#OR WAIT IS THIS PART OF THE FANTASY WORLD THAT KAY IS LIVING IN WHERE HE'S ALSO THE SON OF UTHER PENDRAGON

[probablyaparadox]

Y'all can someone explain to me how Kay is Arthurs adoptive brother while they're both the sons of Uther Pendragon and adopted by the same holy knight... I'm struggling.

[acidsoju]

LOST IN NEVERLAND

read part one here genre: fantasy au, royalty au, multidimentional au, romance, angst, fiction, action, smut, slow burn. pairing: prince! soobin x reader warnings: this is a second part!!, not proofread yet, cursing, sex scenes, mentions of weird vomit, love triangle, a little bit of second male lead syndrom from my part. word count: 22.7k summary: after being dropped into the han river, you wake up in another dimension― soobin's dimension, in which he the crown prince of a kingdom you have yet to get to know.

IMAGINE BEOMGYU’S SURPRISE WHEN THE FIRST THING HE FELT GOING THROUGHT THE PORTAL WAS YOU; you, floating unconsciously from the bottom of the lake, being swiftly pulled by a few water nymphs that the mage had convinced to help him with his little not-too-big-of-a-deal task about getting the crown prince of the Kingdom’s ass back home. You who were completely pale, a painful expression on your face even though you were knocked out as you emerged out of the water and reached the edges of the lake just where Beomgyu was waiting, arms crossing over his chest as he eyes you with little interest.

He was about to order you being discarded but instead scoffed and rolled his eyes at the accusatory stares of the nymphs who seemed to have taken a like to your unconscious-self, protecting your figure with their arms.

“Ha! Fine, whatever. Guards, warm her up and watch over her” he ordered; his command being obliged immediately.

Imagine Beomgyu’s surprise when the second thing he felt going through the portal was the most annoying pain in his ass, even overthrowing the prince himself from the throne. He watched with bored eyes as the forbidden mage flew out of the water with a harsh and dramatic splash and behind him, being dragged by a pair of tentacles, was the prince fighting to not lose consciousness too.

Kai snarled as he sensed the magic barrier capsulating over him; it wasn’t enough to stop him but it was about enough to stop the prince from crossing it. The forbidden mage knew immediately he was surrounded and outnumbered by the palace’s allies, so if he wanted to get out of there alive or at all, he had to drop the prince.

And that’s exactly what he did, with a little too much force into it, as the tentacle on his legs effortlessly threw him back to the lake; Soobin’s body crashing into the water with another dramatic splash before the water nymphs were hurrying to his rescue. Cold blue eyes met with a pair of burning brown eyes, staring defiantly back. Not over is what Kai’s lips mumbles to Beomgyu who just arches an eyebrow in his direction, and then the forbidden mage is gone after a flash of violet lightning.

“Assist the crown prince immediately” orders the mage looking at his friend being dragged to the edge of the lake by the nymphs, guards and maids immediately rushing in to help the drenched prince, whose consciousness seemed to slip through his fingers for a second before coming back to his senses. His lips were barely moving inches as he was stripped out of his clothes and changed into a dry attire yet Beomgyu caught on his words perfectly fine.

“Her… where is she?”

Then just in time, a loud gasp was heard. Your eyes flew open and closed immediately a second after, the bright light of the day making your head hurt like living hell; your mouth opened as well as you took in rush breaths in and out, in and out, in and out, scared air was going to abandoned your body once again. Then your rushed breath got stuck in your throat as you felt something disgusting down in your guts and before you could even think, you were rolling over your own body on the floor and throwing up; the loud gasps of horror never reaching your ears as tears picked in your eyes and a sharp whistle rung in your head.

Wasn’t that just a lovely first impression?

An exhausted sigh escapes the mage’s lips as he takes lazy steps in your direction, lips curling down in disgust at the sight; even if he was from a world where magic existed and coexisted perfectly fine with non-magical humans, he was sure black vomit wasn’t an ideal sign.

You blinked a few times, the warm tears rolling down your cheeks, finally adjusting to the bright light around you, swollen lips darting open as you stared down at your vomit― colored black vomit on the ground, merely inches from your face as you pushed against the floor with your hands enough for not be face-falling into it. Then you looked up, meeting eyes with a tall man whose eyes lingered on you without any kind of interest.

Beomgyu knew you were that little rude brat he’d had the pleasure to have a conversation with days ago just by the arrogant look flashing in your eyes as you stared back at him, directly in the eyes, even in your poor state; wet hair sticking to your back and forehead, lips with a faint tint of black after throwing up, eyes puffed and red from the tears, some dirt on you after being dragged out of the lake by the guards; all of that and yet you stared directly into his eyes.

Your eyebrows knitted as the man stood frozen in front of your eyes; judgy eyes staring at you― then your eyes trailed around taking in the figure of every person staring back at you, eyes wide open and shocked expressions on their faces making you feel like some kind of animal trapped in a zoo, and then you saw him― his eyes were already on you, trying to reach you even through a stare.

Completely ignoring the strange attires everyone wore or the pretty, almost transparent girls waving at you from the lake, you tried to get up, legs shaking uncontrollably at your own weight turning the steps you tried to take into clumsy deer-like stumbles; fuck was all you mumbled under your breath, throat sore and dry, before your legs were giving up after just a second; grunting as you fell to the ground on your butt, your eyes flicked up when you heard the clear sound of steps stopping in front of you.

“Such a nuisance” was what Beomgyu spat in your face before a faux smile was draw on his face and his hand hovered before your eyes, your mind going immediately blank as you fell unconscious to the floor. Beomgyu hmphed, satisfied as he nodded his head proud of himself. “Much better.”

Soobin huffed in annoyance as he watched the whole scene― if he could, he would’ve already been by your side, carrying you instead of letting yourself get even dirtier on the floor, but he couldn’t; crown prince and all of that, he was surrounded by the teary servants of the castle, words of relief, even some people falling on their knees in front of the prince. With a polite smile on his face, Soobin’s eyes flicked to the head maid in front of him, the one who had watched over him all of his life, who was trying to wipe away her tears and asked:

“May I ask for a small favor?” Soobin watched as the old lady hurried in wipe her tears with her handkerchief, nodding once to the prince as a sign of listening. “The miss over there… she is a guest of mine, a very important person to me who has proved her loyalty to the crown as she succeeded in protecting me when I was in despair, therefore I expect nothing but the best of the cares for her.”

“Of course, Your Highness.”

“Ready to go back home, Your Highness?” inquired Beomgyu walking closer to his friend, head following the figure of the maid rushing and walking pass him, in your direction, being followed by a few more maids. Soobin arched an eyebrow and crossed his arms over his chest. “Why are you looking at me like that? Aren’t you super grateful at me for rescuing you? What about a hug to celebrate a moving reunion?”

“You could have helped her” accused the prince; Beomgyu rolled his eyes and pushed the frames over the bridge of his nose up to his eyes.

“I am not a nanny.” “We will see about that.”

-

Well, fucking hell did your body hurt, was the first thing you thought as you fell out of your slumber, hands moving against the soft covers underneath you, soft groans of pain coming out of you as to tried to stretch your body. Taking a whole long minute to recall everything on your mind― coming out of water and throwing up basically petrol, that must have been a dream, right? Last thing you remember was a tall man with long hair falling over his shoulders and the open palm of his hand towering over your eyes, and then nothing.

First thing you saw as you opened your eyes was the very tall ceiling, very beautiful Renaissance’s paintings on it; a few seconds went by as you understood that you, in fact, didn’t have any Renaissance-like ceiling in your room, not a bed as big as the one you were laying on and, hell, the living room of your place didn’t even have a ceiling anymore.

Whines in pain came out of your lips as you turned your body on the bed, stomach against mattress and dragged yourself up to sit down on your knees; eyes scanning the unfamiliar room you were in― just where the fuck where you?

You pushed yourself to crawl out of the big-ass king size bed, bare feet touching the cold floor as you walked over to the window almost as tall as the whole ceiling, opening the soft white silk curtain that fell from the very top, your eyes scanning beyond the balcony outside the window to the immense garden displaying on sight.

“I see you are awake at last” flinching at the sudden voice booming in the bedroom, you turned around quickly, your eyes immediately spotting the standing figure of a man wearing a maroon cloak in the middle of the room; bored brown eyes staring into yours from behind his round-shaped glasses, long brown hair pulled away from his face into a ponytail. You recognized him immediately― the one you saw before passing out. “Took you three days, I guess you are a lot weaker than I first thought.”

Frowning, you squeezed your eyes in his direction― oh, how familiar did the tone of his voice sound to you. It didn’t take you too long to realize, once again, that the man in the room was the same man who had magically appeared that one day on the arcade. Beomgyu huffed under your stare and let himself fall over one of the couches displayed around in the bedroom. The mage on the couch seemed to read your mind as his lips stretched into a sly smile as you put the pieces together about his identity.

“Not so smart either, uh?” you rolled your eyes and tried to speak, aiming to take a step to the front but the words never came out of your mouth, instead a pathetic gasp escaped from you as you had to press your back against the window to avoid falling to the floor once your legs started trembling weakly. “You certainly are not compatible with magic, Bambi.”

Huffing as you forced yourself to stand up properly, trying to ignore the wince of pain incrementing on your extensions, you look up from your feet to meet his gaze again. “Don’t call me that” yet to your despair, your legs shook with a little more force as seconds went by.

To Beomgyu it only took him a snap of his fingers to have a chair being dragged in your direction and swiftly pushing you over it as it moved back into his direction, only coming to a stop when the chair was in front of him. The cocky smile on his face only grew wider as he analyzed the bewildered look on your face while you shoved some strands of hair out of your face― the mage decided to have some fun as he snapped his fingers twice, caughting your attention; the tea table from the other side of the room moved immediately by his command and was dragged by his magic stopping in between your chair and the couch. The set of tea over the table started doing its job only that, of course, there was no one actually serving the tea.

Your mouth fell open as you watched the sight in front of you; the levitating cups of tea being filled by the big kettle pouring down the steaming drink. You didn’t even catch the quiet laugh coming from the mage’s mouth at your sincere amused reaction, Beomgyu only leaning back on the couch as the teacup moved his way.

“H-how…” you mumbled, picking up the teacup that patiently waited in the air for you to grab. Your eyes moved back to the mage who sipped his tea before answering:

“Magic.”

“Don’t fuck with me right now” you replied looking around as if you were to find any kind of invisible string pulling the furniture around; Beomgyu’s eyes widened at your choice of words and almost spilled the tea on his mouth, choking on it instead.

“Don’t what now?”

“This is some kind of joke, right?” you asked turning back to look at Beomgyu with a lot of confusion on your face. “Look, I don’t know how did you pull that little trick earlier but-

“Trick?” Beomgyu interrupted you, a single eyebrow raising as his gaze hardened; within a second, the boy opened both of his palms looking upwards, flames coming out of them as your mouth fell open again. “You dare to say my abilities are false?”

“… Okay, okay! Fine!” you exclaimed, raising up your palms in the air for him to cease whatever the hell was going on; snarling, Beomgyu put down the fire of his hands. “Geez, it’s just so weird.”

“Watch your tone, little girl, if I weren’t so merciful right now, you’d already be ashes” he stated before grabbing again the cup of tip to sip from it. “And you should refrain from using poor vocabulary while you are around.”

“Around?” you questioned, eyebrows knitting in your face as you leaned closer to the table. “Where exactly is around?” your question seemed to take Beomgyu a little off guard.

“You must actually be quite dense- this is the Fifth Kingdom of the Choi Dynasty, of course.”

“… Of course, yeah, haha!” you smiled yet Beomgyu saw the panicked flowing in your eyes and the corners of your lips trembling as you tried to maintain the façade. “And… my place, how far is it?”

“Like… five thousand dimensions away?” “Riiight…” Beomgyu watched over his cup of tea at you, studying every expression; from the way you looked around yet seemed lost in your own thoughts, how your eyebrows moved in concern in unison with whatever you were thinking, to the way your lips curled down before sighing and flicking your eyes back at him. “What about Soobin? Is he okay? Where is he?”

“It’s ‘Your Highness’ for you, little girl” Beomgyu replied in a scoff, parting his lips away from his cup of tea almost empty already. “And to answer your question; yes, he is okay. He was recovered almost immediately, as expected of a royal

“Is he… really-“ “Crown prince?” “Yeah.” “Of course, he was born with the title.” “I see.”

Taking a little sip from the teacup to avoid any more words coming out of your mouth, your mind revolted in thoughts about him and the supposed world you were. You were glad he was okay after everything that had happened to the both of you, but words weren’t enoug; you needed to see him actually doing fine, but were you to ask the quite intimidating mage to let you pay a friendly visit to the prince? Of course not; just from taking a little glimpse at him you already knew that he knew what you wanted to ask.

“He is a very busy person.” “Of course.”

You downed the rest of the tea at once, tilting your head backwards for it and licked your lips once the cup was empty; as you placed it down over the table your eyes met again with the mage’s, whose eyes always seemed to be judging you.

“You need to learn some manners while you are here” he stated, nodding to himself and fixing the pair of glasses up on his face.

“How long I’m supposed to stay here?” you asked, looking straight into his eyes; the mage gulped down, making the Adam’s apple on his neck move at the action. “When can I go back? How can I go back?”

“Well, hahah, it’s a little complicated” he laughed nervously which put you a little on edge; leaning even closer to the table as you knitted your eyebrows, he only avoided your intense eyes.

“What exactly is complicated?” you insisted, hands gripping on the seat edges to avoid falling of it. Beomgyu shifted uncomfortably on his seat.

“What isn’t complicated in life, little girl?” “Don’t try to avoid it, explain.”

Beomgyu huffed his air abruptly at your insistence, a little annoyed; his own eyebrows frowning as he decided to meet your eyes before speaking. “It takes a lot of energy to travel through dimensions and we don’t need only mine to open the portal but yours as well if you want to even think about surviving the little trip back home- not only that but I am running a little bit out of my usual energy thanks to someone falling into the portal so suddenly.”

“Not my fault, I was fucking dropped” you muttered, crossing your arms over your chest with a pronounced frown on your face; Beomgyu twitching at your language. “And weren’t you supposed to be the Blessed One or something like that, greatest magician of the Kingdom?”

“I am” he cleared. “But even if I were to regain my normal state of energy after a few days of rest, we have a problem with you.”

“What? Why am I the problem?”

“For starters, you can’t even walk properly.” “Of course I can w-“ With a snap of his fingers, the chair underneath you completely vanished into thin air and even if you were fast enough to stand, your legs still failed you and you fell down on your knees. “Fuck.”

“See, Bambi?” remarked the mage twirling in index finger in the air to have you levitating on the air and sitting you back on the chair that magically appeared back on its previous place behind you. “Do not worry, this little thing with your legs is just a side effect of the impact of magic on a body that hasn’t ever come in touch with it, it shall be gone soon. However, you still need to make your soul more resistant to magic.”

“And how I’m supposed to do that?”

“Training, of course” Beomgyu’s lips spread into a big grin. “Lucky for you, you have been assigned to the best one all over the Kingdom, me” your eyebrows jumped in surprise at his words “We shall discuss this matter into detail later over lunch… for now, how about doing something about this?” his brown eyes trailed up and down at you, again, judging you.

“What is wrong with…” you mumbled looking down at yourself; well, you kinda got what he meant as you looked the extremely old-fashion white tunic falling down to your ankles. You cleared your throat and looked away feeling the mocking stare of the mage in front of you.

“I shall call the maids to help you get ready for lunch” he spoke as he got up; with a quick snap of his fingers the table went back to its original spot. “Once you are done I will come and pick you up to take you to the dining room” you watched how the man walked over to the entrance of the bedroom, stopping before they closed to remind you that you ��should wait for me here until I come, understood?’.

You didn’t have enough time to panic after the news he so kindly had shared with you when the doors opened just a few seconds after Beomgyu left; a trio of women coming in with cordial smiles on their faces and stopping in front of you, lowering their heads before looking at you again.

“It is a pleasure to meet you, miss y/n” said one of the women, the one looking older and who seemed to lead the other two ones. “We have received orders from the crown prince himself to watch properly over you so if we may help you, I was informed that you are to have lunch with Sir Beomgyu?” you only nodded, feeling a little calmer at the soft tone the maid used to speak. “Wonderful miss, excuse us while we assist you to the bathroom then.”

You mumbled a soft thank you to them as the younger pair approached you and help you support yourself when you got up, walking beside you to the bathroom with the third woman walking before you. The bathroom was equally beautiful as the bedroom and big enough to throw a party inside; in its center was a big bathtub that was soon filled with warm, steaming water by the maid.

“I can do this myself” you said tugging down at the tunic covering your body when the maids tried to help you get undressed; they simply nodded and watched over you if you were to fall. Strangely enough you didn’t feel uncomfortable as they helped you get into the tub, your exposed body soon sinking in the water that relaxed your muscles instantly. For sure, you felt way more relaxed around the three women than the mage; maybe it was the fact that their hands weren’t on fire, you thought.

The pair sat down on a wooden tool on each side of the tub, slowly scrubbing down some soap to help you clean yourself while the third one stood behind you, scrunching down on your scalp, displaying the top tier massaging skills you had ever received in your life. You found yourself leaning your head back, tirelessly, as your eyes closed on their own.

The nice scent of flowers reached your smelling senses once the maids on your sides started rubbing on you some lotion, soothing up your skin. After your hair was washed up, the maid behind you curled up your hair in a towel to absorb the excess of water on it and the maids quickly covered you in a bathtub when you got up.

“That was nice, thank you” you mumbled, suddenly feeling a little kid who was being taken care of. The maids smiled as they walked you out of the bathroom and into the bedroom again, helping you take a seat on the same couch Beomgyu had been before. You watched how they rushed around picking stuff from a big closet on the corner of the bedroom, beautiful silk coming in display in front of your eyes. “These are… my clothes?”

“Personally picked by the crown prince, miss” nodded the maid. You were handed some clean underwear and you couldn’t avoid thinking if Soobin had picked it too, feeling a little embarrassed all of a sudden. The maids helped you put on the dress; Yeonjun would go insane if he saw this, you thought as you run the palm of your hand against the soft silk hugging your body till your waist, then falling freely to your ankles, almost touching the floor.

“Miss, would you let us do your hair?” asked one of the young maids, a little excitement in her voice as she waited for your approval, her eyes shining when you nodded, she rushed in your direction to help you sit down in front of a vanity, a big mirror setting in front of you. You observed for a little while how the maid started untangling your hair and braiding it up with the most care, soft eyes focused on your strands; then your vision was blocked by the other maid who started applying some make up on your face.

“You are very pretty, miss” she mumbled as she was too focused on her task, putting on some blush on your cheeks. “Barely need anything.”

“Done, miss” they informed as the three of them put down their stuff on the vanity and took a step back to let you take a look at yourself in the mirror; feeling a little awkward at first, you leaned in closer to observe the delicate braids falling on each side of your face, very Romeo and Juliet’s style, as the rest of your long hair falling lose on your back. “Is it to your liking?”

You nodded, soft smile displaying on your face as you turned around on the chair to look at the three of them, they looking proud looking at you. “Thank you very much for your help.”

They walked out of the room after lowering their heads once more, leaving you alone with your reflection and your thoughts.

Well, what were you supposed to do now?

Beomgyu had said something about having lunch but just when was he supposed to be back? Hesitantly, you decided to stand up, hands clenching on the air as you tried your best to stop the uncomfortably tremble in your legs, giving short and paused steps to the doors. You rested the palm of your hands against them, pushing forward to open them and taking a peek around, long halls displaying on each side and no sight of Beomgyu around.

Little by little, step by step you noticed the tremble starting to fade away, even though the pain seemed to increase; your knees shook a little but at least you could move around, painfully slow and with a type of support, which you found in the walls around you. Too excited at the thought of walking again, you started moving further and further down the hall, almost glued to the wall as you leaned the side of your body against it. Not so long after you learnt that this way took a little too much of effort when you started feeling extremely tired; fortunately, you spotted a door in the middle of the hall to what it seemed the outside so you rushed, how much you could, to it and stepped out, clear air filling your lungs immediately.

As you leaned over a balustrade, letting most of your weight fall on it, you looked before you to what it seemed to be a training ground filled with dozens of men and women in battle uniforms and wielding their weapons, each of a kind displaying for you to observe; fucking hell, you thought as you observed two of them fighting their blood, sweat and tears in the middle of the ground, it looks like a movie.

You stood there for a while, in part taking a little rest and in part too caught up in the scene unfolding in front of your eyes, something you have never had the chance to witness in your normal day life; it didn’t take too much for the match to end, one of the two people overpowering the other and winning the match. The defeated part walked away and in the ring in the middle walked in a tall figure, his persona shining brighter than the rest, making your breath hitch as you recognized him as soon as he appeared in your vision.

Soobin stood in front of the previous winner, sharp eyes analyzing his opponent as his hand moved to the belt hanging around his hips and draw a long and threatening sword. Your heart beat loudly when you saw how the other person launched at him to attack first, nerve-wrecking scythe-looking weapon slashing in his direction and it had been him if Soobin hadn’t moved to avoid it; you gawked as you observed him moving around the ring, fast and comfortable, sword crashing against the scythe with force, clanking sounds booming around.

Soobin huffed as he received a punch on his ribs but managed to clasp his opponent arm in his free hand, snaking one of his long legs in between theirs, pushing them down to the ground on a strong motion, kicking their weapon off of their hold and pointing his sharp sword at their neck, the match coming to an end with a new winner.

“Flies will get in your mouth, Bambi.”

You flinched at the sudden voice coming from behind you. Beomgyu took a step to your side and rested himself over the balustrade like you were doing, eyebrows raised accusatory at you. “I thought I told you to wait for me so how did you end up all the way here, mhm?”

A soft, nervous laugh came from you as you squirmed under his intense brown stare, you could almost see the fire coming out of them; you smiled apologetically to the mage, looking away from the prince to the man on your side. “… Sorry, it just happened” you mumbled, earning a scoff from him.

As you looked over at Beomgyu, you didn’t realize Soobin’s dark eyes spotting you immediately after he stepped out of the ring, his training session finished as he wiped his sweat with a handy towel. He didn’t think twice before dropping the towel and jogged in your direction, his heart doing martial jumps in excitement and anxiousness; Beomgyu noticed his friend moving your way, so when the mage pointed out at something and you looked that way your guts twirled. Soobin’s eyes shone brightly as they were fixed on you, big smile spreading on his face as he got closer.

Soobin practically skipped the little steps up to where you where, jumping over them with his legs and stopping in front of you, head tilting down to look properly at you. He didn’t give you a minute to speak before you were tugged by him, his arms closing around your frame and hugging you tightly, a sigh of relief leaving his lips as he rested his chin on top of your head, eyes shutting close as he stood there, just embracing you.

“I am so glad you are safe” he spoke softly, finally letting go of the worry that consumed over him the days you were asleep. You felt your heart beating fast and loud on your chest, your hands shyly caressing his torso and rounding his waist to embrace him back, your eyes closing just as his, enjoying the touch and warmth of someone you knew, completely oblivious to the centenar pair of eyes on the both of you.

The little bubble the prince and you were went pop when Beomgyu started clearing his throat excessively with the intention of catching your attention, reminding you both he was still there as well as the rest of the knights watching curiously at their prince embracing a woman. You huffed and rolled your eyes when the mage started practically coughing dramatically trying to take a step back and away from the prince yet you couldn’t seem to move further as his arms around you only pressed you closer, back into his embrace.

Lifting you head from his chest to look up, you only found the tenderness flowing out of his eyes while looking at you in his arms, soft smile on his pretty naturally pouted lips.

“Your Highness” spoke Beomgyu walking into your bubble and hugging Soobin’s shoulders while looking at him with a forced, big smile on his face. “Do I need to remind you there is a whole castle watching right now?”

Irritation appears on Soobin’s features as the hold on you loosened a little, hands caressing your waist before pulling away reluctantly, face turning to a side to look at his friend. “I do not need to mind the prying eyes, mage, this is my castle” he said, arching a dark eyebrow at his friend who only rolled his eyes and pulled his arm away from the prince.

“It’s your parent’s actually, but of course” Beomgyu’s eyes flicked back to you, judging as your soft smile wiped away under his gaze. “And you, next time be sure to do as I say and wait. What could it have happened if you were just fell somewhere around in the castle?”

“Well, someone would have found me eventually” you mumbled, not really liking the whole scolding thing the mage did, your lips curling down in a grimace that had Beomgyu scowling back at you and Soobin’s smile widening. “See? You did find me right now, yoo-hoo!” the obvious irony in your voice made the men in front of you accentuate their previous reactions; Beomgyu’s eyes widening at your rudeness, trailing down at your legs while Soobin’s dimple makes its appearance in his cheek.

“Well, don’t you look better now, Bambi?” questioned the mage as you were standing perfectly fine now, only that he didn’t see your wobbling legs underneath the long silk of the dress.

“You look really beautiful, y/n” said Soobin, again reaching out his hand to grab yours but being prevented by Beomgyu who caught his hand in the air and pulled it back to its place, earning a scowl from the prince. “You are so annoying.”

“And you are talking informally again” refuted the mage; both of them rolling their eyes at each other made you scoff a soft laugh, which quickly switched to a wince as your legs felt weaker by the second you spent stand up, forcing yourself to lean over the balustrade again. Beomgyu’s eyebrows furrowed at you understanding immediately what was happening, while Soobin face twisted in worry, his hands flying to your waist as he towered closer to you.

“Are you okay? What is wrong?” he asked, whether to you or Beomgyu you don’t know.

“It’s nothing, I’m fine” you said, turning around while leaning your back against the balustrade, smiling reassuringly at the prince whose worried eyes scanned you over and over.

“She’s having a little aftereffect to magic” explained his friend as he peeked his heat to look at you over the prince’s shoulder. “Her body isn’t used to it so it reacts this way, reminds me of that Bambi fairy tale you used to like reading to when we were little.”

Soobin hummed as he listened to the explanation, his eyes never leaving you and his hold on your waist only tighten to try and help you keep on your feet, thumbs drawing circles in a way to try to give you some kind of comfort, only making you get goosebumps all over your body.

“And you are supposed to be training her?” questioned Soobin, arching an eyebrow even though he didn’t turn to look at his face. You, otherwise, caught the way the mage’s lips stretched in to a cocky smile behind the prince.

“Who else would?” he said, clearly proud. “It was a direct order from the Queen.”

“Do you need me to carry you?” asked you Soobin, ignoring Beomgyu’s nonsense, taking a step closer to you, one of his hands circling the back of your waist while the other trailed up to cup your face, thump brushing over your hot and red cheek.

“Don’t you dare” you spoke softly under your breath, the single thought of him carrying you bride style down the halls of his castle while you were dressed playing princess enough to make you want to gag and throw up everywhere out of embarrassment. Soobin laughed softly as if he were able to see what you were imagining.

“Fine, but at least let me walk you to where you have to go” he said, his hands not moving an inch from their places on you. You simply nodded, moving up your hands to rest them on his forearms, the muscles under your touch tensing up.

Fortunately for you, the dining room wasn’t that much far away, still Soobin walked on your side, making you grab onto his arm as he escorted you and help you stable yourself at the same time; Beomgyu walked on the other side of you, not really letting you touch him but still matching your pace as you were forced to take careful steps. The big doors of the dining room opened as soon as the three of you reached them, servants lowering their heads as you walked over the room.

“Here, have a seat” said Soobin walking you to one of the big seats and pulling the chair out for you to take it; you mumbled a soft thank you as you felt the stares of the people in the room on you as you sat down. Soobin took the seat on the head of the table, next to you; Beomgyu taking the one in front of you.

“So, let’s discuss matt-

“You look really beautiful, you know?” said the prince, cutting off mid-sentence at the mage whose facial expression went blank; you smiled, trying to appease the tingling in your stomach and the burning in your face which Soobin didn’t ignore, of course, glad to see the soft shade of pink in your ears. “But do you find the clothes comfortable? If not, we ought to go call the seamstress.”

“Don’t have to go that far” you said, shaking your head at the thought of having someone else that Yeonjun taking your measurements. “Clothes are fine, I just wish I could walk normally already.”

“About that” spoke Beomgyu, catching the attention of the both of you again, a slight irritated look on his face. “Would you care to hear about your own training plan?”

Oh, you didn’t like the plan at all. Not only you’d have to spent every day with Mister fire-out-of-my-hands who seemed to have a little bit of a short temper, but you would also have to endure him casting spells on you, like a little laboratory rat is what you thought. And not only did you need training in magic, but also needed to learn some proper manners and built your physical strength. “Why do I need to learn your manners?”

“If you are going to be roaming around here, we don’t need you causing any kind of trouble” before you could even protest, Beomgyu cut you off. “It’s not like I can present a young lady swearing her heart off in the middle of a grand ball.”

“Grand ball?” you question, eyebrows furrowing as you flick your eyes to Soobin. The prince’s lips stretched again into a smile, this time a little more nervous. “A ball as in dance, a party?”

“Not the kind of party your picturing, y/n” mumbled Soobin, having some flashbacks to the party he had been taken by you and your friend back in your dimension. “The King and the Queen, they have decided to host a ball to celebrate my safe return home and…”

“And?”

“And of course they way the one who I said protected me while I was lost there, having a good time

“I will add dancing lessons to our schedule” spoke Beomgyu nodding to himself as he pictured all the things he needed to get you ready to. Soobin’s eyes trailed back to his friend, shaking his head.

“I will teach those myself” stated the prince, earning an eyebrow arched from the mage; turning to look at you again, Soobin’s eyebrows knitted as he mumbled softly to you. “If that is okay with you, of course.”

“Sure” you answer trying to bite back the feeling in your chest, picking up some more food from your plate, deciding to ignore the stare of the mage in front of you probably to your poor mannerisms during supper. “When is this party then?”

“Two weeks from now on.”

From then on, your living nightmare started; you would be woken up extremely early everyday by the maids who soon understood you were a late bird and started dragging you out of the comfort of the big bed you started to get used to; they would get you ready still half-asleep for the mage to pick you up from your bedroom. Sun still rising, the two of you would share breakfast outdoors; Beomgyu speaking too much for so early hours as you could barely manage to pick up your cup of tea, most of the things he said going in and out of your ears.

After breakfast, physical training hours began; Mr. Mage had you doing everything that you didn’t do during your high school years when you skipped p.e most of the time, but ten times worse while he simply sat down on a chair watching you pant desperately for air as your legs began giving up on you, soon giving up completely and making you fall on the ground, dust rising up from the impact.

“Oh? Out already? Okay, five-minute break, then do three series of abdominal work on the ground.”

By lunch time, you would be covered in sweat and dust; clothes dirty and sticking up to your body, legs aching, arms falling limp to your sides and face flushed from the exhaustion. Lucky for you, the maids who have seemed to be assigned for you took the most precious care of you, rushing in taking you into the bathtub, rubbing every dirty inch in your body, letting you and your sore muscles relax under the warm water, rested enough to have lunch with Soobin and Beomgyu in the dining hall.

The routine didn’t end there, oh no; after having some dessert, Beomgyu would drag you away from the prince, who stole your full attention during meals, and onto his personal studio slash laboratory slash ‘office’ how he’d like to call it where the two of you would start your magic training which, if you had to be totally honest, was even worse than the physical one. Maybe it was the fact that never in your life until these last days you had been in contact with magic of any sort, excluding the typical coin tricks and the rabbits out of the hat that used to thrill you so much when you were a kid; this magic, however, felt like waves electricity flowing from the inside of your body, burning everything on its way to come out.

“Te-Ten minutes… break” you pleaded gasping for air as you on your knees, looking up to look at the mage sitting on his comfortably chair with a book on his lap; his brown eyes looked up from the book to you thought the frames on his face and scanned you.

“Five minutes break.”

It was safe to say most of the hours of the day were taken by the mage; it was only after dinner that you and Beomgyu would part ways, him leaving you with the prince who was in charge of your dancing lessons. Frankly, you were glad; Soobin was the person who you trusted the most in this world and while being around him there was this feeling that nothing could go wrong.

“Did Beomgyu gave you a hard time again?” he asks as the two of you walk into the ballroom, following you to the center of it. You sigh a laugh and turn around to face him, his tall frame stopping just in front of you, pretty lips stretching into a bigger smile as you connected eyes.

“When does he not?” you replied smugly, making the prince giggle softly and pretending your heart didn’t skip a beat at the sound of his cute little laugh. You had to gulp the lump in your throat when he stepped a little closer to you, his big hands moving softly up and brushing your hands until it reached the sides of your waist; long fingers pressing without too much force on your clothe skin, pulling you closer to him, forcing you to tilt your head up to meet his gaze.

“Should we start now?” he mumbled softly, one of his hands going back to cup yours in his before lifting it up until it reached his shoulders’ height; the other hand swiftly caressing your waist as it moved to the spot on your back. It wasn’t your first or second dancing lesson with Soobin and yet you still couldn’t get used to this; not only he looked in his prime, wearing the silk clothes that hugged his body perfectly, mostly white, soft shirts with long sleeves, but his whole demeanor had seemed to change once he was back to his world. He was no longer Soobin the lost crazy man I picked up on the streets but he was the crown prince of a kingdom.

Music filled the ballroom immediately as he said the words, most probably due to the castle working with magic thanks to your own personal teacher, Beomgyu, and as always Soobin started leading your steps, slow and carefully, soft smile on his lips as his eyes were glued to yours. You, on the other hand, were too focused on your own feet as always, frowning as you tried not to step in your partner’s shoes, as always, to notice the tenderness flowing from his eyes, as always.

It wasn’t until you heard Soobin clicking his tongue and the hand holding yours letting go to use it to push your chin up that you finally looked back at him. “Eyes up here, y/n.”

“I don’t wanna hurt you, Your Highness” you answered, the title sounding strange in your mouth even as a mockery; his hand went back to grab yours, squeezing it a little after your words. A soft gasp escaped from you when the prince swiftly twirled you around, hand on your back disappearing for a second as you spun and back when your chest met his; Soobin had bit down on his lip to suppress the laugh threatening to come from him as he watched the bewildered look on your face, cheeks flushed and your clumsy feet stumbling on each other.

“It’s cute that you think you can hurt me, y/n” he answered as he continued to move the both of you around the room following the melody’s rhythm. The loose strands of his hair softly brushed against your forehead as he leaned in closer to your face, breath tickling on your skin as his dark eyes stared intently into yours, the hand on your back tensing a little against your skin. “And do not call me that.”

“That’s what I’m being taught” you replied, frowning as you remembered the amount of times you had been scolded by Beomgyu after calling the crown prince by his name; Soobin’s nose wrinkled at that.

“Just call me by my name” he said, his eyes inevitably flicking down to your lips as they barely parted open, his mind rushing in memories of the party in your world when you had kissed him, the way your pretty lips felt against his taking away his breath completely. Oh, how he wanted to feel that again. Unconsciously, Soobin leaned in a little more until his forehead was resting against yours, his own lips hanging open as he waited for the word to come out of you.

“Now?” you asked, the words leaving in a mere whisper, feeling as if any loud sound would pop the bubble you were caught in right now; Soobin hummed in agreement, him no longer leading you around the room, just the two of you standing still in the middle of it. At the feeling of dryness in your mouth, you twirled around your tongue over your lips and felt your heart bump like crazy when the prince in front of you copied your move, the movement of his tongue over his pretty plump lips caughting your attention. “Soobin.”

He loved it, the way his name fell from your lips without any royal weight and how it was directed to him, Soobin, and not him, the crown prince of the Kingdom.

“Once more” he whispered, plead in his voice, as his hold in your waist tightened, his heavy breath fanning over your lips. “Please, say it once more.”

“Soobi- mh.”

The word got stuck in your mouth as a pair of plump lips softly pressed against yours; your eyes closing immediately, hands moving up to hold the prince’s face in them, one hand thoughtlessly sneaking to the back of his head, brushing his hair and holding him closer to you. Fuck, his lips were soft and warm, and they moved so good against yours.

A deep sigh came out of the prince while his hands pressed you closer to him, his arms sneaking on your back to hug you thigh, his head slightly tilting to a side to allow him deepened the kiss and when the he felt the soft licks of your tongue against his bottom lip, he felt like his own legs could give up any minute.

The sweet kiss quickly turned into a more passionate one with your tongue exploring into the prince’s mouth, soon finding his own tongue and brushing against it, drinking in every deep sigh or noise coming from him, or even some soft whines when you tugged at his hair after he started nibbling at your bottom lip, warm tongue brushing against it while sucking, making you pant against his mouth.

“So pretty” he mumbled, pulling apart a mere inch to take a look at your face, starring eyes looking up at his, lips swollen and parted open as you took deep breaths. Soobin leaned in closer to you again, and when your lips opened a little more when he was about to kiss you again, he avoided them and let his head fall to a side, his lips peppering your skin with kisses from your cheek to your jaw and going down to your neck, humming as your scent filled his senses. “So sweet, y/n.”

An inaudible ‘oh’ came out of you as you tilted your head back when Soobin started giving slow licks against the skin on your neck, quickly adding some brushing of his teeth that sent shivers down your spine, the sound of his mouth-open kisses against your skin reaching your ears and making your mind fuzzy.

It didn’t take you too much to realize or feel the way he pressed his hips against you, his hard member forming a tent in his pants, the breath fanning over your neck becoming heavier as he covered you in kisses. You particularly liked the way he’d be a little rougher, hips jolting and a deep groan coming down from his throat, when you pulled his hair in between your fingers; a lazy smirk trailing up in your lips as you heard the boy whine against your skin.

“Soobin” you mumbled, flicking your eyes open up to the ceiling, your fingers twirling his hair in them and softly pulling to try and get his attention. He hummed against your neck, the kissing never stopping. “Soobin.”

His lips trailed up from your neck to your jaw, his nose brushing softly the invisible path he was following, eyelashes tickling you. “Why?” he asked you, a soft pout forming in his lips as you stopped in just when he was about to place them over yours. You bit down a smile, he looked so cute with his hair slightly disheveled, his eyes dark and heavy staring into yours and his ears flushed red. “Let me kiss you, y/n.”

You couldn’t say no to him, honestly, so you just smiled when he leaned in and pressed his lips against yours again, the sweet taste of him filling your tasting senses as his tongue moved with more confidence in your mouth. “Can’t get enough” he mumbled in between kisses. “Can’t get enough of you” he reluctantly pulled back, lips pouting automatically. “I wanted to kiss you from the moment you woke up” that made you giggle softly, couldn’t helping get on your tiptoes to plant a tender kiss on the corner of his red lips, his arms around you tightening if it was even possible.

“You should have then, my prince” you replied, arching an eyebrow.

“Perhaps I could have if you didn’t have such a guardian dog to your side” he mumbled, nose wrinkling and you couldn’t help but laugh.

“Well, lucky for you, you have me all to yourself in this dancing lessons” you said, smiling smugly at the prince, whose lips spread into a grin after mumbling lucky me. “We really should go back to the dancing part, though.”

“Right” the prince nodded, yet his eyes glinted. “But my services are not free… I must have something in return, you know?” you snorted as the prince batted his eyelashes and puck out his lips.

So maybe days in the strange world weren’t so awful as you first expected; soon, as your body began gaining strength, the daily exercises Beomgyu put you through became more tolerable and you weren’t a mess anymore at the end of the day. Magic was still tough, but not like in the beginning; even though it still felt like the air was knocked out of your system, you at least could handle some movement under it which, for you, was a lot of improvement. And about the prince… well, you did learn how to dance quite quickly, it was fairly easier that you thought it would have been or maybe you just had a really, really, good teacher at that. Still, even though you caught on the basics fast, you didn’t stop meeting Soobin every night after dinner and what was supposed to be the rest of some dancing lessons ended up being some kissing sessions.

Not that you were complaining thought.

“Hello pretty, I am so, so sorry for being late” said the prince as he stormed into the ballroom, jogging in your direction while you waited for him patiently sat down against the window’s frame, your eyes flicking from the night sky scenery outside to the man approaching you with his eyebrows knitted. “The King and the Queen wanted to have a word with me.”

“Everything okay?” you questioned, the corner of your lips curling a little as he stopped in front of you and his hand went immediately to its usual spot on your waist. Soobin leaned in and planted a soft kiss on top of your head, mumbling another apology against your skin before pulling back a little to look at you properly.

“Of course, just some last-minute arrangements for the ball” he replied while you moved up your hand to reach the lose strand of hair falling over his eyes and softly pushing it away, your thump caressing over one of his perfectly-shaped eyebrows. “Nothing to worry about” a silent smile spread on your face as you observed the prince closing his eyes at your touch, his own pretty lips stretching on a little smile. “Sorry for making you wait, pretty.”

“I don’t think I can forgive you so easily, my prince” you replied jokingly; Soobin’s eyes slowly opened meeting yours immediately, his own hand going up to cup yours in his and place it near his lips so that you would be cupping his cheek. “Should I make it up to you?” Soobin’s head moved slightly to have his lips under your hand, planting a tender kiss in the middle of your palm, his eyes never leaving yours. “Here you shouldn’t  be treated with anything but the best, I assure you.”

“Well, that’s sweet” you replied as you got on your tiptoes to kiss Soobin’s chin, instead your own lips falling against his as he tilted his head just in time to caught you; the hand cupping yours pulling away to hold onto the back of your head instead, leaving you no chance to pull away from him.

“That is sweet” he mumbled against your lips, barely putting some distance between you as a smug smile trailed up in his face. Soobin started walking backwards, pulling you with him; you frowned as you were dragged by the prince out of the ballroom, his hand leaving your waist to grab properly your hand, interwinding his fingers with yours as he made his way through the long halls.

“Soobin? Where are we going?”

“I want to make it up to you for being late” he answered, looking over his shoulder and smiling brightly at you. “I want to show you something I think you would like, come on!”

Now, as to why did Soobin thought you’d like to see the horses stable, that is something you really couldn’t quite answer. Still, you walked behind him as he pushed the wooden doors open and flicked on the lights, smiling amused as he turned to look at your reaction. You, well, you could just stare at the amount of horses inside, some curled up sleeping, others munching some hay, and others, like a tall white beautiful one, neighing with enthusiasms at the sight of the prince.

“Hello my dearest friend” you heard Soobin mumbled as he stopped in front of the white horse, his free hand going up to scratch his long neck. “I’ve brought someone for you to meet” Soobin took a step aside, allowing you to stand face to face with the horse whose eyes seemed to look at you up and down before scoffing. Should you feel attacked? Soobin giggled at your reaction. “Y/n, this is Odi; Odi, this is my guest y/n.”

“Odi?” you mumbled under your breath, the horse’s ears jolting at the sound of his name, stomping his hoof on the floor. “Nice to meet you Odi.”

Cute, thought Soobin as he pulled your hand under his and guided it to rest on Odi’s neck, showing you how to caress him, his eyes glued to you as you smiled at his horse.

“Ever rode a horse before?” asked Soobin as let Odi out, guiding him from the hold on his reins. You shook your head, following Soobin out of the stable; you observed how he adjusted the saddle on Odi’s back, patting him tenderly before turning to you, a hand stretching in your direction. “Wouldn’t it be good to do it now?”

“… Really?” you asked bashfully, placing your hand over his and taking a few steps closer to him.

Soobin nodded. “I will help you up, okay?” his hands quickly found their place on your hips, grabbing tightly enough to lift you up from the floor and over Odi’s back, the horse scoffing some more as you grabbed onto the reins for dear life, earning a sweet chuckle from the prince who soon followed you and jumped over, throwing a leg over the seat, his arms on each side of you as he leaned in to grab your own hands holding the reins. “Are you okay?” he asked amused at your shrinking self.

Maybe riding a horse wearing a dress wasn’t the most ideal plan, you even had to seat with both legs on the same side, the side of your body meeting Soobin’s chest as he pulled you closer to him and held the reins tighter, his breath brushing on top of your head.

“This isn’t so ba- ah, fuck!” you exclaimed when Odi started moving, startling you and making you let go of the reins to hold onto what you thought was more stable: Soobin. “Sorry, sorry, that scared the shit out of me- oh, fuck, Beomgyu would kill me if he heard me.”

Soobin laughed as he fastened Odi’s pace into the so familiar paths he had grown riding; little by little you grew accustomed to it and, feeling a little more confident, you turned your body to the front, eyes looking in amusement at the scenery changing in front of you; the only light outside was the moonlight that illuminated the path in the forest Soobin was following.

“Oh, wow” you muttered, a big smile appearing on your face as you leaned in thoughtlessly, enjoying the breeze hitting against you and making your hair fly back as Odi galloped through the forest. Soobin smiled behind you as he watched closely how you started to enjoy the ride.

“We’re here” announced the prince as he slowed down his horse, pulling from the reins; your mouth slightly hung open as you watched the small lake in front of you, shining under the moonlight, the soothing sound of the current making you relax instantly. Soobin jumped off the horse and turn on his heels, his hands finding your hips to help you get down.

“Hey, what is this?” you asked, flicking your eyes to the reflect of lights in the water to the prince. Soobin’s hands remained on your hips, his thumps drawing circles against the clothe skin while a soft smile draw on his face.

“Something I thought you would like.”

Soobin walked over to the lake, softly dragging you along, and only pulled his hands away from you when he hunched down to take his shoes off; your eyebrows furrowed as you observed him sinking his feet in the water and go into the lake, stopping when it reached its hips to turn and look at you, his eyes obviously telling you to get in too.

So, there you were, bare feet getting into the lake following the prince, trying to push down the silk of your dress that started flowing up while approaching Soobin, whose hand quickly sneaked around your waist when you caught up to him, pressing you against his side, a soft smile on his pretty lips as you put an arm over his shoulders.

“The water’s not…” “Cold? Yeah, it’s magic.” Or maybe it was Soobin’s heat irradiating from his body to yours, either way you didn’t say anything else as the prince walked further into the water until it reached his chest and your shoulders, your feet not touching the ground anymore which only made you grab tighter onto him.

“You okay?” he asked, turning his head, the tip of his nose brushing against your ear and his breath brushing against your skin making you get goosebumps. You nodded, turning your head to look back at him, your nose coming in contact with his. The prince hummed, the corner of his lips curling up as he softly placed them against yours.

Thoughtlessly, your own body turned to face the prince’s, your legs going up and around his waist, holding his frame in between, maybe for some more stability, maybe because you wanted him closer; Soobin gulped down, both of his hands hugging you behind your back as you clasped your hands behind his head, your fingertips pressing against the little hairs on his neck.

The prince hummed against your mouth. “You know that I love kissing you but I’m afraid this is not what I wanted to show you” he mumbled against your lips as he pulled away a little, a bit of fun in his voice. “Look up at the sky, pretty.”

Throwing your head back, you did as you were told, your mouth opening at the beautiful sight of the sky filled with shining stars above you, big full moon radiating the most precious light that reflected against the water they were in, bathing the prince and you as well; Soobin swears he could see the stars shining in your eyes as he was solely focused on you and the way your sweet lips stretched into a pretty smile at the sight, feeling his heart beating like a wild animal against his chest.

“Soobin this is so beautifu- oh, that is nice too” you hummed as you felt the warm lips of the prince pressing down against the skin on your throat, leaving a trail of wet kisses everywhere, a sigh escaping from your lips as a relaxed smile trailing up, the hold around you tightening as the man hummed in delight against you.

“I thought it would be nice for you to spend some time out of the castle walls” he muttered, brushing the tip of his nose softly up and down your neck. “Was I right? Did I do good?”

You hummed, feeling your cheeks burning up as you heard his voice― which was naturally very deep, going even lower while he moved up to your ear, his plush limps brushing against your earlobe before his tongue and lips got it caught in between them, making you whine softly at the weird feeling of it.

“Yeah, so good” you mumbled, eyes shutting close while your hands clasped his hair, feeling his teeth provocatively nibbling at your ear, his heavy breath turning yours into one alike. Soobin let out a deep and long sigh against your skin, the palm of his hands spreading open wide on your back, pulling you closer as if it was even possible.

As soon as you looked back down to the man, his lips attached to yours, moving painfully slow making you ache for more. With your own hands you pressed him closer to you, tilting your head to deepened the kiss, drinking the low groan that crept from the back of his throat at your motion, hands tensing against you.

Soobin’s tongue was warm, moving longingly inside your mouth, the once spec of bashfulness from the first kisses long gone; you couldn’t help your own sounds coming out of you as the man sucked at your wet muscle, his own gasps for air in between, hands grabbing onto you more desperately each time, his hips started moving at a slow pace against you, the feeling of his growing erection pushing against your clothe core making you tense under his touch, pulling at his hair with yearning, only gaining more beautiful sounds from the prince who seemed to accelerate his pace with that.

“Fuck, don’t do that to me” he pleaded against your mouth when you grabbed his bottom lip in between yours, sucking his skin like he was some sweet for you to eat and softly pulling. You flicked your eyes open, his lip still caught in between yours, only to meet his heavy gaze on you, eyelids half-open. A smug smile crept on your own lips as you purposely let go of his lip, only to immediately lap on it. “Y/n-“ your name left his lips in a shaky breath as his hands trailed down from your back to your thighs, squeezing your muscles hard in his big palms. “I- I want to touch you. I need to touch you.”

“Do it.”

Soobin’s hands started trailing up your thighs, pushing the clothe of your dress with them and sneaking underneath it; a sigh escaped from you as you felt him grab onto the bone of your hips, unbashful as he guided them up and down against his hard crotch, making the both of you pant against each other, the rhythm of his hips increasing each time until either of you were satisfied with it and wanted more.

“Fu-fuck, Soobin” you muttered under your breath as the man practically started pounding on you still full clothed, the sounds of the water splashing in between your bodies getting you dizzy in the head, meanwhile the prince took the best of the cares to your neck with his mouth, tongue running over and tasting you, biting softly and moaning against you. “Need you, fuck- please, need to feel you.”

You heard the growl erupt from the prince’s throat at your words, his body underneath you tensing and then how his hands hurriedly move to the waist of his own pair of pants; even though you couldn’t see anything that was happening under the line of the water, you felt his hands move and brush against you as he pulled down his pants, then pulling you closer once more, forcing a whine out of you as you felt his hard, bare dick pressing against your hot, still clothed entrance.

“Felt me enough?” he inquired, a smug smirk curling up in his face as he thrusted against you, watching every little expression you made, adoring the way your eyes rolled back before you shut them and the contrast of your mouth opening as you panted. The lack of answer only made Soobin click his tongue and push you harder against you, using the hold on your hips to push you against him, matching his own movements. “I guess this is enough for you, mh?”

“N-no, wait” you mumbled, forcing your eyes open to stare at him; Soobin had to bite down his own lip to avoid a pathetic groan escaping from him at your pleading look, eyebrows furrowed, cheeks red, lips swollen, eyes glassy.

“What is it? You have to speak up and tell me what you want, pretty” your legs hugged Soobin’s waist tighter, pushing him closer to you, your own hips moving against his making the prince chuckle airily.

“Need to feel you inside, Soobin, please.”

The way you so prettily moan his name had him almost rolling his eyes to the back of his head; instead, he managed to grab the waist of your panties and pulled them down, your legs forced to let go of him for Soobin to pulled them off completely. One of his hands found you quickly as the other grab his length, eyes fixated on yours as he placed the tip against your entrance, a sigh caught in his throat as he felt the heat and warmness from it, even though your body was underwater.

A shaky breath came from him as he pushed himself inside, head falling backwards as he felt the way your walls so deliciously clenched around him and heard the beautiful sounds that came out of you, breath leaving your body as you felt the big cock sliding inside your pussy, spreading you apart, making you dizzy in the head.

“So tight for me, pretty” he groaned once he bottomed out, forcing himself to take a look at you, his lips curling into a smirk as he saw the pleasure washing over your features; Soobin closed the gap in between yours and smashed your lips together, panting against you when he felt you clench around him even more.

“Soobin” you pleaded against his lip, him drinking up every little sound you made because of him, your hips moving up and down against him, trying to fuck yourself with his cock and failing at it while he held your hips tightly in their place. “Need more, fuck- need you to move-

“Yeah?” he chuckled breathlessly, pulling away from inside you until it was just his tip, then thrusting back in, earning a breathy moan from you that had his dick twitching. “Like this?”

“Yeah, like that” you nodded, your hand grabbing a fist of his hair on the back of his head while your hips started moving again at the loss of movement from the man. You whined in annoyance; why was he such a tease? “Soobin, please.”

The sound of his name falling out of your lips had him doing what you wanted again, this time not coming to a stop as his thrusts gained a rhythm that had your mind spinning around; Soobin moaned loudly when you tugged the hair caught in between your fingers, making him going even harder against you, tongue twirling over his lip as he devoured the way your eyes rolled back when he started going deeper.

“Fuck, that’s it” you moaned before pushing his head down to caught his lips in between yours, his raspy gasps for air against your open mouth, tongues devouring each other.

“Is this what you wanted? Uh?” he inquired, his hands squeezing hard against you, fingers practically burying on your skin as he slammed into you. “Fuck, I’ll give you anything you want, pretty.”

Sweet honey-like words were ignored by you as your body started tensing up, one of your hands grasping to his shoulder hardly enough to bury your nails on his skin, earning a hiss from him. You were close and he felt it too, cooing at the way you walls sucked him in. “Going to cum for me, all over me? Please do, fuc-“

“Oh, fuck-“

Your toes curled as you felt the knot in your low stomach snap, your head falling backwards, mind going numb as pleasure washed all over your body; Soobin cursed under his breath feeling the way your juices coated him completely, warm, thrusting a few more times before he was coming undone too, turning into a moaning mess, his lips pressed against your ear making you the direct receiver of his sounds.

As the sounds slowly died down, all you could hear was the heavy pants from the both of you; Soobin groaned, sensitive, his dick still inside you, lips sticking to your neck, peppering kisses all over you. “Are you okay?” he asked, tenderness in his voice.

You nodded, letting your head fall against his shoulder, the tight hold on it gone as you caressed his back. “A little tired” Soobin chuckled and finally pulled out from you, still hugging you closer to him, embracing you in his firm arms.

“We should go back and have some sleep” he decided after smoothly pulling back on his pants just with a hand, while the other held you close, then started walking closer to the edge of the lake. You hummed in agreement, letting yourself be carried by the prince out of the water.

-

“What…” you looked confused at the two men standing in front of you; Beomgyu was a common sight already as you were in the middle of your magic training session; however, Soobin being out of his usual schedule was a rare one as the prince could only meet you during meals or after dinner. “What is going on?”

“We have something for you” spoke the prince, smile drawing on his face before flicking his eyes to his friend, who tirelessly sighed and walked over to a covered mirror in the middle of his office, pulling the curtain away and waving his hand for you to walk closer.

“Soobin forced me to do this” said Beomgyu once you stopped behind him in front of the mirror, yourself standing in between the two tall man was quite a funny sight and you knew they thought it too as you watched their reflecting expressions; Soobin trying his best to conceal it while Beomgyu practically snorted seamlessly. “Hand.”

You looked down at the mage’s palm opening for you to take it; slightly confused, you did, looking up again to meet his brown eyes staring at you through the mirror, a sly smirk spreading on his face. “You don’t have to look so scared, Bambi.”

“Not scared, confused” you replied, with a slight roll of eyes. “Can you tell me what is going on?” you asked the prince, eyes flicking from the reflection of the mage to his.

“It’s a surprise” he said, soft smile on his face turning into a little pout as he held up his own hand for you. “Hold me too.”

“Toddler” muttered Beomgyu on your side as you took the prince’s hand.

“Shut up.”

Then you felt the wave of magic flowing right into your body, a stronger wave than the ones you were used to making your knees shake a little; your eyes flicked back to the mage whose focus was all on the glass in front of you, yet to no one in particular. Then you saw how a purple smoke swirl appeared in the pane of glass, just where your face was and soon all you could see was a pitch-black hole.

Not long after, the hole was filled with color, noise coming from it and then the clear images on the other side making you gasp, your heart clenching on your chest.

“What the actual fuck is th- Y/n?!” Yeonjun terrified scowl quickly disappeared from his face, his eyebrows jumping while his eyes opened wide in shock, blinking a few times and rubbing his eyes before looking back at the mirror in front of him. “What the fuck? Did I lose my shit already? God-“

“I see where this little habit of yours come from” mumbled Beomgyu as your friend on the other side kept on and on, talking more to himself than to you.

“Junie” you said, voice breaking at the sight of your best friend. Yeonjun stopped talking when your voice reached his ears, mouth hanging open; you saw perfectly fine how his eyes filled with tears and how he moved to grab the mirror in his hand desperately.

“Holy fuck? It’s you, really?” he asked, lips trembling. You wanted to lean closer, but the men beside you held you tight by your hand. “Are you okay? Where are you? Do you have any idea-“ his voice broke and he had to stop to take a deep breath before continuing. “We thought you were dead, y/n, you just… completely vanished into air, no one could find you anywhere.”

“Sorry, sorry” you said as if you were in a trance, the realization of what it must have been to your friends, to Granny, to Yeonjun, thinking you were gone, not knowing anything about you for weeks; then you noticed the prominent bag under Yeonjun’s eyes, his plump lips dried and bitten, the despair in his eyes and you felt even sicker. “I’m sorry” you sobbed.

You saw Yeonjun chuckle shakily, moving his head to his sides. “Don’t be, baby, just tell me you’re okay, tell me where are you so I can come and get you, okay?” You saw how his jaw clenched and how he inhaled sharply before speaking again, this time with a little more anger in his voice. Your friend was an emotional mess, and you totally got why. “Did that bastard kidnap you? Knew he was fucking crazy from the start, fuck, shoulda beat him up when he was just under my nose.”

Soobin awkwardly cleared his throat before leaning closer to you, waving his free hand to your friend whose eyes seemed on fire when he caught the sight of the prince standing next to you.

“You!” Yeonjun exclaimed. “Soobin, when I catch you-! When I catch you, Soobin- if that is really your name!”

Beomgyu laughed loudly, catching your friend’s attention too. “And who the fuck is this?” The mage’s laugh came to an abrupt stop, brown eyes staring daggers at your friend who scowled back.

“Do you have any idea who you are talking to, you insignificant being?” “Ah, god, another one with his head screwed?”

After a few long minutes of explaining everything that had happened to Yeonjun and another few long minutes of convincing that everything you were telling him was true and that no, you hadn’t gone crazy too and that no, the men with you weren’t crazy either, Yeonjun reluctantly accepted your side of the story.

“So? When will you be back?” he asked; you turned to look at the mage who side-eyed you quickly before rolling his eyes.

“We still don’t know that-“ Beomgyu inhaled sharply as your friend interrupted him with a load of curses and bitterly smiled before speaking again. “Lovely. As I was saying, we don’t know for sure but maybe… a few weeks? Maybe a month thought, I really am using a lot of energy on this precious right now.”

“Sorry, are you tired?” you asked worried, turning your head to get a better look of the mage’s face; Beomgyu did look quite tired, he seemed to be trying to hide it but the look on his eyes and the way his hold on your hand started to become lose each minute was enough for you to notice it. “Oh” your eyebrows furrowed. “Junie, we need to go now.”

“What?” asked your friend, fear appearing on his face.

“I’m sorry, I can’t let Beomgyu use all of his energy now” you said, looking sorry at your friend. “I love you and I will contact you again, okay? I’ll let you know when I’ll be back and I am so, so sorry for having you so worried all this time.”

Yeonjun pouted but still nodded. “I love you too, y/n, please be safe and if any fucker mess with you be sure to rip out their bal-

“Sure!” you cut him off, giggling softly as you felt Soobin tensing behind you. “Take care of Granny, okay?”

Yeonjun smirked. “Of course, baby.”

And then the image disappeared; Beomgyu beside you let out a long and exhausted sigh, his hand falling limb to his side, yours only grabbing onto his. “Thanks” he muttered under his breath, eyes flicking down to yours, a little ashamed by his weakness. You nodded, squeezing his shaking hand in yours and smiled softly at him.

“Guess today’s lesson’s canceled” the mage chuckled lowly, shaking his head, mumbling something under his breath you didn’t catch onto before he turned on his heals and went over to the couch, letting himself fall over it.

“Wouldn’t you be happy if that was the case?” replied the mage, letting his head lean back on the couch’s chair, eyes closing and a simple frown on his face, even though his lips were curled up in a tiny smirk.

“You think badly of me, oh Blessed One” you answered, rolling your eyes and letting yourself take the seat next to him. “I’m not that weak to magic anymore though…” you mumbled; Beomgyu’s eyes flicked open to look at you, arching his eyebrow.

“Lucky for you that I am a little bit tired, I would have whooped your ass if not.”

“A little kinky, aren’t ya?” you said, smugness in your voice as you tried to suppress your laugh; Beomgyu’s lips trembled in annoyance before he huffed and looked away, only making your laugh escaped from you. “You’re so fun, Beomgyu.”

“And you’re insufferable.”

And Soobin didn’t know the two of you had gotten so close to the other; the prince observing the interaction between you two as he stood still in front of the mirror, unknowingly frowning as he watched you laugh and joke with the mage who, even though was frowning, and sighing, and snorting, was enjoying the little fight you put up with him. Soobin noticed it, he knew his friend after all and the glint in his brown eyes that rolled at your words was enough for him to tell.

Yes, he was aware that the two of you would spend several hours in the company of the other and yes, he did know you didn’t have much trouble getting comfortable to new people; you had demonstrated that once you met him and again when you got into his world, the servants everyday growing fonder of you as he had been informed. The thing was Beomgyu, a person he had grown with and knew perfectly well, a person who was uninterested to everything below him; who was annoyed first at the mere thought of babysitting you but now seemed to enjoy the little bickering you two had.

Oh, he didn’t like at all what he was feeling.

Sadly, for the prince, he soon needed to be excused and return to his daily duties, leaving him with no choice but to say goodbye to the both of you, a bittersweet taste in his mouth as he walked away and out of the room.

“Why are you still here?” questioned Beomgyu after Soobin was gone, the common judgy look on his eyes making you scoff.

“I can’t?” “I certainly would prefer if you go away.”

“C’mon, Beomgyu, don’t lie to me, I know you enjoy spending some quality time with me” you smiled brightly to the man in front of you, whose eyes widened for a second for you to see clearly the thought of she must be insane on his head. “There must be something fun we can do to kill some time today.”

“Just say you don’t know anyone else around, Bambi” he said, voice tinted with amusement, making you roll your eyes.

“Not like you have any other friends, Beomgyu.”

“You are really annoying, you know that?” Beomgyu snarled. “Okay, fine, maybe there is something we can do.”

That is how you and Beomgyu found yourselves leaving the grounds of the castles, teleporting into town; himself under his usual cloak, hood covering almost all his face while you, on the other hand, wear one of the pretty dresses that filled the wardrobe of your bedroom, kindly being tidy up by the maids when you told them you were going out.

“You really should cover yourself” is what Beomgyu said before he’d take your hand and made you appear on the entrance of the carnival displaying all over the town. Ignoring the twist on your guts by magic travelling, you soon got mesmerized as you observed around; it really resembled the pictures you used to watch, everything looking kinda medieval but with the little twist of magic being a crucial part of society.

Beomgyu observed the way you watched every single detail carefully, your eyes almost sparkling at everything that was so common in his life and he couldn’t fight the small smile threatening on his face.

“Let’s go!” you exclaimed, clearly excited as you walked into the town’s heart; new smells and sights stealing your attention by the second, dragging the mage by the hold you had in his hand, making him awkwardly stumble on his own feet as he tried not to crash against your small body leading the way.

“Come, come here, my child, and taste Madam Renée’s delicious caramel apples!” your attention was quickly stolen by the gentle lady who flashed smiles in your direction, displaying some really good-looking caramel apples for you to have your mouth watering and your feet moving on their own as if you were in some kind of spell.

“You shouldn’t use magic to attract clientele, old lady” it was Beomgyu’s stern voice behind you that got you out of your trance, his hand sliding up from under yours to hold your wrist in place before you could grab one of the apples. Your eyes flicked to the lady behind the counter whose smile suddenly dropped and scoffed at the mage.

“Back away, little rascal, I’m just doing business” the lady snarled at him before smiling again at you. “How many would you like, sweetie?”

The little glint in her eye made you gulp a little nervous. “Just one, please.”

“Do you even have any money?” questioned Beomgyu, tilting his head over your shoulder to look at you. You laughed nervously, feeling some warm spreading through your cheeks as you remembered that, in fact, you were broken.

“Forgot about that” you mumbled, showing the mage the best-selling smile you could; Beomgyu scoffed and grab the apple you had reached for initially, leaning over you and putting down some gold coins on the counter.

“Two apples, old hag.”

“Better watch your mouth, you little shi-“ the lady’s words quickly stopped as Beomgyu lifted up his hood a little, revealing his face enough for the lady to recognized him, the color of her face quickly draining. “O-oh! What an honor to have you here, master."

“That’s better. Let’s go, Bambi.”

After grabbing your own apple, you hurried behind Beomgyu’s tall frame, your eyes looking up curiously as you tasted the really sweet apple.

“You really are careless, y/n” he muttered, giving you a stern look as the both of you continue your walk down the carnival. “What would have happened if that old hag had worse intentions and you just obediently followed her?”

“Good for me I have you, then” you answered flashing an innocent smile at the mage whose eyes quickly snapped away from you, nose shrinking in annoyance.

“Ah, yes” he sighed already feeling the headache the whole day with you was going to give him. “I guess you are lucky indeed.”

Even if he didn’t want to admit it, Beomgyu ended up having a good time; it had been a really long time since he had been into town’s carnival, his good only memory of it unfortunately being attached to a really bad one that had had him having nightmares uncountable times just until a few years ago. But this time, with you annoyingly running around amused at everything, reminding Beomgyu of a little cub, and him following you to stop you from getting into trouble, he barely had time to think about anything else.

“Break time” he pleaded, taking a seat on the edge of the fountain that decorated the town’s center, coins filling its ground as people still had that silly belief of asking for wishes. You smiled at the, your arm brushing to his as you carelessly fell took the seat next to his unknowingly too close, your eyes admiring the surroundings, a soft smile resting on your face. The sun had started to set down and that meant the lights had flicked on, bathing everywhere in warm light; laughs were heard everywhere and music reached your ears as a small group played some catchy melodies, making people stop to either hear some more or dance around. “I might have made an extraordinary job with you- how do you even have energy left, Bambi?”

Laughing, you replied. “I guess you could say I am the best one of your students so far, uh?” you joked, making Beomgyu scoff.

“Yeah, the best at annoying my ass” you laughed even louder at his comeback and Beomgyu couldn’t help but to stare a little longer than he should, the warm lights making you glow underneath them, his heart painfully skipping a beat― what? The realization made him pull his eyes away from you, the smile on his face that he had fail to notice falling. “We should go back now.”

“Oh” he hated the sad look on your face when you heard that and the way your smile faltered a little as you tried to keep the eye contact with him, failing at the end and looking away before nodding. “Alright, let’s go.”

You followed Beomgyu or, well, tried to but it became harder as he only fasted his pace; not only that but the amount of people had multiplied and you had to stop in your tracks several times to avoid bumping into someone. You tried calling for Beomgyu but he didn’t seem to hear, only walking back to the entrance of the town and after a few more people got in your way, you soon lose the sight of him.

“… Princess…” you looked around, the mass of people flowing around you and blocking your sight making your chest hurt, the feeling of being trapped and the failed attempts to spot the mage around making you panic, the palm of your hands sweating as you clenched them in fists; the shiver running down your spine made you slightly jump in your caged spot, turning your head around to watch where the sinister whispers were coming from. “Little princess, you’re time is running out, hehehe-“ Your breath got caught up in your throat, a feeling you already knew and never wanted to feel again, but the familiar voice that tormented you during the nights alone paralyzed you.

“Dumbass” a big and warm hand grabbed your shoulder, starling you; Beomgyu arched an eyebrow when you flinched and turned around, eyes bewildered and breath agitated. “What is it? Were you that scared of losing me?” Even the little tease in his voice didn’t help you calm down, your eyes leaving his to look around once more, your sweaty hands moving up to clasp his forearm tightly, scared of being left alone there.

You were grateful he didn’t start interrogating you right in the middle of the sea of people and instead was quick to drag you out of there; his eyes though, they flicked back and forth to you in concern and it was only when the two of you were at a safe distance from everyone else when he decided to speak. “Tell me what got you like this, Bambi.”

You fail to notice the way you had been gripping onto his forearm this whole time and only let go of him when his free hand brushed your fingers’ thigh hold, blinking a few times before taking in a deep breath, trying to calm your scared heart.

“He was here” you mumbled, the slight tremble in your voice not going unnoticed by the mage.

“Who?” he frowned, unconsciously taking a step closer to you, even if he knew he couldn’t help it, you looked like such a lost deer that he felt the urge to save you in his pocket.

“Kai.” “That is impossible.” “I am sure, Beomgyu.”

The mage gulped down at the serious look your shot him, one of your hands clasping the cloth of his cloak and hanging in there, your eyes still bathed in fear but managing to contain a little of yourself to connect with his eyes. Beomgyu’s mind rushed in thoughts― if Kai was there, how come he didn’t sense him? Were you sure? Or was it the trauma of your last encounter with the dark mage playing with your mind right now? Whatever it was he knew he had to investigate it further, but alone so what he did was sigh and grab the hand hanging from his clothe in between his.

“Let’s get you to safety first” he said, not waiting a second before teleporting the two of you back into the castle, and exactly to where he knew you needed to be right now.

Soobin’s eyes flicked up from the papers spreading all over his desk when the warm and familiar light loomed up out of nowhere in the middle of his office, his eyebrows knitting as he was able to spot the figures of both his best friend and you hand in hand.

“Good evening, Your Highness” mumbled Beomgyu, turning his head to look at his friend sitting behind his desk, the dark frames slipping on the bridge of his nose being pushed back into place as he leaned back to observe at the mage. Hearing his words, you also looked to the prince glaring at the two of you, an almost inaudible sigh of relief leaving you at the sight of him.

“Soobin” your lips stretched into a soft smile, your hand scaping from the mage’s hold as you took a step closer to the prince. Soobin’s eyes flicked to you and, even thought he smiled back, you noticed how it didn’t reach his eyes.

“Hello y/n” the stiffness in his voice got you frowning a little and the way he broke the eye contact with you to look down at the papers on his desk got you stopping in your tracks.

“I will be off now, got some work to do” informed the mage on your back, not waiting for an answer from anyone as he walked to the doors and crossed them, shutting them close behind him and leaving you alone with the prince in his office― you and him and the awkward silence around you.

“Is something wrong?” you asked softly as you walked closer to the prince, whose eyes still rejected to look back at you. Soobin hummed, writing something down before answering.

“Of course not, why would it be?”

You stopped next to him, behind his desk, and leaned against the dark wood; your fingers shadowed under the prince’s chin before pushing it up, forcing him to meet your eyes as you whispered a look at me, Soobin.

A long sigh came out of his pouty lips the moment his dark eyes met yours, his eyebrows knitting immediately over his dark frames; your free hand moved up and grabbed the frames before delicately pulling them off, placing them away on his desk before you cupped his cheek, your thump caressing his soft skin earning another shaky sigh from him.

“Tell me what is wrong, mh?” you asked as you pulled off some pretty eyes just for him, tenderly drawing circles on his skin

Fuck, you were good, he thought. “How… How was the carnival?” he asked, envy evident on his voice catching you a little off guard.

“Well, I had fun” you replied with honesty, deciding to leave the last part out, tilting your head slightly as you leaned closer to look into his eyes, trying to decipher what was happening with your little prince. “Were you sulking cause you couldn’t come?”

“… No” he answered, bashfully looking at a random object behind you. “I am most definitely not sulking… I just- I don’t know, it’s embarrassing” his ears tinted red as he flicked his eyes back to yours. “I am a little sad that I wasn’t the one escorting you.”

“I see” you mumbled trying to bite down the amusement in your voice, yet your eyes shone in a way that gave you away, making the prince getting even more embarrassed. “So, you were jealous, uh?”

“God, it sounds awful if you put it like that” he groaned ashamed, making you laugh a little.

“I just spoke the facts, Soobin” you smiled tenderly before leaning closer and giving him a soft kiss on his pouty lips. “There is nothing for you to be jealous about.”

“But there is” he mumbled, his head following yours as you pulled away from the short kiss, his eyes glued to your lips. “Not only Beomgyu’s the one taking you to the carnival but to the dance.”

“What do you mean? I don’t remember him asking me” you replied, your eyebrows furrowing in confusion. “You haven’t asked me either” Soobin groaned again, this time in annoyance.

“Trust me, there is nothing more that I want but that. I would have already asked you if I wasn’t..., well, me” he replied, tasting the last word bitterly. “The Crown Prince isn’t supposed to take anyone to the ball, he’s supposed to just stand beside his parents like some kind of accessory for them to brag about all night long.”

“Oh, that sounds…” you grimaced; wasn’t this supposed to be a ball to celebrate the prince’s safety return? Biting down the question, you decided to plant another sweet kiss on the prince’s lips, who reciprocated assertively and again chased after your lips once you pulled away. “Cheer up, bunny, it will be only a couple of songs, I’m sure Beomgyu would leave me when he gets tired.”

“I am confident he will not” he replied a little bit sulky but still leaning in to your touch. “Bunny, uh?”

“A little nickname I thought it suited you” Soobin lips stretched into a tiny smile as he turned his face to plant a kiss on the palm of your hand still cupping his cheek. “Do you like it?”

“Love everything that comes from you, pretty.”

Days went on and the ball was just around the corner; the castle was buzzling with the final preparations for the main event of the Kingdom, maids and butlers rushing all over the halls, even Beomgyu started getting severely interrupted for instructions by his disciples during your lessons. You observed carefully how the mage explained something into further detail to the rest of the young mages, them watching him with stars in their eyes and nodding at the words leaving his mouth. As he turned around, one of his brown eyebrows arched in your direction while you stared at him from your sit on the couch.

“I guess you are pretty looked up to” you stated once his disciples rushed out of his office; Beomgyu snorted, his eyes rolling but a faint shadow of a smile appearing on his lips.

“And you realize that now?”

“Looks like I’ll be going to the ball with someone quite big” you said playfully, your eyebrows moving up and down at the mage.

“I don’t recall asking you to be my partner.” “Who else would you take then?” “Mind you, I am a pretty solicited man in this kingdom, Bambi.”

“Okay, I can see that” you replied, nodding slightly as you got up and walked closer to the mage who seemed a little taken aback and almost flinched. “Well then, I will ask you first. Would you like to be my partner for the dance? … God, this feels like prom but older.”

Ignoring your last sentence, Beomgyu frowned and crossed his arms over his chest. “Aren’t you going with your oh, so charming prince in shining armor?”

“He told me he isn’t supposed to take anyone…”

“Oh, so he told you” the mage nodded, dark brown eyes staring into yours. “And I am the second option?” the corner of his lips slightly turned down.

“You’re no second option, you’re just the best one I have right now” you answered smiling jokingly at him. “Although I don’t really mind going alone” you added, ending with a simple shrug on your shoulders. “If you want to go with someone else that is completely fine” Beomgyu snarled at your comment, making you a little confused so you ended up adding: “Or if you just don’t want to go with me, geez, that’s fine too.”

“Shut up” he mumbled. “Fine, I’ll go with- no, you’ll come with me. I will pick you up from your bedroom so you better be ready in time.”

You smiled. “Of course, partner.”

“Master Beomgyu! A word, please?”

Ball day arrived as fast as you could blink and it was the most chaotic morning you had ever have in a long time; maids rushing in your bedroom at early hours, spreading open the curtains to let the natural light inside, pulling away your bedcovers from your body making you flinch in your bed and then tugging from you out of the comfort of your sleep to get you inside the bathroom and help you bathe.

They dedicated full hours to polish every single detail of you; from your nails to your eyebrows, doing a full skincare all over your body and even a massaging session to help you relax your muscles. By the time you were all dressed up and your hair was finishing getting done, you heard a few knocks on your door.

“The mage is here!” exclaimed one of the maids after speaking to Beomgyu on the other side, making you frown; he was earlier than he had said. Either way, you just motioned for them to let him in; you heard his footsteps as he walked inside but you couldn’t turn to greet him as a maid was working on finishing your make up, blocking your view and movements completely, only being able to hear the rest of the servants offering him to take a seat on the couch and wait for you.

“We are done, miss!”

There wasn’t a time when seeing yourself all dolled up by the maids didn’t catch you off guard but this time it made you had to close your mouth after a few seconds when you realized you were gawking at yourself; they really should rise their salary you thought as your fingers brushed your face still in amusement, your eyes trailing up from the beautiful and delicate jewelry they had put on you to the dress hugging your body and falling to the floor splendidly.

Fucking Cinderella shit.

Clumsily you got up from the seat and turned around to face the mage who was too focused on his own nails to notice you were ready; his eyes only snapped up to you when he heard your steps getting closer― oh. Beomgyu’s eyes grew bigger at the sight of you, gulping down to kill the feeling of his heart beating loudly on his throat, his own mouth going slack as his eyes moved down to your figure. The mage opened his mouth trying to get some words out, anything but when nothing came out he decided to clear his throat and stand up, ignoring the shameful way his knees trembled as he took steps closer to you.

“You cut your hair!” you exclaimed surprised at the sight of the mage; he wasn’t wearing his usual robes nor he had his long hair falling over his shoulders or tied in a ponytail as usual. Beomgyu’s hair was cut short, still fairly long, but its ends reaching his shoulders, wearing a beautiful suit that matched the colors and designs of your dress.

Beomgyu felt his breath faltering when you leaned closer and carelessly reached out a hand to touch his hair, your face closer to his than he had ever imagined― beauty, he dared to think.

“It suits you so well” you complimented him, letting go of the strand of hair and putting some distance again, oblivious to the way the mage regained his breath as you did that. Beomgyu forced himself to regain some composure, kneeling slightly in front of you, taking you by surprise as it was something he had never done before, and offering his hand for you to take; moving closer both of your hands to his face and placing a delicate kiss on your knuckles as he looked up.

“You look… beautiful” he said as he straightened up, his hand lowering but not letting go of yours, instead giving you a light squeeze. You thanked him, your smile only growing bigger at his compliment and he had to force himself to look away, clearing his throat once more and directing your hand to grab on his arm. “Ready?”

As Beomgyu and you walked down the hall and the muttering of people became louder and louder, so did the panging of your heart anxiously beating on your chest and the mage next to you, as the meticulous observer he was, realized it. “I can hear your brain working, Bambi, relax.”

You laughed nervously as you looked up at the man escorting you. “Sorry, just a little nervous, never had done something like this before.”

“You shouldn’t be nervous, you have me as a partner” he replied smuggly, making you scoff a little.

“You sound so cool” you joked, watching Beomgyu’s lips curling up in a sly smile.

“I am cool.”

Beomgyu and you made your way into the big, completely transformed ball room, shining brighter as ever, and you fighting against your urge to turn around and run away as you felt all ― absolutely all the eyes on the both of you; heads turning in your direction and conversations stopping abruptly to take a better look at whoever was that young girl escorted by the most prestigious mage of the kingdom.

“See?” muttered Beomgyu quietly only for you to hear as he led the two of you to a corner to patiently wait for the main characters of the night to arrive, grabbing two cups filled with sparkling water from a butler walking around with a tray filled with it and offering you one. “Not as bad as you thought, uh?”

You simple nodded and sipped some of the alcohol in your glass, your eyes looking around curiously; rich people party is what you thought as you quietly analyzed their clothes, their jewels, their mannerisms, their judgy stares towards you. What were you doing in that place? You didn’t belong to this world, clearly.

Your thoughts were cut off by the loud trumpets booming all over the ballroom, everyone’s attention shifting to the principal entrance’s door that were opening only to reveal two big figures with strong auras walking inside, crossing the middle of the ballroom under everyone’s eyes until they reached their seats on the throne; behind them walked alone a man of great height and port, polite smile on his face that didn’t reach his eyes.

Soobin stood next to his father whose big smile seemed to radiate light, a cup filled with wine being raised in his hand and his free hand on his son’s shoulder, patting him tenderly for everyone to see. What the King was saying didn’t even reach your ears; your mind went immediately numb the second the pair of dark eyes met yours across the room, shining brighter at the sight of you before they shamelessly trailed down to your dress, his eyebrows slightly twitching and his adam’s apple bobbing as he gulped down.

“… For the safety return of this Kingdom’s beloved crown prince, cheers!” “Cheers!”

Soobin didn’t move his eyes away from your for a second, nor when he drank from his own cup or when his father indicated him to seat on his throne or when Beomgyu caught your attention by pulling away your empty cup and gently grabbed your hand, silently asking you to dance; the prince inhaled sharply, straightening his back against his throne backrest, his lips inevitably curling down as he watched Beomgyu place one of his hand on the spot in your waist, pulling you closer to him and smirking smugly at you, muttering something on your ear that had you laughing softly as you reached your own hand to hold his.

And the way― the way you looked tonight, you were incredibly stunning, shining like a jewel yourself and Soobin had to grab tightly onto the armrest of the throne to stop himself from standing up and stealing you away from his friend and from everybody else in the room whose eyes lingered on you longer than he ever wanted.

“Y/n…” muttered Beomgyu under gritted teeth, the hand on your waist tightening, making you gulp nervously. “Did you just stomp on my feet? I thought Soobin did teach you how to dance.”

“Sorry, sorry, heh” you laughed nervously, feeling your cheeks warm; Beomgyu, of course, was a good dancer too and lead you perfectly well through the dance floor but his style was quite different to the one you were used to, which was Soobin’s. “Did I hurt you?”

Scoffing, Beomgyu replied. “Well, obviously not, you are so light you couldn’t even hurt a fly if you step on it.”

“I don’t think that’s- “I am trying to say that you can stomp on my feet if you need to, Bambi” “Thanks.”

Two full songs went on successfully with you and Beomgyu dancing around the ballroom, muttering some sorrys in between as you continued to step on him, and him ever so slightly making fun of you for it, liking the way you huffed in embarrassment and looked away. After a third song you accepted Beomgyu’s offer to take a small break and have something to eat and the two of you walked out of the dancefloor, heading to where the big buffet displayed for everyone to have a blast.

You were too caught on the deliciously looking sweets in front of you, debating on which to try first to even be able to notice the way Beomgyu tensed and froze on his place, head snapping to a side, sight sharpening as he felt something that shouldn’t be around.

“Listen Bambi, there is something I need to take care of, I will be right back, okay?” Beomgyu’s eyes didn’t see the curious look you gave him before walking away, disappearing from your sight.

You paid him no mind as you reassumed your arduous job of filling a little porcelain plate with sweets, the tip of your tongue in between your lips as you carefully picked one by one, your eyebrows frowning when you were about to pick up the last of a kind and it was suddenly grabbed by another hand. Looking up, you were met by an amused stare already on you, lips stretched into a silky smile and the sweet― your sweet being held in front of your eyes.

“Oh, I am so sorry, my lady, did you want this?” the man asked referring to the sweet, you nodded. “Would it be improper of me to suggest trading this sweet for a dance with my lady?”

You looked around trying to spot the figure of Beomgyu anywhere near, sighing in defeat as you saw him nowhere around and looking back at the man in front of you, waiting for a response. “… I don’t even know you.”

“How rude of me” the man kneeled in front of you and held his hand for you to grab it, which you hesitantly did, regretting it immediately as he placed his lips on your knuckles for a little too long. “I am prince Jaehyun from the Third Kingdom; may I know the name a princess such as yourself ports?”

Pulling your hand away and wiping it on the cloth of your dress with no dissimulation, you replied trying to control your facial expression as you stated your name.

“Such a beautiful name! Would my lady make me the honor of sharing a dance with me?”

“Sorry but she has promised me a dance.”

A large and strong back blocked your view completely; taking a few steps back involuntarily, you looked in surprise at the prince standing in front of you, his back towards you as he stood tall in front of the man whose eyes widened and smile fell from his face in a second, kneeling immediately at the sight of the crown prince.

“Your Highness crown prince Soobin” greeted the man, head low for a few long seconds until Soobin told him to stand up. “It’s an honor.”

“I am sure you wouldn’t mind if I take what’s mine now, won’t you?” stated the prince, bitter smile on his lips as he looked down at the man in front of his shaking his head quickly. Without even letting him speak another word, Soobin turned around on his heels, his smile widening once he connected eyes with you and he so charmingly held out his hand for you to take it. “May I have this dance?”

The plate in your hand shook slightly catching both of your attentions; Soobin took it from you and gently put it away, before scooping in his hand under yours and lead you back to the dancefloor. Well, shit if you thought you had received some looks when you and Beomgyu arrived it was nothing compared to the amount of stares now that Soobin was the one at your side and while you felt ever so tiny under so many judgmental eyes, Soobin seemed to shine even brighter, not paying any mind to the others and just carefully stopping in the middle of the ballroom, his hand gently grabbing your waist, his tender touch contrasting the intensity of his eyes on you.

“You look gorgeous” he told you as he began leading you at the rhythm of the music, his breath fanning over your face as he leaned closer. “Too gorgeous” he added, a bittersweetness in his voice that caught you a little off guard.

“Why do you look so mad?” you asked softly, squeezing his hand on yours and knitting your eyebrows in confusion. “Did something bad happen?”

“Everyone here wants you” he muttered under gritted teeth, nose wrinkling a little as he flicked his eyes around just for a second before they were back on you; Soobin pulled away a little and guided to you do a little spin, releasing the hold on your waist just for a second as you spun, catching you immediately back and pulling you closer to his chest, your cheeks burning as his tongue twirled over his lips and leaned closer to your ear. “But they can’t have what is mine, right?”

The low growl from the prince on your ear had your face flushing vivid red; his eyes lingered on your lips as they opened to try and say something, nothing coming out of it making him smirk; how bad did he want to kiss you right now in front of everyone else to make them understand that they shouldn’t even imagine putting a single finger on you or else.

But Soobin can’t do that there in the middle of everybody, in front of the King and Queen of the Kingdom whose eyes are fixated on the both of you, half intrigued half astonished; so instead the prince drags you out of the ballroom once the song finishes and guides you down the endless halls of the castle, pushing open a random door to an empty room and pushing you against the wood of it once it closed on your back.

Before you could react, his lips were over yours, moving in need and hunger, so desperately his tongue lapping on your parted lips before sneaking inside your mouth, groaning at the addicting taste of you; his hands that were first placed besides each side of your head now sliding up and down your body, grabbing and squeezing everything he can in his way, making you whine pathetically against him.

“Can’t stand it” he mumbled pulling away from your lips only to slid them down to your neck, his body pressing hard against yours as he kissed and bit and licked, his hands steadying on your hips and gripping them, making the silk of your dress slid up only a little from his roughness. “I hate that they think they can have you, ha! They should know better than that.”

You gasp when you feel one of his hands sliding down under your thigh to lift it up and wrap it around his waist, pushing up your dress even more; your hands moved up to clasp his hair in between your fingers, your head falling against the wood behind you. “You’re more possessive than I gave you credit for, bunny” the petname had the prince thrusting harsh against you, making you let out a soft whine while tugging at his roots.

“I can’t help it, y/n” he groaned as he slid down from your neck to your collarbone and inhaled sharply the scent of you that had his mind crazy before placing soft kisses down the invisible path to your chest, nibbling at your tits over your cloth. “Never had felt his before, never felt this fear of losing something from me” his eyes flicked up as he nibbled meaningly against one of your nipples, making you gasp yearning from more.

“You can’t lose me” you mumbled, looking mesmerized at the boy lapping yearningly your chest over your dress with his eyes fixated on yours; you felt the smirk forming on his lips at your words.

“Right? Because you are mine?” he questioned as he moved further down, placing a last kiss on your breasts before nibbling at your stomach, the sensation making your breath flinch. You hummed in agreement but that wasn’t enough for the prince. “Words, pretty, use your mouth.”

The leg that once was around his waist was now being moved by him over his shoulder as he got down on a knee, his nose moving down on your stomach till your pelvic bone, his eyebrows furrowing as the scent of you became stronger and got him drunk on you.

“Y-yeah” you muttered shakily as you felt his hot breath fanning over your entrance while his hands slid down under your dress and pulled it up; his eyes not moving an inch away from your reaction. “I’m yours, Soobin, all yours.”

The prince almost moaned at your words; licking his lips eagerly, he pulled the skirt of your dress over his head and slid under it, his fingers grabbing the cloth of your panties and pulling them down to your ankles. A loud moan came out of your lips when Soobin pressed down his mouth against your pussy, himself groaning out loud at the taste of your juices, his eyes rolling to the back of his head as he lapped against it like a dog, collecting everything he could on his tongue― so fucking sweet.

“Wa-wait Soobin- fuck, slow d-down” you whined breathlessly as you felt Soobin’s tongue working feverishly on you, trying to pull him away from your abused core by the hold on his hair; the prince huffed in annoyance at your intents and only sank further in you, growling a low no as he continued tongue-fucking you.

Soobin ate you out like he was some kind of starved man, groaning needily whenever your hips jolted against his face, his nose and chin drenched in you; he wasn’t going to fucking slow down, he wanted you to fall apart on his tongue, the mere thought of you cumming just by the muscle of his mouth numbing his mind and going feral underneath you. His devilish pace only worsened as he heard you getting louder announcing your climax; the prince groaned loudly as you pulled meanly from his hair while your hips rubbed against his face, your hot cum falling all over his mouth, dirty slurping sounds from underneath you reaching your ears as Soobin took over the job of licking you clean.

You breathed in and out deeply as you watched the prince appeared from under your skirt, after putting back on their place your panties, straightening the skirt of your dress and standing up, cupping your face in between his hands to connected his lips with yours, tasting yourself on his mouth, making you groan against him. His kisses became calmer and tender, thumbs caressing your cheeks before he pulled away, placing his forehead on yours.

“… Sorry” he mumbled a little ashamed but deep down satisfies with himself. You pecked his lips in response, making a soft smile appear on his pretty swollen lips. “So perfect.”

The both of you stood there a little longer catching your breath with a few kisses in between; you smiled softly as you help the prince tidy up his hair― the one you had been pulling and messing just minutes ago. Soobin let himself be tidy up by your gender touch, his eyes on you as you carefully straighten up his wrinkled clothes, his heart beating as loud as ever against his chest.

The intimacy of the moment, sadly, didn’t last too long. The loud knocks on the other side of the door got the two of you startled and, just in time as you stood back from it, the doors were flying open. Beomgyu panted loudly as he got inside the room, wild eyes fixated on you as he got closer.

“Beomgyu, what happened?” questioned Soobin, hugging your waist with his arm and pressing you closer to his chest. The mage ignored the act and grabbed your shoulders, pulling you away from the prince.

“You need to get out of here” he said hurriedly, ignoring the calls and demands of the prince on his back, his brown and tired eyes staring into yours.

“W-what?” you dumbly stumbled on your feet, grabbing his shirt for support as he continued to guide you to the doors. “Beomgyu, stop! What’s wrong?”

“Should have sent you back sooner but I just- I couldn’t. It’s my fault” he rambled as he guided to down the hall and out of the castle’s walls. Soobin followed closely behind; his words being completely ignored by the frantic mage. “I got too attached, too weak, too blind; he’s been here all along- fuck. I need to send you back, y/n.”

The realization fell upon you like a bucket of cold water. Beomgyu only stopped in his tracks when you reached the castle garden and, without wasting any more time, he fell to his knees and begun enchanting some words in a language you couldn’t decipher, that you hadn’t ever heard, not even during your magic lessons.

Soobin reached you in no time, stopping at your side and hugging you closer to him as he realized what was happening; Beomgyu’s aura became clearer and clearer to the eye and the air felt electrifying, making your skin get goosebumps all over.

“Tic tac, little princess.”

The familiar, disgusting, feeling of something slimy and wet touching your skin got you gasping in no second; the long and thick black tentacles were back and they snaked around your waist tightly, stealing the air out of you as they lifted up in the air. Your eyes met the half bored half amused blue eyes of the dark mage floating in the air, a tiny smile spreading on his lips as he drank up your expression.

“Long time no see, princess” he said, mockery in his voice. “Got the chance to spot you that fun day in town, we had so much fun, remember?”

“So, you were there!” you exclaimed, a shaky finger pointing accusatory to the man in front of you. “Are you some kind of stalker or something, man?” God, you hated it― you and your lousy mouth in the worst times.

Kai’s lips turned down. “I see that not even the castle’s discipline could win over you, uh? Guess you are one like me! Hehehe!” His loud, ear numbing laugh made you wince― not for so long before a loud growl came of his lips, his eyes going feral as he looked down to the floor.

Beomgyu was done with the enchanting― there was a large pitch-black hole on the floor. Now the mage was taking over the job of blasting away the annoying little tentacles of the dark mage with fire coming out of his hands, mumbling incoherences under his breath as his eyes were furrowed in annoyance.

“Such a pain in the ass, this one” you heard Kai saying to himself. “Say, little princess, should I just suck the life out of your body and have this over with?”

“Uh…” you blinked a few times at the question. “Well, I really would appreciate if you didn’t.”

“Boomer” Kai sighed and rolled his eyes before a mad smile spread on his face. “Good thing I get to decide things here. Why don’t I give you a fun ride while I take care of your little boyfriends down there?”

“They aren’t my boyfri-“ your words were cut off when so suddenly you were being lifted up in the air by the tentacle’s hold in your waist, reaching as high as they could in the sky; time froze as they suddenly stopped in mid-air for a second, you being able to spot the lights of the castles very far away from the ground before the tentacles were letting go of you.

There were little moments in your life where you had felt the real fear, horror, terror; for example, when you were very little, still very innocent in life and you were forced to abandoned your so precious childhood to face the real world before you, you parents were gone, you had no other relatives around or that you knew of, you were alone. Or, at first, that was what you thought before Granny and Yeonjun appeared to save you from your pitch-black hole.

There was also that time in high school days when Yeonjun had forced you to go with him to that new amusement park after school, which you thought was an incredible idea at first. You had blast, rode a lot of fun games and won against your best friend in those cute little stands of ‘knock out the pile of bottles and win a plushie!’. It was a great day until Yeonjun convinced you to ride on the first cart of the rollercoaster. Sometimes, if you recalled the memory in detail, you still could feel the pain in your throat from the intense screaming that came out of you and the way your heart fell from your stomach.

Since that day you started developing some kind of fear to heights.

And just like that day, a loud and painful scream came from the very back of your throat as you free-fell from God knows how many meters tall.

“Beomgyu!” screamed Soobin as his eyes were glued to the tiny figure falling from the sky, the loud scream from you erupting in the air making his heart stop.

The mage grunted as he rolled away from the sharp attack of the dark mage’s tentacles. Jumping and avoiding any kind of grip it could have on him, while trying to blast the damn thing with his magic. God, how he hated those things― they were ugly, they were gross and they were a pain in the ass.

From the corner of his eyes, he caught the sight of you falling at incredible speed from the sky. Kai giggled loudly as he tried to use the little distraction of you to caught his enemy, but Beomgyu knew the other man well― too well for his own good, and as the dark mage tried to strike another deadly hit on Beomgyu, he was quick to stop it and blast the tentacle away, teleporting immediately to the back of Kai, striking a hard hit on the back of his head while kicking his legs, making him fall to the ground.

Beomgyu’s eyes flicked to the sky once more and waisted no time before teleporting himself to you, in the middle of the air, wincing at the sharpness of your panicked scream before tangling his arms around your body, trying to shush you and calm you down which was fairly quite difficult. As soon as you were firmly in his arms, Beomgyu teleported you both to the ground, a few feet away from the intimidatingly big and black hole he had opened for you.

Once the arms around you pulled away, you fell on your knees, hands pressing against the ground as you took deep and shaky breaths. Beomgyu went back to the dark mage that was rushing towards the both of you, trying to get him away from you as much as possible, screaming something over the loud noise of blasting magic for you that didn’t reach your ears.

“Get her out of here!”

Soobin rushed towards you, helping you get up and forcing you to take some steps; you following blindly, only snapping out of the shock when half of your feet were hanging from the portal on the ground. You tried to jump away, but Soobin got you on your place tightly. Wincing, you turned your head to him, eyes filled with tears and lips trembling as you tried to plead for him to not let go of you.

The prince reprimed his urge to cry, at least in front of you, as his hands squeezed the sight of your arms; his breath shaking as he inhaled deeply to say the next words: “You need to leave.”

“No.” “Yes, it’s not safe for here anymore.” “Soobin, I can’t-“

The prince whined in agony as he forced you to turn around, the shouting of Beomgyu behind him telling him to hurry, yet his hands moved up to your face and crashed his lips against yours messily, drinking in the soft cries of you as you reciprocated, feeling his face wet either from your tears or his, he didn’t know. Pressing his forehead against yours, he planted a last, soft and tender kiss on your lips before whispering against them I love you.

And then you were pushed into the black hole in your back, your hands trying to grasp the hold of the prince, screaming in panic as the nothingness consumed you.

-

“Hey, baby, how are you feeling?” Yeonjun knocked softly on your door before pushing it open with his shoulder, tray with food on his hand and a soft yet worried smile on his face. You smiled back and sat down on your bed, looking down at the plate of ramen he brought, probably made by Granny out there in the kitchen, thanking him for it.

It had been barely a week since you came back, yet it felt like years. Since you were able to reach Yeonjun, he and Granny had decided to move in with you in your previous complex, the ceiling already fixed. Neither of them had left your side since then, taking care of you with meals made with love, hugs, shoulders to cry onto and a lot of patience as they listen to you when you needed to let go of everything― the last one being mostly Yeonjun, who knew the truth to it all.

“Did you get some sleep?” he asked softly as you eat the steaming noodles, reaching out his hand to caress your head tenderly.

“Barely” you replied, sighing. “Still got a lot of nightmares.” Yeonjun eyebrows knitted in worry. “But I’ll get over it with time, I guess.” I hope is that you truly wanted to say, but for the sake of your friend’s worry you decided to keep it in.

“Of course,” he agreed, tucking the little strands of hair behind your ear. “What do you say if we go out today? Maybe a walk will be good to clear your mind. You can get a shower and I’ll pick up some real nice clothes for you, mh?”

If you had to be honest, you didn’t want to get out. You didn’t even want to get up from your bed, but you knew Yeonjun was trying to help you the best he could, so you agreed to it and thanked him when he took the tray with the empty bowl from you back to the kitchen, leaving you alone to get into the shower.

Spring arrived and everything around you bloomed, beautiful flowers and the trees porting themselves beautifully as you and Yeonjun walked down the streets, eating the ice creams he had bought for the both of you, him talking about things that didn’t really reach you. Point for him, taking in some fresh air did help you feel a little lighter, but your mind― that was something you couldn’t shut down.

“… And so, me and Taehyun are the only ones who made it into the contest” Yeonjun smiled, finishing his story and looking down at you, only realizing you were somewhere else, your eyes glued to the flowers blooming from the trees over your heads, your eyes lost in thoughts. He sighed and finished his ice cream quickly, hiding the pout on his lips even thought you weren’t going to notice it either way.

Shyly, he pulled from the sleeve on your shirt, catching your attention, and pointed back to the convenience store standing on his back. “I need to get some things for Gran real quick, you wanna come or you prefer to wait here?” You opted for the second one, pointing to an empty bench a few feet away. “Okay baby, be right back.”

You watched silently, from the seat on your bench, to the world around you. Spring brought more color to the city surrounding you, people seemed livelier, laughing and spending their times with their loved ones. And you were supposed to be like them, but your heart ached whenever it was awake― the reminiscence of the prince flooding your mind, his last words, his last kiss.

You forced yourself to snap out of it again, shaking your head and inhaling deeply, trying to lose the knot in your throat. You needed to get over it, over him but, was that what you really wanted? To forget everything? To forget Soobin?

“Hello there” you had been so caught up in your thoughts, so buried in your mind, that you had failed to notice the person taking the seat next to you, so when they suddenly spoke and got you out of your head, you were startled.

More startled you were when your eyes met a pair of unforgivable ones, already staring into yours nervously, his familiar lips stretching into a shy smile. You blinked one, two, three times, as if you were hoping the image to fade away like it was some kind of hallucination, but it didn’t.

Your lips trembled and you sobbed audible, not even having the force to try and suppress it, making the man in front of you flinch in surprise. Soobin leaned in and cupped your face, quickly wiping away the running tears down your face, his eyebrows knitting in worry as he scanned your painful expression.

“I’m sorry” he mumbled, pulling you to his chest and hugging you, warm covering your body as you continued to cry on his shoulder, his hands caressing your back, his own voice faltering as he spoke. “I’m sorry, I missed you, I’m here, I love you.”

I’m sorry, I missed you, I’m here, I love you.

[park-jimin-isnt-real]

dusk ~ prologue: when dusk falls

pairings: yoongi x reader (endgame); kai (exo) x reader; kai x oc (endgame); namhope, jinkook, vmin rating: PG-16 genre: twilight au, urban fantasy(ish) romance this part: A phone call. tw: none for this part :) word count: ~0.4k track #1: "Flight Risk" ~ Tommy Lefroy: "How could I do this right if I'm such a flight risk?" title came from: me. pretty sure i came up with this one dusk masterlist ~ main masterlist an: oh boy, hope you guys are ready for this! thank you so much to @cui-nisi for being my beta again. here we go!

The rain beat down against his office window. The room was dark, only illuminated by a soft glow from the desk lamp. It was his turn to work the night shift, but he expected things to go rather smoothly.

A soft vibration from his pocket caught his attention. Had something happened at home? Pulling it out, he glanced at the number but didn't recognize it. He quickly swiped up to answer.

"Hello?"

"Hey, it's me," a soft voice he did recognize came through on the other line. His brows raised in shock, he hadn't heard from her in a while. Before he could ask, she continued, "I just wanted to let you know, as per our deal, that I'm moving again."

Ah. That explained the late-night call. "Really? Where to this time?"

"Some tiny town in the pacific northwest." He could feel her tension over the call, how hesitant she was to say anything to him even though she was required to. "I'm also going back to my actual name. I think it's been long enough."

"You could always go back to the name you had when you lived with me?" he suggested, knowing it would help her relax some if she could snap at him and let some of that tension out.

"Not a chance."

He understood why she was upset, he did, but it was nearly a century ago. "How long are you going to be angry with me?"

"Forever," she snapped again, then let a breath out. At least he was right, she sounded a bit more natural now. "Anyways, that's all I needed to tell you, so—"

"Wait a second," he cut her off before she could hang up on him.

"What?"

"What's the name of the town you're moving to?"

"Forks," she answered curtly. "It's in Washington state, in the United States." He already knew that, there was only one place in the world that could be described as pacific northwest, and he figured she knew that he knew. It was just how she talked with him, ever since that day so long ago.

"Okay," he said, gentle with her as ever, "thank you for telling me." The line went dead after that.

He didn't bother saving the number; he had kept his the same for decades now, so she could get ahold of him when she needed to. He placed his phone down on his desk and looked out the hospital window at the pine trees and parked cars down below.

Despite himself, Namjoon caught himself smiling in his reflection. "Things are about to get a lot more interesting around here."

Thank you so much for starting out this journey with me! Let me know what you think, and if you'd like to be a Cool Kid™️ and get added to the taglist! tagging: @still-with-koo

[hyukascampfire]

hello ashlynn, 🌰 here! i finally read heartworm yesterday and i’m still waiting for the tears to stop falling. it’s also been about a week or so since i watched look back (2024), so the archetype of the prodigy of an artist who grows up to realise they’re now not only “too old” for art, but also a dime a dozen in the industry, has pretty much been haunting me. God, i am heeding your signs and i shall pick up the brush again… tomorrow. if the weather is nice.

you captured the bittersweet essence of growing pains so poetically, too— the symbolism with the moth + childhood being compared to an animal because it’s not only wild but also innocent, it’s easy to scare it away, it requires gentleness and it’s short-lived. also how elements of fantasy subtly bleed through the fabric of the real, mundane world as a metaphor for hope/light at the end of the tunnel, and love finding a way!! the truck scene really had me on edge and yes, this is a double entendre. i admit that was all very hot of kai, but i’ve recently started taking driving lessons and for some reason i was so anxious for them (as if you’d go out of your way to write about them crashing into a tree in the midst of sweet, sweet smut…) but my point is that your writing is so immersive and vivid that i was watching a whole movie in 4k inside my head!! and what greater feeling is there than forgetting that you’re reading ( ‾́ ◡ ‾́ ) i also love how you portrayed kai as being strong-willed and steadfast because those are traits of his personality which i believe some moas might not perceive, mostly because kai unfortunately isn’t exempt from the unavoidable fate that is the babification of the maknae. overall, i’m so glad we live in a world where i get to read your works for free. looking forward to your holiday-themed drabbles! and the next tsfawc chapter, of course.

btw… i’m almost done reading the cruel prince AAAAA but i’ll tell you more about it in another ask (> <) hope you had a wonderful weekend and wishing you a great week ahead! love u ♡

hi babyyyy. i was so happy to see your notif, i knew i needed to put some time away to answer it thoroughly. 🩵

i was also just drawing for the first time in a while yesterday. i got a new matte screen protector for my ipad and it just felt so good to slip into that headspace i get into when i partake in what that little girl i used to be loved so dearly. i really did think i was going to be a big time artist. as you get older, it gets so much harder to believe that. as much as i love it, so often all i see when i create is what i lack, and why i can’t pursue it. i channeled that feeling into heartworm—if that hit anybody else where it hit me, i just want you to know that… maybe you won’t become an artist for a living. maybe you won’t sell your work or get a huge following all for your art and creation. but that doesn’t mean that you stop creating, or that you have to shove that part of yourself down and away to make peace with it. as heartworm hyuka said, if you love it, do it. i think i try to live by that these days :)

you put it all so beautifully and lyrically, honestly you put it even better than i could put it. heartworm has found a special place in my heart ( so maybe you could call it a… heartworm… hehe.. ) and it’s come from a really intimate place. as a recently graduated 19 year old girl, i really put my heart into letters on this one. maybe childhood is over, but i wanted to find a way to illustrate the end of childhood as something that doesn’t have to be bleak and dreadful, or as the death of passion, but rather as just another walk of life, as long as you hold what you adore dear to you. i know that with adults around you working as a constant reminder that you’ve got move forward, it’s hard to hold on to those things that you loved in your youth, but if you can, i think we should all try our damndest to do so.

also… kai truck scene.. 🤤 i can’t pick my favorite smut scene in the fic. i love them both so much. and the driving LMAOOO i remember when i first got my learner’s permit and was driving with my dad, i was ASTOUNDED about how it worked. riding in cars with others has been ruined for me now, i can never be at peace. i’m always hyper aware of what they’re doing.

thabk you so much for reading it, love! i was really waiting for you, because i always love to see what you have to say. ^.^ and i am SO with you about kai.

i am very much looking forward to your thoughts on the cruel prince. waiting very patiently!! muah.

[paulwalk9]

Everything You Need to Know About tv.youtube tv/start

Introduction

In the world of streaming platforms where Netflix and Prime are leading the race, YouTube TV stands out with its 85+ channels of sports, entertainment, news, and lifestyle all packed into one. Since its launch in 2017, the platform has been expanding its reach throughout the world and is gradually gaining popularity. In this blog post, we will discuss everything you need to know about tv.youtube tv/start.

Features Offered by YouTube TV

YouTube TV offers several channels, some of which are part of add-ons that require additional costs. You can stream YouTube TV on various platforms like Fire Stick, Chromecast, Smart TVs, Roku, etc. A subscription is required to access it per month, and it is priced at around $64.99. One of its outstanding features is unlimited cloud DVR recording, which no other OTT platform currently offers. You can store the content on the cloud for nine months. The service also provides YouTube Premium, which opens the door to innumerable benefits that do not apply to unsubscribed users. YouTube Premium members also enjoy YouTube Music as a part of their subscription pack. You will get several advantages of ad-free streaming, background playback, offline availability of videos, and access to YouTube originals like Cobra Kai.

How to Get Started with YouTube TV?

You can visit ‘tv.youtube.com‘ or ‘tv.youtube tv/start‘ and get a free 7/14 days trial after which you need to subscribe to continue streaming. To get started, follow these steps on a Roku device: Sign in with your Google account, allow the permissions asked like location access, choose from a list of channels available for you, subscribe to additional channels by paying an extra amount, and confirm your wishlist.

Activating through tv.youtube tv/start

To activate through tv.youtube tv/start, open the YouTube TV app on your smart TV and log in with your Google account. Go to youtube.com/activate on your mobile or laptop device and enter the code shown on your Smart TV or Roku screen by signing in with the Google account associated with your YouTube TV subscription. Once you enter the code and get it verified successfully, you are all set for a great viewing experience.

YouTube TV Channels and Add-ons

YouTube TV offers a variety of channels that include 24-hour news networks, sports channels like ESPN, Fox Sports, and NBA TV, children-specific channels like Disney, CN, and informative channels like Discovery and Animal Planet. It has also added Viacom channels like VH1 and Comedy Central. As far as add-ons are considered, YouTube TV offers Channels like AMC, Showtime, Fox Soccer Plus, Curiosity TV, and many sports add-ons. The service also offers local network channels for an area, and the Live Tab shows what content is currently streaming and what is next in the list. Additionally, it offers a Fantasy view to check your fantasy team’s performance while you enjoy your favorite sports, currently available for NFL.com teams only.

Conclusion

YouTube TV is a platform that provides a wide range of channels from sports to entertainment, news, and lifestyle all packed into one. It offers unlimited cloud DVR recording and YouTube Premium membership with its subscription pack. In this blog post, we discussed how to get started with YouTube TV, activate through tv.youtube tv/start, and the channels and add-ons provided by the platform. So, what are you waiting for? Subscribe to YouTube TV and enjoy uninterrupted streaming.

[loki-maybe-highkey]

I don't get why people (y'all already know who Im talkin bout 🤡) call Azriel toxic and an entitled prick. Like I waited and heard both sides of the story but now it's clear to me that these arguments were made to serve only one purpose: justify the other ship and invalidate Elriel because they hate Elain.

Hop in y'all it's story time. This is so long but I need it to make sense so shhh

Lemme start with a real life example and experience kay? So, I have a friend, let's call him X. Me and X have known eachother for over 5 years and we're super close. A couple years ago he told me that he's attracted to me but in a physical way (there's more to this story but it's kinda irrelevant). Anyway, the attraction was mutual (atleast to some extent on my part) and we almost hooked up. I wasn't exclusively in a relationship at that time but I was talking to someone so he thought better of it because he didn't want to ruin whatever I had going on with the other person. With that being said I did end up dating the other person and me and X continued to be friends without being weird and he was still attracted to me. He kept his thoughts to himself because I was with someone and later (like after my relationship ended) admitted that even though he felt terrible he would often fantasize about me and was jealous of the other guy. (which is completely normal because he's an adult and he didn't act on those impulses out of respect for me and no this doesn't make him a creep either idk what world y'all live in but you can't control someone else's thoughts).

Just putting it here incase people wanna call me out for being a rape apologist or SA denier- I don't condone any of those things and would never be ok with stalking/harassing or any weird behavior that guys unfortunately think is ok sometimes.

Now to Elriel's situation and what we see in the books. In Acofas, Rhys asks Azriel about his opinion on Lucien dealing with Graysen and Az says

"why should I be the judge of that".

He doesn't track Lucien because he values Elain's privacy. We then have those small Elriel moments in Acofas that show that Az atleast cares about Elain (the wishing her a happy solstice scene, the potatoes thing, and the gift exchange). In Acosf, we see Az is super protective of her but still keeps his distance. In Az's bonus chapter, Az again keeps his distance, doesn't give Elain her necklace infront of everyone because Lucien is present and it's mentioned many times in the chapter how 'wrong' he feels because Elain is a mated female and Az shouldn't feel that way about her.

Now about the argument with Rhys right after (this is where most the entitlement and toxic theories come from so). Az NEVER said he was entitled to Elain. He questioned the cauldron not because he wants Elain to be his mate but because her mating bond with Lucien is preventing him from being with her. Rhys asks him

"You believe you deserve to be her mate?"

And Az replies with how he thinks Lucien is not good enough for her and Elain isn't interested him in either. I don't see anything toxic about being jealous of the man that is in the way of you being with the woman you want to be with.

Also notice how in Acofas Az doesn't give his opinion on the situation but gets defensive and deflects Rhysand's question with another question. In his bonus chapter he only voices his thoughts AFTER he gets Elain's explicit consent. Instead of being a 'horny asshole' and 'weird alphamale' he doesn't project his thoughts and desires on anyone and only after he's certain that Elain wants him too does he admit to Rhys about how he feels. Like COME ON.

In conclusion, there is NOTHING wrong with two consenting adults to be attracted to eachother whether it is a just a physical and sexual attraction or something more. In my case, X being attracted to me doesn't mean that he doesn't care about me beyond his desire for me nor does it mean that he doesn't see/respect me as a person aside from that almost exactly like we're shown multiple times in the books that Az cares about Elain beyond his late night fantasies. Just like X kept his distance unless I clearly told him that I wanted to be with him Az takes active measures to stay away from Elain because he doesn't know for sure if she wants him or not. Me and X had history before the whole attraction thing and we're still friends just like Az and Elain are friends no matter how much anyone denies it. He listens to her ramble about things she loves and if y'all know dudes then you know they only sit there and listen to your shit because they care about you. (Again talking from experience since I've mostly had only guy friends all my life and they agree with this statement) if a guy isn't interested in you or if he doesn't deeply care for you he ain't gon waste his precious time to listen to you talk about your shit nor is he gonna make an effort for you. Our boy Az stays up with Elain for hours and listens to her talk about gardening and her plans and what not. He actively seeks her out and treats her like a normal person when others deem her crazy. From what I know he ain't doing that just to be "nice" and because he feels bad for her. Nope.

I can't believe I gotta make this clear after all that but Az still fantasizing about Elain even tho she has a mate doesn't mean he's weird or disgusting it means he's a person with feelings and desires and urges (some of which may even be out of his control) and him being decent enough and not pressuring her into anything (he didn't do anything in the bonus chapter that Elain didn't want).

He's been suffering for 500 years having loved Mor unconditionally without him getting any love back and now that he's over her and wants to pursue someone else he's toxic and bad all of a sudden. Make it make sense please.

He isn't toxic, he's frustrated (sexually 😂). He's not entitled, he's desperate. He isn't weird or disgusting, he's just a lil thirsty for the girl he likes. He isn't obsessed or crazy, he's about to be in a situation where he doesn't get the girl he wants (again) and he doesn't know what to do.

If y'all made it this far, thanks for coming to my ted talk. Peace out mfs.

[richincolor]

New Releases for the Week of May 3, 2021

It's great to see so many new books hitting the shelves this week. I know I've been waiting for several of these and am happy to be able to finally read them. 

The Ones We’re Meant to Find by Joan He Roaring Brook

Cee has been trapped on an abandoned island for three years without any recollection of how she arrived, or memories from her life prior. All she knows is that somewhere out there, beyond the horizon, she has a sister named Kay. Determined to find her, Cee devotes her days to building a boat from junk parts scavenged inland, doing everything in her power to survive until the day she gets off the island and reunites with her sister.

In a world apart, 16-year-old STEM prodigy Kasey Mizuhara is also living a life of isolation. The eco-city she calls home is one of eight levitating around the world, built for people who protected the planet―and now need protecting from it. With natural disasters on the rise due to climate change, eco-cities provide clean air, water, and shelter. Their residents, in exchange, must spend at least a third of their time in stasis pods, conducting business virtually whenever possible to reduce their environmental footprint. While Kasey, an introvert and loner, doesn’t mind the lifestyle, her sister Celia hated it. Popular and lovable, Celia much preferred the outside world. But no one could have predicted that Celia would take a boat out to sea, never to return.

Now it’s been three months since Celia’s disappearance, and Kasey has given up hope. Logic says that her sister must be dead. But as the public decries her stance, she starts to second guess herself and decides to retrace Celia’s last steps. Where they’ll lead her, she does not know. Her sister was full of secrets. But Kasey has a secret of her own. — Cover image and summary via Goodreads

Meet Cute Diary by Emery Lee Quill Tree Books

Noah Ramirez thinks he’s an expert on romance. He has to be for his popular blog, the Meet Cute Diary, a collection of trans happily ever afters. There’s just one problem—all the stories are fake. What started as the fantasies of a trans boy afraid to step out of the closet has grown into a beacon of hope for trans readers across the globe.

When a troll exposes the blog as fiction, Noah’s world unravels. The only way to save the Diary is to convince everyone that the stories are true, but he doesn’t have any proof. Then Drew walks into Noah’s life, and the pieces fall into place: Drew is willing to fake-date Noah to save the Diary. But when Noah’s feelings grow beyond their staged romance, he realizes that dating in real life isn’t quite the same as finding love on the page.

In this charming novel by Emery Lee, Noah will have to choose between following his own rules for love or discovering that the most romantic endings are the ones that go off script. — Cover image and summary via Goodreads

They Better Call Me Sugar: My Journey from the Hood to the Hardwood by Sugar Rodgers Black Sheep

Growing up in dire poverty in Suffolk, Virginia, Sugar (born Ta’Shauna) Rodgers never imagined that she would become an all-star player in the WNBA (Women’s National Basketball Association). Both of her siblings were in and out of prison throughout much of her childhood and shootings in her neighborhood were commonplace. For Sugar this was just a fact of life.

While academics wasn’t a high priority for Sugar and many of her friends, athletics always played a prominent role. She mastered her three-point shot on a net her brother put up just outside their home, eventually becoming so good that she could hustle local drug dealers out of money in one-on-one contests.

With the love and support of her family and friends, Sugar’s performance on her high school basketball team led to her recruitment by the Georgetown Hoyas, and her eventual draft into the WNBA in 2013 by the Minnesota Lynx (who won the WNBA Finals in Sugar’s first year). The first of her family to attend college, Sugar speaks of her struggles both academically and as an athlete with raw honesty.

Sugar’s road to a successful career as a professional basketball player is fraught with sadness and death–including her mother’s death when she’s fourteen, which leaves Sugar essentially homeless. Throughout it all, Sugar clings to basketball as a way to keep herself focused and sane.

And now Sugar shares her story as a message of hope and inspiration for young girls and boys everywhere, but especially those growing up in economically challenging conditions. Never sugarcoating her life experiences, she delivers a powerful message of discipline, perseverance, and always believing in oneself. — Cover image and summary via Goodreads

Excuse Me While I Ugly Cry by Joya Goffney HarperTeen

Quinn keeps lists of everything—from the days she’s ugly cried, to “Things That I Would Never Admit Out Loud,” to all the boys she’d like to kiss. Her lists keep her sane. By writing her fears on paper, she never has to face them in real life. That is, until her journal goes missing…

An anonymous account posts one of her lists on Instagram for the whole school to see and blackmails her into facing seven of her greatest fears, or else her entire journal will go public. Quinn doesn’t know who to trust. Desperate, she teams up with Carter Bennett—the last known person to have her journal—in a race against time to track down the blackmailer.

Together, they journey through everything Quinn’s been too afraid to face, and along the way, Quinn finds the courage to be honest, to live in the moment, and to fall in love. — Cover image and summary via Goodreads

Hurricane Summer by Asha Bromfield Wednesday Books

Tilla has spent her entire life trying to make her father love her. But every six months, he leaves their family and returns to his true home: the island of Jamaica.

When Tilla’s mother tells her she’ll be spending the summer on the island, Tilla dreads the idea of seeing him again, but longs to discover what life in Jamaica has always held for him.

In an unexpected turn of events, Tilla is forced to face the storm that unravels in her own life as she learns about the dark secrets that lie beyond the veil of paradise—all in the midst of an impending hurricane.

Hurricane Summer is a powerful coming of age story that deals with colorism, classism, young love, the father-daughter dynamic—and what it means to discover your own voice in the center of complete destruction. — Cover image and summary via Goodreads

Indivisible by Daniel Aleman Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

There is a word Mateo Garcia and his younger sister Sophie have been taught to fear for as long as they can remember: deportation. Over the past few years, however, the fear that their undocumented immigrant parents could be sent back to Mexico has started to fade to the back of their minds. And why wouldn’t it, when their Ma and Pa have been in the United States for so long, they have American-born children, and they’re hard workers and good neighbors?

When two ICE agents come asking for Pa, the Garcia family realizes that the lives they’ve built are about to come crumbling down. And when Mateo returns from school one day to find that his parents have been taken, he’ll have to come to terms with the fact that his family’s worst nightmare has become a reality.

With his Ma and Pa being held in separate detention centers, Mateo must learn how to look after his sister and himself. The choices Mateo makes, and the people he turns to for help, might reunite his family… or tear them apart for good. With his parents’ fate and his own future hanging in the balance, Mateo must figure out who he is and what he is capable of, even as he’s forced to question what it means to be an American teenager in a country that rejects his own mom and dad. — Cover art and summary via Goodreads

Counting Down with You by Tashie Bhuiyan Inkyard Press

Karina Ahmed has a plan. Keep her head down, get through high school without a fuss, and follow her parents’ rules—even if it means sacrificing her dreams. When her parents go abroad to Bangladesh for four weeks, Karina expects some peace and quiet. Instead, one simple lie unravels everything.

Karina is my girlfriend.

Tutoring the school’s resident bad boy was already crossing a line. Pretending to date him? Out of the question. But Ace Clyde does everything right—he brings her coffee in the mornings, impresses her friends without trying, and even promises to buy her a dozen books (a week) if she goes along with his fake-dating facade. Though Karina agrees, she can’t help but start counting down the days until her parents come back.

T-minus twenty-eight days until everything returns to normal—but what if Karina no longer wants it to? — Cover image and summary via Goodreads

All Kinds of Other by James Sie Quill Tree Books

In this tender, nuanced coming-of-age love story, two boys—one who is cis and one who is trans—have been guarding their hearts to protect themselves, until their feelings for each other give them a reason to stand up to their fears.

Two boys are starting at a new school.

Jules is just figuring out what it means to be gay and hasn’t totally decided whether he wants to be out at his new school. His parents and friends have all kinds of opinions, but for his part, Jules just wants to make the basketball team and keep his head down.

Jack is trying to start over after a best friend break-up. He followed his actor father clear across the country to LA, but he’s also totally ready to leave his past behind. Maybe this new school where no one knows him is exactly what he needs.

When the two boys meet, the sparks are undeniable. But then a video surfaces linking Jack to a pair of popular transgender vloggers, and the revelations about Jack’s past thrust both Jack and Jules into the spotlight they’ve been trying to avoid. Suddenly both boys have a choice to make—between lying low where it’s easier or following their hearts. — Cover image and summary via Goodreads

Luck of the Titanic by Stacey Lee G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers

Southampton, 1912: Seventeen-year-old British-Chinese Valora Luck has quit her job and smuggled herself aboard the Titanic with two goals in mind: to reunite with her twin brother Jamie--her only family now that both their parents are dead--and to convince a part-owner of the Ringling Brothers Circus to take the twins on as acrobats. Quick-thinking Val talks her way into opulent firstclass accommodations and finds Jamie with a group of fellow Chinese laborers in third class. But in the rigidly stratified world of the luxury liner, Val's ruse can only last so long, and after two long years apart, it's unclear if Jamie even wants the life Val proposes. Then, one moonless night in the North Atlantic, the unthinkable happens--the supposedly unsinkable ship is dealt a fatal blow--and Val and her companions suddenly find themselves in a race to survive.

Stacey Lee, master of historical fiction, brings a fresh perspective to an infamous tragedy, loosely inspired by the recently uncovered account of six Titanic survivors of Chinese descent.

[bao3bei4]

kpop music videos that gave their fans sexual brainworms

OR accidental fetish pop and its fringe fanbase: meditations on gendered desire 

large warning here: i am someone who has been into kpop for the past 10 years. however, i have always been an extremely casual fan. i do write fic, but not rpf. if any of that makes you not want to hear me talk about kpop rpf (or you don’t want to hear about it in general), please keep moving.

anyway, obviously pop is corporate, soulless, and manufactured. but sometimes some truly bizarre shit gets past the committees and destroys a generation. these are their stories.

the video that started this is all is got7’s just right, released july 10th, 2015.

yes that’s all 7 members of got7 (one is out of frame) shrunken down for your viewing pleasure. they live in your room and tell you you’re just right. 

this sheer fetish power of this video is nerfed only by how utterly sexless it is.

they’re styled like and dance like this. it’s a totally unironic sendup of the seminal work that preceded it by four years, “what makes you beautiful” by the white kpop group “one direction.” the chaste energy of the whole thing makes you legitimately wonder if the good people at jyp have just never heard of microphilia. (during a dramatic reading of this piece, here a friend interjected seriously, “i think it’s korean culture not to talk about things like this, fetishes in the workplace.”)

it’s for the best, honestly, though because the actress in the music video is lee ja in, who was 11 when the video was shot. considering that the members themselves ranged in age from 18-23 at the time, i think it’s actually very impressive that we only have to cancel one. 

you receive absolutely no prizes for guessing that it’s jackson wang we’re sending to social justice prison. why’d he do this? no one asked. 

at any rate, got7 fans, or “gans” (they actually call themselves igot7s which is too twee for me), have much to think about here: all 7 very small members of got7 sneaking into their room, possibly weird age play, and jackson wang eating a very large cake.

let’s see what they actually did. 

twitter was actually very tame. the most charged thing i found was (unsurprisingly) from a bts fan (“ban”). i don’t actually know what it means, but i think it means something.

so, of course, i turned to the internet’s last bastion of free speech, where you can say whatever the fuck you want and receive cheers, or as the kids say, “kudos.” that is, i read fanfiction. 

for those of you who don’t know your herstory, i started my journey at Asianfanfics.com, where, at the time of writing, there were 12,067 got7 stories. i want to start this by saying that i think feminism won, because someone was paying real human dollars to advertise their irene/wendy fanfiction on a banner ad, which is quite possibly a win for women for everywhere. 

anyway, Asianfanfics.com’s search engine sucks ass (i kept on finding stories about different combinations of bts members worrying about their weight and being reassured by another member that were entitled “just right”), so i decided to look through all got7 stories written between july 2015 and december 2015. 

but, alas, not a single got7 microphilia fic to be found. 

also, some genre commentary while i’m here: i think the stories i respect the most are the “[y/n] is a ordinary girl who’s assigned to be got7’s manager! can she make them into superstars? as sparks begin to fly, can she keep it professional?” like fuck yeah that sounds like a kickass dating sim. it almost definitely already is one. i salute all the teens around the world for buying into the fantasy of dating a boy band member that they themselves sell you. 

however, i don’t think i respect the “[member a] and [member b] are mafia/jocks and nerds/college students/high schoolers” concepts. in my opinion, the whole fantasy of boy band member is their personas, their hidden real personalities, their celebrity, and the show business setting. find a different intellectual property if you wanna write about school. i even respect the “yugyeom drank girl juice [not estrogen] and turned into a sexy girl” story more, because at least it knows exactly what it wants, and also because they’re all still boy band members. well, band members. shout out to yugyeom. 

so, anyway, i looked elsewhere. at the time of writing, archive of our own only had 11,645 got7 stories, but it does have a better search, so it effectively has more. as an aside, i think it’s so funny, and mildly disorienting at first, that archive of our own separates the “music & bands” section from the “celebrities & real people” section. boy band members aren’t real people. 

the first problem i encountered is that only 20 or so stories were written within a year of just right’s release. absolute cringe gans. don’t you care about your boys? there were zero stories tagged “vore” or “microphilia” either. stories containing the word “tiny” that were rated either “explicit” or “mature” were all normal (“normal”) size fetishization rather than, you know, just right. 

however, i learned my lesson from twitter. i realized that what had happened was that watching this video had created sleeper agents, just waiting for their activation phrase. that activation phrase? bangtan boys. and yeah, lo and behold, there was one! unfortunately (fortunately?) it had nothing to do with got7, let alone just right, so i’m not going to talk about it.  

basically what i learned is that this video may have actually been very normal, and my brain has just been destroyed by being too online at a young age. 

however, there are plenty more videos in this genre. i present to you exo wolf, a banger from may 30th, 2013. i say banger, because in a comedic inversion, it’s actually fucking terrible. 

this video is pretty self-explanatory in terms of why it might induce certain responses. 

let’s get the formalities out of the way. this video, the member who’s getting cancelled is kai. he has braids in this video :/

also skating on thin ice: xiumin and chen. guys what was up with the whole exo-m thing? like, we’re gonna have a cpop subgroup, but it’s going to be part chinese members and part korean members that we’ll give a chinese name? unsurprisingly, the three exo members who have departed from the group are all chinese. they weren’t able to stand the microaggressions probably. but xiumin and chen remain uncancelled as an official chinese apology for five thousand of years of on-and-off invasions of korea. sorry guys that was kinda fucked up. our bad! 

anyway, there are basically three avenues for exo fans to take: 1) humans with wolfish characters (usually wolf pack dynamics, which even wolves themselves don’t fucking use so i think all of you should shut up. the real omega here is your brain), 2) werewolves (duh), and 3) wolves with human characteristics (i.e. standard furry fare). 

exo themselves let all these possibilities exist at the same time, superimposing them over each other, which is very woke and egalitarian of them. let’s see what the people decided. awoo.

Asianfanfics dot com had many stories in this vein. i feel very validated that this time i was able to correctly predict a fetish. that said, briefly returning to my earlier comment regarding alternate universes: it’s intense psychic whiplash reading about these vampires and werewolves, and going okay okay luhan is a vampire this that whatever, and then seeing the actual real performance photos the author attaches at the bottom of each chapter. bro i forgot these were actual people.... it breaks immersion so bad... i’m sorry, i just can’t believe that any of these dancing boys are having weird vampire sex with wings or whatever. 

archive of our own also had many stories in this vein. and i think there are some important difference between the two sites worth talking about. 

first of all, i think the higher engagement rate of archive of our own really enables some of the authors to get super bold. it makes Asianfanfics.com seem a little quaint, actually. like the wordcounts are waaay longer, for one. it’s uncommon for a story hosted on Asianfanfics.com to be more than a few thousand words long (most of them could easily be published in the new yorker), whereas some of these archive of our own people have written full length novels about if the members of exo were werewolves. i guess it’s just intensely demoralizing for the aff.com crew to get, like, three comments per story. 

the second big difference is that i’m noticing more common themes between the ao3 crew’s writing. like stan intertextuality, or plagiarism, or whatever, but they seem to be implicitly engaging with each other’s characterizations, storylines, and tropes. i think it is because they probably all follow each other on twitter. (i have been active on twitter for three weeks now so i am an expert on fanfiction twitter.) 

anyway, like not that i am a particularly big gan (cannot even list all the members), but these people seem to have reached a very specific consensus on how jackson wang, for instance, would react in a variety of situations that really surprises me? if i were to sit down and write a got7 story, i think the fuckboitude, the douchebaggery is a big part of his charm. not to be nationalist or anything, but for god’s sake, he’s from hong kong. but these people have him as very sensitive, lots of protective instincts. not that i understood what anyone on aff.com was doing with his character either, but they did all seem to be doing different things. “kudos” to that, i guess.

but: exo. wolf. i searched the “wolves” tag. this filtered the list down from 33459 stories to 52 stories. and the “wolves” tag was very different from the aff.com “wolf” tag. for the most part, aff.com liked stories where a member was a wolf (usually shapeshifting), feral boy, lots of y/n, lots of y/n dating a feral boy who is secretly a wolf. 

ao3 really, really, really likes alpha/beta/omega stories. sorting by the most popular stories, only five on the first page weren’t a/b/o. and one of them was a cis f!baekhyun story, so i think the intended effect was communicated. anyway, let’s talk about some of the themes. 

first of all, i’m disappointed. today’s bonus cancellation is of ao3 “wolves” writers. why the fuck are you drawing so heavily from european wolves?? there are wolves in asia!! you don’t need to keep giving their packs and ranks weird latin names. i will kill you. i hate italy. korea literally has a native wolf. i hate all of you!!! if you want to write caucasian wolves go watch that dumbass cw show!!!! my god. 

the second theme (the first one was white supremacy) is that no one wants to be a wolf who fucks. i think that we need a sex positivity movement, or something, for omega rights. like, are all of you doing okay? you’re queering misogyny by inventing new genders to oppress. another level to “no one wants to be a wolf...” is the “who fucks” part. there are so many consent issues. and not even in like, a sexy intentional way? in a “i genuinely do not think this author understands how their writing comes off” way. unfortunately i am sensitive to untagged sexual coercion, and there was a lot of that.

at any rate, the aff.com wolves were at peace with being wolves, very self-actualized. the ao3 wolves know that every minute they spend alive on this bitch of an earth is suffering, and also sex.

the third theme is the evolution of y/n. y/n, who, in a startlingly woke move for aff.com, is almost always korean, is a girl main character stumbling into love, boy bands, and wolves (i think it’s because aff.com is oldschool kpop fandom, so therefore heavily asian itself in userbase). but y/n is not the main character in ao3 stories. she is the straight best friend. in what i think is a hilarious move, ao3 authors invert the gay best friend paradigm to give the gay main character a straight girl as best friend. she usually calls him “a gay,” she has lots of thoughts on boys, and she knows his sexuality better than he does and before he does. (sidebar: if all the men are gay, and all the women are straight...)

there’s a really fun twist to this, though, because the main character is always a self-insert in fanfiction. but where older fanfiction like aff.com was at peace with this and literalize it via y/n shenanigans, modern fic writers who haven’t finished distangling their complicated relationship with wanting to be a man who loves other men instead simply imbue their main character with their essence. a little voodoo doll sehun, with a lock of y/n hair. 

this creates a deeply ambivalent relationship with gender in these stories. the main character is usually an omega, but one who resents being an omega. their body and its parts is usually described, if at all, as ostensibly intersex (except more offensively), but in practice, these discourses inscribe a trans body. (nb: i think cis writers approach this in a really fucked up fetishizing way, but i hope by this point we know that that goes without saying) it’s incredibly straightforward to read this, and see the underlying desires and fears in a heady cocktail of unfiltered writing that’s deeply confessional. you know when freud had people say whatever the fuck they wanted and figured they’d eventually free associate into releasing their subconscious into reality? yeah. 

okay, and while we’re on the topic, let’s talk f(x) nu abo, released on may 4th, 2010. 

this is a blitzy, maximalist, amped up dance hit that even has its own applause and cheers built in. it’s so fucking annoying, and i love it. 

this song is on here because the second most popular kpop a/b/o story on ao3 is called “nu abo” except it’s about bts. that’s offensive enough in its own right. write something about f(x) (702 works). when will women win the right to have their own self-lubricating holes.

anyway, even though f(x) is probably innocent in all of this, i’m still cancelling amber liu. 

for queerbaiting. who told her to look like ruby rose but hot? and for what? i’m also cancelling her for racism, but that wasn’t in this video. 

moving on to a double feature: vixx voodoo doll and vixx chained up, released november 19, 2013 and november 9, 2015 respectively. this is because while voodoo doll is more formative, i think the fans who write fanfiction today got into kpop more recently, so we are casting a wide net.

anyway, voodoo doll is jam packed with weird pseudo-medical imagery, blood, vivisection, bondage, puppet shit, femdom, sharps, piercings, asphyxiation, dollification, stabbing/penetration metaphors, and a really sick and catchy dance. god that looks like the list of tags on the a/b/o wolf stories. 

for this song, we’re cancelling you, for being way too into this song when you were 13.

vixx voodoo doll made me goth i guess! insert that pic of the your music saved me sign, except it saved me from getting into emo or pop punk probably. 

chained up, comparatively, is much more tame. the only thing of note about it is that there are around 10 completely different chokers and choker looks the members wear in this music video. also they’re singing about being chained up, but that seemed a bit obvious. 

we could argue that voodoo doll is gay while chained up is gay (derogatory); that voodoo doll is queer while chained up is gay; that chained up is a sensitive masterpiece of omega4omega sexuality. but we’re not going to. 

we’re going to talk about what voodoo doll fanfiction was and was not. first, Aff.com had plenty of it. however, i was extremely disappointed to see that much of it did not hew to the spirit of vixx voodoo doll. my god, the voodoo doll becoming the one preying upon you disgusts me. the fantasy of the voodoo doll is that of absolute power. the idea that the doll itself has agency? instantly breaks the fantasy. i’m even not into voodoo dolls and i’m offended. 

i also don’t think it’s part of the voodoo doll fantasy to release the doll. the only story on there that involved Y/N kidnapping vixx members like in the music video was unavailable because the author deactivated their account. come back qxeen what did you see. 

i think this got off track, actually, in that i was mostly wondering why these people imprinted differently onto vixx voodoo doll than i did. like i don’t think you’re supposed to actually like straightforwardly absorb the morals and aesthetics of music videos like it’s propaganda. however, it’s more entertaining if you do. i hope ao3 doesn’t let me down. 

out of the then 5932 works in the vixx fandom (the least out of every group so far, excluding f(x) because they’re women), 59 of them included the word “voodoo” somewhere. that’s 1%. i legitimately can’t tell if that’s high or not. 

after some more cursory reading through the first page of popular results, my big takeaway is that people watched that video and wanted to be tortured and enslaved? but not, like, in a sexy way where the torturing is the point, the way where the point is to suffer bravely and beautifully, to endure the world’s harms like jesus on the cross, and then to fall into the arms of a beautiful boy who may or may not be the one hurting you in the first place. 

there’s a certain predictability to these fantasies. like it’s not even masochism, which would be fun at least, it’s literally just like the desire to be beautiful, even as you suffer. and i do find that a little boring. (but, i mean, you can’t help being a woman!)

sidebar: on chained up. what’s interesting about chained up, is that most of the then 38 “chained up” works (likely because the video has no storyline) are about the members fucking during chained up promotions. no one’s ever actually chained up, but whatever. it’s fine. it’s fine! 

anyway, here, more than ever, the nature of desire is stripped bare. i’ve written before [elsewhere in the unreleased tshirt cinematic universe] on how kpop boys are, through fandom, re-formed as white, or more strongly, i guess, blank slates. it’s really interesting to me how so much of this dynamic of projection is enabled by the fact that they’re asian men. they’re infantilized, feminized vessels; they’re seductive, but childlike, oblivious to their own charms, so nonthreatening; they have uncontrollable desires for sex, they’re scared of sex. and above all else, white women submit themselves to them, insert themselves into them. basically kpop fans tend to rework old school yellow peril and emasculation fantasies to reenact their own desires, often white, often cishet on them. 

what i am saying is that there’s another thesis about forced feminization and its racialized subtext in here. obviously gender is a racialized construct to begin with, but like it’s fascinating to argue that when white women remake asian men according to their own desires, that is, into themselves, they (hopefully) unintentionally echo these old fears about the sexual order.

it illuminates, it seems, the underlying dynamic in the denigration of asian men, which is of course the fear of miscegenation. now, my breathtaking ability to make everything about me aside, miscegenation is interesting because it presents a racial synthesis, beginning to collapse and trouble the artificial designations of purity. so we make asian men into white women, and end up with an unsettling hybrid. i’m sure this has deep implications for me personally.

but i think we already knew that quite a few of these people had yellow fever, so let’s talk about the gender dialectic at play. basically, the above dynamic, of making men into women (whether literally, in body; or subjectively, in mind; or even relationally, as they are objectified into passive vessels for your desire) coexists with the ostensibly converse dynamic, in which the straight women desires to be a gay man. these aren’t necessarily in conflict: it could easily be that these are different writers writing different stories, that both are ways of expressing discontent with existing in a raced, gendered body, or even that the end product of both is the same.

it’s been a while without a picture. all of you now have the legal right to hunt and kill me for making a d&g joke.

anyway, what i want to talk about is how these two fantasies can coexist. that by making a man into yourself, you can speak on your own desire in a passive way. my normal interest is analyzing forced masc fantasies (albeit in chinese opera lol), and they bear little to no resemblance to this kind of fantasy. this kind offers plausible deniability, of course, because wanting things is embarrassing. but also the fantasy isn’t about wanting to be a man, it’s about having no choice but to be a failed one. the gender pessimism running through these stories is palpable. basically andrea long chu wants what wolf fanfiction writers know: everyone is an omega, and everyone hates it.

at any rate, this racialized dynamic is one that i wasn’t sure how to bring up throughout this piece, mainly because there is no definitive way for me to tell the race of any individual writer, beyond just like the clear and present vibes that i receive. but i think it structures a lot of the fantasies contained in this essay. (i felt more comfortable bringing up the gendered dynamic, because it was fairly trivial to find out the current gender of the person writing each story i was reading.) 

obviously we should return to the specter haunting this conversation: the very much alive david eng. i think this sort of argument is familiar to readers of racial castration, especially his chapter on m. butterfly. btw sorry for mentioning that play 2 out of 3 posts on this blog. i have problems.

let’s talk about the parallel imagery between the depiction of gallimard’s final speech and the fanfiction i’ve described above. in it, gallimard makes himself into his own dream woman, dressing in yellowface and robes, the costume of puccini’s original madame butterfly. and he laments his lost love:

there is a vision of the orient that i have. of slender women in chong sams and kimonos who die for the love of unworthy foreign devils. who are born and raised to be the perfect women. who take whatever punishment we give them, and bounce back, strengthened by love, unconditionally.

in that, i see the self insert, and i see the sufferer of vixx voodoo fic. the fantasy that gallimard has about asian women is repeated, this time about asian men and a helpless identification with them. and on some level, gallimard’s women do have something very compelling to identify with: they suggest that there’s a way to endure white male violence without sacrifice, and even more potently, to enjoy it on some level.

but onward to the titular racial castration. eng argues that gallimard’s wilful ignorance of song’s true gender is a psychic castration -- song’s masculinity is diminished so that his own can be enhanced within their relationship. this, eng believes, acts out “richard fung’s contention that in western imaginary ‘asian and anus are conflated.’” this process stabilizes the relationship between the asian man and the white woman: they occupy the same place within the sexual dyad. 

this is, i think, why some people are addicted to writing from the bottom’s perspective. again -- not implying that irl bottoms don’t exist or that bottoms are psychically castrated lol -- but rather that you can fantasize about this ideal asian man that you can come to embody. in kpop rpf, rather than it being between a white man and an asian man (unless someone’s started writing chad future fic), it’s between two asian men. so this transformation is performed. whiteness is always intruding and so i think eng is helpful here to making it visible again. 

this essay isn’t a callout or actual cancellation or anything like that, i do wanna be clear. i guess i just like talking about fantasies, even the embarrassing ones, and where they come from. i think oftentimes in fandom spaces, we write a lot of stories off as idfic, and i think virtually every single one of the stories i referenced to write this fairly uncontroversially fall into that category. but i think calling something an “id” something or the other naturalizes the satisfaction it gives as purely instinctual and unconscious, when i do think there are deeper narratives at play. while i didn’t ever actually reference the base here (sorry), i do think it’s worth talking about how real world power shapes & maintains the superstructure, and thereby our fantasies. 

anyway in conclusion, maybe i was the one with sexual brainworms the whole time.

[procrastinatorimagines]

Our Little Secret Part 7

Fandom: The Vampire Diaries / The Originals

Series: Our Little Secret

Part 1 // Part 2 // Part 3 // Part 4 // Part 5 // Part 6 // 

Part 7 // Part 8 // Part 9 // Part 10 // Part 11 // Part 12 // Part 13 // Part 14 // Part 15 (Final)

Pairing: Klaus Mikaelson x Reader

Warning/s: none

Word Count: 1,337

Summary: Y/N Gilbert tried to put Mystic Falls - it’s problems, and her whirlwind romance with Klaus Mikaelson - behind her after she graduated, but all it takes is one unusual phone call to bring her right back to where she started and into the path of her first love as she races to solve the mystery threatening the lives of everyone in her home town.

Tags: @awesome-badass-cafeteria-sauce​ // @april-14-blog​ // @akshi8278​ // @keiko0​ // @mylovehes​ // @your-new-mom​

“Hello?” You answered, a pause as you waited somewhat impatiently for whoever had called you three times in the middle of the right to reply. The area code up it in Virginia, which, you realised with a feeling of slight dread, could only mean on thing. 

“Hello?!” Grumbling and half asleep you were about to hang up when you heard a crackle from the other end, pausing as you listened.

The crackling turned to panting, someone was running, presumably through... leaves? Was that the noise? You weren’t sure, but you were sure that you were tired. 

“Who is this?” You asked, turning on your bed side lamp and pushing yourself up into a sitting position, leaning against the head board and rubbing your eyes. 

“Help-” A voice came from the other side of the line, making you freeze, not daring to move another inch as you tried to listen to what was going on. “He said you could help-”

“Who is this? Who told you that?” You practically demanded, suddenly wide awake. The voice didn’t sound familiar but they sounded young, female, a teenager maybe?

“My dad- your number- in an emergency-” the connection was awful, and the continuous movement on the other end didn’t help, parts not getting through as you strained your ears to listen to what they had to say.

“Can you tell me who you are?” You asked her. A lot of your friends from Mystic Falls had children now, but the only ones in their teens were Lizzie and Josie Saltzman, but this didn’t sound like them, though it had been a number of years. “Please, I need you to tell me who you are, where you are, and if you’re in danger.”

You were already tearing yourself out of bed at this point, putting the phone on speaker. “Hope, my name’s Hope- Mystic- Salvatore Sch- please-” And with a scream, the line went dead. You stopped where you were standing, breathing shallow, face pale in horror. 

A second later, you’d forcefully shaken yourself out of it, there was no time to think. Ignoring the fact that it was 3 am, you threw open your closet, grabbing clothes for now and a suitcase to pack, multitasking getting dressed and packing for a trip. 

It had been years since you last set foot in Mystic Falls, moving away for college and only going back for your twin sister Elena’s ‘funeral’, but that didn’t mean you didn’t keep in contact with everyone there, occasionally. Silas, Kai, Lillian Salvatore, the Sirens... Tyler, Enzo and Stefan... 

A lot had happened, a lot of pain, a lot of loss, you’d only brought yourself to return to say goodbye to Elena, which thankfully hadn’t been permanent. You’d call her once you got to the airport, explain the phone call you’d received, as much as you could anyway.

Hope. You knew that name. It was the name of Klaus and Hailey’s daughter. If her dad had given her your number in case of emergencies... You didn’t know why he would have done, but nothing in this world meant more to Klaus than his family, especially his daughter you reckoned. So for him to give her your number, he must have put a lot of trust in you, or you were the absolute last resort. 

You’d loved Klaus once, not that you’d ever told him that, your romance had been like a fantasy, and fantasies didn’t last, especially when your prince charming was threatening to kill your sister and your friends. No relationship was perfect, but you and Klaus had been doomed to fail from the start. 

You were too different, different paths, different obligations... He’d always said that maybe one day, your paths would cross again, that it hadn’t been your time then but maybe it would be one day. Although you’d try to put it behind you, you still wore that shooting star necklace he’d given you, still thought of him when you looked up at the night sky. 

You glanced out of your windows now, taking in the twinkling lights about. Hope Mikaelson was in danger, and she’d asked for your help. So your help was what she was going to get, however helpful a human with no special abilities could be anyway.

You were going home.

-

You touched down in Viriginia just as the sun was rising, casting beautiful colours across the sky as you made your way to the taxi Elena had arranged for you. 

Elena had answered straight away; nothing screamed urgent like a mid night phone call from your distant, in multiple meanings, sister. You’d explained the situation on your way to your terminal, having booked the flight in the taxi over to the airport. She and Damon had been confused, to say the least, but they knew as much as you did.

They had Klaus’ number, you didn’t so they promised they’d be in touch with him, checking in with Alaric at the school too.

You spent the entire flight and taxi ride thinking it over again and again, replaying what had happened in your mind as you tried to figure out the why, all thoughts clearing from your mind only when you laid eyes on the welcome sign. 

Mystic Falls. You were actually here again. 

Checking your phone again you saw no new messages, from Elena or anyone else, which was odd. You’d expected someone to call you, anyone, but they hadn’t. They weren’t answering either, a feeling of pure dread filling you as the taxi reached the town square. 

It was still early morning, but the lack of people set your nerves on edge. 

“Huh, strange,” the taxi driver shivered, quickly taking your money and driving off as soon as you’d grabbed your belongings. You didn’t blame him, even by Mystic Falls standards, something was very wrong here. 

Okay, slight change of plan. Your planned first stop had been the School, but now it was the weapons cache Alaric had at the Mystic Grill. 

You moved quickly and carefully, on high alert just like Ric had taught you, an iron grip on your suitcase as you headed around the back of the building. 

It didn’t take you long to grab a supply of weapons, slipping a knife into each boot, a gun and stake in your belt and a crossbow on your back as you wished you didn’t have a suitcase to slow you down. You’d have to stash it here for now, just until you figured out what was going on.

Grabbing only the bare essentials out of it and shoving them into a more portable bag, you made it back around the building just in time to catch sight of something out the corner of your eye.

Pausing and slowly turning you looked into the window of the Grill, catching sight of people at the tables. You only had time to feel relieved for a split second before fear set in, looking at the way they were slumped over in their seats, some with their faces in their food, some on the floor, trays scattered around like they’d been dropped. They looked like they were asleep... or... dead. 

You felt your heart rate pick up as you swallowed, hard, not wanting to be anywhere near here when whatever did that came back. 

A shadow passing in front of you alerted you of someone or something behind you, flipping your crossbow back around from it’s position on your back and into your hands in seconds as you whirled around. You could take the girl out of Mystic Falls, but apparently you couldn’t take the Mystic Falls out of the girl.

Your breath caught in your throat as you registered who was standing before you, that face, that smirk... he hadn’t changed a bit. “Klaus,” you gasped, lowering your weapon as you took him in.

“Hello love,” he grinned, clearly glad to see you although his eyes revealed his worry, “now, what the blood hell is going on here?”

[salt-warrior]

WHEN EARTH TURNS TO ASHES

Masterlist

Chapter Six: Dust and Ashes and Cinders

Burning wings fluttered to no avail. Screams pierced the air with an agonizing ferocity. Flames licked at golden skin as the angels fell from Heaven and into the gaping jaws of Hell.

Dozens of the majestic creatures fell; the gradual descent causing their lovely features to turn impish and cruel. Feathered white wings turned to scales of black; the skin of shimmering gold shriveling into wrinkled gray tinged red; eyes of the purest summer's day transformed to a forest fire. It was both marvelous and shattering to watch.

The burning Hellfire—which should have consumed them—embellished their features into something near glorious. The flames licked their skin and caused it to glimmer instead of burn.

Heaven's clouds of ultimate glory began to close, allowing but one last angel to crash down to Hell. This final angel, however, did not change as she fell. Unlike her brothers and sisters, the angel's godly splendor increased into something more beautiful than man was worthy to behold. This angel was neither of Heaven or Hell, for She had been dragged out of Heaven against her will.

The angel continued to fall, but not to Hell—for the gates to fire and smoke had closed just as sure as the entrance to glory. The fallen angel was stuck in the middle. Earth.

Fire and glory consumed the angel, though no visible harm showed upon her skin. Tears flooded from her large earthy eyes and down her golden skin. She did not scream like the other fallen angels had, for at least they had a place where they were meant to live.

But this angel belonged to no one; she wasn't wanted by anyone.

***

Sweat still cooled the back of his neck, even as Kai walked into the Hospital. It was two in the morning, but family, doctors, and nurses still buzzed inside the white walls. Kai wasn't surprised. He remembered living in a different hospital for weeks while waiting for the passing of his mother.

It had been nearly a week since Kai had last come to visit Selene. He hadn't known whether or not he could stand to look at her, but he could no longer stay away— not after his dream.

Kai never remembered his dreams. He had been jealous of Thorne for having such exotic dreams for years, but maybe there was a reason for why he usually forgot. The dream he'd had was far too terrible and upsetting.

Kai had promised himself that he would do everything in his power to help this girl. He had kept that promise, but perhaps not in the way he should have. Kai had made a statement with the police. He had visited with Levana. He had taken care of her financial problems, but there wasn't a single day in which Kai had sat by her side and been there for her. He had left her all alone. He was a coward.

After seeing Selene for the first time since the accident, Kai had become sick. Guilt ate at him every time he looked at her mutilated flesh and lack of a limb. He had been so selfish; but he was ready to put that past him.

The extreme burns ward stank in a sickening way. You can still leave, Kai thought. She's in a coma; she won't know that you've been here. Kai hated himself for thinking it, but he couldn't help it.

Pushing past all the fear and guilt, Kai opened Selene's door. Immediate relief filled him at the mere sight of her. Already her skin was healing over, the skin grafting making her skin look patchy instead of bloody and charred.

Kai plopped down in the seat next to her bed. He hesitated, but grabbed her right hand— the one that wasn't burned. She looked peaceful and serene as she slept. Every care in the world had been swept away, if only for a few more days. A pang hit Kai's heart as he remembered the angel, knowing that it had been her.

Clearing his throat, Kai spoke to her. "I, um..." Kai turned to look at the doorway, but it remained empty. "I'm sorry that I haven't been here for you. You're all alone, and I let my own self pity and guilt keep me away, and I hope that you'll forgive me."

No response came, but Kai felt as if a weight had been lifted off his chest. "I got most of your affairs sorted through." Kai smiled, rubbing the back of her hand. Her palms were rough, and it must have been from her mechanics job. The backside of her hand, however, was soft and smooth. "I talked to Levana. She's the one who hit you. She feels terrible, maybe even worse than I feel."

A pause. For some reason, Kai kept on expecting her to talk to him. Stupid. "She was driving to visit her step-daughter. She just had a baby, but it's hard for her to take care of her. The daughter, Winter, has schizophrenia. She has these episodes where she thinks she's frozen or that her house is pooling with blood. Anyway, Levana was going down to help because Winter's husband was gone. He's a doctor and studies schizophrenia in hope for a cure. They were childhood best friends and he promised that he would help her. He loves her that much."

A warm fluttering filled Kai's chest. He wasn't entirely sure why he was telling Selene the story, or why Levana herself had told him, but he couldn't help it. He was a hopeless romantic, and the fantasy of someone loving another person that much filled Kai with unexplained joy. Thorne always teased him about it, but Kai couldn't help it.

"Anyways, Levana feels terrible about the whole thing. I heard that she's come to visit you a couple times even. She ran into Thorne one of the times." Thorne, unlike Kai, had visited Selene multiple times, though it was due to Kai's request. He had visited her three times, reporting that she looked even more hot every time he saw her while Kai sat in the hall outside her room trying not to cry. Kai hoped that he would not try to make a move once Selene woke up.

"I hope that Thorne hasn't bugged you too much. I told him just to come in and check on you, but he probably told you some terribly inappropriate jokes instead." Kai chuckled. "Sorry about him. His heart is in the right place, at least.

"I'm going to try contacting your family today. Well, Foster Family. I don't really know if it counts, but I bet they still love you." Kai cursed himself. He didn't want to give her false hope. Or himself for that matter. He had no clue of her backstory or why there had been a falling out. He had always had a happy family, and it was unfair to assume that hers was the same. "I bet that they'll come for you." Kai amended.

"I bet that I can even convince them to come down for your birthday." Kai winked, though there wasn't really a point. She couldn't see him. "I know that you'll be turning the big double decades in a week and I think that I'm gonna throw you a party."

Iko told him that small detail. She even mentioned that Selene should be able to be at home by that time as long as she had daily hospital visits.

"Selene," Kai covered her hand with both of his own. "I know that I don't know you at all, but I feel like some part of me does. Maybe it's because I dragged you from a burning car and have talked only complete nonsense to you since. Or perhaps it was fate. I don't know. You probably don't even believe in that kind of crap anyways."

A tugging sensation in Kai's gut urged him onward. "When I met Thorne, my best friend, we just kind of clicked. I knew that he would be my best friend, even before we talked to each other. I could be crazy, or sleep deprived–" Kai glanced at the clock on the wall.. "–but I think I'm supposed to know you."

Kai pulled Selene's hand up to his mouth and placed a tender kiss on it. He used to do this with his mother, while she was obstructed with machines and tubes. "Thank you for listening to me, Selene. I'll be back soon."

And Kai knew with a surety that he would.

***

The stench of smoke consumed the dark room, but the presence of the substance no longer remained. Selene's lungs burned, and her eyes stung, but at least she could breathe.

A light flashed on above Selene's head and she closed her eyes with a wince, blinded. A headache throbbed behind Selene's eyes, and the light made it ten times worse. "Wake up, you piece of crap." A kick landed in Selene's side. She let out a yelp, but that only earned her more abuse.

"Please stop." Selene begged, something she hated. She had begged for her mother not to leave her, but nature did enjoy the suffering of orphans. She had begged to stay with the Kesley family, but they hadn't wanted her. She had begged for Peony—the only person who had ever treated her like family—to stay with her, but she had left. "Please."

A strong arm grabbed Selene under the armpits, dragging her off the floor. Selene opened her eyes, just as her body was placed in a plastic school chair. Four people surrounded her, all familiar, but only three expected. The fourth caused a stab of betrayal within Selene.

"Why are you–"

"You know why we're doing this to you, Selene." Barked Sybil Mira, but that wasn't what Selene had been asking this time. She knew why they were doing it, but not why her best friend was. Sybil glared, her dark hair contrasted horribly with her honey skin and storm colored eyes. The black spots dancing across Selene's vision weren't doing much to help her case.

"You did a terrible thing." Sneered Aimery Park. It was funny to hear him accusing her of doing something bad after all the torment he had given to dozens of girls. "You killed Peony, and you're going to pay for it."

Selene glanced down at her feet. It was true; she had done something terrible. She was the reason why Peony had lost her life, and she deserved whatever came next. The only thing that she regretted was that her only friend had turned on her as well. She was the only girl who would talk to Selene, and it went the same for her. They sat together at lunch and did group projects together, and had even spent some time together outside of school together. But that had all been before the accident.

Pearl walked in front of the other three, dragging her nail viciously across Selene's cheek. "When we're done with you, you'll be nothing but dust and ashes and cinders."

Selene stared into Pearl's dark eyes fiercely. She was not about to play the docile girl who would get kicked around. Yes, Selene had made a mistake in letting Peony grow attached to her, but there was nothing that would fix it. They could do whatever they wanted to her, but Selene would never accept that it was right. Because it wasn't.

The final person came to stand in front of Selene. Her presence made Selene ache. She was the only one here who could truly hurt Selene. She would be the one to destroy her.

Selene waited for her best friend to say her piece. The girl hesitated, and for a second Selene thought that she looked regretful. There was a shot of pain in the blue eyes, and she was twisting her fingers in her hair out of nervous habit.

"You deserve this, Selene. You deserve the darkest and most fiery places of hades domain." Whispered the familiar voice. A single tear slipped from the girl's eye. Selene visibly flinched at the words. It hurt to know that her best friend would tell those who wanted to hurt her exactly how to injure her the most.

Selene hadn't meant to kill her sister. It had been an accident, and even the paramedics claimed that there was hardly anything she could have done differently. Selene blamed herself, but not in the same way Pearl did. She hadn't meant to do it, and she had thought her best friend would understand that.

Anger bubbled beneath Selene's skin. Hatred filled her; she would no longer beg to these monsters, but take her punishment. They could do anything to her, but in the end, she wouldn't waste another thought on them— they just weren't worth it.

"I'm sorry, but I'm pretty sure that place is already reserved for the four of you, Cress."

[tessandscottforever18]

Sept 12

Fresh off the UK release of Amazon Studios’ reimagined 'Cinderella', pop icon Camila Cabello talks to Nick Levine about her starring role in the film and her next chapter.

Camila Cabello is in a very good place right now. The utterly joyous video for “Don’t Go Yet”, the lead single from her forthcoming album Familia, shows her dancing around a dinner table surrounded by family, friends and RuPaul’s Drag Race star Valentina. An eyepopping colour palette definitely complements the song: a bright and buoyant Latin bop banger that hits like musical serotonin. In the comments beneath the YouTube video, the singer has added a sweet message: “Hope you guys love this and that it inspires many wine drunk kitchen dance parties for you and your familia.”

The video may be a visual feast, but it’s no fantasy. Cabello says it reflects a recent healing period during which she focused on “collective joy and community and really growing the seeds of my relationships”. The casual dinner parties she threw with partner Shawn Mendes became a nourishing ritual as she stepped off the pop star treadmill for the first time in nearly a decade. This breather was long overdue given that Cabello’s career has maintained an upward trajectory ever since she entered the US version of The X Factor in 2012. Though she auditioned as a solo artist, she ended up landing a record deal as a member of Fifth Harmony, a girl group formed One Direction-style on the show. Four years later, she went solo and cemented her A-list status with “Havana”, one of the bestselling digital songs of all time. She now has more than a dozen platinum singles to her name, including 2016’s collaboration with Machine Gun Kelly, “Bad Things”, and 2019’s “South of the Border” with Ed Sheeran and Cardi B.

Still, Cabello’s pace of life slowed down last year for one reason only: the pandemic. “It’s been an absolutely traumatic thing that’s happened to the world,” she says today, speaking on the phone shortly before she records Spanish overdubs for her movie debut in a feminist reimagining of Cinderella. “But in terms of my mental health, before that particular moment, I was really approaching… ” The 24-year-old pauses, then corrects herself. “I mean, I don’t think I was even approaching, I think I was burned out. And I feel like that necessary forced pause [caused by the pandemic] just allowed me to look at my life differently. It allowed me to recalibrate what makes me happy and what is important to me. I feel like it saved me in a lot of ways.”

Cabello has spoken candidly in the past about her struggles with anxiety, which in turn led to obsessive-compulsive disorder. Today, she likens managing this anxiety to a “constant ebb and flow”, which is made easier by her new therapist, but says the pandemic let her rethink her attitude towards work. “I’m fortunate enough to choose what I say yes and no to,” she explains. “That’s what’s really important to me this time around. If it’s affecting my mental health in a negative way, I’ll say no and do it another way.”

“I feel like the public and the media could almost have become a third person in our relationship.”

A project she’s clearly fully invested in is Cinderella, a new film version of the familiar fairy tale, directed by Pitch Perfect’s Kay Cannon. Cabello stars as the title character opposite Broadway legend Idina Menzel as her non-wicked stepmother and Pose actor Billy Porter as her fairy godparent. According to Cabello, these reimagined characters are just two of the film’s progressive elements. “Those classic fairy tales were all written by men. That’s why the story [of Cinderella] is that of a woman who’s saved by a prince,” Cabello says. “But in our version, which is written and directed by a woman, she’s saved herself and is trying to build her own life. It’s a much more empowering version of the story.”

In fact, Cabello’s Cinderella story has “no evil people in it at all”, because it places the focus firmly on the heroine’s self-actualisation. “Cinderella’s dream is to live an independent life at a time when women aren’t allowed to have careers,” she explains. “So she’s seeing something that’s wrong in the world and not waiting for someone else to correct it for her – she’s doing it herself. I think that’s a really necessary, positive update.”

Cabello has also been using her formidable social media presence – 54.5 million followers on Instagram, 11.9 million on TikTok – to spread some very necessary positivity. After being papped on a run in mid-July wearing “a top that shows my belly”, Cabello told her TikTok followers she thought “Damn!” before remembering that “being at war with your body is so last season”. Today, she says she experiences much less body insecurity since sharing this post. “I felt like I was not alone in feeling that or alone in my frustration,” she says. “And so next time there are pictures of me where my belly is out, there’s gonna be a community of women who have heard me talk about the way that makes me feel and who support me. And that is honestly so liberating.”

She has even used TikTok to break down a human rights issue that is close to her heart. In July, Cabello shared a well-received video explaining that recent protests in Cuba aren’t “about lack of Covid resources and medicine”, but are really “the latest layer in a 62-year-old story of a communist regime and a dictatorship”. She says speaking out in this way was a matter of moral obligation for her. “You know, I’m Cuban and I still have family on the island,” she says – Cabello was born in Havana, then moved to Miami with her parents when she was six. “And so much of what I do is Cuban culture. I mean, ‘Havana’ is one of my most successful songs so far,” she adds. “So when I’m in the United States, showing the beautiful part of Cuban culture, I feel like I also have to be there for the hard part, for the people there who are struggling.”

“If it’s affecting my mental health in a negative way, I’ll say no and do it another way.”

“Havana”, a sultry and infectious celebration of the Cuban capital, was so huge that it could easily have overshadowed her debut album. But thankfully, 2018’s Camila was a cool and cohesive affair that also spawned the brilliant angsty banger “Never Be the Same”. Then in 2019 Cabello launched her second album, Romance, with “Señorita”, a massively successful duet with Mendes that has now racked up 1.9 billion Spotify streams. When Cabello and Mendes confirmed they were dating shortly after its release, they became gossip-site staples – something they remain today – and were accused of faking the relationship for publicity. The impact of this negative coverage on their mental health was barely even mentioned.

Still, more than two years later, Cabello says she and Mendes have managed to maintain their privacy. “I feel like the public and the media could almost have become a third person in our relationship,” she says. “But that’s not been a thing for us because Shawn and I don’t even look at social media like that. Even though we know it’s there, it’s almost like it doesn’t exist for us. And that’s why we don’t live in LA. We live in Miami or Toronto, where there’s less paparazzi and that kind of attention is less of a thing.”

Looking ahead, Cabello says she’s excited for fans to hear Familia, which she feels has greater “intimacy” than her previous albums because she worked so closely with core collaborators Scott Harris, Ricky Reed and Mike Sabath. Because she trusted them implicitly, Cabello says she was able to “freestyle” during recording sessions and really pour her heart out. “You know, there’s one song [I’ve recorded for the album] where I’m talking about my mental health and anxiety without [specifically] saying it’s about anxiety,” she says. “But it’s about what anxiety looks and feels like for me in my body and in my mind. And that wasn’t something I came into the room intending to write about. Ricky just showed me a piece of music he had and it all came out of me.”

Cabello says this “stream of consciousness” songwriting style “never would have happened” when she was recording Camila and Romance because, for her, there was still too much “tension” in the room. But this time around, she felt comfortable enough to be truly vulnerable. In this respect, Cabello draws a comparison between her own creative evolution and that of Billie Eilish, who recently released her acclaimed second album, Happier Than Ever. “I saw this quote from Billie where she said, ‘I wasn’t scared, it wasn’t forced, there was no pressure, it was just really nice.’ And I feel the same way about this album’s process for me,” she says. The message is clear: in both her personal and professional lives, Camila Cabello is in a very good place.

[shelovescontrol91]

Camila Cabello is in a very good place right now. The utterly joyous video for “Don’t Go Yet”, the lead single from her forthcoming album Familia, shows her dancing around a dinner table surrounded by family, friends and RuPaul’s Drag Race star Valentina. An eyepopping colour palette definitely complements the song: a bright and buoyant Latin bop banger that hits like musical serotonin. In the comments beneath the YouTube video, the singer has added a sweet message: “Hope you guys love this and that it inspires many wine drunk kitchen dance parties for you and your familia.”

The video may be a visual feast, but it’s no fantasy. Cabello says it reflects a recent healing period during which she focused on “collective joy and community and really growing the seeds of my relationships”. The casual dinner parties she threw with partner Shawn Mendes became a nourishing ritual as she stepped off the pop star treadmill for the first time in nearly a decade. This breather was long overdue given that Cabello’s career has maintained an upward trajectory ever since she entered the US version of The X Factor in 2012. Though she auditioned as a solo artist, she ended up landing a record deal as a member of Fifth Harmony, a girl group formed One Direction-style on the show. Four years later, she went solo and cemented her A-list status with “Havana”, one of the bestselling digital songs of all time. She now has more than a dozen platinum singles to her name, including 2016’s collaboration with Machine Gun Kelly, “Bad Things”, and 2019’s “South of the Border” with Ed Sheeran and Cardi B.

Still, Cabello’s pace of life slowed down last year for one reason only: the pandemic. “It’s been an absolutely traumatic thing that’s happened to the world,” she says today, speaking on the phone shortly before she records Spanish overdubs for her movie debut in a feminist reimagining of Cinderella. “But in terms of my mental health, before that particular moment, I was really approaching… ” The 24-year-old pauses, then corrects herself. “I mean, I don’t think I was even approaching, I think I was burned out. And I feel like that necessary forced pause [caused by the pandemic] just allowed me to look at my life differently. It allowed me to recalibrate what makes me happy and what is important to me. I feel like it saved me in a lot of ways.”

Cabello has spoken candidly in the past about her struggles with anxiety, which in turn led to obsessive-compulsive disorder. Today, she likens managing this anxiety to a “constant ebb and flow”, which is made easier by her new therapist, but says the pandemic let her rethink her attitude towards work. “I’m fortunate enough to choose what I say yes and no to,” she explains. “That’s what’s really important to me this time around. If it’s affecting my mental health in a negative way, I’ll say no and do it another way.”

A project she’s clearly fully invested in is Cinderella, a new film version of the familiar fairy tale, directed by Pitch Perfect’s Kay Cannon. Cabello stars as the title character opposite Broadway legend Idina Menzel as her non-wicked stepmother and Pose actor Billy Porter as her fairy godparent. According to Cabello, these reimagined characters are just two of the film’s progressive elements. “Those classic fairy tales were all written by men. That’s why the story [of Cinderella] is that of a woman who’s saved by a prince,” Cabello says. “But in our version, which is written and directed by a woman, she’s saved herself and is trying to build her own life. It’s a much more empowering version of the story.”

In fact, Cabello’s Cinderella story has “no evil people in it at all”, because it places the focus firmly on the heroine’s self-actualisation. “Cinderella’s dream is to live an independent life at a time when women aren’t allowed to have careers,” she explains. “So she’s seeing something that’s wrong in the world and not waiting for someone else to correct it for her – she’s doing it herself. I think that’s a really necessary, positive update.”

Cabello has also been using her formidable social media presence – 54.5 million followers on Instagram, 11.9 million on TikTok – to spread some very necessary positivity. After being papped on a run in mid-July wearing “a top that shows my belly”, Cabello told her TikTok followers she thought “Damn!” before remembering that “being at war with your body is so last season”. Today, she says she experiences much less body insecurity since sharing this post. “I felt like I was not alone in feeling that or alone in my frustration,” she says. “And so next time there are pictures of me where my belly is out, there’s gonna be a community of women who have heard me talk about the way that makes me feel and who support me. And that is honestly so liberating.”

She has even used TikTok to break down a human rights issue that is close to her heart. In July, Cabello shared a well-received video explaining that recent protests in Cuba aren’t “about lack of Covid resources and medicine”, but are really “the latest layer in a 62-year-old story of a communist regime and a dictatorship”. She says speaking out in this way was a matter of moral obligation for her. “You know, I’m Cuban and I still have family on the island,” she says – Cabello was born in Havana, then moved to Miami with her parents when she was six. “And so much of what I do is Cuban culture. I mean, ‘Havana’ is one of my most successful songs so far,” she adds. “So when I’m in the United States, showing the beautiful part of Cuban culture, I feel like I also have to be there for the hard part, for the people there who are struggling.”

“If it’s affecting my mental health in a negative way, I’ll say no and do it another way.”

“Havana”, a sultry and infectious celebration of the Cuban capital, was so huge that it could easily have overshadowed her debut album. But thankfully, 2018’s Camila was a cool and cohesive affair that also spawned the brilliant angsty banger “Never Be the Same”. Then in 2019 Cabello launched her second album, Romance, with “Señorita”, a massively successful duet with Mendes that has now racked up 1.9 billion Spotify streams. When Cabello and Mendes confirmed they were dating shortly after its release, they became gossip-site staples – something they remain today – and were accused of faking the relationship for publicity. The impact of this negative coverage on their mental health was barely even mentioned.

Still, more than two years later, Cabello says she and Mendes have managed to maintain their privacy. “I feel like the public and the media could almost have become a third person in our relationship,” she says. “But that’s not been a thing for us because Shawn and I don’t even look at social media like that. Even though we know it’s there, it’s almost like it doesn’t exist for us. And that’s why we don’t live in LA. We live in Miami or Toronto, where there’s less paparazzi and that kind of attention is less of a thing.”

Looking ahead, Cabello says she’s excited for fans to hear Familia, which she feels has greater “intimacy” than her previous albums because she worked so closely with core collaborators Scott Harris, Ricky Reed and Mike Sabath. Because she trusted them implicitly, Cabello says she was able to “freestyle” during recording sessions and really pour her heart out. “You know, there’s one song [I’ve recorded for the album] where I’m talking about my mental health and anxiety without [specifically] saying it’s about anxiety,” she says. “But it’s about what anxiety looks and feels like for me in my body and in my mind. And that wasn’t something I came into the room intending to write about. Ricky just showed me a piece of music he had and it all came out of me.”

Cabello says this “stream of consciousness” songwriting style “never would have happened” when she was recording Camila and Romance because, for her, there was still too much “tension” in the room. But this time around, she felt comfortable enough to be truly vulnerable. In this respect, Cabello draws a comparison between her own creative evolution and that of Billie Eilish, who recently released her acclaimed second album, Happier Than Ever. “I saw this quote from Billie where she said, ‘I wasn’t scared, it wasn’t forced, there was no pressure, it was just really nice.’ And I feel the same way about this album’s process for me,” she says. The message is clear: in both her personal and professional lives, Camila Cabello is in a very good place.

[otakween]

I'm Standing on a Million Lives - Vol. 7

Another great volume! I'm really enjoying this arc, although it does seem a little TOO real for a fantasy setting (drug cartel war). I like the way the story is paced and it definitely keeps me interested. I feel like the overarching story with the game master has lost its way a bit though. With the way the plot's going it feels like we're going to need a lot of volumes or an abrupt ending to get to the projected "end game."

Ch. 30

-The theme of this arc is "grey morality." Not that this series hasn't explored that before, but it's very strong here. The rationalizing of the cartels and farmers is way more interesting than just painting them as pure evil. Of course you can tell we're ultimately supposed to side with the militia because they're represented by a cute anime waifu lol

-Yotsuya uses his charisma magic. I feel like it's been so long since magic has been used that I kinda forgot it existed

Ch. 31

-Loool at the cartel being like:

to Yusuke. It's refreshing when an isekai protag with a shitty personality is called out for...having a shitty personality. In most series everyone is just inexplicably in love with them anyway.

-I like how they're showing each character's strengths: Glen is the brains, Keita has charisma, and Yusuke is...brute strength I guess? I dunno where the heck the other girls have gone off to at this point, but that's the problem with writing big parties

-There's a sense of world building here with Ihar-Nemore being like the wild, wild west and the people are all in survival of the fittest mode. Everyone's morally bankrupt, but it seems like they have no other choice

-We get another girl with a grimdark backstory (Malita). Makes sense given the environment, but it's a bit exhausting at this point when everyone has a history like that.

Ch. 32

-Kay, Glen's a badass and I love her. Also, she got a lil NPC gf! Good for her :'D

-Boy did those block puzzles make me feel stupid lol

Ch. 33

-And we suddenly get a super interesting (nonfiction) blurb about how to report drug arrests without triggering people. The fact that Japanese people are writing stuff like this gives me hope. I thought they were still pretty outdated about how they handled drugs, but it looks like progress is being made.

-This chapter was all about teaching the Ihar-Nemore's morality and solid judgement. I feel like teaching morality is a very Japanese thing. I've heard they have ethics classes in elementary school. In America that's usually kept to religion or scouting. On the one hand it might be kind of cool if we taught morals in school, but on the other I feel like morality can be pretty subjective beyond the basic "don't kill each other" stuff. I could see it getting really controversial with parents

-Oh snap, a black dude! Cool to see, but also jarring to know that black people exist in this world and we're only now seeing one in volume 7. That's anime for ya -shrug-

-The fact that they communicated via the map was smart but were they just spelling things for hours and hours before Yusuke noticed it? That part seemed almost like a plot hole to me

Ch. 34

-Another very grimdark chapter. Lots of death and Carmela's father says she's expendable because she's female. I wonder if the author of this manga grew up reading Berserk? lol

-Are they implying that the bad guy with the eyebrows is also a hero? I might be way off base but that's my prediction for now. Magic doesn't work on him and he was able to see through their "heroes killing heroes = permadeath" ruse

-Glenda said "as the only adult..." and I was like "wait-what!?" lol I had no idea she was supposed to be adult. The anime art style isn't very good at distinguishing different ages so it really needs to be explicitly said how old people are.

[love-sapphirerose]

Yashahime: Princess Half-Demon Episode 21

https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/review/yashahime-princess-half-demon/episode-21/.170045

I was naïve enough to hope that, after delivering an essentially tolerable half-hour last week, Yashahime might finally be on the upswing. Except I forgot: Yashahime is where hope goes to die. The animation, voice-acting, and direction all still range from mediocre to outright bad; nothing's changed there. In order to truly understand what makes “The Secret of the Rainbow Pearls” so lame, we have to talk about its writing, and that means the return of ~Yashahime Masterpiece Theater~, where I provide a completely accurate, line-by-line breakdown of Yashahime's many flaws! We begin some two-hundred years before the beginning of InuYasha, with Kirinmaru plotting his defeat of the Great Dog Demon…

—Prologue: Wherein We Technically Learn About the Secret of the Rainbow Pearls.—

The Four Perils: Lord Kirinmaru, the Great Dog Demon is ill, which makes right now the perfect time to strike!

Kirinmaru: You idiots! I'm an honorable and soulful villain. I only want to kill the GDD if we're on equal footing! Riku, go deliver these medicines to him, so I can murder him later!

Riku: Kay. [He leaves]

Lady Zero: That damned fool Kirinmaru! If only he'd be willing to murder the GDD while he's down! This is why we haven't taken over the world yet! [Riku returns]

Riku: Yo, so I went to go deliver those meds, but that Great Dog Demon dude is definitely dead.

Lady Zero: What!? No! how cruel, how unjust is this world to take from it such a beloved creature! I simply cannot handle this grief, so I'm going to use my tears on the Shikon Jewel to make these Rainbow Pearls, which are like Infinity Gems, I guess? Point is, I'm not even a demon anymore, except I'll still be immortal and young even hundreds of years from now, so maybe I am a demon still?

Riku: Um.

—End Prologue—

(Why does Lady Zero's entire disposition turn on a dime? Why does it take almost two hundred years for Riku to get ahold of the other Rainbow Pearls? I hope you weren't hoping for answers to any of those questions, because instead the episode takes us to…)

—Act One: Wherein Towa Is Very Bad at Listening to Directions. Again.—

Setsuna: Alright, sis, look. Moroha and I are going off to do…whatever it is we do in our free time. It's the new moon, and you're powerless again. We all know that everything you touch is immediately ruined, so I am begging you. Please. Do not go anywhere. Do not do anything. Just stay inside with Kaede. Got it?

Towa: Yeah, yeah, I got it! Geez. Hey, Kaede, how are—

Kaede:[Unprompted] Have I ever told you about how much you remind me of your mother, Rin? I lived with her for years, and when she disappeared after you were born, it broke my heart.

Towa: You've literally never mentioned any of this to me, even though we've been in Feudal Japan for…I dunno, a while? Anyways, I guess I'm mildly interested in this. What happened? Did she die?

Kaede: I dunno. Probably.

Towa: Huh. Well, what about me reminded you of her?

Kaede: She was…nice?

Towa: Neat. Oh damn, was that the Dream Butterfly!? [Towa immediately runs outside to get into some shenanigans]

Setsuna:[Miles away] Seriously, Towa, what the fu—

—End Act One—

(I don't need to go into any more detail about why it's so ridiculous that it has taken twenty-one episodes for Towa to show even a passing interest in one of the most important story threads that fans have been dying to have resolved, right? That's good, because we haven't even gotten to the next part yet…)

—Act Two: Wherein Things Get Really Dumb. —

Towa: Aw, man, I lost the Dream Butterfly! I guess I'll give up on that again for another season or two. [Enter Riku]

Riku: Hey there girl. Remember me? I'm that sketchy guy who always shows up at suspiciously convenient moments. I got you arrested that one time? I have an inexplicable knowledge of the villains' movements and plans?

Towa: It's tea time! [The episode becomes about these two sharing a romantic tea picnic, for some reason]

Riku:[A few minutes of unbearably cringy flirting later…] So anyway, I'm, like, all about these Rainbow Pearls. You know, the incredible magic artifacts that are lodged in you and your twin sister's eyes? I gotta snatch 'em all!

Towa: Oh yeah. That isn't even a little suspicious! I've honestly never thought about them much. What do they even do when you have them all together?

Riku: Who knows? Your powers would increase, I suppose. Or perhaps a devastating Degenerate Age could begin…[Riku gives a mischievous double-wink]

(Note: That is really Riku's line from the show, straight up. Even the wink.)

Towa: I have no follow up questions for you. At all. Not even one! It's a good thing that I'm out here, vibing with such an obviously trustworthy dude, especially since I don't have any powers tonight!

Totetsu: Surprise! I'm gonna kill you all, you motherfu—

—End Act Two—

(There's a fight scene here, it's nothing special. The only noteworthy thing is that Riku summons some awfully familiar-looking poison miasma bees. Oh, and he takes a bunch of bees to the back to protect Towa, which leads us to the worst part of the whole episode…)

—Act Three: Wherein…You Know What? Just Read It For Yourselves. Trust Me.—

Riku: Agh! Towa, I've got to tell you that I used to work for Kirinmaru, that guy who wants to murder everything you love. Well, I used to work for him, but we both have *separate* schemes for the Rainbow Pearls, so it's been kind of awkward.

Towa: Yeah, yeah. Whatever, sure. Have I told you that I kind of have a crush on you?

Riku: Oh. Well, that's nice and all, but I don't know if you heard— [Setsuna and Moroha conveniently arrive]

Setsuna:Towa, you had one job. How are you so bad at this? Plus, this Riku guy is definitely a creep! He smells like our worst enemy! It's weird!

Towa: I know, isn't it hot?

Moroha: Um. [Riku brutally decapitates Totetsu, leaving his head to gasp and twitch on the ground. It's honestly pretty metal]

Riku: I'm just so good at murdering things. Wowzers!

Towa: You see, so trustworthy! In fact, he's so trustworthy that I'm just going to give him my Silver Pearl!

Moroha: Wait, what!?

Setsuna: That is, without a doubt, the stupidest thing you could possibly do at this moment. What on earth would make you think, even for a second, that—

Towa: Already done, no takebacks! Byeeeeeee!

Riku: Um….Okay? Peace out, then! [Riku dips out]

Setsuna: Was that really okay, handing over your Pearl like that? With those Rainbow Pearls he'll have immense demon power. We can only hope that their rightful owner won't use them for evil… [Towa looks very shocked by this ridiculously obvious point]

Moroha: And wasn't Mr. Riku working with Kirinmaru?

Towa: That's right!? I changed my mind! Give me back my Silver Pearl!!! Riku, wait!

Riku: Haha. No.

—End Episode—

You know what the kicker is? That final exchange up there is taken word-for-word from the dialogue in the final scene. What more is there to say, when Yashahime's actual script becomes virtually indistinguishable from my bitter snark? It's one thing to try and blend some humor into your fantasy adventure story, but it's another thing altogether for the show to make its ostensible lead heroine into such an incompetent joke. This week's Half-Star of Pity comes from the single redeeming moment of the entire episode: Moroha finally got herself a corpse head to sell! Good for you girl! Now go buy yourself a hot meal, a fresh set of clothes, and a one-way ticket out of this show, because Lord knows it isn't doing you any favors.

[larryssunflower]

The Non-Royal Romance, season two, part two

last part of season one     teaser trailer      season two, part one      masterlist

tagging- @ravenpuff02 @simplyaiden-blog @msjr0119 @butindeed @mfackenthal @choices-lurker @american-duchess @drakelover78 @monosodiumglutamateme @crookedslimecreatorpasta @mrsdrakewalkerblog @traeumerinwitzhelden @gardeningourmet​ @speedyoperarascalparty​ @agent-zephyrkah​ @liam-rhys-x-mc-x-constantine​ @snyggflicka​ @texaskitten30​ @annekebbphotography​ @irishwhiskys-blog​ @nomadics-stuff​ @catlady0911​ @twinkle-320​ @i-bloody-love-drake-walker​ @drakewalker04​ @bigmemesplz​ @jovialyouthmusic​ @sleepwalkingelite​ @pintobom​ @moneyfordiamonds​ @mskaneko​ @lauzales​ @princessleac1​ @kingliam2019​ @queen-arabella-of-cordonia​ @drake-colt-lover-99​

- Thank you all for your support and I really do apologize for taking so long with this! You would think having all the time in the world because of Quarantine would make me write more… guess not lol. But in all seriousness, I have been going through serious writer’s block right now but I hope you guys like this part! I made it a little longer than usual for you guys ;) I can’t wait to continue this story further! love you all <3 -

warning- there may or may not be some smut at the end hehe ;)

Blinking away sleep from my eyes, I sit up, stopping when I see Drake, sitting in a chair beside me, watching me with a soft look in his eyes. I blush slightly, feeling insecure having just woke up, knowing I look like a hot mess. “Ah, good morning Princess,” Drake murmurs amusedly as I stretch my arms above my head before looking at him with a tired smile. “You know I’m Queen now, right?” I retort, my voice slightly hoarse, making him smirk. “Touché,” He comments with a slight nod. I chuckle and start to remember last night, how I asked him to stay when something hits me. “How long have you been awake?” I ask, curiosity getting the better of me. He couldn’t have stayed awake the whole night, right?

He seems surprised at the question and takes a moment to think. “About 36 hours, why?” He asks nonchalantly, turning his head to the side. I choke. “36 hours? How are you alive??” I demand incredulously, my eyes wide, half in shock, half impressed. Drake chuckles, looking down. “For a time when I serving the navy, I was trained to stay awake for 72 hours,” He explains, and I’m taken aback yet again. “How?” I ask, making him smile slightly, looking down. “It’s a sniper’s tactic traditionally, which helped them stay awake while watching or following a target for a long period of time,” He says, somewhat tentatively, “It works by creating a fantasy or imagining a scenario which includes the target, to keep them attentive and focused at the task at hand.” Drake concludes. I nod along, thinking for a moment.

I glance up at him, my stomach suddenly fluttering. “So you created a scenario about… me?” I ask softly, and his cheeks redden slightly. “Y-yeah,” He admits. A grin spreads over my face. “Drake…” I start slowly, “what’s the fantasy?” I ask, my eyes flicking up to meet his. He brings his hand to scratch behind his neck, and his eyes shifting to the side. “Well-“ Drake’s cut off by aggressive pounding on my door, making me flinch, my heart stopping.

Drake is instantly on his feet. My eyes widen as I recognize the voice shouting through the door. “Hey! Alana!! I know you’re in there! Open up!”. I laugh in shock, making Drake look at me, surprised. I clamber off my bed, rushing over to the door. “Alana you can’t just-“ Drake starts, coming after me, but I fling the door open to reveal someone who has been at university for the past four years, my sister. “Kai!” I exclaim, throwing my arms around her, making her giggle, hugging me back. “Alana! god, it’s been too long!” She gushes, squeezing me tightly. I pull away to take a good look at her. I feel emotional as she smiles at me, looking so grown up. “Wow, Kai, you look older than me! How is that possible?” I laugh, making her shrug playfully.

“It’s all the studying! I swear I’ve aged about thirty years just to get a damn Bachelor’s,” Kai chuckles, her eyes drifting over my shoulder. “Oh! Kai, this is my bodyguard, Drake,” I say, turning so she can see him. She nods at him, and he does the same back.

I grab Kai’s hand, dragging her inside. “Come in! We need to catch up.” I demand, marching her to my couch in the corner of the room. Drake walks to the door, motioning that he will be out in the hallway, and I nod with a smile.

“Gah! I’m so excited for you! I used to dream about this time when we were younger, thinking about you being Queen and engaged! It’s so exciting!” She exclaims, her face bright. I force the best smile I can. If only she knew how complicated all of this is. “Well it’s not all perfect,” I start, but she cuts me off. “Well of course. You still have that Assassination situation, and I’m sure the wedding planning is going to be crazy, but no matter what you need, I’ll be right here.” She implores, holding my hand.

A huge wave of gratitude washes over me and I smile with a sigh of relief. “Thank you Kai, I really appreciate it. It also helps that you are way more educated than I am,” I say with a chuckle, and she just grins. “I’ve always been the smarter one, I think you should learn to accept that,” She retorts cheekily, making me roll my eyes. “Whatever,” I chuckle.

The door opens after a gentle knock, Drake sticking his head in. “Hey, Maxwell’s here-“ and before he can finish his sentence, Max barges in, squealing with excitement when he sees Kai. Drake just rolls his eyes in annoyance, making me grin. I know he secretly loves it, although he will never admit that. “Little K!” Maxwell exclaims, running over. Kai gets up excitedly, wrapping him in a hug.

We all catch up for a moment before Maxwell turns to me. “Oh yeah! We have that barn-raising today, so you guys should probably get dressed.” Maxwell says, and I groan at my forgetfulness. “Oh, I came just in time then!” Kai says excitedly.

“Let’s go catch up somewhere else and let my dear sister change in peace,” Kai says, grabbing Max’s arm, and guiding him out. I wave after them with a chuckle as Max starts to fill her in on the past four years.

—-

Our car finally arrives at the small patch of farm where the building of the barn has already started. A crowd of nobles are helping construction workers lay down the foundation, clearly sweating on the warm summer day. The paparazzi are snapping photos here and there, while others wait in the shade for new nobles to arrive, ready to assault them with questions for their magazines and gossip columns.

Drake turns around in his seat, facing Kai and I. “Are you two ready?” He asks, and I nod. “Yeah, I guess so,” Kai mumbles, seeming nervous. It’s her first time being introduced to the press. Like me, she was hidden her whole childhood from Cordonia. It actually ended up helping her when she went to university in France, because no one knew who she was. Her intellectual success depended on her work, not her title. I’m not surprised she is nervous, not too long ago it was my first time being in front of the press at the derby. God, that feels like a century ago.

Drake opens my door, holding his hand out. For a moment I’m back to that day, and Drake is still here, holding his hand for me. If only things had changed. In the beginning, I had dreaded the inevitability having to be engaged and married to someone I didn’t love, but after meeting Drake and slowly falling in love with him, the thought of being with someone else became painful to even consider. If only I was on the engagement tour with him as my fiancé, not as my bodyguard. I take his hand and step down, making eye contact with his beautiful deep eyes for a moment, before I look away, feeling loss as soon as my eyes leave his. He helps Kai down, and the three of us start down the dirt path to the barn, the hot summer wind already wrapping itself around me like a thick blanket. The paparazzi spot us, and the vultures descend. In seconds they are crowded around us, shouting and snapping pictures, blinding us with their flash.

“Who is this woman with you?” “Alana! How are things with Liam?” “Have you found the Assassins yet?” “Who are you wearing?”

“Okay folks, back up!” Drake shouts, him and Kai’s bodyguard creating a barrier between us and pushing them away. “Come on! Just one comment!” One reporter begs, and Drake looks over at me. I nod reluctantly in approval. “The Queen will give a statement, so shut up and let her speak,” Drake says in a commanding voice and within seconds the paparazzi quiet down, eagerly holding out tape recorders towards us and positioning their cameras. I clear my throat nervously. “Thank you all for uh, coming out today, I appreciate it. This is my younger sister, Princess Kai, she just graduated from University and will be accompanying me during the engagement tour,” I begin, my palms already starting to sweat. I am hopeless at public speaking. “We, unfortunately, haven’t found anything on the assassination yet, but we are working tirelessly to find out who orchestrated that horrible event. And Liam and I are doing well. Thank you,” I finish the statement to my incredible relief, already cringing at my choppy, awkward speech. The paparazzi only respond with more questions and I’m about to leave when Kai stops me, her hand in my arm. “wait,” she whispers to me before turning to the paparazzi.

“Hello, I wanted to make sure to personally introduce myself to you all. As my amazing sister said, I just graduated from University and I am so pleased to finally be home in Cordonia. It breaks my heart to be home at such a scary time, where the people and nobles alike are scared for their lives. But I assure you, as my sister said, we will work tirelessly until we find who is responsible. In the meantime, all we can do is help unite Cordonia, and remind people of love, kindness, and hope in this troubling time. Because that is what Liam and Alana’s union stands for, the perseverance of our incredible country and the unity of our nation. Now, if you lovely people don’t mind, we have a barn to build.” Kai finishes effortlessly with a firm nod, before looping her arm through mine and leading me toward the barn.

I stumble after her in shock. I open and close my mouth wordlessly. “Wow. You are incredible at speaking- words-” I stutter, further proving my point of being helpless at speaking, making her laugh. “Yeah well I learned a lot about diplomacy and public speaking at school, but to be honest its a second nature at this point,” She says simply. We are quiet for a moment, the only sound being the crunch of our shoes on the dirt.

After a moment, I break the comfortable silence. “You reminded me of dad,” I say suddenly, making her stop, her eyes soft. “Really?” She asks, a hopeful smile on her face. I nod. “He was always incredible at speaking, you know that,, I always admired him for it,” I mumble, a sadness falling over me. He died when I was eight, Kai was only five, but she still misses him just as much. I was always a daddy’s girl which made life after his death so much harder with my distant mother who only got worse as the years went by.

“Hey, just because you aren’t the best at public speaking doesn’t mean you won’t be a great leader,” Kai reassures me, but I just snort. “Let’s hope so,” I say, making her laugh.

“Ah, You must be the famous little sister!” A voice says, and we look over to see Liam and Leo walking up to us. Kai nods with a polite laugh. “That’s me! You must be the fiancé!” She enthuses, and he nods with a grin. He kisses her hand respectfully, before turning to me. “Hey babe,” He says sweetly, planting a kiss on my cheek. “Hey,” I mumble, and instinctively my eyes immediately snap up to look at Drake, who is watching Liam closely, his eyes narrowed. I try to hide my smile as I look away and notice Leo approaching Kai.

“Hello gorgeous,” Leo says with a bow, kissing Kai’s outstretched knuckles. She squints her eyes at him for a moment, clearly looking him over with distaste. “I believe the term you were looking for is ‘Your Highness’,” Kai responds flatly, only making a smirk spread across Leo’s face. He nods. “Of course, Your Highness,” He says slyly, amusement in his eyes. Kai just rolls her eyes before turning to me.

“Ready to raise a barn?” She asks. I chuckle and nod. All four of us, the bodyguards following, head over to the construction site and start hammering, lifting support beams, and painting wood strips.

—

Kai and I paint the newly applied wooden slats of the barn side by side. We chat as we do so, filling each other in on all the gossip of the past four years. “Max finally asked Allie out? I’m so happy for them!” Kai gushes, and I smile at the bittersweetness of the situation. It’s great to have Kai back again, but it’s sad because we have missed out on so much of each other’s lives.

“So, I saw what happened between you and Leo,” I whisper tentatively, glancing over my shoulder to look at Leo, who was helping Liam hammer the support beams. Kai groans with a roll of her eyes. “Ugh, do not get me started. I know all about his ‘bachelor lifestyle’ and how he treats women like disposable tissues. All the women at uni knew about him, and when I told them where I was from, all they could do was gush about him constantly. I don’t get it. He flirts with anything that has two breasts and a vagina,” She scoffs, shaking her head, painting with a new sense of anger. I snicker at my usually composed sister. “So you don’t like him then?” I ask cheekily, making her look over at me with a dead-pan expression. “No.” She says flatly, making me snicker more. At least we can agree on that.

A hand comes up suddenly, touching my shoulder gently. I jump, turning to see Liam. “Hey babe, I think it would be a good idea to be doing some things together, you know, for publicity?” He says, glancing over at the paparazzi hanging around, snapping pictures here and there but looking quite restless. “Oh, that’s a good idea! Yeah, you guys should do that!” Kai nods, and I reluctantly smile. “Yeah, let’s do it then,” I say with fake enthusiasm, before following him.

Liam and I start to do little things together like painting window panes, securing them to the walls, helping hoist materials to the roof, all the while, getting top-notch ‘candid’ pictures for the paps. Eventually, a good amount of the press leaves, clearly getting all the photos needed. “Well, that was fun,” Liam comments, and I nod. We stand in an awkward silence before I speak. “Yeah, I should probably get back to Kai, we have a lot to catch up on,” I say quickly, and Liam nods. I turn around, heading over to Kai before I look up and stop in my tracks.

My jaw drops as I spot Drake, shirtless, pulling on a rope to help maneuver a pretty big beam. My mouth feels dry as I observe the way the sun shines over him through the unfinished roof. Blinking dumbly, I watch his muscles shift in the midday sun, seemingly in slow motion, a sheen of sweat gleaming on his lean figure. “Damn. That’s your bodyguard?” Kai says beside me, snapping me out of my daze. I clear my throat, forcing myself to tear my eyes from his fit form. “Uh- yeah. He’s great.” I mumble, suddenly feeling really hot. “Hey, do you reckon you guys got some good shots with Liam?” Kai asks, and I nod. “Yeah- um, they should turn out great,” I say absentmindedly, grabbing a spare paintbrush and joining Kai at the wooden panels.“Are you alright?” Kai asks, looking at me with concern. I chuckle. “Yes! I’m just a bit hot after all this work! It doesn’t help that it feels like 900 degrees outside,” I laugh, making Kai nod in agreement.

“I have a solution for that problem m’ lady’s,” Maxwell says from behind us, slinging both of his arms over our shoulders. “And that is?” Kai asks with amusement, glancing over at Max’s enthusiastic face. “Well, there is a certain spa not so far from here. If you ask me, it’s the perfect thing after all this hard labor,” Max says with a pair of pleading puppy dog eyes. I snort. “Okay Max, we can go,” I smile, making Max let out a cheer, before going to inform Liam and Leo. “I missed you guys,” Kai says with a sweet smile. “Trust me K, we missed you too,” I grin, my heart happy. It’s nice to have family together like this again.

I sneak a peek back over my shoulder at Drake to see him shaking hands with one of the other construction workers, buttoning his shirt, his suit jacket resting on his shoulders.

In another world, I would be standing in front of him, finishing his buttons for him, straightening out his jacket, and planting a kiss on his lips to finish it off. Like an actual couple. I sigh, before going back to painting the barn.

—

After a quick celebration for the now completed barn, Liam, Leo, Maxwell, Kai, and I head over to the spa, the sun starting to set and the world beginning to cool down, satisfied with the work we put in all afternoon. “Its actually way more satisfying than I thought, seeing our hard work being translated to an actual finished building!” Max enthuses. “And what ‘hard work’ did you do exactly? It almost seemed like every time I saw you, I think you were taking a ‘break’” Liam grins with feigned confusion. Maxwell mocks offense with a dramatic scoff and a delicate hand on his chest. “Dear Liam, never have I been so offended! You just happened to see me between my bursts of intense labor,” Max dismisses, making the rest of us laugh.

“I’m pretty sure the person who did the hardest labor was Mr. Walker,” Kai starts, turning to a now surprised Drake, who was following us with the other bodyguard. “You were helping pull a huge beam, most people would need two others to help with something that size,” Kai says, impressed. The rest of us turn to look at Drake for his answer. Clearly uncomfortable with all the eyes on him, he clears his throat. “Oh, well I know a couple of the construction workers and they needed an extra pair of um- hands, so I helped out,” He says, averting eye contact. I smile at his stubborn humbleness. It’s adorable.

“Well good job man, good to know the man working to protect my fiancé is a hard worker,” Liam says, clapping his shoulder. Drake just nods, his jaw clenching. As we continue our walk, I wonder if Liam is purposefully condescending towards Drake. It really seems like it.

Kai decides to join Max in his car to the spa, and Leo quickly follows. They encourage Liam and me to get some ’alone time’ by driving separately. Liam, Drake, and I reach my car, both men reaching to open the door for me at the same time, making them stop. They look at each other for a moment. “No need to worry about that Drake, I can open the door for my fiancé,” Liam says, an edge to his voice. Drake glances over at me. I just nod, so Drake backs away. “Of course,” Drake says unenthusiastically, allowing Liam to open my door. I get in, and Liam follows, closing the door. Drake gets in the front with the driver, and we follow Maxwell’s car to the spa.

Liam’s hand feels foreign as it rests on my knee protectively. “You look beautiful today Alana,” Liam says in my ear. I smile. “Thank you, you look handsome, as usual,” I respond. His hand drifts from my knee to find my left hand, his thumb running over the surface of my decadent ring. I watch as he does so, the familiar feeling of guilt creeping up my throat. “I can’t wait to marry you,” Liam mumbles softly. I glance over at him. He looks up at me with a smile. “M-me too,” I stutter, the guilt overpowering my heart manifesting into sadness. I hate doing this to him. Being engaged, making him think I love him when I fear that I never will. My eyes flick up to the rearview mirror to see Drake watching us. I quickly look away to the scenery outside the window, forcing myself to not let the tear that’s threatening to fall show how broken my heart is.

In about ten minutes of silence, we arrive at the spa to my relief. Liam quickly opens our car door, getting out first, before Drake can even go to open it. Liam seems proud of himself as he holds the door open to me, his hand held out like Drake’s usually is. Drake stands behind Liam, looking frustrated. I take Liam’s hand getting out of the car before brushing softly past Drake and meeting up with the rest of the group inside.

—

We unwind in a private room, equipped with a hot tub, a cold plunge, and lounge chairs. Some of us go off at different times to get massages and facials, before coming back so we can all enjoy the room together. At some point, Maxwell shows off his baby hippo tattoo that I encouraged him to get one night when we were pretty drunk. Kai nearly falls off the lounge chair with laughter. I even catch Drake shaking his head slightly, a grin pulling at the corners of his mouth.

“Good idea on coming here buddy,” Liam comments, making Max smile with cocky satisfaction. He leans back, folding his hands behind his head cooly and stretching out fully on the lounge chair. “Don’t worry about it, I just require that you continue to talk about how awesome and incredible this idea was for the rest of our lives, and how much you admire me,” Max shrugs confidently, making us roll our eyes.

“Yeah, you get to be thrown into the plunge for that,” Leo concludes, making Liam nod in agreement.

“W-wait what?” Max asks, sitting up, his eyes wide. Leo and Liam suddenly grab him, making him squeal as they head over to the cold plunge. They throw him into the freezing water after a dramatic count to three, his high pitched scream cutting out as he is submerged underwater. Kai and I laugh as Leo and Liam nod, looking pleased with themselves until Max grabs their ankles, dragging them into the water, their expressions changing pretty quickly. Kai and I laugh even harder, clutching at our stomachs as the men surface, their hair stuck to the forehead with sour expressions on their faces.

“That’s what you guys get for being jerks!” Kai shouts playfully. “Oh sorry, would you like to join us?” Leo asks, turning his head to the side. “I think she does,” Maxwell confirms, as they get out, heading over to us. Kai gasps, getting up quickly. “No! I hate the cold!” She exclaims with a grin, backing up. The boys suddenly start after her, making her shriek with laughter as she gets chased around the room. I grin, watching them. After they successfully get her in the plunge, Leo and Maxwell turn to me. “Unless you want to have the wrath of the Queen against you, I would suggest you back away,” I warn, making them glance at each other, before deciding its not worth it and backing away, starting a splashing war against Kai.

Liam gets out, heading over and sitting next to me. “How are you feeling?” I ask cheekily as he wraps himself in his towel. “Cold.” He says with a laugh, making me chuckle. “I can see that,” I say with amusement. “Hey, want to join me in the sauna? The hot steam sounds very appealing right now,” Liam chuckles. “Yeah, sure,” I say, getting up. We head down a hallway, the sauna just behind a marked door on the left.

Liam turns around, and he sighs. “Walker, it’s not necessary for you to follow us everywhere we go,” He says, making me turn to see Drake standing behind us, his eyes narrowed at Liam. “It is my job to protect her,” Drake says sternly, holding his ground. “Not for long. Last time I checked, that’s a husband’s job,” Liam snarls, inching towards Drake. “I’m sorry, last time I checked, you two are only engaged,” Drake responds, inching towards Liam as well, his fists balled. I widen my eyes, stepping between them. “First of all, I don’t need anyone to protect me okay? And I especially don’t need you two fighting over protecting me like I’m a child. Drake, thank you for your concern, but we will be okay. Liam, Drake is just trying to do his job, and I need you to respect that,” I lecture them. Drake nods, looking down. Liam backs up, looking embarrassed. “God,” I swear under my breath, shaking my head and walking into the sauna.

Liam and I sit on the wooden seats, enjoying the hot steam enveloping us. I lean back, closing my eyes. I feel my muscles finally relaxing, the stress and soreness from building the barn starting to dissipate.

I open my eyes to Drake kissing my neck, his stubble scratching over my sensitive skin, making me gasp slightly. “Shh, it’s alright, I’m going to make you feel good princess,” He whispers hoarsely in my ear, making me moan breathily, goosebumps rising all over my arms. His hands are running slowly up and down my bare back, his mouth moving down my body. I run my hands through his soft hair, tugging slightly, earning a throaty groan from him. I watch him as his mouth gets lower and lower-

“Alana! I think you fell asleep,” Liam says beside me, gently shaking my shoulder. I jump slightly, looking over to see Liam sitting next to me, watching me with a concerned look. I chuckle, bringing my hand to my forehead, feeling embarrassed. “Sorry! I had no idea I fell asleep,” I say sheepishly, my cheeks burning as I sit up straight. My face feels really hot, I just can’t tell if it’s from the steam or the dream. Liam chuckles. “You seemed like you were having an interesting dream,” He says, making me nod with a gulp. “Yeah, I uh, don’t remember it, you know how dreams can be,” I stutter. He just nods in agreement. “Hey, lets head out, I’m feeling a little light-headed,” I say quickly, getting up.

As we open the door, the cool refreshing air washes over us. Drake turns around to face us, making butterflies flutter in my stomach as we make eye contact. All I can think about is the dream, the way he was feeling me. “Yo Liam! come over here!” Leo shouts from the main room. Liam shoots me a smile before walking over the group. I stay behind, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear, glancing over at Drake, suddenly feeling nervous around him.

He slightly furrows his brow. “Are you okay?” He questions, glancing over me. I gulp, with a nervous nod. “Y-yeah, I’m fine, I just fell asleep in there and feel a little light-headed,” I mutter, shifting on my feet. Drake watches me for a minute.

“You’re acting strange,” He states, making me scoff. “Me? I- am not acting strange,” I say, trying to sound casual. Drake leans in, his eyes roaming my face as I stare back at him, my heart pounding. “Did- Did you have a hot dream about me?” He asks a grin pulling at the corner of his mouth.

My mind goes blank on defenses, making Drake’s grin grow wider. “You did didn’t you?” He asks a look of astonishment on his face. My face gets even hotter, only being able to stutter in response.

Drake glances down the hallway, then back at me, before grabbing the back of my neck, pulling my lips to his. I gasp against him, kissing him back. He suddenly breaks off the kiss, making me sigh in defeat. not again. I glance back up at him, waiting for the usual excuses he tells like ‘this isn’t right’ or ‘you’re engaged’, but he doesn’t say anything, just stares down at me.

He grabs my hand and swiftly drags me into the bathroom on the other side of the hall, locking the door behind me. I blink up at him with wide eyes, waiting for him to say something. He just pushes me up against the closed door, kissing me again, rougher this time. Oh. I kiss him back hungrily, basking in this feeling with him, the way his large hands are tugging me closer against his frame, how his lips move in sync with mine. He breaks the kiss, his mouth right beside my ear, his warm breath fanning across my cheeks. “I hate seeing you with him,” He murmurs lowly, making me gulp at his deep voice, arousal shooting up my body. “mhmm, why is that?” I ask coyly. “because you’re mine,” Drake snarls with a protective squeeze, making goosebumps rise on my arms. I lean back so we are face to face. He stares at me for a moment, his pupils blown. “prove it,” I whisper slowly. His gaze becomes determined and he deftly moves his hands to roughly grab just below my ass, hoisting me up. My legs wrap around him instinctively, biting my lip at the feeling of his hands digging into my thighs and the cool wall against my back.

His lips find mine once again, quickly and with purpose. I start kissing him back, a sound of surprise erupting from the back of my throat as I feel one of his hands move to the inside of my thigh, making my stomach flip. “Is this okay?” He breathes slowly and I gulp before nodding rapidly, my heart suddenly hammering with anticipation. He smirks and his fingers reach my core, making me gasp, heat flickering up my abdomen. I feel a rush of adrenaline shooting through my veins as I realize what’s happening. I groan as his fingers move expertly between my legs, making my toes curl in pleasure, the knot in my stomach growing. I squeeze my thighs around his waist to garner more friction, moaning at the feeling of his touch. “you like that princess?” He growls, his voice deep. I nod with a soft moan as I throw my head back, making Drake take the opportunity to kiss the sensitive skin under my jaw, the various sensations overwhelming my senses. His fingers start to move in tantalizing circles around my clit, making me whimper in pleasure, grinding down on his hand. I can barely keep still, overcome with the intoxicating feeling of being with Drake.

The knot builds and builds until my chest is heaving as Drake continues to touch me, and in a second, the knot comes undone and I chew my lip to stop myself from crying out as I finish, seeing stars. Drake gently helps me on my feet as I try to catch my breath, my knees weak. “I- wow,” I pant, earning a slight chuckle from Drake. For some reason, I feel embarrassed, but when I look up to see the way he is looking at me, all of the apprehension vanishes.

He gently raises my chin, gazing softly down at me. “I cherish you, more than he ever can” He murmurs, making me fall for him even more, something I didn’t imagine was possible. I smile back up at him, looking into his sincere eyes.

“I only have eyes for you Walker, you know that”

—-

end of part 2 :)

I hope you guys liked It! I’m sorry if the smut is bad, I haven’t written in so long and I’m still not very good at writing it haha! sorry again for how long this took

[punkpoemprose]

A Convenient Arrangement- Part 1

Universe: Canonverse Arranged Marriage AU 

Word Count: 5333

Rating: T (It’s clearly implied that sex is a societal expectation but it’s not written in)

Notes: Happy Unbirthday Anna @upthenorthmountain! I hope you like this arranged marriage AU. I was trying to get some mutual pining in there, but it was running away on me and ended up twice as long as planned without getting even half as much in as I wanted. I hope you’ll excuse my run away writing though. I can’t help myself!

He’d never asked for this. Hadn’t even known that he was involved until a full unit of royal guard soldiers broke through a copse of trees on the edge of the clearing where he’d made his little home, half congratulatory, half confused as to how to treat him. They hadn’t known how to address him, or how to tell him he didn’t really have much of an option but to go with them, because he was about to marry their princess.  

There’d been some form of chaos in the kingdom he’d missed, up safe in the mountains as he was. He heard rumors of an upheaval at the Queen’s coronation ball, distrust amongst the people that stemmed from the Queen, Queen Elsa, having magical abilities and some kind of attempted murder at the hands of a foreign born Prince who had been trying to marry the Princess. The Princess he’d never met. The Princess he’d be marrying before even meeting.

It had been a lottery. Every unmarried man between the Princess’s own age of 18 and 30 was included, common folk, the ones who were afraid of their new Queen and wary of the aristocracy with all that had unfolded. It was meant to be a way to calm the masses, to allay their fears. Nothing made people so rapturously joyful as a royal wedding, or so he’d been told. He hadn’t even known that he’d been included, he didn’t even know that the crown had ever heard of him. He was just a mountain hermit for all intents and purposes, an ice harvester with a reindeer and an adopted family no one could know about. He wasn’t built to marry a Princess. He didn’t want to marry a Princess.

He knew that he should be overjoyed, after all marrying into the royal family would give him access, resources, a voice that he’d never imagined having, but so much time had been spent searching for him in the mountains that by the time he made it to the castle, he was being shoved into rooms to wash and dress in unfamiliar clothes that frankly, barely fit him. He didn’t feel anything close to joy as he stared at himself in a mirror. Some palace servant whose purpose and title he didn’t know, had cut his hair and smoothed it back against Kristoff’s annoyed protests. He didn’t look like himself, he was about to meet his wife, on the altar, and he didn’t even recognize his own face.

It didn’t matter. She wouldn’t recognize him either, nor him her. None of it mattered really. He was just an unwilling participant in what would undoubtedly be a sham marriage of convenience. The Princess needed to marry someone common to please the people, and he was about as common as they came.

He felt a bit like a lamb being lead to the slaughter when a knock came at the door.

***

Anna was struggling to keep the bile down. She’d been bathed in rose water, powdered, primped and dressed in a gown of beautiful cream silk, but when she stared into the mirror all she could see was the dark circles they couldn’t hide under her eyes. She looked more like a cleverly dressed corpse than a Princess and a bride. She hadn’t eaten in days, not since Prince Hans of the Southern Isles had nearly succeeded in his plan to marry Anna and have her and her sister killed to take over the throne. She hadn’t slept either, picturing again and again the way she’d just walked into his trap and how she’d only been saved from it by her sister exposing her abilities to the world. She hadn’t spoken much to Elsa in the time since, only enough to consent to this arrangement to help calm their citizenry.

She’d imagined thousands of times what she would look like as a bride, how she’d feel when she married someone for love like her parents had. She stared at herself, a ghost in a wedding gown, her heart aching and screaming against the predicament she’d put them in and the fantasies she’d had since she was a child felt juvenile. She’d been stupid, she was being stupid.

She’d managed to keep herself from crying, to hold it all in and direct the pain in her heart to her gut. She could feign illness when it was all over that way. Maybe whatever man they’d brought to wed her would be kind enough to let an ill woman skip her wedding night. She wasn’t holding her breath though.

His name was Kristoff, that much she remembered. She’d thought at first they’d said Christopher, but a maid had been kind enough to correct her later. Kristoff Bjorgman. He was an ice harvester, and blessedly just three years her elder. She couldn’t imagine having to marry someone much older than him, but if she was being honest with herself she couldn’t imagine being married to him either.

She didn’t even know what he looked like, but she had imagined someone terrifying in her head. He’d be hulking, manner less, and cruel. Maybe he’d be attractive, but not in the well-polished way that she’d imagined for many years, and even if he was nice to look at, even if he wasn’t the beast her sleep-deprived mind was inventing, there was no promise that he would ever come to love her.

He was from the mountains, he’d not even known he’d been included in the lottery and from what she heard the maids whispering, he had no interest in marrying her. She couldn’t blame him. All he knew of her was that she was a Princess and that she was taking away his freedom to choose a bride. Of course, she was told by the royal advisors and anyone else who had a hand in the arrangement that he’d come willingly. Who wouldn’t want to marry a Princess after all?

She felt like her stomach was going to spill itself, though it contained nothing, when she heard a knock on the door. It was time.

She tried to keep her breathing level, to walk with poise as she was directed out the door. She could feel the tears coming as she looked back on her bedroom, the place she’d spent her childhood dreaming of this day. She’d never guessed then that dreams could quickly become nightmares.

***

Kristoff felt choked by his collar. It was too tight, and his throat was even tighter still. Breathing felt laborious in a way that he’d only experienced once, after a fall that knocked all the air from his lungs. He hoped that the assembled guests could tell how eager he was to be done with it all, he hoped they knew that this wasn’t something he wanted.

There were common folk and gentry before him with few familiar faces, some merchants he’d seen in the market before were staring at him with envy. He wished he could tell him that he’d be more than willing to trade with them or any of their sons. He wished that he could walk out of the room, get Sven from the castle stables and pretend that none of this was happening. If he weren’t worried about being hung for it, for slighting a princess, he would.

Arendelle had always been a good place to live. The royals thought of the people, and from what he knew of them and the country’s history, they were not unkind. Perhaps it was an option, but no. Misanthropic as he was, he knew that there were people for whom this marriage was important. It meant something, it meant stabilizing tensions, and so long as Queen Elsa was a good a ruler as her parents had been, he was content to do his part.

Content, he supposed, was a stretch. A better word might be resigned, like a man being put to death.

It wasn’t as if he’d had a sweetheart or anything. He’d just never planned to marry at all. He liked the simple life he made for himself in the mountains, he liked relying on himself and on his adoptive family. He didn’t need companionship beyond that. He didn’t need the castle coffers, he didn’t want to dress in clothes like the ones he’d been squeezed into, his shoulders were already aching over the way the coat he wore tugged at him. He’d just wanted to be left alone.

But he wasn’t alone. He’d spent so much time in his own thoughts, thinking about how much he didn’t want to be where he was standing that he hadn’t noticed everyone in the room standing. They’d already knelt when the Queen came in, taking a solitary seat at the front of the room such that while the day was her sisters, she was still the center of attention, her right as Queen. Now though, no one was kneeling, but instead they stood to get a better look at the white and cream veiled figure striding down the red velvet runner that covered the floor in the aisle between the pews.

His Princess. The woman who was to be his wife.

***

She was still holding back tears, reminding herself to breathe as she walked to the sanctuary doors. It wasn’t the wedding she’d imagined. Her parents had died years ago now, there was no one to guide her to the man waiting for her at the end of the aisle beyond the door. Or she’d thought as much. Her sister had offered, her face betraying every ounce of pain that Anna felt, when Anna had reminded her, as kindly as she could, that as Queen, she’d need to be in the room before her.

When he doors were pushed open by the awaiting guards, Anna was surprised to feel a solid and comforting form at her side, taking her arm gently. She turned to see Kai, the head butler, the man who had known her since she was a girl, taking up place at her side to walk her down the aisle. She saw sadness in his eyes as he smiled apologetically at her. It was enough to bring her some small comfort when she turned to face the room that had opened before her.

There were people standing. She felt their eyes on her and she wished more than anything that it could have been a private affair. Maybe then she would have been allowed to cry, maybe then she would have been allowed to meet her betrothed first. Maybe then she wouldn’t feel so hollow inside.

She focused on moving her feet, on holding her bouquet so that she didn’t drop it, on breathing and on not crying.

Don’t trip. Breathe. Hold it in. Don’t trip. Breathe. Hold it in. Don’t trip.

Her mind volleyed commands at her body as she moved down the aisle, grateful for Kai’s presence at her side until they reached the end of the aisle and was forced to leave her at the stairs before the altar. She strode up it herself, carefully. The man waiting there for her didn’t move to assist her, and she did her best to not look at him at all, sure that if she did, all her carefully constructed walls would fall down.

Breathe. Hold it in. Look somewhere else. Don’t let him know you’re terrified. Get through. Survive. Make your parents proud. Make Elsa proud. Fix the problem you caused.

The assembled guests were seated, and while she could feel their excitement, the room felt somber to her. Little in the way of decorations had been attended to in the rush of arranging the lottery and now the subsequent wedding. There were white roses and ribbons and candles, but they felt too few and far between, too colorless to bring a brightness to the old chapel.

She’d always imagined sunflowers. She loved sunflowers.

The priest was speaking, discussing something at length about duty and how the bond between the palace and the people was one blessed by God and so this marriage would be too. She was just glad he was mostly avoiding the topic of love. She wasn’t sure if she’d be able to keep herself from running out if he had.

She knew that she missed something he’d said when she felt hands grip hers.

She almost jumped from the contact, barely holding the reaction back when she realized that they belonged to her soon to be husband.

Vows. They were being asked to say their vows.

They hadn’t written their own given that they didn’t know each other and certainly didn’t have the time.

Her attention shifted to the feel of his hands on hers, making it unavoidable to focus on him, as hard as she’d been trying to avoid it. He wasn’t wearing gloves. It probably shouldn’t surprise her as much as it did, she wasn’t wearing them, but she simply wasn’t used to being around men who didn’t wear gloves. She could feel the rough callouses on his fingers, on his palm. He was not like any man she’d ever met.

She allowed herself to direct her eyes up, taking in his face for the first time. He had a boyish look to him that made her feel a little less afraid than she had been. He wasn’t some terrifying beast of a man, despite his size which was quite immense compared to her, he was just a tired looking boy a bit older than her who seemed to be just as uncomfortable as she was, well as he was hiding it.

Her eyes caught his and she felt his hands leave hers to pull her veil back. She did her best to compose her face as he did so, knowing that everyone, him included were about to get a very good look at her expression.

His movements were quick but gentle, and she was grateful when the veil was behind her and his hands went back to hers again. It was one step closer to the end.

Her eye caught his, and her heart skipped. His eyes were brown like the earth he undoubtedly worked with his callouses. For a moment they flashed a sort of soft look, but once it was time for them to say their vows, it was gone.

***

He was beginning to grow tired of the pomp and circumstance of the ceremony. They’d said their vows and while he’d heard of exchanges of rings being popular, they did not engage in the practice. Likely, he thought, they wouldn’t even know what size ring to select for him, making the gesture impossible. Still, however, the priest continued to speak on the importance of their marriage, that they should respect and care for each other and about a thousand other sentimentalities that fell flat to him given that he knew nothing about his bride.

He did know that she had blue eyes, and that they looked sad. He could hardly blame her for being disappointed, but he did try to focus on something else. She had freckles on her nose and brilliant red hair. Her lips were set in a false smile that he tried his best to mimic. Despite the fact that she was a Princess, brought up in a life of luxury, he could tell from the way she was standing tall and no longer avoiding his eye that she was strong. That much, he thought, he might be able to grow to like and respect if not love.

“You may now kiss the bride.”

Kristoff had been waiting to hear the words. Relief and terror flooded him simultaneously as he realized that this would be the end of the ceremony, but also the start of a marriage.

He felt her hands start to tremble in his, and he held them tighter in his own, trying to hide it. He wasn’t sure what brought him to do it, but he thought that if he were her, he’d want to seem as strong as she was trying to be, and a shake, involuntary as it was, would show fear and sadness. It was a wedding gift to her, to help her be strong. He had nothing else to give her.

He leaned in, trying to give her an apologetic look before pressing his lips to hers.

They would never have to do it again.

***

The feast after the wedding had been a strange thing. Under normal conditions Anna thought that she might have enjoyed the celebration, but as she looked around the room she’d only been reminded of her failings. It was too much like the coronation ball where she’d met Hans and nearly ruined everything her family ever worked to build. Her life now, she supposed, was something like a ruin, but when she sat at a high table, pretending to eat bits of each course, she’d been able to pretend that she was acting out a scene from a play. She was a blushing bride, she was accepting praise, she was having a lovely meal.

She couldn’t pretend anymore.

She shivered, quaking, sitting on the edge of her bed waiting for the man, Kristoff, her husband, to come to her door. She had a wifely duty to fulfil, nothing more and nothing less, and she simply hoped that he wouldn’t do anything overly improper or painful to her. Frankly she wasn’t certain of what he might ask of her. She knew the mechanics, she knew what the act entailed in its most basic form, but she’d heard things that frankly had her terrified.

Her bridal night gown was still draped over her vanity chair. She’d not been able to bring herself to change into it. It felt too final that way, like she was giving in to the fact that she’d being laying back and putting her mind to other work. She’d sent away her maids, lest they force her into it.

A knock came on the door, and she didn’t know what to say. She felt like one of the statues in the halls, immobile, unable to react in anyway. It would be easier if she was, she thought. Then at least, she wouldn’t have to see what was happening to her, she wouldn’t have to feel it.

“Can… can I come in?”

She already recognized his voice, although he hadn’t spoken much after the ceremony other than to thank the staff and accept the well wishes of guests and witnesses with a sort of unapologetic gruffness that she was begging to associate with him. She hoped beyond all things that she’d not see it in action, rather hoping for more of the sort of gentle kindness he’d shown subtly in the ceremony.

He’d held her steady when she’d fallen apart, when she’d started to shake. It was something she’d been replaying in her head along with the memory of a gentle and chaste kiss that he’d pressed to her mouth. It gave her some small phantom hope that maybe he’d show her some tenderness in the act of their consummation. It was, she thought, the most she could hope for.

“Yes,” she said, her voice quiet and small, even to her ears.

She was surprised that he’d even heard her speak when she heard the door handle turn, though she supposed that it might have also been a coincidence, that he’d simply tired of waiting in the moments after her quiet acceptance. She wouldn’t blame him if he didn’t have much patience for her. She didn’t have much patience for herself as it was.

She stared at her feet instead of looking to see him come through the door. She listened to the sound of the door closing again, locking behind him. She listened to and counted the footfalls that took him from the door to her side, all twelve of them, and couldn’t bring herself to look up when he drew close. Instead she reached behind herself, fingers going to the ribbons of her gown’s bodice and tugging them loose.

Better, she thought, to get it over with.

“Stop.”

She froze. He didn’t sound pleased. The gruffness in his voice had returned in force and she knew that she’d displeased him in some way. She thought that such a thing shouldn’t upset her, but it did.

“Don’t.”

The words were simple, but foreign to her. Why would he not want her to undress? Something in her stomach dropped to think that maybe she wasn’t pretty enough for him. Perhaps, she thought, he wanted to put out the candles and bank the fire before bedding her. She’d been told by others that she was lovely, but she had never quite believed it herself, particularly not after how Hans had played her like a fiddle.

She felt the mattress compress under his added weight as he sat at her side. She hadn’t expected for him to sit, and it was enough to make her look from her feet to his face. She was surprised to see that he didn’t look angry or disgusted, or annoyed, but rather that he appeared to be sad. She caught his eye and his expression softened further, like he understood her confusion and hurt and fear. It struck her in that moment that if there was anyone that would understand, it was him.

“I can put the lanterns out if you prefer,” she said, her voice just as weak as it had been. She tried to hazard a smile, but she knew it just came off as exhausted and small. She saw her failure to fake interest on his face.

“No,” he replied, “you can change if you wish, but I just want you to know that… I have no expectations of you. I’m sure that you were told I would… I know we’re expected to… but I don’t want that.”

She swallowed hard, relief and anxiety flooding her system simultaneously. That she wouldn’t have to bare herself to him, a total stranger, was a kindness. That he, her husband, didn’t want her on their wedding night, was painful. She’d not been wanted in a very long time, and she supposed it shouldn’t surprise her that someone who was forced to wed her would change that fact.

“Oh,” she replied, “I thought…”

He sighed and laid back on the bed.

“I know.”

***

She looked too young to be a bride. He’d wondered briefly at the alter if she always looked so frail, so much like a bird, but when she’d eaten nothing at the wedding feast, he’d been given his answer. Already he’d planned to go to her bedchamber and request nothing, but at the altar, at the meal, his mind had been made up.

She hadn’t picked him as a husband, nor had he chosen her for a wife, but he’d cherish her, nevertheless. He’d protect her and learn to be her husband if in title only. He deserved the choice to do that at least, and he thought that if she couldn’t have someone more deserving of her than he was, he’d at least try to live up to the role.

“We’re going to stay here for a while,” he said gently, trying not to frighten her, trying to make himself prone and small and anything but the intimidating large beast of a man he knew he was. “Then when everyone thinks we’ve… finished what is expected of us, I’ll leave and get something for you to eat and you won’t have to see me again for the evening.”

She looked at him with shock, and he was comforted that it was at least not the nervousness she’d shown him when he first entered the room. It was something at least.

“Why?”

She sounded a bit incredulous, but her expression was softer, more confused.

“Because you didn’t eat at dinner and I think that maybe you haven’t eaten in a while.”

She shook her head, and it took him a moment to understand that she wasn’t asking him why he was planning on bringing her something to eat, and that she was more curious as to his overall motives.

“Why aren’t you… I’m sure you must be angry, or at least upset… unless… well you’re happy to be marrying up or something, but you didn’t seem to be before. I just… I thought that you’d want to take what is yours to take.”

He tried not to bristle visibly. She didn’t know him, he couldn’t possibly blame her for thinking that he’d do everything she’d undoubtedly been warned he would.

“You,” he said, weighing his words, shifting up on one arm to get a better look at her eyes again. They were beautiful, bright and full of emotion. He could already read her feelings on her face. It was simple when she was so unguarded. “You are not property… and I don’t deign to take anything that isn’t offered willingly. I can’t take something from you just because we’re married.”

She seemed to calm at that, her expression shifting slightly to curiosity and then relief. It was almost enough to make him fall back more comfortably on her mattress. He supposed it wasn’t entirely true. Space on her incredibly soft mattress probably wasn’t his to take either, but that she hadn’t chided him yet for laying upon it was a comfort. He’d had a long day and was looking forward to some time to lay back and let his muscles untense a bit.

“I wasn’t unwilling,” she said, so softly he almost didn’t hear her.

He frowned at the ceiling and then let his eyes close for a moment. Despite how quietly she’d said it, there was something resolute to her tone, the strength he’d seen simmering behind her eyes at their ceremony cropping up again. He had a feeling that if she became a bit more comfortable with him, she would be downright feisty.

“Maybe,” he offered, “But you weren’t willing either. Just because you don’t say no, doesn’t mean you’re saying yes.”

He could feel her lay back on the mattress at his side, and he thought that the pins in her hair must be poking at her scalp. He thought that if they had only been given a few days to get to know each other, that he might have taken her hair down for her. She seemed like she might have liked that.

“What if I never say yes?” she asked, “Surely you want a son… what if I never consent to give you that?”

He shrugged, feeling her eyes on him though he couldn’t see her looking.

“If you never say yes, you never say yes. I haven’t thought much about children, but if I ever wanted a son there are more ways than one to build a family Anna.”

***

Her heart leapt at his words, and perhaps most at the sound of her name being said in his voice.

Never. He’d never make her lie with him if she chose not to. She knew that she shouldn’t trust him at his word, especially as it would mean that their marriage would never be consummated if she chose, but despite her recent misplaced trust, there was something about Kristoff that made her want to try believing him. He was already being so much more gracious towards her than she expected he would be, that she thought he should be.

“More ways than one?”

He let out a sigh that was tinged with an almost chuckle. That too made her heart feel warm in unfamiliar ways.

“Well, we have some time to talk… guess we should get to know each other a bit… I was adopted. So if I wanted a child and you didn’t want to engage in the practice of making one… I suppose I would adopt a boy. Or maybe a girl? Carrying on my name isn’t possible given our children would take your name, but don’t worry yourself about it, it was never a priority for me anyway.”

She thought about what he said for a moment. She’d never met anyone who was adopted before. She thought that maybe she should ask him about his family, but she was afraid that if she did, he’d ask her about hers, and she was feeling too shattered for that conversation to take place right away, even if he probably already knew most of it.

“Anything else I should know? Just while we’re talking…”

“Depends on what you think you should know. My favorite color? Favorite food? Best friend’s name? Shoe size?”

There was a smile to his voice when he replied, and Anna let herself close her eyes when she heard it. He was warming to her, and she let out a small but genuine laugh to show him that she was warming to him in return.

“Sure, start there and I’ll tell you mine.”

His smile was beautiful in her head, but she couldn’t open her eyes to see if he was sporting it laying at her side. The softening of their demeanors, the quiet conversation they were carrying on was all that was keeping her from weeping.

She felt lucky, that of all the men in the Kingdom she could have ended up with, it was someone as kind as he seemed to be.

“Only if you promise not to laugh when I tell you my best friend is a reindeer.”

She smiled. He was a bit odd maybe, but there was a sincerity to his tone that relaxed her, allowed her to open up.

“Only if you promise not to pity me when I tell you I don’t have any friends at all.”

There was a long silence after she said it, and for a moment she was afraid that the tentative bond between them had already snapped, but then she felt it. His rough hand had slid across the space between them, his fingers brushing experimentally across her palm, offering a gentle sort of touch that made her want to weep.

She took it and the soft squeeze she felt was far more intimate than anything he could have done to her with her wedding gown off.

“What if…” she started, feeling half mad for asking, “What if a day comes where I say yes?”

Returning to the original topic seemed to throw him for a moment, but she felt his thumb gently brush against her hand before her answered.

“Then I’ll have to say yes too… and I think it will take me some time to get to that place. I hope that doesn’t disappoint you, but I think I’d like to get to know my wife before we come anywhere close to that.”

Her heart fluttered at the thought. He did want her then. She took comfort in that, and in the fact that he wanted to get to know her, to build a relationship.

“Kristoff,” she said, testing his name on her tongue and finding that it felt right to say.

He turned to her expectantly, and she rolled to meet his gaze, her fingers squeezing against his weakly, “I’m sorry you were pulled into this… but I just want you to know, even if it’s selfish of me to think… I’m glad that I’m married to someone like you. I wasn’t expecting kindness.”

He gave her a look that seemed to be a mix between sadness and appreciation. There was a soft almost smile playing on his lips, and she tried to give it back.

“I never thought about marrying… but Anna… I think I’m going to like being married to you.”

The honesty that he carried in his voice with such ease was what made her inch, ever so slightly closer to his side, and for the first time since her sister’s coronation, or perhaps even before that, she felt like maybe things were going to be alright.