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momolady · 11 months ago

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Jasper the Bugbear

First story of the year and I'm giving ya'll a double decker one to set off the year right! This story feature intrigue, espionaige, fucking over the rich, and a cozy bookstore featuring a very handsome bugbear. Female Main Character: Male Monster (both cis)

The letter arrived first thing in the morning, delivered into my hands by someone who whisked away as quickly as they appeared. I had been hunkered down in this small town waiting on this for a while now.

“Geez,” I mumbled over the letter. “Who did they let write this thing?” I squinted over the paper, trying to decipher some of the illegible handwriting. I scoffed, pulling back and rubbing the bridge of my nose. I’d been restless waiting for this thing to come in. I had been placed here for a while now in an attempt to blend in. I posed myself in town, scouting things out, selling trinkets under the guise of charity. I was growing bored with it, not many of the people I had been charged with finding were the type to just go out into the market.

“Dear Caranina,” the letter started off.

“Not my name,” I grumbled. In a bit of spite, I took my own quill and scraped it out, writing ‘Carina’ over it.

“We know you have been waiting long to wehdhjfjfhshj from us. It has taken us quite a while to jshdjhkfjihf and ahdfhrjhuidhh in order to assure your mission runs smoothly.”

You scoffed under your breath. “Were they writing this letter under siege?”

“The festival coming up is the start. While the festival is important there is also a banquet the the aedkfehkjekhkdj family of the ajhdhfkjhdjkd holds every year. It is important that you Caranina-” I scratched that out again, “-must attend the jkfgkjjfeuedhus banquet. This may require you attaining a date from those on the guest list. We have provided to you a guest list, sent to us from another scout in the city.”

“Please let someone else have written that list,” Iyou muttered under myyour breath.

“We have provided it below for you.”

IYou leaned back in Myyour chair and rubbed the bridge of my nose up and down. I took in a deep breathbreat to quelel the frustration bubbling in my gut. “It’s fine. It’s fine, surely I can read one of them.”

“It is imperative you find your way into this party. We will contact you again soon with details of our target, most of which should already be known to you. Warmest regards hdfjjfdkhfeljirorhfdhjjd.”

“Great, I’ll have to tell hdfjjfdkhfeljirorhfdhjjd their hand writing sucks,” I mumbled under my breath.

Below was the supposed list of names, most, if not all of them, were illegible and wonky. I could only make out a few of them. I recognized one, a miracle in its own right. The fellow worked at a bookstore in town. Jasper Synclayr Humbeclaw, a bugbear, and a real smart guy type who seemed to have his fingers in a lot of pies and has done well for himself financially. His intellect could easily be mistaken due to his imposing figure. But I can’t help but think that is why the upper echelon like him so much. An oddity is one thing, an educated oddity is another.

I walked into his bookstore first thing that morning. It was dark outside still, the sun had risen but the clouds had not parted and were growing heavier and thicker by the moment. I could smell the rain that was to come, and I knew if it came, I could extend my visit with Jasper that much longer without it seeming odd.

“I thought I heard the bell.”

I looked up from the book in my hand to see Jasper standing there. Tall, imposing, and dressed very well. His fur was well groomed, his beard trimmed to give the illusion of an extra sharp jawline. Thick brows that gave an air of distinguished intelligence. He certainly looked the part of a bookstore keep.

“Good morning.” He set a thick stack of books down upon the counter. “Are you looking for anything in particular today?”

Just you, I thought to myself. “No, thank you.” I was at least sincere there. “I wanted to look around for a bit. I’ve always walked by the shop but I’ve never been inside.” I smiled politely, at least I didn’t have to fake much. The guild knew what it was doing, sending me in after all.

Jasper nodded, gently taking off his glass. “Yes, I’ve seen you around the last few weeks. You’ve been selling jewelry around town, haven'tahven’t you?”

“Prayer beads and religious charms,” I corrected with a bright smile. “Something to send back to the monastery.” A tiny lie. I was keeping the money.

He nodded, using a small cloth to wipe off his glasses. “What’s the monastery?”

I thought quickly. “Esmeraude Monastery. It’s far, far up north. Very snowy, very cold.” I wasn’t lying when I said it was going to Esmeraude, it’s my last name, and I did live up north as a child.

Jasper placed his glasses back on. “Sounds like a beautiful place,” he chuckled softly. “Well, don’t let me bother you. Books are meant to be perused, so enjoy yourself. Should you need any help, I’ll be around.” He picked up the stack of books and walked out behind the counter, disappearing behind a row of mahogany shelves.

Thunder rumbled outside and I smiled excitedly. The bigger the storm, the more likely I would have to linger inside. Not that I would mind, there were worse placesd to get trapped in than a bookstorebook store.

I wandered around to appear nonchalant at first. I looked through books, easing my way closer to where Jasper was working. I found him close to the back, taking books down from a shelf he was cleaning. Thunder growled low in the distance again, and Jasper turned his head slightly, spotting me.

“Sounds like a storm is coming,” he says.

“Such things do happen when one is busy,” I tutted. “I hope you don’t mind me getting caught here if it does.”

“Not at all. I would hate for a lovely lady such as yourself to get caught in that mess.” He wiped down the top of a book and sets it back upon the shelf.

I was a bit surprised by his comment. It made my cheeks flush ever so slightly. “Thank you.” I inched in even closer. “Would be a shame if the rain continued into the festival though.”

“True,” he sighed. “The people do look forward to it.” He turned a book over in his hands, inspecting the cover as if something was wrong. “Have you ever attended the festival here? It’s quite the event.” He set the book back upon the shelf after his thorough inspection.

“Afraid not. This is my first time here. I am excited to attend and see everything first hand for myself.” I reached for the exact same book as Jasper, causing our hands to collide. I notice how large his are, in comparison to mine. It shouldn’t have been surprising, after all, he stood head and shoulders over me. But his hands, to my surprise, were quite marvelous.

Jasper gently recoiled. “I beg your pardon, Miss.”

“No harm done.” I took the book, opening the pages. “Cara.”

His brow pinched.

“My name. You don’t need to call me Miss,” I chuckled.

He nodded, a slight smile appearing on his lips that curved up past his tusks. “Nice to meet you, Cara.” The way he said my name had a low, deep growl to it. My reaction of excited heartbeats surprised me.

I ducked back down into the book to hide my blush, but perhaps that would help me. “I heard someone say there was a banquet at the festival. I’m sure that's the highlight of the event.”

“Well, for some I’m sure,” he said hesitantly.

I looked up from my book. “What do you mean? Is the town full of horrible cooks?”

His smile returned, brighter and larger. He laughed and shook his head as for the first time he turned to fully face me. “There is a banquet, just for a select few I am afraid.”

“Which select?” I asked knowingly, offering him back the book in my clutches.

He took the book, his fingers brushing against mine again. “From tThe sound of your tone, I take it you can already tell.”

“The big wigs of the town have their own celebration away from the commoners?” I glanced back, seeing that rain hadhas begun splattering against the window.

“Would you want them to mingle?” Jasper said with a laugh.

A slight twinge of resentment came from that remark. Whether he was joking or trying to make some commentary, it came off wrong. “Are you suggesting the two should not? Because you are talking to the wrong person when it comes to such things.”

The hair on the back of his neck bristled, and the way his broad shoulders tensed I could tell I had struck a frightened nerve. “No I-”

“It’s a shame to me that there is such disparity as to create a sense of them and us,” I continued. “That money and class should separate people who are all the same when laid open. What good is wealth when there is suffering of your own kind? It is a shame. A sham really. A lie told to people to make them feel superior, when any number of the supposed wealthy are probably worse and more classless than the supposed brutes and commoners they’re trying to separate themselves from.”

His eyes are glassy, wide and surprised.

I huffed and shook my head. “If you let it, money will take your soul. I fully believe it!”

Jasper hung his head, looking disparaged. “I am sorry, Mis��Cara. I didn’t mean for it to come out that way.”

“You live and work in a part of the town that’s profitable, that’s marked in high regard by these elites. I suppose you wouldn’t know what to mean.”

It was quietquite for a long moment and the storm came in, with howling winds and growling thunder to fill the silence.

“You’re right,” Jasper let out a breathy laugh. “It has been a long time since I looked beyond my own comfortable place. I should know better than to joke.”

I gave him a soft look. “At least you can recognize . Iit.” There was something about him, I’m not sure, but I do think I could like him.“I hope I didn’t frighten you too badly. You looked like a kitten being barked at.”

Jasper smiled. “Hard lessons are my favorite to learn. Sometimes a fellow needs to be reeducated, I should thank you for the fright.”

My heart leapt into a quicker pace, and a genuine grin grew. Oh no. Perhaps I already do like him. “Think nothing of it,” I laughed it off. “In my line of work, it’s a constant thought.”

“I’m sure.” He knelt to get something from the floor then stood back erect. “Do you have any of your wares with you? Perhaps I could sell some here in the shop. I’ll match whatever is sold so you can send double back to your monastery.”

“Oh uh-” Guilt hit me like a sack of bricks. “No. Uhm…it wouldn’t oh-” What do I say to this? Think Cara think!

“Or-” Jasper’s tone went distant and I saw in his golden eyes that he became lost in thought. “I know there is always some sort of argument over the charities my friends give to. They’re always trying to one up each other.”

I held my breath, surely he wasn’t going to suggest what I was thinking. “Friends?” My voice cracked.

Jasper’s glance twitched my way, and his usual expression returned. “Oh sorry. The banquet coming up, there’s always some form of competition about what charity they’re giving too.”

I frowned at him and he shrugged.

“I know. It’s ridiculous. But it’s something they sincerely try to one up each other on. Perhaps you could take advantage of that.”

It wouldn’t be the only thing I’d take advantage of that evening. But wait…what? Did he really suggest it?

“Come with me. I usually don’t have a date for these evenings, so it might be fun.”

I was gobsmackedgodsmacked. How did it turn out to be that easy? I thought I’d have to seduce him first! “You’re serious?” I gawked. “You’re inviting me, just like that?”

Jasper just smiled. “If it helps your monastery.”

My gut was frothing in confusion over how to feel about this. But, I succeeded, I would be going to banquet!

“I wouldn’t want to impose.”

Jasper turned back to the shelf, loading it up with books again. “Don’t think of it that way. You’ll be my guest. I’d be honored to have such a lady as you with me that evening. Besides, I call them friends, but I do find them all quite boring.”

I bit down on my lip. “What makes you think I’m not?”

Jasper chuckled and looked back over his shoulder at me. “I have a sense about these things, Ms. Cara.”

The blush rose up to my cheeks, tingling slightly from his expression alone. I can’t catch feelings for Jasper, not when this mission is against the people he associates with. Bad move, Cara, you know better!

Despite this, I decided it would be smart to gather knowledge from Jasper. After all, if I was going to this banquet, I wanted to know what I was up for. I could gather information about him, send back some of my findings in advance. There were a few of the banquet attendees we were after, so anything and everything was helpful.

I returned to Jasper’s bookstore the next day and the next under the guise of nervousness for the party. He seemed glad to see me each day, inviting me in, chatting with me, I even helped him dust shelves and tend to misplaced books. He shared tea with me, even invited me for dinner one evening.

“I feel I am taking advantage,” I told him. It was the truth. I was starting to grow a gnawing sense of guilt. But this was my mission after all, and it was my fault for growing attached to Jasper.

“Not at all. It’s been a long time since I’ve had a friend over that I enjoyed.” Jasper filled my tea cup then returned to the stove to deal with the food.

I chewed the inside of my cheek for a moment. “You don’t like any of these people you deal with, do you?” I finally asked. “The way you’ve spoken about them recently… I’m sorry if I’ve taken this all wrong, but you don’t sound very fond of them.”

Jasper sighed heavily. “There is some truth to what you say. Most of them I know would rather take me or leave me. Some I don’t have much respect for.” He covered a pot then came to sit back down at the table with me.

“Then why associate with them?”

Jasper scoffed. “You want to know the truth? To keep them coming to the shop so I can get their money.”

I smiled despite myself. “So you’re playing the long con?”

Jasper had been raisingrising his teacup to his lips but he set it back down. “Not a con, exactly. They are getting exactly what they pay for but-” He huffed and took off his glasses. “I know if I don’t associate with them, create some sort of fashion out of the experience, I wouldn’t make ends meet, let alone maintain the life I do have.”

“A grifter then,” I teased. Under the table I felt his foot tap against my leg in a playful kick. It was a move I was not expecting, nor was I prepared for the reaction it would give me.

“We do what we can to survive,” Jasper said in a low, whisper-like murmur. “And I do not wish to go back to my former method of survival.”

This shift in tone bristled the hairs on the back of my neck. “You can’t just say things like that and not expect me to ask for a follow up.” I gave him a soft smile to urge his story forward. “What was survival for you before the bookstore?”

Jasper glanced away, his eyes flickering towards the door to the next room. He stood and waved his hand for me to follow. “I’ll show you.” He took me into a parlor-like room with nice furniture and everything was a varying shade of deep green or gold. On the wall over the stone fireplace was a sword of grand size. The blade glinted gold in the light of the fire, and the handle was wrapped up, covered by thick woven bands.

Now, I am not a strong person at all, by far I’m the weakest of my group physically. The sword on the wall was daunting for me, but I could tell it would give most members of my guild some extreme effort to raise. This was the sword of no mere fighter. No, this sword belonged to another type of creature altogetherall together.

“Your words from when we first met reminded me of what I came from,” Jasper muttered. “I was ashamed to think about what I had turned into.”

I turned my attention to his stony expression. “Don’t say that. We all make changes in life.”

“Yes but, it is a fool who forgets where they come from, Cara.” His voice becomes a low, almost angry growl.

I reached out to him, taking hold of his hand and squeezed it extra hard. He turned to me, looking at me with glassy eyes. He rubbed his large hand over his face, sniffling and trying to regain himself.

“You obviously remember,” I said to coax him.

His hand squeezed mine back. “I am forgetting something at this moment, Cara.”

I furrowed my brow and tilted my head up to him in confusion.“Which is?”

“How to be a gentleman. I almost bent down and kissed you like the ruffian I once was,” he said with a laugh.

My stomach knotted up, not in a bad way, but one of expectancy. “You could ask me.” The words poured from me, I didn’t mean to be so blunt.

Jasper chuckled, smoothed his beard into a point again. “I shouldn’t.”

I shrugged. “Try me.”

Jasper turned to face me, placing his hands first upon my shoulders then moving one up along the side of my neck and onto my cheek. His palm was so big and warm, it was amazing as he touched me. I shivered a bit, excited and conscious of what this could lead to.

“Cara,” he said with a shaky breath, “I am going to kiss you now.”

“I dare you then,” I giggled.

Jasper began to lean down towards me and I was stunned. I close my eyes, accepting his kiss. His tusks were cool against my skin, his fur was soft. I reached for him, touching the sides of his neck then slowly moving my palms over his broad chest.

When he pulled back, both of us were a touch breathless. He moved in to kiss me again, but he gasped and pulled back. I looked up angrily, but he moved off swiftly to the kitchen. “Excuse me, Ms. Cara! But our meal.”

“Oh!” I followed after him. “Right! Dinner.” I laughed as I returned to my seat at the table. I was flustered, fidgeting with my robe as I tried to distract myself from the thoughts blooming in my head. This was bad. I wasn’t supposed to be falling for Jasper. —

It was the night of the banquet, and I was considering turning Jasper down. It didn’t feel right to go. I’d made a mistake by possibly falling for Jasper. Each time I kissed him, the guilt was unbearable. It almost came to a head a few days before the kisses began turning into something much more. His storage room was small, warm, and dimly lit. I’d been helping him find a certain stash of books and we’d gotten smashed together.

His body was close, quite literally on top of mine. He was a mountain of a man, but I felt so safe, so strangely turned on by the moment. The room grew hotter, our bodies were pressed so tightly together you couldn’t fit a page between us. Jasper was hard against my hip and I was growing wet.

Jasper growled low in my ear, sending ripples through my body. He kept rutting himself into me so I could feel the entirety of him. He was thick and I could only imagine what that thing would do to me. His hands pushed up my skirt, touching bare skin, groping my rear. He growled again against my neck as his fingers slipped between my thighs. I touched him, grabbing hold of the shaft and stroking slowly. His voice became more hungry, so desperate. I wanted that voice to come out louder, deeper. I undid his pants, taking that warm, thick cock into my palm.

“Cara,” he snarled.

I nodded, breathing hard as I took both hands to hold him. “Like that?”

He grunted, pushing me into the wall as my fingers wrapped tightly around him, pleasuring him so deeply he began to shiver.

“Big thing like you could devour me, couldn't you? Those teeth…those hands…could rip me apart-” I whimpered.

“Cara-” he moaned again.

“I want you to,” I moaned, leaning up close to his face. I saw his eyes and I suddenly went still, my body was wracked with guilt. But the bell rang at the same moment, so Jasper mistook it for another kind of fear, and we left there.

I paced back and forth in my place, thinking about what I should do. If Jasper found out what I was up to could he forgive me? Would he understand? Or worse, would he hate me?

There was a knock on my door and all blood drained from my face. I approached the door, peering through a crack to try and see who was outside.

“It’s me, Cara,” Jasper announced with joy in his voice.

My mouth flopped open. “I was meeting you!” I fussed.

“I know, but I have a surprise for you.”

My guts churned. No, no, no, not a surprise you big fool! I slowly cracked open the door, peering up at him. “I’m uh…I’m not exactly ready yet, Jasper.”

Jasper had a smile that stretched past his tusks. “That’s fine. I have something for that anyways.”

I let him, silently stepping aside as he came into my room. His eyes darted around before looking back at me, his huge grin not fading. “You’re not nervous about tonight, are you?” He asked.

“A little,” I played into it.

He came to me as I closed the door, taking hold of my hand. “I’ve got you. There’s nothing to worry about. Besides, if I know anything about you Cara, it’s that you could run circles around them effortlessly.”

I smiled weakly and rubbed at my arm. “Thanks, Jasper.”

He squeezed my hand then reached into the pocket of his waistcoat. I was so nervous I hadn’t noticed how sharpley he was dressed. His fur was combed, his beard trimmed, he wore that mix of green and gold that looked so good on him. He was so handsome.

“I got you a present.” He offereda small box to me. “Something special to wear tonight.”

Why did he do this? Why did I have to hurt so badly from a small box? I took it into my hand, opening it up to see the drop earrings inside.

“They’re made from moonstone. I saw them in a shop and they made me think of you.” The moonstones were shaped like water drops, topped with silver and a single red gem in the center. They were beautiful, I loved them instantly.

“You didn’t need to do that,” I murmured.

Jasper came forward, taking one of the earrings in one hand then holding my head with the other. “I know. But the moment I saw them, I wanted to see you wearing them.”

Those words mingled with his touch made me sigh out of pleasure. He slipped the hook into my ear then stepped back and repeated it with the other ear. Jasper took a step back to look, and I saw on his face the same expression from the storage room.

“How do they look?” I murmured.

He nodded, keeping his mouth shut.

“Jasper-” my voice caught in my throat as I walked towards him. I placed my hands upon his chest. He kissed me, sweeping me off my feet. I didn’t fight it. Perhaps if we carried on we would miss the banquet and he would never find out why I was here, why I was with him.

I clung to him, leading him to believe in my desperation. I wanted him to kiss me longer, deeper, I needed him to grow just like that day in the storage room. He pulled away though and gently set me down upon the ground.

“I should let you finish getting ready,” he cleared his throat.

My mouth flopped open and closed. I then shut it tight and nodded. “Yeah. I should-” An idea struck me and I took a few steps back. “I need to change mostly.” I undid my clothing, letting it slip off my shoulders then down around my ankles. His eyes grew wide and his nostrils flared.

I smirked with some smugness as I saw the fire behind his glasses. I touched the earrings then dragged my fingers tip down my body in a slow agonizing way. His eyes lingered the entire time.

He finally jerked, looking away and putting on his airs. “Cara! What are you doing? The banquet!”

“They prefer if you’re fashionably late, don’t they?” I walked towards him, feeling less guilty if I tricked him this way. I slid my hand up his leg, rubbing my palm to his groin. “Please, Jasper?” I whispered.

He growled low, and that sound sent wicked little shivers through my body. I continued to touch him, grinding my palm into him as he began to stiffen. His strong hands gripped onto my bare shoulders and I took off his pants. I felt bad they would get wrinkled, but I needed this now. I could throw myself into passion, to desire, and forget how I’ve used him. I could tell him the truth later, once we missed the banquet and my job was ruined.

I grabbed hold of his cock, leading him over to the bed. I pushed him down upon it and crawled on top of him. He looked so beautiful all made up, and I was going to ruin that too.

“Cara, where did this come from?” Jasper gasped.

I smirked down upon him, rubbing myself against him. “From the moment I saw you.” I gasped breathlessly. “And that other day in the storage room. I’ve not stopped aching for you.”

Jasper grabbed hold of my hips, grinding his teeth the more he felt me. His deep moans echoed through my brain, driving me forward to keep going. It was working, I just hoped I could keep him entertained long enough. I looked down, taking hold of the base of his shaft. I caught his eyes, making him watch as I rubbed his tip against me. He was so thick, could I really take him?

“Easy,” he grunted.

“I’ll do as I please.” I began to lower myself down onto him. I lost my breath for a moment, then I let out a pleasurable cry. Jasper was moaning, wriggling slightly the more I took.

He was deep inside me, and I forgot everything except every touch of him upon me. His great big hands began roaming up my body, his large form was held tight underneath me, and inside me, oh by the gods, he was so deep inside me.

“I’m dizzy, Cara,” he snarled.

“Not too sensitive are you?” I said with a smirk. I circled my hips, taking him and grinding him inside me. I wanted to tease him, but it was backfiring! I’m sure I was feeling it more than he was.

“Not that…just…so long,” he grunted between breaths.

“Then maybe I should have started off with something easier,” I panted. “Maybe I should-” I started to pull away from him, knowing I had to waste my time wisely.

Jasper grabbed a hold of me and I was stunned for a moment by the force. He pushed me down on my stomach, anchoring his large body over top of me. He slid his cock between my cheeks and held his hands upon my wrist.

“Not so fast,” he chuckled with a dark tone.

“Listen to yourself,” I panted. “You almost scared me.”

His cock slipped between my thighs, rutting against me again. “You can’t just give me the sweetest treat in the world and pull it away. Let me savor it a bit longer.”

“I wasn’t.” I lost my voice and all my breath as he pushed back inside me. My smile became goofy upon my lips and I had to moan into the bed.

“Yes.” He released one of my hands in order to grab my hair. “Just give me a few moments. Oh Car-” his voice cracked. “I need to feel you.”

That was fine by me. He could have done anything to me right then and I would have been okay. It had been quite a while for me, and I wanted Jasper all this time. I trembled, squeezing tight around his shaft as he made small, gentle pushes.

“Oh fuck,” his deep voice rattled in my brain. “We’ll be so late. But you’ll be too full to eat anything at the banquet.” His other hand freed my wrist and he rose up taller behind me.

Oh my god! Why did that sound so hot?

He pushed in deeper, pulling out while his hand clapped down hard upon my ass. I cried out against the bed, it was too much, too good. He spanked me again as he pushed back inside and I laughed in a crazy tone.

He smoothed his soft palms over my cheeks, pushing them together then squeezing them. He pulled out again and rolled me over, laying me so I had to look up at him. His eyes glazed over upon seeing me, his mouth hung open slightly as drool collected around the base of his tusk.

I propped myself up on my elbows and the earrings dangled against my neck. “Jasper, I have something I need to tell you.”

He spread my thighs wide open. “I do as well.” He laid his cock against my belly, rubbing himself there.

“I…I can’t go to the banquet.”

Jasper licked his tusk. “I know. Not like this anyways.” He eased himself back inside me and I whined quite loudly.

“No…not like-” My eyes began to roll to the back of my head. “You don’t…oh!”

He pushed my head down into the bed, turning it so my ear was facing up towards him. He licked around the edge, snarling so close to me it was like my skin would vibrate off my bones.

“I need you now. I can’t stop. But I need to go to this banquet.” He bit my neck then my shoulder.

“I do too, but I-” I shivered again and my mind went blank.

“I’m an informant,” he whispered before delivering a mighty blow that rocked me, knocking around any thought I had and squashing it. My body was inflamed, tingling and crackling all over. I lost my breath, my vision for a moment.

Jasper pulled away, leaving me heaving heavily as he went to pour himself some water. He stood by the window, his back turned to me as I rose from the bed.

“Jasper-”

“These people, I need them Cara. Not in the way you think.”

I was afraid to stand up, I’m not even sure how he was. Wait…he didn’t finish! I brushed my hair out of my face. “Who are you an informant for?”

“I’ve never met them, just the fellow I meet with. But back before, back when I had nothing, they gave me the footing to start my business and live the life I wanted. I just had to pay them back. I was afraid of telling you. You work so hard…you’re such a-”

“Stop,” I snapped. I managed to stand and walk to the desk, taking out the letters I had been given about my mission. I looked them over then back at him. “I think I know who it is.”

Jasper’s thick brow furrowed when he saw the handwriting on the letters. “How do you know when you can’t even read the handwriting?”

I dropped the letters back onto the desktop and the two of us looked at one another for a long while.

“You were using me?” He asked quietly.

“At first,” I murmured. “But I couldn’t-” I shook my head and looked away. “I was trying to miss the whole evening by…by fucking you. Which I wanted to do regardless, mind you!” I looked into his eyes, seeing a smile he was trying to hide.

Jasper unbuttoned his waistcoat and took it off with his shirt. He stood naked there at the window, and I was breathless again. “Why did you?”

I couldn’t tell if he was mad. “Because I-” I took a step closer to him. “Because I care. A lot actually.”

Jasper took hold of me and set me upon the windowsill. “We’re working together now,” he whispered, gently pushing aside my hair and burying his face into my neck. “Informant and spy.” he eased himself back inside me and I wrapped my legs around his waist.

The glass was cold against my back, but I could barely tell it was there. I still wasn’t sure if he was angry, but his body and mine melted together and I could sense he was nothing if not elated. I grasped onto him, letting him do as he wished to come. I wanted him to. I needed him too.

At the banquet I was a bit delirious. I gazed off into the distance, but Jasper snapped me back into attention.

“Remember why you’re here,” he whispered.

“Right, donations.” I drank a dark red punch filled with berries and nectar. “I’m still trying to process this.”

He smirked. “What, our lovemaking?”

I hissed at him then looked over the crowd. “No. That’s your the-” I held my breath as some people walked by us. “The you-know-what.”

“You still have to apologize for trying to use me,” he said with a smarmy tone. “But I’ll forgive you.”

I pouted up at him, setting my glass down as a group gathered around us. Jasper was listening, taking in everything while I put on the show and did the work. I managed to make quite a bit of coin off these fools as they tried to one up themselves.

“You should come to my home, I can donate a lot of old knick knacks around the house my wife keeps collecting,” one man blurted out without much thought.

To my chagrin, it was one of the men I needed to get close to. I reached back, taking hold of Jasper’s hand. “I would be honored, sir!”

I got more invites after that, others who continued to try and show off to each other rather than try to perform a good act. As they dissipated when the music began, I took Jasper’s hand and kissed each soft pad on his palm.

Jasper took the bite of food he was eating and set it aside. “What was that for?” He chuckled.

“A small start to our victory.” My expression melted as I looked up at him. “If you still wish to work with me, that is.”

He took my hand as well, kissing it in return. “Partners from here on out. Like it was all meant to be.”

#exophilia #monster boyfriend #monster romance #monster lemon #monster lover #writing #monster x human #monster x female #bugbear #bugbear boyfriend #monster fuqqer #monster kink #monster smut #momolady monsters #my writing

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acupofqueercoffee · 5 months ago

Text

“Fires of Fidelity”

Rhaenys Targaryen x Female Reader

wc : 4800+

cw : ambiguous relationships // description of violence which i wouldn’t call graphic but it depends i guess // there’s smut towards the end, also not very explicit but then again, it depends :’)) // i am OBSESSED with her hair, so it would only make sense that my reader is also obsessed

rook’s rest doesn’t exist for me 🥰 fuck rook’s rest, and happiest of birthdays to my absolute badass of a queen 🥳🎂 but fuck her too (affectionate)

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The market is teeming with hustle and bustle of common folks. A cacophony of vendors shouting and shoppers strolling around, alongside an undertone of your lady’s heeled boots kissing gravel throbs inside your ears, softened only by the cloak that you are currently shrouded under.

Overhead, clouds hang heavy, a grim portrait of gloomy greys and ivory whites, the sun but a vague presence in the silver-lined edges. No shadows paint the ground aside from you who is hot on your lady’s heels. Everywhere she walks, you follow, akin to a shadow perpetually casted on the ground.

Meanwhile, a few children scamper around you, shouting, laughing, and one comes astray, collides with your lady before she continues scurrying on her jolly little way, blissfully unaware. The sudden jostle has the precarious effect on the body in front of you for you notice the break in rhythm of the feet that are taking graceful steps. All at once, you are directly behind her, the gentle sway of her body braced by a stable palm across her back.

“Careful, Prin-” Eyes, a milky-way of green and brown, render you quiet. You are, after all, accompanying your Princess on her covert little trip to town.

Nevertheless, a token of her gratitude follows in the form of the tiniest hint of a smile that beautifully graces her features. Disguised beneath the cloak though her head is, given the close proximity of your bodies, you are granted an audience with wisps of moon-kissed locks caressing the delicate plane of her forehead.

“Walk next to me.” She says, and donning a playful smile, you drop a whisper directly into her ears. “As my lady commands.”

Aloofness shrouds her mien, lips a firm line, although it is not lost on you that there is a twinkle in her eyes, the cause of which dawns on you as soon as a sly hand disappears into the privacy of your cloak. Two of her digits waste no time in pinching your flesh through the fabric of your cloth. Pain blossoms, bringing with it a small wince to your face.

When her fingers remain unrelenting, a grumble flies past your lips, “I jest. I jest.” And only then does she relent with a hum, feet never faltering as you walk abreast, her body the very picture of cool and collected save a smile touching her lips.

“I have promised gifts for my granddaughters. What do you think would delight them?”

“Well, I’m afraid I’m the worst person you could have turned to for such suggestions.”

“Indulge me, then. Go on.”

Ever the woman of queenly manner, even her cadence oozes charisma. It colours your cheeks rosy, bringing forth memories from which the delightful utterance has graced your ears under more intimate circumstances.

“I don’t know.” You begin by clearing your throat, a shrug on your shoulders as you walk. “Perhaps a kiss on their cheeks would suffice? I know for a fact that it would delight me greatly.”

Being both a Princess and a Dragonrider, your lady looks every bit the epitome of poise and gravitas. Seldom does she wear her emotions on her face, head held high and spine ram-rod straight, always an enchanting enigma except to trained eyes which, as a matter of fact, are few and far between, although an aura of authority is effortlessly, perpetually crowned on her Targaryen head. However, having spent a better part of your years by her side, during formal as well as more personal occasions, you have mastered the art of unravelling the subtleties of her features and nuances of her words.

It is how you find yourself now, raising a hand in faux surrender along with a defensive arm across your waist by merely a slight tilt of her head and a gaze to your face.

“Again, I jest.”

In the vicinity of the place where you currently stand, a ruckus suddenly arises, a heated argument between two vendors, it appears, which quickly fans the flames of a full-blown uproar. A crack of thunder is a prelude to the heavy drizzle that descends upon the crowd as fists are thrown, and like a carcass attracting vultures, the fight lures those who have an innate thirst for violence.

While the chaos unfolds, your sole focus is solemnly fixed on the Princess by your side, all the more so because a plethora of people are darting around in panic. You do not know, have no time to seek what your lady’s wishes are as instinct forces you to act. Taking her waist in your arm, you tuck her body into a nook as delicately as possible.

A desperate attempt on your part to narrowly escape the wagon that whizzes past leaves your bodies fitted together, your lady’s back pressed against the wall with your hand behind her head softening the impact. Her breath caresses your face, and the perfumed air is tentalising, fruity with sweet floral notes alongside something that is entirely her.

Meanwhile, the downpour has become more merciless, and you commit to memory the way raindrops cling to her lashes like tiny diamonds.

“Have anyone ever told you that you have such beautiful eyelashes, Princess?”

An arch of an eyebrow accompanies the dainty little rain-soaked lips as they curve into a dizzying smile.

“Evidently, I have.”

“So it seems.” You chuckle, step away, although not before you have adjusted her cloak in such a way that it will offer her face more protection against the rain. “I’m afraid you’ll have to cut your trip short, my lady.”

“It would appear so.”

“Shall we return to the castle then?”

Rivulets of rain travel down your cheeks, and your lady invites herself into your space, mirroring your movement from a while ago as fingers fix the hood on your head, supple in their movements.

“Yes, let’s return home.”

Home.

Home to you is not a place, but rather, a person. A person to whom you have sworn loyalty, to protect, to kill for, and should the need arise, to give your life for. Simply put, your home is by your Princess’s side, and hence, the subtle admission that the castle is as much a home to you as it is to her becomes the culprit behind the joyful little swell of your heart.

The short journey back to the castle is taken by way of a detour, in which you lead your lady through quiet alleyways, except that they are too deserted, almost suspiciously so. Once you reach the town square, you guide your lady to the exit on the other side, a hand on her back as you match her pace.

Beyond the archway, a hooded person is looming out of the darkness, and no sooner have you registered their dubious presence than your hand is grabbing your lady’s waist to urge her behind your body.

“Well, well, look who we have here.”

You recognise the voice to be that of a person from your life before your Princess, a thug who has had unsavoury history with you.

“I don’t have time for your tomfoolery.”

Mockery drips from your lips as you turn, taking your lady by her arm to leave through another archway, but to your vexation, you find that more hooded hooligans have obstructed your path. Hidden beneath your cloak is a sword attached to your hip. Closing your fingers around the hilt of it, you scan your surroundings with a surreptitious move of your eyes. There is a total of five people, six if you include the man standing behind you.

“Don’t you mean, you have no time at all because you see, me and my boys, we’re about to end you right here.”

He taunts you with his words, his insufferable tone grating on your nerves, and irked, you unsheathe your sword, just in time to swivel on your feet and parry his slash, a clang echoing through the alley when your blades collide. At the same time as you hold your stance, a strong kick is unleashed to his chest. The force of it sends him sprawling across the ground, and you let loose a snicker.

“All bark and no bite, eh?”

From your left and right, two of his lapdogs charge at you, and your blade effortlessly cuts through the air in a blur of sharp counterattacks and swift manoeuvres. You make quick work of them, one stab through the abdomen, another through the chest, and they are nothing but marionettes severed of strings, drowning in a pool of their own blood. Following in the wink of an eye is a shower of three more swords that descends upon you in full force, and you block them with your blade, raised horizontally above your head. No matter how well-trained you are, the combined strength of three against one is proving to be a little beyond your endurance.

Your knee has barely braced against the muddy ground when all of a sudden, one of your opponents drops dead, the Velaryon seahorse adorned hilt of a dagger which is embedded in his back letting you know that it has been a product of your lady’s great finesse.

Until now, all of their attention has been fixated on you, but now that your lady has divulged her capabilities, the two lapdogs disperse, one rushing towards your lady with a cry while the other swings his blade at you with renewed vigour. Every inch of your body screams at you to rush to your lady’s side, but the wretched little demon in front of you is giving you no leeway, lavishing you with onslaughts upon onslaughts of attacks, one of which, in your desperation to end him quickly, manages to catch you in your cloak.

“Stay focused, tigress.” As if sensing your distress, your Princess calls out to you. “Don’t worry about me.”

One touch of her voice and fire meets gasoline, the flame within you burning so fiercely that you let out a loud roar.

“Come on! Come at me, you cunt of a coward!!”

Having his feather ruffled by your gibe, he charges at you once more, but when the blade comes, rather than avoiding it, you catch it between your arm and body, trapping the sword and its wielder in place as you push your blade through his chest so hard that a good few length of it escapes through his back. Blood pours out of his sorry little mouth, and retrieving your sword from his body effectively drops him to the ground.

Your lady’s strikes, not as refined though they are as yours, can easily withstand a vermin whose attacks are disorganized at best. Furthermore, she is swift on her feet, wielding the agility of a crane whereas you possess the strength of a tigress, or so your Princess has whispered into your ears, your strikes always heavy, deep and precise.

Speaking of the Princess, your gaze catches her in time to feast your eyes upon her magnificence. The vermin has swung his blade at your lady, but she has gracefully swept down, and before he can recover, her dagger has made his stomach its temporary case, a snug fit. You watch, morbidly fascinated, as blood spills forth the hole once she pulls out her weapon before bestowing another swift stab upon his neck.

Out of five lapdogs, two lie dead at the hands of your lady, and three at yours which leaves only the old hound who at present, is eyeing you with contempt. When he starts advancing however, instead of lunging at you, he opts for your Princess, but having predicted his dirty, old tricks, you easily intercept, swift and light on your feet as your blades clash. You dance around each other in an exchange of onslaughts until once again, you are forced to maintain a firm stance to keep his sword from bearing down on you.

The rain has thinned and through the clouds, the sun’s rays has spilled across Driftmark. In the corner of your eyes, you discern a glint. You notice it a second too late though because one moment, both of his hands are keeping a firm grip on the blade, and the next, one hand has disappeared into his cloak to retrieve a hidden dagger. Nevertheless, his strength barely wavers, and so engrossed in keeping the looming threat at bay you are that you have not been able to stop in time the dagger that stabs you.

Although its sharp tip has scarcely pierced your flesh before you lock your fingers around his wrist, the struggle that pursues leaves a crimson slash across the plane of your stomach. Gritting your teeth, you swallow the pain in fear that it will upset your Princess who apparently has seized the opportunity to deliver cuts to the backs of his knees. Immediately, he falls to the ground with a grunt. Meanwhile, you waste no time in kicking the dagger away from his hand and throwing his blade across the square.

“Bagged yourself another degenerate like yourself, huh? Or did you whore yourself out?”

You are not as perturbed by him making a ridicule out of you as you are livid by his insults towards your lady, but when you have poised to throw a punch to his face, a gentle hand on your arm stops you.

Pulled free of the hood and kissed by sunshine, a waterfall of liquid starlight almost appears to be glowing.

“Lady wife of the Sea Snake.”

She remains silent at his observation, staring him down, but something about him not addressing your lady by her individual title rubs you the wrong way. Still, you will not interfere, for after all, you dance to your lady’s every desire.

Entwined hands resting just below her waist, your Princess has donned intimidation as though it is regalia, a goddess to be worshiped oozing effortless allure.

“I- I didn’t know. Have mercy.”

“I can be merciful if I so choose, but I can’t in good conscience have a vengeful man pouncing on my sworn shield at every chance he gets. And what’s more, you have thrown insults to my face. I could have your tongue for it.” She blinks, sly and languid, slow and deliberate, alongside a small tilt to her head. “So, what do you propose I do, hm?”

“My tongue. If- if it would appease you-”

The old hound in the face of the dragon is like a lamb to the slaughter, grovelling at the feet of the exalted creature who slowly approaches him.

“Insults are insignificant.” So, she drawls, and before he can register a word, a dagger has been plunged so deeply into his throat by way of his mouth that blood gurgles. “Keep your tongue.”

A squelch accompanies the recovery of the dagger. While she wipes it clean off blood on his cloth, you carry out your own retrieval of her other dagger buried in the back of another body. It, too, is wiped clean before being sheathed on her hip.

“Are you alright, my lady?” Your question is answered with a query. “Are you?”

Her gaze, beneath the dapple of daylight, holds the warmth of sunlit amber, flecked with whispers of forest green, and when it caresses your body from head to toe in silent observation, the wound hidden beneath your cloak throbs in harmony with the beat of your heart.

“I am.” You say, and your lopsided grin garners a small smile in return. “It’s high time we returned home then.”

It is only when you have escorted your lady into the safety of her castle that your false bravado comes to light. Your fingers touch your stomach and they come away wet, viscous, and overwhelmingly red. While you are lost in your head, the voice that caresses your ears comes in the form of your name, and you look up to find your lady standing in front of you.

Stickiness clings to your palm as you curl your digits into a fist, but your sorry excuse of an attempt is proven futile when lithe fingers lock around your wrist. A tug coupled with a look from her is all it takes for your fist to pour open. You can almost pinpoint the exact moment when realisation dawns on her, in the delicate lines on her face that have all but calcified into rocky plains.

“Uncloak.” Her tone harbours an icy ring to it by the time she speaks, releasing your hand at the same time, although when you stand unmoving, she demands instead. “Now.”

Pulling your dark cloak open reveals to your lady the cut across your stomach in all its scarlet, grisly glory. There is a twitch to her jaw as well as a tiny tilt to her head, and when she looks at you, a tempest brews in her eyes, but beneath the blaze of storm-tossed sea, dark and churning with a blazing anger, you find a shadow of concern.

“Pay a visit to the Maester, get it treated, and by nightfall, I want you in my chambers.”

And so, that is how you find yourself in your lady’s chambers after getting the crimson slash properly cleaned, stitched and wrapped in fresh linens at the masterful hands of House Valeryon’s Maester.

The door shuts with a soft click, and a greeting falls past your lips.

“Princess.”

You have crossed paths with her handmaiden in the corridors leading up to the chambers, and she must have helped your lady get ready for bed, you conclude, for the Princess is now comfortably clothed. Oddly enough however, her braids are not yet unwoven which is how you find her now, sitting in front of her vanity desk, a waterfall of white silk flowing down her back.

As if possessing a mind of their own, your legs carry you towards your lady before depositing you directly behind her back. Immediately, reverently, your fingers make a descent onto the intricate little bun perched atop her head, during which the Princess regards you silently through the mirror’s reflection. With much delicacy, you unbind the thick braid that is keeping the bun in place, and doing so spills another layer of those silken locks in an effortless cascade down her back.

“You would do well to remember-” It is amidst you undoing one of the smaller braids that her voice graces your ears for the first time since you have set foot in her chambers. Meanwhile, her gaze finds yours in the mirror. “-that your fealty to me is to no avail should you lie wounded and are unable to fulfill your duties.”

“But what good is a sworn shield who cannot…well…” With a sigh, you drop your gaze to your hands before seeking her eyes once more. “…shield?”

“And what good is a sworn shield who cannot stand?”

“I am perfectly capable of standing though.”

“Are you?”

And then, she is turning on her seat, a lock of her star-kissed hair slipping through your fingers like liquid silver, as she seizes you by your tunic. In the wink of an eye, dainty lips collide with your own, all but sucking your soul out of your body, and your witty remark, which you have been intending to let loose, dissolves on her tongue altogether.

Such marks the epilogue to your little repartee.

While one hand holds a fistful of fabric, another wanders, ghosting along your thigh to then settle on your stomach, fingertips dancing across the gauze before it grabs your waist. A wicked pad of a thumb presses onto your side, and the outcome is just shy of agony, a whimper being fed into your lady’s mouth as your knees very nearly fail you.

“Kneel.”

With a mere touch of her murmured breath branded so deliciously onto your lips that are presently bearing the fruit of her ardent assaults, you are instantly reduced to a puddle at her feet, eager to worship your goddess.

“Hmm, I thought as much.”

“Well,-” Your tone is tinged with a whine, whereas a smile blossoms on your face. “-that was unfair.”

“Are you questioning your Princess?”

You tuck your face into her stomach, dropping a little kiss onto the spot where you think her navel lies.

“I wouldn’t dare, Princess.”

In the meantime, fingers trace patterns on your cheek, caress the outline of your jaw, and closing your eyes, you revel in the luxurious sensation up until a palm that cradles your face coaxes you out of your sweet sanctuary.

“It would be cruel of me to have you remain kneeling.” As she speaks, her thumb maps each curve and contour of your lips, which, swollen by now, speaks of whispered words and the heady waltz of fervent kisses. “I believe improvisations are in order.”

“Strip.”

And strip, you do, for at present, you stand only in your loose trousers.

Gracefully, tentalisingly, your lady arises, and even though a few braids remain in place, her hair, now freed from its confine, flows freely past her hip, a cascade of luminous waves shimmering like moonlight upon a still lake. Her gaze, on the other hand, is fixed on the linen that is entirely wrapped around your waist. The seepage of blood from the wound paints the white fabric in a vague vermillion which offers a glimpse into the extent of the injury.

“It will heal in no time, my lady.” Your attempt at soothing your lady is received with a gentle threat. “I do not tolerate imprudence. Nor deceit. It would do you well to remember that.”

“I will, Princess. But it doesn’t mean I won’t do it all over again if it concerns your safety.”

“Stubborn as ever.”

“My Princess likes me stubborn though, doesn’t she?”

“With that bold tongue of yours, count yourself lucky that I do.” Although she has leveled you with a glare, the blaze of which can very well put the sun to shame, you smile a cheeky little grin, looking every bit the picture of a cat that has eaten the canary, or rather, a tigress who has eaten the dragon. “That I agree. My tongue is capable of doing unimaginable wonders after all.”

You feel her hands move, and fearing that her fingers are once again going to subject you to those ruthless torments, you quickly raise your hands in surrender. She proves you wrong however by snaking her fingers into the waistband of your trousers.

“These need to go too.”

Your Princess has said her command, and like the very devotee that you are, your hands make swift work of getting rid of the only piece of clothing that is covering your body. Meanwhile, what enters your line of sight is a heap of white fabric that pools at your lady’s feet.

A breath catches in your throat, your heart beating with an awe so profound that it borders on reverence. She is a nymph of old tales, a creature of myth sung by the bards, born of the elements and graced with the beauty of the divine. Her presence, lucid and otherworldly at the same time, seems to draw the very light towards her, bathed in a halo of celestial radiance.

Your lady’s bare frame, delicate and strong, speaks of both grace and power, a goddess in her own right. It is a sight that will never tire you, and despite having seen it before, you are awed anew by such glorious vision. Your gaze lingers, admiring the soft curves and the rise and fall of her chest, enthralled by the sheer wonder of her existence that stirs the deepest corner of your soul.

Fascinated, you go to take her hips in your hands, but a push from her, and pliantly, you let yourself fall onto the mattress, for after all, a dragon will always be a dragon no matter the circumstances. You have not so much as blinked when she climbs atop the bed to straddle your body, toned thighs, befitting a dragon-rider of her caliber, on either side of your ribcage.

Your lips collide.

Amidst the clash of tongues and teeth, your hands find home on her waist, flesh supple and soft beneath your fingertips, as you move to sit up, lifting your lady slightly to reposition her on your lap, a special throne fit for your Queen.

Wetness oozes, and as soon as you feel the heat of her core on your thigh, you moan, but given that you are locked in place by a hand grabbing a fistful of your hair and an arm around your neck, it tumbles directly into her mouth. There is a sway to her hips, her essence coating your flesh, and all too eagerly, you encourage the dragon-rider to ride your thigh to her heart’s content, hands sliding into the delicious little dip of her waist as you help her maintain the rhythm that she has set.

Her lips part from yours with a delectable little mewl. Those delicate buds, once dainty, now beautifully bears the bloom of passion’s visit. Each swell hints at the fervor of love’s embrace, leaving them a charming, rosy hue, a testament to moments of rapture. Coated in a layer of dew, they glisten softly in the warm glow, as if kissed by dawn itself, promising the sweet ache of desire.

Like a siren’s call, they lure you, and enchanted, you give in, raising a hand to gently trace the curve of her lips beneath your fingertips. A gasp escapes your lips once your wrist is caught in her hand. Another catches in your throat when two of your fingers are sucked into her mouth.

Every ridge and bone is visited by a velveteen tip of a tongue, licking, prodding, and by the time she guides your hand between her legs, your fingers are as equally soaked as her core. They slip inside smoothly to be enveloped in luxurious softness. Curling your fingers into a cruel, little curve seems to drown your lady in sweet suffering if the way her forehead falls atop your shoulder to muffle the sounds, that very nearly spill out of her, with a bite to your flesh is any indication.

Beneath the soft folds of her belly, you can see muscles straining, hidden little pearl, hard and sensitive, grinding against your palm to seek friction. Meanwhile, your love-struck gaze is busy admiring the lovely little freckles that are scattered across her chest, a spillage of stars, and upon chasing them with your lips, syrupy sweet kisses blossom in their wake.

The sight of her trembling frame as she rides your fingers is a scene worthy to be immortalised in art form, but at the same time, you frankly doubt that bards and painters all across Westeros can truly do your lady’s ethereal beauty justice. Swelling to near bursting with adoration, you hold her to your chest, fingers doing their job in the warm cavern of her core, and in doing so, you earn yourself a nibble to your neck, lips closing around your pulse point, sucking, kissing.

Hot air escapes your mouth as you bury your nose in the healthy mane of her hair.

“You seem awfully fond of my hair, tigress.” She pants, whereas you smile, nuzzling her silky strands that are not only smooth but also addictively fragrant. “Fond is an understatement, Princess.”

“What is it, then?”

“Love.”

“You love my hair?”

You abandon your happy, little haven in favour of taking her face in your hand. Tiny pearls of sweat blooms on her forehead while her lips are slightly parted. A knit occupies the space between her eyebrows while her eyes, usually an intense hazel brown, are now hazy with hunger.

“I love you,-” It is into the delicate lines forming at the corner of her mouth that you breathe your admission. “-and everything you have to offer.”

She says nothing, but you doubt even a thousand spoken words will be capable of touching you the way you feel deeply touched by being made aware of the effect it has on her in the fluttering of her folds as they clench your fingers. Your lady has died that sweet little death in your embrace, head collapsing onto your shoulder. It is only when her muscles have relaxed, and her core has released its grip on your fingers that they can finally slip out.

“And my dear tigress.” Fingers lazily toy with your hair. “Yes, Princess?”

“Don’t you dare hide your wounds from me ever again.” Your arms wrap around her body to hold her a little closer, a little tighter, into which she happily melts, rare moments where you can witness her softer, more affectionate side.

Nevertheless, you must have taken too long to her liking because the delicate flesh of your neck falls victim to her teeth.

“Do I make myself clear?”

Although she has left you throbbing in pain, the happiness that swells inside your chest easily prevails over anything and everything, burning so fiercely that you feel as if you can conquer the Seven Kingdoms to offer it to her on a diamond platter. Suppressing your silly little urge, you content yourself instead with a delicate press of a kiss to her bare shoulder.

“Delightfully so, Princess.”

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#house of the dragon #rhaenys targaryen x reader #rhaenys targaryen velaryon x reader #rhaenys velaryon x reader #rhaenys targaryen #rhaenys velaryon #rhaenys the queen who never was #hotd s2 #hotd fanfic #hotd season 2 #hotd #asoiaf #character x reader #eve best #fanfic

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hometoursandotherstuff · 1 month ago

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What do you think of this designer renovation? It's an 1890 home in Hudson, NY. I think I like it, especially the wallpaper and color. The house itself is square and plain, so I think that the updates fit it. 3bds, 3ba, $1.145m. I posted it before, so it's been on the market a while, and it's finally got a pending sale. However, Zillow feels that the price is too high- the Zestimate is $1,078,800.

The designer gave the entrance hall sophisticated paint choices and modern lighting.

Small sitting room off the main hall has an original fireplace painted black. Hate that light fixture, though. The original floors were all painted black.

Pocket doors open to a second sitting room.

She put a little wood burning stove in the corner. Cute. I'm getting moody vibes from this decor.

Small dining room has the popular blue leaf-patterned wallpaper. I saw a video the other day about painting old wood- a woman painted all of the wood walls in a family room, a la HGTV. The video showed how she could've kept the wood and what she could've done to update the room with decor. It was interesting.

The kitchen was given a remodel, keeping the original small footprint. They got a large island in, and some nice shaker cabinetry, but that cooktop w/o exhaust is really gonna mess up those shiny lights overhead.

Back room was fitted with a storage piece.

Nice guest powder room.

Refinishing the wood stairs and coating them in polyurethane would've been more durable than paint. They're going to need some sort of preservative or stair treads.

Cute bedroom.

Bath reno. Not bad.

This room has a nice little alcove and was made into a TV room.

Bedrooms are small - a cloud mural on the feature wall gives it a little feel of openness.

Love the pale pink tree pattern on this wallpaper.

Small vintage bath. Like the heat grate in the wall.

The 3rd level rail was left original. I'm assuming that this is the attic. They don't show it.

Wrap around porch and modern deck on the back.

Fenced in yard. Not sure if that parking space belongs to the house, but it looks like it does. 5,662 sq ft lot

#houses #old house dreams #home tour

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moonkissed-reverence · 12 days ago

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Elain & Azriel visit the Summer Court

An Elriel one-shot

A dreamy tryst at the sea…

Writers note: I’m dipping my toes in the waters of fanfic inspired by Elriel. Just for fun. This is my first ever, I hope you enjoy. 🩷

The sky was filled with puffs of salt kissed clouds billowing above the turquoise sea.

Elain brought a basket of fresh fruits, a variety of cheeses, crackers & a bottle of rosé that she procured from the local market that morning. They enjoyed the refreshments while lounging lazily on a blanket on the sand. Azriel feeding Elain bites of cheese, Elain feeding Azriel figs while they both sipped the chilled wine.

“This is the most perfect day”, Elain sighed joyously, tossing her head back, feeling the ocean breeze through the waves of her golden brown locks.

Azriel bathed in the sight of her glistening in the sunlight, she was radiant. His attention pulled her gaze to him. She tilted her head to the side in wonder, but his look told her he was feeling exactly as she. Lovestruck. His stunning beauty, his golden skin glowing under the sun, his dark curls damp with salt water, hazel eyes bright and piercing.

“Every day with you is a perfect day”, he finally said, pulling her in close, kissing her temple. She turned into him finding his lips, kissing him gently while slowly falling back on the blanket. Azriel ran his thumb over the plush of her lips, running his scarred hands down the delicate curves of her body before rolling her onto him. She lay atop him, exploring his features, tracing his cheekbones and marking the planes of his face, admiring his god-like beauty.

It felt so good to share their affection out in the open without the worry of being caught and they were determined to enjoy this day in each other’s arms.

The sun eventually began to set, the sky turning shades of purple and pink, its reflection glowing upon the sea. Elain ran into the ocean, twirling and splashing about. “Come Azriel, come swim with me!”, she cried out joyously, laughing and spinning through the water. As Azriel gracefully strolled towards her, she ran to him grabbing his hands and pulling him behind her into the sparkling waters. He twirled her around and they played and laughed, his wings splaying and dripping with seawater.

In a swift maneuver, Azriel swooped her into his arms and took flight. Elain gasped in shock but Azriel gave her a reassuring squeeze, “I’ve got you”, he whispered in her ear as they glided over the glittering sea.

As they few through the clouds, feeling safe in his arms, she relaxed and enjoyed the salty breeze against her skin and the breathtaking view.

After a short flight over the ocean, Azriel gently landed them to shore, keeping her in his arms long after they grounded. She leaned back against his solid form and after a few moments she turned in his arms to meet his gaze. “Thank you”, she said, caressing his cheek, “for the most magical day, Azriel. She paused in thought, then sighed as she said, “Must we go home?”

He said nothing, just pulled her into him. They stood that way, holding each other for a long while, breathing each other in as the stars began winking out into the dusk sky.

#elriel #just for fun #acotar #elain archeron #elain x azriel #azriel #pro elriel #elriel fanfic

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mostlysignssomeportents · 6 months ago

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Monopoly is capitalism's gerrymander

For the rest of May, my bestselling solarpunk utopian novel THE LOST CAUSE (2023) is available as a $2.99, DRM-free ebook!

You don't have to accept the arguments of capitalism's defenders to take those arguments seriously. When Adam Smith railed against rentiers and elevated the profit motive to a means of converting the intrinsic selfishness of the wealthy into an engine of production, he had a point:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/28/cloudalists/#cloud-capital

Smith – like Marx and Engels in Chapter One of The Communist Manifesto – saw competition as a catalyst that could convert selfishness to the public good: a rich person who craves more riches still will treat their customers, suppliers and workers well, not out of the goodness of their heart, but out of fear of their defection to a rival:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/19/make-them-afraid/#fear-is-their-mind-killer

This starting point is imperfect, but it's not wrong. The pre-enshittified internet was run by the same people who later came to enshittify it. They didn't have a change of heart that caused them to wreck the thing they'd worked so hard to build: rather, as they became isolated from the consequences of their enshittificatory impulses, it was easier to yield to them.

Once Google captured its market, its regulators and its workforce, it no longer had to worry about being a good search-engine – it could sacrifice quality for profits, without consequence:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/24/naming-names/#prabhakar-raghavan

It could focus on shifting value from its suppliers, its customers and its users to its shareholders:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/15/they-trust-me-dumb-fucks/#ai-search

The thing is, all of this is well understood and predicted by traditional capitalist orthodoxy. It was only after a gnostic cult of conspiratorialists hijacked the practice of antitrust law that capitalists started to view monopolies as compatible with capitalism:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/20/we-should-not-endure-a-king/

The argument goes like this: companies that attain monopolies might be cheating, but because markets are actually pretty excellent arbiters of quality, it's far more likely that if we discover that everyone is buying the same product from the same store, that this is the best store, selling the best products. How perverse would it be to shut down the very best stores and halt the sale of the very best products merely to satisfy some doctrinal reflex against big business!

To understand the problem with this argument, we should consider another doctrinal reflex: conservatives' insistence that governments just can't do anything well or efficiently. There's a low-information version of this that goes, "Governments are where stupid people who can't get private sector jobs go. They're lazy and entitled." (There's a racial dimension to this, since the federal government has historically led the private sector in hiring and promoting Black workers and workers of color more broadly.)

But beyond that racially tinged caricature, there's a more rigorous version of the argument: government officials are unlikely to face consequences for failure. Appointees and government employees – especially in the unionized federal workforce – are insulated from such consequences by overlapping layers of labor protection and deflection of blame.

Elected officials can in theory be fired in the next election, but if they keep their cheating or incompetence below a certain threshold, most of us won't punish them at the polls. Elected officials can further improve their odds of re-election by cheating some of us and sharing the loot with others, through handouts and programs. Elections themselves have a strong incumbency bias, meaning that once a cheater gets elected, they will likely get re-elected, even if their cheating becomes well-known:

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/gold-bars-featured-bob-menendez-bribery-case-linked-2013-robbery-recor-rcna128006

What's more, electoral redistricting opens the doors to gerrymandering – designing districts to create safe seats where one party always wins. That way, the real election consists of the official choosing the voters, not the voters choosing the official:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REDMAP

Inter-party elections – primaries and other nomination processes – have fundamental weaknesses that mean they're no substitute for well-run, democratic elections:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/30/weak-institutions/

Contrast this with the theory of competitive markets. For capitalism's "moral philosophers," the physics by which greedy desires led to altruistic outcomes was to be found in the swift retribution of markets. A capitalist, exposed to the possibility of worker and customers defecting to their rival, knows that their greed is best served by playing fair.

But just as importantly, capitalists who don't internalize this lesson are put out of business and superceded by better capitalists. The market's invisible hand can pat you on the head – but it can also choke you to death.

This is where monopoly comes in. Even if you accept the consumer welfare theory that says that monopolies are most often the result of excellence, we should still break up monopolies. Even if someone secures an advantage by being great, that greatness will soon regress to the mean. But if the monopolist can extinguish the possibility of competition, they can maintain their power even after they cease deserving it.

In other words, the monopolist is like a politician who wins power – whether through greatness or by deceit – and then gerrymanders their district so that they can do anything and gain re-election. Even the noblest politician, shorn of accountability, will be hard pressed to avoid yielding to temptation.

Capitalism's theory proceeds from the idea that we are driven by our self-interest, and that competition turns self-interest into communal sentiment. Take away the competition, and all that's left is the self-interest.

I think this is broadly true, even though it's not the main reason I oppose monopolies (I oppose monopolies because they corrupt our democracy and pauperize workers). But even if capitalism's ability to turn greed into public benefit isn't the principle that's uppermost in my mind, it's what capitalists claim to believe – and treasure.

I think that most of the right's defense of monopolies stems from cynical, bad-faith rationalizations – but there are people who've absorbed these rationalizations and find them superficially plausible. It's worth developing these critiques, for their sake.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/18/market-discipline/#too-big-to-care

#pluralistic #capitalism #feudalism #too big to care #market discipline #graceful failure modes #gerrymandering #impunity #unaccountability #regulatory capture #monopolies #trustbusting

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rockethorse · 1 year ago

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Stocking Stuffer 1/5: A Bajillion Random Painting Recolours

Happy Holidays to all! While I'm proud that last year I finally managed to achieve a longtime goal of sharing a full TS2 Advent Calendar, I'm simply not gonna be able to pull it off this year. Nonetheless, the holidlay spirit has encouraged me to finish up and share a couple of things before the end of the year! I'll be sharing five little gifts over the next few arbitrary days. First up: A BUNCH of Maxis painting recolours.

One recolour each of A/B/C Stroke (yes, I still enjoy playing with these as three separate paintings) using vintage matchbook covers designed by Saul Bass for The Ohio Match Company.

Two recolours +frames for Abstrutionism; "Poppy Cake" by Adolf Fényes (1910), and then this edit of Christina's World by Andrew Wyeth (1948) to include Bella Goth (the original Tumblr poster has deactivated).

A recolour of Anonymous Masterpiece with these two digital paintings by user chestnutroan featuring their farmer Sim and his two alien daughters.

One recolour of the Arghist Soldier with "Friday Nights" by Deborah DeWit (2006), perfect for your novel-enthusiast Sims' reading nook.

One recolour of City Skyline with a fruit & veg painting by Twitter user snail_soup (you can buy a real print of this too if you like it!)

One recolour of the Fourth Element wall scroll with "From Stardust to Stardust - Raccoon" by user ArtOfMienda.

Four Vegetables recoloured with four deliciously juicy tomato paintings by artist Leah Gardner.

Geometry 101 recoloured with a beautiful palette knife painting by Lynn Boggess.

Two recolours of Grilled Cheese (you all know what Grilled Cheese looks like, c'mon); one vintage ad for Hollywood Diet bread which I cleaned/redrew to remove text/graphics, and then "Cloud Rows" by Ivan Eyre (2004).

In The Beginning (+frame) recoloured with "Little Thief" by Courtney / Trash Kitty Art (also available as an affordable IRL print).

Kitten vs. Yarn (+frame) recoloured with this goache painting by user ieafy.

"Until Tonight" by Mark Grantham (2019) slapped on Lady On Red.

Two recolours of Living Room; "Midwestern Summer Fun" by user ink-the-artist (you may wanna zoom in for a surprise), then "Girl On A Swing" (2000) by Andrew Macara.

One recolour of Marketing Print with the Beatles as drawn by other Beatles. I don't remember who drew who because I'm actually not much of a Beatles fan but I thought these sketches were really darling.

In Memory of Johnny Gnome (+frame) recoloured with a piece by Emma Roulette.

A recolour of My First Holiday with art from Twitter user heikala_art.

On Pointed Toes (+frame) recoloured with this digital painting by Twitter user catwheezie.

I fell in love with this Guinness ad so I tweaked it from the photo to fit on the Route 66 poster, then made an accompanying Simlish option.

A single Scruffles recolour (+frame) with this adorable cow illustration by Twitter user poodlewool.

Four recolours of the Sim Noir pop art print; three pieces by Al Parker I found through this Tweet (with some English removed) and then an edit of the original painting to look passingly familiar...

Two recolours (+frames) of Snoozing Enemies; "The Cat on the Pillow" by Adolf von Becker, and "Sleeping Sasha" by Lena Rivo.

Stiller Life (+frame) recoloured with this oil painting of McDonalds by artist Noah Verrier.

Two recolours (+frames) of Stumped Hound; "Shadow" by Tianyi Zhou and "cat falling off table" by user anasauruss.

The Muse recoloured with this Juxtapoz magazine cover by artist Josh Courlas.

And lastly, three recolours of Untitled (the Bella Goth pop art painting) with works by Hiroshi Nagai.

Download All Paintings @ SFS

#the sims 2 #s2cc #sims 2 cc #Stocking Stuffers

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eoieopda · 9 months ago

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FORCE QUIT // EPISODE III: SPIDER

somebody has to make sure you make it through the firefight alive.

pairing: lee minho x reader | series masterlist (3/4) | prev. episode series summary: it's 2077, and life's a fucking nightmare. corporate titans ate the state and shat it back out, leaving citizens of the new republic to fall in line, or fall to their knees. a reckoning is coming — where will you fall? au: series — dystopian, cyberpunk; episode — mutually-pining fuck buddies. ➢insp. by: cyberpunk 2077 + the true lives of the fabulous killjoys genre: smut + angst word count: 23.5k rating: 18+ — minors do not have my consent to interact. series warnings: violence (hand-to-hand, firearms, explosives), depictions of injuries (blood/bruising/burns), some characters have cybernetic modifications, class conflict + poverty, surprise - corporations are bad!, unethical medical/tech experimentation, self-indulgent references to non-skz idols, reader is afab and uses she/her pronouns. episode: above + combat leader!minho, disabled!hacker!reader, pov switches, time skips, loss of limb due to injury (not depicted, minimally described), ref. to hospitalization + recovery, sunshine/storm cloud dynamic, minho is kind of a dick, depictions of combat violence, minor character death(s), unprotected p in v penetration. reader notes: afab and uses she/her pronouns; has a prosthetic/cybernetic leg; wears minho’s shirt at one point. ➢ notes added/expanded upon during 8/6/24 inclusivity review a/n 1: this part required a lot more external resources than anything else i’ve written, so i’ve kind of… footnoted? what i used. see the note at the end of the fic for the list! a/n 2: each episode features a different member x reader pairing, but the plot is linear, so you'd need to read them (in order) to get the full picture! you can sign up for the taglist to be notified of the next uploads. thank you to my beloved @sailoryooons for beta'ing this and @jihopesjoint for being my emotional support internet wife even though she doesn't stan skz. ily both endlessly!

Yours is the Black Screen’s worst kept secret.

The irony of that isn’t lost on you. Professionally, your most marketable skill is your ability to lower others’ defenses; to build and break walls as needed to take what you want for keeps. With finesse few can imitate, you vault over boundaries. Unfortunately for you, you don’t personally have any of those.

You’ve always been this way — no poker face, no affinity for bluffing, no discernible self-preservation instinct — and just the same, you’ve always wished you weren’t.

Time and again, your cards are on the table the second they’re dealt. If that alone wasn’t shitty gameplay, you and that relentless optimism of yours raise the stakes, double down. There’s no hesitating before you go all in; and there’s no surprise when you lose it all, either. Nothing you’ve ever felt has shocked anyone because they saw it coming in the previous turn.

Like Seungmin, for example, who won’t stop rolling his eyes at you from the other side of the room.

“If I took a shot every time you looked up at the door…” He sighs, gesturing from your corner of the Hub to its entrance, “I’d have died of alcohol poisoning six times over by now.”

The grimace you don’t want to concede can’t be hidden, so you rein your gaze in and direct it back at the screen in front of you. You don’t absorb any of the information flickering in front of you, however, because Seungmin has a point. Any second you haven’t spent staring wistfully out of the room is wasted on glancing at the clock.

It’s close to nine o’clock now, which means your not-so-secret distraction is due any minute.

That reminds me…

You check again, wondering how many minutes have passed since you last looked, only to learn that it’s been less than one. That’s when the reflex takes over. Without your permission, your eyes wander from the glowing, green digits on the wall to the door — just in case.

No dice.

Damn it.

In a feeble attempt to cover your chronic — terminal — hopefulness, you try to refocus on your work. All it takes is a few seconds of staring before your eyes glaze over again. That disinterest isn’t reflected in your rigid posture, though. Your brain may be a flat tire, but your body is a bow drawn back, ready to fire.

Anticipation is a hell of a drug, isn’t it?

Seungmin crosses his arms. From the corner of your eye, you can see the knowing look he shoots you. He may not speak his favorite words, but that doesn’t mean you can’t hear them, loud and clear.

Told you so.

“It’s kind of funny, actually,” he says instead.

You know better than to be thrown off by his trademark, flat affect. This is the most amused you’ve seen the weaponsmith in weeks. The corner of his mouth even twitches slightly; it might be the closest he’s ever been to smiling. “He only steps foot in here when you do.”

With all the heat you can muster, you aim to warn him — to puff out your chest a little, just this once — but it just sounds like a whine. “Seungmin…”

As if on cue, light footsteps sound off from down the hallway, shifting closer with every muffled step and cutting your would-be bickering off in the process.

Even with Seungmin’s judgment focused elsewhere, you continue to pretend that the glaring, blue light in front of your face has garnered any amount of your attention. It doesn’t. It hasn’t and won’t, so long as you can feel the seconds tick by in your chest.

He snorts. “Like clockwork.”

Damn it.

For being as light on his feet as he is, Minho tends to drag them more, the longer the day lasts. You never point that out to him; he doesn’t need to know that you’ve noticed. That fact sits among the million others you try to keep to yourself, just like your ability to identify him by gait alone.

Besides, you think, he’d never listen if you begged him to slow down, even if it’s just for a night. Rest doesn’t feature on the short list of things Minho wants from you. Come to think of it, neither does advice or concern for his well-being.

“Well, well, well. Look who it is,” Seungmin sings out when the shuffling stops short. “You lost, hyung?”

The way your head snaps up has nothing to do with Seungmin’s mocking tone and everything to do with the flutter in your chest. You’d attempt to keep that a secret, too, but then Minho walks in, and it’s game set.

He’s fatal with his tattered, grey t-shirt half-tucked into ripped, black denim; and you have to clench your jaw to keep it from dropping. Before your dry throat can choke you, you clear it, swallowing down the thought that Minho and his jagged edges are the most beautiful things you’ve ever seen.

It gets easier to get a fucking grip on yourself when Seungmin starts needling again: “No, seriously, are you lost? What are you doing here?”

Dark, cat eyes flick to you, then back to their target. Deadly, you think, just like the rest of him.

“Wishing you weren’t,” Minho responds without missing a beat.

As usual, his tone is carefully balanced between bored and annoyed. You suspect that’s purposeful. A tactic. It leaves listeners in the dark about his feelings, so they have to guess whether or not they should run.

Nine times out of ten, they guess wrong.

This time, Minho deigns to give a hint. It’s quick enough that you would’ve missed it if you hadn’t been staring. Thankfully, his target sees the microscopic flex of his eyebrow, too.

All that bark leaves Seungmin in a hurry, no bite to follow. With his tail between his legs and his palms raised in defeat, he skirts around Minho before slipping wordlessly out the door.

You frown slightly as you watch him flee, although you sure as shit won’t mind his absence.

“Seungmin’s harmless,” you remind Minho quietly, although you don’t know why you bother. He’s never felt threatened in his life, as far as you can tell. You don’t necessarily hate it when he flexes that fact in front of you, but that doesn’t mean he should. “You don’t need to scare him off.”

Minho crosses his arms and tilts his head in a way that makes you only the slightest bit insane. “I’m not scary,” he rebuts matter-of-factly, as if that’ll make it true.

You make the mistake of looking him in the eye then. Like it always does in moments like this, heat immediately rushes to your face like a backdraft.

Like he always does, Minho senses the spike in temperature. To crank it higher, he meanders his way across the room to you, eyes glittering impishly all the while. Your heart thuds harder with each footfall. Stupidly, you wonder if he can sense that, too.

“In fact, I’m offended,” he corrects you as he closes in.

His palms press down against the opposite side of your desk once he reaches it. This close, you can read the mischief scribbled all over his face, which only serves to tear you in two — equal parts fucked up by his assertiveness and the rare playfulness that only comes in flashes, only with you.

Minho looms over you now, his hardened stare softening just slightly. Whispering through what almost looks like a pout, he adds, “And you’re mean.”

For a second, you think that the hand inching its way across the tabletop is seeking yours. Anticipation makes your fingers twitch. Try as you might, you can’t think of a single fucking thing you want more than to slip them between his.

Proving once again that you’ll never read him right, Minho’s hand darts out to your side instead. You watch in slow-motion as he snags the bag of honey twists from its resting spot near your left forearm, which is nowhere near fast enough to catch him before he pulls away. Useless, your empty hand drops back onto your desk.

You stare longingly at the stolen packet, so dejected that you really could cry, and mumble, “It took so much effort to get those.”

“It shouldn’t have,” Minho counters with a shrug.

He isn’t wrong, and you hate that.

The Black Screen’s demolition expert, Lee Jihoon, is as hard to crack as the shit he blows to pieces. His footlocker full of snacks — a rarity, given the whole everything going on in the world — is even more impenetrable. Charming your way through his stony exterior had been your only option to gain access. It took months, as well as unrelenting friendliness administered in small, persistent doses.

Just like —

Minho wouldn’t have wasted his time with flattery or nuance. He never needs to open his mouth to get what he’s after because his presence — from his stance to his intense, vaguely violent gaze — does all the talking for him. All he would’ve needed to do is blink in Jihoon’s direction, then he would’ve walked out of there with the older man’s treasure trove and the jacket off his back.

Having just been robbed blind yourself, you keep your mouth shut about that.

Shrugging once again, Minho throws down the gauntlet: “Finish your shit quickly, and I might decide to share them with you.”

How thoughtful.

If he’s expecting a verbal response, he won’t get one, you decide. The most you give is a disgruntled sigh. Dying star that you are, you collapse in on yourself, sinking deeper into your chair until you wind up as a half-crumpled heap on the desk below your monitors. It’s a perfect picture of abject failure, making this the only thing you’ve gotten right all day.

You don’t expect Minho to ask after your current state, so you’re not disappointed when he doesn’t. Or, at least, you will yourself not to be. In reality, your bated breath is held for a second or two before you remember who you’re dealing with.

He does speak, though, which surprises you. Your first guess would’ve been that he’d give a hard pass on your dramatics and wander back out the door while your face was buried in your arms.

“Spider,” he sighs, and his tone is so gentle that it shocks the hell out of you. Intimate, almost, even if it is just a caricature. “Call it a night.”

More curious than cautious, you lift your head enough to blink up at him. Between his eyebrows, there’s a small crease that you don’t see often enough to competently translate. You stare at the tension there for a beat longer than you mean to before your gaze drifts downward to meet his.

See? Beautiful.

The second Minho sees your eyebrows raise slightly in question, a switch flips. He shuts the light off, irons out his expression. Whatever softness you found there is gone as quickly as it came.

He clears his throat, then huffs, “Come on.”

You frown and gesture to the screen ahead, pointing out the program you’ve spent all goddamn day working on to no avail. The silent protest doesn’t work on Minho. His stare only becomes more expectant the longer he levels it at you.

“Seriously. Fuck it.”

Having chosen the hill you plan to die on, you envision roots tying your unmoving body to the floor beneath you. Your frown deepens. No, you think emphatically, as if making your internal monologue shout will make him listen.

Minho tries again. “It’ll be here to ruin your day tomorrow.”

You don’t budge, and it pulls an exasperated noise out of him. Curling his right hand into a loose fist, he taps the knuckle of his index finger lightly against your elbow, like the contact will force your mental task list to shut down.

“I’m bored.”

You know exactly what that means.

“Come up to the roof with me.”

Strike that.

“The roof?” You peep, hardened expression smashed to bits before you can blink.

Minho looks a little too pleased by your sudden concession. He even makes one of his own, chuckling slightly before he rolls his eyes and elaborates, “It’s nice out.”

It’s nice out, so you want to fuck me… on the roof?

The hand at your elbow pulls away and re-routes towards the back pocket of his jeans. When it returns to the space between you, there’s a dented, silver flask glinting in his grip. He shakes it, arches one eyebrow, and tops it all off with a wolfish grin that makes your stomach flip.

“Stolen whisky tastes best in restricted areas, I hear.”

He nods his head towards the door, beckoning you to give in, and you’re on your feet without needing the invitation to be repeated.

The sudden movement after sitting for so long means that your body isn’t as enthusiastic as your brain. A sharp pinch pulls a slight gasp out of you. That’s the extent of your own reaction, but Minho isn’t used to this the way you are. Alert eyes flick down to where your residual limb slots into your manufactured one, then back up to search your face.

Once again, he asks without saying a word. You answer with a wave of your hand, “All good.”

Minho’s concern doesn’t immediately dissipate. To prove that you meant what you said, you snatch the packet of honey twists out of his unsuspecting hand and circle around the desk until you’re face to face.

“If I’m on my ass for too long, my leg forgets how to leg,” you explain, grinning more out of triumph than reassurance. Then, you dangle your reclaimed prize from your fingertips because you are nothing if not a little shit. “I’m not a doctor, but I think science says that food helps.”

“Science says?” Minho snorts.

You nod authoritatively, then you turn to the spare folding chair near your work station. Your jacket waits for you there, carefully folded on the cracked, plastic-coated cushion. Shrugging it on, you shove the honey twists in your right pocket and tease, “Sure does.”

The corner of his mouth tugs slightly upwards, and you swear there’s an affectionate smile threatening to break loose.

It doesn’t.

Instead, after pushing off his palms, Minho stands fully upright, nods his head towards the door a second time, and starts making his way towards it. You follow because you always do, biting back your lips to keep your giddiness to yourself.

As the pair of you exit and head down the hallway in comfortable quiet, you note his proximity to you. It’s always the same; he’s always close by but never near enough to touch. The edge of his shirt sleeve brushes against your arm, although his skin never does.

You stopped wondering about that a long time ago, unwilling to figure out if this is a tactic, too.

Halfway to the nearest stairwell, Jeongin appears in a doorway. The room he emerges from used to be an office for the human resources department, back when the factory was operational — back when employers bothered with pretending to give a shit.

Now, the room’s function lands somewhere between a bar and a bedroom. The latter only comes into play when the former makes staggering upstairs to the residential area too much of a hassle. From what you can see over the younger man’s shoulder, that’ll likely be the case tonight.

Jeongin gives you a cursory smile before directing his full attention to the man keeping cursory distance at your side.

None of it makes sense to you, all this effort spent to hide intentions. Maybe, you think, that’s why you’re so fucking terrible at it.

“Hey, hyung!” Jeongin chirps as the pair of you approach. He lifts his hand to wave, but it just looks like he’s shaking the deck of cards in his hand at Minho. “Do you want to —”

Without slowing down, Minho cuts him off mid-ask and at the knees. “No.”

And then his finger slips into the belt loop of your jeans, tugging you along beside him as he keeps up the pace. You’re gone before you can see Jeongin’s face fall, but you’re sure it does.

Yours would.

When you reach the stairs, Minho matches your careful pace, albeit much less awkwardly. For as life-saving as the chunk of metal and carbon fiber on your right side has been, there’s at least one problem it hasn’t solved: going up steps is a bitch.

To compensate for your less dynamic knee, your left leg takes stairs two at a time so you can simply step straight up with your right. And even though you’re a bit out of breath from the extra effort, you open your mouth to comment on what you just witnessed.

Minho stops you before you can start. Shooting you a look you know far too well, he sighs, “Don’t.”

You’re as good a faker as you are a listener.

“He’s just trying to —”

He releases his grip on your belt loop. It’s the only reason you realize he’d still been holding on. Stopping at the landing, Minho turns to look back at you. “Can’t think of anything I want to do less than sit next to someone and have to hear about their fucking day.”

Eyebrows raised, you stare up at him. This time, you don’t say a word, letting your expression speak for you.

“With the ever-present risk that I’ll be murdered by the state tomorrow, forgive me if I’m not wasting today by listening to shit I don’t care about.”

There it is, you think.

The combat leader’s insistence that his life will only end one way: too soon and bloody.

That unexploded ordnance drops heavy between you. You step over it, joining him on the landing, and you don’t look back. Just at Minho, who watches you carefully for a reaction; whose tension leaves his muscles when the slight, upward curve of your mouth says, I understand.

Together, you climb the remaining flight until you reach the thick, steel door leading out to the roof. It’s barely functional, like the vast majority of the factory, and can’t shut all the way. With more force than is even remotely necessary, he kicks it fully open. The thick, rubber tread of his boot thuds against the metal. It’s quickly drowned out by the strangled squeak of its hinges.

You’re at least slightly thankful that those hinges don’t explode into a cloud of rust.

On his way to the ledge, Minho grabs two empty buckets from the pile of discarded odds-and-ends near the doorway. The rest of the pile — mainly two-by-four planks too busted to rehab and similarly spent range targets — threatens to collapse without its foundation, but neither of you stops to fix it. He leads, and you follow, ultimately coming to a stop near the ledge.

“So?”

His insufficient question is underscored by the two buckets landing mouth-down on the concrete with twin thunks.

You’re still blinking through your confusion when he unceremoniously drops himself on the furthest bucket and when he stretches out his leg to tap the remaining one with the side of his boot. Coincidentally, you’re still waiting for the rest of his inquiry when you sit — much more gently — next to him. This time, it’s you who moves, nudging your chrome knee against his flesh-and-bone.

Minho finally takes the hint and continues, pulling out his flask as he does. “How was your day?”

The whiplash makes your neck ache.

Remind me again about the last thing you said to me.

After taking a swig without incident, he passes the flask to you. You take your sip — small, cautious — and immediately let out some clownish, choking noise when the strong notes of wooden barrel hit your taste buds.

“Oh, that’s —” You cough, nose scrunching. Whisky-laced breath slips out of your teeth in the form of a hiss. “Absolutely wretched, I fear.”

For the first time all night, Minho’s mask cracks, and a full-fledged laugh tumbles out of his mouth, high and clear as it cuts through the otherwise dead air.

“It’s not,” he counters. Without taking his eyes off your pout, he lifts a hand to catch the flask that you toss at him. “You’re just childish.”

In recompense, you swat his arm.

He lets you.

“Shut up.” Your distinctly childish comeback is breathy because, like always, your laughter isn’t something you can successfully hide. “Am not.”

Another swig, no further incidents.

“Think you need to be demoted. Maybe I should start calling you baby instead of Spider.”

The violent flutter in your chest doesn’t seem to care that what it heard isn’t at all what he meant. For now, you let it happen. You focus instead on his creased eyes and barely-crooked smile; drink them in as quickly as you can, knowing that your window is closing.

As rare as it is, levity looks perfect on him.

While your laughter ebbs, the wind kicks up slightly, bringing a chill with it. You pull your jacket tighter around you as you watch browned leaves spin in pirouettes near your feet. Their presence here is surprising, given how devastating the War was to the ecosystem, but it’s welcomed. It’s a reminder sorely needed: nothing’s ever truly fucked beyond repair.

Minho pipes up suddenly, “You never answered me, you know.” And even though his voice is low, it startles you.

He’s too busy fiddling with the cap of his flask to see it when you turn your head to look quizzically at him. He probably missed the way you jolted just then, too, which is fine by you. Your goldfish brain is still trying to recall what he asked that went without a reply.

When you remain quiet, he supplies, “Your day.”

As it turns out, you’re just as stunned by his question the second time he poses it. Part of you wants to remind him that he could be murdered by the state tomorrow, just in case he wants to reclaim his wasted time. The rest watches as his absentminded fidgeting stops, and his head lifts to look at you — not impatiently, not sardonically, but with the tiniest bit of insecurity scribbled into his slightly furrowed brow.

Oh.

Now, you’re frozen into silence for an entirely different, entirely devastating reason: he wouldn’t have asked if he didn’t genuinely want to know.

A self-effacing laugh serves as a smokescreen for how fucking flustered that realization makes you.

“Well, I had plans to go phishing, but they fell through.”

“Beach advisory?” He feigns a frown, making your lips curve upwards at the corners. “Those hypocrites at Thanotech really need to stop dumping their shit into the reservoir.”

At this, you laugh outright.

This is the Minho that no one but you could pick out of a lineup: the one that will take a bit and run with it, who lets his guard down and catches you off yours. This one may not be yours — you know he isn’t, not really — but at times like this, when it’s just the two of you alone, it feels like he is.

“I’ll make sure to tell them you said so.” You pat his thigh, which tenses slightly in the second your palm rests on it. Redirecting your thoughts from where they’re headed, you pull your hand back and tuck it into your jacket pocket. “I really think they’ll listen if they know Lee Minho’s the one asking.”

His eyes roll in response, but the amused smirk he wears doesn’t dissipate. It’s still there when he slowly leans closer, making your breath hitch. His hand shifts closer, too, and your pulse hammers harder with every millimeter that’s cast aside.

There’s an old saying about where the shame should fall when a person gets fooled twice. You practically feel it collide with your thick skull when, for the second time, Minho turns the tables. He nearly turns your pocket inside out in the process, hand snatching the yet-untouched packet of honey crisps before you even know what’s happening.

Just like last time, you put up no fight when he settles back into his own makeshift chair with a smug glint in his eyes. A forlorn sigh is covered by the racket of plastic ripping, followed soon after by a faint crunch.

“Speaking of bait,” he snickers once he’s swallowed. “What are you dangling?”

You really want to hate him for that segue, along with all the rest of his committed atrocities, but you can’t. So, you offer up the only thing you still have:

Technobabble.

“The plan is to sneak in a program to mine data. So long as nobody interrupts me —” You pause to shoot him a pointed look. “— I’ll finish coding it tomorrow and fire it off at some grunt in Ulsan’s fiscal department using a cloned, corporate email account.”

“You think they’ll fall for it?” Minho asks, curiosity piqued.

You flash a grin. “I know they will. Nothing spooks a low-level employee quite like an overdue, mandatory, cybersecurity compliance attestation.”

If you didn’t know better, you’d swear he looks almost proud when he hears about the form of your Trojan horse. It’s certainly what you feel blooming in your chest, especially when you pluck the crisp from between his unsuspecting fingers and pop it into your own mouth.

“Once the program installs, it’ll start reaping what they have access to,” you explain. “I’m sure it’ll be limited at the start, quarterly budget reports and such.”

You shrug dismissively, then look down at your hands. There’s no way this is interesting to someone that isn’t you, but he asked, and you’re answering, and you can’t seem to stop talking.

“But those point me in the direction of invoices and their line items, which gets me to payment accounts, recipients, and other shit they don’t want me to know. It’s a paper trail leading to a paper trail, honestly, but it’s —”

“— how you weave a web.”

It stops your brain in its tracks, leaves your would-be sentence to peter out. You can’t remember the last time anyone followed where your explanations led, let alone saw the importance of all the tiny, tedious steps you take. All the intricacies of your carefully plotted architecture.

With you stalled out, Minho finishes that thought where he left off. “Strand by strand.”

“Yeah,” you exhale, warmth creeping from your chest to your cheeks. “Strand by strand.”

You sit on that bucket on the roof for however long it takes for your ass to go numb, and then you sit some more. Hours, maybe a day or two — irrelevant, as far as you’re concerned. You have Minho next to you and a burgeoning sunrise ahead; and you’ll bask in the glow you’ve found there for as much time as you can.

Minho, it seems, has other plans.

He sighs and flattens his palms against his knees before standing, causing the bucket he’d been occupying to scrape against the concrete. The noise is what gets your attention, not the movement. You turn to look up at him. Your disappointment is more than likely broadcasted all over your face.

“Stay with me,” you whine before you can stop yourself.

Needy isn’t normally a word you’d use to describe yourself; you’re far from it. Now, though… In this moment, it might be written in blaring red letters on your forehead, judging by the extremely brief flash of surprise you see in front of you. It’s gone as quickly as it came. The twinge of embarrassment you feel sticks around to keep you warm.

Minho is quiet for a beat, like he’s got something to consider. Whatever he decides on, it makes his head tilt to the side. A devilish look takes over his features, washing from his narrowed eyes to his tilted lips. All mischief, he counters, “Fuck me.”

Why do those things have to be mutually exclusive?

You don’t voice your question out loud, even though you kind of want to scream it, because he holds his hand out to help you up, and instant gratification together feels so much better than waiting through a delay alone. So, you take his hand, just like he knew you would, and you follow.

Back to the door, back down to the second level of the factory, back to your room in an otherwise unoccupied wing, until the door is shut softly behind you.

Every single one of your rendezvous has been different from the last. The time, location, everything varies, not unlike the version of himself that Minho lets you see. Even though the steps change completely from tryst to tryst, they still feel like they’ve been choreographed and rehearsed ahead of time.

For example, he’s never caged you against a wall and pinned your wrists one-handed above your head before, but your body reacts as if this is the sole position it was made to occupy in life.

His teeth nip at the side of your neck, and your head falls back instinctively. You don’t give a shit about the muted thump of your skull against the brick, but Minho seems to.

“Watch yourself,” he murmurs, lips fluttering against your throat. Despite the muted volume, his tone carries an authority to it that makes even your chrome knee weak. “If you wind up with a concussion, I’m not explaining it to Doc.”

You gasp when his tongue flicks out to soothe the sting his teeth leave behind. Beyond desperate, you push up on your toes to bring yourself closer to his mouth. It’s further out of reach than you remember — it shouldn’t be. Barely a week has gone by since he last had you like this.

Embarrassingly breathless already, you ask, “Have you gotten taller? What have they been feeding you?”

His knee comes forward slowly to nudge yours apart. You make room, letting his thigh press into the gap created. If his left hand wasn’t keeping you stretched up to your full height, you’d be riding that thigh by now.

“You know what I eat.”

Your eyes roll back. You’re not sure if that’s a reaction to his line or the way he clenches his thigh, shifting it further into the space between your spread legs. Either way, that taut muscle is only millimeters away from your cunt now; the low hum that rumbles from his chest says that he can feel the heat rolling off you in waves.

You want so badly to be able to touch him, cling to him, scratch your nails across his scalp and pull him in by his hair. You want him to touch you — really touch you — not just to tease you the way he is, threatening to mark you up with his mouth without following through.

If you try to tug your arms down, will he let you?

Part of you hopes that he doesn’t.

At least, not without consequences.

Minho can tell how fucking restless you are. You’re not surprised; you vibrate with want at a frequency he’s always been attuned to. Speaking any of it out loud would be redundant, so you save your breath. His fans warmth over the shell of your ear, pulling the hammer back: “What’s the matter, Spider? You don’t like being the one in the trap?”

You can’t help but tremble at that.

“Fine,” he tuts, finger on the trigger.

Your eyes widen in anticipation when his hand drops its hold on your wrists; and your arms fold slowly back down when he retracts. There’s a muted ache in your muscles from the strain they’d been put under. You can’t say that you mind.

His hands move next to his belt buckle, deft fingers making quick work of the metal before the two pieces dangle on either side of his zipper. That’s the image burned into your brain when he leans in close enough to kiss you. He doesn’t kiss you — he never does — but he finally fires at point blank range:

“Turn around.”

Bang!

It’s so unexpected that you don’t register it as real at first. Neither does Minho, whose demanding gaze stays glued to you. The noise comes again, louder than the first, and you hear the cry that comes with it through the door.

“Spider, are you there?”

Hyunjin.

It’s his voice, you know, but it doesn’t sound right at all. The air of self-assuredness he usually carries is long gone. Whatever’s replaced it sounds completely unlike him in a way that makes your stomach turn.

Minho puts distance between your bodies in the time it takes Hyunjin to push open the door. You notice that he forgot to address his belt buckle, but you suppose it doesn’t matter. The youngest among you is too visibly shaken to see it as he stumbles inside with red-rimmed eyes.

Oh, fuck.

Panicked, you shoot a quick glance at Minho, hoping he’ll see your alarm and know what to do with it. His eyes are locked onto Hyunjin, who comes to a stop in front of you; Minho’s expression is the definition of illegible.

Your hand lifts instinctively to Hyunjin’s shoulder. Apparently, that reassuring touch is all it takes to break the dam; to break him down into sobs.

“Hey!” You gasp, knitting your arms around his frame and hauling him towards you. His face slots into the space where your neck meets your shoulder, allowing his hyperventilated breaths to hit your skin directly. “Hey, it’s —”

You know better than to lie and say it’s okay.

Minho may be fearless, but it’s Hyunjin that’s the least flappable in the entire group by a long shot. If you were to search back through the last decade, you wouldn’t be able to find a single moment where he seemed annoyed or anxious, let alone fucking devastated to the degree he currently is.

This is the farthest from okay things could possibly be.

You can’t tell if it’s heartbreak, nausea, or both that swells when you fill your fists with the back of his jacket and hold on tight.

From his spot two meters away, Minho cuts to the chase. “What happened to you?”

Hyunjin can’t answer, not at first.

Maybe, you think, saying whatever it is out loud will confirm the reality of the situation. You don’t push him. Instead, you stop holding him long enough to pull him over to the far corner of your makeshift bedroom, where he drops down to sit on the mattress held off the floor by two wooden pallets. Despite his wiry frame, the force of his collapse makes the wood clatter against the concrete floor below.

When you take a spot beside him, it’s much less quickly, no more graceful. Hyunjin doesn’t mind the hand you place on his shoulder to keep yourself steady. If he hears the click at your manufactured joint over the sound of his own barely-regulated breathing, he doesn’t say so.

Still standing where he was left — where he left you, more like — Minho’s narrowed eyes hone in again on Hyunjin. The expression on his face is just as unreadable as before, and he still won’t look at you.

As much as that bothers you, your own feelings are never your first priority. You turn your head to look from Minho to Hyunjin, whose hands grip the black denim of his jeans like a lifeline. When the latter finally does speak, the explanation hemorrhages out of him, spilling and flooding until there isn’t much air left in the room to breathe.

Three things in particular hit you like a train:

The Bliss Beta is infinitely more insidious than you could’ve imagined — even for Ulsan — and its mass rollout is closer than you ever would’ve guessed.

You now have the data you need to find the servers running the Beta, which means there’s a chance that the way things currently are is the worst they’ll get.

There’s a guillotine blade looming over the Professor’s neck, and it’s your hand on the rope, obligated to let go. It’s your scale that’s tasked with weighing lives.

Nausea, you realize, almost too late.

You grab hold of the wastebasket near the foot of your mattress and squeeze your eyes shut while your honey twists leave you in a hurry.

He loves her.

He loves her, he loves her, he loves her, and there are fifty-one-million faceless reasons why he can’t have her. You feel the weighted stares of every single one of them on you when he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small, silver datashard. It’s thin, flat with sharp edges, but it’s a bullet if you’ve ever seen one.

When Hyunjin places it in your hand, your fingers don’t close around it. You can’t even look at it without feeling faint; your body won’t accept the weight of it in your palm. You avert your eyes, praying that your object permanence disappears along with it.

And then that reflex kicks in again, craving some semblance of safety.

Minho is already watching you intently when you turn your head his way. The relief you feel is immediate, and you don’t have the energy left to pretend that’s not the case.

You love him.

You love him, you love him, you love him, and this goddamn horror show you’re living through feels survivable while he’s around, even if it isn’t.

Maybe, you think, if you live to see the end, his presence will help you hate yourself less for the things you’re about to do to get there. That’s been the case so far, anyway. You’ve got a decade’s worth of scorched bridges behind you, and the ash on your face has never made him see you any differently.

Hyunjin clears his throat, dragging you back into the moment you don’t want to be a part of.

“She said there’s multi-level encryption on this thing,” he mumbles, voice weak. His hand envelops yours and gently folds your fingers over your palm, as if he knows damn well you won’t do it yourself. “I don’t have to tell you this, but be careful, Spider. One move too many, and we’re all dead.”

You freeze; he stands, wiping invisible dirt from the front of his jeans. Nothing he attempts will make him feel clean, you know, but you don’t fault him for trying.

Before he can take a single step back towards your door, you reach out and grab his hand, preventing him from leaving.

“Keys,” you croak.

His eyebrows knit together.

“Cryptographic keys — characters. Numbers, usually.” You shake your head to realign your thoughts. It doesn’t do much; your explanation still comes out sputtering. “Each encryption is going to have a different algorithm altering its data, and it’ll be faster if I don’t have to write a separate program to try and find the strings I need.”

Judging by his face, the explanation makes sense, but he still looks as if he has no fucking idea what the answers might be.

For the first time in nearly an hour, Minho speaks. The suddenness of his participation makes both you and Hyunjin flinch.

“Dates,” he offers gruffly. “Ones that are significant to the two of you, maybe.”

The suggestion cracks against your skull like a baseball bat.

Of all the things you could’ve expected him to say in the presence of someone other than you, something sentimental didn’t even come close to making the list. Hyunjin, it seems, is just as startled by this — by the appearance of your invisible friend, who’s spent ten years refusing to let this side of him be seen.

You make a note to ask Minho where this idea came from. If there are any dates he holds onto, with no one the wiser.

Hyunjin’s brow furrows for a moment while he thinks. Then, the light bulb behind his eyes flashes.

Eureka.

Dashing now towards the door, he calls out to you over his shoulder. “I’ll make you a list,” he promises breathlessly before he disappears altogether.

Without Hyunjin’s voice to fill it, the silence of your room roars in your ears. You need to shrug it off you, physically; move around so that you stop feeling like you’re being hydraulically pressed.

In a wordless request for help, you hold your hand out to Minho. The jury’s still out as to what you want when he takes it: to drag him down to you, to be hauled to your feet, or to simply have it held.

For the first time — possibly ever — he doesn’t take it.

Well-practiced hands drop to his belt buckle instead of reaching out to you. He re-fastens it quickly, and over the clink of metal, he grunts, “Stop looking at me like that.”

You blink rapidly when that sucker-punch statement hits you. “Looking at you like what, Minho?” You ask gently, as if your excess will make up for his lack.

“Like I’m your future.”

And just like that, he’s gone without another word or a backwards glance.

Eleven days crawl by without you seeing or hearing from Minho. You struggle to keep count as they pass. You’re so preoccupied that there’s no real difference between them, leaving them all to bleed together. It doesn’t help that all ten nights so far have been more or less sleepless.

While you’d love to say that all your time awake has been productive, you’d be lying. Sure, you spend the vast majority of it with the bright light of your monitors boring into your retinas, but that doesn’t mean you’re actively engaging with the shit displayed there. Between your program and your spent brain, it’s your neural pathways that are most in need of re-writing.

“Goddammit,” you hiss when a shock jolts through your upper right thigh for the umpteenth time today alone.

Halfway crazy from frustration, you glare down at your quad and see the remaining muscles there twitching violently. And even though it’s been over a year, your brain is still surprised to find that the source of your pain doesn’t exist at all.

That outburst from you certainly isn’t the first, yet it’s the one that catches Chan’s attention. Like you, he’s spent an unhealthy amount of his time in the Hub over the past week and a half, pouring over who knows what. It’s safe to assume that’s how he’d describe your work, too.

“Been especially bad lately, hasn’t it?” He asks, head popping up from behind a stack of files.

He probably doesn’t expect you to squeak out a laugh at the sight of him, but you can’t help yourself.

“You look like a meerkat when you do that.” The frown you get in response only makes you giggle more, despite yourself. “Like an overworked, overtired, under-caffeinated meerkat.”

Chan works overtime to control his expression, steel himself. It doesn’t work. It never does, no matter how obnoxious you and your comrades are around him because at the end of the day, all he ever is, is fond.

He sighs as he sits up fully in his chair. “Spider.”

It’s funny, you think. He sounds just like your father when he takes that tone with you, although the name he uses is nowhere near the same.

“Talk to Doc.” Realizing he sounded more stern than he meant to, Chan’s mouth softens from a thin, straight line to a slight smile. He adds, “Please.”

And because you’re the best behaved of all his pseudo-children, you don’t put up a fight. You don’t roll your eyes the way Seungmin does, or do the exact opposite of what you’ve been told, like —

Don’t go there.

You just get up, ignoring the strong urge you feel to buckle at the knees and hit the floor, and push your chair back with the underside of your thighs. Chan sees the pained look on your face immediately and moves to stand up and help you. You wave him off.

“All good,” you lie through gritted teeth, bearing weight on your palm as you maneuver your way around your desk.

Chan may not believe you, but he listens, nonetheless. While you guide yourself from your workstation on the far side of the room towards the door, you try very hard to ignore the thought that keeps ricocheting around your skull like a bullet, shredding whatever grey matter gets in its way.

There’s one person that line wouldn’t have worked on.

It takes a considerable amount of time to hobble to Doc’s clinic, which is clear on the other side of the compound, but you eventually make it there without breaking too much of a sweat.

In a past life, the space was an employee locker room that featured shower stalls and toilets on one side, and numerous lockers and benches on the other. Jeongin tried his best, but the plumbing was fucked beyond repair; all the utilities were scrapped. Whatever useful parts remained were repurposed elsewhere, while the broken bits wound up in that pile of assorted garbage on the roof.

Don’t.

Due to the size of the space, there’d been a multi-day debate on what to use it for. In the end, the decision was made to give it new life as a makeshift field hospital because Minho was right. The tile and drainage system is ideal for —

Stop it.

When you push through the swinging, double doors and stagger inside, you learn that you’re not today’s only patient. On one of the cots up ahead, Doc’s nimble fingers work to stitch Scraps’ left eyebrow back together, while Felix paces in the background with his hands in his hair.

“I’m so —”

“Felix!”

Scraps slaps her hands down onto her thigh. The sound echoes off the tile walls like a thunderclap, but she doesn’t flinch at the contact. Doc does, however. She freezes solid, needle-holder in hand.

If Doc is frustrated, she doesn’t show it. That bedside manner of hers is unparalleled. Her gentle voice sounds suspiciously like Chan’s when she pleads, “No violence until I’m done holding a needle near your eye.”

Scraps nods in acknowledgment, which only contributes to the panicked look on Doc’s face. You bite your lips to hold your laughter in as you amble closer and dump yourself onto a nearby cot.

“Seriously — stop apologizing,” Scraps calls over her shoulder.

If it wasn’t for Doc’s gentle hold on her chin, you suspect that she’d turn her head to look at Felix outright.

“I told you to raise the stakes, and you did. So, I owe you a gold star for being a good listener, I guess.”

The way he looks at her when she can’t even see him kind of makes you want to sob. That ache only grows when he puts his hands on either side of her head, leans down, and plants a kiss on her hair.

Meanwhile, Doc is muttering, “Please stop moving, please stop moving, please stop moving,” like those are the only words she knows. You feel as guilty as you do grateful; her distress is a sufficient distraction from your own.

“Done!” She chirps moments later. Relief washes over her in a heartbeat, releasing tension from every single muscle cell she has — like she’s successfully disarmed a bomb, rather than sutured a minor injury.

And even though she’s too polite to say it, you swear you can hear her thinking it:

Please leave now.

And they do. They fall into lockstep, with Scraps tucked under Felix’s arm and hers wrapped around his waist.

And you’re still staring at the door once it swings shut again, so lost in all your conflicting thoughts that Doc has to call your name twice to get your attention.

“You’re not due back in for another month or so.” She frowns. “What’s on your mind?”

As usual, you don’t know where to start. You don’t know how to turn the faucet on without overflowing the bathtub, either, so you just let it all pour out.

“Everything was fine — perfect, probably. Or the closest it’s going to get, I guess. Then — I don’t even know what happened, but he won’t fucking look at me now. Won’t talk to me, walks out of a room when I walk in, like he can’t even stand to ignore me in my presence.”

You suck in a breath through your teeth to make up for all the ones you skipped out on while you rambled on.

Of course, that doesn’t mean you stop rambling.

“And I think it might be breaking my heart. I don’t know. I don’t — I don’t know what to do now. It’s very distracting,” you mutter, frowning.

A laugh slips out to signal how uncomfortable you are with the sudden intentional vulnerability. It sounds more like the sort of hiccup that precedes a sob.

“Stupid thing to fixate on when the world’s on fire, isn’t it?”

To say that Doc is taken aback would be an understatement. Her eyes go wide; her lips purse. She pauses for a moment before she ultimately whispers, “I meant your leg.”

You’d go dig your own grave out back if you could walk that far.

“Oh.”

Doc does you the favor of averting her eyes. She focuses instead on her lap, eyes widening without blinking, as if she’ll be able to see her way out of the conversation more easily that way.

Self-conscious now to the point of nausea, you play with the frayed edge of denim that lays over the end of your residual limb. You can’t help but wonder how many right-side pant legs you’ve chopped off over the last twelve months, and what those bits of fabric ended up being used for.

Maybe they’re in that pile on the roof.

“Is mirror therapy helping at all?”

You glance up at Doc. “Not as much as it used to,” you sigh. “I think my brain figured out I was trying to bamboozle it and threw another wall up. Those are all it has at this point — walls and holes.”

It’s quiet for a few moments. Now, you wonder if you’ve taken Doc out of her depth. You were her first — and thankfully remain her only — amputation. If anyone’s gonna stump her, it’s you.

You snicker at your own unspoken joke.

Get it?

“How much do you remember?” She asks, catching you off-guard. It was the fact that she asked you anything that surprised you, not the question itself, but she assumes she’s offended you. Quickly, she apologizes. “I’m sorry. You don’t need to talk about it.”

The truth is, the before and during are both incredibly vague. You know that you went with a small group to Ilsan, planning to fuck up one of WraithCo.’s supply lines, and that their ghouls caught wind of your plans.

Beyond that, it’s anyone’s guess. The audio underscoring this montage in your mind is warped to all hell; the faces and voices are blurry, as if they’ve since been censored. Deleted, just like the lower two-thirds of your leg.

As for the after… All that comes to mind is pain, in one form or another.

Fighting off an infection, which left your waking hours in some fever-filled daze that only stopped when the various meds worked their magic and knocked you back unconscious.

Being bed-ridden for an eternity after that fever broke and the infection cleared, too exhausted and depressed to keep your eyes open.

Aching all over as you forced your body to remember how to walk, too obsessed with your newfound crumb of independence to let anyone see you stumble.

Self-imposed isolation to hide the toll it’d all taken on you, and the frustration that came with knowing what you were doing but being unable to stop yourself.

“Nothing I wouldn’t mind forgetting,” you finally say.

Doc hums thoughtfully but offers nothing beyond a tiny frown. The part of you that wants to know why she’s asking is overrun by the part of you that fears what she’ll tell you; clearly, she’s similarly torn.

Add this to the list of things you’ll have to learn to live without.

Time continues to both slip and crawl by. Days are gone before you can blink; nights encase you in cement, trap you in place. You know it’s not a coincidence. You’re only alone after dark.

Still, it’s not all bad. You’ve certainly been more productive lately, whether or not you truly want to be. That’s not a coincidence, either. You’re capable of accomplishing quite a bit when the only person you truly want to talk to has no interest in listening.

If he did want to listen, you might tell Minho that he was right about the keys to the encryption being linked to dates. You could thank him, if he’d hear you out. Maybe you’d finally summon up the courage to ask where the idea came from.

What if…?

These little hypotheticals of yours only get more painful, the longer you steep in them, and you’re no good at reining your mind in when it starts wandering. It runs off in the same direction every time it goes — back to the night you finished peeling back all the layers.

You know there’s no point in imagining the ways Minho would’ve distracted you then because he didn’t. He was nowhere to be found; and you cried alone in your room, overwhelmed by both the relief of having answers and the all-consuming guilt of knowing what — and who — it cost to get them.

A familiar, prickling feeling at the corners of your eyes pulls you back to the present. You tilt your head back and blink rapidly to keep the dam from breaking. Part of you is proud. This might be the first time you’ve ever managed to keep your feelings to yourself.

“My halmoni always said that holding back your sneezes like that takes a year off your life.”

With a jolt, you snap to attention. Your neck does the same, head falling back down so quickly that your teeth click painfully against one another. The surprise — and the inadvertent scowl it prompts — melts away when you register Jeongin in the doorway.

You frown, although you laugh a little. “That’s horrifying, kid.”

If Jeongin sees you swipe the back of your thumb over your cheekbones, he doesn’t say so. He simply ambles into the Hub and finds his usual spot at the far side of the central table.

“She said the same thing about being under streetlights when they burn out,” he tuts, taking a seat. He blinks through thoughtful silence for a moment before re-focusing newly-widened eyes on you. “Now that I think about it, she did die young...”

You would’ve loved to hear that theory play out, but the opportunity flies out the door as soon as Hyunjin walks through it. The comment you want to make about his surprising punctuality is swallowed down just as quickly as it bubbles up. His expression tells you that he’s not up for much of anything, let alone teasing. With a cursory nod, he acknowledges that he is, at the very least, capable of noticing his surroundings.

Unfortunately, you’re not capable of looking at him — seeing the state of him — without your bleeding heart cracking right in half.

Chan serves as a sufficient distraction, thankfully. He enters shortly after Hyunjin with both Seungmin and Doc in tow. He ignores the former’s nagging about who knows what and ushers the latter to the chair next to the head of the table. He doesn’t sit, though you wouldn’t have expected him to; he never does. Instead, he stands at the back of his chair with his eyes flicking expectantly over to the door.

In the time it takes you to cross from your workstation to your usual folding chair, the guest list doubles. Holding up the wall in the corner, Jihoon stands with his arms crossed loosely over his chest. To his right, Scraps sits on a rare patch of free space on Chan’s desk, legs swinging idly as they dangle; and to his left, you spy the cat-eyed girl whose name you still haven’t learned. All you know about her is that she works under Hyunjin, and they’re so in-sync that people have taken to calling them siblings.

You see no similarities between them now, however. She has light left in her eyes.

Several others filter in as the minutes pass, most of whom you haven’t yet crossed paths with. Well, you might have. Your days all run together; your short-term memory isn’t firing on all cylinders. You don’t take the opportunity to register their faces now, though. Your eyes only linger for the second it takes to confirm who they aren’t.

Chan turns his head to you, earning your attention. “Where’s —?”

Doc shoots him a look that interrupts his question before he can finish it. She knows what he doesn’t, after all: You’re currently the worst person to turn to for information on Minho’s whereabouts, even though you used to be the first.

Behind you, a heavily-accented voice chimes in, “He’s with little Yongbokie on an errand. They should be back soon.”

You don’t have to turn around to know who’s speaking. Sierra, as she’s known within the collective, has the sort of presence you can feel, even when she can’t be seen. It’s still unclear to you how she wound up a world away from the island she grew up on, but you’re glad that she did, and that she’s on your side. If she wasn’t —

Well…

Suffice it to say, there’s a reason why this foreign mercenary is called what she is — two reasons, actually, according to her native language — and neither bodes well for enemies. Specifically, there’s a mountain of bodies behind her, all of them hacked to bits by those blades she’s so fond of.

Yeah, you think. Definitely better to keep her close.

“Just start without them,” she snaps at Chan, eye roll evident in her tone.

Despite outranking her, Chan can’t hide the uneasiness that comes with being addressed by Sierra directly. You watch him swallow the lump in his throat before he clears it fully. “Everyone, listen up,” he says with the sort of gentle authority only he’s capable of.

You can’t help the smile that tugs at the corner of your mouth. It’s such a stark contrast to the tone that goaded him to speak in the first place.

Still, a hush falls over the Hub immediately.

“I know some of you have heard whispers about this. I don’t necessarily trust that the rumors swirling are accurate —”

Pointedly, Chan looks at Jeongin, who’s often the point in the relay where things go horribly wrong. The youngest never intends to pass on off-base gossip, but his attention span is about as poor as his audio processing. Jeongin ducks his head down; the tips of his ears go a dangerous shade of red.

“— so I’d like to make sure our record is straight.” Chan claps his hands, and as he rubs his palms together, he turns on his heel towards your side of the table. “Take it away, Spider,” he sings, beaming.

You turn your head quickly to the left and then to the right, searching for whoever the hell he’s truly cold-calling because it simply cannot be you. He knows better; he has to. For the decade you’ve worked together, you’ve hidden behind your screens because you don’t have the stomach for this leadership shit — especially not public speaking. It’s why you nominated him to run the show.

Eyebrows disappearing into your hairline, you stare incredulously back at him, silently begging him to pick the gauntlet back up.

Meanwhile, at least twenty pairs of eyes burn holes into you, like sun rays through a magnifying lens.

Fitting.

“Well,” you eventually manage to squeak out. “I — um… I spent the last month or so spelunking into confidential files relating to the — uhh — the Bliss Beta?”

It’s not a question. You don’t know why you made it sound like one.

Collapsing in on yourself, you knot your fingers on the table in front of you and stare down at your hands. “There’s a facility, it turns out, in — umm —”

“Is this going to take long? If it is, I can go and grab snacks.” Seungmin, from his spot across the table, smirks at you in such a way that you might — for the first time in your life — choose violence.

That is, if his jokes at your expense didn’t have your nervous stomach churning even harder, sending bile up your throat.

That is, if a cold voice didn’t fly out of nowhere, primed to eviscerate Seungmin before you can even process your own reaction.

“It’ll be a bit hard for you to chew after swallowing all your teeth, don’t you think?”

You hadn’t noticed Minho enter, but you find him easily now that he’s given himself away. He leans casually against the door frame with his hands in his pockets, leaving his tone as the only indication that he is, in fact, bothered. Everyone that had previously been standing near the door must’ve cleared a perimeter at some point — undoubtedly without being told to.

In response, Chan’s warning look is bifurcated, shot off to both men with equal, albeit subtle force. Seungmin’s face gives way to something apologetic. You can see it in his eyes that he thought he was being funny; that there’s no malice, only an inability to read a fucking room. To the contrary, Minho’s expression is pure venom, jaw set so tight that his teeth could crack.

He may have just interjected on your behalf, but he doesn’t look at you for more than a split second, as if he didn’t mean to concede even that much time.

And even though it feels illegal somehow, you keep your eyes fixed on him, as if you’ll catch another sliver of acknowledgement.

“In Cheongju,” you continue shakily. Your voice barely registers above a whisper, like you’re speaking to a single person, rather than a room full of them. “There’s a facility in Cheongju. All the servers currently associated with the Beta are operating out of there.”

Despite your anxiety, you manage to laugh. “They’re sitting ducks, really. Terrible planning from a security standpoint — either stupidity or arrogance.”

“Both,” Jihoon adds gruffly. If you’re not mistaken, he directs his next line at Seungmin. “Those things aren’t mutually exclusive.”

You know it wasn’t his intention, but you crack a tiny smile, nonetheless. “Comorbidities, aren’t they?”

As soon as you say it out loud, your cheeks set to burning. You send a panicked glance to Doc and duck your head, like your fear of looking stupid isn’t on full display. “Please tell me I used that term correctly,” you mutter, feeling instant relief when she nods and a profound sense of comfort when she pats your still-clenched hands.

“So, what are we going to do about it?” Sierra cuts to the chase, as she often does. “Arson?”

Her eyes sparkle at the suggestion. You find yourself surprised that she’s offered something so tame. Only a week ago, her response to seeing a cockroach in the canteen was to shoot at it.

Not for nothing, you’re also surprised by how endearing you still find that little anecdote — but maybe you shouldn’t be. It’s not the first time you’ve developed a soft spot for someone so sharp.

Reflexively, you look over at Minho. You see his eyes flicker, like he’d averted them just in time to miss yours. It’s the only reason you have to believe that he’d been watching you, save for the inexplicable warmth you’d felt crawling up your neck.

You don’t know what to do with any of that.

“Destroying the servers would only be a bandage,” you sigh. “I want to fully eradicate the program itself, which means those servers need to remain intact — for now.”

“So, we do it like Daegu, then?” Felix suggests. Judging by his sudden participation, he’s overjoyed to have something to contribute to a conversation he wouldn’t normally follow. “We broke in and set up that…. thing for you, in that room that was like an…. air-conditioned microwave?”

You bite down on your lips to keep from laughing. It’s a miracle that he remembers the Thanotech raid at all with the concussion he sustained in the process. It’s even more incredible that he remembers the non-technical explanation you gave for the server room within that data center.

Shaking your head, you frown. “I need to be on-site for this one.”

“Absolutely not. Fuck no.”

Across the room, Minho now stands fully upright. His hands are no longer in his pockets; they hang at his sides, clenched tightly.

You can’t help the incredulous scoff you let out. Bold of him, you think, to write you off completely and then attempt to dictate where and when you get to exist. That slap in the face still stings, but you keep your tone as light as possible.

“If something goes wrong, or if things have changed from the schematics I was able to access, I won’t be able to handle it remotely. I need to be there to troubleshoot.” And even though it goes without saying, you remind him anyway: “We’re not getting a second crack at this.”

“I know you don’t remember Ilsan, but I do,” Minho glowers, tone as dark as his eyes. The rest of the room falls into a charged silence; everyone is too tense to breathe, let alone speak. “I remember carrying three-quarters of your body out of Ilsan and spending weeks at your bedside.”

Just like that, the air in your lungs turns to cement.

How do you admit to not knowing he was even there?

And what the hell are you supposed to do with this information now that it’s reaching you for the first time — a year after the fact — in front of an audience?

You try to start somewhere. “Minho —”

“No. I won’t do that again.” His voice is sharp when it cuts you off, but there’s a crack in the blade, so microscopic that you wonder if you’re imagining things. He clears his throat to try and keep himself even. “You don’t get to make that call.”

Here comes that prickling feeling again, causing tears to spring up at the corners of your eyes. You clench your jaw and try to wish them away.

It’s Chan that speaks next. “You’re right. Spider doesn’t get to make that call,” he concedes. Then, his expression turns to stone. “I do. She said there’s no way around it, so she’s going —”

Minho seeks to interrupt, but Chan raises his hand and stops him in his tracks. You want to argue, too, because you’re right here and don’t need to be spoken about, as if you’re not in the room. The leader plows through, unaffected.

“— and because you know what the stakes are, your only job is to keep her safe.”

If the anguished look on Minho’s face says anything, it’s that he wants nothing to do with the burden of keeping you — what’s left of you, rather — in one piece.

The briefing continues after his outburst, but Minho doesn’t hear a word of it. It all flows past him, waterlogged and warped, without sinking in. He finds it hard to give a shit about that fact, though.

Clearly, his input doesn’t matter. Worse, the sole order that’s been made of him is fucking redundant. He can’t imagine that the rest of them would mean much, so what does it matter if he didn’t pay attention?

He’s halfway out the door by the time Chan wraps up. Dodging eye contact, Minho turns to leave outright, to disappear somewhere and lick his wounds. One last lash manages to hit him as he goes:

When you cross the room, you’re not headed his way. No, your quick steps take you straight to Jihoon.

Minho knows that he has no right to feel this bitter. He should be grateful that his pushing you away is having the intended effect — that you might’ve found someone other than him to lean on — but the relief he’s been waiting to feel is nowhere to be found.

It never is.

The quick fixes he’s gotten of you in back rooms and shadows didn’t satiate him, either. Cutting you out completely has only proven to be more of the same ache.

Unwilling to watch the consequences of his own actions unfold, Minho turns sharply out of the doorway. Automatically, his feet carry him down the hall, up the stairs towards the roof. His brain might tell him otherwise if it wasn’t currently swimming, but his body acts on its own, seeking out the last place and time where he didn’t feel like this.

It’s a bad call, he realizes as he ascends.

He’ll never be able to recreate a scene with half the cast absent. The stage directions are fucked now. There’s no reason to take the steps one at a time now that he’s alone, but he still does. Without context, his motivations make no sense; and his hands don’t know what the hell to do without a belt loop hooked underneath one of his fingers. They twitch in the absence of denim.

With every step, he repeats his only line:

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

And when he reaches that busted fucking door and kicks it with everything he has, no one looks at him with amused disapproval.

It’s all wrong.

Steel hits cement with a sickening clang that’s still ringing out as he stalks over to the ledge and drops himself down on a familiar, overturned bucket. Its counterpart sits unoccupied at his side. Minho can’t look at it, can’t get up to throw it off the fucking roof, can’t do anything except simmer in his rage because —

Your only job is to keep her safe.

He tilts his head back, closes his eyes, and shouts into the void above, “Fuck!”

As if he needs to be told.

As if he hasn’t been trying to do exactly that for all the years he’s known you, driving nails further into his own goddam coffin with every second spent in your web.

Elbows come to rest on his knees. His face falls, too, until it drops into his palms. No matter how hard he tries to control his breathing, it comes out through gritted teeth, seething.

The fucking audacity.

Even if Minho hasn’t given you a reason to know better, Chan should. He’s seen better, firsthand.

Every time Chan stopped by the clinic to check in on you, he found Minho already sitting next to your glorified cot, watching your sleeping form like a hawk for any sign of distress.

Chan didn’t need to ask how your hair ended up in poorly-executed braids because the unskilled hands that made them were wringing themselves at your side. He never needed to ask why, either. When you finally stopped thrashing through nightmares, you didn’t wake up to find yourself tangled in inescapable knots.

Keep her safe.

That’s the fucking problem, isn’t it?

When his candle gets snuffed out — and he knows it will, can feel it in his bones that this is it — who’s going to keep you safe?

Hyunjin doesn’t have the capacity — not anymore. Minho was there with you the night Hyunjin’s whole world exploded into pieces. You saw love, but Minho saw your future. He sees it every time he looks at Hyunjin, who’s still listless, still lingering on the periphery like a fucking ghost. Hyunjin will never be the same, and if Minho lets himself get any closer to you than he already has, you’ll wind up just as empty.

Then who?

Chan is too busy. Doc is just as preoccupied, and as kind as she is, she’s never understood you — not really. Felix and Scraps can barely manage themselves; you’ll fall through the cracks amidst their bullshit shenanigans. Neither Seungmin nor Jeongin can be trusted with anything — or anyone — this important. They’re both fucking disasters in their own right, although Jeongin may eventually grow out of that. Changbin is too reclusive, and so is Jihoon; Jisung’s an anxious mess. Sierra is, at absolute minimum, insane.

And Minho may be the worst of them, but he tried his best for you. He’s still trying, even though that means keeping you as far away from him as possible.

“Fuck,” he repeats, albeit much less strongly.

That pathetic, choked-out word hits the air and dissipates quickly, leaving Minho alone in self-imposed exile. He stays there until sunrise, when the unoccupied bucket to his left becomes too visible to tolerate.

The next time Minho steps foot in the Hub, it’s much less crowded than the last. In fact, for what might be the first time ever, he’s beaten everyone else in. It’s no wonder; his stomach has been churning for hours now, and it was useless to keep laying in a bed he couldn’t sleep in.

Because life is far from fair, you’re the second to arrive. He doesn’t have to see you enter to know it; definitely doesn’t need to look up to confirm that it was your deliberate, slightly uneven footfalls he heard coming up the hall. It’s a reflex, though. His gaze lifts just in time to meet yours.

“Oh,” you peep, eyes bright despite the dark circles below them. “Hi.”

You seem startled to find Minho here ahead of you. Warranted, he thinks. The sunshine you cast on him isn’t, but you don’t try to withhold it — or maybe you can’t. As much as he loves that about you, it confuses the shit out of him and scares him just as badly. You either didn’t get the memo when you chose this life, or you don’t feel the crushing weight of it yet:

Sparks like yours can’t last forever.

His voice sounds like gravel after last night’s anxious reflux, but he echoes you, nonetheless, “Hi.”

And then Chan walks in. He stops short when he sees the two of you, eyes flicking from your face to Minho’s with barely-hidden intrigue. Somehow, he misses the daggers Minho shoots at him with eyes alone.

“I re-routed everyone else to the vans and told them to load their shit. You ready?” Chan poses the question to both of you, but his focus is fixed solely on you. It lingers for a moment, settles in somewhere between the lines.

Minho doesn't know what’s going on, but he does know that he hates whatever it is.

You nod. Whether that’s in response to what was asked or what wasn’t, he can’t say. Your mouth sits in a tight, straight line. That, Minho can easily translate to feigned confidence. You’re not ready; you’re not good at bluffing, either.

He sees his window in that bit of doubt and tries to leap through it. “You don’t have to do this, you know.”

It doesn’t sound as firm as he wants it to. If you listen closely — and you always do — it probably sounds like he’s pleading, which feels both alien and illegal to Minho. He clears his throat. “We can do this without you, Spider. I’m serious. Tell me how to get you set up for remote access, and I’ll —”

“I don’t know how many more times I have to say this for you to understand: You can’t do this without me. You need me.”

Despite what you say, there’s no heat in the way you say it. It sounds like you’re pleading, too — scratching at the door to be let in. He knows you well enough to catch the subtext; to know that you’re not just talking about the job. But Minho can’t make his mouth move. Likewise, he can’t turn away.

Stop looking at her like she’s your future.

Chan doesn’t have time for the thousands of things going unsaid, so he interjects with an exasperated grunt, “Vans.” He points to the clock before gesturing between you and Minho. “Ten minutes, or you’re both walking to Cheongju.”

Neither of you moves once he clears the threshold and disappears again. Say something, he tells himself. Say anything.

He doesn’t.

“You didn’t sleep last night,” you muse, eyes narrowing slightly with concern. It’s not a question. There’s no uncertainty in the way you look at him, although that’s nothing new. “I read somewhere that peppermint gum helps with reflux.”

You shrug, like it’s simply a fact you’re sharing. It’s not. It’s the millionth way you’ve found to say “I love you” without using those words.

Minho slips off the empty workstation desk he’s been sitting on, dusts off the back of his jeans once he’s back at his full height. With a nod of his head, he gestures to your workstation. “Take what you need,” he advises quietly.

When he moves towards the door, you move forward into the room. Your paths cross in the middle, but Minho keeps his distance, too aware of that magnetism of yours to take any risks now. Upon reaching the door, he pauses and looks back over his shoulder to call out your name. As if you were anticipating it, you look up from the desk drawer you’re combing through.

He freezes for a moment, although he doesn’t mean to. You might be the only person capable of catching him off-guard. Once his brain stops lagging, he says only half of what he wants to: “Don’t forget your mask.

Hurriedly, like you really would’ve forgotten, you pull open a drawer and fish out a black gaiter, which you then tuck into the zippered pocket of your jacket. Instantly, Minho’s posture gets a little less rigid. Not for nothing, yours does, too.

“Thanks,” you sigh. The corners of your mouth raise slightly. From what he’s been hearing lately, this might be the closest you’ve been to smiling in weeks. Your reaction stops when you notice the way he’s halfway out of the room. “No need to wait on me. I’ll meet you in the loading dock in a minute.”

Minho stalls, feet unwilling to move, until you go back to gathering items. He nods once, as if you’ll even see his acknowledgment, then slips off into the hallway without you.

The loading dock he’s headed for is on the opposite side of the factory, but his anxiousness propels him there in half the usual time. His team is loitering around the two vans when he reaches them: one unmarked, one branded, both stolen.

Felix grins from the hood of the primary vehicle, where he sits cross-legged. He slaps his hands on the white metal below and proudly states, “I told you it would work.”

“Let me guess.” Minho looks over at Scraps. “You were the one who hot-wired them.”

She glances apologetically at Felix, then turns back to Minho with a shrug and a sheepish smile. “He tried his best,” she sighs. “If we had all day, he probably would’ve succeeded.”

At this, Felix’s grin droops into a cartoonish frown. “What do you mean probably?”

Minho rolls his eyes. “Enough — and go put a hat on, or you’re getting a full balaclava.” He points to the mess of blue hair spilling onto Felix’s shoulders. “If your fashion statement gets us pinged on a security camera, I’ll kill you myself —”

A laugh rings out behind him. He turns on his heel to find Sierra snickering at Felix’s reddening cheeks, both tattooed hands covering her mouth as she does.

“— and you know better,” Minho snarks, pointing straight at her. “Gloves. Now.”

Scraps’ eyes are as wide as the moon when Minho swivels back towards her. She doesn’t give him the opportunity to say it; she’s already shoving her decorated arms into the sleeves of a plain, black jacket and zipping it up as high as it’ll go. He hears relief leave her in a quiet sigh when his focus finds who he’s truly been looking for.

A few meters away, Jeongin is buried so far under the hood of the secondary van that his feet barely touch the ground. With his target now acquired, Minho crosses to the neighboring bay.

“Well?” He demands, “Did you find them?”

The younger one startles at the sudden questioning; there’s a dull thud when he smacks his head on the underside of the hood.

Jeongin groans, “Aigo,” and carefully ducks his head until it clears the obstacle above him. His cheeks are pink and smattered with both dirt and grease — and the mess only gets worse when he mindlessly wipes sweat from his forehead with the back of his semi-blackened hand.

“Behind the radiator on this one.” Jeongin then thumbs over his shoulder to the van Felix sits on. “That one was attached to the undercarriage, near the fuel tank.”

With a grunt, Jeongin exhumes himself from the engine compartment and hops to his feet. It’s completely unnecessary, but he drops the tracker he just detached onto the concrete and smashes it under his steel-toed boot.

“You won’t need the GPS blocker anymore, so make sure to turn it off,” he advises. And he clearly didn’t learn his lesson thirty seconds ago because he taps one of his temples, leaving a dirty fingerprint behind. “Otherwise, it’ll interfere with your comms.”

Jeongin then blinks up at Minho like he’s expecting a pat on the head.

Over my dead body.

Minho instead points at the shards of plastic littering the ground. Affect flat, he tells his junior to clean that shit up, which is the closest he will ever fucking get to you did good, kid. The second Minho steps away, Jeongin drops down to hurriedly scoop the broken bits into his palm.

While he waits on the rest of the group — namely you — to roll up, Minho busies himself with checking supplies.

The unmarked van will carry the backup team to a rendezvous point half a kilometer away from the Ulsan facility, just in case. For this reason, it’ll also carry the big guns, which — like the vans themselves — were nicked from corpo rats. The seats inside were gutted immediately to clear out a cargo area. The trip sure as shit won’t be comfortable, but six people and a few ammo bags will fit inside without much issue.

Most importantly, there’s enough room for Minho’s crown jewel: a goddamn, motherfucking anti-tank gun. He’s been dying to try it out since the WraithCo. raid that brought it into his possession, but he has a sinking feeling that he never will.

Moving on to the primary van, Minho notes the logo emblazoned on the side. This one was harder to steal than its counterpart, but you stressed the necessity, and he made it happen. Now, when the infiltration team drives up to the facility, it’ll be under the guise of the outsourced IT company that Ulsan uses for routine maintenance.

According to the data you managed to reap, Ulsan’s made two glaring security errors, likely because they assume they’re infallible — not handling their own shit in-house, and scheduling their tech contractors to pop by on the same dates every month. Both details were barely footnoted in the reports; anyone but you wouldn’t have thought twice about them.

Something twinges in his chest when his thoughts start wandering in your direction, so Minho shakes his head to clear them. It doesn’t work. Instead, it seems to summon you. You step onto the loading dock a few seconds later.

You’ve changed since Minho left the Hub. The lapse in time makes sense now that his eyes sweep over your frame. The black jeans you’re wearing now aren’t chopped halfway up the right side. In order to conceal that highly recognizable part of you, you struggled through the significant extra time it takes to get your artificial foot through the openings — and he didn’t have to tell you to do any of this, unlike the rest of the team.

It’s been so long since you’ve been one of the boots of the ground that he underestimated you. Clearly, he shouldn’t have because you haven’t skipped a single detail. The treads of your boots have been filed down; but the platform sole remains intact, concealing the brand and size, as well as your true height. Specially-designed black gloves cover your hands, so you can utilize whatever touchscreens and keys you come across without leaving your trace behind. Likewise, the gaiter you grabbed at the last minute rests just below your chin, ready to cover your mouth and nose.

His breath catches in his throat when he sees the long-sleeved black top hanging loosely and hiding your figure. He wants to ask if you remember, but he doubts you do. You borrowed it from him so many years ago that it might as well be yours now.

To stop himself from staring, Minho starts to address the group. “Now that our guest of honor has shown up —”

“We still need Jihoon,” you interject with one finger raised, gently asking Minho to wait.

“What?” Minho can’t keep the confusion off his face, and he can’t wrap his head around this curveball you’ve thrown. Incredulously, he scoffs, “It’s a covert break-in.”

There isn’t a single reason he can think of to include the demolitions expert in something requiring finesse.

You don’t respond with words; your eyes flick to Chan, which is enough of a hint. The two of you are planning something — keeping him in the dark about something — but Minho can’t figure out what or why. The leader doesn’t provide much in the way of explanation. All he offers is, “We need a driver and an extra pair of eyes,” as if that’s the whole truth.

Whatever.

The second Jihoon finally walks through the door, Minho immediately starts his briefing.

The main team — including you, Chan, Felix, Sierra, Jihoon, and Minho himself — will head straight to the facility. The reinforcements — Scraps, Changbin, Eunjae, Sunwoo, Hongjoong, and some fucker from Texas known only as “Cowboy” — will wait just outside the property line with range weapons, ready to party with any gatecrashers.

On site, Felix and Sierra will take out security at the gate; only two men guard that post at any given time. Meanwhile, you’ll slip in and disable the remaining security measures: cameras, mainly, although the alarm system is your biggest priority. To get everyone inside, you’ve cloned the badge of a mid-level researcher who, like the Professor, has authorization beyond the front desk.

From there, the interior group will divide into watchdogs and infiltrators. Given the relatively small size of the building, it shouldn’t take long to get you to the control room, where you’ll take a crack at the main computer housing the Beta’s program. If everything goes as planned, you’ll be in and out within 30 minutes.

Nothing ever goes as planned, though. That Ilsan mission was simpler with significantly lower stakes, and it was a fucking nightmare. Minho can’t think about anything else when he crawls into the back of the van next to you.

For over two hours, Minho has been sitting cross-legged on the floor of this godforsaken van. His brain, unlike his body, is wholly fucking incapable of staying still. No matter how hard he tries to ground himself, he can’t shake the chill running down his spine or the voice in his head. It just keeps repeating the same thought, over and over:

This van will be missing passengers on the drive back.

“It’s your turn, Minho.”

His head snaps up. Instead of Atropos and her scissors, it’s Felix staring back at him, smiling curiously. Warmly. Minho’s pulse should ease up at the realization, but it doesn’t.

He clears his throat, although his voice still comes out jagged. “My turn?”

“He’s asking everyone what they’re going to do with their lives when this is all over,” you explain. Minho turns his head to look at you. For once, he can’t decipher the look on your face. You laugh when you squeeze his bent knee gently, adding, “Don't worry. I didn’t have an answer, either.”

But it’s not an answer that he lacks, it’s time.

Don’t you know that I’m already dead?

The van slows considerably, shifting from paved roads to gravel. Then, it stops entirely. Jihoon turns in his seat and squints through the holed, metal divider between the cabin and the back of the van.

“Spider?” He calls out over his shoulder, and it’s no wonder he struggles to identify you. Everyone sitting in this unlit area is cloaked in black from head to toe.

To help him out, you raise your hand and wave. Even if the dark gloves you’re wearing aren’t visible, your smile is. Your voice is just as bright when you chirp, “Over here!”

Minho sees Jihoon smile for the first time in all the years he’s known him. If he was anyone else, that flicker at the corner of his mouth wouldn’t count for shit; but Minho’s no stranger to steel or your uncanny ability to bend it. He knows your impact when he sees it.

“End of the line,” Jihoon reports. “The next time I stop, you’ll need to sneak out the side. I can see a camera positioned directly above the security vestibule, pointing downward from the left. The van will create a blind spot if you stay low to the ground.”

Now, Jihoon’s involvement is starting to make sense. He’s one of only four people who joined the Black Screen within the last year — after the Ilsan disaster, which led to the incorporation of masks into all field ops. Out of the entire organization, his face is one of the only ones that won’t tip off the guards.

Until the next news cycle, Minho thinks ruefully.

Once the driver is satisfied that the passengers are on the same page, he turns around and sets the van back into motion. Every dip in the uneven road below throws your shoulder against Minho’s; and every time you collide, he wants to wrap his arm around you to keep it from happening again. He doesn’t. Eventually, the opportunity disappears along with the faint crunch of gravel beneath the tires.

The brakes squeak slightly when the van stops a second time. Minho can’t hear the conversation Jihoon is making with the security staff from where he sits, just the slow-motion movements of you, Felix, and Sierra as the three of you inch the side door open and spill onto the driveway like molasses.

All Minho has left to do is wait — for you to come back or for shots to be fired. His pulse picks up when seconds slip by without either of those options playing out.

It’s funny, he thinks as he pulls his rifle into his lap, that the thing bringing him comfort now is designed to take it away. His thumb hovers over the selective fire switch, flexing in anticipation. Any second now, all his best laid plans will explode.

It’s only a matter of time until —

“All clear,” comes your voice through static.

Minho flinches. In all the tense silence, he’d completely forgotten about the earpiece he’s wearing. The breath he’d unknowingly been holding leaves him in a hurry, taking the tension in his shoulders with it as he deflates.

“Meet us at the fire exit on the northeast side. I shut off the emergency alert system, too, so we shouldn’t have any issues getting into that stairwell.”

Jihoon is already pulling the van around by the time you finish speaking. In a matter of seconds, he pulls up to the door in question and shifts gears to park.

You’re standing in the doorway when Minho’s feet hit the ground, eyes crinkling when you see him with a smile he can’t otherwise see. He doesn’t know what to do with that, so he addresses Sierra first. She’s got blood on her temple, and Minho can’t tell whose it is.

“You didn’t make a mess, did you?” He asks, frowning slightly.

“This is business, not pleasure, so no.” She rolls her eyes. The sigh she lets out reeks of disappointment. “Wrung out their necks like chickens and shoved their bodies into cabinets.”

Glancing quickly at Minho, Felix figures out where his leader’s eyes are focused. “Not hers,” he clarifies, nodding to Sierra. With the back of his sleeve, he reaches over and gently wipes the blood from her face, like he’s cleaning gochujang off a child. “Didn’t leave a trace, though.”

That’s all Minho cares about, so he asks no further questions. Instead, he checks his watch before looking up to check on you. He doesn’t pose the question, but you answer him, regardless; and when you do, you accompany it with your thumb raised.

Oh, for fuck’s sake.

“All good!”

You then gesture with that thumb to the stairwell over your shoulder and ask, “Shall we?”, as if you’re inviting him to dance.

“You two —” Minho points to Felix and Sierra respectively, drawing their attention. “Station yourselves along the main hallway. If anyone so much as pokes their head out of a doorway, blow it the fuck off. No witnesses.”

Both nod in acknowledgment, but it’s not enough, not when your life is in his hands. He glares expectantly at them, waits in silence until they get the hint.

In tandem, they repeat, “No witnesses.”

Good enough.

Wordlessly, Minho waves his hand and sends them on their way to the second floor. He doesn’t budge until he sees the tops of their heads through the window, disappearing past the landing. Seconds later, Felix’s voice sounds off in Minho’s ear to advise him that the area is clear.

He turns back to the three people standing behind him to ensure they’re ready to move in. The second he sees the pistol in your grip, his stomach lurches so violently that he really might vomit on his boots.

It’s categorically fucked — so fundamentally, intrinsically wrong — that you’re standing here now with lethal force in your hands. Over ten long years, you’ve never fired a single shot in combat; never stolen the light from someone’s eyes while you’re staring into them. Still, no matter how nauseous the image makes him, the irony of it all can’t be ignored.

You only know how to shoot because he taught you.

“Let’s move out,” Chan says when Minho doesn’t.

Minho takes point with you close behind him. Behind you, Jihoon follows with an inexplicable duffle bag strapped to his shoulder. By now, Minho knows better than to question what’s going on here. He wouldn’t get an honest answer if he did; and Chan makes no excuses for it as he trails after Jihoon up the stairs.

At the top of the landing, you tap Minho’s shoulder, prompting him to stop. When you gesture up ahead, his eyes follow, gaze sweeping down the long corridor towards the southwest side of the building. Near the end of the hall, a pair of glass doors interrupts the path to the server room, which sits further down on an intersecting corridor. Somewhere between that server room and the bulletproof barrier in front of you is your target: the main computer running the show.

All the signage he can spot declares the area secure and for authorized personnel only. You’re neither safe nor sanctioned, but the badge you pull from inside the neck of your — his — shirt will let you pretend to be.

Lim Namseok, it reads.

That poor bastard will probably be dead before sunrise for the things you’re about to do. Minho doesn’t have any higher hopes for himself, but he wonders whether or not you’ll be able to sleep when this is over.

No, he ultimately decides. You won’t.

You keep glancing down at that man’s photograph, swallowing hard like you’re choking down an apology. Committing those features to memory, as if you’re obligated to remember each one of the creases in his forehead.

It’s not a question of if that face will pop up in your nightmares but when.

Minho’s both unwilling and unable to let you keep torturing yourself, so he shifts his assault rifle to his non-dominant hand and reaches out to you. Neither of you says a word as he gently removes the badge from between your fingers and lets the lanyard unfurl. You watch the ID flutter downwards until it rests against your chest; his eyes don’t leave your face.

“Come on,” he says softly. “There are fifty-one-million Namseoks out there that still need their asses saved.”

You don’t want to laugh. Your furrowed eyebrows inform him that you’re trying very hard not to, like your half-hearted glare will override the muted chuckle that slips through your mask. His attempt at levity worked, though. You start moving again when he does.

On the way to the first set of security doors, the four of you pass both of your lookouts, who’ve taken up posts half and three-quarters’ way up the corridor, respectively. Not for nothing, both look bored by the lack of action.

When Felix sees Minho, he complains, “Why is it always unpaid fucks like us who have to work on weekends? Shouldn’t these goons be here to justify their salaries?”

He’s not wrong. This place is a fucking ghost town, and although the datashard you combed through said this would be the case, the emptiness still makes the hairs on the back of Minho’s neck stand up. Whether or not he can put his finger on it, something feels off.

“Wouldn’t mind a desk job,” Chan muses, more to himself than to the rest of the group.

Minho leans into the assumption that he wasn’t meant to hear it. If he was, he’d have no choice but to point out that Chan hardly leaves his fucking desk as it is. So, to keep the peace, he keeps his smart mouth shut.

When several more meters come and go, the four of you reach the security checkpoint. With the badge back in hand and nerves evident in your tone, you hold it to the scanner and mutter, “Here goes nothing.”

Nothing is precisely what you get. No sirens wail, no trap doors give way to swallow you all down. The glass panels simply part with a click before sliding outwards along their respective tracks. Your shoulders sag with relief, unlike Minho’s. He carries tension in every single one of his muscle cells; and he only grows more rigid with each passing second.

To keep his pulse down, Minho counts each step he takes towards the control room. It’s an exercise in futility, of course. He’s a goddamn mess, no matter how hard he tries to hide it.

16…17…18…

Present moment excluded, he can only think of one other in which he’s ever experienced fear. Real fear, that is; the kind that begs his limbs to lock. It’s no coincidence that he can barely function now. How could he, with the common denominator trailing behind him like a shadow?

19….20…21 —

Suddenly, you hiss, “Shit!”

By the time he wheels himself around, you’re frozen in place with your pistol aimed through a doorway that wasn’t open when he passed it. A woman in a lab coat stands there with her hand still on the handle, eyes doubling in size when they land on you. Immediately, the coffee mug in her hand drops, sending both liquid and shards of ceramic flying. Both of her hands are in the air before the pieces can settle at her feet.

You fire once, panicked, and strike her in the upper arm. It’s a shit job, one that’ll give her time to call for help before she bleeds out on the floor, so Minho’s instinct takes over.

“Turn around,” he tells you.

You do.

From her knees, the woman clutches her bicep and begs Minho to lower his weapon. She still wants to have kids someday, she tells him, sobbing. She’s too young to die.

Unaffected, Minho aims at the space between her brows. “Aren’t we all?”

Bang!

Her body drops to the floor like a bag of cement, lifeless. Although the shot still echoes, it’s otherwise dead silent until you whisper, “I’m sorry.”

Stepping to the side to look at you, Minho furrows his brows. “Don’t be. We can’t leave witnesses.”

“I’m sorry that I didn’t do it right,” you clarify, voice wavering but louder than before. “You taught me better than that.”

For a minute, he forgets where he is; loses track of the two people standing on eggshells behind you both. There’s definitely still a corpse lying two meters away, but all he sees in his peripheral vision is proof: You may have chosen this life, but this life hasn’t chosen you.

Despite the bullets and the viscera making a mess of the tile nearby, you’re still the person he met a decade ago — someone with the instincts to do what’s needed but too much heart to be swallowed by them.

He hopes you never change.

“There may be more people that we haven’t accounted for.” Chan’s reminder forces three pairs of eyes to focus on him. He urges, “We need to get this done. Spider, where’s the control room?”

With his gun and without a word, Minho gestures to an office several doors down from where the group currently stands. In giant, black letters, it states, “CONTROL ROOM”. Your answer would be redundant at this point, so you don’t bother giving it. Moreover, Chan can fucking read.

“Oh,” is all the leader says before the group presses onward.

You swipe the badge again when you reach the control room. As was the case with the previous door, this one opens without any theatrics. All four of you slip inside before they close on their own, several moments later.

As soon as he steps foot inside, Jihoon whistles. “Damn.”

Damn is right.

The room feels even larger than the dimensions he saw on the blueprints; and with the forced air flowing from the overhead vent, it’s far less welcoming than Minho expected. Halfway between an operating theater and an airplane, the crisp whiteness of his surroundings seem both sterile and stale. He’d wash the feeling off himself if he could, but he can’t, so his skin continues to crawl.

Consuming the back half of the room, a U-shaped desk boasts multiple monitors, keyboards, and switches. Minho has no fucking clue what any of this equipment is supposed to do — he doesn’t give a shit, either — but he sees your eyes go wide with that childlike wonder he’s always been stupefied by.

Your hands twitch, likely from a desire to touch every surface they can find, so you hold them close to your chest while you look around. After studying all the options at your disposal, you take a seat behind the monitor at the left end of the desk.

Jihoon asks what everyone else is wondering: “Is the main computer not the one in the middle?”

Normally, this is the sort of thing you'd laugh at. You don’t, though; you barely seem to have heard it. Transfixed, you simply mumble something about that computer being hardwired to the server room. Minho doesn’t catch the rest of your explanation, but he hears the words “temperature control” and “ventilation” before concentration makes your voice peter out mid-sentence.

The next few minutes pass by without you noticing. Nobody speaks, nobody breathes too loudly for fear of interrupting your train of thought. That’s not to say it’s silent; far from it. Your rhythmic typing takes over the room, and the effect it has on Minho is borderline hypnotic.

A siren song, sort of.

In response to its call, Minho’s mind picks up and races from the room you’re in — back to the Hub, where this all started; to the countless hours he’s spent just like this, watching you work. As mundane as those moments might be in the grand scheme of things, they’re still his happiest.

Maybe he’d count this moment among them if the Sword of Damocles wasn’t swinging so blatantly overhead.

Out of nowhere, you slam your fist down on the desk, startling everyone else enough to flinch. It’s not just the noise that has Minho, Chan, and Jihoon on high alert; it’s the fact that none of them have ever seen you explode like this.

“Goddamn it!”

Immediately, Minho rushes over to where you’re sitting. His eyes dart from your face to the screen, then back again, finding no obvious answers for your distress.

“What?” He demands, “What’s wrong?”

Eyes glued to the monitor, you continue to mutter, “No, no, no —“

“Spider, talk to me. Tell me what’s going on, so we can fix it.”

“They fucking —” You smack the desk again, like hitting something will knock your thoughts loose. “Fuck!”

For a second, you let the rage simmer. Then, the defeat you still haven’t articulated settles in. You slump down in your chair with your face in your hands, forcing your breathing to slow.

“They must’ve added it after the Professor defected. I can’t — It wasn’t referenced anywhere on that datashard, Minho. There was nothing.”

All your panic is funneled directly into the palms of your gloves, making it difficult to decipher what you’re saying. Minho leans closer just in time to hear you cry, “They built a failsafe.”

Minho is out of his fucking depth. In fact, he’s drowning.

“A failsafe?” He asks, “What, like a back-up program?”

“No, as in, any attempts to delete or alter the program data will invalidate the study.”

Based on your phrasing, Minho assumes you’re quoting something directly. Swallowing back the acid rising in his throat, he opens his mouth to ask you what the fuck that means. Before he can hurl his question out, you look up at him with abject hopelessness in your eyes; and suddenly, he can’t speak.

“All of their research subjects will be purged,” you spit.

On the other side of the desk, Chan and Jihoon exchange a look — a grim one, but not one of surprise. They’ve arrived at the conclusion before Minho can leap to it, and they’re still talking without saying a single goddamn thing out loud.

Minho can’t take it anymore. He shouts, “What the fuck does that mean?”

“If Spider wipes the beta, everyone with that chip goes with it,” Chan sighs. He scrubs his hands over his face until it’s red. “If they don’t drop dead immediately, it’s not outside the realm of possibility that their brains will be permanently and irreparably fucked as a result.”

Now what?

Minho’s legs grow less steady by the second. He presses his palm flush against the desktop to keep his knees from buckling. He knows damn well it won’t make a difference; his spinning head will bring him down if his body doesn’t. Everything — including the pulse hammering in his ears — is simultaneously too quiet and too loud.

What the fuck was this all for? The time, the energy, the lives everyone keeps sacrificing to this fucking cause — any of it.

All of it.

What’s the point of fighting this hard if Ulsan will always be ten steps ahead?

“Minho!”

His head snaps in your direction only to see that you weren’t the one calling his name. He blinks, confused. Who —?

“Minho, they’re coming! Lim Namseok — terminated yesterday. His badge — it flagged —”

Scraps’ voice comes shrouded in gunfire. The weak connection makes it even harder to hear her; whatever isn’t exploding is crackling due to the distance. Each word fizzles at the end, as if lit by a fuse.

“— to get out —”

Hand flying to his left ear, Minho presses down the button at the center of his ear piece. “Who’s coming?” He barks, “Scraps, what the fuck is going on?”

When she doesn’t respond, someone else takes over.

“It’s the fucking retention team. A sniper took Eunjae out before any of us even saw them coming,” Hongjoong yells. “They’ve got a unit on the ground and one in the air. I’ll try to shoot the chopper down, but you need to get out of there now.”

“Hongjoong, do as much as you can to tear them up, but don’t push your luck. If you’re outnumbered, fall back before we lose anybody else. Do you copy?”

He doesn’t get a response.

Jihoon moves closer to the door to listen for any incoming footsteps. Hearing none, he growls, “Who the fuck called the boogeymen? Don’t they only deal with defectors?”

“It doesn’t matter.” Chan waves him off, “They’re here, and we need to be anywhere else.”

Despite what he just said, the leader doesn’t move; doesn’t budge a centimeter in any direction. Chan simply glances across the room at you, and when you stare back at him, it’s with the same, eerie calmness. Some quiet resignation that makes no fucking sense under the circumstances.

“If I can’t kill the program entirely, I can make it inoperable long enough for the existing chips to be removed,” you say, like you’ve already had this idea in your pocket. “Force quit, so to speak.”

You don’t elaborate, leaving Minho’s frustration to drive him halfway out of his goddamn mind. Worse, you ignore the way he’s staring so fucking desperately at you and address the person standing several meters behind him.

“Jihoon, did you bring the party favors?”

In response, Jihoon slips the duffel bag off his shoulder and holds it out to you. Only then do you move. Chan follows behind as you cross towards the door; neither one of you says a thing when you pass Minho, who’s still cemented in place.

“What the fuck are you planning?” He demands, although his voice shakes. “What fucking secrets have you been keeping, and why?”

Once you secure the duffle bag on your own shoulder, you finally bring yourself to look at him. Above your mask, your eyes soften. They crinkle at the corners, as if you’re smiling, but there are tears brimming at your lash line, threatening to fall.

Please don’t look at me like you don’t have a future.

“For what it’s worth,” you start. Then, you sniffle, breath hitching as you try to get the rest out. “You’ve always had my heart. All of it — every stupid piece.”

And with nothing more than a nod to Jihoon, you’re gone, running out the door with Chan towards the server room before Minho can say a single word to you; before he can even think of chasing after you.

In the blink of an eye, biceps wrap around him like a vice, pinning his arms behind his back and gripping tighter with every kick he tries to use for leverage.

“Spider!” Minho yells.

He fights with all he has to break free of Jihoon’s hold, to throw one or both of them to the ground, to get to you, but the older man doesn’t bat an eye. As if Minho weighs nothing at all, Jihoon begins hauling him back down the hallway towards the fire exit.

“You’re going the wrong way,” he grunts as he thrashes. “Let me — go —”

Jihoon doesn’t say a word, doesn’t waste a breath, doesn’t stop pulling. Whatever strength he has left in the reserves, it’s wielded against Minho, not on making apologies.

Minho bucks again, throwing all the weight from his legs to his back. It does nothing apart from exhaust him, but he can’t stop. He’ll never stop.

“Spider!”

Close to feral, his anguished shouts devolve to desperate, growling noises. “I swear to god, I’ll bury you for this, Lee —”

He digs his heels into the ground to slow the older man’s momentum. His knees could snap at the force with which he’s resisting. He doesn’t give a shit if they do; he’ll crawl to you if he has to.

“I’ll splatter your brains against the fucking wall when I get my hands on you,” Minho spits. “I’m your commanding fucking officer!”

The next time he kicks, someone grabs him by the ankles to help carry his restless body down the stairs. Felix, judging by that pathetic, apologetic look in his eyes. Minho resolves to kill him, too, when he gets his limbs back. He’ll burn the whole goddamn compound to the ground for standing in his way; for letting you do this.

It should be me.

You’re the best of them, and they’re letting you die.

It should be me.

They’re going to stand here, watching while you —

A sob he wasn’t prepared for bursts out of his chest in the form of your real name. With it, his threats dissolve into pleas, so goddamn pitiful in comparison to the violent way he still flails.

“Please!” He cries, voice raw. Making himself louder doesn’t make him heard. Incapable of doing anything else, he begs, “Please don’t let her do this. She’s all I have — All I want — Goddamnit, please! I need to get her out of there —”

So useless.

“I have to get her out,” he sobs with one final burst of energy rattling through otherwise spent limbs.

The arms and hands around him still don’t relent. Over and over, he repeats his only thought in rapid succession until his voice gives out:

“I have to get her out.”

Two seconds before they drag his body over the threshold, the whole facility shakes, like the earth below has opened up to swallow it down. Even from the opposite side of the building, Minho can hear shattered glass hitting the ground like sheets of rain. With the heavy, black cloud swirling over the southwest section of roof, he might’ve believed in some storm.

He might have.

But now, Minho sees the flames licking at the sky above, and he no longer believes in anything.

There are 244 kilometers between Cheongju and Changwon. By car, the distance flies by in fewer than three hours, assuming the expressways aren’t clogged with corporate commuters. All things considered, it’s not a trip that disrupts a person’s day. It’s straightforward, and above all, it’s easy.

What isn’t easy is crawling on your stomach underneath a blanket of smoke, only to drag half of someone else’s body weight with you down a flight of stairs.

There’s nothing straightforward about slipping through alleyways and ditches, trying to avoid nearby police blockades as they pop up; or attempting to conceal clothes that are singed in some places and actively smoking in others.

That distance does not fly by in three hours, even though the expressways aren’t clogged, because there’s disruption after disruption:

Starting on foot, only to steal — and later dump — a car when the walk becomes unbearable.

Wandering blindly without a working mobile, unable to access assistance or a map, and learning that your best guesses are wrong turns more often than not.

Avoiding phones in general due to the localized surge in cell surveillance, knowing even a coded message could wind up with you and any recipients dead.

Stopping repeatedly with burning lungs to check on someone in far worse shape than you, pretending not to hurt for their sake.

No, the estimates are all fucked.

It takes twenty-one hours to travel the 244 kilometers between Cheongju and Changwon; and you feel the weight of every single one of them when you hobble through the front doors of the factory just to drop, exhausted, onto the floor.

News of your survival spreads like dandelion seeds throughout the compound. Within minutes, it seems, everyone you’ve ever made eye-contact with swings by the clinic to pat you on the back.

One of them — Sierra, of all people — does you the greatest kindness of all: bringing you a change of clothes and then refusing to stick around for a chat.

Half of them have never spoken to you before now, though you try not to hold that fact against them.

Almost all of them throw the word “brave” around like it’s weightless.

You know better.

What you did was useless in the grand scheme of things, and knowing that is heavy. Crushing, even, so much so that you find it hard to catch your breath. No, you’re sure, what you did was peak cowardice.

You need to get out of this clinic. You need all of these well-wishers to stop looking at you like some tragic hero. You need —

You push off the cot you’re occupying without giving it a second thought. The lightheadedness threatens to take you right back down again, but the feeling passes as quickly as it comes. You stay on your feet, even though you sway, by sheer force of will.

That’s it. There you go.

Doc gave you a once-over when you were first hauled in. Neither one of you truly felt like you were a priority. She may have been justifiably distracted, but in forming her expert opinion, she saw your bruised — not broken — body and declared you “good enough”. You take that glowing assessment at face value now and promptly discard the bit about “needing to stay for observation”.

Her primary concern is that you shouldn’t sleep with your concussion. Baseless, you think ruefully. You’ve been awake for two days and don’t see that changing any time soon.

Before you attempt to make a break for it, you glance at the far end of the clinic. There, a white screen stretches longways across most of the area for privacy, leaving two exits on either side. You don’t see the point of it; it doesn’t hide a thing. Two work lights shine so brightly from their spots by the wall that every movement in front of them is broadcasted on the thin, nylon divider.

As expected, the shadow puppet you’re looking for is still hovering around an unmoving mass in the center of the screen.

Chan.

He’s alive, even though he doesn’t look it. He’s talking, too, which is a marked improvement from the state he was in just a few hours ago. The morphine drip must be helping, you figure. Until now, he had a belt between his teeth to quell the pain, which would’ve kept him quiet.

Otherwise, there’s only one explanation for the corner he’s turned over the past few hours: The love of his life hasn’t left his side since he was carried into the clinic; and he knows she’s there.

You’ve learned the hard way that both of those conditions must be met to make a difference.

One without the other isn’t enough.

You can’t hear what they’re murmuring to each other, and you don’t want to. It’s theirs. Thankfully, their hushed tones give you the only confirmation you need: neither of your pseudo-parents will catch and scold you for leaving against medical advice. They’re oblivious; they’re fine; they have each other. You have —

Do you, though?

The person you want to see is coincidentally the only one in the entire compound that hasn’t come by seeking proof of life.

At first, you feared the worst; ripped your cuticles to shreds when the faces passing by weren’t his. No one mentioned his name or asked you if you’d seen him, as if there was no him left to see.

Then, you saw Jihoon walking around with his cheekbone stitched together. There’s some sick comfort in knowing that Minho at least lived long enough to beat his knuckles bloody. You’ve apologized to Jihoon three times now for the effect you caused, but he’s shrugged off every single one of them, like yesterday was just another day at the office.

Wasn’t it?

You creep out the door undetected and make your way to the nearest stairwell. The quiet throughout the halls in the factory isn’t comforting in the way it used to be. No part of the deeply familiar landscape is.

It should be.

It’s the only real home you’ve ever known — one you thought for sure you’d never see again.

But every empty doorway you pass may as well have a body in it. You still see that woman and her unspent aspirations everywhere you look. You still hear the way she begged for her life before she lost it.

And when the stairs ahead finally come into view — ones you’ve taken a million times — they’re insurmountable. Your body aches automatically, like you’re still pulling Chan’s phantom weight out of the fire. That memory is muscle-deep now, you fear. There’s no getting rid of it.

At the landing, you force yourself forward. The siren song only you can hear is far stronger than the call of your own bed. It lures you around the corner whether or not you’re ready to follow it.

You aren’t, you realize as your steps continue automatically. The guilt threatens to eat you alive, and frankly, you’re prepared to let it. You deserve it.

Somehow, despite your bullshit insanity and your numerous violations of trust, you still managed to skate through with a life left to live. Considering what you did, you figure it’s only fair that you pay this price — feel this fucking awful — for the rest of your unearned years.

Maybe.

You don’t know.

You’re in uncharted territory now because your plan didn’t include an after.

As your footsteps draw closer to Minho’s room, it dawns on you that you don’t have a plan at all now. You don’t know what the fuck to say to him, let alone where to start. You wonder whether or not you should bother at all.

If Minho knows you’re back at the compound, that means he made a choice not to find you. You have no right — none whatsoever — to take away his options a second time.

He’ll never forgive you, you tell yourself. If the roles were reversed, you’d do the same.

Maybe.

You don’t know.

You can’t take those hypotheticals and draw conclusions because Minho has never — would never — put you in the position you stranded him in. He wouldn’t hijack a mission you created or exclude you from a half-baked, shittily-executed contingency plan. He’d never force a friend to make some destructive, deathbed promise; wouldn’t have you dragged out of blast radius, kicking and screaming and fighting and spitting, just to drop you in a front-row seat.

He’s the best of all of you, and you did your absolute worst to him.

It’s selfish, walking up to his door now. You know it is. Despite that, you can’t make your body stop moving now that it’s started; can’t keep that boulder from rolling down hill. One last look, you tell yourself. That’s all you need.

Even if he never looks you in the eyes again, this can be enough.

You raise your hand and reach out to the scraped-up wood with your knuckles leading the way. They’re dirty, you note, caked with soot in every crease. They shouldn’t be. You scrubbed them raw to get the blood and plasma off your skin. It’s possible — likely, even — that your brain is fried beyond fixing, and that you’re imagining things.

Maybe.

You don’t know.

You don’t hear an answer when you finally bring yourself to knock. No, you correct yourself, that’s an answer in and of itself. Acting selfishly once again, you don’t heed that silent reply. You don’t knock again, either. Heart hammering against your ribs, you wrap your hand around the knob and twist.

Part of you wants to laugh. Of course, his is the only door in the whole fucking factory that doesn’t squeak horrifically on its hinges. His tolerance level for annoyance has always been low.

Inching your way over the threshold, you call out, “Minho?”

And once again, you don’t hear a response.

Standing now inside his room, you don’t see him — not at first. He certainly doesn’t see you. His back leans against the window frame while he slumps on the ledge, presumably staring off in the opposite direction through the glass. His defeated posture is as telling as the position he’s in.

The Minho you know never sits with his back to a door. It’s too big a risk and too broad a target; an invitation for a nasty surprise. He’s said it a thousand times: whoever kills him needs to look him in the eyes.

This is what it looks like when a person’s given up, you think.

This is what you did.

Throat thick, you call his name again. This time around, it barely qualifies as a whisper; all your breath is caught up in that tangle in your chest. There’s no way he heard it because you barely did. Really, you should —

“Fuck off,” Minho growls without turning around. “I won’t tell you a third time.”

His words don’t carry the same venom they usually do in circumstances like this. He just sounds hollow, and it devastates you so completely to hear the emptiness that tears start falling without your permission. You don’t move from where you stand, too overwhelmed to process both ambulation and falling apart at the seams.

The lack of footsteps tips him off to your ongoing, unwanted presence.

“When will you people give up? ” After slamming his left fist against the window frame, he pushes himself abruptly off the ledge to his feet. “I don’t want your goddamn sympathy. All I’ve ever fucking wanted is —”

He wheels around then, fists clenched and ready to swing. All the air in his lungs leaves him when he sees you standing there. The rest of that thought is strangled, and it drops lifeless on the floor.

“You.”

You can’t guess what comes next: screaming, blame, silence, violence. You don’t even know which of those things would be worst — just that he’s entitled to all of the above, and you’ve earned the lot.

What you end up with isn’t an outcome you ever would’ve anticipated. It’s him, his quivering mouth, and his exhausted, red-rimmed eyes taking several steps forward on shaky legs. It’s a desperate bid to close the distance, and a look built on so many conflicting emotions that you can’t even begin to take inventory.

At first, your hammering heart tells you to back away; that he may hate you enough to hurt you.

But he doesn’t.

He falls to his knees in front of you when his legs ultimately give out. Boneless, he crumples forward onto his palms until his head hangs low between his arms. From where you’re standing, it almost looks like he’s praying. That is, until you notice the way his shoulders shake.

Of all the people you’ve met in your life, Minho is the only one who seemed to be incapable of crying. Nausea swells now that he proves you wrong. It feels like a violation to see him this way, especially knowing that you’re the reason for the state he’s in.

Through a clenched jaw, he begs for answers you didn’t anticipate needing to give:

“I’m hallucinating, aren’t I? I’ve finally lost my fucking mind?”

Oh.

Without a second thought, you fall to your knees, too. Chrome and carbon fiber scrape against concrete as you scoot yourself closer, and you pray that your proximity will be proof enough that you’re here.

It’s not.

“I left you for dead, and now I’m seeing ghosts. Is that it?”

Heartbroken, you try your best to get through, “Minho, no.”

Tentatively, you reach out to touch his shoulder, thinking that you might be able to ground him, even if you can’t comfort him. Before your fingertips find him, he senses your movement and lifts his head. Your hands automatically reroute to claim either side of his face, fingers sliding into unkempt hair. To your surprise, he doesn’t pull away. Instead, Minho studies your features intently, like he’s ruling out translucence; like his sanity is on the line.

Maybe it is.

More desperately than you ever have before, you drink down the sight of him. Beautiful, you think, even like this.

Now that you’re able to see his face in full, you find it tear-streaked. Somehow less alarmingly, his right temple is scraped to hell and back, while his left is black-and-blue. It’s a perfect portrait of the fist that struck him. The darkest shades of indigo demarcate where the knuckles dug in deepest; and the scabbed, scarlet lines on his other side illustrate the state of the ground he fell to.

Gravel.

You have to stop yourself from asking who hurt him. After all, it doesn’t fucking matter whose name he’d drop. You already know who’s to blame.

Nevertheless, Minho sees the question in your eyes, and he tells you, “I tried to run in after you once the bomb went off. After the fire started.”

Of course he did. What did you expect?

“I’m sorry,” you whisper, as if that’ll ever be enough. It doesn’t and won’t erase what you did, yet you repeat it anyway, “I’m so sorry.”

Opening your mouth was a mistake, you quickly realize. The dam breaks, and you can’t keep the words from spilling out. They all pile up, overlapping in time and urgency.

Every word you say comes out in one breath; sputtered, as if your head has finally broken through the surface of rushing water. “I should’ve told you about the contingency plan, but I knew you’d try to take my place, and I couldn’t —”

“I couldn’t leave you there,” he swears, as if you left him with any other choice. “Even if I was too late to save you, I needed to bring you home.”

Minho suddenly shifts, prompting your hands to fall from his face. To erase the distance he’s created, he sits back on his knees and pulls you into the space between them. You melt into his body when his arms wrap around you. Just as easily, you give in to the thousandth conflicting reason you’ve found to cry:

He’s never held you like this before.

With his cheek pressed to the side of your bowed head, you can feel his runaway tears. Though his voice wavers, his intentions are rock solid. “I fought like hell to get back to you. They had to knock me out just to get me into the fucking van. I didn’t want to leave you. I swear, I wouldn’t —”

“I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I didn’t stop the rollout,” you cry. “Keeping you in the dark was the only way to keep you safe.” You bury your face into the front of his shirt and repeat it even more emphatically, “Minho, I’m so fucking sorry.”

For a moment, he stays quiet. As curious as you are about his silence, you don’t pull away to look up at him. You think you’d rather actually die than sacrifice a single second of the closeness you walked through hell and back to find.

Eventually, without prompting, Minho does speak. His voice is so soft that his question hardly reaches you. “Why did you do it?”

You pause, unsure of which part of your explanation he wants repeated. If he’s truly asking you to start over from the top, you will. You’re prepared to rake yourself over those coals forever, but you doubt he has the time.

“In the control room,” he explains when you don’t arrive at the point yourself. “You told me that you love me, and then you ran off to blow yourself up. Why did you leave without letting me respond?”

Once again, you’re thrown; so disoriented that you can’t find the starting line. There were several reasons for running out the way you did: fear that he’d stop you if he caught on too quickly, or that he’d follow before Jihoon could drag him to safety. More than anything, as you sheepishly admit, “I didn’t think you’d say it back.”

He goes silent again. His arms pull you even closer, though you didn’t think it was possible.

“I think Medusa had it easy,” he confesses, sounding almost self-conscious for the first time in his life.

Though you’re caught off-guard, you don’t interrupt him.

He hesitates for a moment, then adds, “I think my curse has it all backwards. I turn to stone when people look at me, not the other way around.”

At this, you finally unearth your face from where it’s buried in his t-shirt. His body goes slightly slack without your frame to hold him up; the look on his face is just as deflated.

Turning in your spot to face him, you frown, but you tell him the truth. “I’m not as good at reading you as I thought I was.”

“Say it again.”

You blink.

Minho lifts his hand and cups your cheek. “Please,” he begs, thumb brushing over your skin. “Say it again, so I can get it right this time.”

You lean into his palm, allowing the warmth of it to radiate until you feel it everywhere — feel him everywhere. From there, as is always the case, the reflex takes over. “I love you. I think I always have.”

“I love you,” Minho echoes emphatically. “And unfortunately for you, I think I always will.”

It strikes like a pickaxe, sending cracks through a well-built wall. You swear you can hear the pieces of it falling. If you look closely, you can see the light as it rushes in.

There you are, you think. I knew you were in there somewhere.

He kisses you then, scrambling your brain so thoroughly that you almost forget it’s the first time he ever has. But he’s no stranger to you, and he proves it. Calloused hands maneuver you into his lap without resistance, without interruption, and lean arms snake around you as you straddle him, pinning you against his chest.

In an instant, you thread your fingers through his hair, hellbent on clinging to whatever parts of him you can get your hands on. That desperate grip of yours has always made him lose his mind; tonight isn’t any different. He groans into your mouth when you tug those strands now, proving that you’re no stranger, either.

His tongue flicks over your bottom lip, like he’s scratching at the door to be let in. You let him, let out some needy, mewling sound as he licks into your mouth to claim it.

Yours, you think. Yours, yours, yours.

When he unexpectedly pulls away from you, those little whines of yours only get louder. Kiss-bitten, Minho’s lips flatten into a thin line that indicates he’s fighting off a smile.

“Spider, I know vulnerability is your thing,” he sighs. His left hand releases its hold on the bottom of your thigh. With it, he gestures to the other side of the room. “But did you mean to leave the door open for this?”

Whipping your head around, you confirm that you did not, in fact, close the door behind you. Heat rises to your face before you can stop it. No matter how thoroughly you rack your brain, you come up short. There’s no excuse— not even a bad one — for a cybersecurity expert being this abysmally accessible offline.

You’re in the middle of questioning your qualifications for the role you occupy when Minho gently pats the side of your leg, wordlessly asking you to leave his lap. With great difficulty and a dash of awkwardness, you do. Just as soon as you’re back on your feet, your body riots. All the exhaustion and soreness you’ve been ignoring screams for acknowledgement.

Minho must hear it.

“Bed,” he murmurs, punctuating his instruction with a quick kiss to your temple.

Also a first, you note.

Despite your long history of entanglements, you’ve never once ended up in his sheets. Your heart flutters involuntarily at the prospect; the fever-grade burning in your cheeks only gets worse. Thankfully, with his back now turned to you, Minho doesn’t see how eagerly you stagger towards the stolen bed frame in the corner. You hope he doesn’t hear the relieved moan you let out when you collapse in an aching heap on his mattress.

Across the room, the lock clicks. Footsteps follow so quietly that you would’ve missed them if you didn’t have his gait committed to memory. The person walking back to you looks unfamiliar, though — somehow. There’s no trademark sharpness at the edges now. There’s no want darkening his eyes, but something delicate that softens them.

It’s need, you realize when he comes to drape himself over you. It’s gentle, the way he compensates for your strained muscles and takes it upon himself to shed your clothes, layer by layer. And it’s trust, finally letting him see the way you exist on your own — with your artificial leg removed from the equation and set carefully off to the side.

After positioning himself between your thighs, Minho pauses. His forearms rest on either side of your head, caging you in against the pillow below. Time doesn’t seem to pass while he gazes down at you, and you certainly don’t mind the delay. Of all your moments, this one — here, with him — is your happiest.

“In case it doesn’t go without saying,” he murmurs, nudging the tip of his nose against yours. “I forgive you for doing what you had to do.”

Blinking quickly doesn’t do much to dispel the tears prickling in the corners of your eyes. You bite your bottom lip and nod to the extent that you can. “Thank you,” you whisper.

“Do me a favor, though?”

“Anything.”

“Kiss me,” he requests, and you do.

When your mouth is finally on his, he rolls his hips forward with deliberate precision, length sliding through your arousal until he enters you, groaning. He maintains that slow, careful pace; coaxes you open for him until the stretch melts from pain to pleasure.

Eloquent as ever, you mewl with your lips still pressed to his. It’s muffled, of course, but there’s no context to miss. “Oh, my god.”

Once you acclimate to his size, Minho could ramp up the intensity if he wanted to. He doesn’t. He takes his time, grinds against you so perfectly that you’d never dream of rushing through this.

At this pace, every stroke hits deeper than the last; each languid drag of his cock along your walls converts more and more of your thoughts to static.

It’s such a change-up from every other time you’ve wound up underneath him. Part of you wishes that you could scrap all those trysts and pretend that this is your first. In a way, you suppose, it is. There’s a drastic difference between being fucked by Minho and being loved by him. For obvious reasons, you don’t plan on going back to the way it was before.

His length grazes your g-spot, pulling a whimper out of you. Dizzy from the sensation, you don’t notice the way your cunt clenches down on him until he curses under his breath.

“Shit,” he moans, “Wish you knew how perfect you feel wrapped around me. I swear, I’m not leaving this bed as long as you’re in it.”

Another stroke hits you exactly where you crave him most.

“Please,” you gasp, back arching off the bed. He leans in to capitalize on the length of neck you’ve left exposed; the heat of his tongue on your flesh drives you absolutely insane. “R-right there, Minho. Please, I’m so close.”

Other people have described Minho as defiant, but you have to disagree. He does precisely what you beg of him, angling each thrust to get you gushing around him. And even after he has you shaking underneath him, he refuses to slack off.

The orgasm he pulls from you is so overwhelming that you feel it tingling in your scalp, resonating down your spine until every nerve in your body is a live wire. You’re still somewhere in the stratosphere when Minho unravels, twitching and spilling inside of you until he’s got nothing left to give.

Spent, he pulls out of your heat, maneuvers himself carefully around you, and collapses at your side to catch his breath.

His eyes are closed when you regain enough motor function to turn your head his way. Across his forehead, stray strands of black hair stick to a thin veil of sweat. The slow rise and fall of his chest says he’s halfway to sleep, and with how hypnotic you find it all, you’re nearly there yourself.

Just a few more minutes, you tell yourself. It’s too hard to look away from him. You’d never had the chance to see him this way before, and you know better now than to waste it.

“Please don’t ever stop looking at me like that,” he mumbles with his eyes still closed.

Your quiet laughter doesn’t prompt him to look at you, but it does spark the hint of a smile. “Like what, Minho?”

“Like I’m your future.”

while likes are appreciated, comments/tags/reblogs with your thoughts are really what make my brain go brrrtt.

series taglist:

@saintriots, @mal-lunar-28, @dabiscrustyfeet @ldysmfrst @obeythemasters @moni-logue

stray kids permanent taglist:

@variety-is-the-joy-of-life @sourkimchi

multi permanent taglist:

@jihopesjoint @bahng-chrizz, @/variety-is-the-joy-of-life

resources used

regarding prosthetic limbs: tiktok users @/bren_hucks @/footlessjo @/alex1leg @/bionickick; amputee coalition regarding hacking + world-building: gurps: cyberpunk guidebook by loyd blankenship

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sitp-recs · 7 months ago

Note

Favourite Drarry recs (long fics maybe? pretty please?) that are ideally to enjoy this Spring season ?

Hello again! That’s a great ask - I have a long fic rec list that you might find interesting, but this inspired me to do something more specific with Spring vibes feat house renovations, cooking as love language, gardening, domesticity, no angst romance etc etc etc. This is 100% based on my own perception of spring vibes btw, but I hope you’ll enjoy these as much as I did!

💐 Short fic:

magic in the making by @getawayfox (G, 2k)

I didn’t see Malfoy for a year after the trial. When Gin told me that, according to Pansy, he had opened a little posh bakery in Mayfair, I thought she was joking, so I went to see for myself.

Market Saturdays by @sorrybutblog (M, 3k)

In which Harry is an accidental part-time cheesemonger, Draco is an organic farmer and they fall in love. Not an AU.

The Long Fall by @tackytigerfic (M, 3.6k)

It's supposed to be a simple house renovation, and maybe it's just the paint fumes, but Harry is feeling dizzy around Draco Malfoy. And what's the real meaning of family, anyway?

Ice Snakes, Glow-worms and Wolverine Stew by khalulu (M, 8k)

Harry Potter apparently wants to talk to Draco about something, but odd events keep getting in the way of that conversation – and bringing them closer together. Featuring serpentine travels, misbehaving birds, dubious roofing projects, a gay beach, and an unexpected matchmaker.

Life goes not backward by @shealwaysreads (T, 9k)

Harry still isn’t used to gifts, but this one is different. A story of coming home, finding safe ground, and the wild courage of putting down roots.

A Truth Universally Acknowledged by @sorrybutblog (M, 17k)

A year out from the war, Harry agrees to accompany Hermione on a historical walking tour of Pride and Prejudice. Not in the itinerary: running into Draco Malfoy, setting off a summer of stately homes, lavish parties, resentful shagging, and maybe, falling in love.

amid this warm and steady sweetness, orphaned (E, 21k)

Harry is not living in a period drama, no matter what his friends or his new house or Malfoy’s sudden affinity for horse-riding might suggest, and if one more person uses the word courting, he’s going to start hexing people.

💐 Long fic

Moldova's Magical Tea by @aibidil (E, 32k)

Neville Longbottom, Luna Lovegood, and—to everyone’s surprise—Draco Malfoy are opening a magical tea shop to revive wizarding tea culture and, hopefully, to bring the community together after the war. Harry, who is unemployed and trying to find his way in post-war society, wants to help his friends with their new business—but that means spending a lot of time around Malfoy.

Clouds That Veil the Midnight Moon by @drarrytrash (E, 36k)

According to Harry’s personal narrative regarding the incident, he’d hooked up with Draco Malfoy for purely self-destructive reasons, or out of convenience, or by some unlucky accident. Looking at him, sprawled in the moonlight, Harry is devastated to recall that he’d hooked up with Draco Malfoy because he’s hot.

Follow the Water by @xanthippe74 (T, 40k)

Harry Potter’s life is fine. Maybe a little dull and predictable, but he shouldn’t complain about that, right? When he unexpectedly finds himself at Luna’s house one afternoon, Harry gets invited to join the secret wonderland that she’s creating with a surprising group of friends. Maybe a summer outdoors is just what a former hero needs to bring some zest back into his life.

Through the May Air, Over the Ocean by tsauergrass (T, 45k)

Draco Malfoy never expected to find himself in Scotland or being stuck in a cottage with Potter—but wonders never cease. A story about warmth, a story about falling back in love. A story about a flock of sheep in the distant fells of Scotland.

Our Objective Remains Unchanged by @citrusses (E, 46k) - Muggle AU

Harry Potter, returning member of the Oxford University Boat Club, has two goals for the spring of 2005: beat Cambridge, and beat Draco Malfoy. Perhaps not in that order.

Sweeten to Taste by @saintgarbanzo, @babooshkart (E, 51k)

It starts with Draco's buckwheat crepes with honeyed oranges. Or maybe it starts with his porridge with toasted walnuts and homemade apple butter. Or perhaps it starts with the cinnamon buns Draco made from scratch with mascarpone icing. Harry just knows he's hungry for more.

Against All Odds by momatu (E, 54k)

Beauxbatons is hosting the first ever Quidditch Summer School for children from all over Europe, and Harry has promised to enroll Teddy as his birthday present. Meanwhile, Draco is stuck in his office, putting together the first ever Quidditch Summer School for children from all over Europe during, when he should be enjoying summer holidays.

What Branches Grow by @the-fools-errand (M, 55k)

When a run-of-the-mill investigation turns up evidence that the Death Eaters may be resurfacing, Harry seems to be the only one who believes Malfoy has anything to do with it. Yet according to official records, he’s been the poster child for the Ministry’s post-war Rehabilitation program, living in a small muggle town in Wales.

Meet Me at Midnight by @the-starryknight (T, 57k)

Harry was beginning to wonder if he’d ever make anything again when Malfoy stormed through the door of Harry’s furniture shop. Now Harry’s got an impossible Ministry commission to finish, and even less energy than ever to deal with his elusive muse. That is, until he stumbles upon the surreal and beautiful world of a mysterious fae creature…

Stately Homes of Wiltshire by waspabi (E, 58k)

Malfoy Manor has mould, dry rot and an infestation of unusually historical poltergeists. Harry Potter is on the case.

The Promise of Summer by Omi_Ohmy (M, 66k)

How was Harry supposed to know that coming back for eighth year would be so confusing? Everything is the same, and yet not the same. And nowhere is this more obvious than with Draco Malfoy. Harry finds himself once more watching and following Malfoy, trying to work him out. When they are drawn together to heal the castle, Harry doesn’t just find Malfoy - he also finds himself.

Home Truths by @skeptiquewrites and @fantalfart (E, 67k)

In the off-season Harry decided to fix up Grimmauld Place and found that Draco Malfoy was the only person who could help him. A demanding career and unrelenting press scrutiny were enough to deal with before Harry added a house with a mind of its own, family history, and a tense, flirty, complicated relationship with his childhood nemesis to the mix.

The Claiming of Grimmauld Place by @bixgirl1 (E, 74k)

When Grimmauld Place begins fighting against Harry’s ownership of it, he decides he needs help to train the historic home — but little does he expect that it’ll be Malfoy who’s most suitable for the challenge. However, as Malfoy and Harry get closer, Harry comes to understand that expectations aren’t always the best path by which to guide his heart — and in the process learns just what is needed to make a house a home.

Knead by laughingd0g (E, 83k)

This is not a story about Harry renovating Grimmauld Place. This is a story about coffee shops and brewpubs, about Ginny and Luna on a farm with creatures, about magical Oregon, coastal road trips, flying, friendship, and Draco Malfoy's lean arms.

Wild, orphaned (E, 92k)

“No,” Harry said, by way of greeting. Malfoy’s blonde head rose slowly, carelessly. “Get out.” “I feel as though we’ve already established this, Potter,” Malfoy responded. “And I feel that what we established was that you telling me to get out of places really doesn’t make me more likely to vacate them.”

Little Deaths and How to Avoid Them (or Draco Malfoy's Guide to Stop Dying and Start Living Instead) by nerakrose, dustmouth (T, 96k)

Malfoy is way too interested in coroner reports for somebody who's definitely not looking for ways to die, Harry wants to be friends with him, and Ginny wants to break up with Harry.

The Liars Department by @dorthyanndrarry (T, 103k)

This is a story about Harry meeting up with Draco Malfoy four years after the war. And a story about Harry, well, not hating his job per say, but it's not like he has much to compare it to and it seemed fine. His whole life seemed fine. Then Malfoy came along with and his flashy suits and fast car making everything seem dull in comparison, and Harry... Harry couldn't just leave well enough alone.

Any Instrument by @dictacontrion (E, 131k)

Draco Malfoy wouldn't go back to England for anything less than an exceptional case. Being asked to figure out why Harry Potter can't control his magic might be exceptional enough to qualify.

#asks #Drarry reclist #spring reads

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cinnbar-bun · 10 months ago

Text

Love Is... (Sanji x GN!Reader)

Rating: SFW

Word Count: ~1.9k

Summary: (Requested) Sanji thinks he knows what love is. It's love, after all, and surely he cannot be in love with you, his best friend? Especially not when he has a date already…

Notes: GN!Reader, misunderstanding, angst to fluff, seemingly one-sided but it's basically just denial, Sanji being dense and clueless. Featuring a headcanon of mine where I had an idea that Sanji actually is just super calm whenever he's truly in love with a person. Sanji's date is also GN but not named or described.

You can read this on my AO3 here!

Sanji is always open and honest about his feelings. He wears his heart on his sleeves, as a truly passionate man and self-proclaimed gentleman would. No matter the time or weather, Sanji’s feelings will be clearly shown on his face.

Whenever he sees Robin and Nami, his eyes are practically blown out while his body is a pile of jelly. Whenever he talks to Zoro, his eyebrows are always furrowed and he raises his voice. Whenever Luffy tries to sneak food from the kitchen at midnight, Sanji smokes about two more cigarettes than usual. He dances when he’s happy, he’s focused when he cooks, and when he’s upset, he burns hotter than the kitchen stove.

Except when he is around you. Sanji is completely calm. Nary a cigarette in his mouth, never a hair out of place, and no wrinkles on his skin from his emotional outbursts.

Completely, utterly calm.

One could mistake this as disinterest or neutrality, but for Sanji, it was the opposite.

Unlike how he felt around the others, you, for some strange reason, always made him feel calm and warm. Not in the way alcohol does, not in the way a cigarette clears his thoughts, and not in the way that pretty people would make him feel on cloud nine.

No, no, no, you just made him feel… free.

He had never felt that sort of feeling with anyone before. Nobody. And it puzzled him greatly. The way he felt about you was so different from anything he had ever known- so he chalked it up to being incredibly comfortable around you. Obviously, this is what best friends felt for each other, right?

Loyalty to Luffy, rivalry with Zoro, fondness for Robin and Nami…

Yes, that must be friendship he felt for you. A true, genuine bond that was closer than anything he’d felt for another.

So that’s what he did, what he thought, and where he kept the relationship at. Sanji didn’t think much (or at least, tried not to) of how, occasionally, your hands would brush up against his, how you’d wear that wonderful fragrance, how your smile was enchanting, how you would make a silly little joke that almost sounded like a flirtation- an invitation for something more.

Oh, but he must have been misunderstanding… after all, he couldn’t have been in love with you, right? Love was meant to be passionate, exciting, thrilling, heart-wrenching, turn-your-insides-to-jelly, consuming your every waking thought! That was love, he supposed.

The way he felt about you was like returning home after a long day of work. Of stability, comfort, warmth, a place to be when the times were tough. It was lovely, but it could not have been the love that supposedly made men start wars or nearly rip their heart out of their chest.

He never would pay much mind to how your eyes were almost always on him. He just valued your company. He loved talking with you, sharing food with you, growing from both of your own struggles and issues over your life.

But he would not notice how you would have that wistful look on your face when his back was turned.

And then it happened one day, he accidentally bumped into someone at the market on one of their many stops. His breath was stolen, his heart racing, his eyes widened as he eagerly presented himself to them.

It was instantaneous, but Sanji, ever the romantic, was swept up in the passion and chemistry. It seemed perfect! Just perfect!

That good mood didn’t go unnoticed by you and the others as he returned to the rooms whistling a tune. He happily shared what went down at the marketplace, and some of the Straw Hats cheered for their cook hitting it off with someone.

They didn’t notice your shocked expression and silence.

The cycle repeated. He’d rendezvous with the market place crush and find himself swept up in the thrill of love.

Why, they were practically perfect together! They liked food- he enjoyed cooking it. They liked the ocean- he sailed all over it.

His excitement over their connection made him come back to you in a hurry, and unlike the enthusiasm he held all day, the minute his eyes met yours, his shoulders relaxed.

“I had a great time today. I think I might have a real chance with them.”

“Oh… I’m glad,” you nod, doing your best to not let your feelings cloud your judgment. “I’m happy for you.”

When you praise him like that, the grin on his face grows wider and he nods.

“Thank you. You… you are always so kind to me. Thank you, for everything. How about I cook you your favorite meal tonight?”

“It’s alright,” you reject quickly. “I’m not that hungry.”

He notices you’re off today and his smile is gone. “Hey, what’s wrong, (Y/n)?”

“Nothing. I’m just not feeling too well. I think I’m going to lay down.”

He respects your feelings plenty, so he nods and wishes you better health while you retreat. He doesn’t hear the muffled sobbing from you in your room.

Another day, another date.

This time, he notices his date does not sparkle like they used to. Strange, he knows, but something is “off” about them today. Oh well, love is never straightforward, so he can brush that feeling aside with some wine.

His heart doesn’t race anymore. The silly jokes they told don’t make him laugh as much.

Ah, perhaps he’s just tired, too?

He ends the date earlier than expected, not going on their usual walk under the stars in favor of returning home.

The Straw Hats are scattered as usual. Luffy is (attempting) to play cards with Usopp and Chopper. Robin is reading off to the side while Zoro fell asleep standing up alongside the railing. Nami is fiddling with a map while Jinbei is pointing at something on it. Franky and Brook are flipping through racy magazines and giggling at the various models within them.

“Where is (Y/n)?” Sanji asks.

“Ah, they’re inside. Said they weren’t feeling too well,” Usopp answers.

“They didn’t even let me look at them,” Chopper pouts, tears forming in his eyes.

Sanji thanks them for their answer and makes his way to your room. He knocks on the door but doesn’t hear a word from inside.

“(Y/n)? Are you alright?” Sanji calls.

“Yeah, just… just let me rest, Sanji,” you weakly reply. You sound miserable, and his heart breaks for you.

“Can I make you something? Anything? Maybe some soup?” He pleads, worry evident in his voice.

“I’m good.”

There’s no argument left, so he steps away and sighs, feeling like he wants to drown himself in his cigarettes.

It’s morning again and Sanji feels a migraine forming. His head is pounding and he groans when he sees the light from his window. But he promised to see them again, so he gets up and does his best to adjust himself. Love is sometimes painful, but it’s a worthy sacrifice.

He greets them when they glide up to him, smiling, but Sanji grimaces as his head throbs harder. He’s a gentleman, a respectful man, so he will not show it.

They talk. They talk. They talk. The words don’t register to Sanji. And for the first time in his life, he feels… nothing. Not a comforting emptiness when one feels relieved of all burdens… but the emptiness one feels when nothing is being satisfied.

They talk, yet they say nothing. None of the words mean anything to Sanji. Are they even speaking the same language? Sanji rubs his head, his vision blurry for a moment before it straightens out.

Nothing.

He feels nothing. There is no spark anymore. It’s just dull, lifeless conversation.

“...... Sanji?”

“Huh? Oh, I’m sorry, what were you saying?” He apologetically asks.

Their voice is like static. Garbled nonsense he can’t decipher.

He keeps trying to concentrate, trying to keep his eyes on them and just make sense of any word they say, but nothing connects.

Love was supposed to be beautiful. Love was supposed to be passionate, all-encompassing, life-changing.

Love wasn’t supposed to be so drab.

What happened to the love they shared before? Was it them? Was it him? Was he doing something wrong? Was he… was he mistaken?

His date is getting confused, staring at him with raised brows. “Are you even listening?”

“I…” He begins. “I’m sorry. I don’t think this can work out.” “What?”

“I don’t know,” he tries to speak his feelings. “I wasted your time, dear. That’s my fault. Let me escort you home, at the very least.”

He receives a harsh slap across his face and some obscene words, but he can barely think straight with his aching head. He stumbles back to the ship, wanting to rest when he bumps into something.

“Would you-” he begins angrily, before he notices it’s you. You’re holding a plate of the leftovers he cooked yesterday night, and your eyes are wide, almost afraid, when you look at him.

His eyes meet yours, locked in their beauty as he lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. Instantaneously, the migraine, the head pounding, the blurriness, the slap- all of it melts away.

He feels safe and at full health when he sees you. He can’t help but smile at you, making you turn away.

“Sorry. I’ll go-”

“No, no, (Y/n),” the way he says your name, full of life and renewed vigor is too much for you. “Here, let me cook you a new plate. And then, if you don’t mind, would you join me on the deck?”

“But I thought you were out with that person you met?” You ask, and he notices the curious yet hopeful change in your voice.

“Them? Ah, it’s a long story. I… I don’t think they were the one,” Sanji explains, his cheeks turning pink. Finally, after looking at you, the gears in his head clicked and connected in a way they hadn’t before. “No… they never would be. I already have the one I love most with me.”

Your eyes sparkle and your lips curve upwards, showing him the smile he absolutely adored the most.

“You mean that?”

“I do. I do mean that. I just didn’t understand. But seeing you now…” he takes the dish out of your hand and puts it to the side before he wraps his hands in yours. “I know what I truly was looking for.”

The joy on your face was immeasurable, and Sanji felt the thoughts in his head leave. There was nothing inside except that warm feeling he got whenever you were around.

Perhaps true love was not a hurricane, or a storm, or a raging fire… perhaps it was a warm summer day. A plate of leftover food. Bed head. Migraines. The sound of a calm sea crashing against the shore. The chirping of seagulls around them.

Maybe that was love. Not a feeling of agony and pain, but a gentle yet firm reminder of his existence.

“I’m sorry for being such a fool earlier. I apologize for springing all of this on you, but I-”

“I know. I love you, too,” you cut off his ramblings. His face softens as he laughs at his embarrassing display.

“God, I’m sounding like an idiot right now.”

“Yeah, a bit,” you tease.

“Can I be your idiot?”

“Always.”

#one piece #one piece x reader #one piece oneshots #reader insert #x reader #vinsmoke sanji #sanji x reader #vinsmoke sanji x reader #sanji

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alightbuthappypen · 6 months ago

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When Lan Wangji woke it was to darkness, and the unfamiliar textures of a bed and blanket that were not his own. His thoughts were slow and jumbled, as if he had not had enough sleep, though it had been many years now since he had regularly woken during the night. Slowly, he was able to grasp some of the jumbled thoughts and make sense of them. The inn, a short distance from Mo Village. The junior disciples. The rumours of demonic cultivation that he had to–he had to— Wei Ying. In his bed. His arm in Lan Wangji's, walking close. Frost on the ground of the rabbit meadow, wetting the hem of Wei Ying's clothes. But that was not right – Wei Ying had never been to Cloud Recesses in winter, did not know of the rabbits, had never walked with him arm in arm. And Wei Ying was dead. Wei Ying had been dead for so many winters, and it was summer now, and he was supervising disciples on the night hunt, but there were rumours of demonic cultivation and he had to— Something brushed against his thigh and his whole body tensed with alarm. Bichen would be across the room, in the stand, and he sat up abruptly, meaning to get to it. As he did so, his head swam, and the room tipped nauseatingly to the side. "Lan Zhan?" He gasped, unable to draw in enough air. "Lan Zhan, what—hold on." Movement beside him, the rustling of blankets, the creak of an old bedframe, all seeming oddly distant. Then a hand on his arm, a firm grip, and another on his opposite shoulder, guiding him onto his back. The room tilted again, but settled once he was lying down. "Wei Ying," he said, his voice coming as a rasp. "It's okay, Lan Zhan." The hand on his arm was bleeding warmth through him, and for a moment it was difficult to focus on anything else. The market in Caiyi, Wei Ying pulling him between stalls, smile bright and solely for him. Sitting on the bed, Wei Ying's hand on his bare skin. The curse. The curse. He rolled his head to the side. Wei Ying was lying facing him, his features partially obscured in the dark but still recognisable. The memories of the day before finally slotted into place, hard to believe still, but real nonetheless. "Can you…" Wei Ying's eyes were wide and searching, glinting in the faint glow of moonlight that filtered into the room. "Do you remember?" Despite his confusion clearing, it was still astonishing to have Wei Ying so close. It took his breath away, to be lying together, even without touching; to see Wei Ying's face in the dark, the shared blanket warmed by both their bodies. "The curse," he said. It took a surprising amount of energy to speak. "I know where I am." Wei Ying blinked and dropped his gaze. It was impossible to read his expression in the low light, but Lan Wangji belatedly realised he did not need to – he read Wei Ying's silence instead, the disappointment in it. "Good," said Wei Ying, though there was something forced about it. "I thought that maybe…" "My memories had returned." "No." Wei Ying looked back up, catching his eye again. "That you had lost more."

WIPSaturday? I've not written much the past couple of months but I got back on the post-canon amnesia curse today and I liked this part ok, so here we are for anyone (?) who might be interested (??)

#wangxian #my fic #wip

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syoish-aot · 5 months ago

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"I Found You" - EREN/READER - REVERSE ISEKAI (part 7)

reverse isekai, time travel, memory loss

post canon

reader/eren

past eren/mikasa (but no love triangle)

word count: 1682

<- PART 6 | PART 8 ->

*****

Red flowers spilled from the hanging baskets attached to the wrought iron fence that wrapped around the upstairs patio of Niccolo’s restaurant.

Mikasa smiled to herself as she leaned against the railing, pulling one of the flowers up to her nose.

From the other side of the patio, as if he was scared that getting too close would break the mirage, Eren’s eyes followed her movements.

His breath came out in shallow exhales, watching the way the setting sun illuminated her features.

She was so beautiful. She’d always been beautiful. No one could deny that.

Her hair (her long hair, he noted) framed her face and fell past her shoulders, tickling the straps of the red dress that wrapped perfectly around her figure. He hadn’t seen her in a dress since they were kids and it was never something so flashy. Somehow, it still suited her.

Or maybe it was this new life that suited her instead.

Eren could vividly recall the dozens of times that he’d watched Mikasa perform such a simple task, as the mundane action somehow found a way to light a fire in his stomach. Cleaning her swords, adjusting her ODM straps, tinkering with her gas chamber- he’d watch her do it, admiring the way her fingers delicately held whatever tool or object she was fiddling with. But now, with her fingers wrapped softly around a beautiful flower, he felt-

He felt…

Honestly, Eren wasn’t sure what he felt.

And he didn’t understand why not knowing intimidated him so much.

“So…” Mikasa started, cutting off his thoughts, “Welcome to your new life.”

Eren shoved his hands into his pockets, unsure what else to do with them, as he looked away from her and swallowed a lump in his throat. “...yeah.” He replied.

Mikasa laughed to herself and looked up at the sky, admiring the way the sunset placed a silver glow around the fluffy clouds above. “You’re probably pretty confused.”

“That’s putting it lightly.” Eren scoffed before he finally crossed the patio and joined her.

“We don’t really get it either, it just slowly started to happen,” Mikasa told him. “It’s random, but everyone’s memories get triggered by something. For Armin, it was seeing the ocean for the first time. Jean’s came back at a farmer’s market. Connie remembered everything the first time he met Sasha. And Sasha well-...” Mikasa smiled, “there’s a reason we still call her “potato girl” even now.”

“What about you?” Eren asked.

“I-...” Mikasa looked down at her hands and smoothed out her dress. “...I was different.”

Their eyes met and a lump formed in Eren’s throat. He felt guilty, somehow. Guilty for being around when all of this had been happening, but somehow remaining completely oblivious to it. All Eren had ever wanted to do was protect the people he loved, so the fact that they’d been going through so much without him even noticing made him feel like he’d let them down.

Like he’d let Mikasa down, just like he had in his past life.

“How were you… different?” Eren asked hesitantly, as if he was scared to know the answer.

Mikasa smiled before she looked down at the street below them. “In this life, we grew up together just like we had before. You, me, and Armin, just the three of us. You and Armin had no idea about our past lives but I-” Mikasa took a breath, “but I remembered everything.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “Maybe it’s another one of those Ackerman powers but-… but from the moment I could have a memory, I remembered. I remembered Shiganshina and the hill we would run up as kids. I remembered the fall of the walls. The titans. Our attack on Liberio. The Rumbling. Everything. I remembered every single piece of it and I- I remembered you…”

Eren’s breath caught. “What do you… remember about me?” He couldn't look away from her, not for a second.

This was everything he had ever wanted. Everything he denied himself from having in his first life.

This was time. Time for them to finally be together.

“What am I to you, Eren?” “Family.”

He wouldn’t let it happen again. “Mikasa I lo-”

“I remembered killing you,” Mikasa cut him off and Eren immediately slammed his mouth shut. “And I also remembered everything that happened after. The years I sat by your grave missing you, wishing you were next to me so we could sit together and watch Shiganshina grow.”

Eren looked at the flowers next to them.

The pretty red flowers that spilled over the railing, reaching out to the streets below.

“Do you remember the cabin?” Eren hesitantly asked.

“I do.”

“So then-” He looked back at her. “Then you and I- we can- now that I’m here and I’m awake and we’re in this life we-”

“We can’t, Eren.” Mikasa said.

Eren was taken aback. Mikasa had felt the same way as he did in their last lifetime, so what was different now?

“Why not?” He asked.

“Because it doesn’t work here, Eren.”

“I- What do you mean? We finally have the time, Mikasa. We can be together and you don’t even want to try!? Why not? I-... I love you. I’ve always loved you so-”

“I loved you too.” Mikasa cut him off.

“But-…” He was in complete disbelief. “But not anymore?”

“No.” Mikasa answered simply. “Not anymore.”

It flashes through his mind quickly. In weird uncontrollable blips:

A new shirt. A black marker.

Eren scowled and shook his head, thinking nothing of whatever that was. He had more important things to worry about.

“Why not?” Eren asked. “What changed?"

Mikasa took a deep breath. “I lived a whole lifetime loving you, Eren. And I spent most of it learning to live without you by my side.”

Coffee. Itchy cloth. A stale, leftover pastry.

Eren shook his head again and focused on what Mikasa was saying.

“When I came back and I was in this life,” she said, “a new life, I had already spent so much time getting over you. At that point, I just-... I couldn’t go back.”

Spaghetti. Wine. Plush couch cushions against his back.

Eren scowled. His head was swarming with meaningless thoughts. Fragments of thoughts, really. He needed to focus on Mikasa! “And you didn’t even try?” He asked.

Mikasa laughed. “No, I did. Once.”

“Once?”

“Yeah. When we were younger we were together for a bit. Nothing serious, and mostly it was just awkward. I felt like I was trying to play a part instead of being who I wanted to be. And then a few months later you-…”

“I what?”

Mikasa smiled before she took a deep breath. “A few months later you… fell in love with someone else.”

Lips between his shoulder blades. A sharp pain in his chest. And then a laugh.

Eren’s fingers dug into his temples, circling against them as the thoughts continued to swirl.

He fell in love with someone else? Someone who wasn’t Mikasa? What was the point of this new life if he was with someone else? Mikasa was the reason he had fought so hard before. She was everything to him but-

“It’ll come back to you eventually,” Mikasa told him. “And when it does, you’ll get what I mean when I say that you and I wouldn’t work.”

Eren scowled. “What if it doesn’t? What if I get my memories back from this weird life and I still want to be with you.”

Mikasa sighed. “If that happens then… then I’ll probably have to kill you again.”

“WHAT!?”

Mikasa laughed at his bright red cheeks and the expression of pure irritation across his face.

She reached up to teasingly tug his bangs, snapping him out of his moment of rage.

Eren pushed her hand away.

He had looked so serious earlier, resembling the man who had tried to end the world. But now, as he pouted after being teased, all Mikasa could see was his bratty childhood self after Carla told him to finish his chores.

“You shouldn’t joke about that…” Eren mumbled.

“It’s not a joke,” Mikasa said. “If you hurt her I really will kill you."

He scowled. “I don’t even know who she is!”

“You’ll figure it out.” Mikasa shrugged. “Like I said, you’ll get those memories back eventually. Just give it some time.”

Marker. Coffee. Spaghetti and wine.

That’s not what that was… was it?

No.

It couldn’t be.

Those weren’t memories they were just-... weird images in his head. Something he dreamed of, probably, something that didn’t mean anythin-

“Wait!” Eren called. Mikasa was half way across the patio by the time he realized she had even left.

He wanted to ask her to stay. He felt like he was supposed to ask her to say, that’s what his head was telling him, anyway; because their conversation hadn’t resolved anything! He still had so many questions for her, so many thoughts to share and feelings to bring up. But Mikasa was just going to leave him like this!? Leave him to- to do what!?

“Just let the memories come back to you, Eren.” She told him.

“What am I-...” Eren’s mouth opened and closed uselessly a few times before he remembered how to speak: “What the hell am I supposed to do while I wait for that to happen?”

Mikasa smiled as she turned around to look at him one more time.

“Follow your instincts,” she told him, “no matter which lifetime you’re in, you’ve always been pretty good at doing that.”

And then she left him on the patio alone with his thoughts.

Alone with his memories.

Alone with a strange sense of deja vu as he looked down at the red flowers that spilled over the railing onto the streets below.

A messy heart on the lid of a paper coffee cup. A hand that fits so naturally into his. The words “I love you” mumbled before falling asleep.

#eren x reader #eren yaeger x reader #eren jeager x reader #aot x reader #reverse isekai: i found you #my writing

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austinbutlerslovers · 11 months ago

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Wondering if you would do this as I love wil Ohmsford from Shannara chronicles maybe him and the reader are at the lake and the reader goes in for a swim and wil joins her and the end up admitting there feeling for each other and it’s ends with them having sex in the hut

Am I Causing you Pain

Label Mature 18+

Summary Wil is hesitant to get close to anyone, except you. When you meet him at your usual rendezvous near the lake a series of unfortunate events befalls you. As you continue to suffer bad luck Wil steps in to save you each time without hesitation. The more he takes care of you the more he realizes he has hidden his feelings from you far too long and seizes the opportunity to release them caring for you to completion in his hut.

💝Romantic Smut 💝 Fluff•friends to lovers• graphic injury• wound care• foreplay•virgin smut• first time •missionary•pull out ejaculation •after care•fluff ending.

•The rarest unicorn 🦄 of all, Wil Ohmsford smut! 🧝•This is a full bodied friends to lovers story. •Story based on Wil wanting to be a healer •You are his best friend in the village •Light timeline change/ Wil lives alone/ hut description/short hair requested. •Soft romantic journey with hard smut •Pics of Wil sprinkled throughout because he’s so majestically beautiful

Inspo: 💝special request @jessica987

Am I Causing You Pain?

You wander through the forest on a familiar path you’ve traveled a dozen times before. You hear the waterfall before you reach the clearing and see it powerfully cascading down the rock face. You take a glance all the way to the top noticing the ominous storm clouds forming in the distance. You might not be able to stay at the lake today if it rains which would completely ruin your chances of seeing Wil.

You and he have arranged this same meet up every few weeks when you run in to each other collecting supplies at the open market.

The village you both lived in was very mundane and small you both grew bored with the limited ways for young people to seek enjoyment there.

You are both roughly the same age he a year older. You grew up together never having left more than five miles outside of this place. He is your closest friend, though he prefers to be left alone you are the only who seems to be able to get close to him.

He lives in a hut not far from the waterfall and has never shown you exactly were. He hated living in the close confines of the village so moving here made sense for him to be at peace. He always said he never really felt like he fit in and you believed him.

You look around ensuring you have arrived to the lake before him and change in privacy tying tight your usual strips of cloth on your body to protect your modesty and placing your folded clothing on two large rocks.

You quickly enter the water wading all the way in until your feet no longer touch the bottom it’s colder than usual. You dip your hair back and splash your face a few times focusing out in the distance as you see the movements of Wil at the shoreline. He’s already ridding himself of his boots and slipping his shirt over his head peeling his pants down and standing up his firm muscular body only covered by cloth shorts.

You smile admiring his beauty lifting your hand from the water to wave at him as he waves back. Even though he prefers to be alone and is resistant to change you can’t help but notice he has the chiseled defined body of a warrior and the regal flair of a king. Each time you lay eyes on him he looks back at you with a spark of something more than admiration though he is quick to change it.

You watch as he places his clothing in his shoulder bag with his boots against a tree and walks from the shoreline into the deeper waters to meet you. His face is so focused and stern as he swims.

When he gets closer his handsome features warm into a smile his eyes light up as he reaches you “I’m glad you came, it looks a little ominous today“ he says glancing up. “I’m freezing Wil the lake is much colder than last time” you say smiling at him through slightly chattering teeth.

He surprises you not wanting to see you suffer and wraps his strong arms around you hugging you to his chest. You both try to avoid eye contact with pleasant smiles as you tread water together enjoying the warmth of each others closeness for the moment.

Droplet suddenly begin to patter across the lakes surface “Oh no my clothing!” You exclaim both paddling quickly to the shoreline to save what you can.

As you reach the bank you are being pelted heavily by rain. You find your clothing and shoes soaked on the rocks where you placed them.

You are so dismayed as you collect the sopping wet items in your arms.

You look over at Wil looting through his leather bag all of his items still dry thanks to the coverage of the trees. He gets dressed remaining untouched by the rain beneath the canopy of leaves and branches above him finishing by lacing his boots.

He looks over to see you shivering nearly naked and holding your wet clothing in your arms, his heart drops. You are unsure what to do unable to walk back to the village like this.

“Come with me I don’t live far” he gestures. You follow him into the tree line as you walk into the woods barefoot you immediately step your full weight on a jagged sharp stone “Ahhhh” you cry out in pain the stone pierced you intensely. You look down and turn over your injured foot revealing a deep gash that begins heavily leaking blood droplets all over the ground.

Wils eyes grow wide once he realizes what’s happened. “You’re hurt!” He says rushing to kneel down infront of you placing his hands to check your foot, it is a very deep cut he looks up at your shivering form holding your wet clothing and boots.

He stands and opens the flap of his shoulder bag removing the contents into his pockets taking out his facial scarf placing it over his shoulder and collecting the wet clothing from your arms replacing them inside.

He kneels down and you lift your leg as he ties his scarf around your foot in a makeshift bandage to hold the bleeding. He turns kneeling offering his back “I can carry you, I don’t want you walking on that injury” he says over his shoulder.

You take up his offer and climb onto him. He has his bag across the front of his chest and your arms draped over his shoulders. His hands slide under your bare thighs holding you firmly against him as he begins to walk. You take a deep breath trying to relax, the placement of his hands making you feel things, intrusive physical thoughts you’ve never had about him before clouding your mind.

“I’m so sorry about all this” you say in his ear trying to refocus as he carries you. He doesn’t mind at all “No need to worry I have all my Ingredients prepared for vegetable soup at home for us, I usually eat alone so this is a treat for me” he smiles at you over his shoulder.

You begin to study his perfect jawline and broad muscular shoulders and his pointy elf ears you’ve always wanted to touch. You never noticed how tall and strong he is carrying you so easily, his innocent angelic features always distracting you from the fact that he is a young man now and you are constantly trying to stifle the feelings you’ve recently begun having for him.

It doesn’t help that at each step he takes your inner thighs bounce against his lower back, you try to focus on anything else besides the friction of your body’s rubbing together. This is the longest you’ve been so close. Whenever you touch more than a brief moment Wil is quick to turn away.

He continues to walk under the canopy of trees keeping you both dry as it rains. You come to a clearing with a meadow his hut centered in the distance. He lets you down, as you step on the grass it’s so flat and shiny and soft you squeeze your toes into it. He smirks looking over at you enjoying your little moment.

You step forward from the tree line into the meadow clearing and look up to the sky, the rain has stopped. “Wil look a rainbow” you say excitedly pointing up as he joins your gaze

“It is really beautiful” he says looking down at your face instead. You’re staring up in awe at the vivid colors. You’ve never seen anything like it this close. Wil sees a rainbow here every time it rains and he finds you even more alluring to look at.

He takes your hand to grab your attention noticing your lips are turning blue. “You need to dry off and warm up and I’ll need to mend your foot” he says glancing down at it with concern.

You completely forgot you are wearing tied wet strips of cloth with almost your entire body exposed and your foot bleeding. He makes you feel so comfortable in his presence you forgot it could be considered immodest.

You follow him across the meadow up a step and into his hut. As you enter the doorway It’s very colorful and spacious inside. His walls painted indigo blue with birch wood floors. Everything is arranged neatly in the space with lots of hanging light catchers made from tiny pieces of glass casting beautiful shimmers of light around the room.

He has dozens of books on healing tucked neatly in a tall bookshelf by the window. His bed is in a nook at the back of the hut covered in a sheer curtain canopy draping from the roof, the mattress covered in a thick colorful quilt. A sky blue reading chair and table are under the window at your right.

He has dozens of species of small plants shelved in a large box garden window on your left. Little notes of descriptions are sticking out of each one. You walk over and lean in smelling the yellow one that you think is the most beautiful you read the note on it in his handwriting -“marigold”

Wil works behind you gathering chopped wood from a pile near the door he places a few pieces in his wood burning stove at the entrance. He starts a fire and sets a kettle on.

He walks infront of you to the back of the hut kneeling down at the foot of his bed opening a large trunk, he sifts through the items holding up one of his full sleeved winter shirts and a long piece of fabric that could be used as a scarf.

He walks back and stands in front of you “Please get changed I’m going to get some rope and hang your clothing, I will take the vegetables I prepared and cook them outside.” He hands you his clothing and gathers the basket of chopped vegetables with his shoulder bag and quickly leaves you in privacy.

Once the door closes you untie your top, cupping your breasts they are freezing , you untie your bottoms and pull his shirt over your head it falls just covering your modesty with one shoulder peeking out. You take the scarf and tie it around your waist making it a skirt.

You head outside to help him with his tasks. Stepping out into the meadow you see a large pot hanging over a fire boiling the soup. He’s attached a rope to the side of the hut and the other end to a tree he’s wringing out and hanging your wet clothing.

“Wil I can do that.” You rush over before he gets to your undergarments face flushing as you take your top from his hands wringing it and tossing it over the line. He sees you can take over and heads back inside to remove the kettle from the fire.

He picks an assortment of his herbs from the box garden window grinding them with a pestal and mortar adding in the boiling water mixing it into a salve. He goes to the bookshelf and grabs his mahogany chest full of his medical supplies arranging what he’ll need on the table near the reading chair. He returns outside to see you’ve finished hanging your clothing.

“Come inside and Im ready to mend your cut“ he says and ducks back in.

You walk in and see him standing at the table focused intently on threading a needle

“Sit here“ he gestures his head to the reading chair.

He’s so serious when it comes to healing and medicine you look at his stern face deep in concentration and smile admiring how he must really want to be a healer. “What is all of this?” You say looking at his supplies neatly arranged on the table in front of you.

“I want to make sure I mend your foot properly, I’ve been studying healing and medicines for quite some time, I want to practice some things that I’ve learned to help you” he says finally lancing a knot in the eye if the needle.

You sit down in his blue reading chair and he kneels in front of you maneuvering directly to the bottom of your foot. He sees there is blood already soaking through the bandage. As he unwraps it the blood begins dripping once more indicating to him the cut is deep and his assumption is correct it won’t be able to heal closed he will have to sew it shut. You look around the hut at the floor and realize you have left little red footprints everywhere “ Wil I’m so sorry about the mess” you cover your mouth in embarrassment.

He dips a tiny cloth in the salve he’s prepared and rubs it into your cut cleaning it out “ Ahhhh” you cry out gripping the chair it’s so painful . “That’s alright “ he says his vibrant blue eyes finally flashing to look up at you kindly. He continues to clean around the wound

His fingers feel so cold and delicate as he works to care for you. He puts a cloth beneath your foot to catch the fresh blood droplets releasing from the disturbed gash.

Looking at the size of the injury he realizes what he needs to do will be quite painful for you. “I need you to lay on my bed” he says wrapping your foot in a makeshift bandage and assisting you there. He pulls open the sheer curtains and you crawl on top of his soft bed laying down on your back with your hands resting on your navel.

He collects his needle and sterilizes it by fire, burning it over a candle at the table. He sits on the end of the bed and you part your legs wider making space for him. He sits closer in between them holding your foot with the injury above his lap. He steadies his hand, the needle has cooled and is ready to be used for his purpose.

He removes his makeshift bandage from your foot and goes right to work. Holding your foot steady he pierces the needle into the top of the cut. Your eyes widen and your body tenses It is one of the worst pains you have experienced in your life. You squeeze your eyes shut and grit your teeth but you are unable to stifle the scream that erupts from your throat . “AH Wil it’s so painful” you cry out as he lances the needle you feel the thread hot as if it is burning as he pulls it through. “WIL…. “ you speak up again chest rising and falling eyes almost in tears “ how many times do you have to do that? “ He eyes it “12“ he responds. You let out a disparaging moan and cover your hands over your face.

He wants to comfort you somehow. Based on your reaction It’s slowly dawning on him you will probably pass out unable to endure this type of pain. “You are a really brave girl” he says piercing the needle in a third time you cry out and tremble as it turns into a sob. He pulls the thread through it feels white hot, your gash now throbbing painfully as he works.

He tries not to focus on your screams and cries it’s already distracting him so much, he knows he needs to pull these stitches right. He works expertly piercing and pulling the thread through as quickly as he can until it’s taunt the top of the gash now sewn shut.

Ha talks to distract you as he continues “I was really excited you came to see me today and I’m sorry this happened to you, I’m going to mend it right you’ll only have a scar as a reminder “ he says glancing into your eyes with a soft smile to reassure you.

He turns his attentions back and pierces the needle into your foot again. Your body goes into shock you lay your head back and start sobbing the tears rolling from the corners of your eyes down your cheeks the pain now unbearable. He almost stops hearing you cry like that he wants to hold you and tell you it’ll be alright comforting you and letting you rest, but he cant he has to finish his work.

You never imaged having him mend the wound would be more painful than the cut itself. You wetly blink your eyes staring up at the roof. This time when he pierces the needle into your foot you don’t let out a scream your body only winces involuntarily.

You lift your head up watching him delirious from the agony which your body is changing into something else. You feel like you’re floating

He’s in pure concentration on your foot, his slender fingers expertly sewing. He’s going to stitch you together like a piece of fabric. You lightly laugh finding it a little funny.

He looks at you his face showing concern. “Are you alright?” his words echoing. When you don’t answer he refocuses on your foot you see him drive the needle in again everything goes black.

“ Are you alright? “he asks a second time because you are neither laughing or crying there is only silence. He looks over at you as he finishes threading the last stitch. You’re completely out.

He ties the knot and rips the thread. He admires his work 7 perfect stitches and 13 pierces of the needle down your delicate foot. He stands replacing your legs together on the bed.

He applies more salve on the cut wrapping it with a clean bandage. Going into his trunk he retrieves a blanket placing it over you neatly and wets a cloth wiping away your sweat and tears.

That’s when he stares at your beautiful face and his heart swells. Your eye lids are moving rapidly as you dream. He kneels next to you and takes your hand in his “I’m so sorry I hurt you, and I’m sorry this happened because you came to see me, I care for you deeply I never want anything to hurt you like this again”

He expresses his hidden feelings as you sleep finally unlocking something inside of himself he’s been keeping closed for so long. He lovingly presses his cheek on your hand before placing it back on your chest. He leaves your side to finish cooking the soup as he waits for you to come back.

The sound of loud crickets chirping and the cracking of the fire in the wood burning stove wakes you up. Your eyes fly open its night fall and candles light up the room around you. You sit up realizing you’re still at Wils place and your parents will be worried sick in the morning that you haven’t returned from seeing him as usual.

“Wil!” You call out feeling scared that you might be alone. You hear him approaching the hut and enter. He has a somber look on his face that turns into a smile seeing you awake. “You were out for a few hours” he says coming to sit on the edge of the bed “are you hungry?” He asks. Your stomach is completely empty you nod vigorously. He smiles at you warmly “Come sit outside with me“ he says taking your hand.

He helps you walk out of the hut down one step to the ground. A thick quilt is in the grass with two pillows. He sits you down on the quilt and takes the ladle into the soup pot hanging over the fire pouring you a bowl. He brings it to you and lays down at your side his hands behind his head peering up into the night sky.

You blow on the soup cooling it enough to eat, the flavoring is excellent and you eat quickly so famished sipping the last drops and setting the bowl on the grass next to you away from the blanket. You look over at Wil still gazing up breathing gently.

You lay down next to him, looking up as you gasp in awe, there are stars everywhere covering the entire expanse of the sky. He looks over at you and smiles. “I knew you would like this because of how excited you were about the rainbow today” you look back to him gratefully your eyes already telling him what he needs to know.

You gaze up at the billions of stars and feel so small and insignificant in the grand scheme of things. You look over at Wil relaxing, he has such an impressive presence the way he carries himself with purpose, how he’s naturally so intelligent, and he always knows exactly what to do when a challenging situation arises.

“ Wil… there’s something special about you”

you say breaking the silence, it’s hard for you to explain but you try.

“I’ve always known you were different, I believe you have what people call a destiny in you that everyone will admire even more than this entire village…. you …you should leave this place and discover if you have a greater purpose..”

Your heart breaks knowing you might never see him again, but also knowing he has something more to offer the world. He thinks for a while and smiles releasing his hand from behind his head and pulling you gently onto his chest.

He places his hand on top of your head raking his fingers into your hair comforting you both.

“I will leave one day” he says staring back up at the stars. “I understand I don’t belong here but it’s the only place I have ever called home “

“What will you do when you leave ?” You ask curiously.

“I want to be a healer” he says trailing his fingers down your neck to your shoulder and caressing his fingertips there softly relaxing you even more.

You smile suddenly realizing he’s letting you in, touching you intimately without turning away, it is something he has never done before. You have a little feeling he wants more than a friendship with you and it sparks a burning question in your mind.

Please Take Me

“Wil when you leave here can you take me with you?” You ask as a shooting star streaks across the sky. You close your eyes wishing on it that he says yes. He shifts over on his side looking directly at you. “I’m planning to take you with me” he says softly, his thumb strokes your chin as he leans in closely to your face hesitating then planting a gentle kiss on your forehead eyes transfixed on your soft lips after.

You lean in and kiss him without reservation. It shocks him to the core, his lashes flutter as his eyes close giving in to you. He’s never wanted to kiss anyone as much as he’s wanted to kiss you in his life, a new sensation swells inside of him as you brush your lips together passionately kissing under the stars.

His blood begins coursing through his veins down his groin hardening his length. He quickly rolls on top of you. His eyes soften as he looks into yours he focuses on your mouth leaning forward and pressing his plush lips to them again feeling like he’s in a dream.

His kiss is harder this time and he prods his tongue between your parted lips wanting to taste your mouth. You bring your hands up holding the nape of his neck, your body begins tingling from his deeper kisses making you let out a whimper against his lips. You dig your fingertips into his hair.

He lifts from your body and pulls you onto him standing up carrying you easily. You wrap your legs around his waist as he takes you inside. He pushes the door open and brings you to his bed. Opening the canopy curtain with one hand and laying you down with the other. He makes quick work of removing all his clothing and you do the same nimbly discarding your shirt and makeshift skirt. He climbs into bed with you and lays at your side.

He rests on his elbow eyes wandering and admiring your beautiful naked form. You can’t help yourself as you look back at his perfectly toned muscular body, you start to trail the tips of your fingers over his chiseled six pack abs down to the patch of hair on his lower stomach, just above the spot your hand is curious to touch the most, his large throbbing cock you stare at in disbelief.

“Can I touch you?” you ask peering into his eyes. It’s what he wants more than anything the tips of his ears and chest reddening as he nods “Yes” he says voice faltering from arousal. Your fingers slowly trail down and wrap your hand around him for the first time.

A gasp escapes from his lips your fingers feel so delicate on him as you explore the veins of his shaft softly trailing up and squeezing the tip making his abs tighten as his cock twitches in your hand. He sees the curiosity in your eyes already knowing you’re a virgin, which is why he has never wanted to sexually awaken you before. “Have you…had sex?” He asks to make sure, trying to calm his breathing. You shake your head no.

He tries to refocus his heart now beating heavily in his chest he starts doubting himself unsure if he’s making the right decision to take you as your first. You see the conflict on his face and spread your legs apart for him “Please take me Wil” you whisper.

He wants to deflower you immediately overcome with arousal. Leaning in close he guides his hand between your legs and slips his fingers through the soft lips of your wet folds rubbing into them gently. A moan escapes from your throat as you lock eyes with him, never having been touched like this before and feeling a new sensation blossoming you never knew existed.

He kisses your mouth as he parts your folds gliding his fingers up and down between them until you are soaking wet for him. He carefully slips two fingers inside of you all the way to his knuckle. You feel I slight pinch and gasp against his lips but it isn't too painful.

He keeps his fingers inside curling them softly against a certain spot that has you seeing stars, his passionate kisses never leaving your lips. He wants to stimulate you as much as possible to give you the first orgasm of your life on his cock.

You start to pant into his mouth and clench on his fingers from the stimulation. Sensing the increase in your arousal he climbs on top of you settling his weight between your legs. He gently slides his fingers in and out of you as you close your eyes and softly moan from the euphoric feeling of them dragging against your tight inner walls.

His fingers are making squishing noises he's gotten you so wet, your thighs are soaked. You feel something inside of you shift wanting to be even closer to him you open your eyes seeing his angelic face above you and bring your hands to trail down his strong broad shoulders settling on his lower back. You pant heavily enjoying the intense feelings he’s causing to course through you but not knowing what you should do.

He slowly removes his fingers from you and replaces them around the base of his hard swollen cock. Lining himself up with you he hesitates “Is this what you want?” He asks breathlessly, needing to know your answer before he will go any further.

“Yes Wil” You say gazing into is eyes conveying your deepest desire for him “I want you so much” you say pulling his lower back making him inch forward.

“Then take it “ he says releasing the hold around the base “ take my cock it’s yours ” he confesses.

You are flooded with so much sexual arousal you immediately take over pulling his shaft forward and gently pushing the head of his cock against your tight entrance “Oh!” You cry out your eyes gently rolling back as he penetrates into you, both moaning as he sinks in burying so deep he breaks your virginity the burning ache forming as he stretches you out around his large size.

You whimper then cry out clenching tightly on his cock making him gasp and completely stop inside of you.

He thinks about pulling out the concern is written all over his face. "If im hurting you I’m going to stop" he says “Am I causing you pain? Do you still want this?” His eyes are searching yours wildy for the answer.

You gaze back into his striking blue eyes reaching up tracing your finger over the pointy tip of his ear “ I want this Wil“ you whisper. “It’s just all new to me I don’t know what I am supposed to do” you admit.

His cock pulses inside of you with excitement he loves so much what he’s about to make you experience with him.

“Just relax for me and let me take care of you” he says reaching down between your body’s finding your wet nub and gently rubbing his fingertips around it.

You start to moan differently as you feel sexual pleasure begin to form inside of you for the first time blossoming open like a flower you stare into his eyes with astonishment. You are so full of him and wanting more the dull ache dissipating as you relax around his size nodding for him to continue.

Your small whimpers soon turn into moans of pleasure as he rides into you, gently pulling out with each thrust before softly returning back in. “You feel so good on me” he breathes. Your face in pure bliss beneath him with how he’s completely dominating your body.

He increases his pace to make you orgasm amplifying his thrusts wetly smacking his hips into you rocking you with each deep hit of his cock. He's so powerful you tilt your head back overwhelmed with pleasure and just let him take you.

Your vision blurs as your breaths increase, panting so hard you suddenly feel your self clench around him an explosion of intense pleasure rips through you making you shiver and moan loudly for him as your walls flutter tightly on his cock and he rides you through your first orgasm.

“Ughh..Wil… you feel so…incredible” you moan out tears brim and fall from your eyes. Your toes curling as you grab the sheets beneath and he continues his powerful thrusts into you making you his.

He lowers his chest on yours wiping your tears away with this thumbs as he slows down his thrusts “you took me so well” his voice is deep and full of lust “you’re perfect” he presses his mouth on yours in a hard kiss full of his compassion for you.

He releases his kiss and increases his thrusts wanting to cum hips smacking into you as he presses his forehead to yours panting against your face and catching your mouth in hot kisses, when you feel too good on him.

As he’s about to cum his breaths shudder into your mouth and his thrusts falter. He lifts off of you quickly sliding out, his hand wrapped around the base of his cock as it begins to pulse he pumps it over your body as you stare at him in awe.

His plump lips open, his pupils are blown wide and his chest heaving as his abs constrict, he vigorously pumps his cock as he finishes spreading a silky warmth across your naval.

His body immediately softens as he releases his cock, chest is still rising and falling as he breaths heavily staring into your eyes full of complete satisfaction.

He squeezes your thigh tenderly before leaving the bed to grab a cloth. He carefully wipes down your naval cleaning off all of his sperm.

He discards it in a small hamper near the trunk and blows out all of the candles. Once the hut is dark you see the outline of his naked form in the moon light his cock now soft as he slips back into bed with you.

Pulling down the quilt you both lay on the sheets bringing it back up to chest height laying together face to face. “Are you alright?” He asks with a light concern stroking his hand through your hair “Yes of course Wil” you smile at him your eyes full of intense unyielding love. You've already fallen so hard for him vowing never to leave his side after what he made you experience.

He kisses your lips and pulls you into him resting your head on his firm bicep, your cheek is pressed against his chest as you inhale his scent of soft chamomile and sweat. You blink heavily until your eyes remain closed and you pass out.

You awaken to the sounds of loud birds chirping around the hut soft rays of sunlight just creeping into the windows at dawn

Wil is gone you touch the mattress infront of you where he slept and sit up startled he isn’t there, your clothing is folded neatly at the foot of the bed.

You get dressed and rinse your face using a glass jug of water in his kitchen space. Sitting in his blue reading chair you find it challenging to put on your second boot. The swelling and tenderness in your stitches making you wince as you stand up and bear weight on your foot.

Walking slowly you head outside putting less weight on the injured one. Wil is returning to the hut carrying a basket on his arm. He hands you an apple from the top “ breakfast?” he says smiling. You take it from him and eat “We need to return you to the village now I know that everyone is looking for you” he says and you nod in agreement. He puts the basket of full of apples in his hut closing the door behind him.

You begin the long trek back to the village. After a few paces across the meadow your already not feeling well your foot squishing painfully in your boot on the fresh stitches. You slow down and Wil keeps your pace.

As you reach the treeline and the ground becomes firmer you are practically limping and dragging your other foot. He comes to kneel infront of you “ I have to carry you it’s too soon to walk this far”he says, you climb up and rest against his back relieved and exhausted from the pain. He carries you the rest of the way to the village.

As you pass by the water fall this time the sun is shining brightly over it and you smile thinking of how differently the day would’ve gone If you had swam together and gone home like usual. Never experiencing sex for your first time with him. You press your face into the leather shoulder of his jacket smiling remembering all the things he did to you last night as he carries you. Then another thought slowly creeps into your mind.

“Wil if you were to leave, when would you plan to go?” you want to know if he will actually leave the village after what you said.

“I think in a few weeks time when your foot heals, I want to leave the village with you” he peers over his shoulder at you smiling knowing you want to leave as soon as possible with him. You lean forward and press a kiss against the shell of his pointy ear “I’ll be ready” you whisper smiling.

After a long while you finally emerge from the forest to the large valley filled with dozens of small cottages. A large archway welcomes you with an awning that reads “Shady Vale”

🪴END 🫐

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