#Ily relativity falls | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

m1ckeyb3rry · 6 months ago

Note

hi mira can i pls req a sae x reader and it’s like falling in love with someone. like you know that feeling when you’re really getting to know someone and it sounds like a soft song

i love uu take care x

── SEABIRD

Synopsis: Thanks to a chance encounter on the beach, you spend your vacation trying to apologize to the famous soccer player you inadvertently offended. Unfortunately, Sae Itoshi has other plans.

Event Masterlist

Pairing: Sae x Reader

Chapter Word Count: 11.6k

Content Warnings: love at first sight, fluff, humor, teasing as a love language, sae does not understand emotions or relationships but he’s rich asf, reader has a little brother and loves eating, meet-cutes, summer romance, SEAGULLS

A/N: although sae is a difficult character for me to get a hold of, i ended up having fun with this LMAO as i’m sure you can tell by the massive word count 😭 i hope he’s not horribly ooc or anything and that this is kind of what you were looking for anon!! tysm for requesting and ily too <3

Additional: part of my 500 follower event! see the event description and rules to make a request of your own.

You tried to evaluate the series of choices you had made which had led to you lying atop a boy with green eyes and sand smeared across his cheeks, a blank expression on his face despite the way you were literally sprawled over him.

First: your family had decided to spend your summer vacation in Spain. This was innocuous and broad enough, considering how large the country was, so you concluded that your brother’s desire to practice his rudimentary Spanish in a more realistic setting than his high school classroom could not be blamed for your plight.

Second: your father had gotten a great deal on rooms in a luxury beachfront hotel. He was like a bloodhound when it came to haggling and discounts, so it wasn’t a surprise that you were staying in such a nice place for a relatively cheap price — and with a complimentary breakfast every morning, too! Anyways, the hotel had its own private pool that you could’ve been lounging around beside, so that probably wasn’t the cause, either.

Third: your mother had told you that the beach within walking distance of the hotel was famous for its smooth waters and pale sand. You had to visit at least once, according to her and every other travel guide written about the region, but since no one had wanted to go with you, you had decided to go alone, bringing a book, a bottle of sunscreen, and a blanket with you, throwing a dress on over your swimsuit and preparing yourself to spend the entire day soaking in the sun’s rays. This was definitely a contributor to your current predicament, although considering the miles of beach that stretched out in both directions as far as the eye could see where you could’ve been instead of right there, it wasn’t the sole factor.

Fourth: you had thought you would get hungry at some point and had had the foresight to bring a sandwich with you. That was definitely the reason. If only you hadn’t been so concerned with your stomach! If only you had just sucked it up and made the trek back to the hotel upon feeling peckish instead of being so lazy and planning ahead, you wouldn’t be in this situation.

“Can you get off of me?” the boy groaned.

“I am so sorry!” you said, scrambling to your feet and offering him your hand. He did not take it, standing on his own and doing his best to wipe the sand from his face. Then he shook his head like a dog, shaking out the grittiness from his soft hair. “I’m really sorry. I was just running so fast, and I was so worried about my sandwich that I didn’t notice you were there until it was too late!”

“Sandwich?” he said. A few paces away, a seagull landed, the remnants of your lunch held in its beak. You and the boy watched as it tilted its head back, swallowing the last few bites before cawing at you in satisfaction.

“You pig!” you shouted, pointing at it, the boy beside you temporarily forgotten as you fumed over the loss. It cocked its head at you. “That was mine!”

“Ah,” the boy said. “Your sandwich.”

The seagull hopped towards you, like it was teasing you or something, and you screeched before diving at it. Satisfied with the mischief it had caused and the food it had stolen, as well as with making a fool out of you, the seagull took wing, flying well out of reach and leaving you facedown on the ground, your stomach grumbling sadly and emptily.

A foot nudged against your rib cage. “Hey. Sandwich girl. You’re not concussed, are you?”

Being referred to as sandwich girl was so humiliating that you were instantly pushing yourself into a sitting position, folding your arms across your chest as you gazed up at the boy, who still wore that same unimpressed expression from when you had barreled into him.

“No,” you said.

“That’s great,” he said, though he did not sound particularly concerned nor relieved. “Mind elaborating a bit more on why you ran me over? You could’ve seriously injured me, and then you would’ve been in a bunch of trouble.”

“You would’ve been in a bunch of trouble,” you mocked, making your voice high and smarmy. “Jeez, what are you, some kind of celebrity or something? I ran you over because I was taking a break from reading my book, and I realized that I was hungry. Well, luckily, I had brought a sandwich along with me, so it wasn’t a huge deal. I was just about ready to dig in, when that fat pig of a bird swooped down and stole it right out of my hands! The gall! The shamelessness! It was definitely laughing at me, and I can’t stand anyone who laughs at me, so naturally I took off in pursuit, and, uh, that’s how I ended up crashing into you. Though you really should’ve been paying more attention, too. What’s so fascinating about the horizon that you just blocked out the rest of the world for it?”

“I like looking at the ocean,” he said. “But, wait. What do you mean, some kind of celebrity? Don’t you know who I am?”

You gave him a once-over. He was tall, though not impressively so, and definitely well-muscled. His hair was a warm shade, and his green eyes were framed with long eyelashes that fluttered every time he blinked. A pair of sunglasses was perched atop the crown of his head, and the top few buttons of his white shirt were undone, lending him a breezy appearance.

“You’re not handsome enough to be an actor, so that can’t be it,” you said, chewing on your lower lip in thought. “Plus, I’ve seen a bunch of movies, and I’m pretty sure you haven’t been in any of them, so if you were in the film industry, you’d be a D-lister at best, and there’s no way you’d want to flex that kind of status.”

He furrowed his brow, the first hint of a different expression than the one he had kept for the entirety of your very brief acquaintance. “What?”

“What else are people famous for?” you said. “Oh! Are you a singer or something? Were you in that one boy band from a few years ago? I’m sorry, I was too busy having a ‘not-like-other-girls’ phase when they were popular, so I never got into them. I’m over the phase now, if you were wondering, but that would be why I didn’t recognize you.”

“You are amazingly off the mark,” he said.

“I am? I’m kind of out of ideas at this point, though. Can I have a hint or something?” you said.

“Do you watch soccer?” he said. You made a face.

“Hell no,” you said. His eye twitched, so you hurried to elaborate. “My little brother is obsessed with it, so by law, I’m required to hate everything related to the sport. Do you have any siblings? You’d get it if you did.”

“Ask your brother about Sae Itoshi,” he said.

“Okay,” you said, drafting a text to your brother and sending it when you had deemed it to be a perfect blend of uninterested and cool while also underscoring the urgency of the request. “So, your name’s Sae Itoshi? I’m Y/N L/N! I’m not a celebrity, though. If you text anyone and ask them about me, they’ll probably be pretty confused.”

“Yeah, I got that impression,” he said. Your phone vibrated in your hand, and when you looked at the notification, you saw that it was from your brother.

uglier sibling: no shit i know about sae itoshi. he’s that one super talented midfielder on re al. he’s dad and i’s fav player atm.

You gulped, glancing up at Sae before returning to your phone.

me: lol wtf is re al.

uglier sibling: it’s madrid’s team lmfaooo dumbass how do you not know that

uglier sibling: actually wait why are u even asking lol

uglier sibling: did u meet him or something

me: funny story actually!

uglier sibling: WHAT

uglier sibling: y/n are u with sae itoshi rn.

uglier sibling: y/n answer pls

uglier sibling: can you at least get his autograph for me or smth???

Pretending like you were still texting your brother, you typed the name Sae Itoshi into your phone’s search engine. The photos that came up matched the boy in front of you, and the news articles made your heart pound. He actually was a celebrity, and furthermore, his earlier arrogance was deserved. If you had somehow injured such a famous player and put him out of commission for the season, then you really would’ve been done for. It hadn’t been an exaggerated sense of self-importance but an honest evaluation of himself.

“Ahem,” you said, feigning a cough to appear dignified and mature. “It seems like you are a pretty well-known soccer player, Mr. Itoshi.”

“It seems like I am,” he said.

“My brother and dad are big fans, apparently,” you said.

“Good thing you didn’t take me out permanently, then, or I’m sure they would’ve been pretty disappointed,” he said.

You cringed. “I’m sorry again.”

“Whatever. I won’t hold it against you; all’s well that ends well, after all,” he said.

“I feel really bad, though,” you said, rubbing the back of your neck sheepishly. “Is there any way I can make it up to you?”

“You didn’t do anything, so there’s nothing to make up for,” he said.

“Not true! I knocked you over and said you’re not handsome!” you said. “I’d say that warrants some kind of recompense.”

“It’ll warrant more recompense if you keep saying it,” he said.

“You agree that you deserve payment, then? Great! Um…how about I…buy you lunch?” you said, the insistent pangs of your stomach reminding you that you still hadn’t eaten.

“Is food the only thing you can think about?” he said.

“For your information, it is not, but I haven’t eaten since the morning, so I’m hungry,” you said.

“Whatever helps you sleep at night,” he said. “It’s okay. I’m not interested, and just so you know, I’ve been asked out by plenty of girls, but by far, this has been the lamest attempt.”

You supposed, looking back, that it did seem like that was your end goal. But, of course, it had been nothing of the sort; you were just planning on going to eat yourself and thought that you might as well kill two birds with one stone. It was just your luck that he had twisted your words into such a request, though! How were you supposed to maneuver yourself out of this position? If you denied it furiously, then it would seem like you were just ashamed at getting caught, but if you didn’t say anything, then it would be akin to agreeing with his accusation.

There was only one way out of it, and even though you were usually opposed to lying, and even more opposed to bullying others, it was the only thing you could think of. So, bowing your head, you clasped your hands together in front of your heart.

“I’m sorry, but you’re not my type, Mr. Itoshi,” you said. “Like I said, you’re really not that handsome. Also, I’m into tall guys.”

That was how you found yourself sitting across from Sae Itoshi in a private booth at a fancy restaurant, your hands trembling as you read over the menu items and their associated prices.

“I’m in the mood for steak,” Sae said, stroking his chin and setting down his menu, interlacing his fingers and raising his eyebrows at you. “What about you?”

“Steak is a dinner item, don’t you think?” you said, your head spinning at the fact that he had picked the most expensive thing that was served at the entire establishment. “It’s lunchtime.”

“I’m an athlete,” he said seriously. “I need a lot of protein in all of my meals. Especially because I’m so short. It’s important for me to build muscle, don’t you agree? How else will I manage to compete with the taller, better-looking players?”

“Steak it is,” you said with a faux smile. “As for me, I’ll just get crackers.”

“Crackers? What kind of lunch is that?” he said.

“An affordable one,” you muttered under your breath.

“What?” he said.

“Nothing!” you said. “It’s nothing. I just really like crackers.”

He gave you an odd look. “Alright.”

You waved the waiter over. He had been hovering around your table for the past few minutes, and as soon as he saw you beckoning him, he sprinted to your side, fumbling with his pen and notepad before reaching you and bowing.

“Sae Itoshi, sir! I’m sorry to interrupt your date, but I just wanted to say that I’m a huge fan of yours. If — if it’s not too much trouble, could I have your autograph?” he said.

Sae sighed, a long-suffering and irritable sigh. “Just take our order first. I’ll give it to you after we’ve eaten.”

“Oh, my apologies,” the waiter said. “What would you like?”

“I’ll have the steak, and I also want this sandwich, but omit the tomatoes, please,” he said, pointing at the menu items he wanted.

“Got it,” the waiter said. “What about you, miss?”

“Just the crackers,” you said. The waiter paused, but when you did not say anything more, he giggled nervously.

“Would you, uh, like some cheese with those?” he said.

“Nope,” you said. “I’m really the biggest fan of plain crackers. That’s all I want.”

“Sure, miss, if that’s what you’d like,” he said. “So, one steak, one sandwich, and a plate of crackers?”

“That’s right,” Sae said, hardly looking up from his phone when he did so. It was only once the waiter had run off to place your orders that he put the device away, resting his elbows against the table, setting his chin in his hands and giving you a bored look. “Why are you glaring at me?”

“Steak and a sandwich, really?” you said.

“A conversation with you was more than enough to increase my appetite,” he said. “Forget about that. This is the part where you ask me questions about myself and I pretend like I am interested enough to answer them.”

“Why would I do that?” you said, rolling your eyes at him. “Actually, I’m pretty sure your answer to that question will be something that makes me even more annoyed than I already am, so don’t bother. What’s your favorite movie?”

“You’re not going to ask me about soccer?” he said. “It’s Taxi Driver, by the way.”

“I don’t know that much about soccer, so what would I even ask? Based on what I’ve seen from the matches my brother and dad watch, it’s just a bunch of sweaty guys kicking around a ball and pretending like they’re dying whenever another player happens to look at them the wrong way,” you said. “Oh, actually, I am curious about that. How many of those injuries are real? Have you ever faked getting hurt?”

“Almost none of them,” he said. “Generally, players will overreact for the sake of entertainment and the possibility of the opposition receiving yellow cards. I’ve never needed to do anything like that, and I never want to, because it looks stupid. Also, soccer is more than that mediocre description you just gave me.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever you say,” you said. “Man kick ball. Ball go in net. Man happy. That’s the extent of it.”

“Women play soccer, too,” he said.

“It’s the same concept there, but with women instead of men. Not the argument you thought it was,” you said.

“I can’t believe you actually dislike soccer,” he said.

There was definitely some irony in the fact that you couldn’t care less about his chosen sport, and yet you were the one who had somehow finagled your way into eating with him — even if you were the one who was paying. There were so many people who’d do anything to be in your place, but to you, it was a begrudging chore that you were only performing because you felt obligated to. Mentally, you had already marked the entire encounter down as something that you’d laugh about to your friends later; a fun story you’d tell at parties, but little else.

“Like I told you earlier, I’m the older sister. If I didn’t rag on my brother’s interests, then I couldn’t claim that title in any way that mattered,” you said. Sae’s eyes flicked down to the ground.

“You should be nice to your brother when you can,” he said.

“Are you some kind of an only child or saint, then? There’s no way you’re saying that if you have a normal relationship with any possible siblings,” you said.

“I have a little brother,” he said. “Our relationship is okay. I haven’t seen him in a while, though.”

“Long distance?” you said, reaching over to pat him on the hand sympathetically. “That’s the worst. I miss my friends and my pets already, and I’m only here for vacation.”

He snatched his hand away. “You make it sound like we’re dating or something. It’s alright. I’m sure it’ll be the same as it was whenever I go back.”

“True, it’s not like he can dump you and find a new brother who’s both better and more conveniently located than you are. He’s kind of stuck with you forever,” you said.

“Enough about my brother,” he said. “Let’s talk about something else.”

“Okay,” you said. “What TV shows do you watch when you’re bored?”

The two of you continued on in that mindless manner until your food arrived. Your mood, which had steadily been rising as Sae proved himself to be, if nothing else, a willing conversationalist, rapidly plummeted as the waiter set the steak and sandwich in front of Sae and the crackers in front of you.

“Enjoy your meal,” the waiter said.

“I’m sure one of us will,” you said, picking up a cracker and biting into it rebelliously. Sae began to cut his steak into small pieces, using his fork to demurely place the meat on his tongue, doing nothing to disguise the indulgence of eating such a wonderfully prepared meal while you were stuck with crackers.

“What a shame,” Sae said when he was about halfway through his steak. You hadn’t spoken since the food had come, mostly because you were too busy fervently hoping that he would choke and you would somehow be awarded a free meal as an apology on the restaurant’s part, so you jumped at the sound of his voice cutting through the silence. “My eyes were bigger than my stomach. I don’t think I’ll be able to eat that sandwich after all.”

“We should send it back, then,” you said.

“What sort of place do you think this is?” he said. “It’s already been ordered, so it’s ours now.”

“Are you serious?” you said. “What now? I’ll have to pay for something that you didn’t even eat!”

“You’ll just have to have it,” he said.

“Me?” you said, already salivating at the delectable sandwich, the bread which was taunting you. Come, it seemed to be calling out to you. Eat me. You know you want to. “I guess that’s a sensible prospect. Someone’s going to have to take it.”

“Someone will,” he agreed, sliding the plate across the table and stealing a cracker for his troubles. “It might as well be you. My coach will be pretty upset if I get stomach cramps next season because I overate too much on my off time. I’d have to tell him that it was your fault, and then you’d have all of Re Al after you, and you don’t want that. They’re relentless.”

Your fingers inched towards the sandwich. “I definitely don’t. That sounds scary.”

“It would be amusing,” he said. “A waste of resources, though. They might cut my salary to make up for it. ”

“Then the only solution is for me to eat this sandwich,” you said.

“Essentially,” he said. You gave in, taking an enormous bite of the tantalizing sandwich and exhaling in delight. It really was as good as the exorbitant price tag claimed it would be, and although you would never buy such a thing for yourself, you found that you were a little more grateful for the series of events that had led you to be in this position now that your stomach was finally being greeted with something substantial.

“It’s good,” you said, your words muffled by the napkin you held in front of your mouth as you finished chewing. “I can kind of get why they charge so much now. It’s still way more than any sandwich should ever cost, ever, but…I kinda get it. Is your food good, too?”

“It is,” he said.

“Alright!” you said, giving him a double thumbs up. “Then you can consider this a worthy apology! Let’s finish eating and be done with the entire mess.”

“Hm? But how can it be a worthy apology when I’m the one who paid for everything? To me, that doesn’t sound like an apology at all,” he said. You froze, your mouth wide open, the sandwich still halfway to your mouth and drooping in your hands. Sae looked at you, still expressionless, though if you really focused, you would’ve noticed something like mirth dancing in his irises.

“What do you mean?” you said. He unlocked his phone and showed you his screen.

“You can pay by app here,” he said. “I did it as soon as we were done ordering. I was going to tell you after you ordered what you wanted for yourself, but I wasn’t expecting you to be so frugal that you’d really only order crackers!”

“But — but I was supposed to pay! To apologize for—”

“You don’t have to say it,” Sae said sourly, cutting you off. “Believe me, I remember exactly what you have to apologize for, and I’m not going to forget. I just paid this time because I was feeling generous, but you still owe me.”

It was a little suspicious, but you didn’t have any reason to accuse him of anything, so you only narrowed your eyes at him. Taking another bite of your sandwich, you mulled over the latest reveal. He was paying for the entire lunch? You still owed him? You could manipulate that in your favor, then.

“Tomorrow morning, I’ll pay for your breakfast,” you said. “The hotel I’m staying at has complimentary breakfast for guests, but outsiders can eat for a certain fee. I’ll pay for your entrance, and then we can be even.”

“Sure,” he said. “I eat breakfast early, though.”

“How early?” you said.

“I have a snack at 7:00 a.m., before I go for my morning run, and then I eat a proper meal afterwards,” he said.

“Oh!” you said. “Any chance you could not do that?”

“It’s part of my training regimen,” he said. “How about you pay for my food and come on my run with me?”

“I hate running,” you said.

“You’re apologizing. It’s supposed to be an agonizing process,” he said. “You’ve called me short and ugly at least three separate times already, not to mention the entire slamming into me ordeal. It’s really the least you can do.”

“7:00 it is,” you said, though you were fighting back tears at the mere thought of getting up so early while on vacation. “Give me your phone.”

“No way,” he said, holding the phone away from you while you tried to swipe at it. “What are you going to do, post something embarrassing on my social media accounts?”

“Why would I do that?” you said. “I was going to text myself so I had your number and could send you my location for tomorrow.”

“Or you could tell me which hotel you’re staying at now, and then my phone is entirely removed from the equation,” he suggested.

“Do you think I remember the name?” you said. “That’s a rhetorical question, by the way. I don’t.”

He handed you his phone with an aggravated huff. “Fine. Don’t abuse the privilege. I only give important people my contact information.”

“Woah, you really are stingy,” you said, scrolling through his contacts list. All of them either had the designation of work attached to their profiles, or they were clearly members of Sae’s family.

Clicking on the plus sign in the corner, you created a new contact for yourself, typing in your number and giving yourself the name Y/N L/N — sandwich. It fit the naming conventions he had going on, and if it weren’t for the reminder that you were the so-called ‘sandwich girl’, you doubted he would remember who you were in the first place.

“Of course I am. Imagine I gave every crazy fan I met my number. I’d have a million stalkers before you could say Re Al,”he said.

“I’m not a crazy fan. To clarify, I’m not a fan in the first place,” you said, texting yourself from his number before taking out your own phone and responding to the message with a thumbs up.

“Correct, which is why you get my number,” he said.

“I feel so honored,” you said dryly. “Actually, you know what? I would feel honored, if it weren’t for the fact that you’re only giving it to me because you want to wake me up at an unholy hour and make me run with you before paying for your breakfast.”

“Would you rather pay for this meal?” he said, showing you the receipt he had been emailed. Your eyes widened, and then you shook your head rapidly.

“Nope! See you tomorrow!”

The next morning, you tiptoed around the hotel room as you got ready, trying your best not to wake your mother up. She, and the rest of your family, had been up late last night, going out for dinner and dessert well past your bedtime. Far too embarrassed to tell them the realreason you were going to sleep early, you had said you were sick and went to bed as soon as the sun set.

Angrily gnawing on a granola bar from your mother’s emergency stash, you stomped down the spiraling hotel staircase, your eyes still bleary as you texted your family group chat that you were going out for a morning walk but would be back for breakfast.

Sae Itoshi was waiting for you in the lobby, doing some weird stretching routine that involved pressing his foot against the wall and leaning over it. You watched him, bemused, wondering which muscles he was trying to stretch before giving up and deciding it was probably one of those pro moves that you were too uninterested and unathletic for.

“Oh, you’re here,” he said. “Good morning.”

“Good morning,” you said, giving him another one of the granola bars you had taken from your mother’s backpack. “Sorry, it’s sort of smushed. It’s been in a backpack for the last few days.”

He pinched the wrapper between his forefinger and thumb, looking at the granola bar with a disgusted expression. You didn’t think it was thategregious, but according to Sae, it must have been all but an offense against humanity, as he tossed it into the trash can within seconds of having it within his grasp.

“I already ate my snack,” he said.

“Why did you throw that away? I could’ve eaten it!” you said.

“That thing had probably melted and reformed at least twice. It was most definitely radioactive. I did you a favor, so you should say thank you,” he said.

“Thank you, Mr. Itoshi, for protecting me from the horrors of a slightly misshapen granola bar. I’m sure that, by throwing away that still edible brick of deliciousness, you have done me a great service. Possibly, you have even saved my life. I am eternally grateful,” you said.

He snorted. “You’re terrible at groveling. No wonder you have to do all of this ridiculous stuff to apologize to me instead of just saying sorry and moving on like a normal person.”

“Look, it’s a product of my upbringing,” you said. He finished stretching and headed out of the door; you followed after him with a smile at the hotel concierge, who seemed surprised to watch you go — whether it was the hour or your company, you weren’t sure. “Whenever my parents did something to upset me, they never apologized. They just came to my room with a bowl of fruit they had cut for me.”

“At least you got fruit,” he said. “My parents just told me to go practice soccer until I had cooled off.”

“Wow, really? That’s hardcore,” you said. Sae began to jog, and you did the same, though it was closer to a run for you than anything. “Did you just kick around the ball until you were less mad?”

“Pretty much,” he said.

“How horrible,” you said.

“Eh, it’s fine. It was a good way to get my anger out, and it had the added benefit of making me better at the sport, so it was pretty constructive overall,” he said.

“I still can’t imagine it,” you said, shaking your head. “What’s it like, being a professional athlete? Your entire life revolves around a game. What about when you can’t play anymore? When you’re too old, or if you get injured?”

His upper lip curled. “Do you want that to happen or something? Why are you speaking it into existence?”

“Not the injury part, but everyone grows old. You can’t stop that,” you said.

“I’ll play for as long as I can, and then I’ll coach for longer,” he said. “After that, I’ll retire and make sure my kids follow in my footsteps. Athletes make a lot of money, so I luckily won’t ever have to worry much about my finances.”

“What if your kids don’t want to play soccer?” you said. He actually sneered this time, the expression at home on his cold face.

“What else would they do with themselves? If they don’t want to play soccer, or if they have no talent at it, then they’re definitely not my children in the first place,” he said.

“Hm, maybe cooking? What if they want to be a chef?” you said.

“Then I’d wonder how your kids snuck into my house,” he said. You gasped, though it was as much for breath as it was out of offense.

“Stop it! You just happened to catch me at a hungry time!” you said.

“Sure,” he said.

“Just entertain the hypothetical that you really did somehow father children that were into cooking instead of soccer. How would you react?” you said.

“I would put them up for adoption,” he said.

“Seriously?” you said.

“No, obviously not,” he said. “What kind of person do you think I am? Why did you actually find that to be within the realm of possibility?”

“I think you’re some kind of soccer fiend. Who knows how dedicated you are to the cause?” you said.

“Not that dedicated,” he said. “I’d be disappointed if my kids can’t play soccer, and our relationship would probably be a bit distant, as I don’t know much about anything else, but I wouldn’t disown them.”

“You don’t know much about anything besides soccer? That’s a little sad,” you said.

“Kind of,” he said.

“Do you wish you knew about other things?” you said.

“Everyone has something they specialize in. It’s not uncommon for someone to know a lot about one thing and only a little about others,” he said. “My ‘thing’ is soccer. If it wasn’t that, then it’d be something else, so if I was in the business of wishing, I’d always be unsatisfied.”

You were already panting for breath when Sae picked up the pace, though he had not so much as broken a sweat yet. He glanced at you out of the corner of his eye, taking in your obvious struggles, and then he made the decision to not slow down at all.

“I get it,” you said. “You’ll face no judgment from me.”

“Like I would care if you did judge me,” he said. “You’re already dying, and we haven’t even started running yet.”

“This isn’t running?” you said. “What the hell? How much faster can you even go?”

“If you think that this is anywhere near the pace of an average soccer match, then I don’t even know where to begin with you,” he said.

“You look slower on TV!”

“What, so you think I’m slow, too?”

You and Sae returned to the hotel in markedly different conditions. He wasn’t even warm, still appearing to be perfectly put together and entirely perspiration-free, smelling faintly like body soap and cologne. On the other hand, you were still trying to regain your wits about you, leaning on his shoulder so that you did not fall over from exhaustion.

“This is embarrassing for you,” he informed you as you walked towards the breakfast area.

“You’re a professional athlete and I’m a normal girl! It would be embarrassing for you if I could keep up!” you argued weakly.

“That would be true, if I wasn’t going easy on you,” he said, pulling out a chair for you and helping you into it, brushing his arm off when he was sure you were seated. “I’m going to go to the bathroom. Be right back.”

“Have fun,” you said, resting your head in your hands, already knowing what you wanted to get. “We can walk through the buffet together. I’ll take the time to recover.”

“You do that,” he said.

While he was gone, you opened your phone, catching up on all of the texts in the family group chat that you hadn’t been able to read while you were attempting to run with Sae.

me: going for a morning walk but i’ll be back for breakfast

me: just wanted to let you all know so you weren’t worried!

uglier sibling: yeah nobody was worried LMFAO

mom: Hope you’re feeling better, honey!

dad: Make sure you’re back before 10. That’s when the complimentary breakfast ends, and we’re not paying for overpriced toast with jam.

uglier sibling: i still can’t believe u went for a morning walk

uglier sibling: like

uglier sibling: since when do u voluntarily wake up in the mornings at all let alone leave ur bed LET ALONE TAKE A WALK

uglier sibling: bitches will meet sae itoshi one time and suddenly they’re fitness influencers or wtvr

uglier sibling: btw i’m still mad that u didn’t get his autograph or a photo with him or anything

uglier sibling: i bet u made it up

uglier sibling: LIAR. FRAUD. HACK.

mom: Honey, leave your sister alone. Why would she make something like that up?

dad: Your mother is right. Y/N doesn’t even know who Sae Itoshi is.

So it was a typical conversation, then. You hadn’t missed much; just your brother being salty and your parents showing some care for your well-being, as well as your father worrying for his wallet like he was prone to do. You didn’t even bother responding, just liking your father’s two messages and then putting your phone away.

“Y/N, you’re back already? What good timing!” your father called out to you from the entrance to the hotel restaurant. The world slowed as you turned to see the rest of your family walking into the restaurant, dressed in their typical touristy outfits. Your mother waved at you, and your brother faked gagging.

“Wow, you look like shit,” he said. “The fuck kinda morning walk were you on?”

“Gross, it’s you,” you said. “Go away! I’m busy.”

“You don’t even have any food with you,” he pointed out. “Can I sit with you? The parents are way too chipper in the mornings.”

“No!” you said.

“But there’s an empty seat at your table. Are you saving it for someone?” he said.

“Yes,” you said, wishing that for once they would’ve all slept in instead of getting here at the exact time that you and Sae had.

“No, you’re not,” he said.

“Come on, you two, let’s sit together and have a family breakfast!” your father said, motioning you and your brother over from where he and your mother had settled at a four-person table. Your brother gave you a pleading look.

“I’ll owe you forever,” he said. “I’ll grind on all of your video games for you the entire plane ride home!”

“I’m not lying, dude, I actually am sitting with someone. Now fuck off and leave me alone!” you hissed.

“Who?” he said, crossing his arms. “Your imaginary friend? Or your imaginary boyfriend!”

“Excuse me? Sorry, I was sitting there. Do you mind—?”

The most comical expression you had ever seen flashed over your brother’s face just then. It was horror mixed with incredulity mixed with extreme confusion. He turned slowly, his jaw dropping as he made eye contact with Sae Itoshi, whose dry countenance and perfect posture were as off-putting as ever.

“What?” your brother said. “What is going on?”

Sae sat opposite you. “This hotel has the most confusing first floor layout I’ve ever encountered. It took me ages just to find the bathroom.”

“There’s signs. Can you not read?” you said. He stared at you dully.

“I can read. I just happened not to look up at them,” he said.

“If I didn’t want to pay for even more food, I’d make another short joke, but I shall refrain,” you said.

“That was cutting it close,” he said.

“Y/N. My beautiful, amazing, wonderful older sister,” your brother said.

“Yes?” you said, preparing yourself for the incoming explosion. “Also, that’s not what you were calling me in the group chat earlier, was it?”

“Is that Sae Itoshi?” he said.

“Liar, fraud, hack, was that what it was?” you said. “Run along, loser. Maybe if you were nicer to me, I’d let you sit with us.”

Your brother opened his mouth to argue, but then, like he had remembered he was standing in front of his idol, he hung his head and trudged off, scuffing his toes against the floor as he did and giving you a betrayed look over his shoulder.

“That’s your little brother?” Sae said.

“Yup,” you said. “Your self-proclaimed biggest fan.”

“And you made him go sit with your parents instead of talking to me? You’re super mean, big sister,” Sae said.

“He wouldn’t shut up if I let him stay here, and considering the goal of this is for you to eat and then leave me alone for the rest of my vacation, that would not be conducive,” you said.

“I see,” he said. “I didn’t realize that was the goal.”

“Isn’t it yours, as well? I’m sure you’d like to enjoy yourself on your time off from soccer,” you said.

“Who says I’m not enjoying myself?” he said. You furrowed your brow at him.

“You’ve had the same expression on your face every time we’ve spoken,” you pointed out, lowering your eyelids and pursing your lips in an imitation of his resting mien. “Like this. It’s totally amphibious.”

“Amphibious?” he repeated. “What does that even mean?”

“You don’t know what amphibious means? Man, when you said you only focused on soccer, I didn’t think it was this bad!” you said.

“I know what amphibious means! I just don’t see how the word applies,” he said.

“Oh, right. Well, you kind of look like the frog emoji,” you said. “Sorry, I could’ve been clearer. That’s my bad.”

“Were you dropped on the head as a baby? I’m asking this from a place of concern, not anger,” Sae said. “It’s because you say so many nonsensical things. After all, I look nothing like the frog emoji.”

“Sure, and people tell me I look like a famous actress,” you said.

“Really?” he said.

“No, I thought we were both saying things that aren’t true,” you said.

“I think you look like a famous actress,” he said. “There. Now we’re both saying things that are true.”

“Well done, Mr. Itoshi! That was clever,” you said, knowing when to concede.

“Thank you,” he said. “Let’s go get our food now. If you die of starvation on my watch, it’ll be a major scandal for Re Al.”

“Your manager must love you,” you said. “So conscientious of your public image.”

“Nope, he’s usually pretty pissed at me,” he said as the two of you got in the buffet line.

“What for?” you said.

“Contrary to what you think, I’m pretty unconcerned with my public image. I’m a soccer player, not some kind of philanthropist or actor or whatever,” he said. “What does it matter if I offend people? My value is in playing well, not being friendly or kind.”

“No one ever accused you of being either of those two,” you said, spreading butter and jam over your toast. “You’re not that bad, though.”

“You’re not that bad, either,” he said. “At least, you’re better company than my manager.”

“I’ll take it as a compliment,” you said. He scoffed.

“You have low standards,” he said.

“Yours are lower,” you said.

“Very mature response.”

“Thanks!”

Sae was a pretty agreeable breakfast partner. He wasn’t as impossibly cheerful as your parents, who generally drove you crazy with their talkativeness so early in the day, but he also wasn’t as silent and closed off as your brother, who was prone to snapping at others until he had finished at least half of his meal. As with lunch yesterday, it was almost an enjoyable experience, right up until you remembered whose card he was eating on.

“Where are you going?” he said when your plates had been cleared and you had pushed yourself to your feet. He followed after you as you made your way to the hostess’s station, ignoring the whispers that echoed behind the two of you.

“To pay for you to be here, duh,” you said, fishing around in your purse for your wallet. “I know you’re famous and all, but that doesn’t mean you get to eat for free. In fact, that was kind of the point of the meal.”

“I already paid for myself, so you can go and sit back down with your family if you’d like,” he said.

“What? When?” you said.

“I wouldn’t spend that long in a bathroom,” he said. “Not a public one.”

“You little—! Now what?” you said.

“Now you have to see me tomorrow,” he said. “Bye. I’ll pick you up for dinner, so make sure to wear something nice, and bring your credit card. It’s your treat.”

He walked off with a jaunty wave, leaving you standing there, confounded by the development. He had paid for himself again? What was the point of making you take him places if he was just going to cough up the cash himself anyways?

“Psst. Y/N,” your brother said. You weren’t sure when or where he had appeared, but it remained that he was suddenly tapping you on the shoulder and whispering in your ear. “Does Sae Itoshi have a crush on you? If so, please ask if he can get tickets for dad and I to attend his next game.”

“What?” you said, a shockwave running through your entire body at the mere thought of Sae having a crush on you. It was so juvenile and cliched as to be out of Sae’s character entirely. “No! I just owe him.”

“For what?” your brother said.

“I ran into him, called him ugly, and said that he was short,” you said. “Indirectly, of course, but it still happened. I was supposed to buy him lunch yesterday as an apology, but then he ended up paying for us both, and then today, I went on a run with him, and I was going to pay for him to have breakfast here, but guess what?”

“He paid for himself?” your brother said.

“He paid for — yeah, how did you know?” you said.

“There weren’t that many ways the story could’ve gone. Also, I overheard you guys talking,” he said.

“Creep,” you said.

“Weirdo,” he said.

“Freak,” you said.

“Stupid,” he said. “I bet he has a crush on you.”

“Why would he? We have zero common interests, and I’ve mostly only insulted him in our very short time knowing one another,” you said.

“Maybe he’s into that. Some guys are. My one friend is — actually, I’m not exposing him like that,” he said.

“Thank you, because I really didn’t want to know,” you said.

“Anyways, where I was going with that is some guys like girls who humble them a bit. Especially someone like Sae Itoshi; he’s probably so used to people falling all over themselves to get his attention that it’s nice for him to hang out with someone who’s too oblivious to care about that kind of stuff,” he said.

“People like you?” you said. “I told him you were his biggest fan, just so you know.”

“Why would you do that?” your brother said, his eyes bugging out and his mouth forming a pained grimace. “He probably thinks I’m a nerd now!”

“You do it to yourself, buddy,” you said. “Let’s go. It looks like the parents want us to go sit with them. Think you can handle it?”

“After learning that my hero has a crush on my sister and, furthermore, probably thinks of me as some kind of dweeb, I can handle anything,” he said.

The entire day, you pondered your brother’s words. Did Sae have a crush on you? Running through his actions and every conversation you both had ever had led you to think that he did not. It didn’t seem like he liked you very much in even a platonic sense, so how could anyone begin to think he liked you romantically? It was just tolerance for the sake of his pride, that was all.

And you definitely didn’t like him. He was emotionless and conceited and teased you far too often. What did it matter that he was somewhat attractive? He had a terrible personality, and you bet that if more of his fans knew what he was like, he wouldn’t have any to begin with.

No wonder Sae’s manager hated him. He was probably a jerk to his poor employees, too.

“We’re thinking of going here for dinner tonight,” your father said the next day. “Look, their reviews are pretty high, and their prices aren’t crazy. What does everyone think?”

“I’m fine with anything,” your mother said.

“Same here,” your brother said.

“Y/N?” your father said. You were about to respond when your own phone buzzed. You knew exactly who it was texting you, and you sighed as you opened it.

sae itoshi (dumb haircut): I will be there in one hour.

sae itoshi (dumb haircut): You better not have forgotten about our plans for tonight.

sae itoshi (dumb haircut): I made a reservation, so I’ll really be mad if you stand me up.

sae itoshi (dumb haircut): Especially because you’re paying.

me: I WILL BE THERE OMFG STOP TEXTING ME

sae itoshi (dumb haircut): Okay.

“I can’t,” you said.

“Why not? Are you on some new diet or something? They should have vegetarian options, so that won’t be a problem,” your father said. “We can look at their menu beforehand if you prefer, and if you really don’t like anything, then we can find somewhere else.”

“I already have plans,” you said, your lower lip jutting out childishly. “Not that I want to! But I made a promise.”

“You already have plans? What’s that supposed to mean?” your mother said.

“I’m having dinner with someone,” you said.

“Ooh, how exciting! With who?” she said.

“I bet I can guess!” your brother sang.

“Enough out of you!” you said, kicking him in the back of the leg. He doubled over, though that did not stop him from smirking at you.

“Y/N and Sae, sitting in a tree! K-I-S-S-I-N-G!” he said.

“You’re going out with Sae Itoshi?” your father said. “You should’ve just said so! That’s perfectly alright, honey. Actually, he’s the one man I’m not upset about you dating!”

“We are not dating!” you said. “It’s a more transactional relationship than that. No feelings involved. It’s just me apologizing to him.”

“Are you close enough to him to get an autograph for your brother and I?” your dad said.

“Um.” You thought about it. Would Sae give you an autograph for them? You weren’t sure. There was a chance he would, but there was also a high chance he would not. “I dunno. I can ask.”

“You’ll ask for dad, but not for me? Wow, I see how it is,” your brother said.

“Yeah, because you’re annoying!” you said. “Ugh. I have to get ready now. He’ll be here to get me in an hour. Have fun at dinner, all of you. Keep me in your thoughts and prayers.”

“You have fun as well,” your mother said. “Make sure not to bring any money with you. Gentlemen should always pay on the first date.”

“I’ll be sure to tell him that,” you said, giving up on explaining things to your family for the sake of your sanity.

Sae was aggressively punctual. Exactly an hour after he had texted you, a shiny black car was pulling up in the valet lane, and a tall, bald man in a suit was opening the door for you. You climbed in awkwardly, finding Sae to be sitting on the other side, gazing out of the window pensively.

“Hello,” you said, smoothing your dress and buckling your seatbelt. “You have a driver?”

“Of course I do,” he said. “I usually walk places when I’m on vacation, but this restaurant is kind of far, so I thought it’d be more prudent to have the driver take us.”

“I see,” you said. “Thank you, driver, sir.”

The driver hummed in acknowledgement but did not say anything else. You supposed he probably wasn’t used to talking with his passengers; you doubted Sae ever spoke to him much.

“It’s been so hot out recently,” Sae said stiffly.

“That’s what happens during the summer, yes,” you said.

“That’s true,” he said.

“You’re right, though,” you said. “It has been hot.”

“Super hot,” he said.

“Yes,” you said. “Super hot.”

That must’ve been why there was a slight redness to his cheeks. There was definitely no other reason. And there wasn’t any other reason for why you felt uncomfortably warm, shifting in your seat to dissipate the feeling in your stomach. It was the temperature. That was all.

Given the trend, you really should have anticipated it when Sae paid for your dinner while you were freshening up in the bathroom, but you really had not seen it coming in the slightest. He scrunched up his face when you argued, simply telling you that he would see you tomorrow before dropping you back off at your hotel, the receipt in your hand, his flourishing signature scrawled across the back.

“For your brother,” he had said, handing it to you before you could even ask him for his autograph. “You said he was a fan, right? I’ll get him a better one later, but for now, this should do.”

You spent every day of the rest of that vacation with Sae Itoshi. Some days, you would accompany him on a morning walk — he had softened to slowing his pace, so that he was only barely jogging instead of the full on run that he had forced you into that first time — and on others, the two of you would have some meal or another together. The common theme was that, if there was money involved, he would take care of it. Without question, without hesitation, he always slapped your hand back and pulled out his own credit card, telling you that now you both had to meet again, and the next time you really would be the one paying, or else he’d never be able to forgive you for your terrible behavior.

Your parents and brother complained about it at first, as your new friendship with Sae — could it be considered a friendship, or was it something else? — meant you did not see them much on what was supposed to be a family vacation.

You brought it up with Sae, and he responded with something about how it wouldn’t have been a problem at all if you weren’t such a freeloader and actually paid for him, like you were supposed to. This resulted in a lighthearted squabble between you both, which in turn made you forget your family’s whining, and as well you should have. You could take a million more vacations with them, but you’d likely never get a chance to hang out with Sae Itoshi again, so why wouldn’t you take advantage of it when you could?

Sae didn’t forget, though. He sent you back from dinner the next evening with a soccer ball he had won in one of his games, his signature and a note of gratitude scribbled on it in black marker.

Thank you for letting me borrow your daughter and sister from you while you’re on your trip. I really appreciate it, even if she doesn’t know anything about soccer. — Sae Itoshi

They stopped complaining after that. The ball became your brother’s most prized possession, and every day, your father would tell you how happy he was that you had made such a considerate friend.

“And you know, if you ever want to date him,” he’d say, elbowing you in the side with an obnoxious wink. “We wouldn’t be opposed!”

Your mother was in the same boat. “He really cares about you, I think. Enough that he gave your family something so precious just because he thought we didn’t like him. You could do a lot worse than that.”

“Plus, he’s rich and famous!” your brother would chime in without fail. “Double win!”

“You guys are all nuts,” you’d tell them, shaking your head to disguise how pleased the thought of dating Sae made you.

It could never happen. Like your brother was so happy to remind you, he was rich and famous, an athlete that was adored worldwide and played for the best soccer club in history. He could have any girl he wanted, so why would he ever choose you? You and he were from two different planes of existence. Maybe you could pretend for a little bit that you weren’t, but the date for your eventual departure from Spain was drawing closer and closer, and that day meant the certain end of the fever dream that was your closeness with Sae.

You had been prepared from the start for it to finish in this way. You would go home and tell all of your friends about your trip, how you had spent almost every day with the famous soccer player Sae Itoshi, how he had given you his phone number and made you go on runs with him, how together, you and him had eaten lunch and dinner and breakfast and several meals that you were convinced he had just made up to have an excuse to buy food for the two of you — brunch, linner, midnight snacks and third desserts.

There were other things that you wouldn’t tell them, too, things that Sae had not necessarily said to you in confidence but which you sensed were held close to his heart and which you would therefore hold close to yours. His little brother was named Rin, and they had the same eyes, though Rin’s were quicker to water and perpetually had hair falling into them. He still watched the same shows he used to when he was very small, because they reminded him of his parents’ home. He thought that a person’s athletic potential could be determined by the shape of their butt, but he tended to avoid looking as a form of respect for others.

“That’s a pretty cool skill, Sae! What do you think my athletic potential is?” you had asked when he had revealed that last fact.

“If it’s possible for a person to have negative potential, then that’s about what yours is. If it’s not, then you’re definitely at a zero,” he had responded.

“You didn’t even look,” you had said, shoving a French fry into his mouth as punishment. He hated French fries for how unhealthy they were, and you had half-expected him to lecture you about fats and oils and salts, but instead, he had dutifully chewed and swallowed without any theatrics.

“Don’t need to, and don’t plan to,” he had said, and that was that. “I’ve already seen you run, and that told me all I needed to know about your athletic skills. Or, in this case, your lack thereof.”

If you took his words at face value, then you would’ve thought he truly hated you. He never missed a chance to make fun of you, and you were the same way — certainly, anyone who overheard your conversations would’ve been convinced that you and he were bitter enemies. But that was because they didn’t see the way he always positioned himself on the sidewalk so that he was between you and the oncoming traffic. They didn’t see the way he’d pull out your chair and only pretend to frown when you’d thank him for it. They didn’t see the way his ears would turn pink if you dared to smile in his direction or, heaven forbid, agreed with what he was saying instead of arguing, as was your go-to.

No, you were pretty confident that Sae Itoshi did not hate you. It was just that soccer was his thing and all other areas were beyond him, areas which included such fields as emotional awareness and sensitivity.

Maybe you might tell the friends you were particularly close to about that. Sae Itoshi treated me pretty well, you’d say, with grand, sweeping hand motions to emphasize the point. As well as he knew how to, which was well enough for me. If I ever get a boyfriend, they’ll have a lot to live up to. Seems kind of unfair to whatever poor schmuck gets stuck with the task, don’t you think? Considering the two of us never even dated…

“I'm going home tomorrow morning,” you said. The sun was setting, and the two of you were walking along the same stretch of beach that you had first met at. “I finished packing all of my things before dinner. It’s surreal, almost. I feel like an entirely different person now, compared to when I came here.”

“Is that so?” he said, the corners of his lips twitching slightly. “I wonder why.”

“Did you just smile?” you said. Immediately, he scowled.

“No way,” he said. “I’d never smile because of something you said.”

“Uh-huh, uh-huh, you definitely smiled. I made you smile! I made you smile! I made you smile!” you said, poking him in the cheek repeatedly. Sae’s expressions were so subtle that it was easy to overlook them before they had vanished, but there was no overlooking what you had just seen. He had definitely smiled at you, or at least he had been about to.

“Stop poking me,” he grumbled.

“No,” you said, poking him again. “Only if you smile again.”

“Hell no,” he said. You poked his cheek again. “Y/N. Stop it.”

“Will you miss me?” you said.

“Not if you don’t quit that!” he said, grabbing your wrist when you prepared to poke him again. Heat rose to your cheeks at the way his thumb rested against your pulse, and when he realized he was holding your hand so familiarly, his own cheeks flushed. “No. I won’t.”

“I’ll miss you,” you said, digging your feet into the sand, turning out to the sea because you couldn’t stand to look at him when you were being so vulnerable. “I’ll tell everyone I know about you, of course, but it won’t be the same. Something funny will happen, and I’ll think to myself, oh, Sae would’ve snorted at that — but not laughed, because you don’t laugh. Or I’ll order shitty French fries, and it’ll remind me of how much you’d scold me for eating them. You’d say something like, those are basically heart attacks in a box, and then you’d pour a bottle of salted kombucha down my throat to cleanse my system.”

Somewhere in the distance, a seagull squawked, reminding you of the fateful encounter from so long ago. You wished you could go back and get to know Sae all over again. You wished you could ask him the same questions and not know the answers, so that you were surprised when he told them to you. You wished you could argue with him for a little bit longer. You wished that, one more time, you could imply he was short and ugly and slow and a thousand other rude adjectives, even if he was really none of those things, none of them at all.

“I’m going to ask you one last question, okay?” you said. “Please think over your answer carefully. It’s important.”

“Okay,” he said, uncharacteristically gently. “I’ll really consider it well.”

“What’s your favorite animal?” you said.

“Seagulls,” he said immediately, directly contradicting his solemn oath. You laughed at this, burying your face in your hands to hide the hitch in your throat.

“You traitor,” you said. “You know all about the feud between seagulls and I, and yet you’re still claiming they’re your favorites?”

“They always have been,” he said. “I like migratory birds, how they don’t stay in one place but are always moving around. It must be such a blissful life.”

“But it’s probably pretty lonely, too,” you said. “They don’t have anywhere to call home.”

“I like lonely things,” he said. “That’s why the end of the summer is my favorite season.”

“Hm,” you said. “Then, if I tell you that I’ll be lonely once I leave here, will you like me, too?”

He looked at you, but you stared resolutely ahead, your gaze trained on the horizon, the way his had been on the day you had run into him. It was such a kiddish question, and internally, you were beating yourself up for asking it, but deep down, you wanted to know, so you did not move to retract it.

“Well, I like seagulls for a different reason now,” he said.

So that was your answer, then. The waves crashed against the shore, and a balmy wind blew through your hair and clothes, carrying the light scent of Sae’s cologne to your nose, the same one he had worn for as long as you could remember.

“I understand,” you said.

“These days, it’s a specific seagull I’m fond of, actually,” he said.

“Huh? Like a breed or something?” you said.

“No, just one bird in particular,” he said. “It did me a really huge favor recently.”

“What are you talking about? You always say that you suspect I was dropped on the head as a baby, but between the two of us, I think the one that was dropped was you,” you said, the fraying ends of your rejected feelings driving you to irascibility.

“A while ago, I was standing on the beach, feeling pretty annoyed with the world — as usual,” he said. “I had had to run from the paparazzi in order to go on this vacation without being bothered, you know, and I honestly was starting to question if I’d ever be seen as a normal person. I get that the only thing I’m good at is soccer, but it’s pretty tiring to be thought of as a guy who kicks balls around and nothing more.”

Unbidden, you inhaled sharply, because the story was starting to sound familiar. Spinning on your heel, you were met with the sight of Sae smiling shyly, peering down at you through his unfairly long eyelashes.

“That seagull must’ve known how I was feeling. There’s no other explanation for it all. It must’ve known how I was feeling, and somehow, it managed to find the one person in the entire world that saw me as something other than that. Do you know what it did next? It stole that person’s sandwich, and it led her right to me,” he said.

“Are you talking about me?” you said.

“How many people do you think have called me a short, ugly, D-list celebrity instead of asking for my autograph upon meeting me?” he said.

“Probably not very many,” you said. He chuckled.

“Probably not any,” he said. You rested your forehead against his shoulder.

“Probably not,” you said. He stroked your hair, though his motions were like a marionette’s — he was not very used to this type of relationship, after all. But he was trying his best, and you found that to be far more endearing than any suave gestures might’ve been.

“I know you have to go soon, so I was planning on not saying anything,” he said. “What would be the point? I figured this was just a summer fling for you. But then you had to go and be all sentimental, and I had to say something.”

“I’m glad you did,” you said. “It would’ve been worse if I had returned home without knowing at all. Where do we go from here, though?”

“Where do we go from here? Let me think. Well, I’ll ask you to be my girlfriend,” he said. “And you’ll say yes, because who would ever reject me? Then we’ll talk on the phone every day, and you can send me photos of things you find funny, and I’ll have a sixth sense for when you’re eating French fries and I’ll send you strongly worded texts in reprimand. You’ll fly over to watch my matches whenever possible, and when I’m on my next break, I’ll come visit you and meet your family and friends properly.”

“Getting a little presumptuous, aren’t we? What if I say no?” you said.

“Will you?” he said.

“Not sure. How about you ask and find out?” you said.

“If you’re going to say no, then I don’t want to,” he said. You stuck your tongue out at him.

“I can’t be with a man who’s afraid of rejection. It was nice knowing you, Sae,” you said. “See you around. Hope you lose the Champions League.”

“Wait! I’m not afraid of rejection,” he said. “Y/N, will you be my girlfriend? Officially, I mean.”

“Yes, of course,” you said. “But you’re going to have to buy my plane tickets if you want me to watch you. Even with frequent flier miles, I doubt I can afford coming to see you that often.”

“Consider it done,” he said. You grinned at him.

“You know, if you’re my boyfriend, then you’re going to have to keep paying for our dates, as well. My mother said that’s the gentlemanly thing for you to do,” you said.

“Right, I was expecting that,” he said. “Don’t you think there’s a reason why I haven’t let you buy anything yet?”

“Then how am I ever supposed to apologize to you for the circumstances of our first meeting? I mean, I was pretty harsh,” you said.

“That’s true,” he said. “Let me think.”

“Mhm,” you said. “I know that that’s out of your comfort zone, so I’ll give you a minute.”

“I have an idea,” he said, though it was accompanied by a slight glare at your jab.

“What is it?” you said.

“Close your eyes,” he said. You obliged, squeezing them shut, though not without widening your feet into the defensive stance he had demonstrated to you on the day he had attempted to teach you basic soccer skills.

“What are you going to do, tackle me or something? I’m using the position you taught me, but please be gentle, you’re way more muscular than—!”

You were cut off by him pressing his lips to yours. It was a soft kiss, gentle and light, like feathers in the air or water against the sand, and he pulled away before you could really react or reciprocate. He had left you wanting, and you knew he knew that, because there was a smugness to his voice when he spoke next.

“Apology accepted,” he said as you blinked at him in shock, your mind still lagging well behind your body. “Now we’re even.”

“Hold on,” you said. “I’m suddenly feeling very repentant and remorseful. Are you quite sure you forgive me with just that?”

He laughed. It was such a lovely sound, his laugh, and you would’ve told him so if you weren’t afraid that he’d stop when you pointed it out.

“Maybe not,” he said. “You might have to apologize a bit more.”

“That sounds doable,” you said. “Yeah, I might be able to work that in. It’ll be agonizing, but a wise man once told me that that’s just the nature of apologizing, so it’s the least I can do, right?”

“Oh, shut up,” he said, holding your face in his hands and leaning in. You did the same, your eyes closing all on their own as you sought out the connection he had deprived you of earlier.

As the sun set over the horizon and the seagulls settled in for the night, he kissed you again.

#sae x reader #sae x you #sae x y/n #itoshi sae #bllk x reader #bllk #blue lock #reader insert #modern au #m1ckeyb3rry milestone #m1ckeyb3rry writes

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hwangism143 · 4 months ago

Text

euphonia

synopsis in which hyunjin craves you and your voice and distance only made the heart grow fonder

pairing idol!hyunjin x gn!reader

genre fluff, comfort, established relationship

warnings mentions of food and eating, hyunjin is sickeningly in love with reader's voice

word count 2.2k words

requested by 🍓 anon (ily for requesting this mwah)

now playing all of the girls you loved before - taylor swift

a/n sexy voice syndrome is real!! (@calypsohan this one's for you max)

"i wanna teach you how forever feels"

Loneliness loved reminding you of its presence, looming over everything you did. It was like a relative you knew but rarely conversed with, one who sat silently in the corner of your apartment until it broke something made of glass before it left and left you reeling in it's wake.

And it's effect was profound, weighing down on you invisibly. It created ripples that bled into your everyday life until you were pulled under by it's current. Loneliness did that too you; but love always did one on loneliness.

To love was the most beautiful thing you had ever felt. You sometimes imagined life to be easier without love, without a heart that was breakable and a mind that was so easily manipulated. But when you stripped away all the physical aspects of you could define as you, the only intangible thing that you concretely had was the love you felt and the love you could give.

Sharing that same love with Hyunjin only made it more beautiful.

You fell in love in the winter. Back then, you didn't know who Hyunjin was. All you knew was that he would frequent the bookshop that you grew up loving whenever he came to your town, which was becoming often in the past few months.

He would run his fingers along the spines of the books and when one would catch his eye, he would hold it in the crook of his finger and slide it out. Hyunjin read for hours, sketched for what seemed to you like an eternity and only drank a standard Americano.

He felt familiar somehow, as if you had seen him somewhere but couldn't quite place it. But the black cotton mask that covered his face and the baseball cap that hung low only left his eyes visible to you. Even his eyes were beautiful though, glowing with wonder as his eyes darted around the room.

You used to work the counter back then. It wasn't because of a lack of funds, or even a job really. But this bookstore had been the place where you had taken your love, dismantled it into pieces and stored safely to put back together afterwards.

It was very fitting that you fell in love in that very bookstore, among falling snow and the smell of books.

When you finally mustered the courage to ask him his name and what he was reading, the first thing that left Hyunjin's lips were, "You have a pretty voice."

You blushed, biting your lip and drawing the tiniest drop of blood. "Pretty people recognize pretty things," you mustered at an attempt to flirt with him. You laughed off your poor attempt, flushed with embarrassment.

There was nobody in the bookstore except for him and you. He took of his mask and gave you a devastating smile. Suddenly, it all clicked. The billboards, the occasional YouTube recommendations and Instagram advertisements that adorned his face.

You had always found Hyunjin beautiful.

"I'm Hyunjin," he told you, and you noticed the his hands that were resting beside his body slightly trembling.

It couldn't have been easy, talking to a complete stranger considering the profession he was in. You recognized him, but didn't let on, although he had seen the glint of recognition in your eyes as clear as the glass windows of the bookshop in the summer.

"And I'm reading your face, since I recognize pretty things very easily," he laughed, and you thought it impossible to ever fall in love at first sight, but here you were, flying and falling all at once.

─── ･｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

You always thought that Hyunjin had a thing for you voice. "I'm in love with your voice," he would tell you, between stolen nights and lazy mornings.

"What do you love most about me?" you asked him one Sunday while you both were in bed, his arms covered around your waist and his face buried in the crook of your neck.

"Your voice," he mumbled into your shoulder. He pressed a kiss to it while you mockingly as ked him why.

Hyunjin propped up his chin on the blade of your shoulder, looking up at you with the most pleading eyes. "Listening to you makes me feel like I'm sinking in a dream I never want to wake up from but also reminds me that all of this, us, is real."

You didn't know that complete extent of how much Hyunjin loved your voice.

When he finally left on tour and was separated from you, Hyunjin would call you every day. He would close his eyes while talking to you, trying to scorch every inflection your voice had, every dip and octave it reached into his memory.

Every laugh you let out, every I love you that you whispered to him resulted in a pitiful attempt of him trying to grasp the harmony of it in his hands, as if he had the power to turn it into something tangible.

To Hyunjin, your voice was the consequence of if the universe conspired to take every euphonic melody in the world and bestowed it upon one person.

Hyunjin didn't only love your voice. He loved every part of you, your bright eyes and wide smile, your sharp mind and rapid fire tongue ready with a response to anything. But your voice was just addictive, something that he was forever biased towards.

If Hyunjin could bottle up the sound of your voice and drink it every day, he would gladly drown himself in it during his every waking moment.

─── ･｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

You lunged for your phone when it rang, knocking over an empty glass of water sitting on your coffee table and throwing your blanket aside. Your bowl of macaroni and cheese lay forgotten, your hands in pursuit for the phone with it's customized ring tone that only belonged to one person.

Hyunjin hated the Baby Shark song. It only made sense to keep that as his ring tone.

Hyunjin was voice calling you instead of FaceTime, which could only mean one thing: he was travelling and the internet connection was spotty, or he had re-watched Pride and Prejudice (the Keira Knightly version of course) and was currently a sobbing mess. The unmistakable sound of the whizzing of cars told you that it was the former.

"Hello?" came Hyunjin's drawn out voice. You heard rustling in the background and the crumpling of what sounded like plastic.

"Hi Hyune," you giggled, "What's that I hear in the background?"

Hyunjin snorted and his voice was coated with distaste, "That, my love, is a plastic fart balloon that Jisung got me. But that isn't important. How are you?"

You rolled your eyes despite yourself and flopped down on your sofa. "Hyunjin, there are much more covert ways to ask me if I started watching Bridgerton without you. I'm not heartless, you know."

Hyunjin let out a dramatic sigh. "Hyunjin? I don't know Hyunjin. I only answer to love, baby, Hyune, Jinnie or other miscellaneous terms of endearment."

You let out a chuckle. You loved him so much that you felt like you would burst into a million tiny atoms, except those atoms would always be in constant searching for the pieces that made Hyunjin because those atoms were the only home they had ever known.

Talking to Hyunjin stretched on for hours. Somehow, only he understood what you were truly trying to say. It was as if your brains were hard wired to interpret what the other person was saying with the utmost ease.

It was poetic, how you could always translate Hyunjin's words into the emotions that he poured into them.

"I read a very beautiful book today. It was about love. Then again, everything I read is about love. The characters were very messed up, but that somehow drew me in. Oh, and do not get me started on the shit show that was them falling in love. At least they ended up together but-"

The line on the other end was silent. All you could hear were Hyunjin's soft puffs of breath. You felt guilt engulf you. Here you were again, going on and on without a care of whether or not Hyunjin had an input in the conversation.

"Why'd you stop?" came Hyunjin's voice.

"Because I'm rambling, aren't I?" you replied quietly.

"No, you aren't," said Hyunjin firmly, "I could listen to you all day."

Relief washed over you, although it was borderline pointless. Hyunjin's love kept you so safe and secure that there rarely ever came a time where you felt insecure about yourself or doubted your capability to do anything. If someone like Hyunjin could love someone like you, as self-depreciating as it sounds, you believed that anything was possible.

"I guess what I'm trying to say is that love is in constant contradiction of itself."

Hyunjin was silent. You could practically feel him turn over the words in his head, the cogs inside his mind dissecting the inner meaning of the phrase.

"Love is contradictory. It's contradictory in it's every aspect," he finally said, "But it's that imperfection, that flawed baggage it comes with that makes beings as flawed as us experience it on a deeper and more visceral level."

"Maybe that's why they call it falling in love," Hyunjin told you thoughtfully, "It isn't supposed to be easy at all. Maybe the journey towards attaining it should be as rudimentary as us."

─── ･｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

Sleep was more than willing to pull you into it's grasp, whispers of the feeling crawling thorough your bones like wisps of phantoms past dragging you into an unbreakable state of stagnancy.

When another yawn slipped through your lips, Hyunjin finally made you hang up the phone. Despite your protests, he insisted on you going to bed.

To back up his argument, Hyunjin cited several reference of his sleep paralysis demon. You decided not to tell him that it was, in fact, Kkami dressed in a tutu and fairy wings.

That night as you slept, you dreamt of Hyunjin and love and how when you woke up, it would all be there waiting for you again.

The next morning, you woke up to the sound of your shrill doorbell. Rubbing the sleep out of your eyes, you felt for your slippers and checked the time on your alarm clock. Which devil had decided that five in the morning on a Sunday was a good time to come knocking on your door?

You brushed you teeth with superhuman speed, having absolutely no intention to meet whoever it was with stinky breath. Lazily heading towards the front door of your quaint apartment, you bellowed an "I'm coming!" when the doorbell rang again.

You swung open the door, ready to curse at whoever was on the other side, just to find Hyunjin with a tired smile and bright eyes looking down at you.

"Hi. I've missed you so much," came his melodious voice. You blinked in wonder. This dream was very enjoyable and worryingly realistic.

You took a trembling hand and reached for his face, cupping his soft skin at the curve of his cheek with your palm. It all felt very, very real.

Oh.

Hyunjin closed the door behind him with his leg, inviting himself inside. His hands wrapped around your waist like a primal instinct and his forehead found it's place against yours. He slightly bumped his nose against yours.

With a teasing smile, he said, "This is all actually happening, by the way."

The tears started streaming down your face before you even knew what was happening. Hyunjin's expression morphed into one of concern and then affection. Your hand wrapped around the middle of his back and you buried your face into his chest.

Hyunjin still smelled like coffee and old books, like citrus shampoo and chocolate cake.

"Why are you crying?" he asked.

"Because I missed you so much," you sobbed.

Hyunjin soothingly stroked your hair, nestling his own face into the crook of your neck. You felt tears that weren't your own seep into your shirt and Hyunjin sniffing beside you. Your boy was sweet as spring and as obvious as the autumn.

"Why are you crying?" you questioned.

Hyunjin pulled away to look at you, his eyes red and puffy like yours. You had never seen him in a more ethereal state, face full of emotion and eyes swirling with fondness.

"My love for you spills over me so greatly that I'm compelled to share in everything with you," he swooped down to kiss you, "And that includes everything sweet that you eat."

He pecked you again near the corner of your mouth.

You laughed. "Hwang Hyunjin, you're set on making me fall in love with you again, aren't you?"

Hyunjin's chuckle reverberated deep within your bones as he offered you a dazzling smile. You laid your head against his neck again while Hyunjin rested his chin on top of it. His warm breath fanned over your hair.

"I fall in love with you all over again when I even think of you, the anxiety and thrill of it flooding me everyday," Hyunjin murmured in confession against your hair, "But that's a small price to pay when I have the rest of forever to spend by you in return."

please reblog and comment if you liked this fic! it means everything to me and I love reading your thoughts <3

: ̗̀➛ current permanent taglist:

@linoalwaysknows @moon0fthenight @hyulino @palindrome969

@squishybinnieee @lastgreatamericandynasty1 @stayinlimbo @farfromsugafanfic

@hongshuaknow @cookiesandcreammy @kayleefriedchicken @toomanybiasz

@seooj444 @soaplickerrr @nappynapnaps @lina-linny @yrqrnc

#stray kids #skz #hyunjin #hyunjin fluff #hyunjin x reader #hyunjin imagines #hyunjin x gender neutral reader #hyunjin fanfic #hyunjin x you #- via's fics <3

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cocteaucherry · 10 months ago

Text

𝙡𝙚𝙖𝙧𝙣 𝙩𝙤 𝙡𝙤𝙫𝙚 𝙢𝙚 pt. 2

𝙨𝙪𝙢𝙢𝙖𝙧𝙮- 𝙖𝙣 𝙖𝙧𝙧𝙖𝙣𝙜𝙚𝙙 𝙢𝙖𝙧𝙧𝙞𝙖𝙜𝙚 𝙩𝙤 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙥𝙚𝙤𝙥𝙡𝙚 𝙝𝙚 𝙙𝙚𝙨𝙥𝙞𝙨𝙚𝙨, 𝙗𝙪𝙩 𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙨 𝙤𝙣𝙚 𝙞𝙨 𝙙𝙞𝙛𝙛𝙚𝙧𝙚𝙣𝙩

〘 tw- 18+ ,arranged marriages, geto being a dick, fem reader, naked geto, controlling geto, forced marriage, angst

𝙖𝙣- 〘I wrote this in a few hours but tyty for the love and support ily <33

taglist - @chigiii @certainduckanchor

you didn’t eat much that night.

The comfortable kimono you wore turned into your worst nightmare, you now found it itchy and suffocating. The purple and orange hues from the setting sun cascaded through the window painting the room in the slew of colors, you were really at your wits end.

You sat in your room for the past hour debating what you could do, you could run but they’d find and probably kill you.

You couldn’t fight him, he was strong and he didn't even use his technique. What really killed you was that you still found him attractive, aggh.. this fucking sucks.

You began to hastily pull apart the kimono, feeling the layers fall from you your skin felt like heaven but before you could fully relax you remembered. You have to tend to that fucking asshole for the rest of the night. You let out a guttural groan searching for comfortable clothes in the many drawers, you decided on shorts and a black tshirt.

A knock came to your door and just like clockwork you never get time to answer, the same woman who you learned was Manami held the same unimpressed look when looking at you. “Geto’s final meeting is almost done, he’s expecting you in his room.” She said plainly.

“Okay, I’m ready.” Your smile was so sweet it made her sick, “Yeah, yeah come on.” She ushered you out the room into the large hallway, the walk there was relatively silent until the barrier was broken. “I rarely speak to people of your status.” Yup, great way to start off. “But I am curious what’s so different about you.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t think I understand?” You raised an eyebrow questioning her, different? What did she mean different? “I’ll know soon enough” she stated stopping in front of another large door, “Go ahead. She pointed towards the door and you nodded, clicking the door open. You stepped in softly pulling the door shut behind you, unsurprisingly his room was neat. The fabrics of his room were black or dark blue, you stared in awe rubbing your hands on the silky sheets, these were expensive for sure.

The dark wooden bedside cabinet caught your attention, you surveyed the area quickly before gently pulling the drawer open. Nothing caught your eye just books and notepads, you were about to close it before seeing the slight glimmer of a laminated photo peek from between one of the notepads. You pulled the piece from between the pages to reveal the photo.

It was a photo of three young highschool students. A beautiful girl with a short brunette bob, a cigarette perched between her lips, a bright white haired donned in sunglasses boy grinning gleefully at the camera and finally- wait, is that? The same amber eyes, the raven hair albeit longer now but more severe dark circles hanged under his eyes. When was this photo taken? And who were those people? You slid the photo back between the pages closing the drawer before the large oak door slowly opened.

Geto stepped through his face blank with emotion until he made eye contact with you, “Enjoying the space?” He asked, closing the door, the suffocating aura in the room only intensified as he stepped closer to you. “I want you to run my bath, you will be cleaning me after all.” He smirked beginning to slide his gojogesa off his abdomen, you felt your face heat up as you stepped around him making your way to the conjoining bathroom. You had to bathe him? How sick and twisted is he?!

“Vanilla scents!” He yelled from the bedroom, maybe you could drown him. You rolled your eyes walking towards the large tub, you bent your body turning the knobs watching the water gush down. Peering at the side of the tub you found the vanilla bath scent, huh bubble bath you wouldn’t have guessed. You poured the soap mixture in, placing the bottle back on the side of the tub.

You stood up turning your head to immediately be hit with the sight of your naked husband holding a large sponge in his hand, “Close your mouth you’re catching flies.” He simply retorted as he walked towards you handing the large sponge to you. You tried to control yourself, having to force your eyes to look anywhere, his body was scarily toned, he was hiding all of that under his clothes? His chest littered with small healed over scars but towards the center of his chest rested a large scar on the shape of an X, pretty specific scar.

“I’ll give you a question, I’ll answer.” Geto sighed, stepping beside you to swing himself into the large tub, the bubbles cascaded around him as he turned the faucet off. “Why do you hate non- sorcerers so much? The answer flew right out. He leaned forward wrapping his hair into a messy bun, “I find you to be useless, you stay on this earth to do nothing but grovel and produce problems.. sorcerers protect and all you do to repay them is create more mess.”

“But, that’s not fair.”

….

“Excuse me?”

You gripped the sponge in your hand as you felt a warm tear cascade down your cheek, “my whole life I’ve heard nothing but the same demeaning shit, how about you have some fucking empathy instead of shitting on me any chance you get.” A solemn silence followed after your words being broken up with your sniffles.

“I admire you.” huh?

You glanced over to his face, a sick smirk plastered on his face as he gleaned at you, “no one, not even my family speak to me like that.” He tilted his head as you sat at the edge of the tub, “I’d love to hear you talk some more.”

You sat and listened to Geto talk, you scrubbed gently at his back, your fingers would occasionally slip and touch his skin and goosebumps would appear accompanied by a small grunt. After the bath was done he wrapped himself in a robe walking back towards his room, he sat on the edge of his bed releasing his hair from the bun watching as his long raven hair fell around his body. “I think I owe you an apology..”

“Really?” You questioned raising an eyebrow walking towards his dresser, “not an apology.. maybe just I don’t know. This whole situation you’ve been put in, how are you not terrified?” He questioned pointing towards a drawer where you can find his sleep clothes, you opened it pulling out a pair of boxers and an oversized shirt. “I am fucking terrified, but I have nowhere to go.. I can't go “home” and if I leave here my clan will kill me. I’d rather take the insults than die.” You handed him his clothes, “Here you are sir.”

“Call me Suguru.” He took his clothes untying his robe, “O-okay..” you didn’t mean to stutter but for this asshole to actually be respectful was insane. “Don’t say it like that.” He murmured, sliding his sleep clothes on. He slid further down onto his bed letting out a sigh, “You’re done for the night you may leave.” You nodded reluctantly walking towards the door, as you began to open it a voice broke through. “Goodnight.” Suguru said.

“Goodnight.”

(Extras)

Suguru didn’t want to admit it, he wanted to love you, hold you and care for you. He couldn’t shouldn’t/strike have these emotions.

When your fingers touched his skin he felt like he was going insane, he was going insane when he told you to leave, he wanted you to stay he wanted to wrap his arms around you, smell your sweet scent and love and worship hou, he couldn't he shouldn't he can’t love someone like you.

𝙖𝙣- (I’m acc enjoying writing this I might make like 2 more parts to this <33 what do y’all think? <33

#jujutsu kaisen #jujutsu x reader #x reader #geto suguru #jjk x reader #geto x reader #jjk imagines #jujutsu geto #jujutsu kaisen angst #geto angst #getou suguru x reader #geto x y/n #jjk suguru #suguru geto #geto x female reader

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sushiwriterhere · 1 year ago

Text

breathe you in

summary: "The only one of your senses that seems to be clear, that seems to be working, is touch. Every nerve ending in your body is on fire, amplifying every brush of his fingertips to a thousand." rating: explicit (18+ mdni) pairing: the mandalorian x f!reader word count: ~4.7k (oops) warnings: sex pollen (dub-con), mando is not affected but reader is, dom(ish)!mando, fingering, spanking, nipple play, no use of y/n. please heed the warnings. notes: this is dedicated to the lovely, the talented, the amazing @tremendum ily!! tysm for encouraging my mando addiction + hope you enjoy :,) this is my first time writing mando so pls pls tell me what you think! my other works are here tagging: @joelscruff @joels6string @pedgeitopascalreads @magpie-to-the-morning @softlyspector @dindjarindiaries @tulipsbymybed @ezrasbirdie @anchoeritic tagging ppl whose Pedro work I love!!! Lmk if you’d like to be added/removed :)

You know you should say something to Mando when you start feeling the tips of your fingers tingle and the edges of your vision go shock white. It must’ve been a plant that grazed you or one of the patches of sunlight you stepped through, swimming with dust and pollen.

Leave it to you to get high on accident with Mando protected by his helmet, stalking through the undergrowth just a few feet in front of you. You can’t help but notice how broad he is, just how deftly he moves through the forest and clears a path for you and the Child to make it back to the Crest. God, the Child. Is he okay?

You whip your head down to look at him, somehow feeling guilty at the thought that he too, might have inhaled something or gotten injured. It’s your unofficial job, making sure that he’s safe (that and making sure the Crest doesn’t fall apart). But he’s tucked away inside the floating cradle, its little doors shut with him likely sleeping away soundly on the inside.

So it’s just you.

Your head swims slightly, but you keep your eyes fixed on the Mandalorian in front of you, hoping whatever it is that’s happening to you will at least hold off until you get back to the ship.

The pathway back for you is cleared by Mando stalking through the undergrowth, disregarding just how loud the fallen branches snap under his weight. You shuffle along and try to maintain composure as you feel your body temperature spike, and sweat start to bead along your hairline.

A relatively peaceful walk through a cool forest like this one shouldn’t be making your breath come as quick as it does. It shouldn’t be making you tremble like a leaf in the wind, your stomach cramp.

Time slips away from you when you get back to the ship. You think you might’ve muttered something about needing to use the ‘fresher but you’re not sure. All you can feel is the cramping in your lower abdomen, the way the hair on the back of your neck is plastered to you with sweat, and the way your mouth is somehow simultaneously flooded with spit and dryer than the desert, all at the same time.

When you stumble into the ‘fresher, the stale air feels like a momentary reprieve from how warm you are. You can feel your pulse hammering in your throat, and you’re sure you look like a crazed animal. What sets you off balance most, however, is the intense and burning need you feel, centered between your legs and spreading to the very tips of your fingers.

You barely get the door closed before you’re shoving your pants and underwear halfway down your thighs and slamming one palm into the wall so you can bite into your bicep to try and stifle your moans.

But it doesn’t alleviate what you’re feeling. In fact, it just makes your mind fixate on the Mandalorian even more. His broad shoulders, the thickness of his fingers always covered by those gloves, his strong thighs and waist that you know would be behind all the power of him thrusting into you.

You let yourself indulge in that fantasy, easily slipping your fingers into yourself. Your wrist tweaks at the angle, but you can’t bring yourself to care.

That’s how he finds you, three fingers buried in your weeping cunt, standard issue pants just barely shoved down the middle of your thighs, palm braced against the wall. You hadn’t even turned the shower on.

He calls your name from outside the door, “Are you alright?”

You fight the keen high in your throat at the sound of his voice, the cramping worsening as if in response to the thought of him. Fighting the shake in your voice you try to respond, but instead let out a small wail.

“I’m coming in.” Mando’s voice is authoritative, clear in his intentions. He thinks you’re hurt.

“Mando, wait— ” But before you can finish your sentence, the door is opening.

You know how you look, sweat along your forehead and plastering your hair to your neck, arousal dripping down your wrist steadily, body trembling. Mando doesn’t move from where his body is halfway through the doorway slightly tilted forward, hand clutching the frame, gloves stretching against the tension of his grasp.

Before he can say anything, an explanation starts tumbling out of your mouth—as if you were the one to catch him three fingers deep in himself. “I think I inhaled something while we were out and I know you’re always telling me to be more careful, and I checked that the kid wasn’t harmed he’s okay, but Mando I don’t know what’s wrong with me—!”

You cut yourself off with a gasp and you can feel the tears streaming freely down your face, but the next words you don’t mean to say, “Mando, please help, please. I need—I want you.”

This isn’t how you wanted this to come to light. You wanted it to be something natural, the sort of thing you heard in stories of love truer than the galaxy itself. Sometimes, you thought it might be happening in the way he’d relaxed around you, indulged your pleas to leave the Crest and shop at a street market. Maybe it was your imagination, but you thought he might be staring at you as you dozed off in the co-pilot's chair, feeling his gaze as it watched you through your reflection on the windshield.

At your begging, he moves. Instead of pouncing on you or slamming the door shut, he quietly walks over to you, pulls your hand away from your pussy that hasn’t stopped absolutely drenching your thighs, and scoops you into his arms. You scramble to clutch at his chest, beskar making for a lousy grip against your soaked hand. You’re confused and overwhelmed but the pain subsides, ever so slightly.

Closing your eyes tightly to preemptively fight vertigo, you feel him moving through the body of the Crest til you reach his quarters. He rarely ever sleeps there, that you know. But now, he moves to open the door, the slight hiss as it opens and shuts signaling that you’re inside.

Inside the room is pitch black and the air is stale, but ice cold. Like when you entered the ‘fresher, it brings momentary relief against what feels like a thousand degree fever burning you up.

You can’t understand if he’s rejecting you, if he’s moving you here so he doesn’t have to witness this. You start to spiral slightly and try to cling to him as if that might change what’s about to happen.

As he lays you on the bed, you whimper and grasp at his shoulders, until his voice is the one that breaks the moment, “I’ll take care of you, mesh’la, I’m not going anywhere.”

You almost weep with relief as he begins undressing you, pulling your pants and underwear, both embarrassingly soaked, off you. He doesn’t take off your tunic, apparently going for efficiency. You keep your hands tangled in the sheets, afraid that if you touch him he might change his mind.

What you don’t realize in your haze as he spreads your legs and removes his gloves, is that he can see everything through his helmet. He can see the way that your tunic sticks to every curve of your breasts, your nipples hard and your chest heaving with arousal. He can see the way that your cunt glistens with slick, your clit swollen, your hole pulsing and clenching around nothing in desperate need.

Whatever you inhaled is clouding all of your senses. You can’t seem to get enough air into your lungs so your mouth hangs open, panting. All you can smell is Mando–that combination of polishing oil he applies to his armor, sweat, and something distinctly him that he always carries. There’s a buzzing in your ears that only breaks when he speaks or exhales loud enough for the modulator to catch it. You can’t see for shit, the room completely dark and beyond that, your eyes are shut tightly trying to regain some semblance of composure.

You jolt at the first graze of his fingers against your thighs, barely registering the fact that his bare skin is touching yours. His hands are strong and calloused, gripping you tightly and forcing your knees apart. Your hips buck weakly and a whimper escapes your lips.

The only one of your senses that seems to be clear, that seems to be working, is touch. Every nerve ending in your body is on fire, amplifying every brush of his fingertips to a thousand. He moved his hands over your hips, your stomach, and back down to your pussy.

When he finally lets his fingers dip into your cunt, you try and jam your legs shut from how overwhelming it is. He shushes you gently and makes sure to prop you open with his knees and a firm hand on one of your thighs.

His pointer finger pushes through your curls, ghosts over your lips, barely dipping into you. He circles your clit, avoiding the bundle of nerves, seemingly focused on spreading your wetness over your cunt. As if that was necessary—you feel like you’ve been aroused for hours, potentially wet from your pussy down to your knees.

Your first orgasm is a weak, pathetic thing. You almost miss it when the tip of Mando’s finger just barely enters you, far thicker than one of your own. It hardly does anything to break the fog in your mind. In fact, it only serves to make your more aroused as you clench desperately down on his fingertip and thrash feebly in his hold.

A sharp exhale echoes loudly around the room, crackling and odd through his helmet. He lets his fingers pet your weeping cunt and in the dark he lifts and spreads his fingers to watch your cum hang sticky in between them.

“Mando,” Your chest is heaving from the effort of trying to gasp out a coherent thought, “Please, I need more.”

He shushes you again, and tells you sternly, “Be patient, sweet thing.”

But you can’t be patient. Your first orgasm has only intensified the cramping in your abdomen that’s begging to be soothed by his cock filling you.

When he finally pushes a finger into you, you wail and moan. He’s still holding you down so you can’t escape the way he crooks his finger inside of you, petting at your walls in a way that makes your mind spin more than it already is. Another finger and you can’t seem to figure out why you’re fighting him, your hands finally moving to grasp helplessly at his beskar-clad thighs as he twists his wrist and makes a come-hither motion with the fingers he has buried in you.

He works his fingers in and out of you at a relentless pace. At one point he seems to tire of the way you won’t stop thrashing in his hold despite him propping you open, and so he grabs both your wrists in his free hand, pinning them above your head and your body down with the line of his.

“Hold still,” He commands softly.

Maybe if you were more lucid you would have noticed the shift in his demeanor as he lets himself settle into taking your pleasure for his. It’s no less doting, no less sweet, but it has a biting edge not unlike the way a burst of sour fruit brings both the bite of acid and the satisfaction of something almost saccharine. Nevertheless, he seems to know what you need better than you do.

The weight of his body soothes the ache in you, allowing the haze to clear just slightly. At that, you force yourself to hold still, force yourself to simply take the way his fingers make you feel. His shoulders blanket yours easily, and his thighs are strong and powerful in between yours.

Your second orgasm is only marginally stronger than your first, still failing to break the spell of your intoxication. He can feel the way you spasm around his fingers, the way your wetness wets the wrist of his flight suit in a way that makes him pull out, lift his helmet just slightly, and press the digits into his mouth.

You hate the immediate emptiness you feel. You clench fruitlessly around nothing and try to breathe out a plea that’s almost crushed out of you by his weight. Your mind floats aimlessly as you try to focus on regaining your breath, two orgasms normally more than enough to satiate you when its your own hand, but not even close to enough in this moment.

His frustration is palpable as you continue to whine and beg, but he reminds himself that you’re so strung out on whatever is in your system that you can’t help it. You’ll get all you need in time.

“Mando, please,” You can’t seem to understand why he won’t heed your pleas, why he’s still holding out on you.

Except, he isn’t, not really. Especially when he makes quick work of flipping you into his lap and settling you against him as he’s propped up against the wall. Especially when he has you on your knees spread over his thighs, his cock hard against your back and your wrists still pinned together but this time behind your back.

“Patience,” He urges as he pulls his cock out of his flight suit with his free hand.

He coats himself in the combination of your arousal and his spit, the combination doing something deadly to how badly he wants you. You’re still half delirious, unsure of how this will end.

When he finally, finally, lets you sink onto his length, you think that might finally be what breaks the spell. You can feel just how heavy and thick he sits inside you as he slowly nudges you down. He seems to last forever, but also just long enough at the same time. The head nudges at some spot deeper inside you than you can ever manage to pet with your own fingers.

You can feel yourself clenching around him, trying to adjust to his girth. More than anything, you want him to move. You want him to fuck you so hard it steals your breath, so the pain and burning desire finally fades.

But he doesn’t move. He doesn’t move to prop his feet up on the mattress so he can thrust up into your tight heat. Instead he keeps your hands pinned between your back and his chest so both his hands are free to work up your top. You spasm around his cock and you’re sure you’re staining the crotch of his pants where he’s still wearing them.

“If you’re a good girl, if come like this, I’ll give it to you the way you want it, I’ll fuck you deep with my cock,” He almost croons. The helmet has always distorted what you imagine to be the true tenor of his voice, all lovely and smooth and chocolate rich.

You’re not sure what he means, “like this”, until his fingertips brush over your nipples, until his hands grasp your tits in a firm grip. You jerk in his hold involuntarily, but one of his forearms is already pressed against your ribs as if anticipating your inability to hold still the way he wants you to.

As he continues to play with your nipples, you almost want to tell him that you can’t, not like this. That you’ve tried before and it never got you there, that you just can’t. But the words escape you, and all you can do is try to breathe through the onslaught of sensations. Every exhale comes out a desperate, debased whine.

He pets over your nipples, twists them, even tweaks them in a way that makes your heart skip a beat. It borders on painful as he keeps you pinned to him, not letting you move even a centimeter away from the pads of his fingers. There’s no discernable pattern, as if he’s experimenting with what draws out the most whimpers, what makes you twitch most.

A particularly rough pinch draws a groan from you and one of his hands smooths down your stomach. The way he circles his fingers around where your hole is stretched open around the base of his cock is filthy. The way the tips of fingers prod at the edges of you around him, as if testing if there’s still room for something beyond the sheer girth of him makes your chest heave with the promise of more.

Finally, he touches your clit and rocks his hips up ever so slightly. You gasp wetly as your third orgasm washes through you. Your cunt squeezes him tighter than he ever thought possible and he has to steel himself against the feeling that tugs at his gut at the sound of you panting and the way you respond to the slight shifting of his hips with a weak attempt at riding him. Cumming on his cock brings you light relief, but to your dismay it still isn’t enough.

“You still with me?” Now his hands are petting your sides, and his hips are still.

You respond to a question he didn’t ask, “Need more, Mando,” You whimper.

When he lifts you off his cock, it takes the little lucidity you have not to wail in protest. He manhandles you face down, hips up in between his spread legs. He moves too, settling on his knees behind you, cock level with your cunt but he doesn’t press into you.

The position change allows you to relax a bit, but now you’re more empty, you think, than when you started. You start to whine, to protest, before he pushes into you again. Until you realize that he doesn’t keep going, his hips don’t meet yours. You try and wiggle backwards, take a mile where he gives you an inch, but the grip on your hips is firm.

Stuttering slightly, you try and beg for more, “I-I thought you said if I was good, you’d fuck me the way I want.”

He doesn’t budge, instead one of his hands comes between your legs to stroke your clit in a way that makes your thighs tremble.

“You were good,” He hums, “But give me just one more.”

You lurch forward on the bed when his free hand comes down on your ass with a crack. A broken moan leaves you and you realize you’re begging for him to do it again. He ignores you momentarily, choosing instead to smooth his hand over the heat of your skin where he just spanked you.

The sting of his palm on your other cheek stands in stark relief in comparison to the way he keeps drawing lazy circles around and over your clit.

Despite the way you can feel the way the haze, whatever the source, has begun to leave your system, it still clings to you. It amplifies the way his fingers feel on your clit just enough for you to cum again, squeezing the head of his cock. It’s a dizzying contrast, the way you’re split open on just the beginning of his length, the rest of you clenching on nothing.

He rocks you on him just barely, just enough to draw out your pleasure into the biting overstimulation that comes with four orgasms. Distantly it occurs to you he must be enjoying this somehow, the head of his cock just barely in you as your walls flutter in desperation and arousal, his hands holding your hips so hard you know you’ll bruise. The pain of his fingertips is almost soothing.

You beg for mercy as best you can–beg for him to fuck you properly, you promise anything you think might get him to fill you again: cumming on his cock as many times as he wants; swallowing him down til you can’t breathe and tears streak your face.

“You said–,” You hiccup through what you realize are light sobs of neediness, “You said you would f-fuck me if I gave you one more.”

Instead of replying, he pulls out and lays you on your back. Then, he hitches your thighs up and presses you in half with your ankles at your shoulders. His cock slides wet and hot against your cunt, still soaking from all your previous orgasms mixed with the copious amounts of precum that have leaked from him. He kneads at your ass and thighs like a lothcat with one hand while again holding your wrists above your head with the other.

When he finally slides into you, it knocks all the remaining breath out of your lungs. You don’t fight his hold any more, all your strength sapped and simply willing to take what he gives you. Your head lolls to the side, mouthing at what skin you can reach where he’s pushed his flight suit up over his elbows.

When he finally fucks you, it’s unhurried but each stroke is deep and powerful. You can hear the way his grunts come through the modulator of his helmet and distantly, just barely, it registers in your fucked out mind that he’s muttering absolute filth to you.

“The sweetest cunt I’ve ever had, ever tasted. Maker I can’t believe this is what it took for you to let me take care of you, sweet thing. Always talking back, always trying to prove you know what’s best, even when I’m making you cum. Not so loud-mouthed now, are you?”

The words make your head spin and you can’t decide if you want him to stop since they’re driving you quickly over the edge again or if you want him to keep going, to keep confessing his deep seated desires to you. He makes the decision for you as he lifts the lip of his helmet over his mouth.

“Want you to hear my voice when I tell you how badly I’ve wanted to have you like this. How badly I’ve wanted to have you in my bed. I can hear you through the walls you know, touching yourself and moaning my name, even when you think you’re being quiet. You dirty little thing, you’re so good to me.”

Your fifth orgasm feels like a supernova as he continues to fuck you deeply. It starts in your pussy and spreads to the tips of your fingers, leaving you gasping for air and crying out his name in repeat.

“There you go,” He says, “Cum on my cock like a good girl. You’re doing so well. Maker, you’re so fucking tight.”

That orgasm isn’t what breaks the fog in your mind. It’s him.

You can feel how close he’s getting and you decide, preemptively, to beg again, “Come inside me, please, Mando, please, I need it.”

He groans brokenly as he finishes inside you and the warmth of his come finally clears your mind. You clench rhythmically around him, hoping to milk him for everything he’ll give you. The motion of his hips doesn’t stop, the coarse hair at the base of his cock grinding against your clit sending skittering sparks throughout your body.

When his hips finally stop rocking against yours, it’s finally quiet in the room again. Your body finally feels like it’s your own again, and you can sense the ache in your hips from the way he’s got you pressed in half, the light sting on your ass from where his hands came down hard.

Lifting himself from you with a groan, you hate the way you feel empty, like something is missing, when his softening cock slips from you. You briefly consider begging him to stay with you like that, but your mind whispers, another time.

Instead, you let him stand and shuffle about in the darkness, clearly tucking himself back into his pants. He shucks off your tunic; it makes a heavy sound as it hits the ground somewhere next to the bed. You let him lift your limp, exhausted but finally satiated body, and carry you back to the ‘fresher. You never turned the light off.

Mando turns a small jet of water on and washes you with steady hands between your legs, soapy hands running over your breasts, your shoulders, and your thighs. You try to say thank you, try to ask him if this will change things, but you’re too exhausted to form words. He shines under the artificial lights.

He wraps you in a towel and places you gently into his cot that barely has room for two. It’s then that you realize that since this ordeal started, since he picked you up like you weighed nothing more than a single ration pack, that he hasn’t stopped touching you.

Not when he had his way with you, not when you begged for more, not when he coaxed one more orgasm from you. He kept some part of him in contact with your skin so you knew he was there the entire time. His hands never left you in the ‘fresher as you did your best not to shake like a leaf.

You protest weakly as he goes to leave and the lack of physical contact registers in your exhausted mind. It’s the first thing that’s come to you clearly since you inhaled that substance in the forest.

He strokes your hair and gently murmurs, “Let me change. I’ll be quick, I promise.”

You want him to stay, to abandon fresh clothes and stay there with you. But you don’t have the ability to voice it. Instead, you let yourself sink into the cot and breathe in the scent of him in the sheets and in the pillow next to your head.

He returns within a few moments, helmet still on but this time stripped of his body armor and apparently in a new flight suit. When he shuffles you over to make room for himself, you exhale deeply in relief.

Next to you, he’s heavy and warm. He pulls you impossibly close to him, your head tucked into his chest and your legs tangled together.

He speaks first, “Are you alright?”

Part of you wants to pretend to already be asleep, but you’re sure if you don’t confront this now, you’ll never do it.

“I think so.” A beat passes. “I’m sorry.”

With his hand ever so gently under your chin, he tilts your head up so you’re making eye contact with the helmet. Even though you can’t see his eyes you’re sure you’re staring into them. You wonder what color they are.

“No reason to be sorry, you needed my help. I wasn’t too rough, was I?” You think he sounds unsure of himself, that maybe he thinks he got too caught in the moment.

You stroke your fingers across the helmet where you imagine his cheekbone might be, “No. It was exactly what I needed. I’m just sorry that you had to find me and feel responsible, I never wanted—“

He stops you by pulling you into his chest, muffling the rest of the sentence. You think you hear the hiss of his helmet release but you’re not sure till you feel his lips on the crown of your head. You hold your breath.

With his lips pressed into your hair, he murmurs softly, “You have never made me take on a burden I didn’t ask or want to take on. You take care of the Crest, of the Child, you have to let me do the same for you.”

The helmet hisses shut again when he tilts your head up to face him. One un-gloved finger strokes over your facial features, so gentle and tender in comparison to the way you know he’s capable of violence. You’re silent and you let your eyes slide shut, the exhaustion overtaking you.

And that’s how you fall asleep: in the arms of the Mandalorian, content and with a glimmer of something new to come tomorrow.

#din djarin #din djarin fic #din djarin x you #din djarin x reader #the mandalorian x you #the mandalorian #the mandalorian x reader #the mandalorian fic #mandalorian x you #mandalorian x reader #mandalorian fic #mando x you #mando x reader #no use of y/n

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lincolndjarin · 1 year ago

Text

Oh Honey. ✩ Chapter 3

chapter three : we're all mad here

series masterlist ao3 kofi main masterlist

a/n : thank you to everyone who has waited patiently for this ily all. not much to say here other than that this chapter gets a lil buck wild so read the warnings. also this chapter is just a shitty whirlwind of things whoops

pairing : monster!joel miller x mortician!reader

rating : 18+ mdni - explicit content, read all warnings

word count : 11.9k

summary : bunny and joel are in a tough spot but hey couple fight, i'm sure everythings super chill and normal

warnings, etc. : angst, language, smut, dubcon (reader and joels relationship is relatively unhealthy and mostly just sex at this point. basically sex is reluctant or angry most of the time), oral m!receiving, crying after sex, toxic relationship, these two aren't doing well, readers mental health isn't in a great place, gaslighting, grave digging, typical oh honey description of corpses, general sense of dread, fear, feelings of despair, violence, gore, body horror, just in general a lot of bad shit happens in this chapter and i definitely missed tags so proceed with caution. this is a monster fucker fic - proceed accordingly

“It’s okay, it’s just me.”

Joel, Joel, Joel.

The only thing that consumes your thoughts.

The nightmare that’s still there after you wake up.

Neither one of you moves, he just watches you as your chest heaves, your hands shaking as the dam finally breaks and you crumble entirely. The overwhelming fear that has plagued you for weeks now finally consumes you entirely.

And you cry.

Not just a few stray tears, or some sniffling.

You cry.

Big, salty tears and full body sobs because you are just so fucking afraid.

Afraid of the woods, of the monster, and of Joel.

And despite that fact, you let him hold you because you aren’t just afraid, you’re tired. You stop putting up a fight when he pulls you into his arms, and you let him soothe you because there is no one else.

You don’t have anyone here.

(You don’t really have anyone anywhere else either.)

Except Joel.

So you press your face into his chest and you let him lay down with you.

You let him hold your ear against his sternum until your heartbeat matches his.

You let him kiss your forehead.

And you let him rock you back and forth until you fall asleep once more.

You don’t remember any more dreams that come your way but you know that you don’t sleep well after that, at least two more times you wake with a jolt. And you’re rocked back to sleep every time a fresh flood of tears threatens to rush from your eyes.

“Can we talk about last night?” Your eyes are still shut when you feel the heat of the sunrise against your face, his chest rumbles against your cheek when he whispers. “I know you’re awake.”

“I don’t wanna talk about it Joel.” You mumble, your eyebrows furrow, eyes still shut as he rubs your back.

“Please?” He sits up on his elbows, holding you to his chest still, the blanket sliding down his stomach and you’re suddenly reminded of the lack of clothing between the two of you.

You sit up with a groan, stretching your arms above your head before holding your comforter up to cover yourself, as you stare at the scene before you. The morning light is seeping in through the windows, turning his dark curls almost copper. Your eyes trail across the sheets until they settle on the large rips exposing your mattress.

“I said no.” You grumble.

“Bunny-”

You grab the blanket covering him, yanking it down as you yawn. You crawl between his legs letting your own blanket drop as you take his soft cock in your hand, watching him swell against your palm. He gasps at the suddenness of it all but when he doesn’t push you away you keep going.

“Sugar, I’m beggin’, let’s just take a second to talk.” He puts his hand over yours, trying to slow you but you just slide down onto your stomach, pulling him between your lips, wasting no time to drag your tongue along his tip. A long, unbroken groan falls from his lips. You take him deeper, savoring the way your eyes water and your jaw aches. It keeps you grounded. It keeps you here.

“Mmm.” You moan around him, god, why can’t he just be a normal man? If he was just a man he wouldn’t feel like velvet in your mouth, and he wouldn’t taste like sweet coffee first thing in the morning.

You know that now.

He isn’t just a man.

You don’t actually know what he is, but you have a few theories. A lot of theories that don’t work because the monster you saw in the woods wasn’t Joel.

His hips involuntarily rock forward and you groan as he hits the back of your throat. You smooth your hands over his bare thighs to push him back down as you relax your throat.

“Bunny- ah-” He stammers out as you work yourself back down his length, trying to ease him in at your own pace. “Slow down gorgeous, m’gonna come too fast if you keep this up.” He runs his knuckle across your jaw but you just hollow your cheeks and push on, pulling a strained groan from him.

You swallow around him, it’s on the verge of painful as you struggle a bit to breathe but you have no desire to stop. No amount of fear is going to change the fact that he soothes you. With his cock in your mouth it’s easy to forget about everything that’s happened to you this past week. It’s easy to just drink him in, and taste the warm caramel of his skin. You let one of your hands slip between your own legs, your fingers drag through the slick there before focusing on your aching clit.

You concentrate on syncing up the movements. Running your tongue along the underside of his cock as you swipe your fingers against your bud, practically humping your own hand after a few minutes. You keep it up for a bit until you feel his balls tensing and you pop yourself off of him.

You pull yourself into his lap, straddling his thigh as you wrap your hand around his twitching prick, both of you panting as you grind yourself against him. He grabs you by the back of your neck and pulls your lips to his as you groan into his mouth, he grunts against you until you feel him pulsing against your palm, streaking his stomach with his cum. After another moment you feel yourself clenching around nothing, finishing against your other hand.

You collapse against him, resting your head on his shoulder as you catch your breath. You take a moment to briefly run your fingers through his spend before sucking them into your mouth.

Just like frosting, a sweet vanilla taste coating your tongue.

He watches you like he’s about to pick up where he left off before you distracted him but he shakes it off when you give him a desperate look. He pulls you into an embrace.

“If you won’t let me talk about it, at least let me redress your wounds.” He murmurs before kissing the top of your head. You give him a small nod, too tired, and too afraid to object as he peels back the bloody gauze, carefully cleaning every cut before wrapping them once more.

When he’s finished he goes through and gives each one a small kiss, as if that could erase the terror around their origins.

“I gotta go to work, are you gonna be okay today?” He whispers as he leans forward to give you one last kiss on the cheek.

“I’ll be fine.” You give him a weak smile, content to act as if everything really is fine for just a few more moments.

“I’ll stop by for a few minutes after work, then I gotta go get Ellie.” He starts collecting his scattered clothing, dressing himself as you lay back down. “I’ll see you tonight.” He murmurs, giving you one one last sympathetic smile before he’s gone. Just like that.

And you’re alone with your thoughts.

What the fuck are you gonna do?

There’s a monster loose in the woods and Joel is clearly going to be no help. And of course there’s the issue of not being able to break up with him, for several reasons, one of them being that you simply don’t want to. Anything that happened last night doesn’t matter because at the end of the day you really like Joel, but more importantly you don’t think you can break up with Joel. It doesn’t really seem like your body will let you, whatever the invisible, inexplicable force is that drives you two together might not allow such a separation to happen.

So you’ll stay with him.

And you’ll use him to your advantage, it’s clear he knows something about what you saw, why else would he have gotten so defensive about it? He can’t be perfect forever, eventually he’ll slip up. You just have to wait for it.

You can wait.

Turns out you’re not as okay as you thought you were.

You spend the rest of your day cleaning up around the camper, just sort of taking care of things and everything seems fine. Joel texts you a few times, mostly just asking if you’re okay. And he comes to check on you after work, you’re just getting out of the shower when it happens, you had just stepped out of the bathroom in your robe, drying your hair with a towel.

His truck is old, he keeps it in good condition and he takes care of it but the engine is still pretty loud.

That was all it took to send you under the table.

Something about the roar of the engine just as it was turning off set you off. You closed your eyes, just for a moment and all you could see was the thing from the woods and you were curled up in on yourself, tucked away under the table with your hands over your ears. You didn’t hear Joel bust down the door and you screamed when he pulled you out from your hiding spot, thrashing and kicking at him. It took a while but eventually he calmed you down, sitting on the edge of your bed with you wrapped around him, trembling in absolute terror.

When you finally calmed down enough to quiet down he continued to hold you close, humming a song softly as he rubbed your back until you decided to break the silence.

“You have to go get Ellie.” Your voice was raw from screaming and he sighed.

“I can stay.”

“Go get her, I’ll be fine.” It took a lot of insisting but eventually he relented, but not before making sure you ate the take out he had brought you. The two of you sat in silence until he couldn’t stall anymore and had to go.

“Text me before you go to bed.” He mumbled, giving your hand a soft squeeze before he left.

You did as you were told.

That was when you became vaguely aware of just how bad things are right now.

You thought you were up for this, monster hunting, mystery solving business. But you’re terribly afraid, almost to the point of being useless. You can’t just let innocent people die though, no one believes you, so you have to be the one to do this. The thought makes you sick but what else can you do?

So you endure.

You wake up from restless sleeps, haunted by monsters you cannot escape from even in your dreams, and you go to work. You let Joel pick you up each morning and you let him kiss your cheek and put his hand on your thigh as you drive. You work as if everything is normal, and you only work on bodies that have died of natural causes for the rest of the week.

Night time is when things get tricky.

Joel wants to talk.

He wants to ask if you’re okay and he wants to talk about what happened that night you saw the beast but you know that if you do that you’re going to fall apart all over again and you’re starting to worry that one of these times you aren’t going to be able to put yourself back together.

So you do the one thing you know will distract him.

You fuck him.

He comes over after work each night, bringing food as if he knows you won’t eat unless he makes sure of it. He’ll ask you how work is and you’ll tell him the truth. That you’re busy and Maria’s busy with all the funerals.

And every night he tries to talk about it, usually starting by reaching out to you and holding your face in his hands. But you know better than to let him get more than a sentence out, so once he starts you drag him to bed.

The first time you executed this plan you were a little worried about what was going to happen after the sex. You couldn’t fuck him again. (Actually you probably could, but that’s beside the point.) So you needed to formulate a plan for afterwards, but once you’d started you got a little lost in your efforts and by the time you were done you had nothing.

It’s a good thing you solved your own problem when he pulled you against his chest and you suddenly burst into tears.

So yeah, you aren’t really all that okay.

You’ve developed a habit of crying after sex and you haven’t gotten any new information out of Joel. But at least you aren’t getting worse, at least it feels like you aren’t. For a week and a half the routine doesn’t change until finally on Wednesday he comes to pick you up after work.

“Should we go to dinner?” He wraps an arm around your waist as he pulls you closer.

“Let’s just get takeout.” You rest your head against his shoulder as he walks the two of you out to the truck.

“You don’t wanna go out?”

“I just wanna stay in tonight.” He hesitates for a moment, giving you a troubled look as he helps you into the passenger side. Once the engine hums to life you punch the number into your phone, ordering for the both of you, having it delivered to the camper.

And you ride in silence.

For a brief moment you wonder if he’s mad at you.

You can’t really find the will to care, it’s not like he isn’t gonna stay. He’s just as stuck as you are. You aren’t sure you can keep this up for much longer though, he knows what you’re doing at this point and he’s starting to use it against you.

You want him to snap again.

That’s sort of the goal right now.

To have him lift you as if it’s nothing. To tear something to shreds. You’ve been trying to make it happen all week, you’d think that with all the sex he’d lose control at some point.

But he’s careful now.

Somehow you always end up flat on your back and before you can gain any sort of semblance of control over the situation he’s got you coming your brains out. It’s clever really. Fighting sex with sex.

You get him to stop talking by starting it and he keeps you from doing any real investigative work by playing you like a fiddle each and every time.

No one wins. And no one loses.

You know you can’t do this forever but for now it works.

Work, sex, cry, sleep.

You decide you need to search his house, maybe find some evidence. You’re getting nowhere with your investigation and even though there haven’t been any mutilated bodies you know it’s only a matter of time. You need to take preventative measures.

The only problem is you don’t know where it is, you’ve always stayed in the camper and you’re struggling to think of a way to invite yourself over without raising suspicion, after a few days it comes to you.

“Can we talk?” You stammer out the moment you hear him pick up the phone, he doesn’t even bother hiding his sigh of relief.

“Of course we can, right now? Or should I just come over tonight?”

“I was thinking maybe we could go to your house, I’m hoping a change of scenery might help me open up.” It’s a bullshit excuse but you know he’d do anything to have a conversation with you right now.

“That’s more than fine, I’ll pick you up around six? We can have dinner and then we’ll talk.” He sounds so happy you almost wish this was real. That you could give him this thing he wants so desperately but you know that he won’t admit to anything he knows, so you just need to find proof, something he can’t brush off or ignore.

“Sounds perfect, I’ll see you then.” You hang up before he can respond, staring at the wall in silence, barely noticing when the sun sets outside the window. You don’t snap out of it until headlights flood the interior of the camper and you stand, grabbing your bag before rushing out to meet him. He jogs around the front of the truck to wrap an arm around your waist and kiss your forehead before opening the passenger door.

“I hope you don’t mind, we’ve got a little company tonight.” He raises his eyebrows at you, closing the door before you can ask any questions, when he pulls himself up into the driver's seat you open your mouth to ask what he means but he speaks first, turning to stare into the backseat. “Do you know who this is, little monster?” He turns the cab light on and you see Ellie strapped into her car seat. She appraises you for a moment before all of her limbs straighten out as she yells.

“Girlfriend!” She shrieks and you can’t help but smile for the first time in a while as Joel gives you a lopsided grin.

“We worked on that the whole way over, she was supposed to say your name but that’s close enough.” He gives her a mock look of disappointment that has her bursting into a fit of laughter as he turns the light off, pulling away from the camper and back onto the road. Joel turns up the radio, both of you sit quietly as Ellie sings along behind you, making up her own words to a pop song you vaguely recognize. “Hope you don’t mind.” He reaches over, taking your hand while the other stays on the wheel. “I haven’t been able to spend a lot of time with her recently.” He nods towards the back as you smile politely.

“I don’t mind at all.” It’s more than true. You’re rather fond of Ellie. He gives your hand a small squeeze and when you look his dimple is prominently visible on his face.

It’s about a ten minute drive to his house.

It doesn’t even look like he has neighbors. He pulls into a driveway between the trees and tucked away is a small ranch style house. You don’t know what you were expecting. Maybe something a little more sinister? But this is quite lovely, lots of space in an outcropping in the trees, a pretty cream colored house with dark oak accents and a tire swing hanging from a nearby tree.

Secluded.

You step out, staring at the pretty little place as he unbuckles Ellie, who immediately breaks into a sprint when he sets her on the ground, running up onto the porch and jumping to grab at the door knob.

“S’locked, honey.” He yells as he takes your hand, chuckling while he retrieves the key from his pocket. “She’s been excited since I told her we were gonna have you over, she loves showin’ people the house.” You both step up onto the porch as Ellie stares at him impatiently.

“What a lovely house you have, miss Ellie.” You crouch down in front of her as she gives you a grin, she’s clearly much less reserved around her father.

“Thank you.” She smiles proudly, when Joel opens the door she grabs your hand, pulling you inside as he flips on the lights. “We’re home!” She yells into the empty house. You give Joel a nervous look but he just laughs.

“She does that everytime we walk through the door, it’s just us here tonight.” He whispers reassuringly as Ellie immediately drags you deeper into the room.

It’s startlingly average.

It’s simply a house. No claw marks or blood on the wall. Just a surprisingly well kept little place, a well lived in family home. The walls are lined with photos of Ellie and a girl you assume to be Sarah, the fridge is completely covered in drawings similar to the ones you’ve seen Ellie do before. It’s just a house, nothing more.

Ellie pulls you into the living room before tugging your hand and pointing up at the wall until you scoop her up. Joel’s already working in the kitchen on dinner as you walk Ellie around the room. She’s more talkative then you’ve ever heard her be now that she’s got a clear line of sight to Joel, clearly more comfortable as she points out each framed photo, having a seemingly infinite number of things to say about each.

She babbles on endlessly, you don’t understand her well, you can really only make out names in her mess of gibberish but it sounds like she’s telling jokes. She points at each photo, looking at you as she says something incoherent before pausing, when she speaks again it comes off like a punchline, a single short burst of words before a shriek of giggles. You feel truly happy for the first time since that night. You feel normal.

You carry her over to where Joel seems to be putting toppings on a pizza.

“I thought you didn’t know how to cook?” You set Ellie down on the counter.

“I don’t know if buying pre-made dough and putting things on top of it is cooking.” He chuckles, handing her a piece of pepperoni. You feel painfully normal. This feels normal. It feels good, holding Ellie, and sneaking her another piece of pepperoni. It feels good to listen to the music softly filling the kitchen from the radio in the corner as Joel puts the tray in the oven before turning to smile at the two of you. “Did you show her your room yet El’s?” He grins at you and Ellie urgently grabs the sleeve of your sweater.

You pick her back up and she directs you towards the first door on the left once you turn down the hall. You set her down and she runs in, jumping up to turn the lights on as she scrambles to the toybox.

“Oh wow…” You can’t hide your surprise as you look around. The walls and ceiling are painted a navy blue with constellations drawn onto them, each one is outlined and labeled. Her bedframe is a wildly detailed miniature spaceship, hollowed out to hold her mattress. You walk forward, running your hand along its outline. “You have a beautiful room Ellie.” She turns and looks between you and her bed.

“Thanks, daddy did it.”

“Your father did all this?” You tilt your head as you carefully poke the solar system mobile hanging from the ceiling fan.

“Mhmm.” She’s still busy digging through her things until she produces a few plastic dinosaurs, seemingly forgetting your presence entirely as she begins smashing them together, growling and snarling. You watch her until Joel calls you back and she scrambles to her feet, running back out. You take a moment, looking at the other three doors in the hall. You can hear Joel talking to Ellie in the other room so you take the opportunity to look around. You try the door across from Ellies, pushing it open. It's a completely average bathroom, when you check the other two you find them both locked.

You don’t get a chance to make any attempts to get into them before Joel is calling you.

When you walk back into the kitchen they’re already sitting at the table, the seat next to Joel is pulled out and you take a seat.

And you get to be normal for just a few more minutes. This is what you wish it was with Joel. You wish you didn’t have to shut him up with sex every time he came over. You want dinners with Ellie. You want to watch her scramble to pick out a movie and you want to relive the look of content on Joel's face when his daughter chooses to sit between you two instead of just beside him. You want to hear Joel laugh at shitty jokes in a Disney movie and you want to watch Ellie struggle to keep her head up, alternating between leaning against you and leaning against her father.

But you can’t have this.

At least not after tonight.

Ellie yawns, her head slowly tilting to rest in the crook of Joel’s arm as she struggles to keep her eyes open. Joel taps you on the shoulder, nodding down at the sleeping toddler.

“I’m gonna put her to bed.” He mouths before scooping her up and carrying her down the hall. You sit by yourself for a moment, soaking in the quiet ambiance of the movie when you suddenly hear a tiny pair of footprints as Ellie runs up to you. She’s in her pajamas now, a pair of striped pants and what looks to be one of Joel's old shirts. You think for a moment that she might hug you as you give her a soft smile but she just pats your knee a few times.

“Good night.” She mumbles before running back to her room.

“Good night Ellie.” You call after her. After another moment you stand, curiosity getting the better of you as you walk down the hall as quietly as possible, leaning in the cracked open doorway. Ellie is in her bed with Joel sitting on the edge of it, he’s bent down to properly fit into the spaceship as he tucks her blankets in around her.

“What can I get for you tonight, little monster, story or song?” He whispers as he hands her a stuffed dinosaur.

“Song please.” She yawns, rubbing her eyes.

“Comin’ right up.” He reaches outside of her bed, grabbing the guitar you hadn’t paid much attention to earlier, you had been enraptured by everything else at that point. He tunes it for a moment as she gets comfortable, pulling her blankets up to her chin as she stares at him, her eyes already struggling to stay open. “What song do you wanna hear tonight?”

“Hmm… the rabbit song?”

“That’s a very good choice, Eleanor.” He nods as he slowly begins strumming a series of chords.

Run rabbit, run rabbit, run run run.

Bang bang bang bang goes the farmer's gun.

Run rabbit, run rabbit, run run run.

You rest your head on the doorframe as he strums softly, looking up every once in a while to see if she’s sleeping yet, he repeats the song about two times until he finally looks up and her eyes are shut. You rush back to the couch when he stands.

“Took her a while to calm down, sorry about that.” He rubs the back of his neck as he walks back into the room.

“Don’t worry about it, it’s more than fine.” He sits beside you, your thighs touching as he puts an arm around you.

“You’re really good with ‘er.” He whispers, turning to rest his forehead on your temple.

“She makes it easy.” You run your hand along his thigh, trailing it up until he gently grabs your wrist.

“We gotta talk first, bunny.”

Absolutely not. You didn’t find anything so the next course of action is to fuck or leave.

“Why don’t we go talk in your bedroom?” You roll yourself into his lap, straddling his waist and he frowns.

“Let’s just talk for a few minutes.” You start trying to tug open his shirt as he sighs. You lean forward, kissing him but he doesn’t reciprocate, keeping his hands at his sides, when you pull back he’s scowling.

“Come on…” You whine softly.

“You can’t keep doin’ this.” His southern accent thickens as he starts becoming visibly upset.

“Doing what?” You mumble.

“Shuttin’ yerself away. Pushin’ me away. You can’t keep using sex to end conversations you don’t want to have.” You continue fumbling with the buttons on his shirt as he purses his lips, finally just grabbing your wrists, pinning them down. “Would’ja stop for one damn minute?” You can feel him glaring at you but you just keep staring at the buttons on his flannel, silent.

“I don’t want to talk.” You exhale, pulling your wrists free.

“Bullshit.” He grabs you by your jaw, no forcefulness behind the action but he makes you look at him. “I’m worried about you.” His tone softens immensely as he gives you a pleading look.

“I’m fine.” You push his hand away but maintain eye contact.

“You aren’t. We haven’t had a conversation in weeks, and you cry everytime I see you, I don’t even know why you keep askin’ me to come around, at this point I’m allowed to be worried.”

“I don’t want to talk about this.” You start to get out of his lap but he grabs you by your waist and pulls you back down.

“Well I do. I’m serious, somethin’ is wrong with you, this isn’t normal.” When you try to get up again he doesn’t stop you, just putting his head in his hands as he groans. “There’s something seriously wrong with you bunny, we need to get you help.”

“I don’t need ‘help,’ I’m fine, now drop it.” He can’t do this, he can’t just call you crazy when he’s the one who drove you to this point.

“You aren’t fine, you’re the furthest thing from it. You’re a mess, you’ve become a mad woman.” You’re about to just grab your bag and leave when he leans back. “Does it run in the family or something?” He mutters into his hand and you freeze in place.

“Excuse me?” You don’t conceal the hurt or the venom in your tone.

“I’m sorry I shouldn’t have-” He gets to his feet but you put a hand up when he takes a step forward.

“Don’t.”

“Please bunny. I’m just so frustrated I didn’t mean it, please.” His expression is full of desperation but it’s too late, the damage is done.

“Fine Joel, you know what, let’s talk. Let’s talk about how you think I’ve got whatever ‘Ditsy Darlene’ had.” You raise your eyebrows at him, taunting him as you sneer. “Let’s talk about what’s wrong with your batty little bunny.” You hiss the end of the sentence and his eyes grow sad.

He stares at you, silence ringing through the living room for a moment before you finally just grab your bag and make a beeline for the door, unfortunately he beats you to it just as the angry tears start pooling in your eyes.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

“I’m going home.”

“Like hell you are, it’s miles away, and it’s the middle of the night, I’ll give you a ride.” He grabs his coat but you just shake your head.

“I’m not getting in the truck with you. Besides, Ellie's already asleep.” He pinches the bridge of his nose, muttering under his breath once more before reaching into his pocket, scrolling through his phone for a moment, you’re about to just push past him and leave when he brings it to his ear.

“Can you come over? I need a favor.” He grumbles into the phone, you hear a rather irritated voice on the other end until Joel stops them. “You owe me.” There’s a beat of silence before he gets a response that has him nodding and hanging up, looking back at you. “Tommy’l be here in a few minutes, he’ll take you home.” He mumbles before leaning against the counter, you take the opportunity to sit at the table near the door.

Neither one of you so much as moves until headlights illuminate the dim kitchen. When Tommy walks in he’s rather disheveled. His hair is pulled back but most of it still falls around his face, from the looks of it he’s only wearing sweatpants and a jacket.

“This better be important, I haven’t seen Maria in days. So help me god if this is your way of getting back at me for-“ He immediately points an accusatory finger at Joel, sounding extremely irritated.

“She needs a ride home.” Joel interrupts him quickly, nodding over to you before making his way over to Tommy rather quickly, grabbing him by the collar of his jacket and yanking him back out the door. “We need a second.” He yells back in your direction and before you can object he slams the front door leaving you alone.

Almost immediately you watch the blinds shudder as something slams against the kitchen window. You don’t hesitate to stand, rushing over and pressing your ear up against the wall, you don’t even have time to feel bad about eavesdropping. You haven’t found anything damning yet and this might be your only chance. They’re a bit hushed but you can hear them pretty clearly.

“She’s perfectly fine, unlike some people I can control myself.”

Tommy.

“Perfectly fine? She’s a fuckin’ mess Tom. You’d have my head if it had been Maria.”

Joel.

“Maria never woulda found herself in that situation because she knows better, maybe it’s time for you to take care of that.”

“You say that like it’s easy.”

“It is. I told Maria on our second date, you know why? Because it doesn’t matter. There isn’t a damn thing you could tell that girl that would make her leave you, I know it, you know it, hell, she probably knows it.”

Does Tommy know what the thing that plagues you is? The thing that keeps you from staying away from Joel?

“She doesn’t know anything and it’s gonna stay that way.”

“She knows enough. You’re doing more harm by keepin’ her in the dark. What happens when you finally lose that famous self control a’yours?” Another slam against the window has you jolting backwards but you quickly lean back in when you hear Joel snarl.

“I would never do anything to hurt her.”

You want so badly to believe that.

“We both know I’m a hundred times more calm than you and Maria doesn’t even let me stay in the house most days. She needs to know so she can protect herself. What’s gonna happen when you don’t get outta town fast enough one of these days? You’ve been getting dangerously close these last couple of times, you’re gonna break her if she doesn’t know.” There’s a moment of silence and you worry they’re about to come back inside when Tommy speaks again, softer now. “What happens when she goes back into those woods? If she’s in the wrong place at the wrong time?” Another beat of silence. “I’ve seen the two of you, you can barely keep your hands off of her as is, what happens when you catch a whiff of her in the forest and can’t help yourself?”

“I wouldn’t hurt her.”

“I didn’t say you’d hurt her. I said you’d break her. You can’t keep lying to her and telling her she’s crazy, if she finds out on her own she’ll lose it Joel. You want her to end up like our old man?”

You already feel broken.

“This is different.”

“I think it’s exactly the same.” There’s another beat of silence before Tommy speaks again, angrier than before. “If you don’t tell her I will.”

“You have no right-“

“Would’ja quit shovin’ me. She’s gonna come out here if you don’t stop. She has every right to know. I’ll give you a few more weeks but I won’t leave her in the dark forever.”

Maybe you should just ask Tommy to go get coffee or something. From the sounds of it he’ll sort it all out for you.

“Fine.”

“Fine, I'm gonna have to deal with this?”

“Fine, I’ll deal with this.” You barely have enough time to run back to the table and sit before the door swings open again, only Joel comes back in, his expression goes from furious to apologetic when he looks at you. “Tom’s out in the truck, he’ll get you home safe.” The tone he speaks to his brother with is unrecognizable compared to the tone he uses with you. You nod before grabbing your bag keeping your head down as you rush out the door, he catches your arm as you cross the threshold. “What can I do to fix this?” His voice cracks on the word fix and you turn to stare into those brown eyes that threaten to swallow you whole.

You take a moment just to fight the urge to forgive him all together, to act as if all of this is perfectly fine just so you can stay with him.

“You can stop lying.” You whisper before yanking your arm free and running to the passenger side of the truck. You strap yourself in swiftly, not so much as glancing at Tommy.

“Ready to go?” He sounds chipper as ever as you nod, giving one last look to Joel, standing in the doorway watching you depart.

A soft country love song plays on the radio as he heads back towards your camper, a part of you longs to ask him for answers, wondering if he’d actually give them to you. It sounded like he wanted to, a lot of that conversation left you more confused than ever but also rather worried.

You decide it’s better not to let him know you were listening. At least for now.

“You have fun with the little monster?” He breaks the silence, making you jump a bit.

“Ellie? She’s a delight.”

“She’s the cutest, I’m glad Joel has her. He was pretty broken up when Sarah went to college.”

“She still visits, right?” You do your best to not stare at the trees, focusing on the dashboard instead.

“Oh yeah, on holidays and special occasions, she’s only a state away. But you know how it is when you’re in college. She loves her dad but she needed some space to find herself and Joel just got lonely.” He flips on his blinker, turning down your road. “Ellie’s good for him. She keeps him busy.”

“Do you and Maria get to watch her much?” You’re hoping to catch him in a lie.

“Quite a bit yeah.” Damnit. “Joel’s always busy doing Joel stuff and it’s good practice for us, we haven’t decided on kids yet so we settle on just watching Ellie.”

Well this is going nowhere.

You sit in a mostly comfortable silence for a moment.

“She called me girlfriend today, Joel was trying to teach her my name.” You both laugh a bit until he speaks again.

“I’ve been trying to get her to say ‘Uncle Tommy’ for months now, damn kids not sayin’ it just to spite me. She’ll say ‘Auntie Maria’ clear as day.”

You genuinely like Tommy.

Outside of the fact that he wanted to tell you whatever truth everyone seems hellbent on keeping from you.

He’s easy to be around.

“Then what does she call you?” You say with one last laugh as he pulls up towards the camper.

“Most of the time she just calls me Tío.” He gives you a grin as your mouth goes dry, when he gives you a hug goodbye you’re acutely aware of the fact that he smells like cinnamon.

You feel relatively sick the rest of the night.

Tío.

You had almost laughed; it had shocked you so deeply.

It had been Tommy in the woods that day.

You’re sure of it now. It explains everything and fills in all the gaps. The Miller brothers are both haunting these woods. You’re left to stew with that the rest of the night.

You aren’t crazy.

Joel isn’t just a man.

And according to your book that’s why you can’t get away from him. You’re mates. Something about finally knowing you’re right helps you sleep soundly for the first time in ages. You don’t even dream.

You’ve got several notifications from Joel when you wake, a slew of apologies and missed calls which you ignore as you step into the shower. You manage to keep it together long enough to wash yourself, rinsing your hair out, tugging your fingers through the tangles.

You pat yourself dry, wrapping a towel around yourself as you step out of the bathroom, pouring yourself a glass of water as you take a seat at the table, scrolling through your texts.

[ can i come over tomorrow night? ]

[ i’m sorry, i didn’t mean it. ]

[ we can do whatever you wanna do. ]

[ bunny please. ]

You’re already feeling your Joel withdrawal, you should text him, does your body somehow know you plan on depriving it of him? You’ve only been without him for a few hours and you’re exhausted after a full night's sleep. You sit with your head in your hands for a moment, massaging your temples as a headache settles there. After another moment you pinch the bridge of your nose, standing up abruptly.

“Fuck! Ah-” You catch your foot on the uneven board under the table, slicing your heel open on an exposed nail. “Dammit…” You mutter under your breath as you lift your leg, examining the cut. It's small, barely even bleeding but it irritates you wildly, your mood growing more and more sour. You sit on the floor, turning on your phone flashlight as you examine the floor, hoping to fix whatever the problem is, you realize quickly that the entire board is loose. “What the hell?” You pull it back completely, staring confused at the cubby. There’s a small space under the table, when you reach in you find a tote bag in surprisingly good condition. When you free it from its confines your eyes go wide when you see a laptop case.

Darlenes.

Everything’s in the bag, case, laptop, and charger. You set everything on the table, covering the floorboard and making sure nothing sharp is still exposed before taking a seat. You plug the charger in quickly, giving it a moment before opening the laptop and turning it on. You’re delighted when the screen illuminates, a small startup chime playing. Hopefully learning a bit more about your aunt will help you take your mind off things.

Shit.

Password.

You think to yourself for a moment, pondering and trying to come up with a few guesses before you start typing.

Honey

West Virginia

ABC

Darlene Wilson

Ditzy Darlene

You try your own name and your birthday and nothing happens, you stare for a moment, seemingly there’s no limit on guesses so you just keep going. Eventually you just start typing whatever you see, it’s better than nothing.

fridge

shower

laptop

You glance down at your phone.

Joel

Nothing.

You sigh for a moment, running your fingers across your scalp.

Fuck it.

bunny

Your eyes go wide as you stare at her desktop.

Fucking, bunny.

You don’t dwell on that too much, too captivated by the mess of folders in front of you, you start clicking through things, confused by everything you’re seeing until you finally realize what it all is.

It’s everyone in town, and from the looks of it, every adjacent town.

She was keeping profiles on the townsfolk.

It takes a bit of searching but after a few more minutes you find a folder within a folder, within a folder labeled Millers.

Five documents are inside.

Joel M.

Thomas M.

Maria M.

Sarah M.

Eleanor M.

You open Sarah and Ellies first, both are pretty scarce, mostly just schools and such, a few dates in Sarah’s file are highlighted. Maria’s is the same except for a small section noting the increase in unexplained deaths when she officially changed her residence to Honey.

Tommy and Joel are where it gets complicated.

Endless pages of information, enough to fill a book. Most of it seems to be mundane information, more a diary than anything else. Notes on things she found out through the internet, a lot about how they moved around a lot as kids and kept up with that lifestyle up until Sarah, there’s no information on her mother but from the looks of it, the Miller clan settled in Honey six months before Sarah was born.

There’s just too much on them, even simple things like how Darlene saw them in the grocery store, detailed calendars of their whereabouts were being kept by your aunt. You try to skim through a lot of it but there doesn’t seem to be anything highlighted until the last page.

Not to be overlooked.

Did she fucking know?

Darlene may have been ditzy in some ways but this was clearly not one of them. A second highlighted sentence underneath that one catches your eye.

To be investigated in case of my untimely passing.

Your stomach drops.

There’s no way.

You close the files, trying to push away the implications of what you’ve read. But you can’t seem to keep it down.

You never asked anyone how she passed.

Work after the laptop incident is uneventful at best.

With no bodies there isn’t much for you to do.

You clean and you take care of the occasional elderly person you get but that’s about it, you spend a lot of time with Maria, sitting in silence and doing paperwork. It’s as if she knows that you aren’t exactly doing great and just doesn’t want to stir the pot.

You haven’t texted Joel back.

And you feel like shit.

Just in general things haven’t been all that great since you and Joel fought. Being away from him makes you feel shitty and it’s made your mood shitty, you’re irritable and impatient and by the time Maria finally breaks the silence two weeks later you’re ready to explode.

“Are you feeling okay? You seem a little down, you know you can talk to me whenever you want.” It sounds genuine enough but you know better by now than to trust any member of this family.

“I’m fine.” You can’t find it in you to care if it comes off as rude.

“Are you sure?” She’s filing papers on her desk, freezing in place when you speak again.

“Did you do my aunt's service?” You look up at Maria.

It’s a terrible question.

You probably shouldn’t even be asking it but you need to know.

She sits in stunned silence for a moment before clearing her throat.

“I did.”

“How did she die?”

Somehow an even worse question, this is a terrible example of mortician etiquette.

“They told me it was old age.”

“Who told you?”

She swallows loudly.

“The police.”

“Why did the police declare the cause of death? Isn’t that your job?” This might cost you yours but what have you got to lose at this point?

“The police found her.”

“Why were the police even at her house?”

“Christ, I don’t know! You sound just like her, with the questions and the accusations!”

“Accusations? I wasn’t accusing you of anything, what did you think I was accusing you of?”

“I think you should go home, take the rest of the day off.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because you’re acting crazy.”

You aren’t crazy.

Fine. You’ll take the night off. You’ve got some things to take care of anyway. You can’t keep doing nothing, you owe it to Darlene.

“I’ll see you on Monday.” You stand, hastily grabbing your things.

She calls your name as you’re leaving.

“Take care of yourself, please.”

You don’t respond, closing the door as you step into the misty afternoon air.

You aren’t crazy.

And you’re pretty sure Darlene wasn’t either. Something about Maria’s story isn’t adding up, maybe you should have started by interrogating her, she isn’t as good at lying as Tommy and Joel are. Nonetheless, you need to do your own research now.

That’s what you tell yourself to justify what you’re doing as you walk into the police station. It’s tiny, as expected, there’s no secretary so you just let yourself in, approaching a woman with a name plate reading Sheriff.

“Hi, I’m Darlene’s niece.” You don’t bother giving a last name, everyone knows everyone in this damn town.

“Oh! I’ve been meanin’ to stop by and introduce m’self.” She gives you a toothy grin as you nod. “I knew yer aunt pretty well, we used ta joke that I should give er a punch card fer the station.” You thought Joel had a thick southern accent but this woman is on a whole different level.

“She was here often?”

“Nearly twice a week. She would come in ‘ere, poor thing, spewin’ about monsters in the woods. But she was harmless, I didn’t have anything better to do so I’d listen, y’know, ‘take ‘er statement.’” She does air quotes with her fingers and you fight the urge to frown. “Hell of a storyteller that one.”

“Could you help me out with some information regarding her passing?” No sense in being coy about it, seems like this woman will talk for hours if you don’t interrupt. “Maybe I could talk to the officer who found her…” You look around the room at the empty desks before looking back at her, she has a sympathetic look on her face now.

“That would be me. I was first on the scene after we got the call.”

“Call?”

“Well yeah, it was the Miller brothers that found ‘er.”

What the fuck.

“Joel and Tommy?”

“You’ve met ‘em? Who am I kiddin’ of course you’ve met ‘em, they probably knew her better than anyone else, real saints those two.”

“Darlene? You probably know her better than I do.”

That’s what he had said.

“I didn’t realize they spent so much time together.” How much has Joel lied to you about?

“Oh yeah, they were over there several times a week, Joel even named his daughter after her, Darlene’s middle name was Eleanor.” There’s a sour taste in your mouth as you let that sink in.

“So… Tommy and Joel found her?”

“Unfortunately, they had come over like they normally did on Sundays to help her with any house work and they found her in her camper, said she went in ‘er sleep.”

“Wait, they said she went in her sleep? You never saw the body?”

“I- I couldn’t bring myself to look… I cared a lot for Darlene, I considered her a very good friend. Joel and Tommy wrapped her up for me, I escorted them to the home and Maria took care of the rest. Declared cause of death and all that.”

That’s all you need to hear.

Now you have to check, it’ll eat you up inside until there’s nothing left if you don’t. You mumble a goodbye before making a hasty exit.

Tonight you’re going to the cemetery.

Dig or leave.

You need to make up your mind, you can only stand in a graveyard with a shovel for so long before you’re arrested. It’s already ten at night and you need to start as early as possible.

There’s just a lot going on here.

Darlene Eleanor Wilson

More important than the Eleanor of it all is the fact that you’re faced with two tombstones, Darlene’s clearly being a lot fresher than the one beside it.

Benita Isabella Wilson

Both tombstones are labeled the same, beloved wife, and friend

Wife. You’d been told she’d never married.

There was no indication in the camper of such a thing yet here it is, clear as day. From the looks of it Benita passed nearly eight years ago. When you look closer you can see how well kept her tombstones have been. You make a note to pick up where Darlene left off and come back to clean both.

After you do what needs to be done.

You take a deep breath before finally driving the shovel down into the dirt. There’s no time to be squeamish about this, you know better than anyone how long this is going to realistically take to get done so you need to work fast if you want to be out of here before the sun’s coming up.

So you dig.

And you sweat, and you ache but you don’t dare stop.

You dig, and you dig, and you dig.

Until finally the sun is coming up, the sky is dimly lit when you finally hit something other than dirt. You work as quickly as possible to unearth the top half of the coffin and just as daylight breaks you manage to do it. You’re actually a bit thankful for the sun's rising, because you have no time to hesitate, you have to do it and you have to do it now before someone finds you.

So you grit your teeth and open the coffin.

And you meet Darlene.

Your poor, poor aunt Darlene.

Aunt Darlene, who’s cause of death was deemed ‘multiple organ failure, natural causes.’

She’s only been in the ground a few months. A normal person might blame her state on that fact but this isn’t decomposition. Decomposition doesn’t tear half of a person's face off.

When she died she was missing over half of her face, from the looks of it her nose was torn clean off before she got anywhere near a casket.

You swallow your vomit, not wanting to further desecrate her grave.

Your brain is moving at a million miles an hour yet you’re also struggling to form a single coherent thought as you take in the sight of her until finally something just snaps.

Staring at the corpse makes something shift inside of you. As if you’ve been pulled taut for weeks and you’ve finally split in two. Something deep inside of you that you’d never felt before, you sort of wonder if this is how normal people feel when they see a corpse.

You don’t even laugh.

There isn’t fear, or anger, or hate, threatening to burst from you, forcing that all too familiar laugh from your chest.

There’s nothing.

Just you and a corpse.

A mangled corpse, with no one to mourn her, and no one to realize something was horribly wrong until long after she was dead.

You don’t remember much after that. You don’t remember closing the casket, or covering it with dirt, but you know you did. You don’t remember walking to the hardware store, open surprisingly early, you don’t remember making any purchases, and you don’t remember going home.

Yet you’re there when you come to your senses.

You feel terribly hollow and suddenly you’d give anything to fill the camper with one of your nervous laughs but it never comes. You shake your head a bit, trying to focus.

You’re in the camper.

The sun is up.

And you’ve got two rather heavy plastic bags in front of you. You pour the contents out onto the table before methodically grabbing each one, tucking them into your empty backpack, making yourself a mental list of everything while trying to remember why you bought them in the first place.

Several armfuls of rope, and chain, several rolls of duct tape, a new first aid kit, more padlocks than you could ever possibly need, paper towels, bleach, and a rather gaudy souvenir mug, scribbled on the bottom is some print telling you that it’s microwave and dishwasher safe, and shatterproof, it’s obnoxious and absurdly heavy, a decal on the front says ‘Sweet as Honey, West Virginia!’

You stare at your now full bag, blurry memories of your train of thought coming into focus as you slowly but surely remember your intentions.

You were going to visit Joel.

And sort out this whole mess.

Finally have that talk he’s been wanting to have so badly.

If everyone is gonna keep treating you like you’re gone mad then you’re going to act mad.

You wait two days to go visit Joel.

You’ve started to track your cycle so you know exactly when to go see him. When the day comes you tuck yourself into the trees adjacent to the funeral home. Deep enough in the woods that no one can see you but not so deep that you’re filled with the familiar dread the woods typically give you.

It is tempting though.

The concept of getting to feel something again.

Ever since you saw that corpse you’ve just been empty, there isn’t anything left of you.

Joel's truck pulls in as you tilt your head to the side.

You watch as he lifts Ellie out of her car seat, letting her run the distance to the house where Maria waits for her. They talk for a bit before Joel kisses the top of Ellie’s head, making his way back to the truck. The moment he begins backing out of the driveway you begin your walk towards his home.

It’s about a three hour walk but you don’t get bored.

You’d have to be able to feel something to feel boredom.

So you walk, because there’s nothing else for you to do. You walk until you see the tire swing swaying in the cool night air. You walk around the house to the sliding door in the back, and you peer inside through the blinds to find the living room and kitchen empty, when you push the door it gives way immediately.

No reason to lock a door when you’re the scariest thing in the woods.

When you step in you hear the faint sounds of the shower running and you quietly make your way across the room once the door is closed behind you. You take your bag off one arm so you can reach inside, retrieving the novelty mug before zipping it shut and putting it back on.

You don’t even feel nervous.

Your skin buzzes as if you’re anxious and you tap your foot but the wave of anxiety never comes. You fill the mug with water, sipping slowly until you hear the shower turn off and you dump out the contents, tucking yourself behind the fridge and holding your breath.

He moves around for a bit, you hear him moving throughout the house until finally the sound of his footsteps travel down the hall and into the kitchen, when you peek around he’s leaning against the counter, staring into the living room while drying his hair with a towel, dressed in only flannel pajama bottoms.

It’s now or never.

“Could’a swore I shut those…” He grumbles as he tosses the towel onto the back of a chair, you know he’s about to close the blinds so you step out before he can even get off the tile, standing directly behind him as you inhale sharply.

“I’m sorry.” You whisper, shutting your eyes tight just as he turns around and you slam the ceramic mug against his temple.

Please don’t be dead, please don’t be dead, please don’t be dead.

You pray silently to yourself as you finally kneel beside his crumpled form. After the initial strike you’d turned around with a small squeak, terrified of your own actions, hearing the sound of his body hitting the floor. It took you five whole minutes to finally turn and look.

Still breathing.

That’s all that matters.

You throw your backpack down on the counter before crouching down, rolling him onto his back. His chest rises and falls as if he were asleep but a small amount of blood is pooling from where you hit him, the skin split just below his hairline. You brush a curl away from his forehead to look closer, it’s a superficial wound, not too deep but still bleeding profusely. It could be worse, you tell yourself as you stand again, searching through your pack, eventually just grabbing it by the bottom and dumping the contents onto the counter. First things first you need to bandage his wound, this will all be easier if he isn’t bleeding everywhere.

You grab the bandages you bought for this very purpose, along with the paper towels, dabbing up the blood now streaking through his hair.

This is fine.

Everything’s fine.

It takes a bit of effort but once he’s all cleaned up you manage to get him into a chair and it’s easy from there. You know how strong he is so you’re rather generous in your use of each restraint. Using most of everything you’ve got securing him, rope, tape and chain. When you’re finished you take a step back.

He won’t be able to get out of it.

You’re certain.

You aren’t sure what’s next honestly. There isn’t really anything for you to do until he wakes up so you find yourself just staring down the hallway.

He was just in his room, it probably isn’t locked anymore.

Curiosity gets the better of you as you make your way down the hall, Joel’s bedroom door beckoning you. You twist the knob, slowly pushing the door in as your hand fumbles with the wall beside it, trying to find the lightswitch. You stare into the darkness before finally finding it, flinching a bit as a single light fixture hanging in the center of the room flickers on.

Huh.

This is what you were expecting to find the first time you came over. No wonder he always wants to sleep in the camper.

It looks like a room you’d only see in a horror movie. The walls are mostly bare, the wallpaper is torn off in large chunks and against the far wall you can see a few polaroids taped up. The only furniture is a mattress on the floor in the center of the room. Your breath hitches as you walk to the closet, pulling open the door. It looks like he keeps all of his belongings in here, shoved into the small space, clothes, personal items, and boxes fill it entirely. You shut the door, you don’t have nearly enough time to go through all of it so you go to investigate the photos instead.

Five polaroids are pinned up.

One is a photo of Joel holding a tiny baby with a shocking mess of brunette curls atop her head. Her big brown eyes are identical to Joels.

The second is a pretty recent photo of Ellie. A slightly blurry photo of the little girl holding the camera in front of a mirror, Joel is barely visible in the background, you can see his signature dimple as he holds her up.

The third photo is of two people you don’t recognize. A man with a vacant stare sitting in a rocking chair with a woman perched beside him, kissing his cheek. Both look to be in their sixties, the man bares a striking resemblance to Tommy, the woman has the same frenzied curls as Sarah.

The fourth was taken in front of the funeral home, Tommy and Maria are pictured standing underneath a ‘Grand Opening!’ banner.

The fifth, and clearly most recent photo is of you. You have no memory of it being taken, how could you, your eyes are shut. You look peaceful though. Happy. The morning light shimmers against your lashes, you’re tangled in the sheets with your arms wrapped tightly around his abdomen, from the angle he’s holding the camera at you can see his head turned down, giving you an infatuated look.

You run a finger along the edge of the photo, lost in thought until you hear him coughing, you turn the light off, rushing back out into the kitchen, his eyes are glued to you immediately.

“Bunny…” His tone is low and cautious.

“Don’t do that, don’t talk to me like I’m crazy.” You make your way across the kitchen, pulling up a chair and sitting across from him.

You know how this looks but that doesn’t give him an excuse to be condescending.

“Of course you aren’t crazy, I know that, I just need you to let me go.” His voice goes soft, as if he were speaking to a cornered animal.

“Stop it.” You frown at him. “I’m completely coherent right now.”

“Okay.” He nods slowly. “Look, I know things haven’t been easy for you recently, just let me go and we can forget any of this ever happened, okay? We can just go to bed and deal with it in the morning.” The funny part is that you know he’s telling the truth, if you untie him right now he’d carry you to bed as if nothing happened and he’d hold you until you forgot about the whole thing. “Please don’t do this.” He speaks softer now. “Think about Ellie. Don’t leave her without a father.”

“I’m not going to hurt you, I’m not a monster.” The offense is apparent in your tone.

“Then what’s the plan here, bunny.”

“We’re going to wait.” You sit back in your chair, crossing your arms in front of your chest. “I should be getting my period tomorrow.” You tilt your head to the side a tiny bit as the color leaves his face. “We will wait here for forty eight hours, if nothing happens I’ll untie you.”

His face suddenly turns to an expression of concentration, you’ve got plenty of time to grill him over the next forty eight hours, you decide to let him be for now. Neither one of you says so much as a word for well over an hour when suddenly his hand spasms. A nervous tick of sorts, his fingers flexing outward before his knuckles go white as his hand forms into a fist.

“Let me go.” He whispers.

“In forty eight hours.”

“Now.”

You shake your head no.

Almost simultaneously you watch his jaw twitch in an almost inhuman way.

“Then you need to get out of here.” His voice is strained now as he gives you a look of pure desperation.

“I’m staying right here.” You raise your eyebrows at him definitely but lose any of your bravado when he snarls, his muscles rippling briefly as you watch the tape tear, some of the ropes split in different places as he flexes. You tumble out of your own chair as you recoil.

“Iron?” He growls out, when he looks up at you now his eyes are bloodshot, you’re incapable of doing anything other than staring in horror as you hear the screech of metal as one of the chain links bursts. “Are these- are they iron?” His voice shifts down an octave halfway through the sentence and you shake your head frantically.

How were you supposed to know they needed to be iron? You aren’t exactly experienced in holding eldritch horrors hostage.

“You- fuck, you need to get out of here.” When he stares up at you there’s another groan from the strain against the metal but you can’t move. You’ve fallen flat on your ass as you stare at him with wide confused eyes, your legs splayed out uselessly in front of you while your arms prop you up just enough to watch the nightmare before you unfold. “Now.” You recognize the voice that speaks now as Joel’s, despite the fact that it isn’t his at all, it’s just a low bellowing sound now that shouldn’t be possible for a human to make. Your breath is starting to quicken as you tremble.

You’re nearly hyperventilating when the chains all simultaneously break, the metal shrieking as it rips. But it isn’t anywhere near loud enough to cover up the horrific sound that echoes throughout the house.

Bones, breaking.

A sickening crunching and snapping as Joel's flesh ripples as if the ocean is just beneath his skin. Joel is big, he’s always been broad, sturdy, but this is something completely different. He isn’t just big, he’s hulking. His body twists and tears and it hurts to even look at but you can’t turn away. He’s falling apart, his flesh and bones tear and bleed as they reshape themselves into something beyond your comprehension.

This isn’t what you came across in the woods.

This looks like the kind of thing that eats what you came across in the woods.

His body curls in on itself, crouching down onto all fours and he’s still taller than you. If he had been wearing a shirt you assume it would have torn when his spine realigned itself. Each vertebrae popping itself out, separating and lengthening until his body shudders, the skin pulled taut over his stretched out form. The entire process probably takes less than a minute but it feels like hours pass as you watch, your eyes wide.

Until finally he stills, panting, staring at the ground before tilting his head up a bit.

“Little… rabbit.”

It speaks.

He looks at you like a meal and your breath hitches at the sight, there’s a burning in your abdomen as you stare into his eyes, he’s searching your gaze for something but he doesn’t find it. Almost as if you can read his mind a word comes to mind.

Repulsion.

He’s searching for disgust, or loathing, but he won’t find it, after all this is what you wanted. You don’t hate him for this, you won’t look at him like he’s ugly because he isn’t, even if you’re afraid. There is something horrifyingly gorgeous about him, even if every one of your base instincts tell you to get as far away from him as you possibly can.

He’s beautiful like this.

The deep brown of his eyes takes over the whites as his eyelids pull back, his eyes must be the size of baseballs now. Enormous and dark, sparking with intrigue. The hook of his nose now stretches to fit his new face, halfway down it bends and breaks a bit. His hair looks a little longer, more appropriately framing his face now.

Does it hurt?

Is the question that comes to mind the more you take him in. Despite how large his maw is it still tears a bit at the cheeks, holes where it looks like the skin was pulled too tight, revealing the jagged teeth within.

A growl bubbles in his throat, pouring out and snapping you out of your assessment as he crawls forward a bit until he’s practically hovering above you, his head turns, shifting from side to side as he gives you several small sniffs, almost like a dog assessing a stranger in it’s home.

It makes the hair on your arms stand straight.

Run rabbit, run.

“Bunny.” He rumbles out, almost as if he’s acknowledging recognition.

And you fucking laugh.

With your entire chest.

It’s the first time you’ve felt anything in days, it’s almost a relief. Everything comes bubbling to the surface as you burst into a fit of hysterical, nervous laughter.

You have never been this afraid in your entire life.

He exhales sharply, the force of it has your hair rustling a bit, your senses suddenly overwhelmed with the smell of peppermint. You don’t dare move, freezing in place when he leans down, only a few inches away from you now, his arms pinning you in. God, he smells so fucking good right now and you hate yourself for noticing.

Curiosity killed the rabbit.

Is that a saying? It will be after tonight.

You swallow loudly, and try to close your legs as subtly as possible but his gaze follows the movement immediately and you freeze once more. Fuck, fuck, fuck, your stomach burns so hot it’s painful as you stare up at him.

His head tilts almost knowingly as he inhales deeply and his eyes darken.

Fuck.

Can he smell how turned on you are?

i no longer have a tag list !! if you want updates for this fic follow @lincolndjarinnotifs !!

a/n : have a love hate relationship with this chapter bc i hate that i love it. but like straight up lemmie know if this chapter was a bit scattered bc that's my big worry rn. i jumped around a lot but also these chapters are so long sometime i feel it's best to just expedite some scenes yknow? idk.

#lincolndjarin #joel miller #tlou #the last of us #joel miller x reader #joel miller smut #joel miller x you #joel miller fanfiction #joel miller fic #tlou hbo #joel tlou #the last of us hbo #monster fucker #monster lover #monster romance #oh honey #fic : oh honey

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cacoetheswriting · 7 months ago

Text

pearl: august 1986 [drabble]

pairing: eddie munson x fem!reader word count: approx. 900 summary: finally you embark on the adventure of a lifetime with your best friend turned boyfriend, eddie.

content warnings: best friends to lovers, idiots in love, adult language - if i missed anything, pls let me know!

pearl masterlist

a/n: wanted to wrap this series up completely with a final little drabble. thank you to everyone that’s been reading and showing support, it really means more than you can imagine! ily <3

“And here’s a whole bag filled with crackers, salted peanuts, and Oreos, “ Robin explains the last of the random stuff she’s packed for you and slides her arm around your waist. She tilts her head and you meet her gaze. “Still can’t believe you’re leaving me behind, you bitch. Just promise you’ll call every single day.”

“Every day,” you repeat and squeeze her gently, “As long as I’m near a pay phone, that is.”

Robin proceeds to pinch your arm, a squeal escaping your mouth as a result.

“Then you better make damn sure you find yourself near a pay phone or I’m following you out there and dragging your ass home.”

You chuckle. “Okay, okay. I promise… mom.”

“Bitch,” she exhales.

“I’ll miss you too, Buckley.”

Her hold on you lasts only a few minutes more. After letting out a soft sigh, Robin walks back inside the house and you’re trying to remain strong, not let your emotions show because you know the second you’d let the tears fall, you’d reconsider leaving her behind.

After you made the decision to leave Hawkins with Eddie, embark on this adventure together, you both told your mom and Wayne first. They were quick to agree that it’s a great idea. Not only that, they decided to join — at least for a portion of the trip.

The plan was for them to keep you company until New Orleans. There, after some sightseeing, mom and Wayne would take a flight to San Diego. Luckily, you still had some relatives from your dad’s side of the family living in the area; family who after seeing on the news of what happened to most of Hawkins was very quick to offer help. So while mom and Wayne got settled in California, you and Eddie would finish your trip, eventually meeting them there.

Goodbye Hawkins, hello San Diego.

It was a good plan. Everyone agreed there was nothing left for you or Eddie here, but as the date of your move approached, you couldn’t help feeling sad. Robin was staying here, as was Steve. They were going to remain in Hawkins with Dustin, Eleven, and their group friends. Wistful, the thought of moving onto better things while they remained.

Eddie finds you staring blankly at the boot of the car. You hear him sneak up behind you, but you don’t turn around. His arms manoeuvres under yours and wraps around your waist, holding you in place while gently placing his chin atop your left shoulder.

“It’s all so bittersweet,” you say quietly, not looking at him.

“But it’s also for the best,” Eddie’s tone is encouraging, “With Wayne and your mom also coming, and this plan for a new chapter in San Diego, aside from our friends, Hawkins is overshadowed with bad memories.”

As you turn on your heel to face him, Eddie’s arms wrap around your waist.

“This dingy old town gave me you. I’ll be eternally grateful for that.”

“Me too,” he pecks your lips before pressing his forehead to yours, “But you also almost lost me here, forever, and shit it might be selfish to say, I don’t want that happening again. This place is cursed. We’ll be happy in California.”

He’s right. You know he’s right.

Though it still doesn’t make it any easier because goodbyes suck. You knew that all too well. They’re hard, filled with sorrow and sometimes even regret. And as the group gathers outside for the last goodbye, you can’t hold in the tears anymore.

They first break when you hug Eleven. Then her friends, whom you’ve gotten to know in the worst of times, especially Dustin who holds onto you a little longer than everyone else, muttering: “Take care of him, please”.

The seal breaks completely when Robin approaches with a sullen look on her face. She wraps her arms around you tentatively and you return the embrace instantly. You’ve always felt safe around her and by the way she sniffles into me, you know the feeling is mutual.

“What’s crazy about all this is that you finally kissed Munson,” Robin jokes after a few moments of silence. “Thought you’d never grow the balls.”

You roll your eyes at her comment then pull away slowly, although not fully letting go. Instead you hold her by her forearms. “I’ll miss you, Buckley.”

“Just be safe, okay? And if he hurts you in any way, you call straight away. I will gladly kick his ass.” Robin says, loud enough for Eddie to hear, then walks towards him to also give him a hug.

Your last goodbye is with Steve. His hold on you is strong and the tears that stream down your face as a result are salty. He’s crying too, you can hear him trying to catch his breath. He’d been there for you in the worst of times and because of that, you’re forever bonded. Although the hug doesn’t feel like a complete goodbye. You’re certain you’ll see him again and when you eventually break apart, he promises to visit as soon as you get settled in San Diego.

The whole group stands hand-in-hand, watching you and Eddie get settled in the car — mom and Wayne are already waiting in the backseat. The metalhead looks at you while buckling his seatbelt. There’s a smile on his face and despite your tears, you can’t help but return the expression.

No more sorrow, is all you think as you look at the boy in front of you.

And as if he knows what you’re thinking, Eddie leans across from the driver's seat and captures your lips in a gentle kiss before muttering, “Here’s to our next adventure, my pearl.”

pearl masterlist

& tagging some cool people that expressed interest in this lil series: @cactusangie , @spenciesprincess , @capitanostella , @ashlynnkennedy , @ms1oftheboys , @kurdtbean

#eddie munson #eddie munson fanfic #eddie munson fluff #eddie munson fix it fic #eddie munson fic #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x you #eddie munson x female reader #eddie munson x fem!reader fluff #eddie munson x fem!reader #bestfriend!eddie munson #bestfriend!eddie munson x reader #pearl (eddies version)

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jeankirsteinsgrlfrnd · 10 months ago

Note

yesss pleaseeee write the stalker!jean y/n as a drabble!!! like Jean is just soo 😫i just know he would be a good asl stalker, especially since he is super tall and mysterious 😫

lurk

pairing: jean kirstein x f!reader

word count: 1.7k +

a/n: i didnt proof read this but also this came out super cute but like also terrifying but ily pookie bear jean

tw: stalking, manipulation, drinking, etc

it was cold tonight, nearly below freezing in shiganshina. you hated the cold, you dreaded being bundled up in a billion layers only to still be shivering. however, it was almost christmas and you were running behind on shopping. fortunately for you, the streets were quiet. nobody wanted to be out in this weather. you weren't afraid of the dark. often times, you embraced the peace that came from walking the street alone at night. despite being a woman, shiganshina was a relatively safe city.

the streets and sidewalks were lined with a thing layer of snow with flurries still falling from the sky. there's a glow of warmth from the street lines as you duck into the nearest store. it's a small boutique that's much warmer than outside. there are mannequins strewn about, various pieces on displays and a small jewelry section in the back. you decide to head to the back of the store and work your way up front.

despite being a small array of options, the jewlery they had was beautiful. you pick up a small white box were two silver earrings in the shape of hearts like. you frown as you slide a finger down the side of the container. they were pretty, but it wasnt something your mother would like and that's who you were here for, after all. you ponder getting them for yourself but your face drops when you remember your budget. you sigh and put them back on the shelf while you put your mother first.

as you set them down, you can't shake the feeling of being watched. no, you were definitely being watched. you slowly turn your head around and an exhale when you don't see anybody with their eyes on you. just a few other women browsing about and the shop owner who's ringing up a tall man's purchase. you shake your head. christmas time was always stressful for you and it's certainly showing now.

after finding a suitable necklace for your mom, you bring it up to the cashier. the cashier is a sweet, older lady who is smiling as hard as she can. you feel bad that she has to be out at work during the cold and make small talk about how you'll need to do your holiday baking tomorrow. she laughs and tells you that she's running behind too, and that she's sure you'll get your cookies done in time.

the walk back to your apartment building isn't so bad despite the howling wind. you remind yourself to be thankful for the snow, knowing the toll global warming would eventually take. on the opposite side of the street, there's a nice black car with tinted windows. you take a moment to wonder who was lucky enough to drive such a luxurious car, as you've seen it around town before. quite often actually. although, you've never seen it on your street before. you didn't live in the nicest part of town and you assume it must be somebody's family member visiting for the holidays. you head into the builiding, unaware of the pair of eyes staring at you from within the car.

unfortunately, the next day isn't any warmer. you're smart this time and decide to go shopping early in the day instead of having to brave the cold, harsh night. you drive to the nearest grocery store; your kitchen was tragically empty and lacking all of the ingredients needed to make your famous christmas cookies.

in the baking aisle of the store, you stare at the plethora of options that could either make or break your dessert. you grab a bag of chocolate chips and peanut butter chips. you spin on your heel, ready to move farther down the aisle. classically, you bump right into somebody and unfortunately the carton of eggs you had tucked under your arm before coming to this aisle heads straight to the ground. the lid pops open and eggs fall out, cracking on the ground. ultimately, they crack and the yolks splatter onto your shoes and up your paint leg a little. you let out a gasp and look up into the eyes of a handsome stranger.

his hazel eyes widen as he looks at splattered eggs on your clothing. "i'm so sorry, i didn't see you there." he looks for a way to help you but he's failing.

"it's fine," you sigh. "it's christmas time and we're all in a rush. plus, i'm a little clumsy." you blush as you feel his eyes give you a once over. you clear your throat and his eyes come back up to land on yours.

"i'm the clumsy one this time. i really am sorry. could i at least pay for your stuff?" he tilts his head. you realize just how tall he is as he looms over you, waiting for an answer.

"no, that's alright, really. it's my fault, i told you i'm clumsy. stuff like this happens to me alot." you admit, turning more red by the second. he laughs and rubs the back of his neck. his laugh is deep and hearty.

"oh, c'mon, how else are those cookies going to get made?"

"how did you know i was going to make cookies?" you ask, raising a brow at him. he clears his throat and points at the bags in your arms.

"you're in the baking aisle, after all. eggs and chocolate chips are also two of the most important things when it comes to cookies." he laughs and you feel embarrassed at your stupid question. obviously he knew you were going to be baking, it's that time of year and you are holding the ingredients for them. you laugh with him and choose to accept his generosity, appreciating not having to spend your own money, especially since it was a little tight right now.

after picking out a new carton of eggs, you and the handsome stranger head to the check out line. "my names jean, by the way." he says as he hands the clerk his card. he looks down at you.

"i'm (y/n)." you tell him. he nods his head. he hands you the plastic bag filled with your now paid for groceries. you two walk out of the store together when all of a sudden, he stops you.

"this might be a little cliche and a little too fast, but would you like to go to dinner with me tomorrow? just feel really bad 'bout the eggs 'n all." he shrugs as he makes sure his joke lands.

you know what, what the hell?

"sure, jean."

after exchanging numbers, you two head off in your own separate directions. back at your apartment, the fancy car is still there, just in a slightly different position. you think about how nice it must be to have family come to visit as you head inside.

tomorrow night comes quicker than expected. you had knots in your stomach all morning and you find them still lingering into the evening. you take your time getting ready for your date with jean and you can't shake the feeling of anxiety nestling into your chest.

later on, you park your car at the restaurant jean had texted you to meet him at. it's a high end restaurant and you're relieved you chose to wear one of your nicest dresses and an overcoat. as you make your way to the front door, you see that same black car, tucked neatly into one of the back parking spots. you shake your head as you head into the restaurant.

jean is dressed to the nines. if you thought he was handsome yesterday, you thought he fucking looked deadly tonight. if looks could kill.

jean smiles as you take a seat across from him. you give him a shy smile as you watch him take in your appearance. there's a glimmer of hunger in his eyes that makes you want to sink into your seat. you're self conscious as his eyes devour you but his words come out so calmly. "you look really good."

"thank you." quiet are the words that manage to come from your lips.

you spend the evening making talk of all sort of topics ranging from the weather to the casual, heated arguments about aliens and if they existed or not. you really enjoy your time, finding it n yourself to indulge in a bottle of wine. jean offers to pay for the entire meal as your plates becomes empty. you laugh and make a joke about how rich he must be. he just chuckles in return.

you start to realize just how drunk you are. the heat in your cheeks is radiating and you feel like you're vibrating, just a little. jean hasn't taken his eyes off you once.

"before you go," he starts. he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small, white box. "i got you something. now, i know we just officially met but i couldn't help myself."

the words go right over your head as you reach across the table for the little container. you take the lid off and gasp. the pair of little, silver hearts from the store the other night. you become a stuttering mess. "h-how did you.."

your brain begins to move a thousand miles a minute, flashing different pictures your eyes have collected the last few days. it's the black car you've seen all over town. the tall man in the boutique. the black car parked on your street. the feeling of being watched. the cookies. the earrings. the car in a different position.

your words fall out in a whisper as you drop the box onto the table. "you..." jean tilts his head and smirks. he can see the realization in your eyes and the hunger in his grows. you feel helpless in this crowded restaurant, not wanting to make a scene. he watches your rosy cheeks turn pale.

"me? what about me, (y/n)?" his words are condescending.

"you've been watching me. stalking me." you hiss under your breath, hoping it comes out as confident but jean picks up on the shakiness on your voice.

"hmm..? what was that?" you can see the thrill he's getting. you don't answer him. you reach to where you set your phone on the table at the beginning of the date. it isn't there. “oh, my silly (y/n.) you've drank a whole bottle of wine. just however will you get home?"

my jean fanfiction

my ko-fi

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siyooungi · 1 year ago

Note

HELLO MY FAV WRITER!! ive miss u sm!! HSJAHSGS i act have a request!! hmmm ot5 lesserafim x reader,,where reader is a student and she just recently started college. they knew how reader take their education seriously LIKEEE VERYYY SERIOUSLY cause theyve seen reader being burnout n overworking n all while she were in hs. then theres this day/ week,they saw reader waking up at 3am or sum just to study and stressing and shi😭 barely sleeping at all..if you cant do ot5,,it can be sakura/chaewon !! thank you so much my fav person <33

A/N: i hope this is up to your liking because i really didn’t know what to do!?/$:! BUT you are so sweet, ily and i take great honor in being one of your faves!! <33

Pairing: OT5 X Fem!Reader

Group: Le Sserafim

Warning(s): None!

You recently embarked on your college journey and initially, you were excited, but that changed rather quickly when you became adapted. You were already well aware of the tough workload that was going to be thrown your way, but that wasn’t out of the ordinary for you. Would you consider yourself a dedicated and ambitious student? Yeah, that would be most fitting. You took your education very seriously.

The girls had witnessed firsthand how seriously you took your education. You often pushed yourself to the brink of exhaustion during your high school years, and they had seen the toll it took on you, as burnout and overworking became all too familiar.

Though, you’ve always had such a great support system because of them. The girls were determined to support you in any way they could. They literally formed an unbreakable pact without you knowing. The five girls vowed to be there for you, providing comfort, solace, and a much-needed distraction from your studies whenever you needed it most.

On a particular day, as the sun dipped below the horizon and the world around them fell into a peaceful slumber, Sakura being the only presumed one awake at the time, noticed something amiss. She walked past your room to go to the bathroom, but retracted her steps when she heard faint music coming from your room. She quietly opened your door, the sound falling on deaf ears as you were entirely fixated on your books and notes.

You were awake at an ungodly hour, your face etched with stress and fatigue. The sight struck a chord deep within her heart, and she knew they needed to intervene. The very next day, she told all of the girls and they were more than ready to take action the next time they caught you, which they knew would be relatively soon.

On that same day, with a shared determination, the girls stealthily gathered their resources, concocting a plan to put an end to your late-night study sessions. They wanted to remind you of the importance of self-care and that they would always be there for you.

As the clock struck 3 am, the group of girls made their way to Kazuha’s room, where they ordered you to stay when you got back to the dorm. You tried questioning them, but they didn’t leave any room for that and ushered you into her room. Sighing, you brought all the stuff you needed for studying that night, into the room. Eunchae was the one to creak the door open, allowing them to peek in. Like the night before, you were nearly falling asleep as you continued to go over the material.

Sakura, being the first to catch you in this state, took charge. She had prepared meticulously crafted flashcards and notes that would not only make studying easier for you but also inject an element of fun into the process. Each note was laced with encouraging messages and colorful illustrations, designed to uplift your spirits.

Meanwhile, Chaewon and Yunjin busied themselves in the kitchen, cooking up a storm. They knew that a well-fed mind would thrive, so they prepared cuisine meant just for you. Delicious aromas wafted through the air as they whipped up your favorite dishes, carefully arranging them on a beautifully decorated tray. Though, there were moments where Chaewon occasionally scolded Yunjin for messing around and eating some of the ingredients, of course. Next time the younger girl tried to get a bite, she quickly swatted her hand away.

Kazuha and Eunchae, the mischievous duo, had a different plan in mind. While you were on campus, they took your mountain of homework and assignments, determined to alleviate your burden. Thankfully, you didn’t bring them with you and instead, only a notebook for your notes. They were set to work, meticulously completing your tasks with precision and care. Some assignments were required to be done on a laptop and they nearly panicked trying to guess your password.

Luckily, they were dealing with a forgetful person who happened to write her password on a sticky note. Kazuha pointed to the note on the desk once she spotted it, causing Eunchae to sigh out of relief. They both erupted into a fit of laughter once they realized you left it out in the open and they were panicking for nothing. Although, they cut it really close to when you came back to the dorm, scrambling to leave your room how it was and as if nothing was out of place.

They walked past you, doing their best not to act suspicious, but you felt that something was off and squinted your eyes at them. Shrugging, you continued your path to your room. Once you were out of sight and they heard the door close, they giggled and fist bumped before going their separate ways.

As the girls executed their plan with utmost devotion, they finally unveiled their surprise to you. They had taken you from Kazuha’s room without any protests. You were beyond tired and just chose your rest your head on Sakura’s shoulder as she and the others guided you back to your room. You had no energy to question theme

Opening your bedroom door, you were met with a scene straight out of a fairy tale. Soft music played in the background, the room adorned with twinkling fairy lights, and the intoxicating aroma of your favorite scent coming from candles.

Overwhelmed with emotions, your eyes welled up with tears of gratitude. Your friends, your pillars of support, had transformed your ordinary night into a magical one. They had gone above and beyond, pampering you like a princess and showing their unwavering love and care.

Sakura handed you the thoughtfully prepared flashcards, encouraging you to take breaks and enjoy the journey of learning. Chaewon and Yunjin presented you with one of your favorite dishes, urging her to savor each bite and nourish your body and soul. Of course, they put the others in the fridge. Kazuha and Eunchae revealed the completed assignments, relieving you of the heavy weight that had burdened you.

Not knowing what else to do, you brought them in for a group hug, mumbling and repeating a ‘thank you’ into Sakura’s shoulder, considering she was the first to accept the hug before the others quickly joined.

From that night forward, you experienced a newfound balance in her life. You continued to excel academically, driven by your passion and support from your friends. But you also learned the importance of self-care, knowing that your mental and emotional well-being were just as crucial as your academic pursuits.

With that being said, would you still occasionally drive yourself to the brink of insanity dealing with the stress that was awaiting you for the rest of your college years? Yes, yes you would.

#fem reader #le sserafim #lesserafim x reader #lesserafim imagines #lesserafim scenarios #kpop #kpop girl groups #siyooungi

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deobienthusiast · 11 months ago

Text

like a moth to a flame | ljy

• pairing: royal guard!juyeon x gn!reader

• word count: 11.2k words (so fucking proud of myself)

• genre: forbidden love!au, royal!au, angst, fluff

• warnings: brief mentions of nudity, implied sexual themes without actually mentioning it, suggestive, mentions of death (there’s a few descriptive death parts and descriptive injury parts), blood, dead bodies

• synopsis: after falling for the one of the royal guards your family has hired, you now face the dilemma of worrying about his safety without giving away your relationship

• notes: no lie, my expectations for this fic weren’t very high, but when i finished it i bawled like a baby because of how proud i was for finishing it and how proud i was of it. this has to be probably my best fic yet, so i hope you guys really really enjoy it!!!! banner is by @sungbeam ILY THANK YOU SO MUCH🥹🥹

• tagging: @deoboyznet @userjuyo @cloverdaisies @hongyangi @juyeonszn @sureogi @kimsohn @invuwrld (let me know if you want to be apart of a tag list for a certain member OR be tagged for any tbz fics)

Life had a funny way of placing people in front of you so they could become a part of your life. You always wondered, if you were out on your own and living a very different life than the one you live, just how you would meet the same people who were already present within your young adolescent years. Being the child of a king seemed like the life everyone would want. However, when you peek upon the lives of the common who live normally without an impending threat constantly over their heads, you get jealous. They live with such ease, with no cares in the world. You live with a constant fear of your castle doors being broken down, and someone wreaking havoc on your family. That was until your father hired new royal guards.

They were all relatively tall. Some being your height, while others just towered right over you. Three were on the younger side, four of them being your age, and four being older than you. You grew close to the ones who were your age. You grew close to the younger ones as well. They were a bit more childish, so they were kept more so in the castle as to not provide any unwarranted attention. The four eldest were the main ones that were sent out on missions, coming back beaten, bruised, and bloodied. But finishing their job, nonetheless. The eleven guards took care of business when it needed to be dealt with. There was one that stood out to you, though.

When these guards stepped through the castle doors, your curiosity got the best of you. You usually don’t dabble in your father’s affairs. Too worried you’ll hear something that you don’t want to. However, when these men stepped out of his chambers, you couldn’t help but lock eyes with one. He stopped almost immediately, his cat-like eyes dragging you in as his colleagues moved from around him to head to their respective posts. He gave you a bow and a small smile as his long legs took strides to put him right in front of you.

Holding out his large hand, you gently placed your smaller one in his. This allowed him to bring your hand to his lips where he left the softest brush of a kiss upon your knuckles.

“Your highness,” He said softly.

And that was how you met Juyeon. The royal guard who had stolen your heart, and you his. From that point on, you two were inseparable, having to hide your relationship due to the nature of his job. He was forbidden to be with a member of the royal family, but even he couldn’t lie. You were so captivating. Juyeon had never met anyone like you in his life. The way you move so elegantly and swiftly. How you had a multitude of people in the castle wrapped around your pretty little finger (him included). Juyeon was so in love with you that it scared him. Keeping your relationship a secret was hard for the boy. Especially considering he was now to a point where he’d leave with the older guards for missions, which meant leaving your safety in the hands of the three youngest who he knew had massive crushes on you (Sunwoo, especially). Juyeon wanted you for himself. He didn’t like to share, especially not with his members. And you were too special to him, too precious for your safety to be left in the hands of anyone but himself. Of course his members weren’t idiots. In fact, the younger ones were the first to find out about the two of you and spread it to the rest of the crew. This led to Juyeon getting a stern talking to from the oldest, Sangyeon, explaining to him the dangers of falling for a member of the royal family and the harm it could put him in if anyone besides them found out. Juyeon didn’t care, and quite frankly, neither did you.

That’s how two of the older members, Hyunjae and Jacob, found you two in your room with nothing but the royal cotton sheets covering your bodies that were wrapped around each other.

“Seriously?!” Hyunjae said incredulously. “What is wrong with the two of you?”

Jacob walked towards the side of the bed Juyeon lay on as he grabbed his uniform, tossing it to the boy.

“Change! Before Sangyeon realizes you’ve left your post outside the bedroom door.” Jacob said, emphasizing the “outside”.

Juyeon chuckled, rolling over just slightly to softly peck your lips as he sat up, leaving enough slack in the sheets so you could cover yourself.

“I’m not changing in front of you guys.” Juyeon gestured to the two boys.

Hyunjae scoffed. “But you’ll change in front of,”

“Got it! You’ve got three minutes.” Jacob cut off the boy as he pushed him to the door.

He cracked it slightly, checking to see if anyone was outside, making you all hold your breath. He turned to you all, nodding slightly as he and Hyunjae exited before repeating. “Three minutes, Juyeon.”

You couldn’t help but chuckle. Despite knowing the danger Juyeon was putting himself in, you knew they would never tell Juyeon to stop seeing you. Especially since you made him the happiest he’s ever been since he became a royal guard. At least that’s what Hyunjae had told you.

Juyeon waited for the door to close completely before grabbing his boxers from the floor. Sliding them over his legs to cover his bare bottom half, he stood up, turning around to stare at you.

“What?” You said softly.

He just shook his head with a shrug. “You’re just so beautiful.”

Rolling your eyes, knowing how completely ravaged you look because of him, you just nod. “Yeah, you definitely need to get back to your post.”

Juyeon laughed, his hair bouncing with every movement of his head. You grabbed the night clothes the tall man had rid you of when he snuck into your room, slipping them on as you got up to help Juyeon with his uniform. His pants and boots went on without any struggle, but getting his top fastened down enough to cover the marks you left on him seemed to be a bit more of a challenge. Feeling a little guilty, knowing he could get in trouble, you mumbled out an apology.

“I guess I got carried away.” You spoke sheepishly.

He looked at you through the floor length mirror, having finally found a way to cover everything as he smiled.

“Don’t be. They let me know that I’m doing my job correctly.”

Now that was corny, but you couldn’t deny the way a heat creeped up your neck at his words.

As the last button on his top got fastened, a knock sounded on the door.

“Sangyeon is looking for you.” Jacob’s muffled voice said.

Juyeon let out a sigh as he walked over to you, grabbing your hand to bring to his lips just like he did the first day he met you.

“I love you. I’ll see you in the morning after our briefing with your father.”

You could only nod, too captivated by his voice to truly understand what was coming out. Juyeon kissed your forehead this time before moving to the door, throwing a wink to you from over his shoulder as he got out just in time. You laid your ear to the door as you could hear a pair of heavy-footed boots make their way to your door.

“Please tell me you weren’t doing what I think you were?” You heard Sangyeon ask him.

Juyeon replied. “I was just checking in. Making sure everything was okay. I swear.”

From the other side of the door, Sangyeon gave the younger boy a look. “You’re playing with fire Juyeon.”

Juyeon could only nod as Sangyeon walked back to his post, finishing his rounds of checking on each guard. You sighed, allowing your feet to drag you to the now empty king bed that felt too big for one person.

You fell asleep easier than you had expected, waking to a knock at your door. You groaned slightly as the door opened, your right hand coming in to greet you.

“Good morning, your highness. You must get dressed immediately. Your father has summoned everyone to the ballroom for a meeting. He says it’s urgent.” The girl tells you.

You nod, thanking the girl softly as she lays your clothes out on your bed. She exits, leaving you to get dressed as you frown. A meeting that involved everyone in the castle was never a good thing, and suddenly a feeling of nausea passed over you. Did someone find out about you and Juyeon? Is that what this was about? Your thoughts made you dress quickly as you fixed your hair, rushing to the bathroom to brush your teeth. You opened your bedroom door, meeting the back of a head belonging to a rather tall man. You felt yourself relax as you lifted your hand to tap his shoulder before they turned. Your hand retracted immediately as your eyes widened slightly.

“Younghoon, what are you doing over here?” You asked.

The older members watched over the more senior members of the family so seeing one of them posted outside your door worried you to no end.

“I’m just here to escort you to your parents' chambers. The queen and your sister are waiting for you.” Younghoon told you.

You nodded, following the boy through the long corridor. He stopped in front of the door, looking around first before opening it. You furrowed your eyebrows, walking in the room as he closed the door behind you. Your mother looked at you, giving you a small smile.

“Mother, what is happening?” You asked quietly.

She sighed. “Your father is briefing the guards. It’s important that we wait here.”

You narrowed your eyes. “Why was Younghoon posted outside my door? He only does that if there is impending danger.”

Your mother made your sister comfortable on the bed as she stood up. She gently grabbed your arm, pulling you off to the side as she spoke in a hushed tone.

“There’s been some talk,” She starts.

“Talk?”

“They think someone is after your father and I.”

You swallowed. “Which means they’ll also come for her and I?”

You raised a hand to point between yourself and your sister. The action made your mother nod as a knock was put to the door. You jumped slightly as someone spoke.

“Your majesty,” Sangyeon’s voice said just loud enough to make it through the door. “You can come out now.”

You opened the door, coming face to face with the senior guard who gave you a small smile.

“Your highness,” He said with a bow. “The King is looking for you.”

You nodded, thanking the older boy as you gave your mother a kiss on the cheek. You quickly left the room, walking down the hallway towards the ballroom. You noticed Sunwoo and Eric, the two youngest guards, conversing outside the door. They both were having a very hushed, secretive conversation as you walked up to them. You got your hand onto the gold gilded handle of the ballroom door before Eric stopped you.

“Your highness, you can’t go in yet.” The youngest guard said.

“Why?”

“The King is briefing the guards.”

You rolled your eyes. “So why aren’t you two in there?”

Sunwoo spoke this time. “They are being sent on a mission.”

You turned to the boy. “What mission?”

Sunwoo and Eric turned to look at each other, almost as if to silently ask the other if they should tell you. Eric shoved the boy slightly, making Sunwoo whine before he spoke.

“There’s a threat to the kingdom. To your parents and you and your sister. We know the source of the threat and your father is sending the more senior guards out to neutralize the situation.” Sunwoo said.

You nodded, letting out a calm breath. “So, no Juyeon. He’s not going?”

This time Sunwoo was quick to shove Eric, knowing how you got about Juyeon going on missions.

“Uh, well…not exactly.”

Before you could reply the door opened. Your father looked between you and the younger guards before speaking to them.

“Shouldn’t you be at your posts?” He asked as the two younger boys nodded quickly, heading off to their respective posts.

He pulled you into the ballroom where the rest of the guards, more specifically your guard, were gathered around. Juyeon lifted his head, his hair falling into his eyes as he watched your father walk you into the ballroom.

“Gentleman, this mission is important. You need to take great caution in your posts and each move you make. You have to remember who you’re out there protecting. Most importantly, remember that you are out there protecting each other. This threat is serious, and I do not expect you back until it’s completely dissolved,”

You started to drown out your father’s words as you made eye contact with Juyeon. He gave you a sad smile as you looked over who all was with him. Juyeon, Hyunjae, Jacob, Changmin, and Kevin. You knew Sangyeon would be leading the troops and Younghoon would be up there as well. The other older guard, Chanhee, never went on missions unless absolutely needed. Your sister had taken a liking to him the moment they were hired so he stayed to help your mother. You knew Juyeon never went on missions either for the same reason, in fact he, Changmin, or Kevin rarely went away. The severity of the situation was beginning to set in as you excused yourself, feeling a set of eyes on you as you left the room.

You felt sick knowing that Juyeon would be sent out on a mission that clearly was more dangerous than people were letting on about. You headed for the green house, dismissing any staff that was in the building to care for the flowers as you took in deep breaths, trying to steady your rapidly beating heart. Soft footsteps built up behind you as you closed your eyes, speaking just as softly.

“Juyeon, you’re going to get hurt.”

Large hands wrapped around your waist, pulling you close enough so he could place a soft kiss on your temple.

“Let’s not think about that.” He whispered.

You scoffed, turning yourself around. “How can I not? My father is sending you out with the senior guards to neutralize a threat and you want me to not think about it?”

Juyeon sighed. “I couldn’t tell him no. I would’ve been dismissed.”

“At least then you’d still have your life.” You countered, pushing away from him.

“Then what do you want me to do,” Juyeon says, frustration laced through his words. “You tell me what you want me to do! This is my job. We both knew something like this would arise. Let’s not act surprised. I’m a royal guard, and if I get sent on a mission by order then that’s what I have to do. I could lose everything if I say no.”

Tears built up in your eyes as you raised your voice with the tall guard. “And what about me? What if I lose you?”

Juyeon’s face softened at your words, the frustration melting away.

“Baby,” He spoke, barely above a whisper, as he stepped towards you. “You’re never going to lose me, ever. I’m yours. I’m always going to gravitate towards you no matter how far apart we are.”

His hands cupped your face, forcing you to look at him as his thumbs gently wiped at the tears staining your skin.

“Don’t ever think I’m not going to come back to you. I’m going to be the first one back so I can see you, touch you, hold you, kiss you,” Juyeon pauses, placing a tender kiss to your lips. “I’m not leaving you. Like a moth to a flame.”

You could only nod, mind still reeling with the idea of Juyeon never coming back from his mission. Despite your father having no knowledge of your relationship with one of his best royal guards, you were positive you’d never be able to forgive him if something happened to Juyeon. The boy watched you intently, seeing the gears in your head turning at capacity.

“What are you thinking about?” He asked.

Finally pulling yourself from your thoughts, you spoke. “When do you leave?”

“Before sundown.”

With a nod of your head, you pulled both his hands from your face, squeezing them gently. “Please, don’t do anything stupid. Listen to Sangyeon. And if it gets too heavy, fall back.”

“Love, those weren’t the king's orders.” The guard answered.

You scoffed, with a roll of your eyes. “No, they’re mine. And if you love me, you’ll follow them.”

This time you watched Juyeon intently as a small smile made its way to his face. “Of course I will. Because I do love you.”

“I love you, too.”

You and Juyeon pulled apart, but not before leaving a last kiss to each other’s lips. You knew the boy had to pack for the journey, and he would get in trouble if he wasn’t with the rest of the squad. Juyeon kept a hold on your hand as he backed away.

“I’m going to come back.” He tells you.

You smiled. “Promise?”

A nod and smile was thrown back to you. “With all my heart.”

You watched the boy exit the greenhouse as you mentally prepared yourself for the coming days that were sure to be Juyeon-less. You watched from your bedroom balcony as your father sent the guards off into the sunset, not having the stomach to stand with your mother and sister as he sent the men into what might be their early deaths. Juyeon watched you the entire time, giving you a small smile and mouthing the same promise he made just moments ago in the greenhouse.

I’m going to come back.

His words echoed in your head over and over again, pushing you into a sleepless night.

The morning sun peeked through your blinds too quickly for your liking considering you were finally starting to fall asleep. You let out a yawn, pulling yourself from your bed as you heard a faint knock.

When you pull the door open, you came face to face with your mother.

“Mother,” You say, startled by her presence so early in the morning. “Is everything okay?”

She nodded. “I just wanted to check in on you. You seemed upset about something yesterday.”

If only you knew.

“I’m fine. Just wasn’t feeling too well,” You lied. “Have we heard anything from the guards?”

Your mother chuckled. “Sweetheart, it’s too early to hear anything. If anything, the guards will just be getting to their destination. We’re sending Sunwoo out later as our line of communication.”

You let out a breath, hoping for a better answer. “Well, will you let me know if you hear anything?”

Your mother nods. “Of course, my dear. You know, if I didn’t know any better, I’d say you have a thing for one of those guards.”

You could only chuckle nervously as your mother sauntered off, her dress making a ‘swooshing’ sound across the floor of the hallway. You let out the breath you were holding as you leaned up against the large wood door of your bedroom. You closed your eyes, bringing both hands to your head to rub at your temples as someone spoke.

“Any messages you want me to relay to the squad?” Sunwoo’s voice made you jump.

One of your hands was now clutching your chest, right around your heart.

“Dammit, Sunwoo. Announce yourself, please.”

Sunwoo chuckled. “I did. You were in your own world.”

A blush ran up your face as you shoved him, heading towards the front of the castle grounds to see him off. The younger boy caught his footing, catching up to you rather quickly as you spoke again.

“Please, try to keep an eye on Juyeon.” You told him.

Sunwoo pushed open the front doors of the castle, letting in an immense amount of sunlight that casted shadows all over the walls. You walked him to his horse that was waiting for him as he looked at you.

“I’m only a line of communication. I’m not staying.”

You huffed. “Then, tell him…tell him I love him. Please?”

Sunwoo could only smile as he nodded, pulling himself onto the black steed. You always admired Sunwoo’s horse. His being the fastest, and prettiest, made him perfect as a communicator.

Sunwoo pulled the reins slightly, making the horse turn around. His lack of answer made you antsy as you watched him trot off.

“Sunwoo!” You yelled out.

“I’ll tell him!”

The days dragged on after Sunwoo’s departure. You weren’t sure how far out the squad was but considering you were now on day two of no Sunwoo, you kind of figured they were pretty far. The castle was on high alert with the threat and the best guards being out to handle the situation. Juyeon’s words continued to rattle your brain as they were beginning to become the only reason to get you through each day. You checked the front of the castle grounds religiously, even venturing out farther than allowed, making your right hand drag you back onto the grounds.

“Your highness, we mustn’t go past the gates. It's too dangerous.” She said softly, looping her arm through yours to walk you back towards the castle. “Don’t worry so much. He’ll be back.”

Your head snapped towards her as you stopped the both of you. “What?”

She giggled. “You aren’t exactly masters at hiding the way you look at each other.”

You let out a groan, bringing your hand to your head. “Jesus, does everyone in this castle know about us?”

She could only laugh. “Not everyone. Obviously his fellow guards found out, but those faded marks on your collarbone,” Her slim finger was pointed towards your upper chest, making you unravel your arm from her as you pulled your garments closer to your neck. “They give it away. Coupled with the fact that he’s usually sporting the same marks.”

You had never been so embarrassed in your life.

“And here I was thinking we were hiding them.”

“Don’t worry your highness. I won’t tell anyone. Juyeon makes you happy. That’s all that matters to me.” She told you.

You smiled at her, relooping your arms. “Okay then. What about you? Anyone interesting in your life?”

She stopped, smiling at the grass beneath her feet as she looked off in the distance. You couldn’t help the smile that tugged at your lips from her reaction to your question. She opened her mouth to speak before gasping, pointing off in the direction you just came from. Whipping around, you heard galloping that was getting continuously louder. You felt a tug as your right hand began to pull you.

“Wait,” You told her.

“Your highness, we don’t know who it is!” She replied quickly.

You pull from her grasp as the horse, Sunwoo’s horse, is now in focus. You let out a sigh of relief, happy to finally have some sort of news before seeing the state of the horse and the boy on it. Both were cut up and bleeding with Sunwoo looking like he might all but fall off the horse if it wasn’t for someone tying him on him. You stopped the horse, reaching up for Sunwoo.

“My sword,” He wheezed out. “Cut the ropes.”

You turned to your right hand. “Go get help!”

She nodded as you grabbed the sword that was strapped to his side, using the blade to cut the ropes on both sides, cutting your hand in the process. You try to (gently) pull Sunwoo from his horse, causing the boy to topple off onto the grass. He lets out a loud scream of pain as you kneel next to him.

“Sunwoo, what happened? Who did this?” Your mind was racing with questions.

Sunwoo could barely keep his eyes open, the pain being too much for the boy. “Ambushed. Barely made it out.”

“What happened with everyone else? What happened with Juyeon?”

You were pulled from the boy’s side as your father and Eric tended to him. Your mother pulled you up, keeping your sister and New at a safe distance. More men helped out with Sunwoo as New left your sister with you and your mother to tend to the hurt horse. Your father charged past, leading the way for Sunwoo to be carried back into the castle.

“Is he going to be okay?” You asked your mother.

“I’m not sure.” The queen said.

The castle was quiet as Sunwoo got worked on. All that could be heard were his cries of pain that brought tears to your eyes. They kept around the clock care for him for the next 24 hours as you kept yourself locked in your room. You had so many questions. Who did this? He was just a kid, so why would they hurt him? More importantly, what happened to the rest of them? What happened to Juyeon?

You watched the sun set on another day, now having no line of communication to give you any sort of relief. You felt your eyelids grow heavy as someone knocked on the thick wood doors of your chambers. Jumping slightly, you moved slowly towards the door, not wanting to hear anymore news about anything tonight.

“Eric,” You said surprised. “What are you doing over here?”

Eric spoke in a hushed town. “I had to come this late, so you wouldn’t get caught. Sunwoo is asking for you.”

You nodded, now being fully awake as you let the boy lead you to Sunwoo’s location. He stopped in front of the double doors of an abandoned room where your family basically stored stuff away that was used for balls. He pushed the door open slowly to contain any noises that might come from the old wood. Eric looked around before nodding at you, putting a hand on your lower back to push you into the room. He closed the door behind you to stay posted outside as you let your eyes adjust to the dimly lit room. The only light was coming from the oil lamps lit throughout the room. Sunwoo laid on a cot in the back of the room, his bare torso all wrapped in bandages that were starting to stain from his blood.

Making your way over to the boy, you knelt next to his head as you whispered into the dark room. “Sunwoo,”

The boy’s eyes opened slightly as he squinted before slowly turning his head. He hissed slightly from his own movement as he looked at you. His hair was sticking to his face, sweat lining his entire body. He was starting to come down with a fever.

“Your highness,” He breathed out, just barely pulling sound out of his mouth with his words. You leaned in. “Juyeon,”

You felt your blood run cold. “What? What happened to Juyeon? Is he okay?”

The boy swallowed. “As far as I know, but this situation is more serious than we previously anticipated.”

You stayed quiet, prompting the boy to continue.

“You,” His stomach contracted, making him wince as he moved just slightly. “You need to tell your father.”

A confused look crossed your face before you realized what he was getting at. “Sunwoo, I can’t.”

He gingerly shook his head. “You have to.”

“He could lose everything, Sunwoo.”

This time he snapped his head in your direction, ignoring the pain in a means to get his point across. “And yet you two still are together. If you really care about him, you’ll tell your father.”

His words stung, making you turn from him. “How can you say that? You know how much I care about Juyeon.”

“Then tell him. They are prying information from us out there.” Sunwoo countered.

“What do you mean?”

Sunwoo sighed, taking a deep breath. “They weren’t looking to kill us when I got there. They were looking to kidnap us. Torture us as a way to get information about the king, about you.”

You froze. “Me? Why me?”

Before he could answer, you heard shouting. Standing up quickly, you ran to the door opening it fully to an empty hallway. Eric was nowhere to be found as you closed the door, hearing footsteps rounding the corner. Your right hand came full speed right in front of you, stopping just before crashing into you. You grunted softly as she spoke.

“Your highness, the guards, they’re back!” She said quickly.

Your eyes widened as you took off in the opposite direction from which she came from. Heading towards the front of the castle, you noticed your father and mother already out there. Other staff members surrounded the area, watching your father debrief the guards as you let your legs carry you as fast as they could.

When you got to the front door, you stopped. Your heart beating out of your chest as you pushed the doors open. You started the trek down the stairs before stopping. Your father and mother both turned to you, Sangyeon standing in front of both of them. Your mother made her way to you, walking quickly to your side. It was at this moment, you realized that only Sangyeon and Changmin were back. Both badly beaten and covered in blood that wasn’t their own.

“Sweetheart, you should go back inside.” She said quickly.

Walking past her, you headed straight for Sangyeon who was in deep conversation with your father. He eyed you as you got closer to him, watching your every move.

“Your highness,” He started as you interrupted him.

“Where is he?”

Your father looked between the two of you. “Where is who?”

Sangyeon shook his head. “Don’t do this right now.”

“What are you two talking about?”

This time you shook your head. “No, let’s do this right now. What happened? Where is he?”

Sangyeon looked down at his boots before speaking. “He and the others were taken hostage. Changmin and I, we barely escaped.”

“You left them,” You said softly.

“No.” Sangyeon replied. “No, that’s not true. I needed more help, that’s why I came back. That’s why we came back.

He points between himself and Changmin as he turns back to your father. Not bothering to listen, you walked up to Changmin. He kept his head down as you whispered to him.

“Do you know where they are being kept?” You asked him quietly.

Changmin lifted his head, cuts on his lip and nose becoming visible to you. He nods slowly.

You grab his arm, pulling him towards the castle. “Let’s go.”

Your mother stopped you. “What are you doing?”

“Helping.” You said, not bothering to stop.

Changmin kept in stride with your fast steps as you pulled him into the castle, dragging him down the hallway towards Sunwoo’s room. Sunwoo turned his head as the door opened, trying to lift himself as he immediately recognized the person behind you.

“Hyung,” Sunwoo said. “You’re alive!”

Changmin pushed past you, kneeling before the younger boy as he tended to him. You peered through a partially covered window, seeing your father still talking with Sangyeon. Letting Changmin talk with Sunwoo, you moved around the room, finding a sword and riding gear for yourself. This caught both the boys' attention as Changmin spoke.

“What are you thinking about doing?” Changmin asked softly.

“You’re taking me to Juyeon.”

Changmin stood, looking at you like you were crazy. He watched you move around, gathering everything you needed as he tried to find the right words.

“Your h-highness,” He stammered out. “I really don’t think-,”

“I don’t care what you think! You are the only one that isn’t beaten or bruised to a bloody pulp. Sangyeon sure as hell isn’t going to take me, and my father will never let me go. I’m making this decision on my own. Besides, we need to get the others back.” You stopped, momentarily wondering whether you and Changmin would be enough.

You had no idea what kind of state the others would be in, especially with Sunwoo’s condition and the way Sangyeon and Changmin looked now.

As if reading your mind, Changmin took a step towards you, leaving Sunwoo’s side. “Your highness, there’s no way we can get through. Not two of us.”

You nodded at words, agreeing immediately. “Then we take help.”

Changmin looked on, confused as you headed towards the door. Quickly turning to Sunwoo, he whispered something to him as he jogged after you. The castle was quiet, everyone still in shock of only two of the royal guards returning as they stood outside. You took off towards your sister’s room, Changmin hot on your trail. Your footsteps echoed off the walls, alerting the boy posted outside your sister’s door. He stood before recognizing the boy behind you.

“Q,” Chanhee started, calling out to the boy with a nickname. “You’re back?”

Changmin stopped as did you. “You need to come with us.”

Chanhee looked confused, as you spoke this time. “We need to get the others. My father is going to take his time with Sangyeon, and that’s exactly what the others don’t have. We need all the help we can get.”

The boy cocked his head slightly, knowing the trouble he could get into if he disobeyed the King’s orders. Chanhee sighed, looking back at the doors he was in front of. He had promised your little sister he’d accompany her to breakfast in the morning. Clearly, that wasn’t going to happen.

“What do you need me to do?” Chanhee asked, stepping forward.

As you three hatched out a game plan, the youngest guard rounded the corner. The first thing Eric noticed was the gear you had on.

“What’s going on?” Eric asked.

“We’re going to get the others! Are you in?” You asked very straightforwardly.

Eric thought about it for a split second before giving you a nod of his head. “Let’s take the back gate, though. They’ve moved all the horses back there.”

You all nodded, heading towards the back exit of the castle by the greenhouse. As you quickly and quietly walked down the corridor, you noticed a figure by the door.

“Sunwoo, why are you out of bed?” Changmin asked.

The boy was using the wall to hold himself up as he dragged himself across the wall towards you. He pulled at your belt, unsheathing your sword from its case.

“Take mine.” He said softly, tucking the larger blade into your case with your help.

He pushed his full body weight into the wall, slowly sliding down it as he was now sitting on the floor. You and Changmin helped steady him before he reached up to grasp both of your shoulders and Changmin’s.

“Bring them back. Alive.” He said, barely above a whisper.

Changmin looked from Sunwoo to you as you nodded.

“As long as you stay alive to see them when we get back.” You countered.

A small, sly smile made its way to Sunwoo’s face as he nodded. “I’ll try my best, your highness.”

He let his arms drop as someone yelled. “Hey!”

You called out to Eric and Chanhee as the four of you took off out the doors. Just like Eric had said, four steeds stood by the greenhouse, still saddled up. You all climbed onto a horse, catching a glimpse of the person that yelled.

“Sangyeon,” You whispered to yourself as Changmin got his horse untied.

“Come on! This way!” Changmin yelled.

The hooves of the four horses pounded the ground as Sangyeon ran out of the castle.

“Your highness! Y/N!” Sangyeon screamed.

He continued to yell, but the sound became background noise as you let Changmin lead the way. He went full steam ahead to get out of the castle grounds quickly, only pulling back on the speed when he felt as though you were all in the clear. As you rode through the woods, the cool air whipped through your hair. It was the only thing calming you as you let the decisions you just made wash over you. Feeling an impending wave of anxiety creep up, you started to get nervous.

“Let’s slow up right here.” Changmin said softly.

You were the last person to stop, riding forwards just slightly as Changmin addressed you guys.

“We needed to be prepared. What you guys are about to see, it’s gruesome.”

You all nodded. Changmin continued to explain everything as you tried to keep up with what he was saying. His words started to all blur together as your mind started to wander.

The forest you were in started to change around you, the men in front of you disappearing as you closed your eyes to take in a breath.

“Aren’t you supposed to be meeting the guests?” A familiar voice says from behind you.

You turn quickly, smiling almost immediately. “Juyeon!”

He gives you a smile as you run to him, letting your full body weight crash into the boy. Juyeon grunts, letting his arms encircle your waist. He leans down to place a gentle kiss on your lips, making you hum.

You couldn’t believe he was in front of you right now. You nudge your nose against his, letting your forehead lean into him as he speaks.

“Someone is excited to see me!” A chuckle escaped his lips as he spoke.

You looked up at him. “You’re okay,”

“Yeah, I’m okay. Why wouldn’t I be?” Juyeon asked.

You furrowed your eyebrows at his question. “Well, the threat to the kingdom. You had to neutralize it.”

The guard looked down at you confused. “What threat? No one has threatened the kingdom since we’ve arrived to protect you and your family. Are you sure you are okay?”

Feeling something cool and wet against your skin, you look down. Your hands that were set on each side of his lower chest were now covered in blood. Eyes widening in horror, you jumped back from the boy.

“What’s wrong?” Juyeon asks.

Too scared to speak, you continue to back away from Juyeon.

“Your highness, your highness…”

“Your highness? Your highness!”

You jumped as a pair of hands grabbed a hold of you. You look around you, realizing that you’re still in the forest. You look down at the hands holding you before coming face to face with Changmin. He’s looking at you with grave concern as you speak.

“What happened?”

Changmin looks at the guys behind him before turning back to you. “Your highness, I was explaining what the battlefield we’re about to cross looks like. I had asked you a question, but you kind of went mute on us. Almost like you were trapped in a daze. We couldn’t get you out of it.”

You nodded, trying to find the right words before Eric spoke. “Do you guys hear that?”

You all silenced yourselves, letting the sounds of the rustling leaves make their way into your ears.

“I don’t hear anything.” Chanhee said.

“No, no. Listen. Just listen.” Eric replied.

That’s when you all heard it. The faint sound of pounding? No, galloping.

Changmin pushed himself back, so he was fully sitting on his horse as he whispered. “Everyone hide, now!”

You all split into four different directions as the galloping started to get closer. Someone had followed you, and you had a pretty decent idea of who it was.

“Your highness,” Sangyeon called out. “Changmin!”

You all stayed quiet, the darkness, coupled with the full, large trees helped to hide you.

“I know you guys are out there. You need to come with me back to the castle, now! King’s orders.” Sangyeon said.

The only sound he could make out was the loud rustling of leaves from the strong gusts of wind.

Sangyeon sighed. “Y/N, come on. You took battle training when you were younger, but you know you don’t stand a chance against these enemies.”

His words struck a nerve in you. You knew he was right, but you didn’t want to admit that. You wanted to prove him wrong.

“I’m not heading back to the castle without Juyeon or the others.”

Sangyeon’s head moved in the direction your voice came from as he willed his horse to trot slowly towards the sound. “We’re going to get the others, but you have to give us time.”

You shook your head. “They don’t have time, Sangyeon.”

This time, you pulled yourself out of the thick brush. Pulling your horse behind you. Sangyeon let out a sigh of relief, eyeing you up and down to make sure you weren’t hurt.

He hopped down from his horse and held out his hand. “Come on. Let me take you back home.”

You shook your head. Sangyeon was starting to get frustrated by your stubbornness. He really needed to get you back to the castle, not just you but everyone else. He was the leader, and if he failed, the King would have his head. You, of all people, knew that.

Sangyeon let his hand drop, looking down at his dirty boots as he took in a breath. “Your highness,”

“I’m not going back with you.”

“You have too!” He yelled.

Sangyeon was never someone to raise his voice, so to say you were surprised was an understatement. He took your silence as an opportunity to calm himself before speaking again.

“Your highness, I can get in a lot of trouble if you don’t come back to the castle with me. All of us can.” He said loudly, knowing the others were just as close by as you were.

You shrugged. “Then it looks like you aren’t going back.”

Sangyeon closed his eyes, bringing his gloved hand up to pinch the bridge of his nose. “Why are you being so stubborn?”

“Why are you being so adamant?”

“Because I made a promise.” Sangyeon said.

Promise? What promise?

“A promise to who? My father? If that’s the case, it’s broken.” You told him.

He shook his head. “A promise to Juyeon.”

He let his head drop as he closed his eyes. “When we got separated, he made me swear to take care of you, keep you safe. Y/N, he sacrificed himself for us. For Changmin and I. The two of us, we had the chance to leave, and we were going to give it up to help the others.”

“But Juyeon didn’t let you.” You finished for him.

Sangyeon could only nod. It made sense. Juyeon was nothing if not noble. He was willing to die for you and his brothers. You closed your eyes, smiling slightly. Even when he wasn’t around he was finding ways to keep you out of harm's way.

“I have to keep you safe.”

You nodded, calling out to the rest of the guys.

Eric peeked out from your left, as Changmin and Chanhee came from the other side of the pathway. Sangyeon looked at the three boys before chuckling slightly.

You took a step towards Sangyeon, your hand tightening on the reins of your horse as you spoke. “I still can’t go back with you.”

Sangyeon went to protest before you interrupted him. “Sangyeon, come with us. You are the best in hand to hand combat.”

The guards with you nodded enthusiastically, trying to convince their leader to join them, knowing his strength would be greatly appreciated.

Sangyeon shook his head. “I can’t, and you know that. I need to keep you safe. I need to get you back to the castle.”

“You really want to keep me safe and keep your promise to Juyeon, then you’ll come with us. You never break promises, and you know you won’t go back to the castle if I’m not with you. My father would have your head.”

Sangyeon let out a frustrated sigh as he looked at the hopeful faces of his members. He turned back to you as you cocked an eyebrow at him, crossing your arms over his chest. If the situation wasn’t so dire, Sangyeon wouldn’t help but laugh at the way you look. He was convinced that you had never looked more like your father. You were going to make a great ruler, that’s for sure.

“Alright look, if I come, and that’s a big if, you need to listen to me. All of you.” Sangyeon said, moving his body to point at every one of you. “We need to stick together, and not lose our heads. These guys, they are tough. Now we’ve taken out a majority of them, but the few that are left have the guys locked away in their own bunker. Once we locate it, we need to work specifically on freeing the guys, not fighting. Understood?”

Everyone nodded as Sangyeon helped you onto your horse, handing you reins he had slipped from your hand. As you got comfortable, he spoke again.

“Changmin, lead the way.” The older boy said as Changmin hopped onto his horse. The other two boys sprung into action, following along as you guys picked back up. Sangyeon kept an eye out, looking around carefully as you made your way out of the forest and through the plethora of bodies.

You never doubted your father when it came to picking people who could keep the kingdom safe, and now you had to make sure to thank him if you ever saw him again. The wasteland of death that you were walking through made you appreciate sitting in the castle all day long and being roped into stupid balls and useless meetings. The scene in front of you was nothing short of something out of a horror movie. Sangyeon had taken the lead off Changmin and was keeping you guys at a steady pace, looking over the bodies on the ground.

“Watch out for supplies or clues. Anything that can help us find out why they would take them.” Sangyeon said quietly.

You rode in the middle of the pack, Changmin off to your side. He was oddly quiet as you grabbed his attention.

“Q,” The nickname made him turn to you. “Are you okay?”

Changmin gave you a sad smile. “It wasn’t supposed to go this way. No one was supposed to get abducted. Sunwoo wasn’t going to get hurt.”

Shaking your head, you reached out to pat his shoulder gently. “You can’t blame yourself. You guys are trained for all sorts of situations, but something will always happen that rattles you. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from being in the royal family, it’s to expect the unexpected.”

“You can say that again.” Chanhee said from behind the two of you.

You both looked back at him. “Your mother tells me all the time that she wakes up anticipating something crazy to happen.”

You smiled at his comment that made the other men with you laugh softly. The conversation flowed a bit more after that. Different battle stories being brought up to pass the time. Eric brought up one of Sangyeon’s most impressive feats that he loved to exaggerate.

“I didn’t slay that bear by myself, Eric.” Sangyeon said with a shake of his head.

Eric scoffed. “Come on, hyung. You’re too humble. Sure, Younghoon and Hyunjae were there, but most of the damage was at the hands of your blade.”

You let out a breathless laugh before pointing. “Look.”

Sangyeon brought his head back to the front as he stopped his horse, prompting the other four of you to stop as well. Sangyeon climbed off of his horse as he took a few steps forward.

“That’s it.” Changmin said quietly, almost as if he was afraid someone would hear him.

The building was old and rundown. You were surprised it hadn’t caved in yet, but you weren’t holding your breath.

Sangyeon turned to you guys as he spoke. “We need to hatch a plan. By now, they’ve probably split them into different rooms. This place is bigger than you think so I’ll split off by myself. Eric and Chanhee you two split up together, and Changmin you know to keep Y/N in your sights.”

Everyone nodded at their assignments as you let Changmin help you off the horse. He quickly pulled you around the back side of the bunker while the other three split off to different sides. The wood door in the back was broken at the bottom, prompting Changmin to speak.

“There. We can get in through the bottom of the door. I’ll go first.”

He led the way, dropping to the ground to crawl under the broken wood. You heard him draw his sword before whispering.

“It’s safe, your highness.”

You took that as your cue to slide under the door, scraping your face against the hard concrete. The stinging from your cheek being scraped hurt, but you didn’t let it bother you as you pulled yourself up, pulling Sunwoo’s sword out of its sheath. Changmin gave you a nod as he took careful steps. He was making sure to check his surroundings as you both rounded a corner. The place was eerily quiet. There were only long hallways, making the bunker feel like more of a maze than an actual bunker. Changmin was careful to drag the blade of his sword, as quietly as he could, across the walls each time you took a turn.

“In case we have to turn back.” He told you.

As you took another turn, you heard something.

“Wait,” You called out to Changmin. “I hear something.”

Changmin stopped as you both listened.

“Someone’s talking.”

Changmin took a quiet step towards where the sound was coming from as his eyes widened. “It’s Jacob-hyung!”

Changmin took off towards the direction of his voice, making quite the racket as he continued to move quickly. You were beginning to have trouble keeping up with him before you stopped to catch your breath. That’s when you heard it.

More voices. Muffled, but one of them stood out to you.

“I’m not telling you anything. You’ll have to kill me.”

Juyeon.

You followed his voice. The strain in it made your heart squeeze in your chest as you landed in front of two metal doors. Taking a small step forward, you laid your hands on them, bringing your ear to listen.

“Your majesty has invested a lot in his kids to take over when he passes. The oldest has the most power. Just give us what we want, and we’ll let you go. We hate to have to kill the King’s best guard.” An unfamiliar voice said.

Your heart pounded in your chest as you stepped back. You had to help him! Letting your hands slide down the cool metal, you gripped the handles of the doors before ripping them open. Everyone in the room froze.

The men in front of you were dirty. Faces and clothes covered in muck and blood. Dirt and grime built up under their fingernails. They had small blades equipped to their sides as one of them had Juyeon on his knees with the blade to the side of his throat.

“Y/N,” Juyeon breathed out, eyes widening.

“Your highness,” The man holding Juyeon down spoke. “What a pleasure.”

He grinned, giving way to a nasty, greasy smile. His teeth were black and rotted, holes on just about every tooth that was visible.

“We’ve been waiting for you.” The man spoke again.

You eyed Juyeon. One of his eyes was swollen shut. Cuts on his cheek, nose, and lip all swollen. His clothes were badly ripped with dried blood stains and dirty caked all over them.

“Don’t hurt him.” You said softly.

The men started to laugh as Juyeon attempted to free himself, only for the man to push the blade closer to his neck.

Juyeon stopped struggling as he swallowed, looking over you. He couldn’t believe you were in front of him, and while he was grateful you were okay, he was so afraid they would hurt you.

“Y/N, leave now.”

“What do you want?” You asked the man with the blade.

“Stop asking questions, just leave.”

The man tilted his head, the grin never leaving his face. “You. You don’t even know how much money someone will pay for you. Dead or alive.”

One of his men took a hold of Juyeon and the blade as he took a step towards you.

“Stay away!” Juyeon yelled, beginning to struggle again.

The man stopped in front of you. He was much taller than you, causing you to crane your head up at him. He reached one of his dirty hands up to your hair, sliding a loose strand behind your ear.

“I’ll do whatever you want,” You started.

“Y/N, no!”

“Just, please, don’t hurt him. He means the world to me. I can’t live if he doesn’t. I’ll give you everything I have, every secret I know about the kingdom. You have to let Juyeon go, though.” You told the man quietly.

He looked over you. “Sounds tempting.”

Before he could speak again, one of the men yelled out in pain before dropping to the ground. He was bleeding from his back, an arrow sticking out.

“What the hell?” One of the men exclaimed.

“Someone freed the archer!”

Everything happened so quickly. Multiple men dropped, all from arrows as Juyeon tripped the man holding him. Knocking him out, he grabbed ahold of the blade, cutting the rope around his hands before standing.

The man in front of you grabbed you, pulling you into him as he wrapped an arm around your shoulders, trapping you against him. He moved to a corner away from the window all the men got shot from. He pulled out another blade from his boot, holding it to your neck. Juyeon stayed where he was as he watched the man.

“You’re outnumbered. My crew came back for me. It’s only a matter of time before they close in on us. Especially if they freed Hyunjae.” Juyeon told the man as he took a step closer.

The man brought the blade to your side, pushing on it just slightly to apply pressure, making you gasp. Juyeon stopped.

“Hyung!”

Eric’s voice boomed through the hollow walls of the bunker as multiple footsteps echoed throughout the room. Soon all the royal guards had gathered in the room. They stood by Juyeon’s side as the man spoke.

“I’ll do it! I’m all that’s left! I have nothing to live for! But killing the oldest blood of the King, I’ll be legendary. Don’t think I won’t do it!”

Sangyeon and Hyunjae were the last to enter as Sangyeon drew his sword while Hyunjae drew an arrow. Both boys stood at attention, armed and ready to take down the man holding you. A standoff had presumably taken place. Everyone was waiting for someone to make the first move. That’s when you felt the blade dip through the material of your riding gear, beginning to pierce your skin. He was slowly adding more pressure so as to not draw attention to the fact that he was stabbing you. You had to find a way to free yourself.

You moved both your hands up to the arm that was holding you to his chest as you locked eyes with Hyunjae. Your movement made all the boys step forward as the man pulled back as best he could, pushing the blade a little farther into you. You whimpered before scratching at the man’s hand, giving Hyunjae a nod.

Hyunjae let the arrow he had drawn go as it hit the man square in the middle of his hand. The man yelled out in pain as you pulled away and dropped to the floor. Juyeon copied your movements, meeting you halfway as he pulled you into his arms. Hyunjae quickly drew another arrow before letting it fly, effectively silencing the yelling man. You looked over at his lifeless body, watching Sangyeon and Hyunjae make sure he was dead as someone pulled the blade out of your side.

You gasped as you turned in Juyeon’s arms. Younghoon was on one knee, hand held tight to your side to slow down the bleeding.

“Hyung, we have to move now. This cut is deep!” Younghoon told him.

He helped Juyeon lift you as you all worked your way back through the bunker to the exit. You went out the same way you came in thanks to Changmin’s markings on the walls. When you exited, a brigade of soldiers stood outside the bunker with your father at the helm. The men tapped at his shoulder before he turned, watching his guards carry you out.

You clung tightly to Juyeon, who did the same as he went straight to a free horse, loading you and himself up on the saddle. Your father pushed through the guards, shooting a glance at Sangyeon as he tried to catch up with Juyeon who was more worried about the deep cut on your side than debriefing with the King.

“Juyeon, let me,”

“No!” He said before taking off.

Juyeon would deal with the consequences of talking back later. He needed to get you to safety. As he rode, he continued to sneak glances down at you, not wanting to take his eyes off you. He needed you to stay awake. Just until he got you to the castle, but you were losing so much blood.

“Just stay with me, okay? We’re almost there!” Juyeon said as he willed the horse to go faster.

You figured you had enough strength to speak, and just as you opened your mouth, you blacked out.

When you came to, it was dark. The only light coming from a small candle lit by the bed you were in. Your eyes took a minute to adjust as you looked around the room. You were home. You were in your room. You continued to look around to be sure before seeing a figure standing by your window, a figure you recognized all too well.

“Juyeon,” You rasped out.

Juyeon turned on his heels quickly, eyes widening as he strided over to the side of your bed. He dropped to his knees, grabbing your hand as he gently kissed your knuckles.

He gave you a soft smile. “Hi. You’re awake.”

You looked over his face as you frowned. The swelling had gone down, blacks, blues, and discolored greens decorated his face.

“Don’t worry. It hurts worse than it looks.”

You scoffed. “That doesn’t make me feel better, Juyeon.”

The boy chuckled. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”

It was at this moment you realized that you had been out for quite some time.

“How long have I been,” Juyeon interrupted.

“Three days.”

Your eyes widened as you tried to sit up, letting out a gasp at the sharp pain that reverberated throughout your body from your side. Juyeon gently stopped you, helping you lay back down.

“Don’t try to move. Your stitches could break.” Juyeon whispered.

You pulled your hand from the boy’s grasp, gently cupping his cheek to keep from hurting him. Juyeon didn’t let you be too gentle as he took the feather-like touch as an opportunity to nuzzle into your hand.

“You’re okay? Everyone is okay?” You whispered out into the dark room.

The candlelight flickered, casting shadows across Juyeon’s face as he nodded. “Everyone is okay.”

You let out a deep sigh of relief as you finally relaxed. You looked up at the ceiling before looking back at the boy.

He had a ghost of a smile on his face as you spoke. “What?”

He shrugged. “You saved me. You risked your life…for me.”

You nodded. “Of course I did! You’re the love of my life. I’d give up everything for you. Even if it means not being a royal anymore.”

The boy leaned down to gently peck your lips, but you wanted more. You grasped his face, pulling him closer as you laid a more full kiss to his lips. At first, Juyeon tensed up, not wanting to hurt you. Then he relaxed, letting himself get lost in the kiss. He pulled away, leaning his forehead against yours as he chuckled to himself.

“I missed you so much.” Juyeon said.

Pecking his lips once more, you grinned. “I missed you more.”

“I’m still not happy that you risked your life to come save me, though.”

You shrugged. “What is it that you said before you left? Like a moth to a flame, right?”

Juyeon let his eyes close as he let out a breathless laugh. “Touché.”

Juyeon gently crawled into bed with you, maneuvering you around into a comfy position so that he could hold you without hurting you. You guys laid quietly on the bed, just holding each other as the morning sun peeked into the room.

Juyeon looked towards the window, letting out a yawn as he got up.

“Wait,” You said, keeping a firm grasp on his large hand. “Help me up.”

He hesitated. “I really think you should stay in bed.”

“Lee Juyeon, I’ve been in this bed for three days. It’s time for me to get up. I won’t get better laying down all day every day.”

The boy shook his head, cursing your stubbornness as he helped you to your feet. You were wearing clean cotton clothing that was soft to the touch. The bandage wrapped tightly around your abdomen, moving ever so slightly catching your stitches. The slight pinch made you wince as you took a deep breath before looking up at the boy.

Even like this, Juyeon was in complete awe of you. You were amazing. The boy let go of your hands to cup your face, wanting to give you another kiss before a knock sounded at the door.

You called out to the person as the door pushed open. Hyunjae popped his head in as he smiled, bowing to you.

“Your highness, good to see you out of bed.” Hyunjae told you. “Juyeon, his majesty would like a word with you.”

Juyeon stared at the boy for a moment before nodding. He looked at you as he gave you a small smile. You shook your head, going to speak before he stopped you.

“It’s okay.” He whispered.

His hands dropped from your face, to his sides as he headed for the door. Hyunjae gave him a sad smile as he patted his back. The moment he exited the room, your heart dropped. You really thought your father would spare him since he saved you. Hyunjae looked back at you as he walked over, helping you sit on the bed.

“I’m sorry, Y/N. We tried to change his mind.” Hyunjae said softly.

You could only nod. “Could you help me to the greenhouse? I just want to be outside and alone for a moment.”

Hyunjae nodded, standing and holding out his hand for you to take. He walked you to the greenhouse, opening the door as you let go of his hand. You sat on one of the benches, breathing in the fresh air as you awaited the dreadful news praying that your father would at least let Juyeon say goodbye to you.

The flowers were in full bloom. Pretty peonies, tulips, and lavenders decorated the greenhouse. Different fruit trees grow throughout the grounds. Your mother took pride in making the greenhouse beautiful. She had her reasons for picking each plant, specifically the peonies because they were able to withstand even the harshest weather conditions, constantly growing back no matter what. It was a peaceful oasis to escape to when things became too much. That’s where you would always end up, and where Juyeon always knew to look for you first.

The footsteps behind you brought back all too familiar memories as you shut your eyes tightly. You kept them close as the footsteps got closer, practically closing in on you. They stopped behind you before you felt the bench shift just slightly.

“One day I’m going to hide somewhere different to get away from everything. When you come looking for me here first, I’ll be gone.” You said softly.

The laugh you loved so much filled the large greenhouse. “That will certainly be a first. It’s too bad I’m always one step ahead of you. I always know where you are and where you’re going before you do. Part of my job.”

His statement made you let out a breathless laugh as you opened your eyes. When you looked at him, he was already staring at you. His cat-like eyes showed nothing but love.

“How much trouble did you get into?”

Juyeon smiled as he grabbed your hand. “A lot. I was relieved of my duties,”

You felt your shoulders slump. So much for holding out hope. You had hoped your father would be lenient on Juyeon like he was with Sangyeon.

“I’m sorry, Juyeon. I’m so sorry.” You whispered.

Juyeon chuckled. “Don’t be. He already got me another job.”

You smiled sadly. “Where is he sending you to?”

Juyeon let out a breath as he began to grin. “I have to be the head guard for this spoiled royal brat. Follow them around, watch their every move. Make sure they stay out of trouble and obey their father.”

His last comment made your head shoot in his direction. “You, you’re not leaving?”

Juyeon shook his head, dark fringe falling in front of his eyes as you jumped into his arms. Your weight hit him like a truck making him grunt as he wrapped his arms around you.

“You’re stuck with me, your highness.” Juyeon said as he nuzzled his face into your neck.

You felt him leave soft, feather-like kisses on your neck before lifting his head to peck your cheek, then your temple. You pulled away, pulling the boy into a deep kiss. He held onto you as tight as he could without hurting you as you both pulled apart.

“I love you. No one on this planet can keep me from you. I hope you know that.” Juyeon said with the utmost confidence.

Nodding, you pecked his lips. “I know. And I love you too.”

He went to pull you in for another kiss before you turned your head, making his lips land on your cheek.

“What was that for?”

“Lee Juyeon, I am not a brat.” You exclaimed.

A big, sly smile made its way to Juyeon’s face as he tilted his head. “You most certainly are a brat, but that’s okay because I want you to be my brat until the peonies stop growing back.”

“That might take a while,” You teased.

He shrugged, pecking your lips. “The rest of your life okay?”

thank you so much for reading! like and reblog if you enjoyed and let me know how you liked it! feedback is always welcome🤍🤍

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