#again I love you; writing fanfic is a gift you bless me with

[jessielefey]

kk I love you, I suck at spelling too, this is meant in kindness and in the spirit of skill growth not destructive mockery.

but fanfic writers... please add this to your list of common typoes, because it throws me off every time.

It's wary. You mean wary.

Wearily: Tired. This means exhausted.

Warily: cautious, with suspicion.

If someone's already weary at the start of a fight, they're in big trouble. If they're wary, they're smart enough to respect their opponent.

kplzthxilubai

[the-one-who-lambs]

uhh hello!! sorry if this is a tall order LOL but I wanna ask, do you have any narilamb fanfic recs? :D I already read yours and I really like bamsara’s and I’m waiting for epicaandk’s to update (that one is my fav ever <3) but idk what to read now lol

Tall order?? Naaaaah, I'm always happy to give recs. Oh boy, I'm gonna go in reverse chronological order.

If you've read all of my narilamb fics (have you seriously? I'm impressed, that's probably well over half the 150k+ I've written for this damn fandom. Also, to anyone seeing this from a reblog, my stuff is over at onethirdofimpossible!) then here we go!

You already mentioned it, but The Rehabilitation of Death is excellent so far! This one is by @bamsara who is new to the CotL fandom but apparently not new to fanfic writing; they have a really popular FNAF fic and I assume the well-deserved attention this fic's been getting is a byproduct of the popularity they've already gotten in other fandoms. :D Welcome, bamsara! Many of the fic writers in this fandom are friends with each other already, but we don't bite if you wanna say hi.

Feel No Evil and Language Barrier, both by @payasita. I always love how payasita portrays this duo (in both digital art and writing), with so much sass and repressed loneliness, knowing they're stuck together for eternity and making the best of it. (And maybe falling in love, depending on how dense Narinder keeps being.) What makes these come alive for me is how well thought out the setting is outside the Lamb and Narinder. The descriptions and weight of emotions really pop here.

LITERALLY ANYTHING written by pavi / @i-eat-deodorant. Depending on how spicy you want your fics to be he has even more here. Character analysis, diction, pacing, etc. are consistently 10/10. Top-quality banter between a sassy Lamb and tired old man Narinder. We constantly bounce ideas off each other and inspire each other a lot but I promise I'm not hyping him up just because he's my friend oh my god please just go bless your eyes.

It Was For You, O Death by blueberry-muffin-massacre (if they have a tumblr, let me know so I can tag!). An intriguing alternative ending to the final battle wherein the Lamb chooses a secret third option by refusing to give up the Red Crown and still observing Narinder as the God of Death. So many details are so well thought out and duality their relationship is nicely characterized-- both genuine care for each other and also quite unhealthy. A fine line treaded well!

Confessional by jusmove (again, lmk if they have a tumblr). Been a while since I've read it, but I love how the Lamb chips at Narinder's very carefully built emotional walls. Their personalities are very well fleshed out here, especially Narinder's cognitive dissonance at being able to process love.

Confession by @thewitchoftheweed. I didn't expect a part two to this one, but my god I was so thrilled when it did update. Narinder and Lamb with their unique and parallel loneliness and their fucked-up sense of everything. Their relationship is very rocky here, and I love how they navigate it: with tension and eventual, pained acceptance. Mind the rating.

Of Character Development and Being Dense by @calliecature. A short and sweet narilamb classic. They're both mutually pining and one of them is too emotionally repressed to realize it. Guess who.

Not An Offering, But a Gift by @checkplzjuliet. Small confession fic. I especially love how Narinder's descriptions twist the knife of his situation here, and how Lambert is a total foil for him! There are a lot of good things happening in such a short span, which is impressive.

Also, if you think you've read all my narilamb fics... I do have a secret one out there too. Just so you know.

Happy reading!

I'm already friends with many of the people here, but if any of the writers I've tagged have been kinda wanting to reach out for a while but feel a little anxious... Don't be. I've made my best friends in this fandom by literally just waiting for some of my readers to get over whatever assumption they have that I'm cool and say hi. Or being the more confident one first.

[neil-neil-orange-peel]

A Bastard's Carol: a work of fanfiction by scumbaganarchy 💣

Season's greetings, scumbags! I hope you're all having a pleasant day. I come bearing a gift (of a sort):

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1we8qEVul2PTWFCtaVqyyXccVg8-xZBte/view?usp=sharing

A huge thank you to @viviangreeneart for the awesome art! ❤️ It turns out we should all definitely be making fake novel docs out of our fanfic. It's good for the soul.

Some pretentiousness about ABC below the cut.

Just over five years ago, a naiver version of me had the idea of writing a Young Ones/Rivyan parody of A Christmas Carol. She started actually writing for this idea in December 2019... and promptly discovered it was going to be a whole lot bigger than she'd anticipated. With one chapter posted before the big day, she decided to kick the rest into the new year.

That new year was 2020.

Yes, that 2020. Although, to be fair, what other one could I be talking about?

We'll skip all of that. None of us need to relive it.

One year, two or three lockdowns, and four indefensibly long chapters later, ABC was finally done and dusted in December 2020. It stood at around 60K words, making it by far the longest thing I'd ever written. I guess we all had to spend that empty time doing something, right?

Followers of this blog will have noticed, I'm sure, that I've never shut up about ABC since. Maybe you even rolled your eyes when you saw the title of this notification? Uh oh, she's going on about that old thing again...

Yep.

Look, I'm incredibly bad at hyping up my own work - self-deprecation is a bad habit, but a common one - and the more time that passes between who you were when you wrote something and who you are today, the harder being positive about it can get.

I was 18 when I wrote ABC. I had only gotten back into writing properly at 17. The whole work went through one major copy edit a year or so ago, when I knew a little more about writing - but I still didn't know as much then as I do now, and I suspect (and hope) the same will be true for a future version of myself when she looks back on my writing from this time.

All of this is to say, sometimes ABC reads to me as something written by somebody else. 18 year old me didn't write exactly the way I do now; she hadn't gotten the Bachelor of Arts cheat code boost that I have. But she was extremely passionate. She did love the bastards Rik and the gang created with all her heart. She'd also studied A Christmas Carol for her GCSEs only a couple of years previously, so she did at least understand the text she was taking a chainsaw to. I think all of this mattered. I think this gave ABC heart.

But what's my point in saying all of this (again)?

For a very long time, I've wanted but held back on commissioning an artist to draw me a cover. Well, no more. Truly, thank you ever so much to @viviangreeneart for indulging me and creating something fabulous for this old fic of mine. Thank you too to everyone who has ever commented on or kudos'ed ABC on ao3 over the years. It really does mean more to me than I can say.

Having dropped a new and flashy PDF decked out like an actual novel, here's the link to ABC on ao3, which will always be its home:

Merry Christmas, scumbags. Cliff bless us, Everyone!

[altocat]

You helped me, my friend, so now it’s my turn to help you ❤️

From a complete kudos, comments, and bookmark stance, I can’t express enough how AO3 can get into our heads in terms of wanting to perform well. Despite having no set “algorithm”, being a more library-organized system, that’s not gonna stop the rat race of social media standards from messing with us! I think it’s more than understandable to want a fic to do well; I think it’s more than understandable to want those kudos numbers to be triple digits; I think it’s more than understandable to compare which kinda things resonates with people more in order to achieve those things — bc there IS an undeniable validation and satisfaction that comes with seeing those fics perform well! It’s just how things work in 2024, imo, as good and as bad as it may be. So plz know that, at least from me, you have all the empathy in the world when it comes to this kinda stuff 💞

HOWEVER!~

We can’t let those pressures squash our own creative drives ❤️ Bc at the end of the day, we ARE writing fanfiction… we ARE writing a genre that is completely and utterly free, that has no limitations and no guidelines! We ARE writing a genre that, as much as our brain wants to convince us otherwise, is for Us. There’s really no better ecstasy out there than knowing a fic we wrote is appreciated by others!! (Again, that validation!!) But it should never be the other way around ❤️ It’s a hard endeavor in the world of social media, but we shouldn’t be the ones seeking that appreciation from others. I can tell how much you love to write angst from the sheer passion that goes into every single brutal fic you put out. And lemme tell you know — whether I’m being a broken record or not! — you are So. Fucking. GOOD at it ❤️ Beyond good. Beyond great. Straight up masterful. AMT’s wouldn’t be what it is without the heart-shredding angst that made it as powerful as it was. Sinners wouldn’t make me shriek into my pillow if you weren’t go gifted at wielding the angsty blade. Barrage wouldn’t bring me to tears the way it did; Flashes Before Your Eyes wouldn’t still linger in my mind the way it still does. And I can go on and on, but I think you get my point ❤️ You are beyond extraordinary at what you, my friendo. It still leaves me speechless to this day.

So, I guess what I’m trying to say it… if you wanna write angst, PLZ HECKIN’ DO!!! If only for the fact that there is so much love that goes into it when you do ❤️❤️❤️ And that love is palpable, and it leaves impressions, and those impressions make for one heck of a wildly blessed author. I honestly don’t think a fluffy fic written for the sake of it being fluffy will be able to have the same kinda heart that something like Unrequited did… y’know what I mean? 💖 And plz do not get me wrong — Shelter is phenomenal, and every kudos and comment and bookmark is so, so deserved and more!! But I don’t think that should be the basis/comparison point for your fics. You don’t have to be an “angst” writer; you don’t have to be a “fluff” writer; you don’t have to be anything.

Just be you, Alto ❤️ Bc you are fucking incredible. And I wouldn’t want you to be anyone else ❤️💖

*jumbo hugs!*

(P.S. - I was thinking recently that I should switch over to primarily angst writing bc I thought that’s what the people wanted 😂😂 But maybe the Yin and Yang of fanfic genres are simply meant to balance each other out lmaooo!)

DFGHJGFDSAWSEDFG Thank you Pichu!!!! Don't worry, I wasn't seriously considering cutting my angstfics. Just sort of speculating out loud and seeing if people had preferences. But with that said, this all means so much to me to hear. And I'm so grateful that my fics have meant something to you in the long run. I write for fun, mostly as a means of expressing myself or exploring ideas that are bubbling in the surface. So I'm glad it appeals to an audience, however niche.

I'm rambling lolol Thanks so much. You're such a good writer and a kind friend ❤️

[pascaloverx]

Rewrite The Stars

Chapter Seventeen — Season Two

Summary: One photo changes your whole life, when you accidentally bump into a celebrity and the world starts to believe that you are a couple.

Notes:

In this chapter, we have an extra character called Enzo, whom I'd like you to imagine as the actor Enzo Vogrincic. And for those who enjoy the fanfic, I appreciate if you reblog or like. To the readers who supported a new season of this fanfic, my heartfelt thanks. I will be writing more chapters like this one or even shorter, as long as you continue to engage and enjoy what I'm writing.Let me know what you think of the new chapter, and happy reading to all of you ❤

chapter sixteen final chapter

Days later you will look for your mother to tell her the good news. Not that she'll think it's a good idea. In fact, Pedro and you were going to tell him when some preparations were ready but some paparazzi photographed him buying the ring. Now you have to tell your mother who basically already imagines that you are going to get married.

"Do you think she will like the gift?" Pedro Pascal asks as he drives, a little nervous about asking his mother to bless your union.

"She loves cooking, I think she'll love that her son-in-law thought of buying some more practical kitchen utensils so she can cook without much effort." You talk and kiss the cheek of your fiancé. He seems to feel more confident after what you say.

"And we arrived. Don't forget that you promised to support me while I'm talking to your mother about the wedding." Pedro while parking the car, you think it's funny. He seems more nervous now than when he's preparing for some important audition.

"Are you that scared of my mother?" You ask making fun of Pascal. You take your bags and some gifts he brought to please her.

"Maybe. Last time we were here, you kissed your ex in front of me to prove that you were over him. What will we have to do this time?" Pedro's concern seems to be justified and honestly, you know that your mother will not easily accept that your happy ending is not with Enzo.

"Mi amor. There's nothing we have to do this time other than be honest. Yo te amo, tu me amas. We are simply here to inform my mother of this. Did you understand?" You say to Pedro Pascal as you drop your bags in front of your mother's door and kiss him.

"¿Planeas calmarme con un beso y hablando en español cada vez que esté tenso?" Pedro speaks naturally as soon as you stop kissing. You spent two months learning Spanish to surprise him.

"I intend to use Spanish to my advantage at any time. If you're going to marry me, adapt." You say, kissing Pascal on the cheek and pressing your mother's doorbell.

"Wow, you guys decided to come here and invite me to the wedding. I thought I'd have to watch it on television." Your mother says it being super dramatic. You smile and enter her house, giving your mother a hug as Pascal puts your bags inside the house.

"Mom, no drama. Pedro came here to visit you with me just to talk about the wedding." You say while hugging your mother.

"It's a pleasure to be at your house again Madam Y/M/N. I wanted to take the opportunity to deliver some gifts to you." Pedro says, handing over the utensils he bought. She looks at him a little suspiciously.

"We are not in the last century, you don't need a dowry to marry my daughter. Just ensure that she will be loved and respected for as long as your marriage lasts." Your mother speaks, shaking hands with Pedro as if they were closing a deal.

"I promise that I will respect and love your daughter until after the duration of our marriage. Which I hope lasts until our death separates us, to be clear." Pedro speaks while looking your mother in the eyes. Your mother smiles and hugs him.

"Now that we are friendlier, we have some wedding stuff to talk about." You say watching your mother and Pedro hug.

"I hope you know that I will be the one walking my daughter down the aisle to the priest." Her mother speaks and you look at her.

"Mom, Pedro and I aren't getting married in a church." You start to speak but Pedro touches your arm gently.

"Actually, we can think about getting married in church too. Ideally, we would get married in a discreet ceremony." Pascal speaks all understanding, while you look at him thinking he is trying to please your mother.

"And another thing. I'd like some grandchildren. No big deal, one or two would be nice." Your mother speaks and you almost gasp in surprise. Pedro thinks it's funny.

"I would like to assure you that this is not in our plans but we will take your recommendation into consideration." Pascal says embarrassed and you look at him disapproving of his answer.

"We're not going to take anything into consideration. Mom, whether you accept the marriage or not; you can't make demands. Pedro and I don't think about having children. I suggest that if you want grandchildren, adopt some." You answer and your mother looks at you disapproving of your answer. Pedro has a good laugh and then becomes embarrassed again. The rest of the time, you have fun trying to plan the wedding. And eating your mother's delicious chocolate pie. And all the while, your mother managed to treat Pascal like her son-in-law without remembering that he wasn't Enzo. You finally seem to be heading towards your happy ending.

tag: @wanniiieeee , @hungrhay and @leilanixx

[youhideastar]

For the fic rec game, if you still feel like it: 😂🔁✨🛳️

😂 A fic that made you laugh out loud

Early Returns by rageprufrock, 15,500 words, Inception, Arthur/Eames, newsroom AU

This is the fic I rec to friends who have never read a fanfic, but it's also a fic I read like once a year because nothing, nothing has ever made me laugh this hard. The jokes are so good that I still laugh out loud, after reading them at least ten times. Bonus: you really do not need to know anything about Inception to read this fic. Still not convinced? The summary is:

Thinking that a reporter genuinely likes you is pretty much on par with feeling like you really are special to that stripper.

🔁 A fic you’ve re-read several times

i could bite my tongue by astrolesbian, 3000 words, modern AU wlw!Wangxian

I have lost count of the number of times I have re-read this fic, my beloved comfort object, in which Wei Ying confesses her love and then freezes up during foreplay because the stakes feel so high, and she and Lan Zhan talk it through so lovingly and carefully, and the last line is peak peak peak romance and waaaauggh I can't handle how soft and wonderful this fic makes me feel!!! Plus, there is an equally sweet sequel!!

✨ A fic you wish you could read again for the first time

If they caught you by @feyburner, 6000 words, Tian Guan Ci Fu/Heaven Official's Blessing

TGCF is hard to write fic for. The vibe is so specific. Most fics that try to match it fail; you're usually better off intentionally going for a different vibe than canon. This fic, however, gets it exactly right. This is Xie Lian. This is the humor, and the sorrow, hand-in-hand. I bawled. My chest hurt so bad. I was smiling through my tears. I needed a hug. I've re-read this fic and it's still damn good, but nothing will ever match the absolute wrecking ball of that first read.

🛳️ A fic that brought you aboard a new ship

Gift of the Magi by astolat, 4000 words, Person of Interest, Reese/Finch

This fic has a lot to answer for: before I read it, I knew nothing of this pairing, this fandom, this canon--and after it, I devoured all 5 seasons of the show and damn near all the fic this small fandom has to offer. I read this one on a whim because I love astolat's writing, of course, and then it was like a sickness, I needed more. 😂 So anyway, curses upon this perfectly constructed jewel box of a fic for what it did to me, and I now pass that curse along to you, O reader!

Fic rec ask game post!

[pellucid-constellations]

I just have to say, thank you so much for the azriel fanfics you’ve written. I only recently discovered acotar this April and once I got through the first book I devoted the rest if the series.

I was dealing with a tough time this second semester in college for me between medical issues and general depression. But after reading acotar and your works, my mood immediately began to brighten and I’ve been feeling like myself again.

So thank you, for sharing this gift here. It might not seem huge to some, but I recognize the value of small gifts like this that people stumble across at sometimes the least expectant moments. It brightened my day, and for a stranger to be able to do that for someone random, even if not intended, I see that as a true blessing that is lacking much in our current world. Have a good one!

- a new but true follower 💜

Hello :) It really means so much to me that my fics were able to bring you some happiness ❤️ I also turn to reading when things are difficult, and it makes me so happy that I was able to give you a little bit of that brightness. And it is even more special that you shared this with me! It makes me want to write more!! I hope your year turns around and I'm sending you love and wishes for health!! ❤️❤️

[whitedarkmoonflower]

5 things that make me happy

tagged by @synindoodles Thank you so much! I must admit I'm not in a happy mood lately, so my first reaction was to ignore this. But then I thought a bit and damn, it was exactly what I needed - to think about all the nice things in my life that do make me happy. So thank you once again for tagging, it drew me a bit out of the little swamp I'm drowning right now.

So to make it short:

My family – being my man and my children. They are the most precious gift I have💖

My two fluffy grey cats 😺 Mr. Rocky and 😸Lady Victoria. The embodiment of character strength and persistence, when it comes to waking me up at 5:00 AM to demand breakfast

Reading books/ fanfics and lately also writing. Writing is an absolutely new discovery for me, and I revel in this new experience that I can taste thanks to this space and you guys, who read from time to time what I have written

Sports. 💪 Don't laugh! I have never been a fan of sports apart from watching it, and then once of a sudden I let my friend to talk me into going to gym as her training's buddy and now I'm completely drawn in. I still hate the silly bouncing around under loud music, but I love lifting weights. I promise to post some before and after pictures at some point later 😅

What's left? Ah, yes - my two beloved fictional husbands (yes, I'm supporting polygamy when it comes to fictional love 😂) Sihtric and Masema.

I'm so blessed to have all this and some more smaller and bigger things that make me happy, but the objective was to list 5, so I had to prioritise 😍 I'm not tagging anybody, as I have seen so many of you already have done it, but if you see this on your dashboard - consider being tagged. It's really worth reflecting! 💖💖💖

[carusolikey]

Hello, Easter Eggs! And welcome to Part 1 of 3

Find Part 2 Here Find Part 3 Here Masterlist Here

This is a little listicle of all of the references made throughout Paddington 3: Lost in Mallorca. Maybe you caught them all, maybe you'd like to read through them all and read the whole post again so that you can fully enjoy the detail and intent behind our movie, tv, and pop culture loving couple? I'll leave that up to you. Cheers - enjoy!

Javi Gutierrez’s third favorite movie is Paddington 2, so it only seems appropriate to name a fanfic about him Paddington 3, while giving him an adorable, teddy bear looking dog named Paddington.

Javi and X’s nicknames: • Mi vida, mi amor - my life, my love • Cara mia, Querida, and Mon cherº • This is Italian, Spanish, and French, respectively * Cara mia - my darling (feminine) * Querida - my dear (feminine) * Mon cher - my dear (masculine) º This is an homage to the Addams Family movies starring Raúl Juliá and Anjelica Huston, playing Gomez and Morticia Addams, who are passionately in love. Morticia’s use of French drives Gomez wild.

Javi washing his hands - Because nobody needs a UTI or any other infection, be real people - Javi’s so considerate!

The line “Reader, I was successful” in regards to sneaking more ice cream onto Javi’s chest is a little homage to Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, towards the end when Jane narrates, “Reader, I married him,” speaking of course, about Mr. Rochester. (This might come back in future fanfics I write, pay attention, Reader 🙂) “No. Más. Manos.” Have you ever heard of the film, Manos, Hands of Fate? Well good news, the whole MST3K version of the movie is available to stream for free on YouTube:

"Slowly, he looked me up and down, “As you wish, cara mia,” - this one's personal, and one of my first childhood crushes ever, Cary Elwes as Westley aka Dread Pirate Roberts, in The Princess Bride. Oh, how my tiny little heart frantically pumped, understanding that when he said, "As you wish," he really meant, "I love you."

"Giant Inflatable Arm Waving Guys outside of car dealerships" - well, for me it’s always about Always Sunny.

"...nuzzling right in the sweet spot where it tickles a little, but also makes you forget where you are - so what, who cares?" - I can't say "So what? Who cares?" without always thinking about Fred Armisen dressed as Joy Behar. And now, neither will you.

“You can’t leave Baby on the counter,” is a throwback to this iconic scene, and I’m including it because not everyone is #Blessed to know what a gift Patrick Swazye was. I also included the water dance as an homage to the final dance scene in Dirty Dancing, but with a Spanish flair, just for Javi.

"With his right arm looking like Michelangelo carved it out of marble" - Hi, David much?

“Like la petite mort? Komm süsser tod?” La petite mort - French for “the little death” is analogous to experiencing an orgasm, dying a little, seeing the light Komm süsser tod - this is the German version, “come sweet death,” and is in reference to the piece by J.S. Bach, Komm süßer Tod, komm selge Ruh, (Come, sweet death, come, blessed rest): https://www.classicfm.com/composers/bach/music/come-sweet-death/ ; Five times the woman at prayer in the song begs for death, and the sweet release of paradise - and you wonder how it became synonymous with reaching climax? https://www.bachvereniging.nl/en/bwv/bwv-478

Oh, Naughty Little Mermaid!

"I read that it’s supposed to be a shield in front of him, and that he’s holding a club raised behind him. It’s certainly more gladiatorial" - Y'all ready for Pedro in Gladiator 2?

“...I’d definitely be inclined to be a stealthy archer!” - this is actually a reference to Skyrim, the Bethesda game. IYKYK - and definitely not to be confused with this one:

"Every Day You Play! Yes! Yes! I remembered!" - This is not the full poem, just the last few stanzas. Below I'm including the entire poem, English vs. the original Spanish. Every Day You Play by Pablo Neruda English vs. Spanish The translation I included was not specifically this one. It was my attempt through translating on my own - in addition to comparing multiple translations in order to get what I felt was an accurate English version that also captured the romance and musicality of Neruda's words. This analysis does an excellent job of describing the various emotions Neruda feels as he describes this relationship that he holds so dear, with such passion, and intensity - try not swoon, I dare you:

“As you wish,” and he jerked me upright….” This is absolutely inspired by two things, first the more obvious one, Princess Bride - see earlier gif.

And secondly, a specific scene in Narcos, because I needed it to be, and so did you. Don’t lie. Consider this - Javi G. roleplaying Javi P., is that technically an Inception? Should we ask Leo? Nah. He's busy. SUPER, SUPER NSFW Peña scene link to jog your memory just over yonder: Javi and I will both gleefully giggle while watching this, but at some point I will need to fan myself so that I don't get the vapors.

Dr. Frankenstein - of course I’m referring to Gene Wilder.

“Let’s stick a pin in it, ‘kay?” - I know you remember this SNL Skit: 

"Two old guy muppets" - in case you’re not familiar: 

“Mi hermosa paloma” - my beautiful dove. La Paloma was Frida Kahlo’s nickname, while her husband Diego Rivera was nicknamed El Elefante, a complex, yet beautiful real life relationship worth learning about:

Our Flag Means Death - if you haven’t watched it yet, I’m curious why not.

"There’s an artist by the name of Joan Miró who painted a series of works called ‘The Constellations’ during WWII" - So you'd like to learn more about Joan Miró?

There were many artists, like Miró living in Paris around the time Germany began its infiltration, and while Miró managed to narrowly flee to Spain many, like Marc Chagall, Max Ernst, André and Jacqueline (neé Lamba) Breton, and Consuelo de Saint-Exupéry (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's wife - he was busy flying a Bloch MB with the Armée de l'Air for a bit), to name a few, took up residence at Villa Air-Bel, just outside Marseille as part of a refugee project conceived by the ERC (Emergency Rescue Committee, an American humanitarian effort based in Marseille). Varian Fry, an American journalist, along with Mary Jayne Gold, an American heiress from Chicago, and Albert Hirschman, a Jewish-German humanitarian from Berlin, worked together prior to U.S. involvement in WWII to provide support and resettlement opportunites for refugees. They saved over 2,000 people, including 200 artists and intellectuals at risk of the advancing forces.

The International Rescue Committee did not stop its work after WWII, they continued, and in the 1960's when Varian Fry needed to raise additional funds for the IRC, Jacques Lipchitz, one of the artists Fry rescued suggested "Flight" as the theme - the concept encapsulating the refugee experience. Over 300 artists contributed one of a kind works, including Miró.

It's a little disappointing that Kathy Burke in the Travel Man video I included at the end, is so disinterested in Miró's work; but it's also hilarious that Richard Ayoade called Picasso a hack, because Joan Miró himself considered Picasso bougie and is quoted as saying, "I will break their guitar," referring of course, to Picasso's cubist paintings and sculptures of a guitar. Man loves his guitars, okay?

(There's more guitar shtuff, but I'm sure if you're motivated, you'll find your way to them.) Gary Busey - one of the most frightening actors you could possibly encounter in the wild, and that’s a fact. If you don't want to sign up to read the whole article, the first few paragraphs should provide an adequate characterization:

“Sherlock-inspired Mind Palace” from the BBC show Sherlock, starring Benedict Cumberbatch.

“I think I know who was on the grassy knoll!” - while I’m not making light of the original horrendous incident, the truth is you could have your pick of television series, movies, and books that make the conspiracy or the event a plot device, and that in and of itself is the reference: The Umbrella Academy, 11/22/63 by Stephen King, Mad Men, Quantum Leap, the list goes on.

As a long time bartender, I love mixing up drinks and have a strong interest in cocktail history. I'm a purist who believes that the best cocktails use the best ingredients; poor ingredients often are high in sugar, and that's what leaves you with a hangover the next day. One of my favorite resources is Imbibe Magazine, and so I present, Imbibe Magazine's collection of Old Fashioned Riffs. Cheers, loves.

Imbibe Magazine Old Fashioned Riffs

“all up ons” - this is an extremely old internet reference to a character named Strong Bad, who used the phrase in interesting and sometimes confusing ways:

“Oh! Hel-lo, Sailor!” - super obscure reference to this Anne Taintor piece: 

There's more Easter Eggs to come, don't you worry, in Easter Eggs Part 2: More Easter Eggs, The Eggening.

You can find that RIGHT HERE.

[hyukascampfire]

GOD BLESS THIS RB LMFAOOO CAM IM SORRY (pretty please don’t send any cease and desists my way)

im gonna place all your suffering right here so i can giggle at you

“Nothing is more certain than that I will greet every living thing eventually. I’ll come to take you, too, when the time comes.” knowing what i know now i could but rip at you with my bare hands after seeing this line again- 

when i tell you im here sitting in my living room on the edge of my seat- like knowing more of his lore just puts me out bc i know this is going to be painful

STOP IT ASH COME PAY FOR MY THERAPY RN RIGHT NOOOOWW. ASSSSHHHLLYYYNNNN IM SUING YOU

Im going to start sobbing now

Ash fix this wrong you have created, this hurt that has come to take from me pls- And it hurts so much because your writing is just so good like im rolling around on the floor bc i know the pain is here and now- 

Pov this is me at the end of the fic lol <333 hehehehe so cute so fun so not heart wrenching- 

yeah im paying for my sins for finding him hot in that moment because now im in pain again hahahahahah yay! 

ha ha hA HA HAHA ASH WHY WHY WHYWHY WHY WHY- HUH YOU LIKE HURTING ME? HUH? YOU FIND THIS FUNNY? Real tears REAL ones came down my face like say sike rn pls pretty pls take it back and delete it pls :)) 

sobs - Sobs harder wtf ash- 

i’m such an evil dictator a giggled through it all. have mercy on me i am just a fanfic writer pls

AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH ALREADY ASH YOU HAVE ME- how i was silenced, i know its simple but it feels so like a book opening like not a book opening but a book that i have in my mind opened to witness all that is coming next STOP DONT MAKE ME CRY

At the start of this im so hooked on you have no idea it feels hazy like foggy, dark, and dare i say mysterious the beginning of this fic is gen so ominous yes

THE ALLURE PLS HAVE MERCY ON MY SOUL i love this so much i can feel the way his voice is in the woods now. It’s such a start to a fic i'm so in love. ALLURING IS LITERALLY THE BEST WAY TO DESCRIBE THIS YEONJUN IM GONNA SMOOCH YOU ON THE MOUTH

THE FEEEEELLLINGS I HAVE AAAASSSSSHHHH PLLLLS I'm attached to him in an unhealthy way. me too

Ugh a gift, i love the power in names and in a fic like this feels so heavy and im just eating it up its hitting me and it hurts im covered in bruises- i literslly love the power of names, like not having someone’s name or having someone’s name affects smth its so interesting, especially in this when it alludes to the fact that she is in fact special to him TEEHEE

And i love this feeling him before seeing him the same kind of feeling as the start with the woods i love it i love it i love it sm me too i need him to come visit me

When i tell you i love scenes like this, small but in comparison but overall so impactful to the characters, i eat them up and its so soft and gentle i love it sm-  i could kiss you right now because these are my favorite kind of scenes. seeing who someone is outside of romantic interaction is so impactful :,) and just him being there for a dying animal showing MC that dying doesnt hve to be such an awful thing. sobs.

I DONT MEAN TO BE YOUR MONSTER STTTTTTOOOOOPPPP IT NOW STOP- IM SO GLAD THAT YOU GET THIS LINE LIKE ME WE ARE ON THE SAME WAVELENGTH I WAS GIGGLING LIKE WTF

this is them and also us if youll accept cuddling as an apology

I love the lore ive been a nerd for a long time and eat up anything that has to do with the wild hunt and reading this just fixed me and broke me but mostly fixed me. & YOU DONT GET IT I LOVE THIS SM i love the wild hunt lore i love this vibe i love this feeling i love this- IM SO HAPPY YOU GET ME SO WELL BECAUSE THERES JUST SOMETHING ABOUT THE WILD HUNT i literally could not put it into words for you but it just has this feeling and i am so obsessed with the concept. i woukd literally read a fantasy book if that was the only selling point i’m so serious PLUS IT JUST MAKES HIM SO SEXY AND MYSTERIOUS

Ugh the intimacy in nothing but a question and i love the parroting back of the ‘no’ and the term of endearment being love- ive melted cam’s finally met the way i write yeonjun (it’s not a choice i literally am shackled i think i’m like forever ruined by tsfawc yeonjun or smth) and i could not be happier. SENSUAL INTIMATE BUT ALSO FREAKY YEONJUN YES PLEASE ILL TAKE TEN YES THANK YOU :3

ID LET HIM EAT MY HEART you get it >.<

A strong moment of silence- “I want you to beg me for it,” rumor has it that user biteyoubiteme has not recovered from this line.  you better believe i’m begging, like meowing and on my knees thwres no limits thank u v much

Okay pause a bit bc is it wrong for me to be like- ‘oh hey hottie’ like in this moment like it was only for a second but- no speak your truth he’s hot he can’t help it, it’s just that he’s also hot in the wrong situations

Now this is the moment i knew i was in trouble, ash has come to collect her dues on some long lost list of transgressions ive done in a past life- The moment starts so simple, over bread like its nothing- simple enough like a paper cut i swear because it burns and im bleeding tears- ruin me why dont you-Kill me in the worst way- sobbing thinking about this moment too it was so sweet in a disgusting bittersweet way i hope they’re happy forever and ever.

This reblog was made in loving memory of cam, otherwise known as user biteyoubiteme on tumblr dot com, slain at the hands of ashlynn, otherwise known as user hyukascampfire on tumblr dot com, to show your condolences read this fic in its entirety over and over again to share even a fraction of her pain- STOP ITSBJSJSJS ILY AND IM SORRY FOR WHAT I DID OKAY TAKE ME BACK

PLS ILY A THOUSAND KISSES

THE TERRIBLE HALF-TRUTHS OF THE UNDEAD ҜING

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

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

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

rꫀׁׅܻblogs & asks arꫀׁׅܻ always apprꫀׁׅܻciatꫀׁׅܻd!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“There you are, love.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

༺ ꘏ ༻

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

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

And you absolutely should not wonder about him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“That’s not my issue.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

༺ ꘏ ༻

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Do you come here often?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He shakes his head. “He’ll die.”

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

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

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

༺ ꘏ ༻

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“No.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

༺ ꘏ ༻

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I take pride in that.”

“Take pride in what? Being insufferable?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

༺ ꘏ ༻

You curl your arms around yourself, the night biting cold. Yeonjun had dragged you from bed, and who knows what hour of the night it is? If the heaviness beneath your eyes is to judge it by, it’s far too deep in the dead of night to be outside with your boots half-laced and nothing but your sleep chemise on.

You might’ve just stayed wrapped up in your blankets if you weren’t so lonely as you’ve been. Soobin’s been scarce. The most you see of him is in the fields from morning to afternoons. You hope that he’ll stop by your doorstep and knock so that you can groan about it but swing the door open anyway each time, but he doesn’t. He thinks that you won’t want to see him, and so he allows you your space.

That couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s hard to be the one to come back after a conversation like that, though. You watch him from the windows and hope he understands at some point instead. It’s an awful lot easier.

Other than preparing meals and window watching, you’ve been up to nothing much at all. You hadn’t realized how much you had, but you feel him in his absence. 

“It’s cold…” you say. The fog of breath that punctuates it makes your point. Whatever he’s brought you out here for, you have no doubt it’ll be something strange. The grin on his face tells you as much.

Leading the way, he heads for the Darkwood. “Only you would come rushing out without a cloak for your shoulders.”

“Well, only you would drag me from my nice, warm bed at this time of night. For what?”

“Can’t anything be a surprise with you?” he says, shooting you a cheeky glance over his shoulder. “Surprises are fun.”

“Surprises!” you say, working your legs to catch him. “Not surprises that involve you bringing me out into the woods. You know, it’s awfully suspicious. Somebody who sees this might think that I am the type to… sneak out with men.”

“Aren’t you now?”

Your lips tug down. “You know what I mean.”

He laughs in his airy way, a twig snapping under his foot. You’re well in the woods, now. Probably somewhere near where you’d first met him.

Lifting a brow, you look at him expectantly. Maybe a will-o’-the-wisp will come floating through with its light bouncing off the trees. That would be a nice surprise, you admit.

Yeonjun circles you. His presence behind you tingles in the way it always does, but true chills erupt when his breath puffs against your ear. “Close your eyes. I have something I want to show you.”

Your mind wanders back to what Soobin had gotten so twisted up about. It might be naive and reckless and against everything you ever learned, but you let your eyes fall shut to blackness. If he was going to hurt you, you imagine he’d have had that opportunity a mind-numbing amount of times before.

“Are they shut?” he asks, waiting for your nod. His voice comes from in front of you now. “I want you to keep them shut. You can’t open your eyes, or it will all go away. Okay?”

“Okay,” you breathe, mind full of a bounty of questions. You don’t even know where to begin to assume what he’s got going on, so you stand there shifting your antsy feet.

There’s a strange, rustling sound that catches you off guard with your eyes closed. It drags on for a long moment. Curiosity pries at your eyes; you want nothing more than to just crack an eye open to spy the source of the ruckus. 

It’ll be gone if you do, anyway.

You let out a surprised squeak as something rises up beneath you, as if risen from nothing more than the dirt and roots of the forest floor, bringing you up from the earth. You wobble and send your hands out to find a perch.

A horse. It’s a horse, its mane so tangled and windswept, but matted and clumped with leaves that crunch under your palm when you find them. It reeks of mud—everything around you begins to smell of earth and decomposition.

You know that if you open your eyes, you’ll find yourself sat upon the pale white steed of the Undead King, its eyes white and its knobby knees almost as famous as the leader of The Hunt himself. It chuffs beneath you.

“Are you ready?” Yeonjun says over your shoulder. You can hear the feral grin in his voice. It’s the leader of The Hunt, a creature of folklore, that sits behind you now. He curls an arm around your waist and tugs you closer to him, securing you against the wall of his chest. “Hold on tight, my love.”

The call of the wild, that horn, bellows again like it had the first time you heard it. Rather than coming from nearby as you thought it would, it dances between trees far off just like it had that time, too. Your heart jumps up into your throat.

Taking off with a howl, the Wild Hunt follows it.

You dig your fingers into Yeonjun’s at your waist. Weight melts away, and you know you’re in the air. Your belly swoops in tandem with the howls and hoots of the riders, heart palpitating to the hoofbeats. How there’s hoofbeats as you ride through the air, you’re not sure. The ghostly fleet manifests around you in vivid imagery, though you squeeze your eyes shut. They are wild enough to imagine just what they might look like: with their clothes and flesh in tatters, with their eyes beady or pale, with their hounds piercing the air with their calls and running alongside them, they are a perfect personification of freedom.

Whip-lash sends you reeling, body going rigid. You grit your teeth and squeeze your eyes harder, wishing that you’ll touch ground soon and that everything would become real again.

Yeonjun feels you go stiff. Bringing his head back to your shoulder from his own delight, he says, “It’s okay. You’re okay. Let it into your bones. Do you think I would let it hurt you?”

He is their leader. If it got too much, you know Yeonjun would be there to catch you. Curling your fingers into his, you release that tension and allow their drumbeat to echo through you.

And when it does, your blood begins to sing along. The wind whips your cheeks and your hair, and you begin to laugh with them. The Hunt twists and turns and dances through the air, an apparition in the night, but nothing more than that.

It comes to a slow, eventually, until the noise and even your steed crumbles back down into the dirt it appeared from. Your eyes pop open hoping to catch at least a glimpse of them, but only the dark forest and pale moonlight answer. Your legs threaten to give out on you, veins still thrumming, but, oh, do you feel alive.

You feel more alive than you ever have, more than you ever could have hoped to have known. Mind spinning, you stumble. Yeonjun catches and steadies you before you can go scraping your knees on a rock.

“Oh my fucking god,” you say.

The laugh that Yeonjun breaks into has you sending him a glare, but you break too. Everything about him is ironic; and how ironic indeed that Death himself should show you how to be alive, rather than to just live?

༺ ꘏ ༻

The air is so fresh in your lungs when you step outside that it nearly burns. You clutch your basket of warm fig tarts. Songbirds trill and fly between tree tops that slowly become more bare the deeper you fall into the season, singing their sweet songs that sound like new beginnings.

Raising your hem from the ground churned up into mud from the afternoon’s trickle, you prance into town with a lively pep in your step. You spent all last night making these—Yeonjun had kept you company, watching you how he always does as you pored over making them just right. His cruel snicker when the jam had simmered over flame for too long and became too thick bounces off your bones in a sweet melody. You’ve come to adore his wicked delight, the way his smile cracks over his face and the facetious raise of his brows, more than you fear it.

Sending small smiles to the people that you pass, you stop by a huddle of kids digging sticks into the mud. They look up at you with curious eyes, stopping to gawk.

“Hey, guys,” you say, pulling back the cloth laid over the sweets. “I’ve made some fig tarts. Do you like fig? I bet you’ll like them; they’re sweet.”

The kids stand up, eyes big as they share a look. They don’t let out so much as a peep before they scurry off home.

You blink. Well, you’re used to weird reactions, but that was… different. Picking up your deflated shoulders and hesitant limbs, you make a shoddy attempt at not letting it dampen your good morning. You were expecting wary looks, anyway.

You head down a little further toward the far side of your home village, the side that breaks off after a fenceline into a great, grassy field. There’s a bustle, mothers washing their clothes in pails and hanging them up to dry and a few others whispering at each other lowly as they go about their days.

An old woman so old her back curves and her fingers have gone knobby makes her way to wherever the day’s duty demands her to be. Your neighbor—an eccentric old lady bound in her times. You decide on her: the elderly are forgotten by the young. She might enjoy knowing that her neighbors still know she exists.

“Hello,” you say, showing her your basket with a hopeful, excited heart. “I have some treats that I was wanting to give out. I know they might not be much, but would you like one? I’m not the best baker, but I do it often enough.” A face like that, dragged down by her years on this earth and not long to death, has no doubt spent many years making meals for her family. You imagine your goods would be nothing beside hers, but it’s the gesture, no?

“Oh, girl,” she says, voice crackling as she clutches her shawl tighter around her shoulders. “I’m afraid it’s best if you found yourself missing from this place. Hurry yourself up and spare the drama.”

The incessant cawing of a crow from a clawed tree fades into the background as you furrow your brows and lower your basket to ask, “...Huh?” Your belly goes up in knots; terrible knots done up tight and fast. You haven’t got a clue what she’s talking about. Elders always did speak a bit strange, though. It could be nothing much; she’s a stern old lady.

But her eyes are not angry and glaring in the way that a harrowed old hag might turn her nose up at the youth. They drag down with a cold pity.

“Listen to me, girl.” She points at you with one of those worn, sun-spotted hands. “You had best leave. The boy’s gone, and they are already not fond of you. Who will they point their fingers to?” the woman says. “I hardly know you, but I would hate to see it.”

The rest of her words fade into the roaring in your ears, the feral drumbeat of your heart like a wardrum in the cage of your ribs as it beats against them as if to escape from you. You don’t feel the basket in your hands, don’t feel the solidity of the earth beneath your feet, and don’t feel a single one of your thoughts like tangible things. They flit as if liquidated into a rotten, sick mush.

Nothing. You can think of nothing. Nothing real; nothing holding you to the earth.

“What?” Your voice hardly reaches your ears, but what does is weak and broken and like a plea for her to tell you that it’s not really what you think it is.

And if you could see or hear anything beyond your fraying little rift in reality, you would’ve heard the man coming up to you. You would’ve heard the words coming from his angry, sneering mouth, and would’ve done something when he picked up a pail of water, and you would’ve been shaken by the nasty ice water that runs down your frozen body and plasters your hair and clothes down as he pours it over you. But none of it cuts through your stupor.

He yells some awful, stabbing things at you, and a few others join him. They tell you that you are nothing but a plague, tell you to leave and to not come back here.

But this is your home. Where else would you go?

With your sopping wet dress clutched in your shaking fists as though that might keep you grounded, you choke down the tightening of your throat and sift through their faces, searching for his face. Those brown eyes, brown and always shining with nagging playfulness, do not come up anywhere. Jaw trembling, you search harder. Out on the field where he should be at this time of day, at your doorstep demanding that you go spend the day doing nothing with him, in someone’s yard helping them fix up a broken fence, no matter where you look, neither his broad silhouette nor his cheeky, dimpled face is there. You continue to stand stricken dumb, looking for him even though you know by the churning in your belly that it’s true, and you’re just hurting yourself trying to find him right where he should be.

Fine. Alive. Untouched by your disgusting, destructive presence.

When you can no longer fight the strangling tightness in your lungs and your dress is as heavy as your heart, you take off. The hem of your dress drags in mud and sticker bushes and catches on stray twigs, and you don’t know where you’re going, but you just run. You’ll give them what they want. 

You stumble, probably like some lost, undead thing, until you find yourself at the edge of the forest. Only then do you let the wall of whittle-edged tears roll down your face. And you assume you sound like a choking, dying animal with how you choke and heave on them, but he was the one you might’ve dropped your head and cried to, so what’s the use of making it pretty? No; you let it all fall as it is.

Soobin’s dead. Soobin’s dead, and it’s nobody else’s but your own fault. You clutch your chest to staunch that old ache that’s grown teeth and tears at your heart; you have and will always be the end of everything that comes near. You are just as much the plague that you began to pretend, to believe, you weren’t. It was your stupid hope that maybe you could have something and not watch it become carrion that drove that pick. It was by your hope that he’s gone.

The hair on your arms begins to raise. You pick your head up and find Yeonjun standing in front of you.

There’s a few beats of long, dreadful quiet as he takes in the state of you. He drags his eyes down and they become liquid flame—something different from the impious delight that he is made of. He becomes the King of Death.

“What happened?” he says. The chills on your arms prickle furiously at the words, furling out distant and yet furious like the center of the fire.

You shake your head, wiping your soaked cheek.

“What the fuck happened?” he growls again, taking your face into his hand. “Who did this? Who did this to you, my love? I need you to tell me who the fuck did this to you.”

Letting the venom in your mouth out, you shove his chest and say, “Get away from me. Don’t fucking touch me.”

Yeonjun’s face twists up, looking scalded. Not surprised, though. “Don’t do this,” he says. “Let me hold you while it hurts. Don’t push me away. I can’t… I won’t lose you again.”

All the pieces that you had been putting into the corners of your mind snap together at that. As many suspicions as you had, though, it feels sour hearing it confirmed from his mouth. That you are his dead past lover, reincarnated or whatever you are. That it was his presence—because even though he stayed away for centuries, a part of him still lingered with you—that now has torn down everything you ever thought you could love. He, standing there in front of you like a kicked puppy, is the ruination of your life in the flesh. The flipping of your stomach is nauseating.

“I hate you,” you spit. “I hate you so much.” You repeat it a few more times, and you sob it into his chest as he takes you into his arms. “Is this what you wanted? You’ve been waiting for this forever, haven’t you? To find me again, so that you can die and fucking leave me here. So that you can make me exactly what you are, while you get your peace. You are a liar and a thief. All you’ve ever done is steal and take. How could you do it? Huh? Tell me…” Your voice trembles and staggers off. “Tell me how you made love to me, how you made me believe that you loved me, and all you ever wanted was to save yourself? You betrayed me.”

Pulling back, Yeonjun says, “No.”

“Yes,” you say, stumbling back away from him with a shaking, accusatory finger pointed at him. “Yes you did.”

Fingers itching to reach out to you, he holds them back by curling them into fists. “No. That’s not fair. I have spent an eternity loving you. I spent the entirety of my immortal, monstrous life searching for you, just so that I might find you in any form. I would have been glad to find you as a leaf in a tree, as long as I found you. But, then, I find you alive. Alive and back, as if… it never happened.” He steps toward you, aching to be near you. His voice wavers. “Please, don’t do this to me, love. Please, just let me have you again. I’ve waited… I’ve waited and I’ve waited, and I finally have you, and now you’re looking at me like I… Like I’d ever hurt you. Finding death—finally getting to die would be worth nothing if you weren’t there with me. It was never about that.”

“I could never love you,” you say, matching his steps forward with steps away from him. “I could never love a monster that does… Does nothing but kill. Take.”  You know your words are cruel, but you need them to be. You need him to hurt, you need him to go so far away from you that never again will you cause another living thing’s death. 

“You did.” Yeonjun’s mouth cracks into a pained smile, sharp at the corners. “You loved me just as much as I love you, once.”

“Just leave me. Leave me, and I wish to never see you again. If you love me, then you’ll give me that.” 

He looks at you, clever eyes intense and glassy, for a long time. And then he says, “Would that make you happy? Would it make it so that you could live a happy life, and find yourself something to live for?”

What’s left for you? A small village that won’t ever embrace you? No, it wouldn’t fix your life. But you open your mouth and tell him, “Yes.”

“Okay,” he says, brushing his knuckles over your cheeks reverently. He swallows in your features, running over them for what he knows is the last time he’ll be seeing you—the very last time he’ll see the face of his undying love. When he finally opens his mouth again, his voice is gentle. “I’ll leave you. If my being here hurts you, then I won’t be selfish. I love you, darling.”

Don’t go, you want to tell him. Please don’t leave. Please, hold me. But your mouth is dry, and you let the radiant hurt in your chest stop you. You let him go.

༺ ꘏ ༻

There’s only one place you can think of going to. It’s the only place your vagrant feet take you.

His spot still is held sacred by the flattened, gold wheat stalks. Your best friend, still living here on Earth in at least one way even if he’s not here to listen to your stupid rambling. And he would maybe complain, but he’d always listen.

The last thing you’d done was fight with him. What an awful thing—what an awful way to repay him for being the only one who ever dared to get close.

You sit in your spot, beside his, and rest your chin on your knees. If only the ground beneath you would open up and swallow you whole. You’d deserve it.

What’s left for you? Is there a place in the world that would keep you happily once they see what you do? No. There is not. You wish you knew what to do; you wish you had somebody to ask.

Releasing a long, tight breath, you just sit and wait for something to give you answers. A gentle breeze makes your hair dance, but it does not whisper anything to your ears. Something’s circling over head, but it doesn’t caw in the cadence of his laughter.

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

Conceding, you begin to push yourself up from the ground. A rustle in between the foliage stops you before you stand.

A tawny hare leaps out in front of you. It sniffs around you, nose twitching. Then it stands back on its haunches. It stares straight at you, an intelligent light in its eyes that knits your brows. The wild thing stands there with a purpose that is uncharacteristic of a forest animal.

But entirely familiar in the face of your best friend. That shine in its eyes as it stands there, nose still twitching, makes your chest tighten up.

“Hey,” you say, as if it might answer you. Your eyes well up with hot tears again. Of course, it doesn’t. 

Maybe you’ve gone mad, but you know that it’s him. That idiot, coming to show you that he’s okay in the afterlife—to visit one last time and to let you know that you shouldn’t worry for him or cry for him. Look at him, full of life once again, he seems to say. The hare blinks its beady eyes. It lingers there for a long time, the ease of peace found in his gaze that Soobin hadn’t had in this life, saying that there is still something waiting out there for us once we go. You reach out a hand. He does not flinch as you scratch behind its ear.

“Okay,” you whisper. “I’m glad to know you’re alright. I know what I need to do, now.”

He blinks.

You laugh a hoarse, breathy laugh, familiar in only the way that Soobin could achieve. “You look stupid.”

Indignantly, the hare stops a bratty foot in a way reminiscent of one of Soobin’s huffs before it settles back down onto its forelegs and scurries off. He goes to live out this new form of life, because it’s true: life does not end in death. He’s shown you that.

Maybe, like this, he’ll find that pretty lady that loves him the way he deserves. That loser.

༺ ꘏ ༻

You spend only one night in your home and you know that what you’ve chosen is right. After spending your day out in the field, you sneak under night’s cover into your husk of a room and let yourself sleep there under the covers one last time. When morning breaks through the window, you gather your weary bones up and leave. 

You run into your mother on the way out. She doesn’t yell at you to leave, but her eyes have gone cold. Colder than you’re used to. You’ve killed again, in every way that counts. So you don’t bother with bidding her or any of them any grand goodbyes. You couldn’t handle the relief you might find falling over them, should you.

Plopping down to the floor, you take a few bites of the cheese and bread lathered in sweet jam that you’d swiped from the kitchen. The grass is long and willows in the wind, bending and dancing prettily. It’s so soft; you enjoy the feeling of it beneath your fingers in your quiet serenity. The scent of it, fresh over the baseness of dirt, you breathe into your lungs.

It would be the loveliest place to spend the rest of eternity.

For the first time, Yeonjun appears in front of you rather than behind you. He materializes from nothing, his elbow on his knee as casual as if he’d been sat there the whole time. The darkness beneath his eyes seems heavier, but then again you know that exact heaviness. It sits right in the very center of you.

You both are quiet for a bit. You let the tall grass whisper, instead.

“Bread?” you say and slant your lips into a smile. Bringing it up, you offer it to him.

His smile wrinkles his nose and curls at the edges. Entirely him. Yeonjun accepts the bread, ripping a bite out before throwing it away into the sea of green. Once he’s chewed, he leans in and captures your lips in a kiss that’s utterly at odds with his sharp mouth. Your lips move over each other gently, save for an indulgent nip or bite here and there.

He pushes you back into a bed of sweetgrass, never letting your lips go. Not to breathe, not to say something that’ll pale in comparison to the sweetness of your mouths on one another. He kisses you until he’s had enough to fulfill a lifetime without it, and then some more.

“My love,” he whispers into your skin, his breath hot on your collarbone. “Mine,” he says, pressing a kiss into the column of your neck, and then he says it again with a hot kiss to the place where your dress suggests your breasts. He says it a handful more times as he pushes your skirts up your thighs. “My love forever. I waited for you so long, and I would do it again.” Lowering his voice to a honeyed whisper, he adds, “I would find you no matter what.”

Laughing softly, you run your fingers through his raven hair to better see his eyes. You know he would.

Gently giving you one more of his lingering kisses that make your skin tingle, right into your bare shoulder, he presses into you. You loose a soft breath, wrapping your arms around his shoulders. The beating in your chest slows to a content purr as he begins languid thrusts in and out of you, rolling pointedly and unhurried.

Yeonjun makes love to you in a thousand dusted kisses and sweet words, your hands holding each other’s soft edges. Yeonjun traces the lines of you, taking the pads of his thumb down your cheeks and your lips and then his hand over the swell of your breasts and down your belly and over your thighs. Clamping down on him as your belly grows tight in the way it had the first time you had done this, your thighs begin to shake.

 Breathlessly, as you hurdle over the edge, all that you can say is, “I love you, ‘Junnie.” 

Yeonjun smiles at you and then presses his face into your neck. He doesn’t even brace himself against the grass to chase his own peak. Neither of you want this to end; you want to hold on to this moment and let it span forever. Slowly, Yeonjun rolls up into you until his hips finally stutter and he cums into you, his cheeks pink. The weight of him above you as he shakes with your shared ecstasy, and even as you both have come down and are nothing but lazy, is the only thing in this world. He is the only thing in this world.

Once you’ve both evened your breathing out, you roll apart and face each other, still just two forms bending the grass into your shapes. Blinking slowly and digesting his features one at a time—the angle of his eyes, softened but never tamed, the line of his nose, the line of his mouth always so proud and playful, and that pretty dot below his left eye—you let them solidify fully in your mind.

“Yeonjun,” you say, finally meeting his eyes across from you. “I want to go. I’m ready.”

The gentle, knowing look that he gives you soothes over the way your heart begins to race in your chest in rebellion. “I know,” he says.

Of course he had known. Yeonjun had been called here to ferry you into the afterlife. He had known the moment he appeared in front of you that his last soul to reap would be you; an ironic circle of karma that should be cruel, but you two make it something sweet. Chewing on your lip, you will your hands to not shake as you curl toward him. You’re no longer scared of going. You know that if you’ll be with him, it will be okay. It won’t be so scary. A hot tear rolls down your temple and then drops into your hair. “Will you be with me? I won’t be there alone?”

He tucks some hair behind your ear reverently and then leaves his hand there. “I don’t know,” he answers. “But I won’t leave you. I’ll stay right here with you.”

You lay there for a long time. Chatting and giggling and just looking into each other's eyes, until your heart becomes slow and all you feel is the wind singing in your blood. Yeonjun presses one final kiss to your forehead.

Maybe, in some years, somebody might dig up your bones and find you immortalized like this in your love. Your bones bowing toward each other, as if even death were not enough to stop you from reaching for each other. Or maybe they’ll just find yours, and Yeonjun still curling into them how you know he will for an eternity more.

Either way, the going is still slow and gentle, as death always is.

🪶 ⦂ tears. omfg i cried writing this which could totally be me being a bitch baby but it DAMN. omfg.

rꫀׁׅܻblogs & asks arꫀׁׅܻ always apprꫀׁׅܻciatꫀׁׅܻd!

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Regarding Fandom Gift Exchanges

(UPDATE - 10/10 2024 - With the Felannie Exchange under its new management, my boycott has come to an end. While I still abstain from fic exchanges for the reasons entailed below, this means an end to my fandom vacations as well as my being able to read exchange fics again. Do note, however, this'll still come with caveats -- please read this post for more details.)

Regardless, for context, I'll be leaving much of the following post intact. Updates are applied where applicable.)

Hey, all! Fair warning: there's fandom drama afoot in this post, but as I'd like to elaborate upon a leave of absence next month, it's kinda an unavoidable subject. If you'd rather skip all that, just know I'll be gone from 2/7-2/21. Hit me up on Discord if you'd like!

So, for those not in the know, I'll be taking a two-week vacation from fandom beginning next Wednesday (2/7). About twice a year or so, I disengage from the hustle and bustle of fanfiction to recharge my batteries, annnnnd this'll be one of those times. For clarification, this means I won't be around Tumblr/Bluesky during this time, so in case you notice I've dropped off the face of the internet, well, now you know why.

For those wondering, yes, this means I'm not participating in the Felannie fic exchange; actually, I'll be upfront and admit this timing's no coincidence, because you won't see me participate in any fic exchange events. Ever.

Why's that? As it happens, I entered said fic exchange some years ago -- my very first one, in fact -- and it was nothing less than an unmitigated disaster that not only completely destroyed my faith in the exchange process but very nearly ruined fandom for me. Having come off a miserable year-long adjustment period to fandom -- wherein I felt unappreciated and unwelcome in the unfamiliar realm of AO3 -- it became apparent I had to set some hard boundaries if I were to continue writing fanfiction; unfortunately, this is one such measure, and I don't foresee it going away anytime soon.

I'm sure some of you are curious about what happened; honestly, I'm hesitant to get into the "why" if only because I'd rather not ruffle any feathers on old grudges (as you'll see below, I hold an certain opinion that I know has set people off in the past), but as there's certain layers to this particular boundary, I feel it's necessary to provide some context. To summarize in three points:

1. I'm Not Being Ghosted Again. During that exchange, I spent two whole months writing a gift for a recipient I'd never met. This piece -- Waking Dream, which I still consider my Felannie masterpiece -- grew beyond my wildest dreams. It was like I was possessed: I could only watch as my fingers danced on the keyboard, typing out idea after idea, cracked gag after gag, illustrated metaphor after metaphor -- all breathed into life as a three-chapter 15k fic.

An epic fake-romance-turned-real. My very best work. Penned even under the rigors of my father's (thankfully treatable) cancer diagnosis. Meticulously designed word-by-word with, to their blessing, alterations to the recipient's original request. Daydreaming day and night of how much they'd love it. All this for someone I never knew, and my recipient responded to my passion by ghosting me.

Given the whole "year of misery" thing I just mentioned, you can imagine the heartbreak I endured.

Writing fanfic is already a stressful risk -- no one idea's guaranteed to find an audience, and it's a huge struggle molding any idea into the written word. With that in mind, the gift exchange's additional burden of expecting someone to express the basic courtesy to thank you is too unhealthy of an ask, and I'm absolutely not risking that outcome again because some asshole doesn't know when to cut ties with fandom fatigue. It's one thing to say there's little one can do about it, but regardless of the circumstances, it magnifies loneliness/rejection in what should otherwise be a celebratory event and that's just an unacceptable outcome no matter how you slice it.

2. Anonymity and I Are A No-Go. (Warning: Hot Take Alert!) While I respect the idea of post-reveal anonymity on the grounds that it provides private writers an "in" with these events, I personally don't care for the practice and I'll be quite frank in how its general treatment as an unspoken rule directly contradicts how these events are marketed. (Putting it this way: why bother with the guessing game mystery when such cases slip through the cracks after the fact? Just rip the band-aid off and be open about it so people know what they're getting into.)

To make this absolutely clear: people's reason for privacy are their own, and I don't begrudge them for that choice. But as someone who regularly struggles with fandom anxiety, I view the appeal of such events as natural avenues to bond with the community -- be it solidifying familiar bonds or making new friends -- and it's only natural to expect as much given how all that's baked into the concept. (Not to mention the thrill of the mystery.) I recognize how cold and entitled this may sound, but I simply can't meet that goal with an anon gift.

Needless to say, having just come off the ghosting sh*t, I wasn't thrilled this wasn't divulged beforehand. I'd elaborate on how things escalated -- I don't think I need to describe why "I'm not interested in sharing that rule and I'm sorry you didn't consider that beforehand" is a hollow, unempathetic apology displaying a shocking lack of humility and responsibility -- but while I won't pretend I handled that fiasco perfectly, there are reasons why I can't get into detail.

We can argue all day over what, exactly, a fic exchange entails, but the point here is that like anyone else, I'm not one to enjoy having the rug pulled under at the very last minute. Call me invasive if you must, but it's not my job to deduce unspoken caveats and I don't apologize for feeling misled.

3. The Feeling's Mutual. In case this wasn't obvious, I maintain strong objections to how the moderator runs things, and I'll leave it at that. (UPDATE - 10/10 2024 - this was in reference to the prior moderator.)

So, that's that, really.

Since that whole mess, my approach to fandom is that I approach projects that I can control. For instance, the variables involved with fic exchange events proved themselves too risky or incompatible with my tastes, but could there exist a compromise? You betcha: I'm always up for gift exchanges or fic collaborations between friends! In fact, I've done two since then -- Love, Elusive and One-Hit Knock-Out. With receptive partners eager to join hands, there's next-to-zero chance of anything going wrong, so I can happily write fics at my leisure. (Helps they both made a big splash, too! Some of my fondest memories.)

To clarify, yes, this unfortunately means I won't be reading anything from the event. I want to make perfectly clear that while the fic exchange is a huge sore spot for me, I don't begrudge anyone for entering it; seriously, go off and have fun. Really! I encourage it. My problems with the exchange are my own and the last thing I want to do is ruin everyone's fun. All I ask is that you respect my boundaries in turn and please, please don't take this personally.

Really, I wish things were different -- honestly, jumping through these hoops to stay engaged with fandom can be exhausting, and you'd be correct in assuming I'm still wrestling with some serious emotional baggage (enough, even, that I still wonder if it's all worth it) -- but I know this is my own problem to tackle and this is the healthiest method in handling it. In case you want to reach out to me, I'll still be on Discord, so hit me up or message me for my information!

[lamialamia]

Hi there! Secret Santa back with a second message for you.

First of all, thank you for your answers last time, they have been very helpful! I’m still in the process of outlining your fic (I randomly got a shit ton of new ideas and have spent this morning organizing them into a semblance of coherence). It’s been so fun to build this world for you. I thought it would be a struggle since it’s not territory I’ve explored before, but it’s actually been a relief with how fresh it feels to try something new!

That being said, I have a few more questions before I dive into actually full-on writing :)

1. I did some completely normal and not at all weird stalking of your profile and saw your reblog of Sledgfu headcanons, one of which was your idea that Snafu nudges Sledge’s neck. Immediately that sparked something for me and I would love to include that hc in your gift, but I wanted to ask your permission first since it was your idea! It feels a bit too much like theft for me to just use it without checking first haha!!

2. Are you at all interested in receiving the work as a gift on Ao3 when it’s published (as in I actually dedicate it to you and gift it to you)? It’s totally okay if you don’t want a gift work and would just like the link, but I just thought I’d ask in case you want it to feel more like an actual present!

3. And finally, as I’m sure you can tell, I am like…incapable of shutting the fuck up. What I mean by this is that the outline for your gift is already 1.6k words of literal bullet points of underdeveloped ideas and dialogue, so the fully fleshed out and written fic might end up being a bit lengthy (though I intend to keep it as a oneshot). Is this something you’d like me to try to tone down on? I know not everyone is interested in reading something super long LMAO. Just let me know either way, I’ll do my best!

And that’s all the questions! :)

Also, this is just something amusing that happened during this process: my original summary for the fic was almost identical to one of yours, completely by accident. I’m so glad I went and checked out your writing before I ended up leaving it like that. That would’ve been so embarrassing lmao

P.S. Your header image makes me laugh every time I see it, love it!

P.P.S Your tags on my first ask made me so happy! :)

Sorry for bombarding you once again, and I look forward to hearing from you!!! 💞

Hey Secret Santa!!!! <3

I know that feelings when a fic idea gets out of hand, I have been there, I have done that. It's a blessing and a curse lolol

Ok, about your question:

1/ Yes. My hc is not a property but like dandelion seeds I blow into the wild. Anyone can catch it and blow it away. This metaphor is weird. Anyway, yes, pls use any headcanon on my blog as you wish.

2/ Yes. You can gift me the fic on Ao3 :D

3/ As long or as short as you want to write. I love long fic, I love short fic, I love medium fic. Because fanfic is a labor of love so any length is perfect <3 I mean, the fic I'm writing for my giftee is getting long too! but it's about the story and not the WC, ya know.

Thanks for everything <3 love ya

[curatoroffiction]

A Loving Homage To “Dark Mage Solomon”

“All Magic Comes With A Price” is the first title in an amazing 3-part series for “Dark Mage Solomon” written by @beels-burger-babe, where she wrote about Solomon under the influence of the magic of his pacts, losing his soul and abusing the main character (You, in place of the reader) as a result. It’s a graphic and heart-wrenching story. Absolutely amazing. I’ve linked it, and I cannot recommend reading it enough. She’s one of my favorite “Obey Me!” fanfic authors. 10/10, highly recommend perusing her goods if you’re a fan of the series. She finished the Dark Mage Solomon series today and I found myself wanting more, so I ended up writing my own blurb to continue off of the story pieces she left to the reader’s imagination. This is a fan-made piece that’s designed to pick up where she left off in her three-part collection for her Dark Mage Solomon series.

WARNINGS:

- MAJOR SPOILERS for @beels-burger-babe‘s “Dark Mage Solomon” series.

- Mentions of physical and emotional abuse

- Ya’ll this is so much darker than my usual works. Hahahaha.

- Obsessive and addictive behaviors from Solomon

- Semi-mind-control/influence?

- Asmodeus cries a lot

- THIS IS NOT A STAND-ALONE PIECE. It’s meant to be read after you read the entirety of the Dark Mage Solomon series written by @beels-burger-babe

===========================================

Resolutions In Broken Memories

It's been some time since your pacts returned, but the brothers haven't stopped fawning over them. They'd long-since mourned their losses. The moments they felt the burn of your separation, they thought this connection to you was lost forever. To see the gift of having them returned was something out of a fantasy, and none of them can seem to fully believe that they still get to have this special connection to you.

Oftentimes, you find them caressing their marks absent-mindedly while cuddling you. At first, it seemed really cute, but once the haze of the spell's initial 'fix' wore down, you began to realize it was a bit strange how fixated on your marks they were.

You began to ask questions.

The brothers, Diavolo and Barbatos, Simeon and Luke had all discussed your condition thoroughly before you really came out of your stupor. They came to the unified conclusion that if you wanted to know what happened, it'd be in your best interest to walk you through it again. After all, the fear that caused you to break down, the fear that caused the spell to activate, was the fear of having permanently lost your connections to the brothers. Now that you had those back, conversations surrounding what happened to you previously would be easier, or, at least less dangerous to have.

Still, they can’t help but be afraid of what will happen to you if you’re pushed into a place of panic again.

They still don't understand how strong this spell is, and all attempts to break it have ended poorly. Solomon's power may be gone from him, but the footsteps of his actions in the past echo forward, marking you with the sorcerer's influence.

The charm stands as one last glimpse of the immense power he wielded before he got caught.

---

Asmodeus in particular has been struggling to leave your side. He gently caresses his mark on your skin, eyes listless when he thinks you can't see. You gently caress his head, holding him close, letting him take all the time he needs.

You, after all, don't know what's happened to you.

"Asmodeus?" Your voice saying his name is a blessing for him to hear. His eyes look to yours as he glances away from your mark. "Can I ask.. why is it you guys keep caressing my marks? I feel like.. Well I feel like something strange happened. Something bad. But I don't remember anything happening."

Asmodeus' fingers stop against your skin, and his expression darkens. He averts his gaze and you feel your stomach drop. Whatever it was that happened, it was so painful to him that he couldn't even find the words to express everything. You gently stroke your fingers through his hair, your thumb softly rubbing along his cheek. You gently murmur to him; "I'm here. You can talk to me about it. I promise."

".. Something.. happened to you. But, because of what happened to you, there's a spell on you." He begins slowly. He'd worked through this in his head a thousand times since you'd lost your memories, in case he'd have to be the one to tell you. "... Because.. of.. ah.." You can see his eyes welling with tears as he speaks. "Because of the spell.. if you feel unsafe... the spell will do things to make you feel safe again.. But.." You gently caress his head, cooing gentle praises to him for being so brave in telling you about this, and it gives him just enough strength to continue. "... We don't know what it'll do. ... Something did happen to you, but.. Until the spell is gone, there's a powerful and unknowable influence that reacts to your emotions."

"And such a spell would be incredibly dangerous if I was upset while under its influence." You finish and he nods. You gently tug him in closer, massaging into his back. "... Thank you. Knowing that much at least gives me a sense of what's happened. ... If it really is that powerful and dangerous, then, it's okay if I'm in the dark a little longer. I'm happy right now. I feel safe." Asmodeus clings to you and you hold him close. He begins crying quietly into your shoulder, and you warmly massage into his back.

Whatever it is, you're okay being there for him right now. It could be the spell and how it calms you, but, you're content here. You're content to just experience this moment with him, knowing just a fraction of the whole story.

Asmodeus just sobs as he remembers what he did to you. Every caress from you when he knows you can’t remember his actions.. just feels like a burning singe to his skin. The nightmares have lessened, but knowing that they weren't just nightmares- Rather memories of him hurting you- has been killing him. Every reassuring and comforting murmur from your lips makes him feel selfish in a way he can't put to words right now.

All he can say is repeated apologies. Begging you for forgiveness with every quiet sob. You gently massage into his back, affectionately telling him it's okay. You'll be okay.

And in every sense of the word, you truly believe that you're safe.

---

Solomon has been searching, scrounging, trying to find any source of power he can scrape together. Something, anything to let him feel in control again.

He hasn't felt this helpless in a very long time.

The brothers took care to shut down any networks of magic users from accepting or helping him. Diavolo made it clear to all of Devildom that any demons found consorting with the once-powerful sorcerer would find themselves answering to him directly.

No matter how far he went, what realm he consorted with, he was unable to find anyone willing to make a pact or allow him to borrow their power.

The sorcerer finds himself leaning on the oldest of magics he ever learned - The ones that first allowed him to connect with demons. Spells forged of candles and written words, chalk marks and sacrifices. Spells cast through loss. Through spilt blood.

Without the pacts, without his connection to any demons, he finds that no stretch of the of his sacrifices are able to generate even remotely enough power to communicate with beings outside the three realms.

It's been months of scraping through to find a way to recover even an ounce of his old power, and in that time, his mind has begun to change once again. Now no longer under the influence of his pacts, he finds himself having more vivid memories of his time with you.

With much less of a rose-tinted glass to peer through.

There's many a night he spends curled up as your screams ring through his core and fill him with a sense of dread. As he's forced to quit his magic cold-turkey, he's also forced to come to terms with what he did to you while he's at his most powerless.

And his most sober.

He begins to realize what a monster he made of himself. For the first time in his life, he realizes just how dangerous greed can be.

Because ultimately, this was the fruits of his own greed.

His greed for power, his greed for you, his greed for control..

He’s still trying to establish definition where the lines blurred. Did he want power to help you? Or was it to control you? Did he want you because you were powerful? How much of his actions were for you?

And how much of this was for himself?

He'd deluded himself in the thick of it that he'd been doing this all for you, for your benefit.. But, with the clarity of his senses so barren of outside influences.... He finds that he's struggling to come to terms with those same excuses.

---

The brothers don't leave you alone for too long. You sleep in the arms of someone who loves you every night. Tonight, it's Mammon's turn. He likes to sleep in your room, because it was the way that he felt closest to you. He gently tugs you into his arms, hand warmly caressing the back of your head, cradling you close. You sleepily wrap your arms around the demon and moment by moment, you drift deeper into sleep.

But Mammon can't sleep.

Ever since you were taken, he'd been struggling with coming to terms with having failed you as much as he did. Lucifer had caught onto his feelings of guilt and tried to alleviate them for him, but..

He was your protector.

He gently breathes, holding your body like a delicate memory. A memory of when he's felt his best. A memory of when he's been his best.

Your body begins to tremble. The spell was strong, but it was common for your unconscious mind to grieve in your sleep. He surrounds you with warmth, tugging the blankets up to keep you comfy, resting his head atop yours. Your body soon relaxes into his touch, but not without that damned glow.

The glow of the spell.

Every time he saw it, it only made him angrier.

The brothers have watched as Solomon's spell has continued to soothe you. Forcing you into a comfortable state. It infuriates Mammon to think of what Solomon would have put you through if he hadn't fucked up as royally as he did. The demon's anger bubbles and festers as he securely holds you.

In truth, he’s terrified that you may never be able to experience fear again. Will you ever be able to make your own choices regarding your safety again?

It's common for the brothers who stay with you at night to wake up exhausted the next morning. You're always worried about them, but they promise you they'd be worse off if you slept alone.

The exhaustion is from the emotional labor of their fears.

---

The day started off like any other - The only difference was that little notification you found on your phone.

A notification from someone you didn't recognize.

Opening your messages, you see that you'd spoken with them a lot. Your last message to them was something about telling them that you'd arrived at their house.

You start flitting through your texts with this person. You're confused. Why don't you remember them? Why can't you remember this person at all? Who were they? Who were they to you? As you read through your old texts, you begin to see the picture being painted; They were your friend. For over a year, in fact. You had messages going back to when you first arrived in Devildom. You had messages about things happening with the brothers. Messages where you lamented over homesickness. Messages where he told you about experiments. Every time he offered you food that he made, you always declined. You two would go out together alone. He helped you with injuries and healed you. You helped him with magic and testing things. He cared about you, and you cared about him. Your texts make it evident enough to you.

You begin to look through your call history. The last time you'd ever gotten a call from this number was months ago, and his call correlated with the chunk of memories of time that you knew you didn't have.

Whatever this person was to you, they were connected to whatever was going on with you in the now.

Solomon's message to you this morning is just;

[Can we talk?]

You pause, staring at the screen. You're not really sure what to say. On one hand, you'd finally get answers, but... On the other hand, were they worth it?

The brothers kept mentioning that you were under an incredibly difficult to remove spell, and that while under its influence, your emotional state and well-being was a trigger-point for the spell. This person might have something to do with that. You could ask one of the brothers about this person, but with how protective they've been lately, would they let you pursue these answers?

You take your time to think about it. You don't respond right away.

---

Classes went smoothly, and for the majority of the day, you almost forgot about the message from your mystery person. That is, until you're checking your messages on the walk home and you see another notification from him.

[I noticed you didn't respond for a lot of hours, so I figure you don't want to talk. That’s fair. I just wanted to apologize. I know that's probably really empty, considering what I did to you, but.. I'm sorry. The magic is gone, and it's been.. sobering.]

You decide to text him back. [I'm gonna be real, I don't know who you are or what it is you're apologizing for. It sounds like you sucked.]

[You.. don't know who I am?]

[No. Are you the reason there's a spell on me that everyone's been freaking out about?]

---

It takes Solomon a moment to respond. You don't know, but he's panicking on the other end. You don't know him. It hurts so much, but he's also elated. You don't know him! For a moment, he has a brief rush of relief that you don't remember what he did to you.

But that's quickly replaced by a flood of guilt as he realizes, you don't remember what he did to you.

Solomon stares at his D.D.D. You're responding, you don't know who he is, but he's already been so selfish with you to this point. His breath hitches in his throat as he knows what he has to do, and he hisses in frustration as he begins to carefully force himself to type.

---

[If you don't know who I am, then, I don't think we should be talking. I hurt you. Badly. I think I probably know what it is you're referring to about the spell. ... In which case, yes, I think I was the cause. I'm sorry.]

[If you cast it, can you remove it?]

[... No. I can't. Not anymore.]

[What's preventing you from removing it?]

---

Solomon stares at his screen. He's spent the last month trying to find a way to get the power to undo his mistakes, only to find a full power embargo in every direction.

The clarity of the distance from that power allowed him to see how he'd been changed by the magic. How he'd allowed himself to obsess over getting what he wanted, whatever the cost. The man that was left when the magic was gone was just a husk of who he once was. A husk that realized just how much he used you.

In the quiet, he came to understand just how much he'd wanted you for himself. For the acclaim. For the love. For your power. He'd gotten so used to making pacts to get what he wanted. To control those he admired. When he saw you, his rising star, growing and learning and coming into your own... He admired that in you.

He admired you so much, that he wanted your power and your strength and your acclaim all for himself.

But he couldn't make a pact with you. You weren't a demon.

He'd dealt with demons for so long, collecting and borrowing their power... So meeting someone like you, who was so powerful and strong, only to know that he couldn't take that power for himself?

The greed he had was so immeasurable that it permeated and rotted every facet of his soul.

He got hungry, to outmatch you. Collect more and more pacts. If he couldn't have your power, he would match it. Exceed it! He might not have wielded the power of the seven, but he would wield an army that could swallow them if he must.

It was because of this that he had become so obsessed with collecting power. He saw you achieve what he couldn't, and he couldn't stand it. Envy. His desire to have that power only for you to be able to achieve it within a year..? You'd even been able to bring Lucifer under your control.

Solomon was convinced he was the greatest sorcerer that ever lived, until you got the one pact he'd lusted for since he began his pursuit of magic. Lucifer Morningstar. The blow to Solomon's pride ran deep. Deeper than the rot of his greed. His wounded pride was what really drove his actions.

He needed to feel important again.

You were already more accomplished than him in gathering power. And who were you? Just some random person plucked from the human realm. A nobody. The wrath bubbling under the surface of his senses sickened him. He wanted to lash out. He wanted to hurt you. He wanted to put you in your place.

And that initially scared him.

It's why he had to make a promise to himself that he wouldn't.

He was never satiated. A glutton for that which fed his desire to be admired. No matter the cost.

When he couldn't have your power, and he refused to hurt you, he had to find another option to soothe his burning hunger. All it took was you coming to him with that broken wrist for him to remember how fragile you were, despite your success.

So fragile. Unlike him, you couldn't live forever.

His pride mended itself as he convinced himself that you needed him. It was so easy to believe too. A sweet comfort of a lie that tugged at the edges of his mind. Of course he was still important. Of course he was still amazing. He was your protector. He was the one who would keep you safe. Your mentor. Your friend. Your confidant.

He told himself that you wanted his protection. But.. The driving force at the very core of his actions was his desire to possess that which he admired.

His desire to possess your magic. And when he couldn’t possess it, he decided to destroy it.

He hated how his veins itched for the magic. For the control. For the strength. Every pang of craving for that power just wracking his senses with the guilt.

Even now, his mind runs a mile a minute to try to use you, and he finds himself disgusted. Even now, he's still hungry to possess you. He keeps finding his mind trying to find a way to get you to meet him alone. A thought he repeatedly shoves out of his mind to the best of his ability.

He's fighting so hard against it. Against the cravings. Just that alone is taking so much energy. He stares at his screen, helpless. Sloth tugging at his soul, begging him to give in, to take the easy way out.

It'd be so easy to isolate you again.. And this time he could do it right..

Solomon drops his D.D.D to the ground between his legs as he clutches his skull. He's a mess. His eyes, grey without a single speck of their old golden hue, stare at the device.

You deserved an answer.

Could he give you one without losing control again?

---

[My magic was removed. For good reason. I no longer can practice it. I'm.. I'm sorry. I can't undo the damage I've caused.]

[What damage did you cause?]

---

How does he answer THAT? Do you remember NONE of it? What of your pacts? Is this.. Is this the work of his charm? His stomach drops.

Did he doom you to live in a passive stupor for the rest of your life?

They're calm again. Happy. We could get them alone and this time try it right. This could be good for us! The thoughts swirl against his chest as he grips his head.

The desire to be close with you again soaks into his core, and he has to let it wash over him like a bad headache.

He can't use you again.

He forces himself to remember your body, limp and almost lifeless in his arms. He did that to you.

He can't trust himself with you.

---

You watch your screen as Solomon types and then stops repeatedly.

This goes on for a while. So long, in fact, that you put your D.D.D away and just enjoy the company of the brothers for a movie night. It isn't until you're heading to the kitchen to grab some snacks that you feel your D.D.D buzz.

You lean against the kitchen island as you read it.

[I.. used you. To soothe my own insecurity. In doing so, I destroyed your pacts with the 7 brothers. I isolated you from the outside world for months. I lied about your whereabouts to our friends. I cast a charm on you to try to force you to feel safe again, so you'd finally be happy.. ... I don't know the extent of what that charm has done to you, but I think that might be the spell that the others are so worried about.]

Your mind fuzzes over as you try to remember. Why can't you remember? And what's more, you're not even.. scared. You're not even scared that you don't remember.

The longer this charm has sunk into your senses, its passively calming effects have taken root.

[... I can't remember any of this. Why can't I remember any of this?]

---

Why CAN'T you remember any of this? Solomon feels his stomach flip-flop as he clutches his device.

[I'm.. not sure. It's possible it's connected to the charm.]

[My pacts are fine though. So, if you did something to them, it didn't stick.]

His eyes widen.

Your pacts were... fine?

You'd been able to recover the unrecoverable?

Could he.....?

He shakes his head. He needs to know more. No- You need to know more. He doesn't need closure. You do.

“This isn't about you. You can’t make this about you.” He utters this to himself, hissing the words like a curse against his own weakness as he takes up your chat again.

[Ask the brothers about your pacts. They should know more.]

---

"Hey, everything alright in here?"

You look up to see Belphegor standing in the doorway. His expression is warm as he found you safe and sound. But when he sees you looking to your D.D.D instead of gathering snacks, he does feel nervous.

You set the device aside and look lost in thought. "... Belphie, can I ask you something?"

"Yeah, of course." He comes alongside you and leans against the island with you.

"Did something happen to my pacts with you guys?"

His heart drops. Why are you asking about that? He reflexively begins looking you over as he panics visibly, looking for his and his brother's marks.

They were all still there.

He breathes a sigh of relief, resting his forehead against your shoulder, but his reaction alone is quite the answer to your question.

".. I think I'm ready to hear about what happened to me. Can you please tell me?"

"... C'mon. We should go talk to the others about it."

---

The movie paused, the brothers gently ease you into it, telling you about what Solomon had done to you. How he'd ripped you from your pacts. The immense physical and emotional abuse you endured. How he abused his control over Asmodeus, and the violent nightmares the demon endured as a result. How Asmodeus felt so helpless as he was forced to do Solomon's bidding.. How, even now, the charm he cast on you is preventing you from being able to remember any of it. They explain that they don't even know the scope of the charm's strength, but that it's already shown to shift the reality of your body and mind to make you feel safe, so it's very dangerous.

So much begins to make sense.

Belphegor sees you thumbing your D.D.D as you listen, and it clicks to him that there was probably a cause to this conversation.

"... Did someone bring it up to you? Is that why you're asking about it?"

"... Someone with the username 'MonSOLO' has been texting me today-" But before you can finish your sentence, several of the brothers have shifted into their demon forms.

Just the man's username is enough to put them on high guard for yours and Asmodeus' safety.

And, knowing the story now, it makes complete sense.

Mammon is the first to blurt out "HE'S GOT NO RIGHT" followed by Asmodeus going fetal, hugged and caressed by Beelzebub. Belphegor is silent, but his expression is visibly pissed. Satan's smiling, but you can feel the murderous intent behind it as he begins to speak up.

"No no, this is perfect. Now we can tear him limb from limb ourselves. Right? This has to breach something. Right??"

Asmodeus didn't realize that hearing that Solomon had re-entered your lives would hurt him as much as it did. He's in shock.

Lucifer is deep in thought as Satan continues ranting vividly on how he's going to gut Solomon. Mammon angrily griping, unsure of who to direct his frustrations at. Beelzebub is tending to Asmodeus. Belphegor is just stuck between rage and fear.

Leviathan is actually the one who focuses in on you.

You're... eerily calm.

Even though you’ve just heard some of the worst possible news, you’re, for the most part, unreactive. They're all panicking and in a flurry of intense emotions, you're just sat as normal as ever.

So he cuts through the noise to ask you a question that makes everyone freeze as they wait for your answer. "___, did you text him back?"

...

".. Yeah. We got to talking." You're slow to respond. The brothers begin to move to listen, each watching you carefully. All of their thoughts and fears and anger put on the backburner. "... I didn't know who he was, but it looked like we had an extensive conversational history in our chat. He apologized, and I didn't really know what to do with that, so I told him I didn't know who he was or what he did. He was actually the one who told me to ask you guys about what he did to my pacts."

"I don't trust it! I don't trust him! He lied to our FACES for months! JUST LOOK AT WHAT HE DID TO ASMODEUS!" Mammon is quick to make his opinions well-known. "HIS APOLOGY MEANS NOTHING."

"You're not going to accept his apology, are you?" Beelzebub speaks up, looking to you with concern.

"... I don't know. I feel like, I need this spell to be gone before I can choose how to handle this."

The brothers are quiet in your conclusion. They'd had you ripped away from them once before, and were scared of the damage Solomon could still do to you. Lucifer speaks up, breaking the silence. "You won't be seeing him without one of us with you as protection. Is that understood?" His words are harsh and commanding, but his tone is gentle. He's worried about you. This is the best way he can give you the freedom to make your own choices, without losing you again.

The last thing you need is seven controlling demons after what you’ve been through.

"I understand. It sounds like there's a lot I don't know about him. I'd feel safer with one of you guys around anyway."

"I can't do it." Asmodeus croaks, his eyes listless as he stares at the ground. "I can't be around him." Belphegor reaches over to gently massage into his brother's back. He knows especially how hard this has been on Asmodeus.

Watching Asmodeus, you wonder to yourself if you'll feel similarly when the charm is taken off.

It's so hard to imagine yourself that scared.

The brothers agree that Solomon will be kept away from Asmodeus. None of them would ever force him to see that man again. Asmodeus seeks the comfort of your arms, and you caress him and gently coo comforts to him, forgiving him for everything he did when he was under Solomon's control. His tears flow hotly as he cries, clutching you close, sobbing as the grief washes over him. He can't stop apologizing, to which you gently massage into his back and reassure him that he's already been forgiven.

---

After a long and lengthy discussion, you're able to plan for a meeting with Solomon. A meeting in which, under the care and watch of both Luke and Simeon, as well as the protection of Lucifer, Satan and Belphegor, and the oversight of Barbatos, you'll be able to have a discussion with the sorcerer about the charm he put on you. He's expected to bring every article and paper and note he has on the charm, so it may be dissected by Satan and Belphegor.

If there's a chance to undo this charm, they will find it.

-----

End of chapter

-----

This is a Tumblr-Exclusive piece, but I write other cool stuff over here:

https://archiveofourown.org/users/CuratorOfFiction

[fragilecapric0rnn]

sen! (may i call you sen?) your fics are a godSENd. i don't know if you know this but four ScorE aNd SEveN years ago there was no "Cheerleader Steve Harrington". shocking, i know. it is thanks to you that we have been blessed with this gift. aSEN. your greatest gift is your ability to insert your favorite characters into ScENarios so unlike the one they were born in, and yet, you do all of this without loSing their charactErizatioN. you allow them to travel between time and through space while keeping their esSENce so close to your chest. many are the AUs where our beloved "BlorboS" are unrEcogNizable, but your works are the very proof that it is possible to allow said "Blorbos" to be themSelvEs in New and unfamiliar SEttiNgs. your voice ShinEs through it all and i will Never tire of hearing it. 💗

Pink Heart Anon (pinkie? can i call you pinkie? i'm gonna call you pinkie) - it should be said that i am impressed with the amount of wordplay going on here and that i am so touched and honored to have received this love letter from you :') THANK YOU THANK YOU for your kind and generous words <333

I try very extra hard to keep the characterization and the essence of the characters fully intact as i write these AUs.

isn't that what fanfiction is about?

rather than completely doing away with them to the point that they become knock-off OCs that only vaguely resemble the source material (both in physicality and personality) if you squint, turn your head, and take your glasses off - don't you think the goal of fanfic should be to expand on the characters as we know them? as they are?

shouldn't the goal of fic writing be about taking the characters we love and exploring their canonical traits?

at least, that's my goal with fanfiction.

thank you again, pinkie 💗 your words made me giggle and my heart flutter 💗

anonymously (or not) tell me what my specialty as a fanfiction writer is

[jillianallen14]

Spirk fanfic rec

Some amazing Spirk fanfic to bless your dash because I’m falling in love with this shit all over again (this is like the 10th time this has happened lol):

Entering Orbit:  Jim escapes to Iowa to avoid the media frenzy following the Narada incident, but a late-night miscommunication results in Spock turning up on his front porch; rated m; 30,957 words

Papers in the Roadside:  Non-Starfleet AU. Jim owns a small bar in Chicago, keeps on picking up strays and taking care of everyone no matter how hard it makes his own life. Spock is a journalist writing feature articles for the Chicago Tribune; he depicts the world with uncanny skill, but hides more than one personal drama and is possibly under surveillance from the Vulcan royal family. They meet by accident just before their lives start to spin out of control; rated e; 49,637 words

Take Refuge in What You Know:  AU - Kirk has moved into a apartment/house and wants to get to know his neighbors. He meets his neighbor Spock, a loner who suffers from extreme agoraphobia. Kirk thinks he's beautiful enigma; rated e; 120,334 words

Listen, this is not only my favorite Star Trek fic of all time, it’s also one of my favorite fanfics in general. It’s right up there with Text Talk and The Shoebox Project from the HP fandom, which if you’ve read, you know are incredible and frankly life-changing. And this fanfic changed my life. The description the author gives doesn’t do the beauty of this fic justice. I suffer from agoraphobia and Spock’s depiction as an agoraphobic man was probably the most well-researched, sympathetic, empathetic, caring, realistic portrayal of what it’s like to be agoraphobic that I’ve ever witnessed in fiction. It made me cry like a child because I had never felt so seen and understood. This writer is incredible, and this fic is incredible. I can’t recommend it enough. It’s an AU, which I’m usually pretty wary about, but it barely even feels like an AU. It just feels like Jim and Spock. The author’s understanding of both of their characters’ is perfect, like just a spot-on portrayal of who they are. This fic genuinely helped me accept who I am and helped me understand that I am capable of & deserving of love. If you don’t read any other Star Trek fics (and you def should read more Star Trek fics because they’re amazing), then let this one be the one you read. I dare you not to read it three times in a row like I did.

Observations:  First Officer Spock comments on life aboard the Enterprise and his service under Captain James T. Kirk; rated m; 500,000+ words.

So the author of this fic actually did a thing where they made this fic into two books (similar to what The Shoebox Project authors did many years ago in the HP fandom). They don’t get any money from people buying the books; the cost is just to go towards producing the books. This fic is the equivalent of two LARGE novels. We’re talking 600 pages & up. It’s a huge fic. Now, that being said, I read it in one day. ONE DAY. It’s that good. This is another one of my all-time favorite fics, though not quite as dear to my heart as the one I listed above. It’s focused on AOS, and tbh, I forget that what happens in this book isn’t actually canon. Like it’s so well-told, it just feels like it’s now part of the timeless story of Kirk & Spock. The “professional” Star Trek writers would never be brave enough to do what this author does with Kirk and Spock, though. This fic will make you angry, will make you laugh, will make you cry. It has such a good grasp on every single character. It also shows the love between the crew of the Enterprise, which is always a treat, and it’s beautifully done in this fic. It has a sorta-enemies-to-lovers arc between Spirk and an enemies-to-close-friends arc between Spock and McCoy that is beautifully done and fleshed out. This fic is definitely a journey to go through, and I can’t recommend it enough. It’s extremely slow burn, and you will want to slap both Kirk and Spock (and McCoy) upside the head at certain points lol. 

Of Coffee Beans and Green Tea Leaves:  The progression of a relationship, through Coffee Beans and Green Tea Leaves. Basically, it’s an AU where Kirk works at a coffee shop to pay his way through school, and Spock visits often. rated t; 16,429 words

Love, love, love, this fic. It’s cute, it’s in character. They have kind of a rocky start together, so it’s got a little bit of that Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy i-hated-you-but-now-i-love-you-marry-me vibes to it. I’m a sucker for that, if you haven’t figured that out by now lol. It’s really good, and a really enjoyable read. And it’s not too long, if you’re in the mood for something on the shorter end of things.

 Please Don’t Touch the Vulcans:  The "yes" is out of Jim's mouth before he can think about it. Jim is chipper about having time off for the holidays. He asks everyone if they want to spend time together but sadly, everyone ditches Jim over the holidays because they have plans. McCoy visits his daughter, Nyota visits her family, and everyone splits. Not knowing Spock has feelings for him, Jim doesn't even bother asking if he wants to spend time together figuring he has something to do. Something cute, romantic with the boys spending time with one another and confessions; rated m; 17,690 words

Super cute and has lots of Sarek, which idk about y’all, but I’m always a fan of. Sarek and Jim kind of get to know each other a bit, and it’s cute. Sarek knows about they’re in love before Spock & Kirk know lol. If I remember correctly, there’s also some appearances from everyone’s favorite: Old!Spock! You also get a little bit of jealous and protective Young!Spock. So you’re in for a real treat with this one. 

The Ren shat’var Trilogy:  A split-second decision changes Jim's life forever, as he enters into a bond with Spock in the face of certain torture. Enemies to the Federation emerge from unlikely places, and the command team must contend with unexpected threats, as well as challenges within their own intense relationship. In this three-part series, the Enterprise races across the galaxy to confront the unknown, and Jim and Spock discover the true significance of their unprecedented connection; rated e; 184,411 words

Textual Attraction:  Valentine’s Day does not bring up pleasant memories for Cadet Kirk. But the serendipitous switch-up of his cell phone with a particular Vulcan professor’s will make his day far more interesting –and romantic. Perhaps some new memories can be made! 15,900 words

SO GOOD. Just SO good

Spaceman:  Academy AU. Five times Spock realizes he's attracted to a barista at the academy spaceport, and one time he decides to do something about it. rated t; 3728 words

Short, sweet, funny. You’ll love it.

Subtext: Texting your Vulcan first officer in the middle of the night is never a good idea. Especially when you have an obsessive crush on said Vulcan.The holidays are approaching and Jim is left entirely Spockless aboard the Enterprise when his First takes shore leave on New Vulcan. After some midnight pining, Jim sends a text he instantly regrets. That is, until Spock responds and willingly continues their textual communications to an inevitable conclusion; rated t; 13,032 words

Cute, sweet, funny. It’s a texting fic. I think you’ve probably figured out I love those. This one makes me laugh so fucking hard. Like actually laugh-out-loud-omg-did-i-just-snort kind of funny. Spock is great in this one

All Spock Wants For Christmas:  While Jim is away on a delegation mission, he panics about what to give Spock for Christmas. With help from Bones and Uhura, and in between some spam texting with Spock, Jim realizes he already has the perfect gift. And all it needs is wrapping paper and a bow; rated t; 11,966 words

And here we have another cute, sweet, funny texting fic. Sue me lol

The Morning After:  Jim convinces Spock to take shore leave with him on Risa, hoping the time together will help re-solidify their bond of friendship after some recent tension. Meanwhile, Spock convinces himself he's on Risa for one reason and one reason only, to prevent his wayward captain from getting into trouble. After a passionately illogical night of Romulan Ale and chocolate infused liquor, everything changes when Jim wakes with something other than a hangover filling his head. Something he's sure neither he nor Spock can handle. Because if Jim knows anything for sure, it's that his messed up thoughts belong nowhere near Spock's clean, ordered mind; rated m; 50,381 words

HAHA. This fic fucking cracks me up. You’ve got drunk boys pining over each other & not realizing it. You’ve got accidental marriage. You’ve got bed sharing. It’s great, it’s cute, it’s funny. 

Take This Sinking Boat (And Point It Home):  In which Spock pines, Jim isn’t stupid (except he kind of is), and Christopher Pike has had enough of this bullshit; 6698 words

Pike is great in this one, and it’s super, super funny.

Extracurricular Activities:   Spock returns to the Academy from a tour of duty to find an intriguing cadet captures his attention; rated e; 15,433 words

Veritas: Basically, Kirk and Spock are on trial because the Federation thinks they are emotionally compromised by each other, which is putting the lives of their crew in danger. They have to convince a court they’re not actually in love with each other. They think the claims are bullshit. They think it will be easy to prove that they aren’t in love or emotionally compromised, damn it. It isn’t; rated m; 186,80 words

This one is so, so good. A real gem off of Fanfic.net. I remember it was actually one of the first Spirk fanfics I ever read, and it blew me away. The progression of their relationship is really well-done and interesting. It has star-crossed lovers vibes and has some really emotionally intense moments in it, especially for Spock. 

A Habitual Affection:  Living in 1930s New York with the Vulcan you're secretly in love with is no simple thing. But Jim never liked anything simple. And then, the big snowstorm hit...; rated t; 7998 words

A beautiful TOS fic about one of the gayest episodes of Star Trek. Love this one. 

Atlas:  Between what was and what will be stands James Tiberius Kirk, in all his fractured patchwork glory. Because saving the Federation was only the beginning; rated t; 135,529 words

A beaut. Really great characterization, and the progression of Jim and Spock’s relationship is really well-done.

[yoomiii123]

Introducing Recollections, my most recent Jalice fanfic.

Recollections is a collection of interconnected OneShots that span Jasper's life with Alice. They are in the same continuity, but can be read as stand-alones.

You can find it on AO3 , FF.net or just read it right below, here on tumblr.

Summary: Due to perfect recollection, it is entirely unnecessary for vampires to keep a diary or similar record of our immortal lives. However, that doesn't stop some of us, especially those with semi-permanent residences, from keeping little collections of mementoes. For me, it is dates and places. Written down neatly in the small leatherbound notebook Alice gifted me many years ago, they guide my memory whenever I decide to delve back into a certain period of my past. And there are many moments, both happy and sad, joyful and terrifying, to remember.

Word Count for this Chapter: 2'513

Timeline for this Chapter: This happens immediately after breaking dawn. The witnesses have left, giving the Cullens some time to recoup and reflect on what happened.

Trigger Warnings: none

Rating: PG

---------

Prologue - December 31, 2006 - Forks, WA.

December 31, 2006 - Forks, WA.

The line filed in perfectly with the other dates on the page, handwriting impeccable. It had not always been this way. Writing was one of many human skills and mannerisms I had to master again in the years after finding my salvation. Alice had been very patient; always glad to help, and never disappointed.

It was one of the things I absolutely loved about her. She had spent twenty-eight years with visions of me, most of them of a brighter future. A future, where we were together. Where my eyes were golden, and I resembled more the man I was today than the soulless ragged shell she met that rainy day in Philadelphia.  And still, she had never once been frustrated or discouraged. So pure was her belief in the companionship we would once share.

I could still recall how her small hand had wrapped around mine as she guided a few clumsy strokes to form her name. Of course, I could. Perfect recollection was a trait all vampires acquired upon transformation. It had been both a curse and a blessing to me. So many memories I would have preferred to forget but at the same time, so many instances—most of them with Alice—I never wanted to let go.

Due to our impeccable memory, it was entirely unnecessary to keep a diary or similar record of our immortal life. But that didn’t stop some of us, especially those with semi-permanent residences, from keeping little collection of mementoes.

Carlisle, for example, held an impressive selection of artworks which he carefully wrapped and took with him whenever we moved. Thirty-seven paintings, all of them beautiful on their own. However, they only gained true meaning when they were put together in the right order. Neatly arranged on his office wall, they told the story of the kindest, most honourable and compassionate man I’d ever had the pleasure of meeting.

Esme kept a small ornate box with reminders of her family members on her nightstand. She had only recently brought it down to the living room to add a lock of Renesmee’s first haircut and took the opportunity to show the contents to her niece.

I was aware that Alice had given her the first drawing she made of our family, back when it was nothing more than a vision in her head. But up until that moment, when Esme carefully placed the keepsakes into Renesmee’s hands one by one, I had no clue what other tokens the box contained.

A small blue sock she had knit for her child that unfortunately left this world far too young.

A picture of Carlisle’s and her wedding day.

A small piece of paper on which Edward had scribbled the first notes of the composition that eventually became Esme’s song.

The single earring Rosalie still wore when Carlisle found her that night in Rochester.

A flower—now pressed and dried— that Emmett brought back from his first-ever hunting trip.

An Italian recipe she had printed out to try for Bella when she still was a human.

And a single brown button. I couldn’t help but smile when she gently lifted it between her fingers, the memory of that day flooding my thoughts.

xxx

Alice and I had been with the Cullens for about two years. I had been very reluctant to leave her alone with the others for prolonged periods of time, even though I never perceived a single hostile sentiment from any of them. But eventually I had to get over that, and I knew it. Still, I was worked up when Rosalie took Alice down to New York for an extended shopping trip, and Emmett decided it would be best to take me out as well. Let off some steam.

We returned from our hunting trip only a few hours before the girls would arrive and while cleaning up, I noticed that one of the buttons on my shirt had come loose. Alice would just have thrown the shirt away instantly, but as someone who was used to wearing the same clothes over and over until they fell apart, I had an inherent aversion to this kind of wastefulness.

Having observed Esme sewing on multiple occasions, and thus expecting that she probably could spare a needle and thread, I knocked on the door to her office, behind which I could already hear the motherly vampire humming lightly.

“Come in,” she said, and I slid through the door, finding her at the desk. Blueprints for an intricately decorated dresser were spread out before her. 

“I’m sorry to disturb you, Esme. I was wondering if you’d be able to loan me a needle and some thread?”

A warm smile decorated her lips and I felt excitement rush through her veins. I was still getting used to the tight-knit bonds that this coven—this family—shared and thus didn’t rely on her or the others as much as they all did. As much as Alice had started to. Therefore, Esme always exhibited an extraordinary amount of thrill at the most mundane of my requests.

“Of course! Did you rip something during your hunting trip? You know, I could easily stitch that back up with my sewing machine,” she offered, rushing over to one of the cabinets. It only took her a few seconds to find a needle cushion and a box full of threads in different colours and strengths.

“That won’t be necessary, it’s just a loose button,” I declined as politely as possible, but she was disappointed nevertheless. It was a harsh contrast to her previous thrill, and I couldn’t help but wince at the quick change in her composition. Her usually positive and warm emotional climate—like Alices—was very soothing and frequently drew me into her proximity. And it bothered me to be the reason for it to be clouded.

I reacted without a second thought. “But maybe you could help me with that? It’s been a few decades since I held a needle and Alice would probably not appreciate the messy way in which we used to fix our uniforms.”

“I would love to!” Her excitement returned instantly, and I took a deep breath as the wave of positive feelings washed over me.

Once I recovered from the initial overwhelming warmth that passed through my body, I noticed that Esme was looking at me expectedly. It took me a moment to realise why. She waited for me to take off my shirt so that she could start to fix it. This was something I hadn’t considered in my hurry to return her emotions to their previous cheery state.

I could leave and change into something else before handing the button down over to her. But I feared—no, I knew—that she would be disappointed by that course of action, thinking I didn’t trust her. Which was, after all, true, but nothing special. I didn’t truly trust anyone except Alice and Peter. And I would definitely not have left my angel alone with any of the Cullens for one minute if I hadn’t been convinced that she was more than capable of defending herself if the need arose.

But they didn’t have to know that. Maybe Edward did, but if this was the case, he at least acted as if it didn’t bother him. However, it would without a doubt hurt Esme. And no matter what, I didn’t care to inflict pain on such a gentle creature.

Thus, I quickly reached out and took a firm hold of her emotions, before starting to unbutton my shirt. There was an initial spike of excitement which was quickly replaced by shock and alarm when my bare arms and the lower part of my neck were revealed. I still wore my undershirt, but the sleeveless garment didn’t do much to cover the areas where bite marks were most densely layered on my skin. Hers was the natural reaction our kind had, whenever they first laid eyes on me, and it usually didn’t bother me. My scars were a warning that had served me well in the past. But Alice cared about Esme. I didn’t want her to be afraid of me.

I swiftly obliterated her terror and pushed the other emotions she was feeling—mainly concern and sadness, none of which I cared much for—into the forefront. It would have been an easy trick for me to let these feelings fade as well, curbing the excitement and happiness from before. But this was a change that someone sensitive like Esme would notice and I didn’t want her to feel betrayed by how I played with her emotions.

Her gaze burned into my skin, and I quickly handed her the shirt such that she no longer had to look at the monster in front of her and could instead focus on her work. It worked. The pity subsided, all without me having to interfere.

Esme quickly found a suitable needle and thread and retook the seat at the desk. “This will only take a few seconds if you want to wait.”

xxx

I had approached her later that day, as she carried the box back upstairs and asked why she had chosen the button. Esme had just smiled gently and ran her finger over the intricate ornament on top of the box before shifting her loving gaze to me. “Carlisle and I were a little worried about you back then. To us, Alice and you became family within a few hours. But we feared that after everything that happened, you’d never be able to see yourself as part of our family as well.”

I averted my eyes, knowing how much she always hoped for me to be like Edward or Emmett. A true son, a real member of this family. I wasn’t able to fulfil that wish, even today. No matter how much I grew to care, I would never be like them. This family was all they had. Even Alice had been part of it from her very first day, not in person but in spirit through her visions. But I hadn’t. I had a life before this. Memories and experiences that shaped me. And they would always make me an outsider; a son-in-law rather than a true son.

“When you came to me that day, I realised that I didn’t have to worry. You just needed some more time.” Esme smiled and hugged the box close to her chest as she continued her way up the stairs. Even without my talent, it was obvious how precious the collection was to her. And it was nice to see how perfect it fit with her personality.

Maybe this was the case with all of our mementoes.

Edward, who was very musical, held a vast collection of records with at least one piece from every year of his immortal life. At some point, he had transferred most of the old pieces to CD such that it was easier to transport and play them. But I was sure that the originals were still in one of our homes somewhere, even though I didn’t know exactly which one.

Alice, our resident fashionista, stored one item from all the significant fashion trends she lived through in an old suitcase at the back of our closet. From gloves to pearls, a feather boa, shoes, hairpieces and— of course—her wedding dress, the suitcase contained everything I could imagine and probably even more.

For a few years, I had suspected that Rosalie would retain a collection similar to Alice’s, since fashion was one of her passions as well. But after getting to know her better, it quickly became obvious why she didn’t and probably never would. She didn’t like to be reminded of her inhuman lifespan.

That Emmett didn’t have the desire to amass mementoes as well, didn’t surprise me. He was after all the poster boy for ‘living in the moment’. He simply had no desire to dwell in the past. The only thing I could imagine him collecting were the hides of bears that put up an especially entertaining fight, though, at the same time, I doubted that Esme would take kindly to him bringing home the bloodless cadavers of his prey.

My own collection was the smallest of them all. A single, leather-bound notebook filled with dates and places. Alice had gifted it to me when I started researching my own past, trying to make sense of everything that happened between January 4, 1863, and October 28, 1948—a task that had presented itself to be quite challenging since time had no meaning to me back then. Except for maybe knowing when the individual newborns reached their one-year mark.

I didn’t have to write down and collect the dates, but I liked to. Marking the dates and places of significant events helped me orient whenever I decided to delve back into a certain period of my past.

The first few pages of the book covered several decades. It was only after Alice found me that the gaps between the entries became smaller. And they had become significantly shorter again when Bella entered our lives. Who would have thought that a single human could cause so much turmoil?

There had been a rather big gap between the last two dates—at least if it was held to the standards of the new ‘Bella’-era.

December 14, 2006 - Forks, WA. The day our family lost their future. The day Alice and I left, not sure if we would ever be able to return. Or if there would be something left to return to.

December 31, 2006 - Forks, WA. The day our family survived the Volturi, regained their future and became whole again.

xxx

I put my pen aside and listened. The house was quiet, most of us had left. Everyone was cherishing the feeling of having a future again in their own way.

Edward and Bella had taken Renesmee home, where, for the first time in weeks, they could watch their daughter sleep without fearing that she would be taken from them. Emmett and Rosalie had left to celebrate the victory in their own way, somewhere far from Edward’s exceptional mental ears and my emotional reach. And Alice was downstairs in the living room, spending time with Esme and Carlisle, catching them up on our travels.

I had sat with them for a few minutes, soaking in the soothing emotional climate but eventually decided that I’d rather spend some time alone. Shuffling through the notebook reminded me of why it had been worth the risk. Why this family was worth fighting for. And why we would persevere, no matter what fate threw in our way next.

I smiled slightly as the book naturally parted to reveal the page, I had spent the most time looking at. The third date had faded to a light blue hue from the many hundred times I had run my finger over it in remembrance.

October 28, 1948 – Philadelphia, PA.