#IF YOU KEEP LEADING ME INTO YOUR ROOM
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hey guys someone should put into my event a songfic with church by chase atlantic so i can make dallas fall in love with a church girl and make him use it against her thanks
#IMMA BOUT TO TAKE U BACK TO CHURCH#BABY TELL ME YOUR CONFESSIONS WHATS THE WORST#BAPTIZE IN YOUR THIGHS TILL IT HURTS#AND ILL KEEP LEADING YOU ON#IF YOU KEEP LEADING ME INTO YOUR ROOM#THE DRINKS ARE ALL GONE#BUT THATS FINE#BABY SO AM I#god that song is soooo dallas#i lovr him#and i love chase atlantic#someone do it and i’ll turn it into a fic instead of a blurb#thanks#or drabble#idk#and i rlly dgaf#leo’s late night rambles
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listen I'm not gonna be a Curly apologist he did Fucked Up as captain but I genuinely recommend ppl watch a playthru that goes thru the game in chronological order. It kinda helps clear up the events and gaps between them, bc even tho u See the times, you still experience it out of order.
The stuff Anya says definitely sets off alarm bells but it doesn't seem like he Fully Understands what she means, and I'm going to be 100% honest I think she was trying to repress it herself. This isn't to say that she is AT ALL "at fault" for what happened after and she should've gotten help even if she wasn't ready to fully discuss the issue but I genuinely think she herself was still coming to terms with things, so she didn't necessarily process the full impact before talking to Curly, and a lot of what happens occurs after they're laid off- like this delves into personal interpretation but I genuinely think Anya only registered Jimmy as a serious danger after his outburst towards Curly. Ofc my interpretation is limited bc of the limited pov in game and not having gone through what she has, but it personally reads more akin to coercion over time than a singular Obviously Violent incident (like. Not to say that Sexual Assault isnt violent in nature, just that coercion often specifically works to obfuscate the fact it is a form of violence.) The layoff is a Massive catalyst for her bc of Jimmy, in that she now has a very clear understanding of his capacity for aggression.
To extrapolate a little from the "Dead Pixel" conversation, she starts by saying she Likes The Screen (even though it's fake). While Curly has his quotes about the pixel "not ruining the illusion" which. Y'know is Symbolic Of His Flaws. She doesn't say the pixel ruins it, just that she can't get it out of her mind.
If we take the pixel to represent her Or jimmy, either way the way she talks about it kind of downplays things, like it's a Minor Thing that's Slightly Upsetting, but she's still okay with the big picture. Idk I could be 100% wrong but that is my take
Besides that, Anya tells curly she's pregnant 2 days before the crash, and it isn't until she outright states it that he starts Putting The Pieces Together. I want to note, he says "I'd do anything" and "this doesn't have to go on our performance evals" 1. Before he knows shes pregnant 2. Under the assumption she might attempt suicide, and I doubt he even thought about her using the gun on anyone else before she brings that up. He says literally before the line where she tells him she's pregnant that "being laid off isnt a reason to hurt [herself]". Like I've seen ppl talk about the performance evaluation thing like it's about her and jimmy, but I think he's referring to (his belief) that she might attempt suicide or similar which might genuinely be a consistent thing he's seen her struggle with, given she's able to go through with it. Also just to note: assuming their society is like ours (hellish) reassuring her he won't blab Abt her mental health is like. Genuine reassurance- lots of mentally ill ppl will Not Open Up bc it could have long term consequences (like. For example. On employment) ANYWAYS I hope it doesn't come off like "Curly never failed Anya" but rather "Curly approached this specific situation without the context of why Anya is panicking and (possibly validly) assuming she's dealing with a very different issue"
Also let me say again the time frame is 2 days. We don't Really see what happens, but we know Anya tells Jimmy without Curly knowing. I genuinely believe he maybe didn't do a Great Job in those two days (the fact he says Anya should've talked to Him before telling Jimmy is uhhh. Mm. 1. Your job to create an environment where she comes to you my man 2. Weird to tell her what she should do with HER OWN PERSONAL INFORMATION) but like.
I get a lot of ppl want immediate consequences but consider that they can't really get rid of Jimmy (co pilot. Which is. Y'know it's Own Problems) but also like. Curly knows Jimmy, and we know that Jimmy tends to lash out. Curly should probably Not Confront Jimmy Unless He Knows Exactly How To Keep Him From Hurting Anya. Like I'm not an expert but this is something genuinely important- when confronting an abuser you NEED to take into account the impact it can have on their victim, and sometimes for the victims safety you need to wait until you have a Solid Plan. It sucks but it's important.
And theres discussion to be had about Curly kinda going along with Jimmy saying "well what if we all died" and like. I do believe he Didn't Realize What Jimmy Said. Like he was just processing/trying to keep the situation under control (and failing because he underestimated how willing Jimmy was to hurt everyone including himself).
Like he's definitely an enabler but I would say his problems are mostly before he understands the gravity of the situation, in that he's friends with Jimmy and assumes the best of a man with abusive tendencies, and fails to create an environment that can keep Anya and the others safe. Like, he definitely doesn't handle in game events perfectly (psych evaluation for one- he does do it instead of Anya which is actually helpful, but he still treats it like. Weirdly.)
Idk I have a lot of thoughts about this game and I don't necessarily want to defend Curly but more like. Anya's situation is very delicate (and light on details) so sometimes the way ppl talk Abt it feels like they aren't actually focused on what she wants and what it means to prioritize her safety y'know?
Edit bc I just now figured out kinda how I want to word it: curly is an enabler and making things worse bc he doesn't put a stop to Jimmy's BS, but in the specific scenario we see in game I think he's trying to use his Skillset of like, people pleasing not for Jimmy's sake but for the crews (like "if I nod my head and say I sympathize he won't lash out and hurt them") which like. There are situations which that is unfortunately the safest option (on an individual level yes, but sometimes it's also necessary to prevent abusers lashing out in response toward ppl who are more vulnerable) but it was the Wrong Choice.
It's like. I think Curly was trying and had good intentions, and understood that he needed to protect the crew, but he didn't have the toolset/experience to realize he can't Just go along with things and that he needs to be able to set hard limits, even for ppl he likes and trusts. Like he failed but the failure was "for want of a nail", where it began way before what we see (for want of an understanding of power dynamics I guess.) Again, don't think this makes curly more forgivable or whatever, I just think he's a good example of trying to make the right choices when you never realized you'd have to make these kinds of decisions and therefore are unprepared and/or unaware
Second edit: personally I don't think you can really incapacitate jimmy without there being serious risk (again he's the copilot) but curly should've given Anya the gun when she told him Abt the pregnancy
#Mouthwashing spoilers#Rape ment#Suicide ment#SA ment#Yeah. Pronouns were kicking m fucking ass in this post. Names also bc I once called curly jimmy#if I write to much my brain stops cooperating with words#Idk. The way she brings up the locks in my mind sounds a little less like#Singular Incident and more. The lack of locks is a Very Important Boundary That's Missing#That feels like it often leads to the erosion of other important boundaries especially when someone abusive#Is specifically pushing those boundaries. Idk again. My take on it#And while Anya says ''i told you'' a part of me thinks she told him like. Y'know vaguely about the situation but probably didn't#Characterize it as assault (bc even if he didn't believe her I don't think he would ask ''who'' if he remembered her telling him#That his friend assaulted her) and was maybe not interpreting it as assault herself bc she was trying to rationalize it#Bc she's in a very isolated situation for over a year in a place where Two Whole Rooms Have Locks.#Realizing she was in the cockpit (has a lock) when Curly is assuming she's suicidal (or at least going to hurt herself)#And then she's in the medbay (has a lock) when she actually. Y'know#Idk I'm fully up to debate this. If someone has good reasoning why curly is actually worse than I think he is I'm all for it#I'm just trying to like. In the context of my beliefs understand the actions he takes and how they fit in within the timeframe#But legit watching a chronological playthrough helps A LOT bc like. Game is super impactful nonlinear#But like. That's not how the characters experienced it and it really fucks with the timeline of events intuitively#Anyway again. If u hate curly that's entirely understandable I just want to try and organize my thoughts while keeping#The timeline and my view of events relatively straight. Feel like there's sometimes a lil too much focus on how the men failed Anya#When we should focus on what Anya's needs and wants are. Which ofc from our POV characters are Hard bc. It's curly and jimmy#But still it's worth trying to understand her better than they do#Game that makes you think so much your brain becomes mouthwash
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Every fucking time. Every fucking time I go "I'm going to get my sleep schedule fixed!" I get hit by the good ol' 1-2 -- Insomnia & My Family Members Don't Respect Night Shift Workers.
#em.txt#oh you're asleep during the day? that's sooo strange why would you do that when you can wake up now#negative#vent#when i am up late i keep it down but these cunts CANNOT imagine doing the same for me#because I don't matter enough to do some basic shit like 'close the laundry door so the machine is quieter'#or 'don't let your child run up & down the hall outside my room screaming' PICK A DIFFERENT HALLWAY#THERE'S OTHER HALLS. A BACK YARD. GO SOMEWHERE ELSE#once again reminding followers i have had this schedule for 5 months it's not new or a surprise that i sleep when i do#they just don't even consider giving a fuck abt it bc I don't fucking matter. their kids right to scream does#i told my lead i would go out of my way to be rested for tonight bc I'm always tired on his shifts#well that's too damn bad. because these cunts don't shut up ever
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a while ago i accidentally bent a g.pangolin electrode (those things are made of gold) the world was covered in conductive gel time is passing unreal lvls of quick they know my heart is yours
#a mark per line. i want to learn how to play the santoor linguistic communication is a two way process. candle dances like theres someone#burning in it. both listeners and speakers need to adjust for successful communication. give two examples of how listeners might adjust to#speakers. a quick rum picks you up. speakers assimilate. speakers adjust to mispronunciation. my cat is guarding the living room#my friend is stuck in abstraction hell. how might speakers adjust to listeners? laziness leads to permanent language changes and neonates#recognise the rhymes their mothers sang to them before birth. we know this because we have a way to quantify familiarity. i wonder if my#heart too would slow if i heard your voice . are you free on the 7th? i'd love it if youre there even for a little bit.#he said i dont know when ill see you again. ill see you whenever you want. i have an exam the next day and an event i'm not going to#full of beautiful monsters. shes taking her girls instead. shell be on her motorbike overclocked. from 7 hours to 9 days after#birth neonates can habituate to basic 2d shapes. i was in your living room in some latent space between solid and not. ive grown#complacent and overfilled and lazy in their warmth. my friends keep me alive and undervolted. too much sun to care for the important things#that arent you. she escapes to a small town with a book alone for meditation. she tells me she cuts fabric for the girls blood in their eye#i wish you never met my lips. shes back in lancaster. hes back from her cave full of velvet and rivers and sand#go on girl punch like you mean it#kick like i taught you.
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i hope tottmnt puts heart back into the inevitable Meet Casey Jones episode that's honestly all i can ask of any tmnt project
#ikildaman shut the fuck up#tmnt#2k3's rendition of this is everything u guys dont understand......#'12s was such a nothingburger midfest 2k3 had the heart to empathise with raph.#and gave casey his wriggle room for redemption but i moreso cared about the grace raph was given#casey in general in '12 was kindof a nothingburger he had plenty of leads to build on but never got explored#bayverse turned him into a cop and rot just incorrectly labelled karai with his name#and then they were like oh whoops no here he is actually in that movie or whatever. idfk i dont like rot#pleeeeeeeaaaase somebody give a fuck about casey. GUYS!!! CAN YOU HEAR ME#ive known ppl who were emotionally irregular and were super abusive abt it and ive known others who literally never did anything wrong ever#2k3 was so simple in its terms. theres nothing Wrong with you but you have to get your shit in order if youre losing it#this was 2003 how did television peak in 2003#also casey kindof remained a basketcase somewhat. hes still very outwardly destructive. hes never villanised for it though.#if we're getting Back To Form (thank god) can we not do a '12 and do sumpthing a little more 2k3#and can we Especially not do a rot and just pissfart around acknowledging the coolest deuterag this franchise has#also unrelated. i hope this animation isnt paced like rots was. whatever processing disorder i have genuinely cant keep up with it#a crumb of readability sir....?
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#rant time#ok you know what im literally done bc if you’re going to act like my friend only when it’s convenient for you you’re not my friend!!!#like!!! hello??? do you realize how not ok it is to treat people that way??? to make comments that lift them up and make them feel like#they’re your best friend and then ignore them for the next two weeks or whatever??#seriously stop being so fake!!! you should’ve just been a mature person and told me that you don’t want to be my friend anymore instead of#whatever this is#like just tell me if i did something wrong to you and we can move on#because do you understand how terrible it makes me feel every time i’m in a class with you and all of your friends and you act like you’ve#never seen my face in your life??? and i’m just sitting there alone when years ago you would always sit by me when i was sitting alone#because you said you hated when people sat alone#yeah right ok girl i believe you!!!#of course you don’t understand that because you’ve never felt that way#you just ditch your friends every one or two years because there’s new people you like better#well guess what??? if you keep being a crappy friend those people will never be your real friends#like seriously who are you actually friends with??? you’re so fake!!! you constantly talk crap about all of your new friends!!! and then#the second they’re in the room with you you act like they’re your best friend for life#like no they’re not!!! not when you’ve said stuff like how mean and braggy they are and how you don’t want them to get leads over me!!!#well guess what if you want to ditch friends who are actually good people then you’re stuck with mean and braggy people so deal with it#and it’s not just me!!! i feel like you’ve treated everyone like this and it’s so not ok#so anyway i know I’ll say all this and then the next time you try to talk to me i’ll keep acting like it’s fine#but just so you know i think you’re the fakest friend I’ve ever had and i hope someday you get a taste of your own medicine#sorry for the rant lol#lav speaks
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you ever go into a tag for a show or whatever and find several painstakingly created gif sets from interviews with the actors where they're just like. fully mocking fans? talking about them like they're the most despicable thing on this earth kind of bitter mocking. and on the one hand you're like, okay, i get it, fans can really be shit and get overly parasocial and think you owe them something beyond the work you created but on the other it's like. bro this makes me not want to engage with anything you do at all. ever. you don't have to sing your fans praises but you can do them the basic courtesy of professionalism and not ridiculing the entirety of everyone who both engages with your creative work and whose interest ultimately results in your paycheck.
#dan talks#dont expect this to breach containment but just in case locking it up#bcs there are like a million people out there who'll misconstrue what i said in a complaint post#theres just this air sometimes in fandom where actors etc go beyond boundary setting and into fanbase mockery#where ure supposed to nod along and mock as well bcs haha stupid fans but the whole time youre aware it includes u as well#ik this is a complex topic and a lot of stuff leads to creators getting bitter towards their fans#but oscillating between 'we love u give us money <3' and outright mockery just sits rly badly w me#creators i really love have started doing it too the last few months and its excruciating#to be clear i dont rly engage w anyone's private life ever and im lurker extraordinaire#i rarely know the actors' name much less care to watch their interviews and stuff thats meant to like give u a sense of peeking into#their private lives#and i have to assume those interviews are mandated?? so sometimes they provoke reactions not of their own volition and are thus bitter#idk lots of thoughts#i get it i rly do they're people too who get annoyed and do mean jokes about it like everyone else#but it gets a whole dif dimension when those mean jokes are public and get back to people they're said about#who are often not even the ones who did anything#the internet is not the privacy of ur friend group!! rules go both ways#managing your frustrations about being public and keeping to professionalism when you're online is a huge part of that job#you're a person too both means 'gtfo out of my house youre not my friend' and treating your job like it's a job and not a living room#gossip circle#maybe thats the thing??? that the comfort of a certain environment blurs the lines between professional and friend chat#just feel sad for those gif makers bro don't spend care and time on words that explicitly ridicule you#ok that's it for today thank you for tuning into dan central
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the thing with autism right. is i know if i was having a full mental health crisis what i would end up doing is going to the emergency room and being like "hello, my name is (x) birthday (y), um i was hoping to talk to you about potential mental health inpatient care? i'm currently having a mental health crisis and don't think i can be trusted on my own" like if there's one thing i can be sure will live on in me no matter how hard the brainworms try. is my fucking customer service voice
#like itll be busted as fuck because ill be freaking out but you bet ill be sobbing my way through verbally drafting an email#ive done it before‚ like im a frustrated crier and once i start crying i cant turn it off so ive had a couple times where i had a breakdown#at work‚ cried about it a lot‚ and my lead pulled me into a meeting room after i calmed down to check in#and as soon as i started talking it just started again so i had to be like 'sorry th-this is just something m-m-my bod-dy does‚ i-i'm calm#m-mentally but i just c-cant turn this-is off‚ just try to i-ignore HIC it and f-f-focus-s on the w-wwwords‚#(tired of crytyping so just mentally fill it in yourself in everything else i say)#n they offered me more time to chill but im like no really i genuinely am calm‚ i calm down wayyy before my body does its gonna#keep doing this on and off all day‚ it takes hours for it to fully calm down and is on a hair trigger the entire time#so thinking about this will make it kick back up again no matter what unless we talk tomorrow‚ so if youre ok with bearing with me then cool#and theyre like. dang ok and just focused on what i said#or much more recently i was talking to my roommate‚ stopped‚ held up a finger + stood there silently for ten seconds‚#then was like 'sorry about that‚ i think i have to throw up. excuse me for a moment. what was that? oh gotcha yeah i'll message you if i#need anything‚ thank you'#and just typing it out like that it sounds like i was fine and just saw it coming a ways away. however that is not the case#i had had my covid booster and some other vaccine earlier that day‚ lost 5 vials of blood‚ eaten Nothing‚ drank only#acidic-ass apple juice‚ and had just hit my vape too hard#keeping it in once it made its presence known was a feat of will the likes of which have never been seen before#and still my sentences prevail
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Imagine following me quietly for a year, just to (out of the blue) send rude, incomprehensible messages
and get blocked immediately without any response or acknowledgement.
#Its really so easy just to keep your horrible thoughts to yourself and carry on freely viewing my blog.#Being mean or rude will lead to immediate blocking with no room for excuses or explanation??? Bc i literally do not care WHY????#Im here for a nice time with others who want the same. Anything that goes against that will not be welcome in my space#If you have something horrible to say??? Do not. You wont win any prizes for it.#If they had kept it to themselves they could have continued following me peacefully indefinitely without incident. Their loss#It is rare that i post about these kinds of things tbh bc i dont like bringing any kind of attention to the mindless fools.#But this was a weird one. Their first message to me was rude af & the messaging thing said theyd been following me for over a year already?#I dont understand it and i dont really want to#Ppl are odd#No longer my problem tho#At least the rest of you are a delight
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📝 💐 🛼 💔⏪️💭🧊🌄❤️🩹
Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow by The Shirelles
previous ⏪ now playing ⏩ next back to playlist
#stranger things#bizarre love triangle playlist#el hopper#el's pov#this is the first song for el in the playlist#also probably the most optimistically romantic song for el in the playlist 😭#this is because these are el's feelings in the day before their reunion aka before everything sort of went to shit (mike's words not mine)#and yet while it is hopefully romantic#every romantic build up leads to a 'but--'#the whole point of the song is this feeling of uncertainty that this love she's filling is doomed not to last last#'tonight you're mine completely. you give your love so sweetly. tonight the light of love is in your eyes. but will you love me tomorrow?'#despite this love existing right now in a way that feels tangible. sometime as soon as tomorrow that love is suddenly at risk#and it's sad bc we know that deep down el is having doubts seeing as mike is incapable of simply writing love in his letters#it's just especially sad in her case bc she thinks she is responsible for it ie. 'you don't love me anymore?'#up to this point she has had reason to assume that mike loves her bc of what she overheard mike saying to the others in the cabin#but something isn't right and she's resorted to lying to try to keep mike's affections#right now she can feel some comfort in the fact that she has all these letters/pictures from him displayed in the mike shrine in her room#and yet...#'i'd like to know that your love is love i can be sure of. so tell me now and i wont ask again. will you still love me tomorrow?'#dead ass sounds like a very very valid threat as el's doubts were very much founded#it basically foreshadows how mike being incapable of telling el he loves her in her room during their fight is the final straw for her#she is not going to ask again#and so mike going through with it in the end just makes it all the more tragically epic#and then ending the song with:#'will you still love me...'#dot dot dot indeed#4x01#gif
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vent tw, if you have depression please please just dont interact-
#ok so. to preface this for anyone with depression going past this point. im not gonna be nice. this isnt about you#this isnt about you in particular or how your secretly constantly a burden to everyone you love or how you just cant get it right#its not about having to deal with a person with depression but more how the social climate has made it so its so hard to deal with every#thing. thats all. if you read more do not blame me for feeling bad.#that was your only and last warning#okay so! now that hopefully all my homies with depression out there are ok- it is hard being surrounded by people with depression#sorry like. i am the only one in my imediate family without depression. and its. its hard a lot#like i care so much about these people and yet i cant help them because their either sad or tired or angry or numb most of the time#and i cant do anything. i cant do anything at all. and thats fucked!!!!! i think. sorry i am not one for curing mental illness but i really#really wish there was just a cure for depression so the people i care about could be happy and have energy and be ok#i dont want to constantly worry in the back of my head if what ill say next will lead them to going quiet and sad#or worry about how a few too many wrong moves and a hard time could push them off the edge. i know it wont happen.#but i worry about it constantly especially with the political climate#and i care for them so much and i just wish they could feel happy most of the time. just more than half is enough. more than half#gosh its gotten to the point a sertain tone of voice or someone saying their tired can make me feel bad#like bad enough i need to leave the room and go cry. everyone is alwase tired and i dont know what to do#i feel like a little kid being so sensitive by others emotions- but i cant help it. i cant help it when im surrounded#again this isnt a bash against anyone with depression. this is a bash against depression because of all the pain its given my loved ones#if i could fight depression as a just. thing i would mawl it alive. tooth and nail til all that was left was either bones. cartalige.#blood and flesh that hadent somehow made it into my stomach. and id keep it alive for a long as i could as i killed it#it would suffer 10 times the amount its made others suffer if i could. i can be a cruel bitch and i will if i ever got the chance.#and u h ya! sorry lil bit of silly moment i am just. sick of the tired. if i could id honestly never hear the phrase im tired again
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all my live reactions :P
𝒯𝑂: 𝑆𝑂𝑀𝐸𝑂𝑁𝐸 𝐹𝑅𝑂𝑀 𝐴 𝑊𝐴𝑅𝑀 𝐶𝐿𝐼𝑀𝐴𝑇𝐸 ༉
𝓘N THIS STORY 〃 a life lived as a human among the fae is one hard-earned. the folk are built of indescribable beauty, and of debauchery and mischief. for some, a life lived subservient to the folk is just fine; but to those who dream of something more, they would spend their lives clawing and biting to make it happen.
you, looking for a way to escape a life as a faerie’s human servant, put a new foot forward thinking that any life could be better than that. but, when your first assignment as a king’s spy is alongside a brooding, icy faerie man, you begin to wonder what your place in this foreign world really could be.
wc ➳ 20.2k
pairings faerie!taehyun x human!reader, faerie!yeonjun x human!reader
warnings angst, heated kissing, violence, blood, jealousy jealousy jealousy, controlling and obsessive behavior, a bit of a gross nightmare, magic spell places over a human, a bit of traditional values, i think that’s all…
playlists ⑊ yeonjun ˒ taehyun ˒ series
…🪶 ashlynn's note guys. really. that’s all i have to say. i love u and once again if u see a typo or like whack sentence…… no you didn’t. also my back hurts help
← ⑊ →
You’ve come to a thought, in all your aimless idling about the estate. Running your fingers over the surface of all the things you’ve done and the decisions you’d made leading you into this reality, you’ve been caught on one particularly worrisome divot: the geas.
They hadn’t exactly given you a time frame, but you surmise that you’re quickly approaching the limit. You've entertained the fantasy that they’ll just consider the both of you dead, but it’s just that: fantasy. You know it’s a ridiculous thought. There’s a plethora of things that they might first assume before coming to the conclusion that you’ve met your ends. Though the geas’ workings are a bit elusive to you, you can imagine that all it would take is a tug to check whether or not you’re alive. So, if you ever really wanted to call this place home, you’ve got to do away with it. You’ve got to. Otherwise, all your wagering to stay here would be in terrible vain. You imagine how much of a fool you already look to Taehyun, considering your entanglement with the prince, and how he’d warned you repeatedly. It’s not your fault that he decided to stay here along with you, but you feel nauseous imagining your own mistakes getting the both of you killed.
Embroidering whorling designs on the hems of your coverlets or sweating away your energy with practicing blocks and parries, you’d also let your mind wander off to fill the silence. It was then that you’d remembered what Beomgyu had offered you in his attempts at luring you. I could dissolve that geas for you.
You sit, legs spread out ahead of you, in the little spot that you’ve found yourself frequenting these days: pressed against the side of your wardrobe, just enough room for your feet to brush against the wood framing of your bed without having to bend your knees. Taehyun has recently been bringing an influx of faeries to work the estate—all indebted to him or his father. Or, well, that’s what he tells you, anyway. You choose to believe him, but still, you wonder about the circumstances of those debts. The brownie assigned to your care, named Conifer, is long-limbed with bark for skin that crawls up from her spindly fingers and toes, just to end at her shins and fore-arm, and insists on bathing you and preparing your clothes each day. When you refuse her, she loiters around the doorway anxiously watching you prepare yourself with her watery black eyes until you decide to make her life just a bit easier and allow her to do her work. You don’t exactly adore the scrape of her sharp fingers on your scalp while she does your tresses up, though. Their presence reminds you of the servants you’d see running around Yeonjun’s place.
In this corner, you avoid them. It’s a nice spot to betray your own resolution; his letters are only a grab of the handles away. You try not to, but you read them. Often. When your memories really get kicking, when you’re sickened by twinkling, desperate eyes looking up to you from the ground, you read them.
“You look sorry.” Beomgyu settles opposite from you, his back against your bed.
Scoffing at him, you pull yourself out of a slouch. “Oh, wow. Thank you. You have a way with words,” you quip, hiding the letters you’d fished out indulgently away behind you.
He furrows his brows. “I meant it.”
You drag in some air and release it slow. “I know. I’m sure I do.”
He points at you with the hand he has rested on his knee. “Does it have something to do with the letters?”
You hadn’t hidden them fast enough. Shame crawls a warm red path over your cheeks and ears. Nobody has made any comments at you for your longing, but it feels pitiful to be doing so. You shake your head. “No. I was just... thinking. About something you said when we first met.”
Strong brows shoot up over lazed eyes. “I think I said many things,” he says, “you’ll have to tell me.”
“That you could dissolve my geas,” you say, fiddling with your fingers.
His eyes consider you. “It bothers you.”
“It does,” you say. “It was a mistake. I should’ve refused it.” Hope flutters in your chest like a dead weight. You shun it away before reality can rip it out for you.
Deadpanned, and not particularly delicately, he tells you, “I cannot break it.”
Nodding, you wilt. It’s what you were expecting, anyway. That would be too easy. "Why not? You said it yourself that you could.”
“A geas is a type of magic cut from the fabric of a promise. It’ll exist until the faerie that placed it over you chooses to revoke it. I couldn’t reach in and cut the line like I would another sort of enchantment.” He presses his mouth into a line. “I was under the impression that you were brought up here. Hadn’t you known that a promise is binding?”
Wincing, you answer, “Yeah. I did.” And yet, you made it. It was perhaps the biggest mistake you’ve made in your entire life. You now understand Taehyun’s aversion when he first made his appearance at the den. You were too tunnel-visioned to really listened to him, then. You run your hands furiously through your hair. “Still... you said you could. How did you say that, if it was a lie?”
A wicked smile cracks over his lips—one that looks as though he’s sharing a joke that only the both of you might understand, but you’re far from being in on it with him. “A bit late to be learning how our kind play, I believe. I was able to say that because I made myself think it true. It is not plain, and it is not fair, but it’s what it is.”
“That makes no sense,” you say, shaking your head. “You can’t believe something is true over what you already know is the truth. You’d have to acknowledge the other thing’s truth to do that.”
He grimaces. “That you believe that is why you’ve found yourself here. It’s paradoxical, maybe, but we’re good at that. Loopholes exist where you look hard enough for them. If you don’t intend to get caught up, you just never accept a Faerie deal, there’s no other way to it.”
Running fingers over the grooves in the wood of the floor, you say, “I suppose I shouldn’t ask you to work up an enchantment that might counteract it, then.”
“Perhaps I could,” he says.
Perked up and mouth dropped open, you’re ready to ask him a waterfall of questions. He cuts in before you can even start. “It wouldn’t rid you of the original magic, and I can make no promises to you that it’d be watertight.”
“I’ll take anything,” you say. With narrowed eyes, you add, “After that whole speech about finding loopholes to lie, and to never trust faerie magic, though...”
He frowns at you. “I see how it is.”
“What? I mean, you said it a few seconds ago. I think getting tripped up into another Faerie trick, like, literally seconds after you warned me about them would be a bit ironic.”
“We’re no longer friendly,” he says, crossing his arms over his chest.
You laugh. Him considering you friends is news to you. The word is delicious. You want to say it more. “Oh, please. We’re only friends when it benefits you. How can I be so sure you aren’t tricking me?”
“Now, we’re really not friendly.”
A laugh bubbles past your lips once again, and you crawl over to him to try and make amends. “You’re the one who said it.”
He turns his face from you. “Spare me.”
“Seriously though, do you mean it? That you’d help me?” you ask. The proposition is too shiny to not consider.
“It’s not as if I could harm you in any way,” he tells you, dropping the theatrics. “I think I’d like something in return for it, though.”
You frown. Of course, in Faerie, there are no favors. “What would you want?”
The kelpie’s eyes roam over your room for a moment, but it’s mostly for show, because his eyes come back on you with intent. He lifts his head at you in a pointing gesture. “Those letters,” he says.
Frown deepening, you sit back. “The letters?” you say, trying to rein in your face. You don’t want him to see how awfully you want to cling to them. Having them is inconsequential when stood beside dealing with the geas, but still... “The ones from Yeonjun?”
Eyes dancing with interest, he nods. “Those.”
You pull them from behind you. They look a lot less pretty now, envelopes dented with your touches. You can’t see why he’d have any interest in them; they weren’t even for him. “Why?” you ask him. “They’re just letters.”
Beomgyu nod his head in acknowledgment. “They are,” he says. “So why do they bother you as they do?”
Pausing, you consider his words. Why do they? Yeonjun is a liar. You weren’t special—just a mission to him. You should hate him; seeing those letters full of flowery words and proclamations of love should anger you. And they do, they do anger you, but that doesn’t stop you from reading them. You’re not sure what you’re searching for in them. Closure? Proof of his lies? Or, excuses?
Beomgyu has no interest in the letters. It’s his way of telling you that you need to grow a spine. You suppose it’s about time that you do just that.
“Here.” You push them off into his hands. “You’ll do it, then?”
The corners of his lips turn up. “Maybe...”
You hiss and reach for your letters, but he tugs them toward himself and holds them safe out of your reach.
“Give those back, you prick,” you say. “You don’t get them for free. It’s called a deal. You said you’d help me.”
With his eyes dancing with wild mischievous intent, he pretends to think. “Did I?”
You land a smack on his upper arm, groaning when it only sends his face more viciously taunting. That playing glint in his eyes is welcomed, though. At least you know he’s only playing. Otherwise, you might be more worried that he is genuinely screwing you over. “Stop playing tricks,” you say, furled out from gritted teeth. “You know you did. This is what got you here in the first place, idiot. I’m being serious.”
His lip curls, and he relents. “Do not remind me.”
“Didn’t you learn your lesson the first time?” you say, sending eyes with dagger points his way. “C’mon. Magic.”
Looking kicked, he grabs your hand. It sends you back to the day you’d gotten that awful geas and the way Cricket had done the same thing. You’re going to fix that mistake.
“I was just having my fun. I suffer a terrible drought of it here.”
Your skin tickles, and you know he’s working on it. Heart doing nervous laps, you say, “Well, look whose roof we live under. It’s no wonder.”
He likes that, wicked delight crackling over his features in just the same way his magic crackles through your veins. It’s a far cry from the last time you’d felt a sensation like this. It feels as though a beast of the wild is crashing through your bones like they’re hollow. It’s untamed, but you know just by the thrumming of it that his magic is much more refined and ancient than the geas’. Its claws brush up against your very core.
You try and blink away the daze, deciding to distract yourself away from it with speech. “You know, I was thinking.”
He raises his eyebrows, listening. His magic doesn’t falter as he offers you his attention; no need for his concentration. Not when he’s had centuries to become intimately familiar with it.
“That maybe Yeonjun is a gancanagh,” you continue.
A gancanagh—sugar-mouthed faeries with the power to send those around them enamored with them with only as much as their words. They’re better known for their other, and in your opinion more fitting, name: love-talker. You’d been so taken by Yeonjun, so weakened by him. The idea that perhaps it was all to the effect of some magic... You’re not sure whether it consoles you or makes it hurt more. Then again, it could also just be you trying to justify the mistakes you’d made. Your mind bends and twists around the thought, maybe the magic. Or, maybe, frustration.
“A gancanagh,” he says. Beomgyu considers the notion for a moment, but still works his magic through you. “I’m not sure.”
Not sure? You press the issue. “How are you not sure whether or not the prince is a gancanagh? I know you stay in your forest, but I imagine that you’d know that.”
“Hmm.” He turns your arm as if trying for a new angle. “I believe that the prince’s mother is one of the sorrier kinds that the High King takes. He has his Ladies, and he has his courtesans. It seems that he was not so proud of her, since her name never reached my lands.”
A bout of nausea rolls over your skull. His magic is so potent. The tidbit of information is enough to have you perking up despite it. “You think that his mother is a courtesan?”
“Well, I know she is not a favored Lady. I know nothing of her. She could be gancanagh, or she could be any other thing.” He shoots you a pointed look. “I’m curious as to why you ask.”
Skin clammy, you wipe at your cheek. “How long does this take?” you ask.
“As long as I make it take,” he says, tilting his head off to one side. “Why are you worried of the prince’s heritage?”
You know he’s fishing answers out of you. Shrugging, you tell him, “It was a genuine thought.”
Nausea and buzzing subside as he releases your arm. “The King has many children. Only some were really considered for their father’s throne, though. I know that the young prince was never one of them. I suggest thinking on that.”
You blow out a shuddering breath, controlled and small, to compose yourself under the weight of this new magic. “That’s it?” you ask, brushing some hair away from your face. “What did you do?”
“Mostly, blocked.”
“Elaborate,” you say, running fingers over your skin as if you might feel the magic there.
Taken with amusement, he answers, “If the one who placed the geas there tries and play that card, they’ll find the pathways blocked.” He slumps back onto your bed. “It does not mean that the original magic is gone. It is still very much there. Just... hindered.”
Your head swims. It’s not gone, but this... You know that your sleep will come to you easier now. Maybe it’s not foolproof, but this is much better. Much.
“No more deals,” he tells you. “You’ve only got so much of yourself. Each time you fill yourself up with our magic, you lose that space. You will never be whole again, but you ought to savor what you’ve got left. You can only make the best of it.” His mud brown eyes are not joking, now.
Blinking, you fumble out a nod.
You’ll never be whole again. You hope that’s more a clever wording than the truth, but with the chill that grips your belly and brushes over the overfilled parts of you, you fear you can’t help but believe it.
❆
You hate it.
Drowning in it—you hate it. You hate the scarlet red of it, you hate the sticky spray of it on your skin, hate the cries of agony that follow its ceremony, and the feel of its blazing warmth fresh from the body. You’re choking. Swimming up with thrashing arms, it’s so thick that you make no way.
The liquidity turns to sturdy arms. They cage you, grab your heart and twist, point daggers at your chest and they whisper words in your ears that you don’t want to remember. Your place is in the dirt, they say. You are nothing. A boot in your neck chokes you. You want to scream and cry that you are good, that you didn’t want to hurt them, that you’ll just mind your place if they take their boot off from your neck, but you can’t. You have no voice.
The metallic tang of the blood follows you, even as you find yourself standing in Court. It stains the muddy floor a wretched color. A thousand eyes blaze on your skin.
You feel them looking at you. You want them to stop, but they laugh and laugh. Yeonjun joins them, looking up at you with vile mock.
“You think I’d beg for you?” he sneers. His sweet voice is warped and twisted into something ugly and mean that grates at your ears and heart. His laugh echoes, and then you’re looking up at him as he hovers over you. “You don’t deserve my begging. I hate you.”
Metal burns your nose, and when you look between the two of you, he’s bleeding from the stomach—from the dagger you’d plunged there. He looks up at you, livid eyes piercing you. “Look. Look what you did. You killed me.”
You shake your head frantically, going to hold his face. You try to tell him no, no you didn’t—you didn’t kill him, but still—
Shooting up, you grasp for breaths and clutch at the bedding. Heart thudding in your chest, you find Taehyun stood in your doorway, looking dragged from sleep.
You adjust your sleep gown, disheveled with sleep and ridden up your thighs. Still piecing together consciousness, you croak out a, “Huh?”
There, tickling at the back of your mind, you still smell blood.
“I thought something was wrong,” he says, taking in the room with a thorough sweep. “You sounded...” Taehyun starts, but does not finish. “Since you’re doing fine, I’ll leave you to sleep.”
“Stay?” you blurt, before he can turn and leave you here. Your voice comes out thinner and more fragile than you’d meant it to.
Brows shooting up, Taehyun is hesitant to step into the room. “It’s probably hours before sunrise,” he says. “You don’t want to fall back asleep?”
You shake your head. No, you don’t. If you do, then you’ll be back to drowning. You might not even be able to fall asleep at this point. The taste lingers. You’re still panting a little when you say, “I don’t want to bother you, but... Please.”
Taehyun relents apprehensively, stopping just before the end of your bed. Moonlight blooms over his face from the window. It makes a show of his sharp cheek and jaw lines and emphasizes the feathering of his jaw around a hard swallow. “You were having a bad dream,” he says, an observation rather than a question. “About what?”
Him standing over you like that; it doesn’t feel so easy to tell him that you’re haunted by what you’ve done. You wince at him and send a gesture up. “You don’t have to stand there. You can sit here.” You pat at the opposite end of your bed.
He flexes one hand, a rare anxious gesture from him. “I wouldn’t just invite myself into a lady’s bed.”
Well, he didn’t have to put it like that.
You say, “I’m inviting you to sit down next to me, Taehyun...”
It’s a few moments before he does, bed dipping beneath him. Like this, it feels much less like an interrogation. Insects buzz outside, singing their song to the stars and mercifully filling up the moment that you take to pluck up composure. He watches you, but doesn’t say anything. He waits.
Catching a few strands of your scattered thoughts, you say, “Do you get nightmares sometimes? About the people you’ve killed?” It’s blunt and not much, but it’s all you have in you. It’s a thought that has served as a thorn in your side for quite a while now, too. Is it only you who’s had a prison made of their own mind?
Will it ever go away?
Resolutely, he shakes his head. “No. I don’t.”
“Oh.” You hold yourself a little harder, as if the chill that passes over you is a draft from the window and not bitter dread. “How? How can you not be bothered by it? They’re dead, and they’ll never be coming back. They had as many thoughts and wants as we did. They had mothers that might weep to know they’re gone. I can’t... I don’t stop thinking of them.”
“It’s a bit too late for me to start feeling sorry for it,” Taehyun says. “You can’t let it rule you. Not everybody is good, and they were not. If they try to hurt you, you hurt them first. If they lay their hands on you, you cut them off.”
You grow tense as he explains, eyes so heavy that you can practically feel the dark hollows beneath them. “Not even when you hurt someone for the first time? It didn’t bother you then?”
He eyes you. The pine smell of him so close to you is both familiar and a distant memory. “I saw blood too early for it to ever haunt me.”
Turning finally, you find his eyes. “I feel so guilty.” Your body buzzes with the need to curl into him, to have him comfort you for it, but you know that he won’t receive it the way you want him to. The way Yeonjun had.
But you need it. You need it so bad right now.
“That won’t absolve it. Guilt will not raise them from the dead,” he says. It’s forthright, but he doesn’t mean it to disconcert you. “You’re tearing yourself up inside, but there’s justice in protecting yourself.”
Swallowing around tension, you nod. He’s right; you had every right to kill those times. You’ve known that the whole time. So, why does it still visit you in the deep hours of the night? You chant his words in your head, as if to beat them into your skull. If you try hard enough, you will.
“What happens?” he asks, when the both of you have been quiet for too long. It’s strange to see him making attempts to fill silence. “In the dreams, what happens?”
Shifting into a cozier position, you lean into the headboard by your shoulder. Some of the adrenaline has worked itself away, but remembering it is still bitter.
You don’t miss the flickering of his eyes over the expanse of your thigh. You might’ve explained it away as a quick glance if that... look had not passed over his face. Restraint—darting eyes and his throat bobbing. It seems that his concern about being in your bed was about more than just propriety.
“Mostly, blood.” You make a distraction out of the hemming of your blanket, pinching and picking at it. “So much of it. Sometimes the dreams are different, but... it’s always the common theme.”
Acknowledging that, he dips his head in a slow, shallow nod. “We’ll start training you on the bow, then.”
“The bow?” you ask.
“I think that the long range will be better for you,” Taehyun elaborates.
You drink his face in once more. In it, you see him reaching out a hand—it’s shaky and awkward and untrained. But under all that, you see that he’s trying. In the silver moonlight, the bow does not look so bad.
Taehyun doesn’t leave you until dawn cracks through the windows.
❆
You wish that you had your gloves. It’s freezing today—wind whipping your hair and teeth chattering even through your extensive layering. You have, like, two pairs of woolen stockings on. But Taehyun said that you’ll need to be able to grip the bowstring good, and so you abandoned them when you’d dragged all this on.
He’d made good on his word. Now, you’re out in some shallow neck of the woods, and he’s pointing out the trees that you’re supposed to be using for targets. They’re obscured in the onslaught of snowy haze. You want to gripe that he’d picked the worst day to drag you out here, but really, you know it was a fully intentional choice.
“No bullseye for now, just try and hit them wherever you can manage.” Taehyun makes a gesture up at the array of trees. “Don’t forget that the wind is blowing west. You’ll have to adjust for that.”
He watches you take up an arrow, quiet as you clumsily wiggle it around until it sits in a spot that feels relatively correct.
“Higher,” he finally says. “Find the rest for the arrow, and then you’ll find the nocking point on the string.”
You fumble with the placement some more, freezing fingers not as agile as they could be. Just as he said, the arrow falls into a place where it sits comfortably. “This?”
He hums, voice closer. “That’s good. Now, you lift it just like that. Don’t lose that hold, and pinch the back of the arrow, behind the feathers, with your knuckles.”
Raising the bow, you’re so concentrated on keeping the arrow in place that it shocks you how hard it is to pull the bowstring. The further back you pull it, the more force it demands from you. You only manage to bring it halfway before you stop. “Woah.”
Wind stops brushing your cheeks and hair so hard, and Taehyun’s voice comes from right beside you this time. “Harder than you thought it’d be, huh?” he says, smirk in his voice matching the one you find on his mouth when you turn to look at him. “It’s going to be hard for a while. You’ve got to build up the muscle for it. For now, you just have to power through it.”
You try again, finding the spot where your muscles protest and then going beyond it. Your arms tremble, some spot in the middle of your chest aching with it. You sift through the trees, rushing to find one to release the arrow on before you can no longer maintain the hold.
“Stand straighter.” He reaches over to adjust your arm, pulling the string-wielding one even further back and forcing your chest further open. Your arms burn. You’re not sure how much longer you can hold like this.
“Hurry,” you say.
“Go ahead.”
Deciding on the nearest tree, you let the string go from between aching fingertips. It misses and passes the tree to land somewhere in the foliage behind it, but not as awfully as you’d expected. Hissing, you shake out your arms and stretch your shoulders to try and kill the burn, but it lingers. “You made that look a lot easier than it really is,” you tell him.
“My first shot looked a lot like that,” he says, leaned back into a tree. “That was a great first try. I should’ve had you on the bow earlier.” He motions to the bow. “Show me another one.”
Arms still ringing, you sloppily repeat. None of the arrows meet their mark, and you get worse with each. You’d done so well with the first one, though. Frustration sparks in your chest, catching into a flame when this one misses as well. The cramping in your shoulders and the gnawing of frost at your fingers do not help your temper. “Guess that was beginner’s luck,” you say, jaw tense. “I can’t shoot for shit, now.”
Pushing himself off the tree, Taehyun approaches you once more and says, “It helps if you breathe out before letting the arrow go, but it’s mostly that your arms are tired. Today isn’t about aim, it’s about repetition.” Now in front of you, his eyes dart down to your mouth, but it’s a split-second look. You’d have missed it with a blink. You want to ask him why he keeps looking at you like that—like how he had in your bed that one night. You don’t want to make the air awkward, though.
To be more honest with yourself, you’re afraid to ask. You’re afraid what the answer might be; you have don’t even have the foggiest clue. “Maybe we should go back. I’ll just stick with what I know.”
“So, you’ll just give it up when it gets hard?” he says, a little ticked off. A muscle in his jaw feathers.
You wonder what he’s thinking, beyond just what he’s saying. What he feels beyond what he’ll let you see. The reason that Taehyun dropped the spy life the moment you’d told him you’d stay here with Yeonjun is still just as elusive to you. You’re no fool—you’d seen the look that passed over his face when you had. It had brought a chill down your spine, something hollow but also desperate. Taehyun does not seem like the type taken to puppy love. He does not seem like the type to follow whims, either. So, what is this? You’re unsure what to make of it, and what to make of him.
You two had been snapping teeth and blazing arguments, but what lays beneath that? Why does the impenetrable man let you get under his skin the way he does?
“Yes,” you say, just to ruffle some feathers. “I’ll just keep working on swordplay.”
He catches the bait. “Then, what are we out here for? I thought close combat was bothering you.” Flakes of fluffy snow sit on his hair, white petals against black. “And, it doesn’t hurt to diversify your skillset. Not with a war looming.”
Frustration gives way to softness. Taehyun doesn’t have to be out here. He has no obligations to help you with your ridiculous, pitiful dreams. You’re thankful for it, no matter how rugged he comes across while doing it. “I’m just messing with you. You make it too easy,” you say, offering him a smile. Beneath it, you’re left reeling with the reminder about the war. In your choosing to omit it from your thoughts, you’d just about forgotten about it. Anxiety comes crashing back through the crumbling dam. By now, the King has absolutely realized that Yeonjun is not coming back. Does he think that the north has hurt him or holds him hostage? He might start the war himself, then. A thought dawns upon you. That might’ve been the intention all along—to have him start things, to remain faultless. Taehyun had said that the Queen is a scheming sovereign.
“War,” you say, licking over chapped lips. “Do you think it’ll really happen? That it’ll come to battles?” You can’t help worrying. You’ve chosen your side in staying here. What if that was the wrong choice? What if your betrayal comes around to bite you? Or, what if the north’s reputation for brutality ends up doing the job before it ever can? You feel surrounded by death—surrounded by walls of violence, where too far in one direction would be your end. “It’s not as if I’ll be fighting, though.”
Face solemn, he says, “Let’s start heading back.”
That draws no complaints from you, tucking fingers under your arms to try and save them. He hadn’t answered your question, though. “Taehyun?”
Brittle leaves and brush crunch underfoot. “It’s coming.”
Narrowing your eyes at him, tensed in the shoulders, you ask, “Why are you acting like that? Are you hiding something from me?”
The both of you pause to let a dryad scurry off, snow falling off its bark skin in chunks as it crashes through the forest and away from you. These woods are a lot fuller than the ones you’d found Beomgyu in.
“Taehyun,” you repeat. Your stomach is sick. Skin burning, you get flashes of memories—of Yeonjun’s guilty eyes that night. It rushes through your bloodstream like icy water. This feels like an overreaction, but your body does not align with your stuttering heart. You can’t tamp it down. “What is it? I don’t like secrets.” Your voice comes out fragile, like it’ll break in the frigid air like ice and fall down to the ground in a crash.
His face is hard. You don’t like that, either.
“You’re not going to be fighting, but I know what is planned. It’s messy; messy and dirty. And dirty wars are not afraid of collateral damage.”
Frowning, you ask, “How do you know what’s planned?”
“It’s a general’s job to know the war he leads his army into.”
You stop dead. “Are you serious?” you snap, voice on a tight leash. “Seriously, Taehyun?” He keeps walking, forcing you to tear your feet from their spot to follow him. Jogging to match his stride, you say, “So, you’re just going to take up his will? You’re going to lead a war, like him? What about me, Taehyun? What happens to me?”
It seems that he’s fully taken over his role as heir to his father and his estate, but why? Why, if he sheared off his own ears to escape that legacy? Taehyun’s moral code has exceptions for violence, but he said it himself—he doesn’t like senseless killing. Not like what would come with taking on this role.
“Being general secures me a seat while they discuss their plans. It means I have sway in what happens. This is not for my enjoyment, or for power, like how my father saw it,” he says, measured and steady. “You’ve not seen a Faerie war. They’re given to dramatics, and they span... they span long. If something is going to happen, it’s better off that I’m in the room that they discuss it. Otherwise, we’re just sitting here and crossing out fingers that we don’t get caught in the crossfire.” Head held high, he adds, “This is my duty.”
Anxiety warms your frozen bones. “Duty?” you say through a caustic laugh. “You’ll be going to war, Taehyun.”
“Not petty battles. If something more drastic happens, I suppose I would, but being a foot soldier is not my role in this. Maybe my father would’ve, just to see the blood and carnage, but not me,” he says, as if that makes it any better.
“I don’t like this.”
“They know we were here as spies. They could decide at any moment to kill us. As general, my position would protect us.” He levels you a stare, hard. “You decided to stay here for him, so this is what I have to do.”
A terrible sickness settles in your stomach with his words. These are the consequences to your actions, for your overenthusiasm, but you feel more like a burden than sorry for yourself.
You want to tell him to stop paying the prices; that it’s not his job, but a chilly breeze sings in your ears that it’s much too late for that.
❆
Biting back complaints and the prickling of tears, you let Conifer work on your hair. She’s merciless with the tugs and pins, fingers threading through strands to tug them up into the frilly and loose updo.
“Why do I need to be dressed?” you ask her, watching her work dutifully behind you through the mirror.
“My Lady,” she says around a pin she holds in between her lips. “One moment.”
“You don’t have to call me Lady, or anything,” you tell her, wincing at the sound of it. “I’m no more a Lady than you.” She’d come into your room, nervously plucking at the pine needles on her forearms as she informed you that she needed to get you prettied up. It’s random, but you’d perked up immediately. It’s been so long since you’ve done anything—so long since you had a reason to look pretty and drag on glittering dresses. Not doing the work yourself is strange, though. You wonder if this is what your life would’ve been with Yeonjun, with servants waiting at every corner to pamper you and make sure that your hands never again see any type of hard work.
You shake those thoughts away. That’s not your life here in Taehyun’s estate. It does you no use comparing. You’re not so used to this, anyway. It gets under your skin a bit, though you know they’re working off debts in his service.
“Oh, the Lord would prefer that I do,” she says. A sharp pin scrapes up against your scalp as she pushes it in, securing up a willowy tress. All Yeonjun’s gifts—the dress she’d laid out for you, and the jewels she garnishes you in. How strange is it to have Taehyun’s servants dressing you in Yeonjun’s things? You still don’t know why he even bothered with bringing them in. You all were managing before. It's not as if any of you are the type to demand being waited on, anyway. You all have lived in more humble means. Beomgyu literally comes from the forest. And, why would it even matter how she addresses you to Taehyun?
It wouldn’t be fair of you to demand her to call you otherwise, then. You nod. “I’m sorry you have to work for me.”
“Oh, it’s no bother, dear. I’m grateful that the Lord has chosen such a way for me to pay him for my debt.” She tugs a few tendrils loose. It looks now more like the style is worn in by a good night spent dancing and laughing than freshly combed up. “There are worse ways to do so.”
That’s right. For her, servitude is only a result of some extrenuating circumstance. Your servitude was nowhere near your fault. That’s where the difference lies; why she can be so blithe about it.
“What happened?” you ask. It’s an invasive question, sure, but you prefer to ask it straight. No buttering it up or smoothing over words.
“The late General spared my life on a whim. I’d worked this estate for years, even watched the boy grow into his manhood, until the General passed and the young Lord went disappearing. No reason to work an empty estate. And now, by bloodline, my debt is owed to him.”
You frown. Serving under Taehyun’s father, only because he decided out of the kindness of his heart to not murder you, sounds harrowing.
“But, that’s of no importance, dear. The Lord is expecting you; the Queen holds council soon.” Hastily, Conifer slides one last pin in, just for safe measure. “It’s terribly important that you maintain good manners, dear. Stay by the Lord, and do not speak unless they speak to you.”
Council? He’s expecting you to come with him to a war council? You pause, but she ushers you up and away.
Bounding down the stairs in a flurry of feet, you hold your skirts in a death grip, heart clenching with nerves. Once, you’d been a mirror to this—panicking over attending Court for the first time. That was nothing. If you had been oblivious to Court propriety, sitting in on a Faerie council in the presence of the Queen and her entourage... You’re screwed. So, so screwed.
Taehyun waits beside the blackthorn tree. Noticing you, he greets, “Ready?”
“You’re serious about this?” you say. It’s hard to speak around the lump in your throat. “Why do I have to come? It seems more like a risk than anything.”
Brows furrowed, he adjusts his tunic. “You’re smart, aren’t you?” he says, cadence flat and matter-of-fact. “It’s not a risk. I’m bringing you so that they know you’re with me. You won’t have to come to any more after this, unless it’s what you want.”
Frowning, you say, “I feel as though they’ll react not so kindly to a human just... waltzing into a war council. You really think they’ll just let me come and sit in?” The Queen will be there, and all the terrifyingly massive players in the Unseelie Court, and then... You. You’ll just have to make yourself seem important enough to be there. Taehyun is one of those invaluable players now, you suppose. The General. Your mind still struggles to wrap itself around the enormity of that.
Will Yeonjun be there? He’s no doubt got the status. You pick at your fingers viciously. You’re not ready to see him again; not sure if you’ve fortified your walls enough for that yet. You might crumple with just a glance, but to sit in the same room as him?
“They’ll trust my judgement,” he says. The lines of his face do not carry the same confidence that his voice does. “You’re not just stumbling in. You’re walking in with me.”
“But, I’m sure they’re all very aware by now that we were spies. Doesn’t that leave a stain on your word?”
He reaches up to a low-hanging branch, dark and bristling with thorns, and snaps off the very ends of them into thin poles of twig armed with spikes. The thistles remind you of his eyes—in fact, the whole tree does. Barbed and dark and sturdy; the House of Blackthorn could not have better chosen their symbol.
“They made me their general,” he says, circling until he’s come behind you. “They’ve already made up their minds.”
Tugging at your hair tells you that he’s wiggling those sticks, black and sharp, into the updo, as if they’re accessories. It’s like what he’d done with those berries just before you’d gone to Court for the first time, but these twigs do not act like a ward like they had.
You turn to interrogate him and his sudden interest in your hairstyle, but confusion splinters off into nothing when his cold hand brushes at the back of your neck. In a heart-pounding moment, his sword-roughened fingers drag down the length of your jaw from behind. He grabs your chin his hand and turns your face further toward your shoulder. Snowflakes and the breeze and the stars all stand frozen around you. Or, maybe, you haven’t got the will to pretend they exist while he’s leaning down so that he’s right in your ear and whispering with puffed breaths that raise chills on your skin.
Under his breath, low and just for your ears, he says just one word. It’s one that you don’t recognize, curling in a way that you doubt your tongue would be able to even pronounce. As quickly as the moment had come, he releases your face. Snow crunches under his feet as he retreats.
Blinking for a moment, you spin on your heel to follow him. You make a point to not catch his stride fully, though. He absolutely should not see how ruffled you are. “What does that mean?”
He doesn’t answer, only leaving you in a flustered, charged silence. You beg the wintry breeze to carry away your racing thoughts, or at least to lick at your cheeks and cool them. Whatever it was that he’d said, you can only assume it to be in an ancient Faerie tongue.
With a stuttering heart, you follow him. You’ll just have to whistle in the dark. If you don’t do it scared, you won’t do it at all, and you’re always scared.
❆
Inside the council room, a handful of who you assume to be the Queen’s most important advisors sit around a circle table. On that table stand war maps and a collection of letters and objects no doubt important to plans and intel.
In one of those seats sits Yeonjun. Of course, he’s here. You’d anticipated as much, but that doesn’t change the way you jump right out of your skin the split second your eyes meet. It’s a fiery exchange, sending sparks up your spin and rendering your mind a blistering mess. His eyes are hard. He doesn’t shy away from it the way you do, tearing yourself away to sit in the seat next to Taehyun’s.
It’s not just Yeonjun’s eyes that burn on your skin. They’re wondering why you’re here. You itch to dip out and away from their scrutiny.
“Do I have to say anything?” you say, voice barely anything but a whisper as you lean over to Taehyun. “Like, announce myself or anything?”
“Not now,” he says. “Not unless you’re asked to.”
Fidgeting with your dress under the table, you dip your head in a shallow, quick nod. You’ll just mind your own, unless you’re forced to do otherwise. You can’t risk saying something that’ll end up screwing you both over.
Chairs scrape the floor, faeries standing and dipping at the waist. You follow them. Your back is to the door, but you don’t need to see to know who’s arrived. The Queen.
She sits in her seat, at the head of the table, and everybody else follows. You swallow hard. Her eyes, hardened and storm-colored, pin each of the attendees as she sweeps the room. A diadem of twigs and rotted leaf lays on her tangle of hair. The Unseelie Queen; she looks the part. Breath catches in your throat when her eyes come to you.
When she opens her mouth to speak, jagged teeth reveal themselves from behind grey lips. “The human girl. Does the Blackthorn house claim her?” she asks. Her voice commands the air—both slackened and imposing.
Yeonjun’s eyes bare down on you.
Taehyun answers her. “Yes. She is my retinue.”
One of the council members, with a haughty, long face and a sneer to match it, says, “Is this the girl that you sang so profusely to us for, prince? The spy girl?” His ruffled sleeves flourish as he gestures. He’s dressed especially plummy among them, but they all are dressed in glittering robes and tunics. This faerie no doubt thinks highly of himself, though, to be poking at Yeonjun.
Yeonjun had spoken of you here?
You feel a little frozen. Becoming the center of their attention is the very last thing you’d wanted. Rather than sinking back into your seat, you claw at your insides to keep your head held high. You do exchange a quick glance with Taehyun, who’s mouth is pulled taut.
He takes it in stride. “Yes, it is.”
“You beseeched us for her safety, but...” the black-haired faerie continues, “She’s sat beside our General.” A cruel smile plays on his lips. He knows exactly what he’s doing. “And I believe it to be unprecedented that a human joins us here, your highness.” He turns to the Queen, a smile that tells exactly of the game he’s playing.
“Not here,” the Queen snaps. “We haven’t the time for this. Who cares. Let’s not waste what slight time we have, with all of us in attendance.”
The black-haired faerie snaps his mouth shut, but a nasty attitude lingers.
Another speaks up. “Your majesty, is there not something to be said of the exclusivity pertaining to who we meet here with?”
She drums her fingers on the arm of her seat. Bored. “Be gone with it. I did not know you’d become so wary of humans.”
That stings. You’re not even worthy of being a threat. Jaw tightened, you grit your teeth.
“She has ears,” he says. “And a well-working mouth, I’m sure, and we have delicate issues to discuss.”
None of them press any further as she sends them a pointed stare. They begin offering up and discussing their positions and knowledge, much of it lost on you. All you’re thankful for is that most of it is bickering over how to approach the war, and not plans for full-fledged schemes.
Taehyun offers up his approach a few times, his voice carrying strong and his shoulders squared. Yeonjun does not speak much at all.
And when it’s over and everybody disassembles, you know you’ve got to leave. Fast; fast enough that Yeonjun will not be able to corner you into a conversation that you are too flimsy to be having. As you do, though, you war against every instinct in your body—heart and feet and arms ringing pleas in your bones. You can’t. Really, you can’t.
“Pretty.”
That voice, smooth but also so very sullen now, shatters your frenzied bubble. You go solid and frozen to the ground.
“Pretty, look at me,” he grits out, voice cracked down and raw.
When you don’t, he steps around you. His eyes dart up, taking in something on your head, and then his jaw ticks when he finds something he doesn’t like. The blackthorn twigs in your hair.
He’d looked sullen and detached when sitting at the table, but here, up close, he looks awful—far and beyond worse than you’ve ever seen him. It’s as if you’d ripped the heart right out of his chest and asked him to go on living without it. In the hollowness there’s a sadness, but there’s also a blazing anger.
A frozen hand takes your upper arm and tugs hard. “Come on. We’re leaving.” Taehyun’s voice is hard.
You stumble forward with him, summoning the will within you to not look back while you do. You do not want to watch his face as you leave. You absolutely cannot. Your gut twists viciously.
You’re pathetic, missing him the way you do.
❆
When you get the first letter, you accept it from the servant uneasily. You don’t even ask whose letter it is. The wax seal tells you enough, but you’d know even without it. Yeonjun has broken his silence.
It confuses you. Taehyun had intercepted his letters when he sent them before. Why does he not bother, now? It doesn’t feel like a kindness. It feels intentional—like a gambit. Beomgyu had made a point to take those original letters from you. You know he meant well in the cheeky way that he shows his companionship, but you’re spineless after all, and they come at a very weak moment. Just as you’ve built up wavering pillars, he reaches in and crumbles them down as if they were nothing.
ℐ 𝑘𝓃𝑜𝑤 𝑦𝑜𝓊 𝑡𝒽𝒾𝓃𝑘 𝑡𝒽𝒶𝓉 𝒾𝑡’𝓈 𝑙𝒾𝑒𝓈, 𝒷𝓊𝓉 𝓉𝒽𝒶𝑡 𝓌𝒶𝓈 𝓃𝑜𝓉 𝓅𝒶𝑟𝓉 𝑜𝑓 𝑡𝒽𝑒 𝒹𝑒𝒶𝓁. 𝐿𝑜𝑣𝒾𝑛𝑔 𝓎𝑜𝓊 𝓌𝒶𝓈 𝓃𝑜𝑡 𝓅𝒶𝑟𝓉 𝑜𝑓 𝑡𝒽𝑒 𝒹𝑒𝒶𝑙. 𝐸𝑣𝑒𝓇𝑦 𝒷𝒾𝑡 𝑜𝑓 𝑜𝓊𝓇 𝓁𝑜𝑣𝑒 𝓌𝒶𝓈 𝓇𝑒𝒶𝑙. 𝐹𝓇𝑜𝓂 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝑣𝑒𝓇𝑦 𝓂𝑜𝓂𝑒𝑛𝓉 ℐ 𝑙𝒶𝒾𝒹 𝑒𝑦𝑒𝓈 𝑜𝓃 𝓎𝑜𝓊, 𝑡𝒽𝒾𝓃𝑔𝓈 𝒸𝒽𝒶𝓃𝑔𝑒𝒹. 𝒩𝑜 𝑙𝒶𝓉𝑒𝑟 𝓉𝒽𝒶𝓃 𝑡𝒽𝒶𝓉. 𝒲𝑒 𝑙𝑜𝑣𝑒𝒹; 𝒲𝑒 𝓁𝑜𝑣𝑒𝒹 𝑡𝑟𝓊𝑒.
𝐼’𝓂 𝓈𝑜 𝓈𝑜𝓇𝓇𝑦 𝑡𝒽𝒶𝓉 𝑜𝓊𝓇 𝓂𝑒𝑒𝓉𝒾𝑛𝑔 𝓌𝒶𝓈 𝑜𝓃 𝓈𝑜𝓇𝓇𝑦 𝒸𝒾𝓇𝒸𝓊𝓂𝓈𝓉𝒶𝓃𝒸𝑒𝓈, 𝒷𝓊𝓉 𝒹𝑜𝓃’𝓉 𝑡𝓇𝓎 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝒶𝒸𝓉 𝑙𝒾𝓀𝑒 𝓎𝑜𝓊 𝒷𝑒𝓁𝒾𝑒𝓋𝑒 ℐ’𝒹 𝒽𝓊𝑟𝓉 𝑦𝑜𝓊. 𝒴𝑜𝓊 𝑘𝑛𝑜𝓌 𝑡𝒽𝒶𝓉’𝓈 𝓃𝑜𝓉 𝓉𝑟𝓊𝑒. ����𝑜 𝑛𝑜𝓉 𝓂𝒶𝑘𝑒 𝓎𝑜𝓊𝓇 𝒽𝑒𝒶𝑟𝓉 𝒷𝑒𝑙𝒾𝑒𝑣𝑒 𝒾𝓉 𝓈𝑜.
𝒴𝑜𝓊𝑟 𝑒𝑦𝑒𝓈 𝒽𝒶𝓊𝑛𝓉 𝓂𝑒. 𝐼 𝒽𝑜𝓅𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑛𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟 𝓈𝑒𝑒 𝑡𝒽𝑒 𝓌𝒶𝑦 𝓎𝑜𝓊 𝑙𝑜𝑜𝓀𝑒𝒹 𝒶𝓉 𝓂𝑒 𝑙𝒾𝓀𝑒 𝑡𝒽𝒶𝓉 𝒶𝑔𝒶𝒾𝑛, 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝑦𝑒𝓉 ℐ 𝓈𝑒𝑒 𝒾𝓉 𝑒𝓋𝑒𝑟𝑦 𝓃𝒾𝑔𝒽𝓉.
𝒞𝑜𝓂𝑒 𝒶𝑛𝒹 𝑔𝒾𝓋𝑒 𝓂𝑒 𝑦𝑜𝓊𝑟 𝓌𝑜𝓇𝓈𝑡 𝓌𝑜𝓇𝒹 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝒾𝓉. 𝐼 𝒹𝑒𝓈𝑒𝓇𝑣𝑒 𝒾𝓉. 𝐼 𝒹𝑜𝓃’𝑡 𝒹𝑒𝓃𝓎 𝑡𝒽𝒶𝓉; 𝐼 𝒹𝑒𝓈𝑒𝑟𝑣𝑒 𝑒𝓋𝑒𝓇𝓎 𝑙𝒶𝓈𝓉 𝒹𝑟𝑜𝓅 𝑜𝑓 𝒾𝓉. 𝒯𝑒𝓁𝑙 𝓂𝑒 𝓌𝒽𝒶𝓉 𝒾𝓉 𝒾𝓈 𝑡𝒽𝒶𝓉 𝓌𝑜𝓊𝓁𝒹 𝑓𝒾𝓍 𝑡𝒽𝒾𝓈 𝒶𝑛𝒹 ℐ’𝒹 𝒽𝒶𝑣𝑒 𝒾𝓉 𝒹𝑜𝓃𝑒, 𝒷𝓊𝓉 𝓎𝑜𝓊 𝒸𝒶𝓃𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝒶𝓈𝑘 𝓂𝑒 𝓉𝑜 𝒷𝑒 𝒶𝓌𝒶𝑦 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝓂 𝓎𝑜𝓊. 𝐼 𝒸𝒶𝓃𝑛𝑜𝓉 𝒹𝑜 𝑡𝒽𝒶𝓉.
𝒴𝑒𝑜𝓃𝒿𝓊𝑛
You’re able to let this one roll off your shoulders, but the next few are not so easy.
𝐼 𝑤𝒾𝑠𝒽 𝓎𝑜𝓊 ℎ𝑎𝒹 𝑠𝓉𝒶𝓎𝑒𝒹 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝑙𝒾𝓈𝑡𝑒𝓃𝑒𝒹 𝓉𝑜 𝓂𝑒. 𝐼 𝓊𝓃𝒹𝑒𝑟𝓈𝑡𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝑤𝒽𝓎 𝓎𝑜𝓊 𝒹𝒾𝒹𝓃’𝑡, 𝑎𝓃𝒹 𝓎𝑒𝑡, 𝐼 𝑠𝓉𝒾𝓁𝑙 𝑤𝒾𝓈𝒽 𝓎𝑜𝓊 ℎ𝒶𝒹. ℐ’𝒹 𝒽𝒶𝑣𝑒 𝑙𝒾𝑠𝑡𝑒𝓃𝑒𝒹 𝓉𝑜 𝓎𝑜𝓊.
𝐼 ℎ𝑜𝑝𝑒 ℐ 𝑝𝓁𝒶𝑔𝓊𝑒 𝑦𝑜𝓊𝑟 𝑚𝒾𝓃𝒹. 𝐼 ℎ𝑜𝑝𝑒 𝓉𝒽𝒶𝓉 𝓎𝑜𝓊 𝑠𝑒𝑒 𝓂𝓎 𝑓𝒶𝒸𝑒 𝑤𝒽𝑒𝓃 𝓎𝑜𝓊 𝒸𝑙𝑜𝑠𝑒 𝓎𝑜𝓊𝑟 𝑒𝑦𝑒𝓈 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝓇𝑒𝓈𝑡, 𝒶𝓃𝒹 ℐ 𝒽𝑜𝓅𝑒 𝓉𝒽𝒶𝓉 𝒾𝑡 𝑏𝓇𝒾𝓃𝑔𝑠 𝑦𝑜𝓊 𝑏𝒶𝒸𝑘 ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒, 𝑡𝑜 𝓎𝑜𝓊𝑟 ℎ𝑜𝓂𝑒: 𝑚𝓎 𝒶𝓇𝓂𝑠. 𝒲𝒾𝑡ℎ 𝑚𝑒, 𝓃𝑜𝓉 ℎ𝒾𝑚. 𝒩𝑜𝓉 ℎ𝒾𝑚.
𝒫𝑒𝓇𝒽𝒶𝓅𝑠 𝑦𝑜𝓊 𝒹𝑜𝓃’𝓉 𝒶𝓃𝓈𝓌𝑒𝑟 𝑏𝑒𝒸𝒶𝓊𝓈𝑒 𝑦𝑜𝓊 𝓉𝒽𝒾𝓃𝓀 𝓉𝒽𝒶𝓉 𝐼 𝓌𝒾𝓁𝑙 𝒶𝒸𝒸𝑒𝓅𝑡 𝓉𝒽𝒾𝓈 𝑒𝓃𝒹𝒾𝓃𝑔, 𝑏𝓊𝑡 𝐼 𝑤𝒾𝓁𝑙 𝓃𝑜𝓉. 𝒯ℎ𝒾𝓈 𝒹𝑜𝑒𝓈𝓃’𝓉 𝑒𝓃𝒹 𝓌𝒾𝑡𝒽 𝓊𝓃𝑓𝒾𝓃𝒾𝑠𝒽𝑒𝒹 𝑤𝑜𝓇𝒹𝓈 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝑔𝑟𝒾𝑒𝑣𝒶𝓃𝒸𝑒𝑠.
𝑁𝑜. 𝒯ℎ𝒾𝓈 𝒹𝑜𝑒𝑠𝓃’𝑡 𝑒𝓃𝒹.
𝒴𝑒𝑜𝓃𝒿𝓊𝓃
The letters change with your prolonged silence, too.
𝒮𝑒𝑒𝒾𝓃𝑔 𝓎𝑜𝓊 𝒶𝓇𝑟𝒾𝓋𝑒 𝑏𝓎 ℎ𝒾𝓈 𝓈𝒾𝒹𝑒, 𝒶𝓈 𝒾𝑓 𝓎𝑜𝑢’𝑟𝑒 𝒽𝒾𝓈… 𝒟𝑜 𝓎𝑜𝓊 𝑤𝒶𝑛𝓉 𝓂𝑒 𝒸𝑟𝒶𝓏𝓎? 𝐼 𝒹𝑜 𝑛𝑜𝓉 𝒷𝑒𝓁𝒾𝑒𝓋𝑒 ℐ’𝓋𝑒 𝑒𝓋𝑒𝑟 𝑓𝑒𝑙𝓉 𝓈𝑜 𝑜𝑢𝓉 𝑜𝑓 𝓂𝓎 𝑜𝓌𝑛 𝒸𝑜𝓃𝑡𝑟𝑜𝑙 𝒶𝓈 𝐼 𝒹𝑜 𝑛𝑜𝑤. 𝐼𝑓 𝓉ℎ𝒶𝓉 𝑤𝒶𝓈 𝓎𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝒾𝑛𝑡𝑒𝓃𝑡𝒾𝑜𝑛, 𝓎𝑜𝓊 ℎ𝒶𝓋𝑒 𝒽𝒾𝓉 𝓎𝑜𝑢𝓇 𝓂𝒶𝑟𝑘 𝑤𝑒𝑙𝑙.
𝒞𝑜𝓃𝓉𝒾𝑛𝑢𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝒾𝓈 𝑏𝒶𝑛𝒾𝓈ℎ𝓂𝑒𝑛𝓉 𝒾𝑓 𝓎𝑜𝑢 𝓂𝓊𝓈𝓉, 𝑏𝓊𝓉 𝑘𝑛𝑜𝓌 𝓉𝒽𝒶𝓉 𝓌𝑒 𝓌𝒾𝓁𝑙 𝑏𝑒 𝓉𝑜𝑔𝑒𝓉ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝒶𝑔𝒶𝒾𝑛. 𝐼𝑡'𝓈 𝑜𝓃𝑙𝓎 𝑓𝒶𝓉𝑒, 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝓌ℎ𝑜 𝒶𝓂 𝐼 𝓉𝑜 𝓂𝑒𝒹𝒹𝓁𝑒 𝑤𝒾𝑡ℎ 𝑓𝒶𝑡𝑒?
𝒴𝑒𝑜𝓃𝒿𝑢𝓃
It’s jarring, it’s more of that desperate pleading that you’ve been trying so hard to escape, and it’s burrowing deep down into the tender parts of your heart like a stake.
There are some letters that are even more frenzied than that. They’re testaments to his promises: this doesn’t end.
You had been sorely mistaken in thinking that Yeonjun would just step away. Terribly mistaken. Deep in your belly brews the feeling that this is not going to go over as smoothly as you hoped it would. In retrospect, how had you ever thought you could cleanly tear him off you? This is not like ripping off a bandage—quick and painful—no, this will be much, much more unpleasant than that. Yeonjun had done a delicate job of veiling just how wretchedly he loves you, but you’d seen peeks of it. Flickers and moments of potent neediness and jealousy, quickly smoothed over with something more groomed and palatable. Now, you see it in full force. As soon as given the need to unveil himself, he was not afraid to. As long as it brings him you.
But he will not get you. You’re not yet so foolish to go falling back into his arms. Not after you’d done just that, and then learned what trusting him just based off his inability to lie meant. It’s not as if you’re not already slowly wanting to forgive him for the fact that his initial job was to kill you. In weak moments, you construct excuses. But if you brush off lie after lie, where is the limit to the lies you’ll accept, if only just for him? There would be none. That is a dangerous beast to toe.
You think you know now, why Taehyun lets you read those letters freely.
❆
Lifting your fist to knock on the door, you bounce on your heels. Taehyun tells you to come in, voice muffled behind the door.
Stepping in, you drink in the sight of his quarters. Not once in the months that you’ve spent here have you been in his room. In the center is the bed, bedding coal black. His desk is cluttered with maps and stray daggers. Taehyun works on the strap to his leather baldric, looking up to you.
“Where are you going?” you ask him.
“They called me for council,” Taehyun answers. He straightens up. “What’s up?”
You purse your lips. “Oh,” you say. “Nothing. I was just seeing what you were up to.”
Honestly, you’re not entirely sure why you’d stumbled in here. It had just felt right in that moment. It couldn’t hurt to try and mend the tensions that lay between you two, anyway. If this is going to be your home, it’s better off that way.
Taehyun nods slowly, as if he’s not entirely sure what to say. His tongue darts out to wet his lips.
A smile tugs at your mouth. Beneath the confident, hardened exterior, Taehyun is stiff in the face of emotional connection. “Didn’t want me to join you for this one?”
He shakes his head, the lines in his shoulders stiffening as if the thought were offensive.
Scoffing around a laugh, you say, “I didn’t do that bad, did I?” It’s more to pester him than offense—you’d had your fill. And you want to know what’s changed; why he’s suddenly averse to you joining.
Jaw shifting, he says, “No, you didn’t.” Taehyun brings his hand up and adjusts his collar. “I’d just prefer it.”
You change tack. His face has fallen a bit, and you’d intended to lighten things up. “It’s fine. That was boring anyway,” you say, “Besides, I’d prefer it here, with the army of servants waiting to see to my needs.” Tilting your head to one side, you give him a grin chock-full of mock pretension.
His brow furrows. “The servants? Do you not like it?”
Shrugging, you answer, “I don’t hate it. It’s nice to have help getting ready, though, I guess. Makes me feel special.” To quell your own gnawing curiosity that’s been festering beginning the moment the first one had arrived, you add, “Why’d you do it, though?”
His face flickers. “The estate needs to be run. They have duty to do so. If it were going to be anybody, it’s them.”
You know that look. Living with Taehyun, you’ve got to become fluent in the face and even the most subtle changes. What he doesn’t speak in words, you’re forced to find there. Try as he might to fortify his mask, water will always find and slip through the cracks as slivers of true emotion crack through his face. He’s not telling you the truth. You narrow your eyes.
“Yeah. I understand that. I just thought we were doing fine before, I guess.”
“I thought...” he says. “Did the prince not keep servants?”
Your frown deepens. Why would it matter whether or not Yeonjun has servants? Of course he’d have attendants; he’s a prince of Faerie. Mind churning for a moment, you stumble upon a thought. Or rather, it stumbles upon you.
Taehyun had brought servants here because he figured that, because of your time with Yeonjun, you’d want that. It bothered him to think that Yeonjun could provide something for you that he couldn’t. He’d gone out and tracked down faeries indebted to him and his father because that got under his skin. You think to that morning he’d woken you up, spitting venom, because Yeonjun had sent you those dresses. And in his arm, he’d held a single crystalline gown.
“Taehyun, why did you tell Yeonjun about our kiss?”
For a split second, he’s taken aback, shifting as though you’d lit a fire under his feet. The air hangs heavy—so, so thick. It’s so stiff that you have to breathe with conscious effort. This silence, tense and on the brink of snapping, stretches for an eternity. Your mind reels; you’re just as caught off guard as him. You haven’t the faintest clue where you’d trudged up the nerve, but you had, and now you’re terribly curious to know his answer. The memory had hovered around, blazing and impossible to brush off, from the very moment the words had tumbled out from Yeonjun’s lips. How had you even lasted this long, pretending it hadn’t happened? All off that electric curiosity comes to a head here—now—and you do not know if you’ve prepared well enough for the truth of it.
As silent as it is, the moment buzzes. It’s deafeningly loud, just as it is deafeningly quiet. His silence answers just as well as words.
His answer slices the air, cutting through the tension like a scalding knife. “The prince told you that?”
You step toward him, looking up at him through your lashes. “He did," you say, quick and dismissive. “Why did you tell him? When?”
A flash—a flash of something untamed and deep like the woods—renders his eyes dark. You remember that look; he’d scarcely let you see it. It had scrawled under your skin the first time he had. Something in it strips you down to your very bones, where you are nothing more than buzzing soul and heat. Taehyun approaches you in dark, languid steps. You’re lightheaded, breaths lodged deep in your chest. Any semblance of clarity you might have had becomes a lost cause as he takes your face in his hands and leaves you no other option than to meet those smoldering eyes. Bitterly cold hands bite into the soft skin of your cheeks. Cold-blooded.
Your head spins. “Taehyun?” you say, short and breathless. Even just a naked whisper of his name, you struggled to manage it. Him, here, in front of you, is both so real that it rattles you down to you core and so intangible that you wouldn’t dare believe it. And yet, blistering eyes pierce through the mist, and you know that it is sickeningly real.
“Fuck,” he says, mouth turned down and at war with the rest of his face. He’s so close that you feel the word on your face. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” His throat bobs. “I don’t know who this is.”
In a stumble of clumsy feet, you clash with the desk in a rattle. There’s hardly any perch for you, but in a scramble, you curl your fingers white-knuckled around the edge. He has you pinned between him and the wood with nowhere to breathe and nowhere to think. A controlled, shaky breath comes tumbling from behind your lips. Electricity crackles in the air between you, and you’re weak to it. You turn your head away, clawing for some semblance of control or respite from the bare intensity.
Despite your shock, somewhere deep, deep down in your belly, you know that this is only the fruit of some howling storm that has been swirling—swirling and churning and gaining power. You’d felt the trembling of it, the promise of something explosive and imminent, as oblivious as you were to its source. Now, the ground cracks open beneath you, and it will accept nothing other than to swallow you whole.
“Do you not think of me as a man?” he grits out. Since you’ve decided to blatantly avoid his gaze, he gets down right into your neck. “Well, I am. And you brought him here. Brought him into my home, and you let him touch you. ”
Taehyun had been there that day.
It’s as if time itself slows down around you. This moment inflates into something infinite. Everything that he’d done, every little thing that you’d struggled to digest, is laid out before you. He’s holding your hips as if you’ll fade around the edges and leave him here. There’s something raw beneath the growled words; something desperate.
Belly flipping ruthlessly, you speak, but they’re not coherent thoughts. “I... didn’t think that...”
He’s quick to cut you off, rearing back to look you in the eyes once more, forcing you to do the same. And he holds you there. “Do you think that he can provide for you better than me? That I can’t provide you your needs?”
Your heart is a ravenous, wild thing in your chest. All that he’d done: the dress, the servants, finding Beomgyu, staying here in the north, demanding that you don’t depend or even associate with Yeonjun, urging you to not attend Court because he knew Yeonjun would be there—was because it was supposed to be him. And it was killing him because finally something had managed to drive right through that suit of ice armor he struggles so hard to keep up, right down to where his real emotions slumber, and he is forced to feel something. In all that banishing emotion away, he’s now faced with this blazing consumption, and he is utterly lost.
Taehyun curses, a relenting of his will, before he’s taking your lips to his. It’s a ravaging, fervent meeting, clashing teeth and roaming hands with no destination. He lifts you up onto the desk, and then his hand finds the hair at the very back of your head. You remember this wild dance of tongue and mouth—the first time he’d put his mouth on you, it’d been just the same. You’re gasping and clawing at his shoulders.
What on earth are you doing?
His hands are all over you. It’s as if he can’t get enough, as if he’s catching up to all that had been bursting at the seams in his mind. His lips taste like finally. When he’s forced to release your lips for air, it’s not as if he gives you any real room to breathe—his lips fall like glowing ashes down the column of your neck. You’re helpless to the whines he takes from your lips. He melds your bodies into one clumsy thing, pushing you down into the desk in a clumsy clatter. He wholly overwhelms you, and you think that it is a conscious effort. He intends to wiggle his way into every little corner, every little space, until you have no room for thought but him. If the drunken haze that’s rendered your thoughts sluggish is anything to speak of his efforts, he’s succeeded.
You catch yourself halfway down, before your back makes it down onto the desk. His mouth is back on yours, spinning with the sting of your scalp as he guides you through his kiss. His hands reach your upper thigh, making slow work of bunching the fabric.
“If you knew,” he says, appreciating the bare skin as if it were as precious as jewel and gold the same way he had that night in your bed: as if every inch were just as intimate as a glimpse of your cunt. “If you knew what I think about doing to you.”
Blood roars beneath your skin. The confession that Taehyun has thought about touching you like this, or the fact that he’s been battling against his own mind in the onslaught of those thoughts, sheds a new light over so much. Beneath that stony face, he’d been needing you.
Through the licking of your bottom lip and the buzzing behind your skull, you see Yeonjun’s face. Your stomach does a flip. You’re not supposed to feel guilty. You shouldn’t, but guilt slices like a molten dagger through the haze. How can you be here, doing this, when he’s out there aching for you? As far as you distance yourself from his sphere, you’re still reminded of who taught you your body now that another man touches you. You imagine how hurt he’d be if he saw you now.
You rage against those thoughts. You owe no guilt to the man that had only ever approached you because you were his target.
Taehyun’s gaze meets yours. You must’ve gone quiet, or maybe still. Perhaps it’s your eyes that gives it away, though, because he does not like what he finds in them. In a blink, he’s retracting back into his shell.
“You’re thinking of him,” he spits. His voice is so caustic and venomous as it falls out that your skin burns. “Even while I’m touching you.”
You want nothing more than to reach in and pull that fire and raw emotion back out. He pulls away. Your skin is painfully empty of his touch. Chest aching, you say, “Taehyun, wait. Please. I wasn’t.” The lie rolls off your tongue too easily, but you can’t stand the chill fallen over your form.
His face is far off and distant, his jaw set tight. He runs a hand through his hair, made a mess with your touch, the action punctuated by a barbed laugh.
He doesn’t even say anything more to you when he leaves the room. He just leaves. You sit for a few minutes, legs dangling and blood roaring.
Taehyun has kept a lot beneath a jaded and aloof front, but it seems that even he has a tipping point.
❆
“That reeks,” Beomgyu says. He’s sat on the basin, legs dangling down.
The water embraces you in a delightful lukewarm that disarms your nerves and has you drowsy. “Soap?” you say with a subsequent rich snort. You scoot, bathwater lapping at the walls of the tub when you bring your knees to your chest. The round tub is big enough for you to sprawl out, but you prefer sitting right up against the wall. Only the suds and perfumed oils sitting in a thin, hazy film on top of the water protect your decency from Beomgyu’s eyes. With the servants insisting on helping you wash, though, you’ve become indifferent to bathing in front of others. It’s not as if you’ve got to worry about him leering, anyway. He doesn’t blink at your nakedness. You appreciate the company. “It smells clean. You know, so you don’t smell like straight mud.”
“Mud is not such an offensive smell as that,” he says, nose crinkling. “You lather yourself in smells that are wholly unbelievable.”
Laughing, you feign sending a spray of water droplets his way. “Well,” you muse, “We are not hewn from the same stone. We have to clean ourselves.” While your worldly body demands that you maintain hygiene with soap and water, the folk wash for leisure. You don’t bemoan it, though. It’s your reality—always will be—and you delight in coming out feeling fresh. “And your earthy... musk... is just as terrible to me as this is to you. So...”
“Agree to disagree.” He sits still. Beomgyu is always eerily still—you’ve come to the realization that it’s because he doesn’t breathe. No rising or falling of his chest meant he could sit in absolute repose. You’re not entirely used to it, even now. How could anything be a living, talking being, without breath? There he sits, though.
Echoes of your washing fill the room. You sigh. With each scrub, you imagine carving away both any dirtiness and any heavy thoughts. It doesn’t work, of course. You feel no less heavy. If only it were that easy.
“Taehyun is general now,” you say, frown tugging at your face. “For the Queen.” Remembering it makes you feel impossibly heavier. It had been a secretive move, but still... He had become the one thing that has haunted him for you. His words yesterday said as much. You buzz at that memory, heart racing at just the memory. It had been a battle pretending your first kiss hadn’t happened, but this was different. Terribly different.
You blink, trying to bring yourself together when Beomgyu says, huffing out a humorless laugh, “He is only his father’s son.”
Sighing, you sink lower into the water. The kelpie wouldn’t be himself without some snide remark in Taehyun or his father’s expense. You know why he’d done it, now, but you’re awful and can’t help but consider what him being general might mean. Taehyun has a strict moral code; you don’t think he’ll go around killing in cold blood. Still, in order to retain his standing, he’ll have to carry out the council’s will. It’s a slippery slope; you fear the he’ll become the thing he’d once hated at your expense. With a sickened stomach, you hold your knees closer. You don’t want that. “He said it was to make sure we’re no longer targets. You know, since we came here as spies and all that,” you say, voice softening as thoughts grow louder.
Agitated, Beomgyu slips off the basin. “Why would he have bothered with finding me, then, if he had already made other plans?”
Spinning water with a finger and watching it swirl, you say, “I know for a fact it’s why he did it. It’s just that I don’t like it. I mean, getting involved in the war is one thing. We were already involved to some degree, anyway. Becoming the general is a whole other thing.”
A wicked delight crackles across Beomgyu’s face, and you brace yourself for whatever has excited him so. “If you would deign it with your word... We could be gone from this estate. Anywhere that pleases us, free from the fool.”
“Of course,” you say, rolling your eyes and watching him pace the floor. “It’s always dramatics with you. We’re not running away. Good try, though.”
He pauses, grimacing down at you. You suppress a laugh. Maybe you could’ve entertained his grand plan. At least, for a moment. Your fingers have pruned up, but you have no will to drag yourself from the warmth. Let you just stay like this, cocooned in its welcoming arms, for a bit longer. Then, you’ll find it within you to face the memory of Taehyun’s hands and the gravity of what he’d let slip.
❆
Dust motes flutter when caught in the light. You, with bare feet padding on the chilly morning floors, plow right through them. A clattering, so lively in the still sleep-ridden estate, floats out from the kitchens. You follow it.
Beomgyu stands, lanky and strange as always, watching a servant work dutifully on a meal. You frown. It’s a bit early for any of your usual meals.
“Hanging around in the kitchen? Thought you didn’t eat,” you say.
He gives you a distracted grumble. “I can eat. I just don’t need to.”
An eye roll slips. “That’s even worse. You asked for a meal to be made for you, just so that you can taste it,” you say, hand on your hip. “Very inconsiderate.”
Disconcertment lines his face at that, looking back over at the servant. “I did not ask for a meal.”
“Yeah... Okay. Anyway, do you know where Taehyun has gone? Out?”
Beomgyu shakes his head. “No, I don’t believe he’s gone anywhere,” he says, eyeing you. “You’re searching for the Lord?”
“I mean, I was just wondering where he is. I didn’t see him around, or anything.”
“Oh, pull your stake from my heart,” he grumbles and scratches at his neck. “I fear you’ve abandoned me in my loathing, with who else am I to escape this place? ” he says.
“There you go again,” you say, relenting to conversation. Conversation with Beomgyu makes you feel lighter. “If we ran away, we’d make it like... a week.”
He cocks his head to the side. “You’d last a week. I’d be just fine.”
“Oh, you think so?” you scoff. “And where would we go?”
Now, he’s really riled up, throwing his arms up, exasperated. “To the forest,” he deadpans. “I... come from the forest. Of course I’d go to the forest.”
Mouth pulled into a grin that you know will irk him, you say, “Sounds like a nice place. For you. You just want to get out of here, you don’t care about what happens to me. I’m hurt. This is supposed to be our escape plan, not Beomgyu’s.”
He likes that, lips curling at the corners. “Well, I pride myself in my cleverness, and it’s not as though I’ll be leaving this rotten place by my own means,” Beomgyu says.
“Oh, you’re just so clever.” You’ve become too familiar with that impish grin—he’s joking. But you don’t doubt for a second that if you were to propose running away, Beomgyu would be elated. He makes the jokes for a reason, anyway. It’s become a sort of game; him suggesting it, and you shutting it down. “And is that why you deign to bless me with your presence? Plotting and scheming?”
“Don’t give me your sarcasm,” he huffs. “I deign you with my presence because I ought to. What else should I do?”
“You love me,” you say, tableware and platters clattering and mingling with the sound of your voice. “I know it.” You drag out the last syllables in a taunting melody.
The servant who had been busy with making the breakfast, a hob you don’t really recognize, pokes in to tell you that it’s finished, so you move your conversation over to the table. Pulling out the chair, you eye the plates. It’s more extravagant than you usually eat here. It reminds you more of Court food or what few meals you’d had with Yeonjun: a honeyed meat and some fire-roasted burdock root. Beside it is a bowlful of salt, but it’s only by yours. You dip your head at the faerie, careful of course not to say thank you. That would mean that the faerie has done you a favor, and then you’d be expected to repay it. A simple gesture works just fine.
Beomgyu doesn’t sit, nor does he take any interest in eating. Instead, he hovers at the far end of the long table, telling you, “I do not love anything.”
Raising your brows at him, you say, “Whatever.” You salt the bitter root before forking it. “What are you so antsy for, anyway? Isn’t your whole thing that you sit around in a swamp for the entirety of your existence? What’s that, to staying in an estate for a bit? I think that you just like to complain to me.”
He laughs, rocking on his heels. “It’s about free will,” he says, “And, maybe I do. Though, isn’t it a wonder that you complain to me just as much?”
You’ve finished your plate. “Fair.”
Taehyun emerges from a room. Your belly does a little surprised flip. You knew he was still here, but you’d hoped to avoid him. When you’d first arrived here, the estate had felt massive. Now, it’s not so much the same.
He doesn’t mention it, though. Instead, he surveys the table, and then his brows knit. “You’ve cooked?”
“Not us. It was being made when I got up. There’s some for you, too, though. If you’re hungry.”
His frown deepens, but he nods and wanders off into the kitchen. You understand. You’d been confused when you’d went into the kitchen to find a meal being made so early. It’s as if the servant is new and unfamiliar with schedules. Turning to Beomgyu, you say, “Anyway. Would sneaking out for one night appease you?” You push around the last bits of your breakfast, too full to eat anymore. “Maybe you just need to get the thrill out of your system. I have a tree by my window, that might up the ante rather than sneaking out the front door.” You give him a tongue-in-cheek raise of a brow.
“Well, I don’t think it’s sneaking if you discuss it a room away from who you’re sneaking around,” he answers, picking at the wood of the table. “And, no.”
At a crash, you both are whipping your heads toward the doorway. The hob servant is sprawled out on its knees. Taehyun’s face has gone cold, and he holds his sword out at the faerie in a point. Your eyes go wide, and you hop up out of your seat. “What are you doing?” you say, taking in the scene. Adrenaline sparkles in your pulse. One second, you’d been enjoying your morning, the next Taehyun has one of his servants at sword point. It’s whiplash.
Despite your initial shock, though, you pull together the pieces—about the strangeness of the routine, and the unusual meal, and the unfamiliar faerie. You go to share a look with Beomgyu. In the narrow twitch of his eyes, you deduct that he’s come to the same conclusion. And, you’d eaten that whole meal.
“Face me.” Taehyun barks out the command, looking down on the hob with a chilling severity.
The faerie does slowly, bowing its head to avoid Taehyun’s face in an attempt to placate him. Taehyun says, “Who have you weaseled yourself into my estate for?” His voice carries, strong and unforgiving. It penetrates down to your marrow. You’re sure the hob feels it worse, though. There’s a long few moments with no answer. Either they won’t say it, or they can’t. They dip their head further. “If you think that your silence will earn you a quick death, it will not. Speak now, or give me your hand. I’ll have your fingers.”
“Taehyun,” you say, shooting him a hard stare. “Are you serious?” Your stomach goes nauseous. You’ve seen Taehyun kill before, but a punishment like that, meant to inflict agony... It shocks you.
Taehyun looks at you strangely, eyes at war with the rest of him. He says to you, keeping his sword on the hob, “Am I serious? You just ate all of that, who knows if it was poisoned.” Now stood behind the hob, he takes it by the scruff and lines the deadly edge of his sword up to its neck.
Your heart does a little trick. You absolutely had eaten that food without question. Why would you question it? It hadn’t come to your mind at all that somebody might infiltrate this estate. With Taehyun’s new role, it only makes sense. You don’t feel bad, though. Not like when you had been poisoned at The Hovel. You’d felt that pretty fast and hard. Right now, you feel fine. As much relief as that brings you, it does beg the question: if they’d come here to do harm, why wouldn’t they utilize such a blaring opportunity? The hob had just... made you food.
“I have every right to protect my home, and those who live in it.” Taehyun grabs harder, picking the hob up and pressing his sword in closer. The hob squeezes its narrow eyes shut. “It’s my duty.”
It’s always duty, with Taehyun. The sight of the faerie bracing, knowing that Taehyun will hurt or kill it, worms under your skin. Your fingers strain in trembling fist. You can’t handle the awful sight, no matter if the faerie had intended to harm you.
You think you know who’d sent the hob to come and be eyes on the inside of Taehyun’s estate, anyway.
Beomgyu scoffs hoarsely from beside you. “I watched the fool make it. She’s not fallen sick, had she?” His bored eyes shine with distaste. "You, general, just miss the taste of blood on your tongue. You miss it dearly, I know. It’s a terrible hunger to have.” He exchanges the word Lord with one that you can acknowledge hits as a much lower blow, considering his past. Beomgyu would never miss the opportunity to remind Taehyun that from which he comes from. To that regard, you are thankful for not knowing who your parents are. No matter where you end up, at least you’ve had the power to mold your own legacy. Taehyun’s follows him, grim and stained red.
“Taehyun, can’t you just make an exception this once? Beomgyu’s right. If they’d have wanted us hurt, they had a pretty good opportunity to. But, they didn’t.” You flex your fingers hoping to expel some nerves and step closer to where he’s stood. Making a point to catch his eyes and hold them hostage, you add, “We’d be hypocrites to kill for spying. You know that. Who are we, to call it justice and kill over this? That’s not fair.”
He holds your eyes, pausing. “Exceptions are dangerous,” he says, but his voice is changed. There’s something other than ice-cold resolution there. You release a breath of tension.
“I get that, but...” You search his face. “Please.”
The estate is quiet aside from the huffing of the hob for a second. The look in Taehyun’s face changes, and then he’s throwing the faerie to the ground. He sheathes his sword with a crisp click that you’ve never been more elated to hear, and he snaps, “Get out. Go. Tell whoever the hell sent you here that I won’t take so kindly to this again.”
The hob does not waste even a second in making good on their second chance. It scrambles up and away in a scramble of furious legs and arms.
Beomgyu shakes his head and goes to retreat off to wherever he spends a majority of his time, now that the show is over.
Taehyun, looking disconcerted with his arms folded and brows lifted, says, “Somebody is sending their people here, and now I’ve set a precedent. I look weak. Those wolves will pounce on any stretch of weakness they can find.”
You sigh. “I know,” you say. “I know, Taehyun. Thank you.” You don’t tell him that the wolf he speaks of is Yeonjun, and that the spy was not here to kill or collect intellect from him.
It seems that the prince has made his move.
❆
“You think that was the end of it?” Beomgyu says. “No. That was nothing beyond a glimpse. A life spent beside his blood-drinking father is undeniable. How the gentry kids learn Court snark, the Lord learned to take butchery as a trophy.”
Shooting him a glare, you slot the arrow in its home and pull the bowstring taut. It comes much easier, now. Your chest doesn’t tremble, and you can properly hold it there comfortably enough to actually aim. Finding the bullseye of woven straw, you narrow your eyes down. You find the center of the spiral, further down the field now that you’ve gotten a better handle on your archery. Like Taehyun had said, you aim a little left to make room for wind direction. You release a slow breath in a smooth, silver stream of breath. Wind whistles around the arrow as it dances down the flat of powdery snow. It pierces the center left with a far-off thud. Not a bullseye, but you’re glad to meet your mark.
You reach for another arrow. “Or,” you say, “Growing up with his father taught him to be a better man for it.”
The kelpie, having watched you practice out here for at least thirty minutes, looks up to you from where he sits squatted on the ground. “You don’t believe that,” he scoffs. He drags a finger in the snow. The ground around him is a work of muddy shapes, where he’s worked the snow so much that the wet ground beneath it has begun turning it to brown slush. “The brute is no different. Ardently as he may detest the former general, he has followed his tracks in the snow. Reluctance makes him no better.”
Cupping your hands over your mouth, you puff out warm breaths that soothe your stinging nose and stiff fingers. It lasts only a small, gratifying moment. You puff out a sigh and take the bow back into your hands. You thought you’d gotten over this conversation, decided to determine for yourself what kind of man Taehyun is, but... When he took up his role as general, you were set back an infuriating mile. Things are even muddier, now. You know he has a reputation to keep up as general, and that he made an exception for you in letting that spy go. If he doesn’t present a strong front, it’ll put you all in danger. That doesn’t stop abrasive thoughts from sticking under your skin, though.
“Don’t even try and act like you care about violence,” you tell him, giving him a high brow. “It’s not as if you don’t trick people and drag them down into your swamp for your own enjoyment. You just dislike Taehyun.” You bring back the string and let another arrow go. It lands somewhere near the first.
He doesn’t deny that, a rotten smile splitting across his face.
Your next shot lands beside the bullseye. Letting out a triumphant sound, you say, “Did you see that?”
Beomgyu hums. “That one was good.” He stands up to full height with creaking bones and adds, “But, aren’t you getting bored of this? I say we find something more interesting to waste precious time with.”
You frown. “More interesting...”
He nods, enthused.
“That sounds like a terrible idea, coming from you. Interesting is subjective, and I don’t think I’d like to learn your interpretation of it,” you say, voice sewn with suspicion. You lean your bow against the tree, though. Hitting so close to the center was enough gratification to appease you for the day. “And how can I be sure that this isn’t part of an escape plan?”
He groans. “Let me play some, won’t you? I have a place that will please the both of us.”
You feign long consideration, but you’ve already decided. As cold as you are, and despite your weary arms, you’re jumping at the opportunity to escape the strong walls of the estate. You’ve got a funny tingling in your veins that pleads with you to go and do something. Wherever Beomgyu may take you, you’ll just appreciate the distraction from muddled thoughts and recycling anxieties. You nod finally. “Fine. Don’t bring me anywhere weird, kelpie.”
Though, you never know what you’re getting into, with Beomgyu.
❆
Well, the dusted walls of a once-great residence around you are not the worst you imagined when thinking where Beomgyu might take you.
“You told I’d me be pleased,” you say, voice bouncing off the walls and coming back to you hollow. It was the residence of some gone gentry folk, you know. Why that would be of any interest to you, you’re not sure. It’s pretty, sure. You’d fought snow and numb fingers to get here, though. You frown at him expectantly.
“You have a sorry amount of trust in me. You would be, if you’d just open your eyes to it,” he cuts back.
You hum. “Sure.” Raking your eyes over the baseboards, brown wood carved into leaves and acorns, and then down the still halls, you make an effort to see anything differently. Of course, it does nothing. Beomgyu speaks strangely, and he hadn’t actually meant to look differently. Despite your conclusion, you still see a stale and forgotten place. You cross your arms over your chest and say, “I get it. This was just an escape plan. And I’m gonna get your ass. Do you know how far of a that walk was?”
“This would be a nice to stay, if we were to forget a certain Lord’s estate...” he muses, tilting his head off to one side. “But no.”
Looking around, your eyes catch on the film of dust on the floor down the hallway that shoots off from the tall dining hall that you stand in. More specifically, you’re concerned with the set of footsteps leading down it. Your feet tell you to dart. “Beomgyu?” you say, eyes wide as you look over to him. “Who’s here?”
“Should we go find out?” he says, thick set of brows jumping in a playful twitch.
He sets off down the hallway. You follow, internalizing the new surroundings with large drinks. You’re not sure why you ever thought this would end with him taking you out to the forest to watch will-o'-the-wisps dance in twinkling balls of light, or going to watch a babbling brook work its way over the earth.
A tall man steps out from a room. You jump, pulling Beomgyu back, as if he weren’t some ancient faerie beast capable of managing himself. He cracks a laugh. The man looks between you two. Your tongue darts out to wet dry lips. He’s no doubt wondering who you are, just the same as you’re wondering who he is. You whisper to your cavorting heart that Beomgyu is magically compelled to not shove you into harm’s way, and it seems that he knows who this is.
You notice the man’s round ears, and his soft and humble features, and the earthliness, and the imperfection-flecked skin. Familiarity bursts in your chest—you’re looking into the face of another human. “Who is this?” you whisper over to Beomgyu.
“This is Soobin,” he announces, answering your whisperings with his full chest. “A friend, and a human, as I think you’ve noticed.” A proud gleam flashes over his eyes. “I believe that you owe me your thanks now.”
The man, Soobin, dips his head at you. Dull, brown eyes study you. “I am,” he says.
Searching for words, you open and close your mouth a few times. A nervous thrill wraps you up. You’ve wanted to get to know and be friends with your kind for your entire life. “Why are you here?” you ask, making a gesture at the residence. “It looks abandoned. Very abandoned.” When you’d first arrived at Taehyun’s estate, it’d been left alone for quite a while in Taehyun’s leaving it behind. This, though, looks much different than that. You wonder who this place belonged to, and why it’s no longer in use.
Sullen eyes answer yours. They remind you of Beomgyu’s, the old tiredness. It’s strange, seeing that look reflected on such a young face. How does Beomgyu known him, anyway? Soobin answers, “I was a glamoured servant here. Until the faerie died.” He continues talking as he returns to the room from which he’d come from. This room, off and away from the massive inner hall that makes up the majority of the residence, is fresher. Where dust balls and had taken over what was once most definitely a place busy with servants and the host of many feasts, this room is alive and no doubt where Soobin lives. “Then, the glamour died, and I came back to myself.” He sits down onto a foot bench in front of a green-sheeted bed. This must’ve been bedroom for the faerie he’d served. Now, it’s his. He brings his hands up. Where the soft skin of an easy life should sit, there’s worn and ruined skin in its place. “I wasn’t conscious when I’d been working it, but when I came back... my body ached. It ached so bad, and at first, I had no idea why or... where I was. All I knew was that I’d been worked into the ground.”
Your heart hangs like stone in your chest, looking at his broken hands. When you’d been taken from the human world, you’d been so young that it made no difference to you. Growing up here, it’s all you’ve ever known. Not every human is brought here how you had been, though. Some are snatched up from their adult lives; fallen to some faerie trick hidden in plain sight. Slip up, and you’re stolen away to come do work in this wretched realm. You don’t know what’s worse: what happened to you, being raised here and molded into a meaningless servant, or that. The faerie had stolen time from his life that he will never get back—and he remembers none of it. Glamoured servants had always stricken a gut-wrenching sick feeling in you, whenever you’d seen them. With gone eyes and hollowed out cheeks, they’d look right through you like mist and continue on with their prescribed duties. Like a husk of a living being.
Even now, Soobin’s body tells the story of the taxation. This faerie must’ve seen humans as cattle. “Why stay here?” you ask, making a seat out of a sofa along the wall. The cushions accept your shape graciously; made affable by time and use. Beomgyu trades the cushioned seat for the floor in front of your crisscrossed legs. He lolls his head back, coarse hair tickling at your skin.
Beomgyu answers. “Because he has no place else to go, and his awful stubbornness keeps him here. There are no rides back to the human world, if you’re not willing to give something away for it.”
Soobin, looking more annoyed than genuinely angry with Beomgyu’s words, says, “I’m not going to give your kind any more of me than I was already forced to. I’ll find a way. Eventually.”
Eventually. The word is heavy coming out from his mouth, falling out like a dud; not even he believes it. “How long have you been here?”
“I... don’t know.” He shifts, watching the flooring rather than looking at the two of you as he speaks. “Since I was taken here? I have no idea. I don’t remember a lick of it. But from what I do remember, long. Centuries, maybe.”
Your fingers, raking paths through the tangles in Beomgyu’s hair, freeze. Looking up at him, you tilt your head. It sounds like it should be a hyperbole, an overdramatization to describe what feels like an eternity spent here in this old place. But he doesn’t deliver it as such. No, his voice doesn’t joke at all—his eyes stare hard and lack the light of life. “What?” you say. Your voice crackles with a confused flare. “What do you mean, centuries?”
“He means that he’s been making this his home for centuries,” Beomgyu says.
“No,” you say, willing your glare to burn holes through the back of his head below you. Of course, he doesn’t stir or notice at all. “I mean, that’s not possible. We don’t live that long.” Nonetheless, he looks no older than you. Anything above twenty years is no less unbelievable than centuries.
“You don’t?” Beomgyu says. You hear the patronizing smile through his words. “I have known him long. And yet, he lives... How strange is that?”
You deliver a punishing shove at the back of his head. “You know what I meant, idiot.”
Simpering, he says back to you from over his shoulder, “You’re not so much the sweet girl I remember meeting. Spend enough of your time here, and even the human’s body slows. The makeup of his human flesh has not aged for quite some time. Neither will yours.”
A lifetime spent dreading how fast your life will dwindle away comes crashing down over you. You blink hard at the impact. You’d been haunted; followed around by the dark and heavy promise of a soon death, of deteriorating joints and a forgettable name. That had all been in vain? The enormity of that realization... it comes overhead like dark and swirling water, sucking you down where no amount of kicking or thrashing will clear a way. It swallows you. A bitter anger kindles down in the depths from which that fear had nestled itself. So, Nut-hatch had made the very conscious decision to lead you to believe otherwise.
“You’ve reached maturity, and you will stay this way for until you leave Faerie. The years will begin coming to you, as long as you remain there; where time flows differently through the veins,” Beomgyu continues. “He only wishes to spend his blessing of time decaying away here.”
The two of them begin talking back and forth about whatever it is that Beomgyu says, but a loud silence like fog in your head has their words more like background noise. You’d lived for so, so long thinking that you were running out of time. The tick of a terrible clock sounded off in the distance in a haunting echo in everything you ever did. It’s why you ever rallied the nerve to up and leave the life you’d been dragged into. You’d been so scared of wasting what little life you had—fear welled up high and told you that time was running out to do it. Would you have ever even left, if you’d not thought yourself so rushed? Your face feels hot.
Soobin saying your name, loud and questioning, draws you out just enough to hear him say, “How did you get tricked?”
You swallow and clear your throat, sitting up straighter. “What do you mean?” you ask, mental inertia coloring your words lost. “Tricked?” Doing a re-survey of the room, you stop on the windows. Day has begun weaning off into the gray of eventide.
“How did you end up as a servant, I mean,” he elaborates.
“Oh,” you say, nodding your understanding. “Sorry, I got distracted. I was taken when I was little, so I didn’t get tricked, or anything.” Nut-hatch didn’t have to trick you to bring you here like most faeries do when taking humans from their world, because you had no will. It’s the loophole in their governing nature; though they might not be able to just take humans without a promise or debt or something of that sort, they can take away the newly born. As long as they leave behind what they believe to be a replacement as payment.
“You’re a changeling,” he says, as if realizing out loud. His eyes meet yours, dead and gone and bitter. “You should’ve killed that faerie. They all deserve it.”
The acidic rancor there has you balking. Kill Nut-hatch? You may still harbor resentment—deep, deep gnarly gashes and crevices that you’d had to fill, and it just so happens that enmity did the job well. You understand his anger, but the thought of killing your stealer for self-gratifying revenge doesn’t make you feel good. Not in the way he suggests it should. In a sick way that only a child with a cavity in their chest where the love for a parent should be could manage, you consumed her role as your owner and digested it down into something you could cling on to. And, with chubby little desperate hands, you had. Perhaps she would spit in your face if you were to return to her now—because you’d failed to fulfill your purpose for her—you could not fathom hurting her. You pull back the sour face twitching at your muscles and say, “How do you feel about that, Beomgyu? I thought you were friends.”
He shakes his head. “If you make senseless bets, you’re already the fool. You can’t act so surprised when you’re then asked to put on the fool’s hat and to dance,” he says, pointed derision like an arrow at Soobin.
Whatever that means. The folk speak with adages and idioms, but Beomgyu’s verbiage is infested with it. You scuffle down your laugh when Soobin does not share your humor.
“How was I supposed to have thought I’d be making a bet with a faerie? Nobody even knows this shit is real, there. It’s all just folklore and scary stories. It’s not fair ground if I didn’t even know that I was doing it. And now, here I am: everybody I ever knew and loved is long, long dead.”
His words are seething with hatred, and yet they’re barren. It’s carved him up inside, dug him out into a shell with only this awfulness left. It shakes you a bit. You’d been so eager to find another human to know or to bond with. This, though... Your brain feels rattled around in your skull. You hope to never become this.
“So, no. We are not friends,” Soobin says. “He only comes here to enjoy my misfortune, and our kind live with the need for interaction. I tolerate it, I guess.”
You husk out a laugh that doesn’t find your eyes. “Well, that’s not very nice, Beomgyu,” you say, stressing his name with false reprimand. “He enjoys my suffering too,” you tell Soobin. You nudge Beomgyu with your dangling leg, trying to drag the nonplussed kelpie back into the conversation to save you.
“Of course, he does. It’s why they take us from our world: our pain is no more than like playing with a beetle to watch it struggle, and then killing it when it’s no longer fun. We’re bugs. Or, dirt. I’m sure you’ve heard that before. They love to tell us that.”
You have. That memory is one that you prefer shoved down and compact where you can’t let it remind you what your designated role really is. You’ve been so good about ignoring it, too. With a quick glance to the windows and the dark that’s fallen outside, you say, “I think we need to go, Beomgyu. We didn’t bring any lights...”
The kelpie drags himself up from the ground and away from the room without any sharing of pleasantries. You offer Soobin a quick goodbye and are next out of the room, feet moving like the wood flooring has gone to hot coals.
Even in the round edges of a human face, you had not found the resonance that you’ve longed so hard for. Humans have the capacity for unshaking violence and vacant souls too, it seems. Perhaps it was never that you were looking for a human to see yourself reflected in—you’d just bloomed cloudy hopes of finding eyes that will see you clearly and deeply. Those hopes had been misplaced.
But, if not in another human, then who?
❆
It’s utterly black outside—a moonless night. Kicking your restless legs out from your blankets, you stumble down the stairs.
You can’t find sleep, even behind closed eyes. Behind your eyelids, you see Yeonjun’s storm-clouded face and you taste Taehyun on your mouth. You’re harassed by guilt cruelly, and feel the weight of your conversation with Soobin deep in your chest.
How you end up at Taehyun’s door once again, you’re not sure. It’s a wholly inappropriate hour of the night, and you ought to have learned your lesson the last time you’d found yourself here. You don’t know why your sleepy legs lead you here. You’re better off plaguing Beomgyu with your restlessness instead. Why you’re stood here before this door... It’s beyond you.
Though, you’ve been desperately unable to shove down the urge to stick your toes in the water and see just how icy they are. He’s pointedly avoided you, and you have no grasp on where you two are going after this. An innate feeling, settled heavy like stone in your chest, tells you that everything has changed.
Once you’ve knocked and cracked the door open, though, a nervous tide creeps up on you. You should pivot and be back to your room. You would, if you were smart, but as Taehyun sits up with a mess of dark hair and sleep-dusted cheeks, you’re compelled by something other than your mind. It’s something strangely human, waking up in a groggy haze. The sight of sleepiness on the ever-composed Taehyun is jarring. It’s gone in only a blink, though, as he shakes it away.
“Is something wrong?” he says. He may have brushed away the fog in his brain, but he’s powerless to the husk still weighing his voice down. It sends a strange thrill through you.
You shake your head, throat dry.
He frowns. “You’re having dreams again?”
The gentle question has you pausing. It’s so out and away—so far beyond what you expect from him. Taehyun has never been one to ask around about how you’re feeling. He’d much rather skirt around such things, and pretend them away. Emotional nuance is a lost cause on him. Or, that’s what you’d thought, anyway. What’s changed? “No,” you tell him, pursing your lips. “I just... wanted to talk to you.”
Taehyun sits more fully upright. “About what?” he says. You don’t miss how his shoulders straighten and stiffen.
On bare feet, you shuffle over to his bed. “Nothing,” you tell him. You hadn’t exactly planned on coming here. Of course, he thinks you’ve come here to address what had happened. But... that’s not why you came here. At least, you think it isn’t. You don’t know. “Can I sit?” You gesture at the foot of his bed. He nods, eyes trained right on you. Pressing one knee into the coverlets, you climb in.
The buzzing and hum of wind dance in the air between you. You’re not sure what to say; it’s so heavy with every single thing. It’s hard to keep things light with him, when even the silence is painted with intensity.
You settle with just saying, “I couldn’t sleep.”
He licks his lips, nodding. “I’d only just fallen asleep,” he says. “Always something to think about.”
You can relate to that. The melody of a serene, content mind seems like a distant memory. “Sorry,” you say. You hadn’t meant to ruin his rest. Rigidity intrudes on the flow of conversation. You don’t remember ever being this awkward.
He dismisses that with a shake of his head. “I’ll manage,” he says. “When I came back yesterday, you and the kelpie weren’t here. Where did you go?”
This is exactly what had been keeping your mind awake. You had wanted to think of anything but that, but maybe talking to somebody about it will be nice. “Beomgyu took me somewhere,” you say. You laugh softly as he makes a face. “Yeah, I know. It was some old, run-down place. And there was this human there.”
You pause, filtering through the memory. Taehyun doesn’t speak, his eyes watching you with an attentive slowness. He’s just listening. Continuing, you say, “It was weird, because... Well, we were talking, and... He was nice. It was nice, talking to another human and seeing my features on him.”
You give a passing glance over at his ears.
“And Beomgyu is a jerk, but I don’t think I learned that yesterday,” you say. You ramble, perhaps filling the space where the uncomfortable memory sits before you can let it bother you. It doesn’t help that the air is so quiet. Your mouth moves quick to make it less so. “But... this guy. He’s centuries old, and just lives inside that place. I’d been so excited to have someone who could understand me like that, but then he started saying stuff that made me feel... just, bad for him, I guess. He was so angry and bitter.”
Taehyun watches you speak, and then nods. Tinged with his sleepy husk, he says, “Not everybody stays good when they live for so long. He let it rot him.”
“Yeah. It was really like he was rotted. Not bad, I guess,” you say. “It made me worry that I’ll end up that way, someday. Even though we came here differently, I still feel that sort of anger sometimes. I don’t like it, though.”
“I don’t think you will,” he says.
His voice feels so strangely soft. You don’t know how to respond to this, coming from him. Long, quiet beats only decorated by the crackling of bushes scraping up and down the windows, fall over you two again. Your gazes intertwine, dancing together in a way that is also different. “Thank you,” you tell him, your voice meek. “I hope that’s true.”
The longer you’re sat there in Taehyun’s bed, the plush warmth of it and his presence serving as some sort of scarecrow for your pestering thoughts, your eyes grow heavier and your words more useless. Here, in his room and in his presence, it’s as if those thoughts and their terrible claws cannot reach you. You prattle on to him about sleepy nothings, but he doesn’t seem to mind that you’re stealing his sleep from him. He only listens, eyes watching you melt down into something softer on the surface of his bed.
❆
When you’d woken up this morning, you’d popped up in a frantic flurry. Instead of on your own bed, your dreary eyes were met with the walls of Taehyun’s room. You had fallen asleep in Taehyun’s bed; talked yourself into a solid sleep. You had been so thankful that he was not there when you’d been drug from your slumber by the feel of foreign bedsheets on your skin.
Even thinking about it now, your ears glow red. Had he been annoyed? You frantically shove those thoughts away.
There’s a thump from outside. You lean over from your spot on the bed and try to get the best look out you can manage, but it’s at an angle. You see nothing but winter’s flurries there.
Your head drops back down to the threadbare fabric in hand. Beomgyu, after a long-winded back and forth, had relented to letting you patch up his clothes. Well, just his shirt. When he’d handed it over to you, it had been a valiant internal battle to not run off and drown the thing in soaped water. For now, you settle for just patching up the mangiest bits. It gives you something to be busy with.
Taehyun has been especially busy lately. You’re not sure why; he doesn’t exactly go around singing about his stresses.
This time, there’s three resounding and deliberate knocks at the pane of your window. Your working fingers come to a stop, head popping up. A nervous rattle thrums up and down your spine. It could have been a straying tree branch knocking a song with the wind’s encouragement, but they’d been so sure and pronounced. You let the shirt down and slip off the bed. Keeping your approach down to whisper, you creep toward the window.
Yeonjun, nose gone pink, sits on a sturdy branch.
For a moment, you stand there taking in the sight of him there; a prince of Faerie, crouched up and in a tangle of branches as he waits for you. It’s absurd. Not only that, it’s dreadful. You’ve done well, tearing yourself away from him. So, so well. Recently, all that hurt has painted its face and made itself anger. At the sight of his face, it sparks in your chest. But it’s a dull, slow flame, oh so reluctant. This anger feels different than other angers. It bothers you so deeply that you can’t place a finger on why.
And you want to let that anger sit there and fester, hoping that it will work at eroding away your still-connected heartstrings like rot. Even through the glass of the window, you feel them—red and reinforced and tugging you toward him.
It’s ridiculous. This is ridiculous and pathetic, letting him send you fragmented just with this. You’ve become the sort of girl that you’d snort over in sappy lover’s ballads and odes, the kind that you’d looked down on for their lack of spine. How different it is, when it comes to your turn. Despite it all, you reach out and push the windows open. Even with the sputtering flame you foster, he’s frozen and does not look like he’s going to give up just at this. If you were to pretend he wasn’t there and flop back down into the bed, you think that he might sit there brazen and let the ice freeze him from the inside out. Or, he’ll find some other way to speak with you. The glint in his eyes, the only light reflected in flatness, tells you as much.
“This isn’t cute, or... romantic, like you think it is, Yeonjun. Not like last time. It’s just hurtful,” you tell him.
Breath like smoke, Yeonjun says, “I don’t mean to hurt you. It kills me that I do.” His voice is sweet and smooth like malt liquor. It grips your mind in dazzling claws.
You shake your head, staying a reasonable distance from him and the window. “You’re not supposed to be here. You have to go,” you tell him, pulling the leash to the collar you’ve put on yourself taut. “It’s icy. Climb down safe, please.”
Of course, that doesn’t budge him. “Not supposed to be here? Why, because you don’t want it, or because he’ll be angry at you?” he says. His pretty face has gone sour. “Look at you. You’ve lost so much weight. He’s not taking care of you, pretty. Come home to me. I know you know where it is; I see the look on your face. I know that you lie to me with your words, but you were never good at hiding your face.”
You stay rooted to your spot; you won’t be so weak to words again. No matter how sweet and soft they feel against your shining, weeping wounds. He put that hurt there. Leaning into it would just be self-destructive.
“Please. It hurts both of us to be away, so why do it? I know that I’ve hurt you, and I’ll spend every last of my waking breath letting you know that it was a mistake. I’ll leave it all behind—none of it matters,” he continues. “Make me your servant. Ask me to swear my life away to you, and I’ll drop to my knees and put it on my beating heart right now.”
Your throat feels dry. He’d swear himself in your service, give you the ability to control him as you will. It’s an unfathomably massive show of trust and dedication. You don’t want that, though. Not one bit. His frantic professions punch you in the gut nonetheless. Had you been losing weight? You haven’t even noticed. Yeonjun did, though—at a glance, he’d known you’ve been hurting.
“Yeonjun, please. You’re not making this easy for me. Just give it time; we’ll get over it. Eventually, we’ll forget each other,” you say, jaw aching with protest at each heavy word. Now faced with the reality of a much, much longer life, your own words bite you. It means, though, that you have so much time to build yourself up into something solid and beautiful. And, somewhere down the road, you’ll think of this and be unaffected. Won’t that day come any sooner, though?
“Forget each other?” he says, laugh like poison. “No, we won’t forget each other. Time doesn’t fix it. I promise you that I know that all too well. Our love is not the kind you can forget. It will just hurt forever.”
“Go on,” you say. “Lie to me again. I want to hear it.”
Eyes shining and unable to lie, he says, “I love you.”
Swallowing thickly, you back away and get ready to close the window.
He climbs in through the window in a quick move. You don’t even have time to protest it before he’s saying, “Ask anything of me. Any last thing that you want of me, but do not ask me to watch you in his arms. I will not.”
There it is again—that dread. You want it to go easy, but of course it never was going to. “Stop it,” you say, mustering up a shaking finger to point at him. “Stop. Just go.”
His face goes hard. “That bastard is off to a war camp. Soon. He becomes more like his father every day, doesn’t he?” His soft hands, warm and cradling, find your face. “You don’t have to punish me by being with him. Come be safe. All he’s done is throw you out in the path of danger. If he cared for you, it would have never happened.”
Darting between his eyes, breaths come quick to you. “What?” you say. It’s the one word you can pull out from the chaos that he’s wrought onto your thoughts. A blizzard erupts, and through the whipping breeze and shards you don’t think to pull away from him or take his hands off of you.
So, that’s why Taehyun had been busy. What does that even entail for you? Are you going to be here? Does he expect you to pack up and go there with him, to travel for a war that you don’t even care for?
“All I ever did was protect you, pretty. I know that, in hindsight, it all seems shady. But I promise you that I did. They were never going to hurt you, and neither was I,” he says, his voice thick and strong with conviction.
Metal rings, the sound of a quick blade being unsheathed.
“Leave,” Taehyun snarls. He holds his sword at point, right on Yeonjun. It’s an emphatic promise of what he’s capable of and what he’ll do.
Flame, wild and melting you around the edges, eats up every last bit of oxygen in the room. It leaves none for you to breathe. It crackles and pops between them, where their gazes meet and feed it. Everything else has gone still. Even the wind, it seems.
Sword held fast and unmoving, Taehyun says, “You send your people into my home, and now you sneak in yourself. I won’t be walked over. Leave now, or you waste my courtesy.”
So, he’d come to that conclusion as well. He’s so still—his face carved of ice into sharp edges.
When Yeonjun sends a look your way, you shake your head at him. You have no clue what he’s thinking, but you want none of it. Your stomach does a violent flip. “Yeonjun, go. I want you to go. Please.”
His features lined with flame; he looks from you to Taehyun. “Your violence will be the fall of you,” he says, jaw tight as he pushes out toward your door. Not without a final glance sent to you, though. The promise you see there is a dreadful one.
You refuse to meet Taehyun’s daggered look. Beomgyu’s shirt lays forgotten on your bed. You’re half tempted to grab it and resume work; to continue on and escape this.
“That didn’t take very fucking long, did it?” he says. “Right back into his arms.”
Your drag your hands down your face. “I didn’t tell him to come here,” you snap. “It’s none of your business who I talk to. How about we talk about you leaving? When did you plan on telling me, huh? I don’t like secrets, Taehyun.”
Taehyun slips his sword back into the sheath. It clicks back in place. “None of my business?” he says. He repeats the words back at you with an asp’s curl. “When he’s in my home, in your room, it’s my business.”
“Would you stop?” you say, exhaustion sputtering out your fight. “With Yeonjun, I always know what’s going on. With you? I don’t know what to expect,” you say. “Tell me. When were you going to tell me that you’re going?”
His face morphs into something different: one of those bone-chilling ones that you don’t know how to explain. He doesn’t answer for a few beats; you can see his mind turning itself over. “This was going to happen. I told you that,” he says. “And I was going to tell you.”
You let out a long sigh, your shoulders loosening with it, when this time his voice isn’t so venomous. He’d been so busy lately. Being general assured that, especially now that things are moving. “When? How long will you be gone?” you say. “What if something happens to you, Taehyun? What are Beomgyu and I supposed to do?” You include Beomgyu in your proposition, but you’re not sure whether he’d stay with you or run off into the tree line the moment he finds he’s free. Then, really, who would you have?
“You’ll be there,” he says. “You can come. I prefer it. If you stay here, you’re vulnerable to attacks. This estate is known to be mine, and now that I’ve become the general... I can’t say that it’s safe.” He’s come so close that now his eyes look down on you. They don’t feel acidic on your skin. “And nothing will happen to me. I promise it, nothing will happen to me or you. Or that kelpie. I’ll win this war.”
Around a thick swallow, you nod.
You don’t doubt that Taehyun has the skill or the wits to do so. You only can hope that he doesn’t destroy himself trying to prove it; to both you and himself.
…🪶 ashlynn's note i know, i know. we made big moves this chapter. AHHHH! taehyun…… taehyun…..
﹙🏷️ ﹚ @lvrs-street2mmorrow , @soohashits , @f4iryfever , @arcturus444 , @linqed , @serenityism00 , @immelissaaa , @luv4cheol , @lickingan0rchid , @20-cms , @hhoneylix , @beestvng , @hyucktapes , @bewitchless , @prince-jjae , @blankliving , @yaoizee , @stormy1408 , @missychief1404 , if your tag isn't working, check the mentions part of your settings!
#still loving the beomgyus character over here he adds a nice energy to the mix!!!#even tho he did say something kinda insane and ominous in the beginning there about magic!#“the pine smell of him so close to you is both familiar and a distant memory” NOT RELATED TO THE SCENE BUT I WANT HIMMMBBB#‘But under all that you see that he’s trying. Taehyun doesn’t leave you until dawn cracks through the windows’ sweet boy :(#‘You want to ask him why he keeps looking at you like that—like how he had in your bed that one night.’#OH! GONNA BE TOTALLY NORMAL AND FINE ABT THIS HAHAHAHA!!!!#“It’s a general’s job to know the war he leads his army into.” im gonna kms. are you joking.#‘ “You decided to stay here for him so this is what I have to do.’ omfg. im really gonna kms now holy shit.#AHH YEONJUN LEAVE HER ALONE!!!!!!!!!!! “You’re pathetic missing him the way you do” YEAH YOU ARE!#okay wait ill give it to him that last letter was kind of a heater “its only fate and who am i to meddle with fate?”#But he will not get you. You’re not yet so foolish to go falling back into his arms. YESSS MY QUEENNN#“I thought...” he says. “Did the prince not keep servants?” pause. what.#“Do you not think of me as a man?” he grits out. Well I am. And you brought him here.-#-Brought him into my home and you let him touch you.”#HOLY FU*CKONG SHIT I AM LOSING IT MY TUMMY IS IN KNOTS AND I AM GRIPPING MY BLANKET RIGHT NOW#There’s something raw beneath the growled words; something desperate. HOLHUDSFJ#“Do you think that he can provide for you better than me? That I can’t provide you your needs?”#it was supposed to be him.#he’s now faced with this blazing consumption and he is utterly lost. IAOHUEYDFHIAEKHJR#He intends to wiggle his way into every little corner every little space until you have no room for thought but him.#“You’re thinking of him”. “Even while I’m touching you.”#ARE YOUP FYUKCING JOKING DO NOT PLAY WITH ME RIGHT NOW OMG#WE WILL BE TALKING ABT THIS SCENE BUT THOSE ARE LIKE SOME OF MY FAV LINES/MOMENTS AHHHH#need to talk abt how you always know how to end a section of the story with a heater of a line#like they got my head spinninggggg#esp “Then you’ll find it within you to face the memory of Taehyun’s hands and the gravity of what he’d let slip.”#SOOBINNN!!! :D#soobin :(#very sweet moment with tyun :(#YEONJUN???? no hes just so UGH infuriating and in love but mostly infuriating
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plsss would u do sukuna taking care of his pregnant wife? like noticing his robes keep disappearing, only to figure out its his wife. or more dad!kuna 🙏🏾
robes — ryomen sukuna x f!reader
a/n: me👰♀️ ➕ 👹heianera!sukuna
sukuna is a deeply preceptive man.
it’s something he prides himself over, and since he is observant, he quickly notices that his robes start going missing.
in the beginning, he thinks that it’s probably the increased number of bloodied robes because he has been going on a higher number of rampages the past couple of days.
so, he goes to uraume to inquire about why the delivery of his robes has been later than usual.
uraume quickly responds that they have been personally delivering the clean robes to his chambers and ensuring that they are placed where he can clearly see them.
the revelation makes sukuna annoyed because that means that someone has been stealing his robes directly from his chambers.
he is presented with two courses of actions—excluding the option of saving himself the trouble and just killing all the servants: sending uraume to spy on the whole ordeal or investigate it himself.
considering how he has been pretty bored the past couple of days, he decides on the latter. the past few rampages have given a clear warning to the rest of the villages surrounding his castle.
so, with nothing else to do, sukuna takes it upon himself to monitor the main entrance of his chambers to see whether anybody enters the room after uraume places the robes in the room.
so, he situates himself near the room but far away so that they can’t catch him.
he stays there for a good couple of hours, yet he sees no one, not even in the darkness of the night: the supposed prime time for a thief.
perhaps the thief has been made aware of sukuna’s inspection? but that would mean that the robes would still be in the chambers. so, sukuna enters his room in search of his robes, but, to his surprise, he doesn’t find them.
that immediately leads him to concluding that whoever is stealing his robes is someone who has access to the hidden door of his room.
and no one knows about that door except—
“y/n.”
you yelp and slowly turn to your husband. he is standing there, arms crossed, brows furrowed, and an everlasting frown on his face. you have been caught and are in some big trouble.
you don’t falter immediately though. you try to act normal. you smile nervously, “yes, my love? is something bothering you?”
keyword: try.
he repeats your name lowly, and you quickly crumble. you visibly deflate and lower your head as you murmur, “yes…”
he nods in satisfaction before asking the awaited question, “where are my robes?”
your hands rest on your lap, and you fidget with your fingers.
you still can’t figure out what his reaction will be. so far, he is just gathering information. he is giving you nothing to work with, so you have no other option but to comply and just keep answering him.
sighing, you answer him, “my closet.”
he quirks an eyebrow and sits in front of you. his hand is placed on your head, and he raises your head, so you’re looking him in the eyes. it’s something that you have noticed only being done to you.
you had absentmindedly asked your head servant about it, and said servant, uraume, had told you that it’s because he views you as an equal and does not take pleasure in your fear and acting inferior to him.
and in the end, sukuna only does what pleases him. if it doesn’t please him then why do it?
he hums as if in thought before egging you on, “and why are my robes in your closet? in fact—” he smirks, eyes observing your frame, “why are you currently wearing my robes?”
you pull the robes tighter around yourself, and you purse your lips. sukuna wants an answer right now, and while he is enjoying your ‘suffering’, he also wants to know what’s wrong.
if there is anything that he hates then it’s not knowing, especially if it’s something about you, his very pregnant wife.
his hand travels to your jaw, and he grips it lightly.
“so?” he says as he tilts your head to the slide slightly.
“you…have been gone for longer than usual lately, and I have been missing you,” you admit softly as you try your best to maintain eye contact, but you end up looking away.
he is still silent, so you continue laying out your reasoning, “and for some reason, the robes alleviate the pregnancy pain. I couldn’t find any logical or scientific reason, but I think—
—it’s because the robes are filled with your cursed energy, maybe acting as a kind of assurance to the baby that you are beside us even if you aren’t.”
he doesn’t grace you with any reaction nor reply for quite a while, and it makes you think that he is probably thinking about how foolish the entire scenario is.
so, you add hesitantly, “or something like that…”
after a moment, though, he sighs and simply says, “you could’ve just asked me, you foolish woman.”
you blink confused, “and you, my ‘no one takes what’s mine’ husband, would’ve allowed that?”
“you, idiot, are mine, so my belongings are yours anyway,” he states, and his hands rest on your stomach, “this is mine too, so you have to take good care of it.”
a smile takes over your face, and you nod happily, “of course, I will!”
you pause for a second, and it has sukuna confused.
you frown and you point your finger at him while reprimanding him, “and don’t call me an idiot, mister! I am your wife, and I am blessed with a good name.”
a pinch is delivered to your butt which makes you shriek. you jump away from your husband and start rubbing the spot in attempt to soothe it.
sukuna smiles wickedly before suggesting, “how about I help you with that?”
“no! keep your hands off of me, you brute!”
he chuckles, and it echoes throughout the room. it’s kind of creepy. you always said that you wanted to add more furniture to avoid that situation.
you start thinking about the new design for the room when your husband speaks up, “and regarding my absence the past few of days.”
you turn your head to him, and he continues, “I will be putting my plans on pause for a while, so you don’t have to resort to the robes for the time.”
he turns his back to you before announcing, “I am expecting you at dinner and later in my chamber. is that clear?”
you feel giddiness fill you up, and you reply enthusiastically, “yes, my king!”
“good,” he smirks.
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#sukuna x reader#sukuna x you#sukuna x y/n#sukuna ryomen x reader#sukuna ryomen x you#ryomen sukuna x you#ryomen sukuna x reader#sukuna fluff#jjk x reader#jjk x you#jjk x y/n#jjk imagines#sukuna imagine#jjk sukuna x reader#jjk sukuna x you#jjk sukuna x y/n
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“-other than that, wasn’t so bad.” Simon says, readjusting the material of the balaclava across the bridge of his nose with his free hand. His other hand is busy, keeping yours warm as you lead him down sidewalk after sidewalk.
The two of you have just finished having Sunday morning brunch at a local cafe, something you insisted was becoming ‘tradition’ after the second time it happened. And according to you, after finishing eating, (Simon never wanting to hear a word about you paying for a thing) the next part of this lazy morning routine calls for strolling about at a pace that he would normally find pointless, if not downright frustrating. But for you, he slows down.
“Butcher’s an interesting first job.” You reply, nodding along in thought. You picture a younger Simon, fresh out of school, probably fresh faced as well. He was likely as tall, though not yet as muscular as the military would make him. A meat clever in hand, bloody apron around his waist, he was likely still inadvertently intimidating people back then the way he does now. “I was mostly just taking babysitting jobs until I graduated. Liked it well enough.”
“I actually had to babysit a neighbour one time, when I was younger. Actual baby at tha’ too.” He tells you with a chuckle, slightly shaking his head at the memory.
“What?” You laugh as well, the image in your mind now swapping out the meat clever in a teenaged Simon’s grip for a drooling infant. “How did that work out?”
“Neighbour comes bangin’ on our door, she’s carryin’ the thing, it’s screamin’ its bloody little head off,” You roll your eyes at the way Simon refers to the child, swatting his arm playfully but listening on. “She tells me her husband thinks he’s havin’ a fuckin’ heart attack. None o’ the other neighbours are home or answerin’ the door. ‘Fore I know it, she’s passin�� me the kid, askin’ if mum can watch her while she drives him to the hospital. Next thing I know she’s gone and I’m left with the thing.”
“Oh my gosh! Well where was your mum?” You ask, in disbelief that you’ve never heard this story from him before, half wondering if he’s pulling your leg.
“She wasn’t home, I can tell you that! Only me and the new lil’ orphan were.” He utters, strengthening his grip on your hand as you start to hunch over with laughter.
“Okay so wait, you were home alone? Oh no! How long did you have to ‘babysit’ for?” You giggle.
“Well technically Tommy was there but he would’ve only been a hindrance, told him to stay in his room.” Simon adds, pulling his hand out of yours, only to wrap it around your shoulder, now that you’ve come to a standstill at a crosswalk, waiting for the light to change. “Fuckin’ nearly 4 hours went by before mum came home and took over. Longest hours o’ my life. I think that might’ve been the day I enlisted actually.”
You elbow his side as you continue to laugh, seeing that he’s teasing you at the end now. You open your mouth to tease him right back, but your eye catches sight of the shop you’ve been standing in front of, jaw dropping wider.
“Simon!” You’re pulling him with a strength he would otherwise be impressed by if he wasn’t so suddenly caught off guard, senses kicking into high alert now as his head swivels in search of the cause of your distress. “How have we never seen this before??”
Oh.
He should’ve known better.
He actually had been avoiding taking you down this street for a little while now, but had been too caught up in his story telling to notice the direction you’d taken in him. His subtle effort of wrapping his arm around you to tilt you away from the storefront obviously hadn’t worked out. He opens his mouth to answer, but can only sigh when you’re already making your way towards the entrance of the pet store.
“We’re only lookin’, right?” He asks loud enough for you to hear as he follows you in.
Wrong.
#call of duty#call of duty fanfic#call of duty fic#simon ghost riley#simon riley#ghost cod#ghost fanfic#ghost x reader#ghost x y/n#simon riley fluff#simon ghost riley fluff#simon riley x you#simon ghost riley x you#simon ghost x reader#simon riley x reader#ghost x you#readwritealldayallnight#cod fic#cod fanfic
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Chubby reader x monster!141…. Chubby reader where you are at all-time-low after your ex cheated on you with the woman you had always been insecure of (she was everything you were not), so now you are just done. Done with him, with her, with your terrible work that forced you to come in even while sick, done with life.
So you go to a bar, and intend to fully drink yourself and all your sorrows away. You don’t even care enough to ask any friends to accompany you- they knew. They fucking knew. Calling them friends anymore is just stupid- and you don’t care enough to look around at anyone; you know you aren’t anyone’s preference either.
When a man, big and burly, curling horns and two big ass wings (maybe one of those dragon shifters? You know harpies have feathers, but the rest of your brain is too muddled) sits down next to you, you just ignore him and continue nursing your drink, trying your best to bite back the tears in your eyes.
“That’s enough now, love,” he croons, and much to your confusion, he takes the glass away from you. His voice is rough and rumbling, like thunder. Too hazy, too drunk, you don’t even care enough to get angry at him. No, your eyes fill with tears instead. “No, no, calm down. Let’s get you out of here, alright, little love?”
Another man joins your other side, just as big and burly but shorter than the dragon man who is making you tear up by holding your drink, your source of solace tonight, hostage in his hand. This one is a werewolf, his ears flicking in your direction much like his grin and his tail eagerly thumping to and fro against your chair.
“Sweet lass,” he croons, your teary eyes flicking towards him. You can see his hands clench in the air. Why, why, why- you just wanted to drink away. They are both so handsome, such a shame they clearly don’t like you and are just bothering you for the sake of bothering you, a fat woman in a miserable corner. “Enough tears and enough alcohol, aye, hen? Yer aff yer heid!”
His words are so strange, your tears momentarily pause. “What…?” You wonder outloud, shivering when you feel a warm breath across your neck, warming your skin. The dragon. His hand settles on your lower back, nudging you to get off the chair with them, and you feel like crying again. He probably can feel all the fat there, how horrible-
“Careful there, little love.” Dragon steadies you with two hands when you get dizzy, and with weak hands you try to swat at him, try to move away, but the werewolf is at your other side and keeping you pressed between them.
“S’op… stop callin’ me that,” you mumble. The tears roll down then. “Not- not funny, not at all-“
Two other hands on your back, a tail thumping against the back of your thighs, you are still led outside even as you babble about everything. Your size, your ex, the one your ex cheated, your work, your ex-
You want your damn drink back.
For their part, Price and Johnny didn’t think coming out for a drink tonight would lead to finding their last soulmate. The second they had entered the dinky bar, John had expected to need to puff out a deep, smoky breath to keep his nose clean from all the overwhelming smells and Johnny had prepared to to keep his nose happily pressed into John’s skin.
They hadn’t expected to smell you, something like the smell of stepping into a warm home after spending time out in winter, something like watching soft, golden sunlight stream into the nest room on a morning they spend sleeping in with Kyle and Simon. Like soulmate, like the last link of John’s hoarde and Johnny’s pack, and he has no doubt that you are Kyle’s nest and Simon’s. Simply his. A part of him just as you are a part of them.
Driven so wholly by instincts, seeing you drunk and crying pushing them even more into said instincts, they easily you herd along with them, back to their home. All explanations, everything else can wait until tomorrow. You are so soft to the touch, all tender and squishy, they already think you so perfect. In the back of the car, it doesn’t take seconds before you are dozing off and dead to the world, already so trusting.
By tomorrow morning, Simon would be easily able to track down where you live and get all your items. And also find that shitty ex of yours. John hasn’t yet decided if he wants to thank or beat him.
Watching the way Johnny holds you in his lap from the rearview mirror while he drives, hands squeezing your lovehandles with a low groan, mumbling about how much he already adores you, soft bonnie hen, all theirs- John decides he doesn’t give a single fuck about your ex at the moment. He needs to hold you between his arms and wings, in the comfort of his nest.
Fuck, he might end up breaking more than just a few speed limits.
Part two
#noona.posts#cod#cod x reader#cod x you#tf 141 x reader#tf 141#tf 141 x you#cod imagines#john price x reader#noona.writes#poly!141 x reader#ghost x reader#soap x reader#gaz x reader#simon riley x reader#ghost x you#kyle gaz x reader#simon riley x you#call of duty x reader#poly 141#simon ghost riley x you#simon ghost riley x reader#johnny soap mctavish x reader#kyle gaz garrick x you#poly!141#poly 141 x reader#john price imagine#simon ghost riley imagines#simon ghost x you#simon ghost x reader
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Drunk on You
Summary: Spencer is completely and utterly infatuated with you
Request: Pussy drunk Spencer where it’s the first time they sleep together and he’s completely obsessed with being inside her and eating her out (initially requested to @imagining-in-the-margins)
Pairing: Spencer Reid x Fem!Reader
Category: Smut
Content Warning: (18+, minors DNI) heavy kissing, handjob, fingering, oral (fem receiving), protected penetrative sex, slight overstimulation
Word Count: 2.2k
Masterlist
Maybe it was a bit cliché to invite Spencer into your apartment for coffee after your date. The ulterior motive was obvious but there was no elegant way of telling him what you really wanted. He didn’t seem to mind when he accepted your offer with a grin on his face.
The tension between the two of you was palpable once you stepped through your door. The warm amber of Spencer’s irises shone even brighter under the lighting of your living room. It was mesmerizing to look at him, so much so that you quickly forgot about the coffee.
Spencer couldn’t care less. It was obvious that he knew a hot beverage wasn’t exactly what you craved right then. The way he licked his lips as he looked at you gave away that he was longing for something else, too.
Stepping closer, you left barely any space between the two of you. The warmth he radiated penetrated your skin and spread through your body. You breathed in his scent, a pleasant mix of his cologne and laundry detergent.
“So,” you teased as you leaned closer. “Are you gonna kiss me now or what?”
“Gladly,” he chuckled.
To your surprise, he took his time with you. His fingers found your jaw, gently brushing along your skin before slightly tilting your head. His other hand made contact with your waist to pull you even closer. Then, unhurriedly and with a precise motion, he finally leaned in to close the distance.
Once your mouths made contact there was no more holding back, though. His lips were soft yet demanding and he didn’t waste any time to deepen the kiss. Tasting you broke any resistance Spencer had and he couldn’t keep up his demeanor anymore.
His fingertips dug into your waist before you felt them trembling against your body. His tongue brushed over yours as if you had finally granted him the first taste of water after a life-long drought. When your hands found the nape of his neck to playfully tug at his curls, he unabashedly moaned against your lips.
Spencer was desperate to make you his and he had no intention of hiding that from you. His lips only left yours to gasp for air before kissing you some more. When you wanted to lean back to look at him, he chased your mouth and immediately closed the distance again.
His enthusiasm made you smile into the kiss and he noticed. That was when he finally slowed down, leaving a few more feather-light pecks on your mouth before leaning back.
“Sorry,” he awkwardly laughed. “I’ve been waiting so long to do this.”
“Don't apologize,” you breathed. “I like how eager you are.”
To prove your words, you took his hand in yours to lead him into your bedroom. Spencer wasn’t the only one who had been waiting too long for this to finally happen. You had no intention of acting shy with him when it was clear how much the both of you yearned for each other’s nearness.
Right beside your bed you came to a halt and turned to him. Patiently he watched as you undid the buttons of his dress shirt and brushed the fabric over his shoulders. Once the shirt dropped to the floor, your hands wandered along the waistband of his pants.
Your eyes followed the movements of your fingers and you couldn’t ignore the outline of his hardness straining against his trousers. You looked at the man in front of you and found him staring at you with the utmost adoration in his eyes.
“Can I touch you?” You asked and he nodded.
Your palm carefully made contact with his clothed cock and a sigh immediately escaped Spencer’s throat. He leaned into your touch and twitched against the fabric of his confines. You decided to free him as you undid his pants and slowly pulled them down together with his underwear.
As you took your time to admire the beauty of your lover, you completely forgot your surroundings. Only Spencer’s hand brushing along your arm brought you back to reality. You locked eyes with him again and felt your cheeks heating up.
“You’re so handsome,” you mumbled.
His hand found the fabric of your shirt and tugged on it as he cooed, “I want to see you, too.”
Together you got rid of the remaining pieces of clothing until both of you were completely bare. You lay down on the mattress to continue kissing without any barriers between your bodies.
Spencer hovered over you when he began kissing down your neck. He left sweet pecks on your skin before biting down on your pulse point, drawing a whine from your lips. To soothe the angry skin, he carefully licked along it before moving further down your body.
“You smell so good,” he groaned as he kissed your breasts. “I can’t get enough of you.”
He took one of your hardened peaks into his mouth while his hand found the other, teasing it with his fingers until you couldn’t hold back your moans. When he heard your hymn of praise, he hummed into your skin.
Hungry lips found one another once more. “You are marvelous,” Spencer mumbled into the kiss.
While he was distracted with his mouth on yours, a curious hand made its way down his body to wrap around his erection. It made him whimper against your lips. Your fingers brushed over velvety skin until they found the weeping tip to spread his arousal over it.
“Fuck!” he hissed as he looked down his body to watch your hand caressing him.
“Do you like that?” you teased as you kept stroking him a little harder.
His hand found your wrist to stop your movements. “Yeah, a little too much,” he confessed and his words made you smile.
You let go of him and watched as his fingertips danced along your chest and down your stomach until they reached their destination between your legs. Tentatively, he let one finger glide along your slit before spreading your folds apart. When he found you already dripping with desire, he groaned, “So wet for me.”
He collected your dew on his fingertips and dragged it along your folds before circling your most sensitive spot. The sounds of your pleasure only spurred him further on, caressing you some more before he breached your entrance with two digits, finding little resistance from your body.
Spencer kissed along your neck as he curled his fingers inside you, pressing against a spot that made you light-headed and let your walls flutter around him. He seemed to relish feeling your body like this, taking his time to explore your core before settling on a steady pace. It didn’t take long for you to dance along the edge of euphoria.
His lips brushed along your ear as he whispered, “I can’t wait to fuck you.”
That was all it took for your undoing. Spencer groaned as he felt you pulsing around his fingers, your entire body writhing as you found relief. You were still panting when he withdrew his fingers, making you whine at the loss of contact.
With a playful smirk spread over his face, he brought his hand to his mouth to lick your release from his fingers, savoring the taste of your cunt on his tongue.
“You taste so good,” he breathed before moving down your body. “I need more.”
Before he could settle down between your thighs, you grabbed his shoulders. The feeling of being empty was overwhelming and you yearned to be filled out by him. Even though the prospect of having his mouth on you was exciting, it was not what you needed then.
“I need you inside me now,” you whimpered. “Please, Spencer.”
He kneeled between your legs when he chuckled, “How could I say no to that?”
Hurriedly and with little grace you reached over to your nightstand to get a condom from the drawer. Spencer didn’t waste any more time when he took the wrapper from your hands to put the condom on. As he leaned over you, you watched him closing his eyes for a moment before he aligned his cock at your entrance.
Then, after locking eyes with you, he began pushing his hips against yours. He hissed a curse at the sensation of slowly stretching you open one inch at the time. When he dared to look down between your bodies, he got so overwhelmed at the sight of his cock entering you that he almost came on the spot.
Quickly, he averted his sight to get his composure back. Your walls fluttered around him and you felt him twitch in response. Once he had filled you up to the hilt, he took a moment to feel your heartbeat deep inside you.
“Spencer,” you whined as you began rocking your hips against his. “Please!”
He didn’t mean to tease you or test your patience. He just wanted to fully savor this moment. Feeling you tightly wrapped around him made his head spin. He felt inebriated when he began moving and started to think you had cast some kind of spell on him.
“You feel so good,” he breathed when he began moving. “So tight for me.”
Pure magic was the only explanation for what you made him feel. Spencer struggled to wrap his head around the fact that this was reality. Nothing else mattered other than being right there with you, making you his as he fucked you against the mattress.
“Harder!” you cried and Spencer obliged.
It proved to be a mistake, though. As he watched you quiver underneath him, the bedframe shaking with his forceful thrusts, he struggled to delay his downfall. Feeling you getting even tighter around him made it impossible to not fully indulge in this sensation.
With his whole body trembling, he tried but failed to slow himself down. Desperation was written over his face as he attempted to prolong the feeling of being inside you. Of course you noticed it, too. Seeing him fall apart on top of you as pleasure overcame him was exhilarating and you had no intention of slowing him down.
“Come for me,” you murmured and Spencer’s eyes widened at your words.
Then, with a particularly hard thrust, he did. Trembling and groaning, the built-up tension was released as his climax washed over him.
Before you had a chance to wrap your arms around him to welcome him inside your embrace, he pulled out of you and quickly moved down your body. With your head still spinning, it took you several seconds to realize what he was doing.
Only when you felt his tongue glide through your folds did you comprehend that he had found his new home between your legs.
“Oh fuck, Spencer!” You hissed at the feeling of his mouth caressing your sensitive center.
Like a man starved he collected your honeyed wetness on his tongue, moaning into your skin as he tasted your heady aroma. The vibrations he created sent shockwaves through your body, prompting you to buck your hips against his face.
Seemingly unfazed by your reaction, he wrapped his arms around your legs to keep you in place as he continued pleasuring you with his tongue and mouth.
“So good,” he whispered against your heat.
Despite his effort to hold you securely against his mouth, you were sure you might start floating at any moment. Two of his fingers found their way into you, adding more pressure and bringing you closer to your undoing.
It only took a few more seconds until ecstasy overcame you. Your thighs trembled as you rode out your high, rocking gently against Spencer’s face. He didn't let go of you, though. Almost in a trance-like state he kept caressing you, licking up your release as you writhed underneath him.
Your chest was heaving when you looked at him, eyes closed and half of his face buried between your legs. Spencer didn't even consider stopping, not when you tasted so heavenly, even more so after you came. Drunk on your taste and scent, he would have been more than happy to spend the rest of his night right there.
It became too overwhelming for you, though. The constant stimulation was too much to bear and almost became uncomfortable, so your hands found his curls to pull on them. “Enough,” you murmured.
In an instant, he removed his mouth from your core to litter your inner thighs with little kisses. Then he looked up at you, a wicked grin painted on his glistening face. He wiped himself clean with the back of his hand before plopping down beside you.
“Sorry, uh…” he muttered. “I got a little carried away.”
You placed a kiss on his lips, noticing your own scent still lingered on them.
“I’m not complaining,” you purred. “I just need a little break. We can continue later.”
The glimmer in his eyes at your words must have been akin to someone witnessing a miracle. Content with the prospect of doing all of this again, he wrapped you into his arms.
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