath the edge of your underwear, sliding it off to the side. he groans at the sight. unintentionally. he takes two fingers and spreads you apart, the contact has your hips rolling into him.

you’re so responsive. especially when he dips two fingers into your entrance and drags your slick over your clit. he does that a few more times, watching as you clench around nothing every time he pulls them out.

“you say you’re not a tease,” you start, whispering because your voice is all breath at this point, “but it’s really starting to feel like you’re lying.”

he chuckles against your inner thigh, entertained. “i’d apologize but this view is too pretty not to appreciate.”

“i think you’d appreciate it better if you actually did something,” you breathe, voicing ticking up with impatience.

“and what would that something be?” he asks, fingertips resting at your entrance but refusing to go in further. he’s having fun. more fun than he’s had in a long time.

“something like this,” you say, reaching between your own thighs to move his fingers out of the way. it’s the last thing he expects you to do. to finger yourself right in front of his face. but he stares as you pump your fingers in and out with practice. they’re considerably smaller than his yet you still roll your hips as you meet each gentle thrust. you still moan in relief. you still sigh his name.

“move,” now he’s the impatient one. he can’t bear the sight anymore. he needs to satisfy you. so badly he swears his skin starts vibrating.

he removes your hand like it’s nothing, slipping your fingers into his mouth to clean them off. you gasp in surprise but he’s not really thinking anymore. it’s all just instinct.

he licks between your folds, groaning at your taste. you’re so wet, impossibly so. his eyes fall shut and he truly does savor you. he swallows you down over and over, his lips wrapping around your clit as your hips begin to circle.

“oh, law, you’re so good at that,” your hand finds his hair and a moan of surprise slinks up his throat at your praise. he needs to hear you say it again.

law returns his fingers to you. not toying with you this time. he hooks his fingers exactly the way you did a few moments ago. and you cry out, fingers curling in his hair.

“mmm just like that.” you’re still propped up on your elbows but your chin is resting against your chest and you can barely keep your eyes open as you watch him. your voice is soft and whiny and your movements start to become frantic.

“shit shit shit.” he’s pretty sure he’s leaking into his boxers. he speeds up and your noises increase in response.

your mouth is absolutely filthy. you beg and swear and ramble. it washes over him in waves, molten lust coursing through his veins.

“m���gonna cum, oh my-.” you collapse onto his bed as you come around his fingers and into his mouth. your thighs snap around his head and it muffles your pleas. but he doesn’t stop. not until he feels you go boneless around him. your walls the only thing still tremoring around his fingers as your breaths leave your lungs in satisfied wheezes.

he’s so hard it hurts, yet seeing you like this almost makes him feel like he got off too. he kisses his way back up your body. his lips soaked in your orgasm.

your hands are weak and shaky as you loop your fingers through his belt loops. somehow still wanting more from him.

“let’s take a second,” he gently wraps his fingers around your wrist to stop you as he pecks your neck and cheek.

he would stay in this syrupy afterglow with you forever. he could keep you in these sheets for hours. that’s what he wants. it’s what he craves. but just like everything in his life nothing is ever convenient.

“kiss me again,” you plead.

but his lips never touch yours. there’s three loud knocks on his door. cora’s voice slips through the cracks.

“no,” he jumps off of you, searching his pockets for his phone. “fuck, i forgot my siblings were coming over.”

“what?!” you recover quickly, covering yourself with your hands as if you got caught by them. “that’s not something you forget!”

you’re scolding him. “you distracted me!” he retaliates and your mouth opens and then promptly shuts.

“that’s fair,” you ultimately reply.

he pulls his phone from his back pocket and opens his doorbell camera app.

“why are my parents here?” his voice is cold, drenched in his shock.

“oh my god, i cannot meet your parents like this! your brother was one thing,” you shuffle off the bed and onto the floor. “what do we do?”

“get dressed,” he tosses you your pants as he quickly adjusts himself in his. “i just have to think of something to say.”

“i came over for a cup of sugar?” you offer as you stick your legs into bottoms.

“ok no,” he rolls his eyes, “firstly that doesn’t happen in real life-,”

“it totally does.”

“and second, they’re never gonna believe that.”

“why not?” and you pout.

“because the likelihood of me owning sugar is very low,” he answers tearing his eyes away from your bottom lip. you’re starting to become a real problem for him.

“jeez, no smoking, no sugar. what are you? Mormon?” you try to fix your hair but you only kind of make it worse.

“yes,” he says, monotone and staring blankly at you.

“really?”

“no.” he laughs to himself.

“jerk,” you push him but not hard enough for him to budge.

“let’s just go,” he tries to tug you out of his room once your decent.

“no way, i am just gonna sneak out the back and cut across our lawns.”

“you can’t be serious.” he doesn’t see the problem.

“law, i refuse to meet your entire freaking family in pajamas and having just come all over your face. you really expect me to greet your mom like that?!”

well now that he thinks about it. he can still smell you on his face. and all he can think about when he looks at you is how pretty you look freshly fucked. maybe you should sneak out the back.

“i’m too old for this shit,” he shakes his head and unlocks the sliding glass door in his bedroom.

“i promise I’ll make it up to you.” you lean up to kiss him chastely but not wasting much time before you slip out the door and dart across his lanai.

the doorbell rings out loud and sharp. he doesn’t have the time to watch you go unfortunately.

“one second!” he yells out running to his bathroom to splash water on his face and wash his hands before jogging to the front door.

“what took you so long?” cora eyes him like he knows exactly what took him so long. but that’s impossible. his brother is just a menace.

“i was in the bathroom,” he lies. his sister bullies her way inside first, headphones on and texting furiously. next his parents walk in holding bags for dinner. it looks like enough food to feed ten families if he’s being honest.

“hi, sweetie.” his mom taps his cheek with her hand and he internally cringes.

“son,” his dad nods and claps him on the shoulder.

cora lingers though. he sizes law up before stepping over the threshold, leaning in close as he says “i saw her run out the back.”

law side eyes him, but says nothing.

“you scoundrel.”

[pb-dot]

Quick little scene based on this. I'm not actually catholic, so pardon me if I've gotten anything wrong. I'm going with The Pope's Exorcist-style exorcism rules here, which is to say it's basically superhero fiction for Catholics.

Father Dahl had never seen anything like it. He had done exorcisms before, several times in fact, but never one that shook out like it did with this young man. Father Scarpi, his mentor and partner in the theologically murky business, was apparently content with writing the whole thing off as God working, as He so often prefers to do, in mysterious ways. Dahl wasn't so sure it was God who moved in mysterious ways this time.

It wasn't that the exorcism had been easy, exactly. Demons and Spirits never gave up the control of a host willingly, but even so, Father Dahl had never seen a demon more apparently relieved to be exorcised. His ancient Etruscan was admittedly weak, but the priest could've sworn that the demon, upon being driven out of the young man, said something to the effect of "about damn time."

The interview of the host in the aftermath was supposed to determine how the demon had first been introduced to its victim. The Vatican State had feared organized occultism for just about as long as it had existed, and while no evidence had ever been found, as his tutor had put it, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. All the same, these "exit interviews" were a drag. Self-pitying sinners in need of therapy more than a priest, and as a man of the cloth he had to show empathy and silent strength, even when he didn't particularly want to.

This particular interview, though, Dahl was invigorated. There was a story here, he was sure, and he wanted to hear it. Father Scarpi was less sanguine about the affair, but as a life-long man of the cloth, he could fake it like the best of them. "So, I want to thank you," Alexander, the young host in question, said. "I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, this demon possession business." "I can imagine it must have been frightening," Father Dahl said. Alexander shrugged. "It was, for a while." "Pardon me, Mr. Poole, but what do you mean, "for a while"?" "I mean, once I discovered The Trick it was more fun than anything." "What trick is this?" Scarpi asked, his English was heavily accented, but considering he spoke four languages, two of them dead, in addition to English, this could easily be forgiven.

"Now, I don't know how much standup you two watch," Alexander said "I'm guessing not a lot," "Stand up?" "Comedy," Father Dahl supplied to his aging partner. "It's a style of comedic monologue, you could say." "Yeah, that's it. Now after I realized that I couldn't force the demon out of my mind, and he wouldn't leave once ordered to as he had promised, I got a little creative with it. I went with what I came to call the Salt And Pepper Protocol. Ring any bells?" "No, unfortunately," Dahl said, albeit there was the faintest tingle of a tiny bright bell in his mind, if he could only grasp it. "I started singing. I've never been much of a singer in real life but it turns out that my… brain, soul, whatever the "I" of the situation was during the possession, anyway, that part of me could sing with a backing track and everything. So, I did the most reasonable thing I could think of. I sang What's New Pussycat. Over and over again. I didn't have vocal chords that got tired or dry, hell, with the demon at the wheel I didn't even need sleep, so I kept singing. Once in a while, usually every 7th hour or every 423 repeats or whatever, I'd sing a different song before I got right back to What's New Pussycat." "What's… uh, what was the purpose of that?" Alexander grinned, it was a childish expression in a way, but there was a rebellious spark to it. "Well as I said, Padre, I couldn't make the demon leave, but I could sure as hell make him wish that he could. I'm not trapped in here with you, you're trapped in here with me-type of deal."

After Alexander had left, Father Scarpi rubbed his forehead. "Mio Dio, I have no idea what I will even write in the report on this one." He complained. The exorcism hadn't been easy on him, even if the demon had wanted to be exorcised. He was getting old, even to be an exorcist paired with a younger colleague. "Don't worry about it," Dahl found himself saying. "I'll type it all up." "Good, just maybe don't spend so much time on the song." "Surely it bears mentioning?" "Yes, mention, as the host's own thoughts on the topic. It may not be germane to add Tom Jones music to our list of tools." "Oh, I can see that," Dahl said. "The last thing we need is them getting a taste for it." "Yes, and it's damnably catchy." "You got the ear-worm too, huh?" "I'm old, Father Dahl, not dead." "Oh cheer up old man, let's go get some coffee."

You have been possessed by a demon. Instead of panicking, you realize an important truth: you're trapped in your own body with a demon at the wheel, but you're still in the car, and you have the power to make them regret every single second they spend with you.

[sminny-wew]

I've been thinking about how differently Agent Stone looks at Eggman vs. how Dr. Starline looks at Eggman. They both love him, but in very different ways.

Starline started out as a huge fanboy, aiming to turn his parasocial relationship with the doctor into an interpersonal one. He built up this ideal in his head of what he thought Eggman was like, based on outside observations. And once he began working directly with Eggman and got to see for himself that the man wasn't everything he envisioned, that disappointment crushed him. He became obsessed with proving to Eggman that he was doing the whole "villain" thing all wrong. You don't do it like this, you do it like that, and to prove that my way is the right way I'm going to conquer the world first and let you stand by my side. Surely you'll realize I was right all along and thank me for my help and this won't blow up in my face at all.

Stone, on the other hand, knows exactly what Eggman is like from having worked under him for a while. He does not care about how "problematic" Eggman is, even when he maybe should; he is 100% ride-or-die for that man, warts and all. And he's not clueless about his position as an underling, either; the Sonic 2 Pre-Quill tie-in comic shows that he can be just as ruthless and cunning as Eggman if he wants. Unlike Starline, Stone has no desire to conquer the world himself, though he absolutely could if he wanted to; he just wants to be part of the doctor's conquest, no matter how big or small that part may be. Ironically enough, by being his sycophant, Agent Stone brings out Dr. Eggman's humanity. Stone loves Eggman unconditionally when unconditional love is something Eggman's never had. Stone gave him a human connection at a time when Eggman believed humanity wasn't worth connecting with; and yet, when Eggman was so desperate for companionship while stuck on the mushroom planet that he put a face on a rock, he didn't call it Agent Boulder, he called it Stone. And in the third movie, he (apparently) died realizing that for all the trouble he went to to seek his grandfather's approval, he already had someone by his side this entire time, someone who never willingly left him in spite of all the mistreatment at his hands.

Eggman is such an interesting and compelling villain to me (specifically in the games and comics and movies) because underneath all the grandiose schemes to take over the world, he's still so painfully human. He admires his grandfather, he envies his cousin, and he got so attached to the AI he created that she wound up becoming a daughter to him. He wants attention, respect, recognition. He can be a caring father (Sage) and a deadbeat dad (Belle) at the same time. He's so goddamn multifaceted and I fucking love it.

I once read a really great post that essentially said Eggman is a right-brained villain (creative, emotional) while Starline is a left-brained villain (calculative, logical) and I've never stopped thinking about it because it's true.

(Btw I'm not trying to say that any of this makes Stone "better" than Starline as a villain/love interest, I'm just pointing out how differently they approach their affection for Eggman and how differently he responds to both of them.)

[lonely-moons]

♡୭something good | sam winchester x reader

title: something good

pairing: stanford!sam winchester x socially anxious!reader

warnings: lotssss of overthinking, reader is awkward and a nerd but also lowkey a little cool, social anxiety, sam winchester being a cutie patootie, references to fandoms i'm not in rip lotr fans and dnd players my bad

summary: when you're forced to tackle a group project, you briefly debate throwing yourself in a pit of fire - you're not much one for working with other people. but maybe this is something you needed after all

wc: 2,412

when your professor first mentions the words 'group project,' you have to physically bite down on your tongue to avoid groaning. they're the bane of your existence, and you allow yourself a moment of wondering whether education is really worth all of this. but you force it down as your class ends and make your way to where the list of names has been tacked to the wall, a sigh crawling its way up from deep in your chest.

you find your name next to one you can't place a face to. it's not surprising - you don't really have any friends in college, something that's followed you through from school even after you'd tried so hard to evade it. the college emails of each student are in a column beside the names, so you take note of it and hope to god that whoever sam winchester is, he's at least going to pull his weight.

you get the email from him before you're done with classes for the day, a simple one asking you when you'll be free to discuss the work. you both decide on tomorrow evening in the library, you moreso hoping to just get this over with rather than being particularly eager.

the time rolls around quickly, and at 7 p.m. the next day, you're heading to the library with a dread roiling in your gut. it's not that you hate meeting new people - you're just bad at it. you never quite know what to say, and even if you think you do, it always seems to come out wrong. like the words somehow scrape along the sides of your throat as they crawl their way up, get tossed about on your tongue until they're coming out completely unrecognisable from how they started. it's something you've always dealt with, but it seems to get worse as you get older, while everyone else prances ahead and you're left behind in the dust.

you don't have much hope as you're greeted with the musty smell of the library, your eyes scanning around for someone who looks like they could be there for a group project. you spot three candidates, three guys on their own, but two of them you vaguely recognise from classes.

it's a brief moment, but the panic sets in so entirely that the seconds seem to stretch on for minutes. you're so desperate to escape the embarrassment of going up to the wrong one that you consider leaving, sending sam some message about an emergency coming up and hoping that this goes better next time. but then one of them turns around, his eyes catching on you, and he smiles in your direction.

he shifts in his seat to face you a little more, his hand raising into small wave. your panic flushes out entirely, and you mentally chide yourself for being so dramatic. you're okay, you tell yourself as you head for the seat at table. you don't need the adrenaline levels of someone being hunted for sport.

"hey," he says when you're close enough, slinking your bag off of your shoulder. "y/n, right?"

"yeah, hey." you send him a smile that you hope looks okay. in your head it's still tinged with the remnants of some of your previous panic. "sam, i hope?" you wince; who the hell else would he be at this point?

but his smile remains intact. "yeah. it's nice to finally meet you. i mean, i've seen you around in classes and just on campus, but you usually look pretty busy."

you've slid into your seat, the uncomfortable wood making you want to shift around, but you remain still. if you were on your own, you'd probably have your feet up on it by now, shimmying around to find some kind of position that works. but you are not alone. "busy time of year." you shrug, knowing that he probably hasn't seen you around and is just being polite - maybe he has, but you're positive he wouldn't remember. you've never been one to make much of an impact.

"hey, i get it," he says. "sometimes it feels like they expect us to just give up on sleep entirely."

you think of the dark circles under your eyes that you'd half-heartedly tried to cover with make up. "tell me about it."

he perks up a little, remembering something. "by the way, speaking of, i got us some fuel." with the pen in his hand, he gestures to the share bag of m&ms that's beside his water bottle. "apparently chocolate helps with concentration levels."

you look at the bag, and somehow your simple comment of thanks turns into - "isn't it dark chocolate that does that?"

sam doesn't miss a beat. "yeah, well dark chocolate would make this even more miserable."

your lips twitch slightly. "fair."

"so, anyway, you wanna get started on this?"

you begin to look at the project guidelines, silently reading over the instructions even though you've done it about ten times today alone. but you appreciate the minute to gather your thoughts, trying to keep your eyes on the paper and not glancing at sam.

he's sweet, is the first thing to come to mind. you've witnessed plenty of college boys who act as though they run the place, who treat anyone different than them as lesser creatures. you thought people were meant to grow out of all that crap after high school, but evidently they had missed the memo.

you think that sam would be a nice friend to have, if only you knew how to go about doing that. the entire future of your interactions play out in your mind: you'll meet up a couple more times to do this project, maybe say something to one another in the class where you submit it. at most, any passing greetings will last a week before he manages to shake you off, and then you'll be back to another face in his class once again. even if you did ask for his number under the guise of project work, you know you'd never be able to text him after it was submitted. he wouldn't text you either. not only would you be a forgotten name, but also a random set of digits in his phone. the thought feels heavy in your head, refusing to budge.

"hey, are you okay?"

you blink, startled slightly, and find sam looking at you. there's a small crease between his eyebrows that makes it look like he genuinely wants to know.

"yeah." you clear your throat, wondering how you'd managed to zone out for so long. not for the first time, you wish the ground would swallow you whole. "yeah, i'm good. sorry, just got lost in thought."

"no, don't worry about. have you thought about which sections you want to cover?"

you spend the next few minutes dividing up which of you will cover the different topics of the paper. he's sweet about that too, always letting you have the first choice and triple-checking that you're okay with what you've landed with. by the time you're getting ready to move onto the next step, he's opened the packet of m&ms.

you worry that he's noticed your glance in their direction, because he takes a few for himself and then nudges the bag in your direction.

"concentration myth might be a bust, but they do taste pretty good."

you let a reluctant smile crawl up your face and grab one to pop into your mouth. turning it down would feel mean and, besides, you do really want some.

"so what classes are you taking?"

you glance at sam, not that surprised. the typical round of polite questioning has happened before, mostly during the first weeks, but they still pop up occasionally. especially when you don't have your crowd and every exchange is with someone new.

you list off your modules like second nature. "and for extra credit this semester i'm doing occult studies."

his eyebrows raise, like he's a little surprised at the fact. "occult studies, huh? like supernatural stuff?"

your polite smile turns a little sheepish now. "yeah. i've always kinda been into that kinda thing and they had space, so..."

he nods a little, like he finds it interesting, like it answers something he's been wondering. "oh, i get it."

"get what?" you ask, taking another m&m if mostly just to give yourself something to do.

"you're a nerd."

you crunch down on the shell in your surprise at his words. but they're not laced with mockery or any kind of insult. if anything, they're just a little teasing, interested, and the grin on his face makes you believe he doesn't mean any harm.

you look down at your outfit on impulse. "was it the spider-man shirt or occult studies that gave you that impression?"

you hadn't noticed that his grin was a little tight, but now it loosens completely. he seems glad that you're leaning into this. "actually," his eyes flicker down to your backpack, "it was more the 12-sided dice key chain."

"technically it's a die because it's only one -" you cut yourself off at the amused look on his face, wondering why you were becoming so free with trusting your mouth to open. it's all his fault, stupid sam winchester and his stupid smile. "never mind."

"no, tell me about it. you play, uh..." he thinks for a moment, "dungeons and dragons?"

it's the first time you've given in to shifting in your seat. you know how people view the game, how often people make fun of it. your small group in high school hadn't even lasted two years before disbanding. you'd kept it up as a solo hobby ever since, even if it'd been way more fun with the extra three people.

"... a little." you hate that it comes out almost defensive, like you've been conditioned into having to explain yourself. you wait for a follow-up comment, something you'll dissect late into the night as you look from every angle at how it's further ruined his perception of you.

"what's it like?"

your pre-prepared wince isn't needed. "the game?"

he nods.

you wonder if he is genuinely curious or just that good at acting. "oh, um... it's fun, i guess. kinda like an interactive book or something, you know?" now you get to use that wince.

"you like to read?"

"you've already called me a nerd, i think you know the answer to that."

his laugh comes out as a huff of air. "i'll join the club, then, i like to read too."

"what kind of stuff?"

"oh, you know, just the classics. i don't really go near anything written after the nineteenth century."

"oh." you clear your throat, any hope of relating vanishing. "that's, um... cool."

"i'm kidding," he says lightly, eyes flickering to your hand that's still clutching the pen you haven't even used in fifteen minutes. "i like lord of the rings."

your hand clenches, the ring on your finger suddenly feeling heavy. for your last birthday your parents had gotten you a replica of the one ring. you wore it almost every day. you're surprised sam had noticed.

"you like fantasy?" it comes out more bewildered than you'd like, but you really wouldn't have guessed it to even be in his top three genres.

"yeah, i've read a lot of it."

"huh."

"what?" he raises an eyebrow, amused.

"didn't take you for a fantasy guy."

"why not?"

you know your real answer, the one that remains firmly locked inside your head: he's attractive. annoyingly so. and, yeah, you know that looks don't dictate what's inside and all that crap, but from your experience, people who look like him don't go for that kind of stuff. then again, lots of people who look like him aren't generally so nice either.

you shrug. "you're a law guy. that usually means pretentious."

"we take the same classes, you know."

"which means i've witnessed all that pretentiousness first hand."

he releases a small laugh and something about it warms your chest. it hits you then that you're really just having a normal conversation. maybe it's sad, but it's been a while since it's come this easy. you blink and go for another m&m so that you can tear your eyes away from his face.

"you're something else," he says.

your hand pauses for just a second in the bag and you ask, as though the answer doesn't even matter to you, "is that a good thing or a bad thing?"

"good," he answers, like he hadn't even considered the alternative. "it's definitely good."

you grow a little uncomfortable under how genuine he sounds, and it certainly doesn't help that his stupid smile is still there, still directed right at you.

"you'll take that back once i've eaten all your m&ms." you steal another for good measure.

"well, what chocolate do you not like? i'll bring that next time."

the dig is what registers first, which you're glad for as your body automatically releases a mock gasp. it's a much better reaction than being surprised he wants to meet up again, which is what sinks in now. this project doesn't focus too much on the group aspect; you easily could've gone your separate ways and just emailed one another if you needed to check anything. one more meetup, max, if any problems came up, but nothing long enough for a study snack. you half assume he just said it for the joke - you usually would - but there's something that tells you he means it.

"and here i was thinking you're not half bad."

his smile is more of a smirk now. "is that a good thing or a bad thing?"

"bad." your expression half matches his. "definitely bad."

the conversation keeps up until before you know it, the librarian is ushering you out for closing time. you don't even know how it happened, but somehow underneath those fluorescent lights and across from sam, you actually enjoyed meeting someone.

sam asks for your number before you head your separate ways. you try not to act surprised, but something about the way his own smile widens at the light in your eyes makes you think that he knows you'd been hoping for it.

you go to bed that night the lightest you've felt in weeks, with sam winchester's number in your phone and his stupid smile ingrained in your mind's eye.

[howdeepthegrave]

Modern Agathario AU where Rio arrives a bit early to collect Agatha for their third ever date and Nicky, of all people, answers the door. Rio knew Agatha has a kid, but she was not quite prepared to meet him this soon.

"You Nick?" she finally asks.

"I am Nicky. You Rio who is gonna take my mama to the golfing?"

"Uh, minigolf, yeah."

Rio can feel this four year old judging her.

"I like your hat," Nicky says.

Rio adjusts her baseball cap and smiles.

"I like your scrunchie."

"I don't like haircuts," Nicky explains.

They just continue to stand there until Agatha appears at the top of the stairs.

"Nicholas Andrew Harkness! You know you're not allowed to answer the door on your own!"

"Mama, it's only Rio."

Agatha rushes down the stairs and pulls Nicky back, smiling at Rio.

"The sitter's not doing such a good job of sitting, I guess."

"'S okay by me. Sorry if I got here too early or..."

"No, no, it's fine, come in."

There's a teenaged boy flopped on the sofa, frantically texting as tears pour down his face. Agatha looks livid.

"William, you're here to watch Nicky!"

"I... Oh, hey Ms. Vidal."

"Hey, William. You studied up for that quiz next Tuesday?"

"Uh, yeah. I just... I've been having a rough week. Eddie and I had a fight."

Agatha goes and collects her purse and pulls out a roll of cash.

"William, just go home, okay? Here, that's everything for tonight, but only because I'm a sucker for a sad kid whose eyeliner is running."

William takes the cash and bolts, leaving Agatha, Rio, and Nicky standing in the living room.

"I pro'ly can babysit myself, Mama," Nicky says. "I will watch good cartoons only."

Agatha actually laughs at that and bends down to pick her son up onto her hip.

"Rio, I'm sorry, looks like we'll have to reschedule..."

"Couldn't we just take Nicky with us?" Rio shrugs. "It's minigolf. He might enjoy it."

Agatha looks shocked.

"You'd... You'd be okay with that?"

"Sure. So long as you are."

So they all go out to minigolf together. They have a pretty great time, they eat a little junk food, which Nicky LOVES because Mama almost never lets him have junk food, and when Nicky is tired at the end of the evening, it's Rio who carries him back to the car because, as Nicky says, "You're taller than Mama, so we'll get there faster."

When they get back to Agatha's, Rio walks with them to the door and steps inside to wait while Agatha struggles a sleeping Nicky into pajamas and puts him to bed. Agatha comes back down to tell Rio good night and thank her for putting up with Nicky.

"It was a great night," Rio assures her, "and I hope we can do it all again sometime."

Most of Agatha and Rio's dates after that are just them, but occasionally Rio arranges something so Nicky can come along too. Sometimes it's minigolf again, but sometimes it's a museum or a walk in the park or any number of other fun family activities.

When Rio decides to propose a little over a year later, she talks to Nicky about it first, just to ask if he'll help. Agatha has made it clear if and when a proposal happens, she wants no big showy stuff. She just wants it to be like a normal day. So, Rio comes over one night to cook dinner for all of them, and she lets Nicky help her. Halfway through, she hands him something from her pocket.

"Go and take this to your mom and ask her what she thinks, mijo."

So Nicky takes the item to Agatha.

"Rio said to give this to you and you should say what you think of it, Mama."

Agatha takes whatever Nicky's handing her without really looking up from her book, but the moment she realizes it's a small velvet-covered box, her heart starts to race. She opens it, sees what's inside, and dispatches Nicky back to the kitchen with her reply.

"Rio, Mama says she'll take it. She says absolutely."

They get married that summer at their friend Jen's place in the Hamptons.

[gaymarasov]

Yellowjackets S3 E6 Thoughts:

Shaunajackie deniers found dead in Miami. I had to get up and pace my living room and I'm not joking. No further comment (yet) but much to think about. I need time to process this fully.

WOW NATALIE WOULD HAVE HAD EVERY EXCUSE TO KILL HERSELF WAY SOONER. WE LOVE A RESILIENT QUEEN!! NAT 2, FATHER FIGURES 0!!! LETS FUCKING GO!!!

Shauna is about to lead these girls to the darkest places they've ever been in their lives and I literally cannot wait to see it I feel like a fucking crazy person I'm vibrating out of my skin.

MISTY KISSING COACH'S CORPSE I KNOW THAT'S RIGHT! THAT'S MY FUCKING GIRL! THREE CHEERS FOR THE NOTORIOUS MFQ!!!!

Callie thinks she's soooo smart. It's all fun and games until you find out the recording you scored is a 45min long audio file of someone being hunted through the woods and murdered like a fucking animal by your mother. If I don't get to watch the face journey I'm going to be PISSED!

Taivan ribbing Shaunahat over the course of the episode and Shauna specifically was SO FUCKING FUNNY TO ME. Nothing beats dyke drama unfortunately there is no force in the world strong enough to stop it. "You know what? Yeah, you were right. She does seem better" at the end had me fucking SICK!! Shauna surrounded by giggling girls and Van said yeah she WOULD be happier now wouldn't she??? SICK. SICK I TELL YOU.

Speaking of Tai and Van, I'm locking in my answer: We haven't seen "real" Tai all season. "Other" Tai is living it up and loving her time with Van, while "real" Tai is drowning in the horror of all of the recent events and can't keep her head above water. She's been in a constant dissociative state (I DON'T BLAME HER!) and "other" Tai has been steering the ship. If she did kill Lottie and Van finds out, it could be a great and interesting parallel to her having burned down the cabin in the teen timeline and Van knowing all along and keeping Tai's secret even from herself. This could go so hard. Let's see if they pull it off or if they're just fucking with me.

I've been saying since episode 2 that letting Shauna do all the violent and ugly parts of surviving in the wilderness is going to come back to bite. It's all fun and games until a nice pair of explorers wander into your camp looking for exotic birds and Shauna and Melissa jump them like a pair of dogs with resource-guarding tendencies. This is going to be such a fucking mess.

[bigification]

Spreading Leather

"Not this shit again." You say as the lights flicker for a moment, before completely shutting off. "I paid my rent in time this month, that motherfucker can't just shut off my power whenever he wants."

You pull out your phone and send a strongly worded text to your landlord about him shutting off the power.

It doesn't take long to get a text back. "That wasn't me, but I've been hearing about a lot of power outages in the neighbourhood. Check the breaker on the side of the house to see if there's any damage."

This quells your anger, but only makes you more annoyed that you have to fix the problem yourself. You make your way out the front door and around the front of the house to reach the breaker.

"Where do you think you're going?" A deep voice calls from behind you.

You turn to see a police officer sitting in front of your garage, as if he were waiting for you.

"I... ugh... was just going to check my breaker." You stutter, slightly intimidated by the man.

"Did you know you're trespassing on private property." The officers gruff voice sounds almost aggressive.

"Oh no, you're mistaken, I live here." You respond, just trying to move on with your day.

"Do you own this home?" The officer asks as he stands up. His large figure looms over you as you look up at the 6"6 man standing in front of you.

"Well, no. I just re-" you try to explain, but are interrupted.

"Didn't think so, you're under arrest for trespassing on private property." The officer grabs your arm with one hand and reaches for his cuffs with the other. You try to pull away, leveraging your entire body weight but the man doesn't budge. "We'll add resisting arrest to the list of charges."

"Are you even a cop?" You ask as you finally notice the man is wearing a leather uniform.

He doesn't respond, instead he pushes you against the garage door and cuffs your hands behind your back. He starts dragging you down your driveway like you weigh nothing.

"Aren't you gonna read me my rights!" You ask.

The man chuckles, "you have none." He throws you into his car like a ragdoll and starts driving. The interior reeks of sweat and leather, making you flare your nostrils in disgust.

"I've got one, I'll be back in a few." The man says over his radio.

"What do you mean 'got one'?" You say, trying to ignore the smell.

"You talk when I say you can talk, understand!" He yells.

"Yes sir!" You respond, as if it's instinct. "Why did I just say that?" You think to yourself. You have no respect for this man, why would you ever call him sir. No wait, he's your superior so you have to call him sir.

"Stop squirming back there!" He yells.

You immediately sit up straight and stop moving. You can't move even if you want to, as if he has a spell over you. But your leather harness is irritating your skin. Wait, leather harness. Since when are you wearing a leather harness. You look down to see a black leather harness under your skin tight shirt. Also, you could have sworn this shirt was pretty loose on you earlier. "Maybe I'm just stronger than I was before." You think as you flex your biceps. The moment you do so, your sleeves rip in half, revealing leather bands wrapped around your massive biceps.

The thought of your muscles groaning makes your dick press against your leather jock. You grab your pecs as they swell, pressing harder and harder against your tiny shirt until it rips open, letting your thick pecs hang over your harness. You let out a deep moan as you rub your swollen nipples.

"What did I say about talking, maggot!" Your master yells.

Your mind is being split. One side wants to appease him and be quiet, while the other side wants to give in to the overwhelming sexual pleasure of feeling your body grow.

You rub your thick calloused hands against your now smooth and hairless chest. Your hands venture down to your stomach where your belly fat melts away, leaving six rock hard mounds of muscle in its place.

Your remaining fabric on your shirt is ripped off when your shoulders broaden to match your bodybuilder sized body. Your back ripples as mounds of muscle create a pattern on your back, all the while you feel your head reach closer and closer to the ceiling of the car.

Your lower body follows suit. Your thighs and calves nearly instantly tear through your jeans as they swell with muscle. Your knees start pressing against the seat in front of you as your legs grow longer and thicker, making it a struggle for you to fit into any vehicle. Both fat and muscle pile into your once flat ass, making two perky globes of fat that could make even the strongest men weak in the knees. And your feet burst through your socks as they double in size, perfectly fitting into your leather boots.

Your hips thrust forward as you feel your cock expanding inside of the jock. Your hard dick starts to push its way out of your jock, snaking up past your belly button as it passes ten inches. It all becomes too much, making you shoot the largest load of your life all over the car.

"Look at the fucking mess you've made, I'm gonna make you clean this up with your fucking tongue like the pig that you are!" Your master yells. But you know that's more of a promise than a threat.

As you come down from the best orgasm of your life, the final parts of your transformation take place. Your double chin melts as your square jaw becomes as sharp as a knife, garnished by a subtle five o'clock shadow. Your nose widens and your brow bone becomes more prominent. And your hair shaves down to a military style buzz cut, solidifying yourself as an object to be used by the police when needed. No individual thought and no wants or needs other than sex.

You finally arrive at the precinct and are dragged out of the car. You hit your head on the way out, not used to your towering height of 6"4.

"This is yours, now you're gonna treat it nicely or the lieutenant will never let you see sunlight again, got it?" Your master says as he points to a brand new motorcycle.

"Now let's go meet the lieutenant." He says as you both walk into the precinct.

Everyone in the building is wearing leather, or nothing at all. All the cops are wearing tight leather uniforms and the criminals are wearing leather straps at most.

The pungent smell of leather that fills the building is making you hard again, but you have to keep together for your master.

You finally make it to the lieutenants office. Opening the door reveals a pig of a man laying back in his chair. His big hairy gut is spilling out of his straps and laying on his lap. His thick thighs are barely contained inside leather shorts.

"I've got another one, sir!" Your master yells the boss.

"Good work. We've transformed the entire police force, and most civilians. Get the new recruit working on politicians, soon we can spread leather internationally." The lieutenant says.

"Yes sir!"

[magickizu]

The New Girl

Crossover dp x dc. So I've got this time line in mind, for my crossover AU and this is a snippet of it. Will post more of it; will make a master post at some point soon.

In order to further Damian's social skills, keep up illusions and maybe in an attempt to give the boy some form of normality in his life Bruce negotiated with him to attend High School. The only condition Damian set, on which he would not budge, was that Jon and him will attend the same school, to not start off completely alone.

When a new girl got transferred to their school, who happened to share a majority of their classes, a few things changed for both boys.

Math is boring. High school in general is boring. Not to mention, that he already knows most, if not nearly all of what the teachers say anyway! It's just frustrating... Especially, ever since his classmates found out who he was, which didn't take that long due to public appearances of the Wayne family. So many people, try to be cool or smart or pretty in front of him for his attention, to gain his favour and with that his status. The same shallow talks and compliments from galas and high social events. Honestly, if Jon wasn't here to make it bearable in any way, chances are Damian would have made sure, his first day would've been his last.

Not to mention the materials taught here are so dry for the most part. There are things and concepts that are good, sure... But for the most part? It felt so useless. When would someone like him, someone who was going into the medical field, ever going to need to know that in Poe's works-

Damian sighs. It's Monday morning and math is supposed to start soon, the first double period of the day. He already sits in his chair, materials open. He can hear a particularly noisy group of girls chit chatting about 'grand, expensive weekend getaways' and how 'school is so easy right now', as they deliberately sit a row in front of him... tt, a special form of mental torture, that he has to go through alone for now, as Jon actually had a doctor's appointment and it takes a while to fly back. The rumbling comes to a halt, as the teacher walks in, yet picks up in hushed whispers again, as a new girl steps in behind the teacher. After a few shared thoughts the class quieted down, as the teacher stood behind his desk,

"Class, from today on we have a new student with us, I expect your best behaviour only. Would you introduce yourself, please?" The teacher turned to the girl, she looked at him for a moment then sighed.

"'kay... Hi, I'm Ellie Nightingale. I uh... Just moved here with my family from Wisconsin and yeah..." As she talks, it's definitely clear; she has a thin midwestern twang but strong enough to notice, a light tan and soft freckles. Although the black hair and blue eyes do seem familiar... But the white streaks, that didn't really look natural, throws him off and the electric blue in her eyes, that barely balances the line to normal; even Kryptonians have a more natural blues. Yet Damian just knows, if he wasn't so observant, he could have missed it. Just a meta, he thinks.

"Well, welcome to Gotham Academy Ellie. Go and take a seat, please." The teacher says, the Nightingale girl nods and scans the room for a free seat. The girls in front of him started to cackle already, tt how moronic... Yet he does nothing to clear the seat next to him, even though he knows fullwell that the seat next to him is one of the two empty seats. But he is not about to sacrifice his -somewhat- peace here, for no good reason, and so the lesson begins.

The teacher introduced a new topic, as he spoke and explained, Damian noticed the girls in front of him giggling and then he saw it: a paper ball zooming through the room, hitting the new girl in the head in a moment of inattentiveness from the teacher. Well that's just rude and unnecessary, she didn't even do anything yet. Damian rolled his eyes at these childish antics. Throughout the rest of this double period of math, the behaviour continued; paper balls thrown, cackling into her direction and one of them, Sabrina Portman, made snide comments towards her. Damian just observed, of course he'd intervene if it became too serious, but Nightingale held herself quite well so far, ignoring it well. At least until the teacher had to leave the classroom for a very brief moment, leaving the students unsupervised for only a few minutes.

"Hey, soo... you're really from Minnesota or something?" Portman asked, the class just watched.

"Wisconsin, actually." Nightingale spoke, without looking up from her text book. Good priorities, he admitted to himself. The girls giggle.

"So did you like grow up on a farm or something? Because you kinda look it, country bumpkin." Damian scoffed silently, the rest of the class seemed to snicker at this. "How'd they even let you get in here? Because I kinda doubt, that a farm dweller like you could afford it. Sorry, not sorry." More snickering, Damian just gives Portman a snide and slightly disgusted side glance. At least Jon isn't here to hear this, that boy would be furious. ...on second thought, that is really not acceptable in any form-

"Ow, ou, ouch! That sting! That burn!" Nightingale threw herself over dramatically onto her table, just to prop herself up again, grinning with a weird mix of mischief and indifference. "Be honest, two entire periods and this is the best you can come up with? Well I guess you're right, I wouldn't wanna pay the amount of people necessary to educate you either." Damian blinked, the rest of class looked dumbfounded, Portman seemed absolutely flabbergasted. Yet the raven after a moment of silence, couldn't help the very subtle way the corners of his mouth would form an infinitesimal smile. Then his breath hitched, as their eyes met directly, time stood still for the moment as did his heart, skipping a beat only to make up for it, by beating faster. But it was over just as fast as it came by. This feeling, still stuck in his throat like a lump he can only hardly swallow, the tingling in his head and stomach. He drew in a sharp breath, it hit him, ran through him like a shock. A feeling he knew all too well... Could it have to do with her powers? It had to be, she must be a meta, that's the only explanation. The slight metallic taste, similar to blood, of the feeling, still lingering on the back of his tongue and down his throat, his heart just slowly calmed again and now he understood it wasn't just stunned silence filling the room in-between his classmates. It was something else:

Pure fear.

Damian had to keep an eye on the new girl, just to make sure nothing happened...

"You did what!?" Jon gasped in utter disbelief, gaining a confused look from his best friend. They sat in the cafeteria, Damian sat them down in a spot to keep watch over the new meta. To be ready, just in case. But for the moment right now, the kriptonian in front of him held his attention.

"I didn't...-" He got cut off by said half alien.

"Exactly! You didn't do anything- honestly Dami, you see someone get bullied and you do nothing??" The boy bit down on his snack carrots in a huff, the clear disappointment still on his face. The other also huffed.

"In my defence, she handled herself very well, there was no need for me to step in and help-"

"Damian..." The bigger one laid his head into his hands and sighed, defeated. Sometimes Jon really wished Damian's vast knowledge would also incorporate a few more social skills, on the other hand he's probably never seen real bullying. "It is. This is bullying. And you step in, not because they can't handle themselves, but to show comradery and that they are not alone."

"Hm..." Jon was right, he himself thought what happened was truly unacceptable, as Damian took another bite of the breakfast Alfred made him. "You're right... I suppose I should apologise for my incorrect behaviour yesterday." It had been rather quiet the rest of yesterday and for the most part of today, except that Portman's friend group talked about her in hushed tones. One glance over, Nightingale sat alone at a corner table headphones in and scrolling through her phone while sipping on a juice box. Damian sighed defeated and made a motion to stand up, "Are you coming with me or would you prefer to stay seated?"

"Hm? Mmh... I'll join." Jon thought it over, maybe he can help Dami when he's got trouble putting his emotions into words.

Nightingales eyes shot up at the two boys immediately, as they stood in front of the table and Jon could feel a slight shudder down his spine... Damian didn't exaggerate, there's something almost sparking, not sparkling but like lightning sparking, in her truly electric blue eyes.

"Hello, Nightingale. I am Damian Wayne, this is my best friend Jon Kent, we share-"

"I know, same class. What do you want?" She cut him off, seemingly a little tense, training her eyes to keep either of them in view at all times. Both boys knew that look, yet they were a little taken aback by the harshness of her tone.

"...right." Damian cleared his throat, that bone chilling and irrational feeling comes back. "I wanted to apologise for my lack of comradery yester- and today as well. I should have at least said something, even if solely to stand up in solidarity." Slurping on the straw of her juice box, she listened, processed, only to look confused at them. Jon decided to say something,

"What he meant to say was, that it was not okay for you to be bullied and we will help if we see something happening. We also know it's hard to find new friends in new surroundings and if you'd like you could sit with us?" Damian nodded, Jon can put his thoughts better into words- at least for their civilian forms. Well... Damian has gotten better, he just likes that Jon knows what he means but as if he'd ever admitted to it. Vise versa too; Damian can formulate words better when there're reports and other hero related issues. Sure Jon learned over the years, but this just feels more comfortable and he likes how close it shows them to be.

Nightingale looks them up and down, her eyes narrow slightly, thinking, contemplating about something. "Thanks, but I'm fine. I can handle myself."

"Are you sure? We really don't mind-" Damian put a hand on Jon's shoulder, pulling the attention of the bigger one towards himself.

"The offer still stands. See you around, then." He nods and pulls Jon away, who looks confused.

"Why did you keep it so short? Sure, she was a little defensive, but..."

"Not just defensive, Jon. She kept her guard up constantly and walls sealed shut; this conversation would have led nowhere." Damian explained his observations, "trust me, I should know..." Recognition of this behaviour flares in his eyes and Jon understands immediately, nodding in understanding. Then a small smile forms on his face again, growing,

"Then we have to make actions, speak louder than words. And consistency is key! I mean, for how long did I annoy you, before you realised I wouldn't go?" Damian gave him an honest smile at the now fond memories, he hummed in agreement, which in turn earned a bright grin from the Kryptonian.

"It is settled, then. I also highly suspect she is a meta. If we get close enough, we can properly guide her to the good, when the time is right."

"Yes, let's go!" Jon laughed, that settled it most definitely for their plan,

Operation: The New Girl

Goal: befriend the new meta, before the wrong people get to her and use her powers for bad.

[toriaaniin]

Scarface

No I'm not writing about the 1983 Al Pachino movie of the same name... I'm writing about our handsome Luke Newton's new scar on his forehead.

In preparation for my upcoming livestream tomorrow, I asked my followers "What should we talk about?". One of the responses was this:

If you're not too overwhelmed with asks. Luke's scar at SAG. How did he get it?

If you look closely... I mean, if you can get past the huge sigh of pleasure + butterfly flutters you experience simply by looking at this gorgeous man, posed on a bed, compelling us to...

Oops. I lost my train of thought 🥵🥵🥵

If you look closely at his forehead, just our-right of centre between his (perfect + expressive) eyebrows (that, you know, sit over his remarkable shade of blue eyes), you can see that Luke has acquired a vertical 4cm-ish scar.

The ask that's been asked of me: "How did he get it?"

Now you all know that I have Luke's phone number programmed on quick-dial. HA! 😂 I wish! All my questions would be answered, and oh how I would appreciate a day without wondering all things. Not so lucky. Naturally - like you - I have no idea.

What I do know is that Luke didn't have a cut or the scar back on October 21st when he and Nicola posted - simultaneously - their season 4 Polin (but I say Lukola) photo.

And Luke didn't have a cut or scar in late November while in Rome, filming White Mars. The second of these two photos was taken on November 29th, US Thanksgiving evening.

These are the last photos we have of Luke before we started seeing the scar.

The photos below show Luke at both the BOSS/David Beckham event on January 30th and then again February 14th when he attended the British GQ "Excellence in Film" event in London.

Introducing: the scar!

To the best of my knowledge, no one noticed the scar at that time. Granted, during the BOSS event we had other (ahem) things on our mind, and on February 14th, we were focused on Nicola in Ireland as well as Luke's solo evening out and his fun encounters with fans. We were simply happy to have new photos of the both of them!

So... while I can't tell you HOW Luke got the scar, I can tell you that it happened either in December or early January.

It's possible that he was injured in the last December days of filming White Mars. It's very possible. After all, he and Lucy Hale were battling a malevolent entity that infiltrated their Antarctic research facility 😲

It's also possible that while on his sunshine filled New Years trip abroad with Nicola, he encountered something to hit his head on.

Here they are, photographed on January 8th (Nicola at the William Tell premiere - Luke around the same date at a family gathering), both a touch red from too much sun. Sun kissed one could say 💛💛

But wait... hold up Tori! Luke isn't sporting a scar here either!!

Actually, my theory is that Luke had a cut (possibly with stitches) on his forehead in this photo. Why? Because it was originally posted with this "ouch" emoji plastered on it! At the time we all wondered: "WTF? Why put an emoji on his forehead?! How rude!" (note that the emoji was put on Luke's forehead by his cousin)

Someone in the fandom did us a favour and removed the emoji, then did a touch-up job to recreate an emoji-less forehead. With the doctored photo (above) as our breadcrumb that a joint sunshine trip was taken, many of us forgot about the original photo. I remembered it today though, hence this post! Friends; Lukey had a boo boo and it was covered up! 🤍🤍🤍

In conclusion I have no choice but to say again: I have no idea how Luke got his scar. I have, however provided you with a timeframe for when the injury occurred, and I've offered two scenarios where his head could have been bonked.

Personally I like my suggestion that it happened while on a sunny holiday with his lover, Nicola!! What do you think?

Do we really care though? The man is more handsome then ever before - truly! - and we got to see he and Nicola at SAGs shine with the energy and light of their love. I'm happy!

For now 😜

Aaniin Xxx

[hyukascampfire]

everyone say it with me… betta late then never!!

first let’s watch our regularly scheduled broadcasting of rain suffering and hating me while reading

ash you're going to pay for this. I hate you.

fuck u ash.

You let him go. - SAY IT THEN FUCKING SAY IT

I refuse this. I rebuke this.

“I want to go. I’m ready.” damn it. damn it. damn it.

I hate you ash. I hate you so much, you'll pay for this. I hate you.

NO HELP ME I CANT DO THISS

I WONT LOSE U AGAIN WHAT HELP I CANT MY HEART HURTS

LOLLLLLL I WAS IN THE BACKSEAT OF MY CAR GIGGLING

off the bat, this is an insane quote. I love you, ash. I do. hehe

ASH. ASH. IF DEATH THINKS YOU ARE FLATTERED, HE MISUNDERSTANDS YOU. THIS LINE, IM SO GLAD IT HIT YOU TOO CAUSE IT HIT ME WHILE WRITING IT

ok, so I've prided myself on not knowing much of anything about this fic because I wanted to be surprised, so i'lll be writing my takeaways from everything. and from my understanding here, is it that everything she touches or is in contact with dies? I'm going to feel so dumb if I'm interpreting this all wrong lmaoo. you’re so smart cause this was literally right. now that you’ve read it, i’ll confirm that wasn’t yeonjun’s intention, but it was definitely his fault, because his proximity and affection for her caused things to die around her.

they are death made in the flesh. help. you're in their forest. I would genuinely be so scared. me too, i’d be running just like her

“There you are, love.” - oh I'm ready, I'm so fucking ready. THIS LINE THIS LINE I LOVE THIS LINE the foreshadowing and the fact that it implies that he’d been looking for her. and when he calls her love >.<;

is it fucked that I find this hot. & FINE ASF. & him wearing a cape just made him a thousand times more hot. LMAOO THE THIRSTING OVER HIM IS SO REAL and no it’s not fucked because he’s hot and he can’t help it. this yeonjun specifically was sexy asf while i was writing him like yes my panties were wet yes i needed him badly and i think it shows in what i wrote sometimes 😭 also RAIN YOU GET ME SO BADLY WITH THE CAPE idk if this is a fantasy reader thing but the cape is just hot

Should you run or thank him? Is Death as prideful a creature as the other kinds that inhabit Aethera? - I like this quote a lot. ily

Morbid curiosity is like that, though. - I really like all the subtle hints at death in this i love people who notice things. like youre just a noticer and i love it

A deep, familiar voice from behind you gives you pause. “Want some help with that?” Soobin says. He stands  in the doorway, his head nearly brushing the top of the frame. It’s made too small for him. Most things in your tiny village were made too small for Soobin. There had been a time where you’d been taller than him, that had hardly lasted long enough. - are you wearing pants... WHEN I TELL YOU IT TOOK SO LONG FOR ME TO UNDERSTAND THIS CAUSE I WAS LIKE… yes he’s wearing pants?? duh??

  “Cow shit isn’t an ingredient.” - LMAOOO loled when i wrote this poor guy

“I think you are very, very beautiful. Would you stop ignoring me, now?” - help ok why do I ship them now... never tell anybody you heard this from me but in my heart he definitely had an unrequited crush

“Don’t like you?” he asks, “What reason would they have for that?” - boy why are you acting like you don't know...it's your fault LMAO POOR YEONJUN HE DIDNT MEAN TO

he was human??? — “You were human?” oop me and her are the same. this made me giggle

THE DANDELIONS MY HEART. SHE DIED GIVING BIRTH??? — YOU FOUND HER YOU FOUND HER. also, "or a blade of grass in the forest" help. their love story is so tragic and i know that i wrote it like it came from my head but it still hurts. and yeonjun’s backstory especially. he loved her so much :(

I'm betting it's the reader. you clocked that. like i said youre just a KNOWERR

if only we cold know that death was actually like this, the comfort I would feel if it were. yes. exactly this. a big source of inspo for this fic was my own fear of death. it felt nice to portray it as something not so final and scary, but maybe something to look forward to. i’m still scared of it and definitely always will be, but it would be so comforting to know for sure that there’s something after death.

and one sec lemme compile all the little bits from the smut scene cause it’s my favorite part I LOVED READING THIS PLEASE

“Crawl to me, then.” - OH? THIS LINE IM ILL sir yes sir!!!

“Tell me to stop. Please, tell me to go. Because I don’t know how.” - HELP HELP HELP DONT GO DO NOT GO GOD I LOVE HIM I LOVE A DESPERATE MAN. i just love how he wants her so badly and lets it be known. HOT HOT HOT

“No, you don’t understand what you’re asking for. All I’ve ever done is ruin. All I’ll ever do is ruin. I won’t ruin you; not again.” - NOT AGAIN?????????? hell yes

“I want you so fucking bad. You are in the marrow of my bones. Fuck, I have done nothing but want you, but I am foul. I will only hurt you.” - what if I pass away huh?? what if I do that?! LMFAOOOO

“I want you to beg me for it,” he says, grinning down at you with cruel intention. “Beg me, and make it so pretty.” - I'm hot is anyone else hot or is it just me... i love you so bad for giving me the opportunity to read all this

“I could give it to you, or I could not…” He hums. “Wouldn’t that be so cruel of me? To leave you wanting?” - HELPPP MEEE RIGHT.

Think about it: do animals just fly into anybody else’s windows and die? Do the trees that they pick from just end up dead? It’s his fault that they all treat you the way you do.” - and ykw I cant be mad at him for saying this because the logic part of me agrees with him. he just cares for her and doesn’t want her hurt. soobin loved her so much. DAMN. but i also understand why what he says hurts her as well yk? it’s the worst. and this being the last time they speak is so awful, but sometimes it happens that way. :((

You were expecting wary looks, anyway. - awh no I feel so bad for her ): she tried to not blame them for being scared of her but omg it makes me so sad for her. she always just wanted be a part of the community. it’s messed up

It was by your hope that he’s gone. - SOOBIN NO. SSOOBIN NO NO NO. FUCK OFF ASH MY SHAYLAAAAAAA. WAS HE EVEN WEARING PANTS PLS WAS HE EVEN WEARING PANTS LMAO IM CTFU

The day moves along without you. You’re not sure how long you sit, but it stretches somewhere between a few minutes and eternity. No matter how long you wait, there are no answers. No matter how long you mull over it. - ok Bella swan WAIT LMAO YES

i loved reading this thank you queen. 💋💋💋

THE TERRIBLE HALF-TRUTHS OF THE UNDEAD ҜING

⠀(🍂 ) 𝓡EVENANT in folklore, a revenant is a spirit or animated corpse that is believed to have been revived from death to haunt the living ... ( 𝑝𝑙𝑎𝑦𝑙𝑖𝑠𝑡 )

1︎5.5k revenant!yeonjun · ƒ ! r ft. soobin ⸺ ✴︎ 𝖿𝖺𝗇𝗍𝖺𝗌𝗒 ... smut, violence, angst, death, animal death & vivid descriptions of animal death, major character death, unprotected sex, cumming inside, dry humping (because bring it back), biting, dom yeonjun sub reader, mentions of death in childbirth, reincarnation, teasing, breast worship, yj calls reader ‘my love’, def some typos

🪶 ⦂ how fun is this collab? :,) this fic was so fun to write. i personally believe that tsfawc enjoyers will love this one,, but you'll have to read it to confirm that, right? hehe. and of course, go read everybody else's if you love this one! they're all set in the same world, and everybody worked so hard on these fics. send some love their way!

rꫀׁׅܻblogs & asks arꫀׁׅܻ always apprꫀׁׅܻciatꫀׁׅܻd!

𝒪𝑁𝐶𝐸 𝒰𝑃𝑂𝑁 𝒶 𝒯𝐼𝑀𝐸, in a land far, far away, where the treetops touched the soft clouds of the sky and the water sparkled under the glowing sun, where mountains rose high, and long, deep caves ran through them, where the sea met shore in collisions of swirling, foamy punches, where the undead walked among the living, where the winged flew above the finned, there was a land where things beyond reason and rhyme existed perfectly true. Among those strange beings and within the veils of Aethera, there was a girl loved by death. 

He sits on your shoulder, a dark, boding shadow and glared at those around you with promise in his eyes.

That’s how it seems, anyway. That’s how everybody looks at you. They dodge you, whisper about you, evade your gaze as if he might reach his claws for them next if they linger for too long.

Crows with dead eyes arrive at your doorstep like some lover’s cheeky gift, other poor creatures like fat grey mice are left to rot in the wheatfields, and yarrow stocks wilt outside the wall of your room. If Death thinks that you are flattered, he misunderstands you. You are terrified of nothing more than dying. The first time, it was a sly joke. Then it happened again, and you watched their eyes change. And it happened again and again, and your people are a suspicious type. Something can only be a coincidence so many times.

When you began to sneak into a little shack with a village boy, you thought that maybe, somehow, this would all pass. He died too. There’s really no coming back from that, is there? You don’t blame them. You’re not the freak that they all believe you to be—none of them get close enough anymore to know that, though.

The wickerbasket’s handle creaks under your fist. You usually only forage along the shallow line of the forest; you pluck from bramble bushes topped with plump berries that crawl between trees during the summer, and when the crab apple tree’s branches hang heavy with the fruit, you snatch those up too. You’re more useful to your family out here, in the woods that they deem just as cursed as you. Where you won’t be their burden.

Crisp autumn leaves crunch under your boots. You scan between them—more grey and rotted this late in the season than fresh and orangey—for the edible mushrooms and roots that you usually forage at this time of year. The basket’s already pretty heavy with a variety, black morels and sorrel and burdock, as you bend down to pull a truffle from the dirt against a tree.

You drop it down with the rest of your finds. The basket smells like earth, no doubt your hands do too. You dust your palms off on your skirts and go to rise back from your squat.

A deep, billowing horn pierces the forest’s silence. It’s both far away, wiggling between the whispers of rustling leaves, and much too close. It draws out. Long. Bone-chilling. You freeze, scanning between each tree trunk and praying that you won’t find what you fear you might.

You are much deeper into the woods than you usually are. Than you ought to be. And you know what that horn means—you know that it means something far worse than what you’d been afraid of, coming into these woods. Much more primordial than the hide-behinds you were scared you might find this deep, much less avoidable than the faerie rings you stepped around.

Why would The Wild Hunt be here? A shudder runs down your spine, and you curl your fingers into your skirts and lift them as if to prepare to run, but you don’t. Your feet find root in the forest floor and all you can do is stand terribly still in catatonia. Their horn sounds again, and a procession of wicked whoops and howls follow. Wild hoofbeat rumbles under it all—the hunt and their rides. You hope that they’re just passing through, and you won’t so much as see one of those wild riders. There were plenty of folktales that the matrons of your village would bolster to terrify you as children, but you knew even then that their stories of the riders, with their flesh falling away from them and their pale or beady eyes and their gnarled maws and frightening figures as they rode on the backs of equally terrible steeds, were not fabricated. They are not a bogeyman or a wailing banshee; they are death made in the flesh, and they are here. In your forest. 

Your legs won’t work. You curl your clammy fingers tighter around your basket and lean into the tree beside you. How deep had you wandered into the forest? Hopefully not too far; when you gain the courage to run, you hope that they do not send their hounds to snap their foul breath on your heels. Maybe just standing here and blending into the trees is best. The Hunt would love a chase, and you don’t want to become their next.

The next call comes and you throw that all to the wind. Your heart pounds against your ribcage as you let your basket clatter to the leaves and you take off. You fly over roots and shrubbery and between the trees, your blood roaring in your ears faster. You’d oblige if you could.

Above the loudness of your frantic mind, the harrowing whinnies and The Hunt’s ruckus dulls until it’s faraway again, and then it’s gone. Well, you don’t stop to check if they’ve really passed through the forest. You just run.

“There you are, love.”

His voice cuts through your frantic escape and stops you dead in your path. You almost go crashing down over the ground with the force that you dig your heels into it. Though the voice is non-threatening, you don’t turn to face the source.

He speaks again. You already know who it is. He, old as the earth you stand on itself, leads that band of wild riders. Is the king of the undead, collects souls for reaping.

And he’s the one who’s plagued you with his attention. Death.

“Why do you keep your back turned to me?” he says. “I frighten you. That hurts.” His voice lilts with amusement and sharpness. “I wish that you would face me.”

You’re not fond of the way that he speaks to you with a familiarity. But then again, you’re not fond of dying, either. Your legs are boneless beneath you. Turning, you slowly indulge him, though it takes a great amount of willpower to not run again like your jittering jaw and trembling hands ask you to.

The King of Death stands tall and utterly preternatural, leaned against a crooked tree in the woods behind you. His smile cracks across his face in a jagged way that suggests he finds you amusing, but none of that meets his eyes. They’re the color of the greyish, rotted leaves beneath you. The dark shadows beneath his eyes are the only thing belying the weight that his infinite life might have on him. That, and the hollowness that rings from him.

And though he sounded entirely playful, you are shaken by the sorrow that you find in him now that you’ve turned. Even more so, you’re not sure why you feel it echoed somewhere in the hollows of your bones. “I’m sorry,” you say. It trembles terribly. You want to say that you’re sorry you caught his attention, but it seems you’ve always had his attention. It’s more that you are petrified down to your marrow that the time’s come that you face this… strange infatuation. Here he stands: the one who leaves hollowed out husks of creatures at your doorstep. Should you run or thank him? Is Death as prideful a creature as the other kinds that inhabit Aethera? “I don’t mean to…”

He pushes off his tree, fixing his cape that cascades over only one of his shoulders. It’s tattered and falling apart like the rest of his clothing, though you think that the bronze stitching and swirling oakleaf patterns in the black say that they might have been immaculate at some point. Or maybe they weren’t, and they had started that way. He is Death, anyway. “You’re sorry?” he says. “Why are you apologizing to me? You’ve hardly done a thing to warrant it.”

Faltering, you wet your chapped lips. You’re not really sure. Holding back another apology for fear that you’ve offended him and he’ll now strike you down for it, you say, “I thought that, maybe the hunt was…” Wow, you sound stupid. You can see in the sly smile his lips form that it amuses him. That’s almost worse than angering him: intriguing him. What you really should be doing is boring him so that he’ll find you a waste of his time. Then, maybe, he’d give up haunting you.

“After you?” he finishes. Shaking his head, he says, “My hunters only answer to me.”

“Oh,” you say plainly. Part of you wants to ask why that should comfort you, especially when you’re the one that he sends little bits of death to, but rationality keeps those words in the back of your throat. You don’t really want to know. “Why are you passing by here?”

Something akin to old longing passes through those witty eyes, and then he eats up the distance between you with languid steps of his long legs until he’s nothing more than one last step in front of you. The closeness consumes the air in your lungs, leaving nothing for you but short and shallow drags. The forest has gone dead silent aside from the sound of it. His voice is even more magnetic now that he’s so close.

You recoil when he brings a hand up to brush the pad of his thumb over your cheek and then cup your jaw, as if afraid that he might snuff you out here and now. His fingers are softer than you thought they might be, and the lines of his face sharpen into what you think is hurt. Hurt that you flinched?

“We go here and there,” he says, “but it’s been a very long time since we came here.” There’s a certain thickness to his words; a certain tension coiled over them from something that you’re not privy to. And yet, there’s a farawayness, too. You bet he’s full of a lifetime of secrets. Lifetimes of secrets. “But I think I’ve found myself a reason to finally return.”

Breathy and still struggling to flatten out your breathing, you ask him, “Why?”

The Undead King’s smile turns wicked once more, and he doesn’t answer you. It’s awfully eerie.

“Do you have… business here?” you try again. It’s a roundabout way of asking, do you have someone to take away?

“I have business wherever the living go,” he says, letting your face go but not giving you any more room. You narrow your eyes. He’s quite good at non-answers. “Nothing is more certain than that I will greet every living thing eventually. I’ll come to take you, too, when the time comes.”

Your mouth dries up. The entirety of your home, all the people you’ve ever known, fear you for all the death you bring. Not one of them fears it more than you do. You’ve seen it enough to fear its frightening finality.

The drop of your face must’ve told him how much that scared you. “Dying is not such an awful thing, love. Living pales in comparison.” Searching your eyes, he adds, “But I’ve not come to take you.”

That’s easy for him to say: that death isn’t something to fear. His words don’t calm your thundering heart, but you offer him a, “Thank you…” It trails off toward the end when you realize that you don’t have his name. If he has one, anyway.

“Yeonjun.” He tilts his head, strands of sparrow hair brushing over his watching eyes. “Most don’t know it, but you’re not most people, are you?”

Your breathing had just begun evening out. It’s a shame, the way that it kicks back up at the way he looks at you. “What do you mean?” you say, but of course you know. Nobody else is given dead things like you. It’s not like you yourself are very strange; you like pretty dresses and sharing gossip with friends just as much as any other girl your age.

Giving you another one of those knowing smiles that he uses just like words, he steps back. “I’m sorry that I scare you how I do.”

You don’t answer him. What could you say to that? That he doesn’t? That would be a lie, and he would know it.

Yeonjun’s eyes flit over your face, over your cheeks made pink by the autumn cold, lingering on your lips for a few unexplainable beats, and then landing on your eyes where he searches and finds something that sends his throat bobbing with a thick swallow. “I don’t mean to be your monster. It’s only that…” He steps back again. “You remind me a terrible amount of someone I once knew.”

“Who?” Though your shoulders relax a bit with some distance between the two of you, you do your best to not let your guard down. All the stories that you recall being told, all those cautionary tales passed down through word of mouth around a fire, end with some stupid girl thinking that the monster could be changed or tricked. You’re willing to bet that the man in front of you, no matter how human he looks or how enchanting his words are, could be neither.

That doesn’t explain the ache in your chest when he holds your eyes for too long. But you shove that feeling way, way down. It’s nonsensical.

His voice takes on a parting tilt when he says, “It doesn’t matter anymore. Death takes us all.” Yeonjun dips his head at you. His smile wavers. You’d think that crooked smile on his mouth was indelible had you not seen it twitch down at the corners only for a moment. If you’d have blinked, you’d have missed it. “You think I’ll hurt you,” he says, “well, don’t let me stop you. Go ahead, run. I apologize for your basket.”

Death takes us all. You’re not sure what that’s supposed to mean, coming from him, but it sends a cold wind up your spine and goosebumps crawling over your skin.

He watches you go. You don’t look back when you do, but his gaze sits on your back until you’re sure you’re out of his sight. When you return to your home, your mother asks where the basket full of ingredients for supper went.

You imagine what her face might look like if you told her the truth. But that was impossible, so instead you tell her some stupid story about a wolf that startled you so bad that you ran home paying no mind to where your basket was. It’s close enough to the truth.

༺ ꘏ ༻

It doesn’t matter what you do; you can’t get his face out of your head. While you cut butter into flour and then roll out dough, simmer fruits over flame and you slice cheese off blocks, you replay that meeting in the forest. The memory spins and turns over no matter how hard you try to put it away from your thoughts.

It’s not every day that somebody meets the likes of him. You can’t blame yourself; he had such captivating eyes. Dark, playful, and endless. There they are again. You sigh and dust your hands off. Maybe you are just as strange as they all think that you are. Morbid curiosity is like that, though. Taking the most normal of us and making you wonder what you absolutely should not wonder about.

And you absolutely should not wonder about him.

The sun has begun to hang high in the sky, but the breeze that crawls through the window you pulled open before you got to work is a crisp one. Autumn’s really come, now. Outside the window, a huddle of children play around in the leaves that you’d raked up. You’ll have to rake those back up, but you hardly have the heart to tell them to take their playing elsewhere. Their giggles and small voices waft in with the breeze, and a traitorous part of you yearns for a family that you know you’ll never have. No man would risk that fate, not after what happened to the last man who paid you any attention. You grit your teeth at the memory.

Having a face for the thing that’s made your life the way it is is strange. Seeing him in the flesh, with handsome eyes and a taunting mouth, looking something near human, you think you’ve come to resent him for it. How dare he ruin your life? He, more than anybody, should know how fleeting life is. What is in it for him to deface what little time you have? You keep going back to that thought: why did he ever even appear to you in that forest? There is not one story in which you remember Yeonjun showing his face to those he hasn’t come to claim. Death makes his visits swift and purposeful.

Moreover, why on earth would he even look your way? You wish there was a plain way to ask him why, or even to plead with him to stop. Whatever it is he’d ask of you, you think you might give him. To get back to living, you would.

A deep, familiar voice from behind you gives you pause. “Want some help with that?” Soobin says. He stands  in the doorway, his head nearly brushing the top of the frame. It’s made too small for him. Most things in your tiny village were made too small for Soobin. There had been a time where you’d been taller than him, that had hardly lasted long enough.

“As if,” you dismiss and gesture at his dirty hands. He’d no doubt been out working his family’s field, his tunic sleeves rolled up to his elbows.  “Cow shit isn’t an ingredient.”

Anybody else might’ve scoffed or taken offense, but he just laughs and invites himself in anyway. It never fazes Soobin. He doesn’t let you push him away.

It’d be better if he did. How long before he ends up dead, too? Alive one moment, and then a husk without a soul next. You don’t think you could handle seeing cold, dead eyes where the annoying, warm shine should be. Of course it would be better if he stayed away, if he had half the mind to. Even most of the children have heard enough from their mothers to stay a healthy distance. He’s not too much better than a child, though.

“Isn’t it?” he says. His cheek is smudged with whatever sort of dirt he’s got on his hands and under his nails. “I’m done with work for the day. Want to go out to the field?”

You two have always ran off and avoided your life in between willowy, flaxen wheat stocks. They were just tall enough at this time of year to hide you away. But, for some reason, your stomach does a quick flip at the thought of being outside. It’s silly; couldn’t he find you here, too? “I’m busy,” you say. You’d already kneaded this roll of dough plenty, but you dig your fingers into it and begin again.

“Busy?” he scoffs, “Since when are you too busy to get away from work?”

Gritting your teeth, you let the sounds of your kneading answer. Now, more than ever, he should keep his distance. You know one thing that you’re sure nobody else does: Death’s come to visit. 

His brows shoot up in your peripherals. “I don’t get answers today?”

“I’m sorry,” you say, giving up working the over-kneaded dough only because your arms ache. “Why don’t you go talk off the ear of some other poor village girl? I’ve heard as much as I can handle today. And then when that one’s tired, you can bother the next, I’m sure.”  You soften the words with a quick smile his way. No matter how many times you say something sour in hopes that it’ll send him away, as soon as you glance up at his face, you reel it in.

His company is all you’ve ever had. The least you can do for him is make sure he doesn’t end up like carrion, even if he chooses to take that risk himself. You don’t know why he does.

Voice playful, he says, “I’m glad to hear that you believe I’ve got ladies falling at my feet, but I’d rather not annoy a pretty girl, so you’re my only option.” He pokes at the sleeve of your simple cotton dress. “Should I drag you out of here? Don’t your arms hurt doing all that?”

“Oh, you are a refined man, aren’t you?” you say, shuffling out of his reach. Damn him, he makes it difficult. “Well, I am a pretty girl, so you should take yourself elsewhere.”

Soobin smiles easy. “I’m bored out of my mind. You’re just going to let me suffer?”

“That’s not my issue.”

“I’d argue that it is,” he says. “Come on. Why are you giving me a cold shoulder?” Leaning, he tries to get a look at your face. “Did I upset you? I wasn’t aware that you cared much about what I thought.” When you spare him a sharp glance, he says, “I think you are very, very beautiful. Would you stop ignoring me, now?”

You wish you could fall into the easy banter that comes with being around Soobin, but you can’t. You can’t let him be around you. “Soobin, stop it,” you say, draining your voice. You don’t look at him while you say it.

Going quiet, he seems to notice that today’s different. His gaze is heavy as he stares at you for a few long moments. Crossing his arms over his chest, he asks, “What happened?”

You swallow. “Nothing. I’m just doing something.”

“Oh, alright,” he says, tone inflicting in a way that says he doesn’t believe you one bit. He pushes off the counter. “I’ve put up with you pushing me away for years. You think I don’t know what you’re doing?”

“Soobin,” you warn. If you look at him, you fear you’ll be forced to watch the only one who never cared much what a risk it was being around you leaving. So you don’t.

Your friend raises his hands in the air defensively. “Okay, then.” He makes for the doorway with languid, lingering steps. As if he doesn’t want to leave. “Tomorrow..”

That’s both a threat and a promise, knowing him. Sighing and watching the rowan tree out your window sway, you bid him a curt goodbye.

If only that jerk took offense to things. It would make things an awful lot easier for you.

༺ ꘏ ༻

Being out in the wheat fields brings you peace when you’re alone, but you find it to be terribly lonely. The earthy, sweet scent of it wraps around you, and the stalks whisper against each other in a soothing way.

When you look beside you, the patch of wheat imprinted with the shape of your bodies is empty on his side. You are quite weak; it makes you want to go knocking at his door for his company. But that would be the selfish thing to do, so you card your fingers between the golden straw instead.

A chill trickles down your spine. You feel his presence before you even see him; it’s a feeling that you used to get fleetingly, as if something far away was tugging at you. But then he became real, a living thing in front of you that can touch, and that is much different.

“Why is it that I always find you out in the wilderness?” Yeonjun says. His voice comes from behind you.

Has he been watching you? You stand and dust your bottom off, heart kicking to life. “It’s nice out here,” you say. In truth, you haven’t come outside since that day. You’ve dodged Soobin and made a million excuses as to why you won’t go anywhere past the fences of your home. “I like to… watch people go about their days. It’s interesting.” It’s true—you always watch from afar how the village folk interact. How groups of girls your age link arms and whisper to each other, how neighbors come together to fix up a shoddy fence. You watch them be a community that you are not a part of. Watching it tastes bitter sometimes, but mostly you take pleasure in imagining yourself there with them. You’re not sure why you try making small talk with him, but what else? Should you go running again? If you were to listen to your pattering heart, maybe that’s what you’d do. He’s hardly shown you any bad will, though, and he’s the one that’s come to you. Maybe it’s silly to wait until something bad happens to be cautious.

A thousand pounds in stones sit at the center of your chest, though, and his voice makes them feel lighter. Why on earth that is, you’re not sure. It’s a nice relief regardless.

He smiles. It's different from the ones he showed you before. It’s knowing; more sweet than cracking over his face like the smile you would expect from the likes of him. What use might he have in being sweet? “Could I join you?”

Blinking dumbly at him for a second, you nod. “Oh, uh… Yeah.” Settling back down into your spot, you spare him a few curious sideways glances.

The breeze billows over the gold stems, moving them like gentle waves over the ocean and blowing your hair in it too. The flattened bits rustle under his weight. He doesn’t even turn his face toward the village; instantly, his gravitational eyes are on you.

“Do you come here often?”

“I do,” you answer. Mostly when you and Soobin have too much to do and not enough will to do it. “It’s nice. The village doesn’t like me much, so it’s easier out here.” You don’t mention that mostly you don’t come here alone.

Yeonjun’s face becomes far away. It looks strikingly like somebody forced into an old, unpleasant memory. “Don’t like you?” he asks, “What reason would they have for that?”

“They fear me. Things go wrong around me, that’s all.” You pluck at the hay absentmindedly. “Things die. They’re smart to stay away.”

The hay whispers much louder for the long moment he remains quiet, digesting what you’ve said. Maybe deciding what to say, considering that it’s his fault.

“Die?” he asks, voice inflected with surprise.

Turning to him, your brow creases. Shouldn’t he know? He’s the one that’s done it to you. “Everything that gets too close ends up dead. Everything,” you say, resting your temple on your knee. “So, I guess, I just keep it all at arm’s length.” You look back at your tiny village, a collection of familiar, un-familiar thatch-roof homes. 

Continuing to blink at you, his eyes narrowed in a strange grimace, Yeonjun says, “Death follows me, too.”

What? A laugh of disbelief bubbles up in your chest. Of course, death follows him. You cover your mouth with a hand to obscure your laugh, but you just giggle at him harder.

A laugh twitches at the corners of his mouth, too. “I mean it,” he says. The lines of his face become distant again, eyes both trained on your face and melancholic as if the sight reminds him of something.

It ignites a question in your mind about something he said in the forest. “You said that I reminded you of somebody,” you say, testing the waters. “Who?”

A muscle feathers in his jaw. He looks away, as if he can’t look at you while he says it. “I loved a girl from this village once. When I was human, no less than you.”

You falter, mouth falling open to ask all the questions that flurry through your thoughts. You settle on one. “You were human?”

“I was,” he says ruefully. “And I had everything. I had the love of my life. I think that even the most bitter of creatures on this island had envy for our love. She would braid dandelions into my hair, and then I’d braid them into hers.” He swallows thickly and pauses, as if the wound was still festering and fresh. “And then she died. She died starting our family. She died because of me, in my arms.”

You don’t know what to say, so you just look into his shining eyes as if that’ll help. You’re not very useful with people, much less comforting them.

“I couldn’t accept that. I wouldn’t. So I went where I shouldn’t have gone, and angered something much bigger than myself. They thought it would be a fitting punishment for me to live an eternity, the King of Death who could not bring back his dead lover.” The harrowed look that he gives you, only briefly, has your chest heavy all over again. “They have a sense of humor, the forces.”

You imagine what it would’ve been like for him to lose his lover in that way. How far he’d gone to try and have her back, but death does not give back. Where had he gone to have been turned into this? An immortal thing, forced to roam the world and scoop up the souls of the living for an eternity? To be bound in ancient bones and made to remember forever how you had lost your lover?

The grandness of what you want to say is too big, but all those words feel pitying and patronizing in a way that you don’t think will actually bring him any comfort. Rather, you doubt anything you say will be able to patch up a wound older than you could imagine. Simply, you offer him a raw, “I’m so sorry.”

Yeonjun lets a crooked smile replace the trembling at his lips. “As long as I live, so too will she,” he says, placing his palm over his heart. “Death doesn’t so much happen when we leave behind our bodies, but when we’ve left the minds of the living.” Narrowing his eyes at you, he brushes hair behind your ear with his knuckles. “I know she lives on, somewhere out there. Somewhere. I’ll find her.”

That intrigues you. “Is there some way that you could bring her back?”

The grim light in his eyes tells you his answer. “My curse is to take life,” he says, “not to give it. But the one who made me this, he is cruel in a twisted way. If I were to find her, as a human or an animal or a blade of grass in the forest, only then could I rest.”

It is cruel. “You’ve been searching, then,” you conclude. “When you find her, you’ll both be able to rest.” But how could he find her, if as he says, she could be any living thing? Where would he even begin?

Slowly, he shakes his head, throat bobbing. “Death needs a farrier.”

She would become what he is. You swallow thickly. Was it not him who caused the deaths that follow you? Or, at least, it was not on purpose?

Opening your mouth, you go to tell him that you’ll help him look. You’re sure you’ll be of no help. He’s spent an immortal lifetime searching, and he still hasn’t found his dead lover. Nobody would know better than him where to look.

The ground shakes beneath your palms with impact, and something cuts through the wheat. The noise of its bleating becomes nearer until the both of you scramble up to find out what’s in such distress.

A deer stumbles around wildly. It looks lame, but you don’t see anything wrong with its legs. Your throat tightens at the awful sound, piercing and sad. Frozen, you watch it try to stay upright before it finally collapses down, legs still kicking as though it still wants to run but its body has begun weakening on it. “Oh my god,” you say, stumbling back. The sounds; its sounds are awful, echoing in your bones and constricting your thoughts until they’re a pinched panic.

There’s an arrow lodged into its ribcage, deep and at a terrible angle. You already know that it’s pierced some vital organs, if not its heart. It continues to writhe on the ground, not ready to give up. You’re not sure if you should approach it—you don’t want to scare it, and you can tell by the look in its wet eyes that it already wants to be away from you.

Or, maybe it had come to you. How else had it found the two of you in the middle of this field?

Yeonjun’s already on it. He puts his knees into the dirt and dried wheat to kneel by it, running his hand over the beast's pelt in long strokes. The small buck flinches at first but relaxes once he learns that his touches are gentle, not the gnashing of hungry teeth ready to make him a meal.

Blood runs like lead through your veins. You say, “Can we help it?”

He shakes his head. “He’ll die.”

Whip-lashed, you swallow thickly. He says it so unphased, and you’re sure he is. You can hardly make yourself mirror that serenity that he exudes as he runs his hand over its flank, but you get on the ground beside him anyway.

The buck’s breaths slow to desperate drags for breath. For a few long minutes, the two of you sit in silence and stay with him until he no longer fights, until his breaths are ragged. You feel his side, still warm and alive, but you see the life going from his eyes. You sit here, talking to each other about nothing just so it hears gentle voices as it goes, for a while.

Eventually, he’s gone. Quiet and at peace, no longer hurting. This time, when you look over to Yeonjun who still smooths over the deer’s skin even as he goes, guiding him delicately into whatever greets us when we go, you see death as a gentle thing.

༺ ꘏ ༻

Though you never seek him out, Yeonjun always finds you. In hidden places, away from prying eyes, he appears behind you and makes himself known. Well, you have a feeling that he watches you for a while before saying anything. It’s hard not to feel the strange tingling of his gaze over your form. It’s akin to the sixth sense that’s supposed to keep you safe out in the dark hearts of forests, an innate feeling that tells you some beast with a rotten, pale maw watches you between the trees.

Yeonjun doesn’t feel rotten, though, preternatural and eerie as he is. As you shirk your duties and talk with him for hours, you stare into ancient eyes and watch his crooked mouth move around his words and you feel an odd comfort. As if he’s the only one who’s ever understood you, or maybe that your strangeness pales beside him and for once you’re nothing but who you are. So many nights, the sun fell on your talking until the night insects buzzed from the grasses and your eyes were heavy.

Sometimes, as you dozed off with your back to a hay bale or a hardwood wall of the abandoned home beside yours with its sagging thatched roof, you caught such festering longing in his his eyes that you’d let your lashes fall and pretend to sleep so that you could imagine what it was that he longed for. No doubt his lost lover. When you imagine him, bound in bones and coming back to haunt the living for an eternity as he mourns her infinitely, searching for her in impossible places, your chest aches with a gnawing intensity.

It’s a terrible, cursed existence. Even the nothingness of death becomes a paradise beside it.

“Is it scary?” you ask into the air, sat criss-crossed on the thick duvet of the bed. He sits across from you, looking perfectly lazy. Moonlight pools in like sterling mist through the shutters.

“What?” He watches you, sitting in your plain dress, as though you’re the only thing in the world.

You’ve begun to wonder. Wonder about those looks he gives you.

Shifting, you fix the shoulder of your soft chemise where it’s slipped down when you catch his eyes lingering on it. His throat bobs. “Dying,” you elaborate. “Is it really nothing? After we go, all of it was for nothing?”

A slow smile tugs his full lips, made a bit red in the middle where he likes to worry it. It’s such a human habit to see on something so far from human. “Hardly,” he says. “It’s like going home, right where your soul is supposed to be. Who do you think rides with me?”

Furrowing your brows, you tilt your head toward one shoulder and let your hair pool there. “The riders are dead?” You had thought they were undead in some way like Yeonjun, other sorts of revenants come back to life with their own purposes. Then, are their creepy horses dead, too? A chill goes down your arms. Sometimes, sitting here with him when his face is made soft by the orange glow of the fire he puts on, you forget what he is.

“They are.” He nods, leaned back onto his elbows, his eyes alight with a hunger that makes your insides feel funny. “It doesn’t stop once we’ve died. You don’t need to be scared, my love. So many things end, but then so many things begin. The earth no longer holds you down, the weight of being is gone. You don’t know anything like it; you don’t know leaving behind the pleasures of earth to know the ones that only the afterlife can show you.”

His eyes laced with something entirely else, he adds, “And it’s not the end. Not for everything. For some it’s only the beginning, and for others, those who have not yet fulfilled their purpose, they come back to the flesh. They return.”

You can’t tell if he means himself, or something else. The weight in his eyes, dark, endlessly swirling pools, makes you wonder again why it is that he’s lingering here: the place that he had not visited once since the death of his lover, for the fact that it still hurts too much. Why his shadow of death, his fault or not, was tangled in your soul enough to brush its fingers over the things around you.

“It’s scary,” you say, breathy. The thought of eternity.

Soft hairs brush over his eyes as he tilts his head at you. “Do I scare you?”

“No.”

“No?” he echos, pushing himself up so that he leans back onto his palms. “Isn’t that strange? Pretty little thing says she’s not afraid of death, but her heart races when I’m near. Her sweet heart jumps at just the brush of my leg. Are you sure you’re telling me the truth, love?”

Your blood roars in your veins, inflaming your cheeks and making your head dizzy. Nobody’s ever looked at you like that before. Hair prickles on your skin. “Yes,” you breathe.

Feral delight sparks in his eyes, black as pitch. His smile turns up all feline at the crooked corners. “Crawl to me, then.”

Like how fire licks up oxygen in any room it is in, his words steal the breath right from your lungs. What does he think you are? You blink at him wide-eyed and dumb for a moment.

How can he say that as though it were nothing? Moreover, how does the ravenous flare in his eyes, his head tilted back as he watches you down his nose expectantly, do that to your belly?

Your mind glazes over with something thick and heady, and you damn the nerves in your belly and begin to crawl from your end of the bed to his. His tongue darts out to wet his lips, making sure you feel every inch of the taunt in his eyes as he trains them on you. When you’ve gotten to him through the thickness in the air, you settle into his lap and bracket his waist with your thighs.

Yeonjun takes the soft fat of your hips in his fingers. “Fuck,” he says. It sounds like he’s barely holding the gates on something endlessly consuming. Something that might break loose on the two of you, and leave you changed forever with its hungry, gnashing teeth. His head hits your collarbone. “Tell me to stop. Please, tell me to go. Because I don’t know how.”

“Don’t,” you say. “Don’t stop. I want it, Yeonjun. I want this.”

He straightens, pupils blown and eyes as tense as his set jaw. “No, you don’t understand what you’re asking for. All I’ve ever done is ruin. All I’ll ever do is ruin. I won’t ruin you; not again.”

That rings bells somewhere outside the heavy fog that’s infiltrated your mind, but they don’t sound too alarming when he looks as though he wants to drag his teeth over your heart to taste its beating. It doesn’t touch the ground, when you want him to, so badly. So badly that you taste it on your tongue and it tinges your words as you tell him, “I do know what I’m asking for. I want you. Yeonjun. Don’t you want me too?” Voice and confidence wavering, you pull back. Maybe you’ve read this all wrong. A tickling shame crawls over your skull. “Do you not want me?”

“You think I don’t want you?” he says, straightening up and meeting your gaze. His breath is hot on your mouth. “I want you so fucking bad. You are in the marrow of my bones. Fuck, I have done nothing but want you, but I am foul. I will only hurt you.”

He takes your hand and places it over his chest, where a heart should be. Beneath your palm, you do not feel the thumping of an alive thing. Yeonjun has no heart. You knit your brows and examine the strain of his features. Does he think that you’ll be disgusted? Maybe the girl you were in that forest might’ve been, but being near Yeonjun has changed you in ways you couldn’t start to put your finger on. “I’m asking you to,” you say. “Show me what you want to do to me. What you’ve wanted to do to me.”

Searing silence burns between you as he drinks that in, and then he shoves you onto your back. Supporting himself with an arm beside your head, he curls his fingers into your hip and nudges your thighs wider. He doesn’t lift the hem of your chemise like you expect him to. No—Yeonjun begins to grind himself into your cunt through all the layers of your clothes. Though your dress is bunched up and his pants lay between any real contact, Yeonjun’s hard and that friction tastes fleetingly sweet.

“I want you to beg me for it,” he says, grinning down at you with cruel intention. “Beg me, and make it so pretty.”

You let little sounds linger in that back of your throat and become hungrier each time he grinds against you. It’s so much, mind swimming and sparks spraying up your spine, and yet each time it is not near enough. Damn that foxish smile on his face; you beg for him anyway. “Yeonjun,” you breathe, curling your fingers around the wrist of that hand with which he pins your hip. “P…lease, will you help me? It feels so good; I want more, please.”

He raises his eyebrows at you and an eager grind comes right over your throbbing clit. 

You know he wants more than that, but mortification already is making your voice unsteady and your cheeks burn. “Yeonjun,” you huff, hips wiggling.

The king of the undead delights fully in your shame and rewards you with more of those pointed, dry grinds. Your legs tremble; he’s giving you so little, and yet your need takes it and magnifies it into something grand.

Though he pretends he’s on some high ground, you hear his shuddering breaths each time his fucks his hips against you. He feels that roiling, liquid need in his belly just as vehemently as you do. The room fills with your breathy pants and grinding bodies. You catch your lip in your teeth and begin to meet him half-way. Your moans are low and sweet, and each one sends his jaw tighter. 

You twist and grind against each other like fumbling teens until you’re coiled up so tight that he has to pull himself away. Your throbbing cunt protests, but you know he doesn’t want you cumming like this.

“You want me to show you what I’ve wanted to do to you?” he says, working at his pants. His eyes are so drunk on you, and his cheeks betray his state. “Open your legs, my love. Let me show you a little death.”

Throat gone dry, you slowly let your thighs fall open. The dull throbbing between your thighs roars to life. He slides your skirt up your leg, stopping when he frees your knee to pepper a few hot kisses into it. Once he’s got it bunched up at your ribcage, he runs his tongue over his dry lips to wet them. “Fuck. Such a pretty pussy. I want to fucking eat you up.”

“Yeonjun,” you whine. His name is all you can muster out, anticipation sharpened to a knife point.

Flashing his teeth, he purrs, “You like that, you filthy thing. I bet you’d like for me to fuck you till your brain’s gone and all that’s left is my name. Isn’t that right? Is that what you want?”

Your thoughts stall and you nod, making your mouth into a filthy pout. God, how you want that. Maybe he’s right about you being filthy. Coming from him, it sounds like a delicious thing to be.

The pretty, leaking tip of his cock brushes your clit as he slides it up and down your slit to collect the mess there. Your thighs jump to close before your mind gets the better of it. He does this a few times—up and down, letting you feel and get used to the size and length of him all the way till his cockhead kisses your clit and you squeak.

“Are you comfortable, love?” he asks, shifting your hips with strong hands. “Do you need anything from me?”

It’s so at odds with his other, nastier words. Your head spins, the moonlight blurring. “I’m okay,” you tell him. “I… just want you. Want you to put it in, want to feel you.”

His cock catches on your hole, and he begins to push forward with promising pressure. But then he pulls back, smiling downturned. You whine; why can’t he save his capriciousness for later? You’d almost had it…

“I could give it to you, or I could not…” He hums. “Wouldn’t that be so cruel of me? To leave you wanting?”

You flutter around nothing. Every inch of your body buzzes. Alive. You are more alive now, at the promise of Death’s touch, than ever before. The irony might be something to wonder about if you weren’t dribbling down onto the bed sheets with crude need. “Stop it,” you say. Your voice is whiny. You’re glad you can hardly hear yourself past the pounding in your bloodstream.

That delights the King of Death. He wrinkles his nose at you, burning you alive with his eyes as he presses his palm to your belly and guides himself into you with his free hand. You wrap around each inch of him slowly. The air between you bows under the weight of your gazes; he holds your eyes the whole way, inch by inch until he’s seated fully into you with his groin flush to your body. He stretches you to fit, and yet it’s just right. You could ask for no more or no less; you might even think your body was made for him, were you not too busy circling your hips to feel him.

“Good?” he says, squeezing your hip. “Do you need a moment?”

Pursing your lips, you test out the shape of him with another wiggle. “Maybe… Maybe a second.” Truth be told, you need a moment to grapple with the sparks sprinkling over your mind more than you need a moment to adjust to his stretch. You let out a shuddering breath.

He traces circles into your belly, just beneath your navel. The pad of his thumb goes round and round, warm on your flesh. “As long as you need,” he says, but it’s more like a triumphant, playful coo. There’s that lopsided smirk. One day, you’d like to kiss it off him. Taking that hypnotizing finger, Yeonjun trails it up your stomach, over your ribcage. He hooks it beneath your dress and drags it higher, revealing the soft swells of your breasts to the air. You shudder, body so, so hot that your nipples peak and tighten against the cool air.

“Such pretty tits,” he says, brushing his knuckle up the underside of one. “Everything about you. Such a pretty, pretty body. God, I don’t know if I want to worship it or ruin it.” His breaths fan over your skin as he bends down and pops an eager nipple into his mouth, lavishing it before releasing it with a lewd pop and letting his mouth fall all over your breast. Lick here, nip there, until you’re squirming adequately and squeezing him like a virgin. Then he blows cool air over it and watches with eyes like a cat toying with its prey as you shudder harder, your chest jumping. “Fucking look at you,” he sneers.

“Junnie,” you say, lost for breath. You think you’ve walked yourself into the lion’s den.

His breathy laughs fall over your breast. Taking his teeth, he drags them over your skin, right over where your heart thunders a rhythm fully for him, and then he bites. Nothing more than a shallow mark, the shape of his teeth in your soft tit. He lingers there, admiring the sight before he straightens himself up again.

“Fine.” He pulls out of you slowly, but you know what comes after that, so you savor every second of it. “I suppose you’ve wanted after it long enough. Let me hear your sweet voice again, my love.”

Yeonjun fucks you just right. His cock nudges right up on your sweet spot as if he’s done this before. Like he knows where to find it. You gasp and whine—you’re just happy he’s finally giving you something. 

“Oh, fuck,” you mewl. His shoulders wear the red crescent marks of your nails. “That’s—so good right there.”

Ever egotistical and cocky, he croons, “Yeah?” Rolling himself back, he makes it his mission to hit it ruthlessly.

A sharp, pitchy sound comes tumbling past your lips. You bring your hand up over your mouth, letting your eyelids dust your burning cheeks so that you can brave the flipping in your spine and deep in your belly. It’s nearly insufferable—the way pleasure licks up your spine, how it spreads out into your veins and takes control of you.

“No,” Yeonjun growls. “Don’t you dare close your eyes. Let me see that look in your eyes when you cum.”

Your eyes are heavier than they’ve ever been, but you open them. The sight that greets you is worth the effort. Yeonjun’s lip twitches and then he throws his head back, the column of his neck on display as his Adam's apple jumps around a thick swallow.

If that sight wasn’t enough to send you teetering down into whatever depths of lust and ecstasy that he crawled out from, then the angle he hits as he pushes one of your thighs to your chest is. The world frays, deep tremors starting at one small point in your cunt and then exploding up through your stomach and down the back of your thighs. Your chest arches off the bed and you mewl helplessly, fighting and embracing your orgasm in an intoxicating death.

“Oh, fuck,” Yeonjun growls, strained with something whinier as he watches you shake beneath him. “Fuck. I’m gonna—fuck, I’m gonna cum…” His voice chokes as his hips become stuttered more than pointed, the slick sounds of your own release tangling up with his grunts and pants until he shudders and stills, cumming into your puffy, fluttering cunt.

You both catch your breaths as if there’s no air in the room left for a while. His hair’s damp on his forehead, as is yours on your neck, and his eyes droop lazily. More lazy and content than you’ve ever seen him.

Collecting you to his chest, where only your heart thumps away frantically, he presses his mouth to your ear and says, “Do you think death is so scary now?”

With your limbs nothing more than boneless and liquid pleasure floating slowly through your thoughts, you smile.

A little death can be more visceral than living, you think.

༺ ꘏ ༻

The tree stump beneath you makes your tailbone ache. You sit criss-crossed, watching Soobin work away at the soil and tend to that section of the fence that’s begun to rot and sag. Your mouth moves endlessly, filling the space that would otherwise just be made up of his grunts of hard work.

“You know, you ought to help me if you’re just going to sit and watch,” he says, straightening to swipe at his forehead, sweaty despite the cold in the air.

“Totally improper,” you say, smiling at him cheekily. “Are you saying that you can’t handle yourself, strong man?”

He glares at you with the venom only somebody made to put up with hours of chatter could muster. “What’s got you so talkative?” he says.

You know he means why you’re suddenly not glaring him away. You can’t tell him that you’ve spoken with Death himself, so instead you say, “Nothing.” Letting your legs dangle down, you smile at him.

Yeonjun hadn’t done any of it. It’s a comfort, to some degrees, to know that. It’s not your fault that they died. Being around them, being around Soobin, won’t make them turn up dead. The rest of them still don’t know that—and they wouldn’t believe it, anyway—but the black shadow hanging over your shoulders dissipates.

For the first time in so, so long, you do not feel marked by death.

“Sure.” His smile tilts. “A week ago, you wouldn’t even look at me.”

Rolling your eyes, you decide to give him a hard time. “Not true. You just have a way of getting on my nerves.”

“I take pride in that.”

“Take pride in what? Being insufferable?”

Crinkling his nose, he says, “Knowing how to bother you best.”

“Get back to work, stupid.” Your heart soars. It’s good to have friends. To let yourself have friends is an ever better thing. Is this how it is? To be with others and not feel like their burden, or like they’re crossing their fingers behind their back to ward off whatever bad things you might bring onto them? He’s made it his mission to hover around you no matter what, but this feels different.

Maybe, for so long, part of it has been your own gloom that’s obscured it all. Maybe if you didn’t bare your teeth to anybody who got too close, it could’ve been like this always. You hate to think that your own isolation could be some part your own fault. But how were you not to show your teeth when someone tried to reach their hand out to you?

It doesn’t matter now. You shove that all down and let yourself feel the slight warmth of the sun’s glow on your skin where it peeks through the clouds. It’s a nice day, you shouldn’t ruin it with those thoughts.

The sun’s begun making its descent when Soobin’s done. He takes a long drink of water, hissing with relief and crumpling down to the ground with his back to your stump.

“Are you making any way with that girl you were talking to me about?” you prompt.

Giving you a long look over his shoulder, he says, “Don’t.”

“What?” You laugh a little, raising your brows down at him. “I’m not doing anything.”

“You know what you’re doing,” he says, voice flat as he picks stickers out of his fingers.

Soobin’s had a thousand different crushes. There was that daughter of the shepherd, and then the wealthy merchant’s daughter and her long pretty hair, and then the neighbor… Well, you could go on. None of them ever really came to fruition for the poor guy. He thinks that it’s because he’s a poor farmer’s son, but you always tell him that it’s because he’s got an insistent mouth, and that he should be more grateful that you deal with him. Your lips turn up at the corners a little thinking about it—he’ll find the one eventually, but you like the indignant look on his face when you say it.

“I mean it!” you say, nudging him with your leg. “Tell me. I want to know.”

“You won’t even tell me what’s happening with you. Until one of us quits keeping secrets,” he says, placing accusation heavy over the words, “I’ll keep my dealings to myself. What’s it to you, anyway?”

Feeling the weight of his head as he lets it loll lazily against your thigh, you decide that it couldn’t hurt to tell him. The itch to tell somebody crawls under your skin. Especially to tell him. “You know the other day? When I was… being awful?”

His body shakes with a vindicated laugh. “If you’re nothing else, at least you’re self-aware.”

You skirt around that with your own, more awkward, laugh. It’s nice that he thinks so, but you don’t feel it. “Stop,” you huff and nudge him again. “I was foraging out where I usually go. But I guess I wandered out farther than I thought I did. You remember when they used to tell us stories, right? Like the bogeyman. That he’d come snatch us up if we didn’t listen.” Your mom especially had loved that one, back when she cared what became of you. Would she care again, if you told her that everything was fine? “Well, I don’t know if you remember the one about The Wild Hunt, but… Anyway, I was picking some stuff, and…”

Sitting up from his exhausted slouch, Soobin looks like he’s suddenly come back to life. “What?” he interrupts. His voice is strangely serious.

“What?” you say, brow creasing. “They travel here and there… but they were here. In the woods. Like, I heard them.”

Tersely, he asks, “What were you doing that deep in the woods?”

“I mean, I just kept on finding nice stuff until I just… was deeper.” You survey him. You hadn’t thought that he’d react like this. “So I ran, and then there was this guy,” you say, watching realization fall over his face. He knew those stories as much as you do—knew where you were going with this. He is as starkly superstitious as the rest of your people, you forgot. Pushing past the grimace on his face, you say, “And I knew that he was the king. The one from the stories. It was so weird; it’s like you can feel it. And I spoke to him, and then…”

Stood up now, he cuts you off once more. “Are you kidding?”

“Why are you being like that?” you say, messing with your skirts to quell the defensive bite in your tone. “I didn’t do anything.”

“You didn’t do anything? Are you trying to get killed?” He throws up his hard-working hands. “We have rules for a reason. Don’t go out into the forest, don’t make deals with faeries, don’t follow a banshee scream. And then you go and talk to the king of death? How am I not supposed to be upset about that? You know that…” Soobin blinks a few times as if second-guessing what he’s about to say, but he says it anyway. “You know that he’s the reason that they treat you how they do. You know that he’s the one who ruined your life. Why would you ever mess with that?”

You push yourself up from the ground, eyes burning. That stings like a cut. “He didn’t do it. None of it is his fault,” you say, furrowing your brows. “What are you trying to say, Soobin? Just say what you want to say. Come on.”

“He didn’t do anything?” He scoffs, letting a heavy silence hang suspended in the air for a moment before saying, “Is that what he told you? And you just believed it? Listen to yourself, does that make any sense? He’s played with your life like it’s some fucking toy, and now he’s come to rub it in your face. Think about it: do animals just fly into anybody else’s windows and die? Do the trees that they pick from just end up dead? It’s his fault that they all treat you the way you do.”

Mouth opening and closing, you don’t know what to say. 

He sees the hurt in your burning eyes and tries to reel it back in. “What I’m trying to say is—”

“I know what you’re saying,” you say, grabbing up the lunch you’ve been nibbling on. “I know exactly what you’re saying. I just never thought you’d say it out loud.”

“Say what?” Soobin says, his voice raising behind you as you storm off.

That you think it’s my fault, you want to say. That they all die because I am a plague, and you are a charity worker for being my friend. Instead, you just leave and try to choke down the tightness in your throat.

༺ ꘏ ༻

You curl your arms around yourself, the night biting cold. Yeonjun had dragged you from bed, and who knows what hour of the night it is? If the heaviness beneath your eyes is to judge it by, it’s far too deep in the dead of night to be outside with your boots half-laced and nothing but your sleep chemise on.

You might’ve just stayed wrapped up in your blankets if you weren’t so lonely as you’ve been. Soobin’s been scarce. The most you see of him is in the fields from morning to afternoons. You hope that he’ll stop by your doorstep and knock so that you can groan about it but swing the door open anyway each time, but he doesn’t. He thinks that you won’t want to see him, and so he allows you your space.

That couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s hard to be the one to come back after a conversation like that, though. You watch him from the windows and hope he understands at some point instead. It’s an awful lot easier.

Other than preparing meals and window watching, you’ve been up to nothing much at all. You hadn’t realized how much you had, but you feel him in his absence. 

“It’s cold…” you say. The fog of breath that punctuates it makes your point. Whatever he’s brought you out here for, you have no doubt it’ll be something strange. The grin on his face tells you as much.

Leading the way, he heads for the Darkwood. “Only you would come rushing out without a cloak for your shoulders.”

“Well, only you would drag me from my nice, warm bed at this time of night. For what?”

“Can’t anything be a surprise with you?” he says, shooting you a cheeky glance over his shoulder. “Surprises are fun.”

“Surprises!” you say, working your legs to catch him. “Not surprises that involve you bringing me out into the woods. You know, it’s awfully suspicious. Somebody who sees this might think that I am the type to… sneak out with men.”

“Aren’t you now?”

Your lips tug down. “You know what I mean.”

He laughs in his airy way, a twig snapping under his foot. You’re well in the woods, now. Probably somewhere near where you’d first met him.

Lifting a brow, you look at him expectantly. Maybe a will-o’-the-wisp will come floating through with its light bouncing off the trees. That would be a nice surprise, you admit.

Yeonjun circles you. His presence behind you tingles in the way it always does, but true chills erupt when his breath puffs against your ear. “Close your eyes. I have something I want to show you.”

Your mind wanders back to what Soobin had gotten so twisted up about. It might be naive and reckless and against everything you ever learned, but you let your eyes fall shut to blackness. If he was going to hurt you, you imagine he’d have had that opportunity a mind-numbing amount of times before.

“Are they shut?” he asks, waiting for your nod. His voice comes from in front of you now. “I want you to keep them shut. You can’t open your eyes, or it will all go away. Okay?”

“Okay,” you breathe, mind full of a bounty of questions. You don’t even know where to begin to assume what he’s got going on, so you stand there shifting your antsy feet.

There’s a strange, rustling sound that catches you off guard with your eyes closed. It drags on for a long moment. Curiosity pries at your eyes; you want nothing more than to just crack an eye open to spy the source of the ruckus. 

It’ll be gone if you do, anyway.

You let out a surprised squeak as something rises up beneath you, as if risen from nothing more than the dirt and roots of the forest floor, bringing you up from the earth. You wobble and send your hands out to find a perch.

A horse. It’s a horse, its mane so tangled and windswept, but matted and clumped with leaves that crunch under your palm when you find them. It reeks of mud—everything around you begins to smell of earth and decomposition.

You know that if you open your eyes, you’ll find yourself sat upon the pale white steed of the Undead King, its eyes white and its knobby knees almost as famous as the leader of The Hunt himself. It chuffs beneath you.

“Are you ready?” Yeonjun says over your shoulder. You can hear the feral grin in his voice. It’s the leader of The Hunt, a creature of folklore, that sits behind you now. He curls an arm around your waist and tugs you closer to him, securing you against the wall of his chest. “Hold on tight, my love.”

The call of the wild, that horn, bellows again like it had the first time you heard it. Rather than coming from nearby as you thought it would, it dances between trees far off just like it had that time, too. Your heart jumps up into your throat.

Taking off with a howl, the Wild Hunt follows it.

You dig your fingers into Yeonjun’s at your waist. Weight melts away, and you know you’re in the air. Your belly swoops in tandem with the howls and hoots of the riders, heart palpitating to the hoofbeats. How there’s hoofbeats as you ride through the air, you’re not sure. The ghostly fleet manifests around you in vivid imagery, though you squeeze your eyes shut. They are wild enough to imagine just what they might look like: with their clothes and flesh in tatters, with their eyes beady or pale, with their hounds piercing the air with their calls and running alongside them, they are a perfect personification of freedom.

Whip-lash sends you reeling, body going rigid. You grit your teeth and squeeze your eyes harder, wishing that you’ll touch ground soon and that everything would become real again.

Yeonjun feels you go stiff. Bringing his head back to your shoulder from his own delight, he says, “It’s okay. You’re okay. Let it into your bones. Do you think I would let it hurt you?”

He is their leader. If it got too much, you know Yeonjun would be there to catch you. Curling your fingers into his, you release that tension and allow their drumbeat to echo through you.

And when it does, your blood begins to sing along. The wind whips your cheeks and your hair, and you begin to laugh with them. The Hunt twists and turns and dances through the air, an apparition in the night, but nothing more than that.

It comes to a slow, eventually, until the noise and even your steed crumbles back down into the dirt it appeared from. Your eyes pop open hoping to catch at least a glimpse of them, but only the dark forest and pale moonlight answer. Your legs threaten to give out on you, veins still thrumming, but, oh, do you feel alive.

You feel more alive than you ever have, more than you ever could have hoped to have known. Mind spinning, you stumble. Yeonjun catches and steadies you before you can go scraping your knees on a rock.

“Oh my fucking god,” you say.

The laugh that Yeonjun breaks into has you sending him a glare, but you break too. Everything about him is ironic; and how ironic indeed that Death himself should show you how to be alive, rather than to just live?

༺ ꘏ ༻

The air is so fresh in your lungs when you step outside that it nearly burns. You clutch your basket of warm fig tarts. Songbirds trill and fly between tree tops that slowly become more bare the deeper you fall into the season, singing their sweet songs that sound like new beginnings.

Raising your hem from the ground churned up into mud from the afternoon’s trickle, you prance into town with a lively pep in your step. You spent all last night making these—Yeonjun had kept you company, watching you how he always does as you pored over making them just right. His cruel snicker when the jam had simmered over flame for too long and became too thick bounces off your bones in a sweet melody. You’ve come to adore his wicked delight, the way his smile cracks over his face and the facetious raise of his brows, more than you fear it.

Sending small smiles to the people that you pass, you stop by a huddle of kids digging sticks into the mud. They look up at you with curious eyes, stopping to gawk.

“Hey, guys,” you say, pulling back the cloth laid over the sweets. “I’ve made some fig tarts. Do you like fig? I bet you’ll like them; they’re sweet.”

The kids stand up, eyes big as they share a look. They don’t let out so much as a peep before they scurry off home.

You blink. Well, you’re used to weird reactions, but that was… different. Picking up your deflated shoulders and hesitant limbs, you make a shoddy attempt at not letting it dampen your good morning. You were expecting wary looks, anyway.

You head down a little further toward the far side of your home village, the side that breaks off after a fenceline into a great, grassy field. There’s a bustle, mothers washing their clothes in pails and hanging them up to dry and a few others whispering at each other lowly as they go about their days.

An old woman so old her back curves and her fingers have gone knobby makes her way to wherever the day’s duty demands her to be. Your neighbor—an eccentric old lady bound in her times. You decide on her: the elderly are forgotten by the young. She might enjoy knowing that her neighbors still know she exists.

“Hello,” you say, showing her your basket with a hopeful, excited heart. “I have some treats that I was wanting to give out. I know they might not be much, but would you like one? I’m not the best baker, but I do it often enough.” A face like that, dragged down by her years on this earth and not long to death, has no doubt spent many years making meals for her family. You imagine your goods would be nothing beside hers, but it’s the gesture, no?

“Oh, girl,” she says, voice crackling as she clutches her shawl tighter around her shoulders. “I’m afraid it’s best if you found yourself missing from this place. Hurry yourself up and spare the drama.”

The incessant cawing of a crow from a clawed tree fades into the background as you furrow your brows and lower your basket to ask, “...Huh?” Your belly goes up in knots; terrible knots done up tight and fast. You haven’t got a clue what she’s talking about. Elders always did speak a bit strange, though. It could be nothing much; she’s a stern old lady.

But her eyes are not angry and glaring in the way that a harrowed old hag might turn her nose up at the youth. They drag down with a cold pity.

“Listen to me, girl.” She points at you with one of those worn, sun-spotted hands. “You had best leave. The boy’s gone, and they are already not fond of you. Who will they point their fingers to?” the woman says. “I hardly know you, but I would hate to see it.”

The rest of her words fade into the roaring in your ears, the feral drumbeat of your heart like a wardrum in the cage of your ribs as it beats against them as if to escape from you. You don’t feel the basket in your hands, don’t feel the solidity of the earth beneath your feet, and don’t feel a single one of your thoughts like tangible things. They flit as if liquidated into a rotten, sick mush.

Nothing. You can think of nothing. Nothing real; nothing holding you to the earth.

“What?” Your voice hardly reaches your ears, but what does is weak and broken and like a plea for her to tell you that it’s not really what you think it is.

And if you could see or hear anything beyond your fraying little rift in reality, you would’ve heard the man coming up to you. You would’ve heard the words coming from his angry, sneering mouth, and would’ve done something when he picked up a pail of water, and you would’ve been shaken by the nasty ice water that runs down your frozen body and plasters your hair and clothes down as he pours it over you. But none of it cuts through your stupor.

He yells some awful, stabbing things at you, and a few others join him. They tell you that you are nothing but a plague, tell you to leave and to not come back here.

But this is your home. Where else would you go?

With your sopping wet dress clutched in your shaking fists as though that might keep you grounded, you choke down the tightening of your throat and sift through their faces, searching for his face. Those brown eyes, brown and always shining with nagging playfulness, do not come up anywhere. Jaw trembling, you search harder. Out on the field where he should be at this time of day, at your doorstep demanding that you go spend the day doing nothing with him, in someone’s yard helping them fix up a broken fence, no matter where you look, neither his broad silhouette nor his cheeky, dimpled face is there. You continue to stand stricken dumb, looking for him even though you know by the churning in your belly that it’s true, and you’re just hurting yourself trying to find him right where he should be.

Fine. Alive. Untouched by your disgusting, destructive presence.

When you can no longer fight the strangling tightness in your lungs and your dress is as heavy as your heart, you take off. The hem of your dress drags in mud and sticker bushes and catches on stray twigs, and you don’t know where you’re going, but you just run. You’ll give them what they want. 

You stumble, probably like some lost, undead thing, until you find yourself at the edge of the forest. Only then do you let the wall of whittle-edged tears roll down your face. And you assume you sound like a choking, dying animal with how you choke and heave on them, but he was the one you might’ve dropped your head and cried to, so what’s the use of making it pretty? No; you let it all fall as it is.

Soobin’s dead. Soobin’s dead, and it’s nobody else’s but your own fault. You clutch your chest to staunch that old ache that’s grown teeth and tears at your heart; you have and will always be the end of everything that comes near. You are just as much the plague that you began to pretend, to believe, you weren’t. It was your stupid hope that maybe you could have something and not watch it become carrion that drove that pick. It was by your hope that he’s gone.

The hair on your arms begins to raise. You pick your head up and find Yeonjun standing in front of you.

There’s a few beats of long, dreadful quiet as he takes in the state of you. He drags his eyes down and they become liquid flame—something different from the impious delight that he is made of. He becomes the King of Death.

“What happened?” he says. The chills on your arms prickle furiously at the words, furling out distant and yet furious like the center of the fire.

You shake your head, wiping your soaked cheek.

“What the fuck happened?” he growls again, taking your face into his hand. “Who did this? Who did this to you, my love? I need you to tell me who the fuck did this to you.”

Letting the venom in your mouth out, you shove his chest and say, “Get away from me. Don’t fucking touch me.”

Yeonjun’s face twists up, looking scalded. Not surprised, though. “Don’t do this,” he says. “Let me hold you while it hurts. Don’t push me away. I can’t… I won’t lose you again.”

All the pieces that you had been putting into the corners of your mind snap together at that. As many suspicions as you had, though, it feels sour hearing it confirmed from his mouth. That you are his dead past lover, reincarnated or whatever you are. That it was his presence—because even though he stayed away for centuries, a part of him still lingered with you—that now has torn down everything you ever thought you could love. He, standing there in front of you like a kicked puppy, is the ruination of your life in the flesh. The flipping of your stomach is nauseating.

“I hate you,” you spit. “I hate you so much.” You repeat it a few more times, and you sob it into his chest as he takes you into his arms. “Is this what you wanted? You’ve been waiting for this forever, haven’t you? To find me again, so that you can die and fucking leave me here. So that you can make me exactly what you are, while you get your peace. You are a liar and a thief. All you’ve ever done is steal and take. How could you do it? Huh? Tell me…” Your voice trembles and staggers off. “Tell me how you made love to me, how you made me believe that you loved me, and all you ever wanted was to save yourself? You betrayed me.”

Pulling back, Yeonjun says, “No.”

“Yes,” you say, stumbling back away from him with a shaking, accusatory finger pointed at him. “Yes you did.”

Fingers itching to reach out to you, he holds them back by curling them into fists. “No. That’s not fair. I have spent an eternity loving you. I spent the entirety of my immortal, monstrous life searching for you, just so that I might find you in any form. I would have been glad to find you as a leaf in a tree, as long as I found you. But, then, I find you alive. Alive and back, as if… it never happened.” He steps toward you, aching to be near you. His voice wavers. “Please, don’t do this to me, love. Please, just let me have you again. I’ve waited… I’ve waited and I’ve waited, and I finally have you, and now you’re looking at me like I… Like I’d ever hurt you. Finding death—finally getting to die would be worth nothing if you weren’t there with me. It was never about that.”

“I could never love you,” you say, matching his steps forward with steps away from him. “I could never love a monster that does… Does nothing but kill. Take.”  You know your words are cruel, but you need them to be. You need him to hurt, you need him to go so far away from you that never again will you cause another living thing’s death. 

“You did.” Yeonjun’s mouth cracks into a pained smile, sharp at the corners. “You loved me just as much as I love you, once.”

“Just leave me. Leave me, and I wish to never see you again. If you love me, then you’ll give me that.” 

He looks at you, clever eyes intense and glassy, for a long time. And then he says, “Would that make you happy? Would it make it so that you could live a happy life, and find yourself something to live for?”

What’s left for you? A small village that won’t ever embrace you? No, it wouldn’t fix your life. But you open your mouth and tell him, “Yes.”

“Okay,” he says, brushing his knuckles over your cheeks reverently. He swallows in your features, running over them for what he knows is the last time he’ll be seeing you—the very last time he’ll see the face of his undying love. When he finally opens his mouth again, his voice is gentle. “I’ll leave you. If my being here hurts you, then I won’t be selfish. I love you, darling.”

Don’t go, you want to tell him. Please don’t leave. Please, hold me. But your mouth is dry, and you let the radiant hurt in your chest stop you. You let him go.

༺ ꘏ ༻

There’s only one place you can think of going to. It’s the only place your vagrant feet take you.

His spot still is held sacred by the flattened, gold wheat stalks. Your best friend, still living here on Earth in at least one way even if he’s not here to listen to your stupid rambling. And he would maybe complain, but he’d always listen.

The last thing you’d done was fight with him. What an awful thing—what an awful way to repay him for being the only one who ever dared to get close.

You sit in your spot, beside his, and rest your chin on your knees. If only the ground beneath you would open up and swallow you whole. You’d deserve it.

What’s left for you? Is there a place in the world that would keep you happily once they see what you do? No. There is not. You wish you knew what to do; you wish you had somebody to ask.

Releasing a long, tight breath, you just sit and wait for something to give you answers. A gentle breeze makes your hair dance, but it does not whisper anything to your ears. Something’s circling over head, but it doesn’t caw in the cadence of his laughter.

The day moves along without you. You’re not sure how long you sit, but it stretches somewhere between a few minutes and eternity. No matter how long you wait, there are no answers. No matter how long you mull over it.

Conceding, you begin to push yourself up from the ground. A rustle in between the foliage stops you before you stand.

A tawny hare leaps out in front of you. It sniffs around you, nose twitching. Then it stands back on its haunches. It stares straight at you, an intelligent light in its eyes that knits your brows. The wild thing stands there with a purpose that is uncharacteristic of a forest animal.

But entirely familiar in the face of your best friend. That shine in its eyes as it stands there, nose still twitching, makes your chest tighten up.

“Hey,” you say, as if it might answer you. Your eyes well up with hot tears again. Of course, it doesn’t. 

Maybe you’ve gone mad, but you know that it’s him. That idiot, coming to show you that he’s okay in the afterlife—to visit one last time and to let you know that you shouldn’t worry for him or cry for him. Look at him, full of life once again, he seems to say. The hare blinks its beady eyes. It lingers there for a long time, the ease of peace found in his gaze that Soobin hadn’t had in this life, saying that there is still something waiting out there for us once we go. You reach out a hand. He does not flinch as you scratch behind its ear.

“Okay,” you whisper. “I’m glad to know you’re alright. I know what I need to do, now.”

He blinks.

You laugh a hoarse, breathy laugh, familiar in only the way that Soobin could achieve. “You look stupid.”

Indignantly, the hare stops a bratty foot in a way reminiscent of one of Soobin’s huffs before it settles back down onto its forelegs and scurries off. He goes to live out this new form of life, because it’s true: life does not end in death. He’s shown you that.

Maybe, like this, he’ll find that pretty lady that loves him the way he deserves. That loser.

༺ ꘏ ༻

You spend only one night in your home and you know that what you’ve chosen is right. After spending your day out in the field, you sneak under night’s cover into your husk of a room and let yourself sleep there under the covers one last time. When morning breaks through the window, you gather your weary bones up and leave. 

You run into your mother on the way out. She doesn’t yell at you to leave, but her eyes have gone cold. Colder than you’re used to. You’ve killed again, in every way that counts. So you don’t bother with bidding her or any of them any grand goodbyes. You couldn’t handle the relief you might find falling over them, should you.

Plopping down to the floor, you take a few bites of the cheese and bread lathered in sweet jam that you’d swiped from the kitchen. The grass is long and willows in the wind, bending and dancing prettily. It’s so soft; you enjoy the feeling of it beneath your fingers in your quiet serenity. The scent of it, fresh over the baseness of dirt, you breathe into your lungs.

It would be the loveliest place to spend the rest of eternity.

For the first time, Yeonjun appears in front of you rather than behind you. He materializes from nothing, his elbow on his knee as casual as if he’d been sat there the whole time. The darkness beneath his eyes seems heavier, but then again you know that exact heaviness. It sits right in the very center of you.

You both are quiet for a bit. You let the tall grass whisper, instead.

“Bread?” you say and slant your lips into a smile. Bringing it up, you offer it to him.

His smile wrinkles his nose and curls at the edges. Entirely him. Yeonjun accepts the bread, ripping a bite out before throwing it away into the sea of green. Once he’s chewed, he leans in and captures your lips in a kiss that’s utterly at odds with his sharp mouth. Your lips move over each other gently, save for an indulgent nip or bite here and there.

He pushes you back into a bed of sweetgrass, never letting your lips go. Not to breathe, not to say something that’ll pale in comparison to the sweetness of your mouths on one another. He kisses you until he’s had enough to fulfill a lifetime without it, and then some more.

“My love,” he whispers into your skin, his breath hot on your collarbone. “Mine,” he says, pressing a kiss into the column of your neck, and then he says it again with a hot kiss to the place where your dress suggests your breasts. He says it a handful more times as he pushes your skirts up your thighs. “My love forever. I waited for you so long, and I would do it again.” Lowering his voice to a honeyed whisper, he adds, “I would find you no matter what.”

Laughing softly, you run your fingers through his raven hair to better see his eyes. You know he would.

Gently giving you one more of his lingering kisses that make your skin tingle, right into your bare shoulder, he presses into you. You loose a soft breath, wrapping your arms around his shoulders. The beating in your chest slows to a content purr as he begins languid thrusts in and out of you, rolling pointedly and unhurried.

Yeonjun makes love to you in a thousand dusted kisses and sweet words, your hands holding each other’s soft edges. Yeonjun traces the lines of you, taking the pads of his thumb down your cheeks and your lips and then his hand over the swell of your breasts and down your belly and over your thighs. Clamping down on him as your belly grows tight in the way it had the first time you had done this, your thighs begin to shake.

 Breathlessly, as you hurdle over the edge, all that you can say is, “I love you, ‘Junnie.” 

Yeonjun smiles at you and then presses his face into your neck. He doesn’t even brace himself against the grass to chase his own peak. Neither of you want this to end; you want to hold on to this moment and let it span forever. Slowly, Yeonjun rolls up into you until his hips finally stutter and he cums into you, his cheeks pink. The weight of him above you as he shakes with your shared ecstasy, and even as you both have come down and are nothing but lazy, is the only thing in this world. He is the only thing in this world.

Once you’ve both evened your breathing out, you roll apart and face each other, still just two forms bending the grass into your shapes. Blinking slowly and digesting his features one at a time—the angle of his eyes, softened but never tamed, the line of his nose, the line of his mouth always so proud and playful, and that pretty dot below his left eye—you let them solidify fully in your mind.

“Yeonjun,” you say, finally meeting his eyes across from you. “I want to go. I’m ready.”

The gentle, knowing look that he gives you soothes over the way your heart begins to race in your chest in rebellion. “I know,” he says.

Of course he had known. Yeonjun had been called here to ferry you into the afterlife. He had known the moment he appeared in front of you that his last soul to reap would be you; an ironic circle of karma that should be cruel, but you two make it something sweet. Chewing on your lip, you will your hands to not shake as you curl toward him. You’re no longer scared of going. You know that if you’ll be with him, it will be okay. It won’t be so scary. A hot tear rolls down your temple and then drops into your hair. “Will you be with me? I won’t be there alone?”

He tucks some hair behind your ear reverently and then leaves his hand there. “I don’t know,” he answers. “But I won’t leave you. I’ll stay right here with you.”

You lay there for a long time. Chatting and giggling and just looking into each other's eyes, until your heart becomes slow and all you feel is the wind singing in your blood. Yeonjun presses one final kiss to your forehead.

Maybe, in some years, somebody might dig up your bones and find you immortalized like this in your love. Your bones bowing toward each other, as if even death were not enough to stop you from reaching for each other. Or maybe they’ll just find yours, and Yeonjun still curling into them how you know he will for an eternity more.

Either way, the going is still slow and gentle, as death always is.

🪶 ⦂ tears. omfg i cried writing this which could totally be me being a bitch baby but it DAMN. omfg.

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[fiction-is-the-new-reality]

One year gone

word count: 1k

summary: the death of Foggy has left you and Matt in different places. What happens when you come face to face with Matt again?

The courtroom doors burst open, and you're among the first to escape into the cool, echoing corridor. The smell of old wood and polished floors fills your nostrils as you hurry away. It’s no use. Of course.

You hear a distant, muffled shout of your name echoing from behind. The voice calls again, but you ignore it, your footsteps quickening and your breath loud in your ears. The voice calls out closer and louder this time. The third time your name is said, it's in front of you.

You had promised (lied) to yourself that you wouldn't stop no matter what.

Now, seeing him face to face, you realize you have set yourself up to break that promise. He was just as handsome, and his smile was just as charming as when you first met him.

The people moving around you two fade out of your view as you look at him. It had been over a year since you had seen him last. You note how he's grown out his beard and the start of grey hairs around his temples. Your chest gets tight.

Matt breaks the silence first, "Hi."

"Hey." You fight to keep your voice neutral, hoping to feign coolness. No doubt he's already picked up on your nerves.

"How have you been?" He asks casually like you haven't been estranged for over a year.

"I've been fine. You?" Keep it short and simple. Don't open a boarded-up door, you chant in your head.

"I've been hanging in there. I haven't seen you since the funeral." You say the last two words with him.

"Yeah, I moved back home."

You didn't have to tell him that; he had heard it the second you began speaking. Your subtle yet melodious accent resonated in his ears. He smiled softly; he always loved how quickly your accent returned when you visited your hometown.

"That's-that's good. Hey, do you want to grab dinner or coffee while you're in town?"

"No, Matt, I think I'm good."

"Oh," he lets out a sardonic chuckle, "I know you're lying. I'm just uncertain if it's to yourself or to me."

You scoff, "Of course, you know because you know everything, don't you?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

So much for not prying open that boarded-up door.

"Nothing, just forget it. It was good to see you, Matt." You shove past him, you shoulder nudging him.

"Forgive me for throwing out an olive branch. You haven't been around in what feels like forever. I've tried calling you. I've left messages, but all I got back was radio silence. I was so close to believing that you were dead. Then you show up, and what I'm supposed to ignore you?" His tone is dripping with accusation.

Your body goes stiff, and you whip around to face him again.

"I called too, you know! After the funeral. The weeks following. I called damn near every day. I didn't just give up on you, Matt. I tried!"

"I couldn't-I was-"

"Going through a lot. I know. I lost Foggy too, and then-" Your breath hitches in your chest, a gasp catching in your throat, your voice trembling. "I lost you. I tried so hard to hold on, Matt." Tears sting your eyes.

You had told yourself that you were done crying over Matt Murdock. Guess it was another lie you fed yourself.

"I tried to be there for you, but you pushed me away. I tried to give you your space, but that just seemed to make everything worse. I couldn't," you stop yourself, contemplating your following sentence.

"You couldn't what?"

"I couldn't keep waiting for you to care about me again, Matt." Your quivering bottom lip trembles, failing to muffle the volume of your voice as the words burst forth. The fiery anger burning inside you finally flickers and dies as you confess, the tension leaving your body like smoke. It's quickly replaced with regret, the type of regret that has your stomach in a knot.

A heavy silence hangs in the air. You can't bear to look at him.

In the silence, your heart pounds in your chest, and each thud echoes in your ears. No doubt Matt hears it just as loud as you do.

Instead of matching your volume. Matt's words come out defeated.

"That's not fair."

"No, Matt, it is. What's not fair is what you put me through. I would never want you to hide your grief, and I'd never be mad at you for grieving, but I couldn't ignore my feelings. I waited for you. I did everything I could think to do. But at the end of the day, you wanted me gone. Deep down inside, you wanted me to leave."

Matt opens his mouth, trying to object.

"Don't try to lie, Matt. I know you better than anyone else. You pushed me away when you went after Fisk, and before that, you pushed me away when you started going out at night. I know it's you trying to protect me. I know you were scared. Scared of losing me, scared of losing Karen, scared about how you lost Foggy and scared about who you were turning into."

"I would have loved you through it all, no matter how long it took you to talk to me again. I would have stayed by your side. But you didn't just ignore me. You avoided me, and you walked out, Matt, not me! So you don't get to be mad at me." Hot tears fall freely down your face.

Matt's arms reach out towards you but stop halfway. He reminds himself that he can't comfort you. Even though every fiber of his being is aching to hold you and wipe away your tears, he can't. He has to remind himself that he's the reason you're standing here crying in the first place.

"You're right, okay? I pushed you away again. I-I was spiraling, and I didn't see a way out, and I wasn't going to drag you down, too. If I had talked to you, you would have convinced me not to shut you out. So I did what I do best. I self-sabotaged and destroyed the whole thing. I regretted it while I was doing it and after. I hated coming back to the apartment and you being gone. I hated having to find out from Karen that you had left. I have hated myself every day because of it. Nothing has felt the same, I-" he choked up, eyebrows furrowing as his eyes glossed over with tears. "I haven't been the same."

"We have found our way back to each other before this. Please find your way back to me. Please don't let this tragedy ruin everything we've gone through. I would do anything to have you by my side again. I'll do whatever it takes for you to forgive me. Please let me prove it to you."

You remain silent.

He speaks your name softly.

"Say something to me, anything. Yell at me, tell me to fuck off, just-just say something."

"Do you want to go get coffee?"

Matt instantly perks up, "Really?"

"That's not me saying I forgive you, Matt; it'll take time."

"Of course. I meant what I said. I’ll do anything."

"I know. Let's start with coffee first."

You extend an olive branch back and offer your arm out for Matt. He hesitates for a second till you clear your throat. With a smile that makes the edges of his eyes crinkle, he links his arm with yours.