#and I’ll find something interesting to read

[mandalhoerian]

Fish in a Birdcage ৎ୭

ৎ୭ ⸻ rafayel has quite the storm raging in his mind during his artistic expedition to aridum. which, the root of his crisis he was trying to wean himself off of wasn't supposed to tag along to make him spiral further. funny thing is, you just think he's sick. he is. just infected by something far worse than you can imagine: crippling dependency.

ৎ୭ ⸻ SO MUCH BUILD-UP, momentary sickfic, anxious attachment issues, rafayel being hot and cold with the reader, angst, exhibitionism for like 0.01 seconds bc of bond shenanigans, switch4switch and constantly changing dynamics that comes with it, handjob, slight obedience kink, impromptu bondage play with rafayel's neck piece praise kink, obedience kink blink and you miss it, p in v, CLOTHED SEX ITS SO HOT 2 ME, unprotected sex, multiple rounds.

ৎ୭ ⸻ hello lads fandom, FIRST WORK HERE (it sucked my soul out i've been working on this for like tHREE weeks)!!! this is my adaptation of rafayel's nightly rendezvous card intertidal zone. a lot of it is based on my reading and understanding of the card, i'm so sorry for releasing this when caleb just released but, i hope you enjoy, much love <3 ( lil tag: @comatosebunny09 )

ৎ୭ ⸻ 26K, read on ao3

In retrospect, finding out Aridum was a city in the middle of a desert should have made you stop and think more about how the climate would actually affect Rafayel before diving straight into travel plans.

You know, a Lemurian.

Who, logically, wouldn’t fare well in the dry heat.

Rafayel flicking off your genuine concern like it was a bug on the surface tension of his fish tank was the first red flag you should have paid more attention to. In your defense, since he’d been there before and was confident enough to initiate banter, it was easy to give in and trust he knew what he was doing as he batted his lashes at you with those pretty dual-colored, sparkly wide eyes that left you starstruck in the face and said, “As long as I’m with you, I’ll be fine.”

Well. He was with you now and he wasn’t fine.

Because for once in his life, Rafayel didn’t have enough energy to run laps around you. Just a few minutes outside the hotel, lingering near the grand fountain square framed by towering palm trees that offered scant shade, and he began to deflate pitifully like a garish balloon leaking its vigor into the sweltering air. His usual dynamism, the kind that pulled attention to him as effortlessly as a river carved its path, had dimmed to a sluggish ebb, so much so you found yourself glancing over your shoulder every ten seconds, vigilance heightened by the unsettling absence of his ever-present current. The languid pace like he was moving through molasses made him look like an entirely different person than the one tugging you through the airport with even the luggage excitedly rolling behind him.

And it had been just a single day since you’d set foot in Aridum.

That wasn’t to say the trip had been a disaster or he was in terrible shape — you two were still on day one. Back in Linkon, he was, on paper, enthusiastic about pointing out local landmarks for you to go together like he knew the city personally, but he had quickly lost that energy when it actually came to the execution. You chalked it up to him not being able to get any sleep the previous night because of a mix of jetlag and the discomfort of a new bed, but regardless, it was still concerning to watch him only interested in stopping by street stands where he could buy himself cold water bottles and stand in a shaded corner in order to drink them slowly under shelter, while also dragging you with him, so there wouldn't be even a split-second distance between you two.

You were thankful you didn't have many plans in mind. Rafayel always packed enough enthusiasm for the both of you, but now, as you watched with wide-eyed worry how his spark had suddenly wilted, the drastic shift in his personality left him finding everything he suggested doing utterly unnecessary for the day. On top of that, after only managing to sit still for five minutes or so, it'd become obvious to see that the environment of this city, complete with a sun beating down hot enough to cook you alive, had taken a toll on Rafayel's temperament far more drastically than expected — rendering his eagerness completely sour.

But still, you wanted to cheer him up, you did. It broke your heart seeing someone who brought so much life into every room shrivel down to such a defeated shell. Maybe that's why you couldn't help yourself when you caught him pouting at something on the phone screen as if it'd done him a great offense.

So, you began teasing. “Rafayel, we haven’t even been out for thirty minutes, you're sweating already?"

“No, I’m not.”

“Yes, you are,” you countered, only to squint at his face more closely. “Wait. You’re not?”

He threw his arms out like he was expecting a grander reaction. “Do you know what that means?”

“That you’re a human raisin in the making?”

He groaned, a sound that was more theatrical than pained, but you still caught the edge of frustration in it. “It means I’m seconds away from crumbling into sand. You’ll have to gather me up and carry me home in a jar.”

You started walking towards one of the fountains near some empty seats where shade was available, while he dragged himself behind you like a zombie. "Let's sit you down before you begin to form cracks."

The fountain’s spray misted faintly in the air, enough to make the stone bench beneath feel less like a skillet. Rafayel took extra care positioning himself on one of the seats before collapsing backward, draping one arm over his flushed face.

He took the bottle of yet another ice cold water you fished out from your bag without protest, but his free hand found your wrist and lingered there — light at first, then tighter, like he needed to anchor himself. The unexpected heat radiating from his skin sent a little jolt up your arm. You were about to comment on it, but then he tipped the bottle back and drank, and you swore you could feel the tension in his throat as if it was your own.

When he finished, he let out a breath — not a sigh, just an exhale that sounded heavy, deliberate, sprawling beside you, one leg stretched out, the other bouncing restlessly as he tilted his head back and squinted at the cloudless sky.

“I think I’m dying,” he announced, as if that wasn’t thr fourth time he’d said it today.

After your attention was made aware that he indeed wasn’t sweating by the dry hairline of his, though, the mood to banter had dissipated like a mirage. You began fussing. Was it normal that he didn’t sweat? If a normal person was like this, they needed to be taken to the hospital. However, Rafayel had done nothing but up the ante in complaining, that had to indicate nothing was seriously wrong, right? He’d know his body the best. Right?

“I told you to put on sunscreen this morning. Did you?”

He scoffed, “I don’t need it,” — and you heard the imaginary Lemurian in his tone rolling his eyes at your human expectations.

“Not with that attitude,” you shut him down, already skimming through your bag at an increasingly faster pace. “Now, keep still.”

Finding what you were looking for, you uncapped the bottle, reaching out with one hand to tilt Rafayel’s head left and right to gauge where to start. His skin under the pads of your fingertips felt almost brittle and paper-thin — unnatural on Rafayel, making you unconsciously rub like it was a stain you could get rid of. Without meaning to, you frowned, and he made a soft, lukewarm grumble, nudging your leg with his foot, reminding you what you were doing. Which was fussing over a grown man who should have been responsible from the start and able to take care of himself.

“Show me your forehead,” you said, wanting to get it out the way first.

He obediently carded his bangs back, silent, half-hooded eyes flicking everywhere on your face going ignored as you rubbed sunscreen in and felt what alarmingly was similar to a fever. It was a relief to hear him humming at the feeling, you hoped it would help as you quickly moved to spread the white lotion over his cheeks and smeared a stripe right across the bridge of his nose as he fixed his hair, squinting at your ministrations.

Though, somehow, he looked contented enough that you had to stop him from nuzzling into your hand. “Rafayel, I’m working here.”

All you got was a breathy, “Mmm,” as if he was speaking through the pleasant haze of sleep.

How contradictory of him, as always. For someone constantly grumbling about the unbearable heat, he leaned into every touch with a docility that defied reason — and worse, he initiated them, either molding against you like water taking the shape of the container it was poured into, or his fingers ghosting over your skin as though drawn by instinct. You couldn’t make sense of it. The mere thought of physical contact when the air was this heavy and oppressive made your skin crawl, but he seemed to revel in it. No, thrived on it.

It wasn’t just the way he didn’t flinch — he leaned in harder, his breaths hitching faintly, brow furrowed like he was wrestling with a need he barely understood. You’d swear the heat radiating from your skin would only make it worse, yet he tilted his face into your touch as though your thumbs brushing his cheekbones offered a balm, a strange, cooling relief.

Maybe, he perceived your skin to be indeed cooler than his.

It had to be something unique to his Lemurian physiology. His reactions didn’t make sense otherwise. What human would ever enjoy the sensation of warmth pressed against warmth in such sweltering conditions? And yet here he was, biting back what suspiciously sounded like a placid sigh, while you struggled to reconcile the peculiar contradiction.

“C’mon, don’t let me do all the work,” you muttered, quieter than you intended, the heat and the moment distracting you entirely.

You must have sounded a tad bit worried, because Rafayel didn’t react with his usual playful defiance or the melodramatic sulking he resorted to when things didn’t go his way. Instead, he fell silent, sinking more fully against your side as though he belonged there, and successfully narrowed the angle you were working with. His head tilted slightly, guiding your hand to the sharp line of his jaw with an unspoken invitation, eyelashes fluttering as he blinked, the haze of his voice turning soft and almost vulnerable. You couldn’t even see his face properly from looking at the top of the purple mop of hair blocking you.

"Do my neck too?"

Before you could decide, his hand encircled your wrist. Not tightly — not forcefully — but with a loose, guiding pressure that was maddeningly deliberate. He led your lotion-slicked hand to curve around his throat, the smooth, simmering heat of his skin pressing against your palm.

You hesitated, the instinct to pull away warring with the strange tension settling between you both, but his thumb found the delicate underside of your wrist and began tracing slow, thoughtful patterns that seemed designed to leave you paralyzed. You knew damn well how tenderly and skillfully he handled paintbrushes, and it was evident by the practiced precision of each touch that he was using the same sensibility on you, whether he was fully aware of it or not, which sent a warm burst of blood rising to your cheeks.

Seeming restless, Rafayel sat up straight and finally allowed you a clear view of him. His head tipped further back, exposing more of his neck to your hand, eyes darkened into to a shade of purple that seemed otherworldly in the harsh light of day. They glittered like faceted amethysts film-burned blue around the edges, soaking in every sunlit fleck of your features with a focus that made your chest tighten, like you were being studied with the assessment of the artist Rafayel before another’s painting, his focus unbroken save for the low hum he let slip, soft and unguarded.

You swallowed hard, aware of how exposed you were. The bustling world of Aridum hadn’t stopped turning just because the two of you had stumbled into whatever this was. A bead of sweat rolled down the back of your neck, but it wasn’t just the desert heat making you feel like you were suffocating.

This shouldn’t have been happening. Not here, not now.

Your breath shuddered as you finally regained enough sense to break the silence. "Do it yourself," you murmured, voice uneven as you pressed the bottle of sunscreen into his chest. You looked away, clumsily rubbing your hands on your arms to mask the way they trembled, pretending to rid yourself of excess lotion while wishing desperately to erase the heat radiating off your skin.

Rafayel sighed, a low sound of reluctant acceptance, as he pulled himself upright. His fingers glided over his neck, spreading the sunscreen where you hadn’t, his movements smooth and unaffected as he worked the lotion over his collarbones and along the nape of his neck. The sight was annoyingly graceful, as though he wasn’t feeling the same unbearable tension you were. If you’d have thought of bringing a small electric fan along today, it would have been inches from your face already.

"Maybe we should’ve gone out at night," you said abruptly, grasping for any lifeline to shift the moment’s focus. Your gaze darted to him as he worked, your cheeks burning hotter than the sunlight that baked the streets. "Now I feel bad."

"What for?"

"Making you come along. This must not be very inspiring.”

Rafayel let out an honest-to-goodness laugh. It rolled from his throat so easily and naturally that it seemed even he wasn’t aware of it until the sound tapered off into a quiet chuckle. Shaking his head, he leaned toward you until his temple rested lightly on your shoulder, his gaze unfocused as he stared absently at the fountain ahead. "I’m not giving up time with you just because the sun here wants me dead."

He completely bypassed the part about inspiration, but the sincerity in his words hit you like a splash of cool water on overheated skin. Your shoulders relaxed as you melted into a sigh, letting your head fall atop his, but the sticky warmth made the closeness unbearable almost instantly.

You promptly peeled yourself away with an, "Ugh.” He had already filled his making-you-feel-hot quota for the day, in every sense of the word.

Rafayel straightened just enough to meet your gaze, "That’s how you answer my heroic declaration?" he asked dryly, one brow arched in faux offense.

He didn’t budge, though, even though the heat seemed to bother him more than it did you. The stubborn set of his jaw spoke volumes, and it took a gentle nudge of your elbow to get him to finally sit upright. Even then, he let out a dramatic whine from deep in his chest as if being forced to separate was a personal betrayal.

"You’re lucky I’m rewarding it with mercy," you shot back, brushing a hand through your hair to vent your own rising frustration with the heat. "Come on, let’s head back. I need to get my fishie in the water before he dries up completely."

"But you wanted to see—"

"There’ll be plenty of opportunities in the future," you interrupted with a wave of your hand. "If anything, this was a good lesson about choosing the time we go out more carefully."

To your relief, Rafayel didn’t push back. He rose to his feet with you, though his sluggish movements and the slight downward pull of his lips suggested reluctance. As much as his leaning on you had been irritating in the heat, the sight of his faint frown made your chest tighten, and without thinking, you looped your arm through his and pulled him closer, even though the contact made your already overheated skin feel unbearable. His shoulders straightened slightly at the gesture, but the small crease between his brows didn’t disappear.

"I hear it’s seafood night at the hotel restaurant," you offered, attempting to lift his mood. He was obviously bummed out, but his stubbornness refused to show why outright. It was cute to a degree — childish almost, so endearing you couldn't find it in yourself to grow impatient with him. But you hated seeing him down. "If we head back now, we might snag a rooftop table.”

"Snag? Puh-lease. Worst case scenario, one glimpse of me and I could get us prime seating any time, anywhere," Rafayel scoffed. Still, the corner of his lip twitched upward as if tempted to smile, and you found yourself mirroring the reaction immediately. “And that whole thing would still be less bothersome than you assuming I haven’t secured us a reservation already.”

Later that evening, after dinner on the rooftop, the mix-up with the room service attendant delivering Rafayel’s envelope to your room turned out to be a convenient excuse to check on him. It had been hours since you insisted he take time to rest, and while he promised to settle in and let you know how he felt after freshening up, you hadn’t heard from him since.

You were greeted by the humidity hitting you in the face like a solid wall of rain when the door got opened though, instead of your boyfriend. Thick as fog like it had its own gravity.

Rafayel stood in the doorway, his hair dripping and clinging to his flushed skin in lazy dark purple rivulets, robe loose, the soft fabric blotched dark with water where droplets had slid from his neck and shoulders.

The room behind him radiated a different kind of heat — not the oppressive dryness of the desert, but the heavy, steamy warmth of someone trying to crawl their way back to comfort in the only way they knew how.

He looked better, at least.

The brittle edge that had been clinging to him seemed softened, as if he’d soaked away some of the tension in the beath he’d clearly stepped out of upon you knocking on his door.

Still, the sight of him — damp like a wet cat instead of a fish in his natural environment, robe-clad, the faint sheen of exhaustion still lingering in the way he leaned against the door frame left an odd twist in your chest.

He didn't look any worse for wear than he had earlier in the day when he’d claimed he wanted to spend the rest of his night marinating in ice cold water, and while seeing him not suffering was a relief, you clearly weren't expecting for him to actually mean what he said, even though the water obviously wasn’t ice cold.

The envelope, as it turned out, held a ticket to the memorial hall and an invitation to an art salon gathering hosted by one of his friends. Neither looked to be sparking any interest in Rafayel, however, despite him having come here for as much stimulation as possible for his inspiration.

You understood. It just wasn’t possible when he wasn’t feeling well.

The room itself was telling the entire story, in fact, chaotic in its stillness against the beauty of the floor-to ceiling windows framing the desert skyline in soft, shimmering lights of the city crowned by the full moon hanging proudly above. Papers were scattered across the floor in uneven piles, some curling slightly at the edges where they’d caught the artificial moisture in the air, blank and untouched, and some haphazardly sketched in a way you couldn't even begin to guess what they would become later. A few uncapped pens sat nearby, ink untouched, next to a can of soda that had long since gone warm. It wasn’t hard to guess what he’d been doing — or trying to do — in the hours since you’d left him.

So, you told him to stop forcing himself. Come enjoy the scenery with you.

It was your first instinct, but the words didn’t feel enough. You weren’t an artist, you didn’t know what would be good for the block he was going through. Even though your concern was genuine, you were clumsy at best at consolation.

But, he did lower himself onto the floor beside you anyway, his hands brushing against the scattered papers as he sat and leaned back on his palms. Like this, it was easy to imagine him search for his vision to come to him among the mess as he was attempting to draw, and end up with his gaze drifting out the window instead.

And then, as if he were a tide and the moonlight was pulling him inexorably to shore, he began to open up. Pushed by your mention of watching the view together, he spoke of sceneries. Of what traveling to discover secret corners of nature meant to him before everything changed — before he started creating. About how he used to just look at the world and feel it. Admire it. He didn’t need to do anything with it back then. A sunset was just a sunset, the sea was simply the sea, and neither asked anything of him but to exist alongside them.

Once he began to create, however...

Those discoveries done from a place of pure enjoyment became material, their beauty and pain turned into fuel. The act of looking became an act of taking. Of extracting. He started to see the world not as it was, but as something that could be stripped bare and transformed. A beautiful, bleeding wound. Every sunrise painted became a slice taken from the sun. Every ocean wave he put down on canvas was a handful of ocean lost. He couldn't experience sceneries for themselves anymore without having to to capture and translate them into a demand.

He didn’t look at you while he spoke, but the portrait of his honesty could be interpreted by even the most art-blind.

It was then that he dropped the bomb on you: “If one day, I become someone who only takes from you… If I were like that, would you leave me?”

That question dropped into the space between you like a stone in still water, sending ripples through everything you thought you understood about this moment.

But Rafayel was watching you in a way that made your pulse trip over itself, dissecting every flicker of your expression, like you were sitting in the middle of a high-stakes exam you hadn’t studied for. His fingers splayed on the ground besides yours were mere inches away, but even in that minimal distance, you sensed him drawing further back — a subconscious, reflexive reaction to fear, as if he needed to protect himself by retreating into some remote part of his mind, distant and closed off from the rest of him.

"Oh you silly fishie..." was your immediate response despite the whiplash he'd inflicted upon you, fondness rolling off your tongue easily, folding over itself into a dull ache for the struggle he was going through. "I won't leave you."

Your hand slid towards him, pinky finger crossing over until it brushed against his — gently, giving him ample chance to pull away before you covered his entire hand with your palm.

He was feverish again, despite all attempts made to soothe him, and the urge to smooth the pads of your fingers over his flushed skin, mapping each ridge and freckle that dotted his knuckles, surged forward within you. And you gave in, trying to make up for what you knew words would never be able to express, as you lightly rubbed lines onto the back of his hand.

It seemed to melt something in him, and he eased into your touch. It was an involuntary response to you reaching out for him — he tilted into you like he always did. It only lasted a second or two, however, before you felt him falter; like he noticed the instinctual motion midway, then consciously pushed down the reaction by gripping his thighs in an effort to sit back and avoid leaning in. Your heart dropped a little, confused, and you stole a peek at his face through the corner of your lashes to try to guess what he was thinking about.

What you saw only amplified how wrong everything felt. His features, which normally softened whenever you reached out for him, tightened, pensive. He frowned, holding back — hesitant about something, unreadable except for a subtle unease creeping in around the edges.

Even before he broke the silence, you had the awful premonition that his next words weren't going to be what you hoped to hear.

"Are you sure?" he asked, measured and quiet, and you knew you were right. This was trouble.

You squeezed his hand lightly despite wanting to do the very opposite, reassuringly, "Do you really think I’d stay even a second longer with someone I know is bad for me?"

He remained unresponsive.

“Rafayel?”

You made it about yourself, idiot, you realized.

Instead of acknowledging him and his cue for more reassurance and affirmation, you'd shifted the attention from him to trust in your decision making. You hadn't meant to, you hadn't done it deliberately — but...

Gosh, you were absolutely terrible at this.

So much so that Rafayel being the more emotionally in-tune of the two of you even in his vulnerable state was setting a humiliating new standard for how low you could go.

It was pathetic, really, how utterly you failed to pick up on what should have been an obvious cue. There wasn’t a shred of doubt in your mind that he’d taken your clumsy words as a glaring sign you found his struggles trivial, insignificant compared to your own convenience. All you’d managed to do was shove him deeper into the spiral of insecurities he was already battling.

This was supposed to help him clear his head. All it had achieved so far was adding onto his concerns.

Despite your determination to pour everything you had into assuaging the gnarled knot of his self-doubt, you were woefully unqualified for the task. Unmoored, you floundered blindly through half-finished thoughts, grasping for ways to communicate your feelings — gracelessly, imprecisely — all in hopes of soothing whatever ugly thoughts tangled around your boyfriend's brain like weeds choking the life from fertile soil.

Your stammering words stuck to the roof of your mouth like taffy, thick, unwilling to yield, and suddenly useless, coming out slow as you spoke. “What I mean by that is… My life has been consumed by you. In the best way possible. You made it ito a beautiful, chaotic mess bursting with life. I couldn’t possibly leave you.”

And he heard it — you felt it in the faint shuddering breath he drew as a silent response.

His thumb swiped over your pinky in absent response, stroking soothingly over the thin bones as he stared at your joined hands. His shoulders hadn't relaxed even marginally, but there was still an immeasurable kindness in the gesture.

“Besides, you’re not someone who takes. That’s not true at all. You’re just…”

He looked up then, turning his head to you, a doe-eyed, half-dazed blink breaking past the glassy stare he'd fixed on the empty space in front of him. His hand twitched underneath yours, flexing as he made a questioning noise, wordlessly urging you to elaborate as he invited comfort from your explanation. The way he tilted his head, the corners of his furrowed brows slightly angled upwards — the effect was childlike, innocent almost.

Receptive.

Breaking through your hesitation to touch him lest he shrink away again, you lifted both hands to cradle his cheeks gently, smoothing your thumbs across the high sweep of his cheekbones until his eyelids slid shut.

A soft sigh fell from his parted lips, his body pliant in your grasp as he melted under your fingertips, as if the gesture were more potent than any reassurance you might offer. The climbing tension within your ribcage dissolved with a single exhalation at the sight — helplessly endeared by his sheer willingless to submit to your awkward, inexpressive attempt at consoling. Subtle adoration burned quietly beneath each featherlight caress you placed along the slope of his nose or the soft patches underneath his eyes.

"You're just feeling a little anxious," you continued carefully, brushing a stray piece of damp hair away from his temple. It stuck stubbornly, refusing to let itself be tucked behind his ear before you tried again, gentler this time, hoping to soothe any lingering reservations you hadn't managed to wash away. “That’s probably why you’re overthinking things.”

In the brief silence that followed, anxiety bubbled low in your stomach once more, especially when he seemed to be focusing somewhere on your neck and ignoring looking you in the eye directly. It came as yet another whiplash and a sinking feeling simultaneously when he covered one of your hands with his, tilting his chin to plant a kiss into the centre of your palm as if making up for the withdrawal from earlier.

"What, were you playing tricks on me?" you murmured.

Shaking his head, "A token of my gratitude," he clarified. A gentle huff of laughter slipped past his lips, so faintly that you would've missed it had you not been staring at him with rapt attention in your bewilderment. "For you. Who accepted someone like me."

You frowned, eyebrows immediately drawing close. “Rafayel—”

He leaned in all of a sudden, one of his arms slid behind your back, while the other stretched across in front of you, caging you in with an unnerving ease. Both his hands rested flat against the floor now, framing you on either side like a living barricade. Your own left arm shot down to slap a palm down so you wouldn't topple over on your side. The droplets falling from his damp hair onto your neck was a sharp, sudden cold in comparison to the alarming heat radiating from his body, making you jolt in place as he loomed close enough for his breath to fan across your face.

"You're burning up again," you said weakly, trying and failing spectacularly to disguise your nervousness with indignance as his lips brushed softly against the apple of your cheek before ghosting lower, pausing just beneath your ear, testing for a reaction.

Meanwhile, him taking your hand that was balled up in a fist on the ground to slowly bring it towards his mouth left you frozen and dizzy from the contradictory sensations prickling under your skin.

Rafayel hummed against your wrist in response, dropping light kisses along the ridge of bone connecting your thumb to the rest of your fingers in the interim. It was impossible to ignore how every one of his touches ignited something different within you — the sensation of him painting the length of each finger with tender brushes of his lips and heated exhales sent pulses of liquid warmth flowing through your bloodstream.

The abrupt shift had left you uncertain about many things, chief among which being whether your previous efforts actually sank in at all or not.

Apparently they had.

The combined assault was distracting, but even amidst the whirlwind of thoughts vying for attention, you struggled to fully comprehend just how drastically the moment had veered off course — how your own worry-stricken attempt at appeasing him ended here instead, with your pulse hammering in your ears as he pressed even closer, draping his arm around your waist to turn you sideways until you were nearly sitting on his lap, faces inches apart.

A glimpse hope of maintaining control over the situation arrived in the form of a can toppling over during his handling of you, clattering on the hardwood flooring and startling you enough to snap free of the strange trance Rafayel had ensnared you in during his momentary lapse in focus.

Being so close gave you a good look at the change in him that manifested suddenly; his features visibly hardened as he turned his head at the disturbance, seemingly irritated to have been interrupted midway — a dark glint shone through his lashes before shifting over to you, misty, hazy, indescribable in its raw complexity.

His bathrobe hung loose, the neckline slouched further down one shoulder from having moved so much earlier, displaying more skin than was appropriate, and you weren’t sure if you were imagining the faintest hint of familiar coloration mottling his chest.

Which was dry.

Not only had his skin absorbed all the moisture that clung to it like a sponge after stepping out of the bathroom, there was no hint of perspiration whatsoever — not a bead of sweat lining the ridges of his collarbone or dampening the strands of hair stuck to his forehead.

As if responding to your inner thoughts, he lamented, "As you said, I'm anxious... Well, more like... Restless," before leaning in further to bury his face in the crook of your shoulder. "Ever since I arrived here, I feel..."

His arms encircled your waist, pulling you flush against the expanse of his chest and filling your nose with the scent of bodywash. It was no less than holding a solid block of heat capable of radiating more than enough warmth to replace an actual human furnace. The sheer amount of radiated temperature seemed ridiculous in such conditions, but the way he tried the loosen the already disheveled robe covering his other shoulder despite coiling around you, which had to be the source of the biggest discomfort concerning heat, was even more ridiculous. Shouldn’t he have let go of you before complaining?

"The air feels like it's burning, like there's not enough moisture anywhere. My heart's racing and I feel so miserable," he admitted quietly, muffled in the material of your shirt.

Yeah, you were taking him to a hospital.

This wasn't normal by any means, especially since you were now a hundred percent sure Rafayel couldn't sweat in order to regulate his internal body heat.

How could you let this go on for so long? He had been suffering these symptoms for a whole day now, hiding it all under layers of petulant frustration and overdramatic complaining to escape having to ask for help.

He was always like this. So secretive and reserved about his struggles underneath all the goofiness, especially those directly related to him being a Lemurian.

You put a hand on his burning chest and pushed yourself away to put some distance between the two of you and this moment, ignoring his quiet gasp and the way he clutched your waist. "I'm taking you to a—”

Suddenly, the world spun off its axis, a dizzying blur of motion that ended with your back colliding against the floorboards.

The impact sent a ripple through the room — drawing pens clattering and rolling away, half-sketched papers crumpling beneath you, while others scattered into the air like startled birds, carried by the gust of displaced air.

As you blinked up, trying to shake the daze from your mind, the world sharpened into focus.

The light cascaded over Rafayel like liquid mercury, accentuating every sharp edge and soft curve of his form. His bare legs straddled your hips, knees pressed firmly into the ground on either side of you, pinning you in place with an effortless authority. His hands had found yours in the chaos, and now your wrists were restrained above your head, his long fingers encircling them with a grip that was firm yet somehow shaky.

The bathrobe he wore hung precariously, one shoulder already exposed to the moonlight’s caress while the other threatened to follow suit, the fabric dipping low to reveal a tantalizing V that stretched from his clavicle down to his navel. Tendrils of lilac hair curled lightly downwards with gravity, catching the light from outside, glittering like morning dew against a canvas of violet satin and plopping down onto your face, each impact making you blink. And his face, suffused with a flush so intense that it seemed to glow under the pale lighting, as if all the blood in his body had rushed to stain his fair skin with an undeniable rosy bloom.

The cool floorboards beneath your skin were contrasting harshly with the heat of his touch, and the helpless position left your pulse racing in a way you couldn’t entirely blame on adrenaline.

Rafayel lowered himself until his nose brushed lightly against yours, his breaths shallow and uneven, eyes caught halfway between hazy drowsiness and burning intensity — a vivid shade of sunless plum made darker not by the shadows cast across his features, but a deeply buried and masterfully concealed emotion on the verge of making itself known to you.

To call it desire wouldn't do it justice.

It was something far stronger than fleeting arousal or casual infatuation — you hadn’t been looked at this way before. Weren’t even sure if a man could look at someone like this. There was nothing superficial or mundane about this particular weight. It sought to consume you. To burn you alive, leaving you to crumble into ashes like incense offered up to a deity. And the worst part? You had no idea what exactly you were being consumed by, or why.

All of this, because you had merely wanted to—

“No. I’m not going anywhere,” he hissed as if sensing your plan, breath dragging along the edge of your ear. "I'm just... restless.”

But—

“In every sense of the word.”

Oh?

Your mind reeled, dizzy from the intoxicating cocktail flooding your senses — from his breaths washing over the side of your neck, to the overwhelming sensation of Rafayel on the verge of draping over you like a living brand, hot and firm, trapping you in place.

"Especially when you're by my side," he purred.

Oh.

He pulled back to stare you down, heavy-lidded and glinting like knives honed razor sharp, yet somehow tender in his approach. If anything, it served only to accentuate the danger of whatever it was simmering below the surface. This was different than his Ebb Day state, but similar enough in its intent to be instantly recognizable — especially since it bore all the marks of the manic rush he fell victim to when succumbing to the lure of his instincts.

It was something primal in you that scattered your thought process into oblivion and made you look away instinctively, averting your attention toward the window off to your left — but the sparkling view of night time in Aridum was soon curtained by a flash of Rafayel's hand as he cupped the side of your face in one smooth motion.

The slight roughness of the pad of his thumb brushed along your cheekbone until his fingers sank into your hair, fanned along the outer edge of your ear, and turned you back to face him. The gesture felt proprietary, like he wanted to make certain he'd captured every last scrap of your undivided attention, like it physically hurt to allow even the smallest opportunity for you to withdraw and escape his grasp.

“Rafayel,” you forced your common sense to come out of its hiding place. “I don’t think—”

"But even so, I can't let you go. I don't want to," he breathed against your lips, punctuating his command with an achingly slow drag of his nose tracing yours. The contact made something molten unfurl in your belly, warm and sticky-slick and pooling in the hollow space below your navel, curling its tendrils through your veins like sweet, syrupy nectar. "What should I do?"

It would be easier than breathing to surrender and give him whatever he was asking for, but... but...

It felt wrong when he was so distressingly hot to the touch, not to mention you couldn't shake off the feeling he was doing his best to distract you from your worry by acting more brazenly suggestive than you'd ever seen him be before.

"You should rest, I don't think you'll enjoy getting worked up in your current condition—"

Your efforts were derailed with the subtle scrape of chapped lips running up the slope of your neck and a bite into the fleshy part below your ear as punishment for daring to answer his plea with platitude.

A shudder shook your frame, nerves firing off confused messages in quick succession throughout your brain, half demanding the sudden pressure recede and half urging more from the tingling heat. Your hand flew to grip his bare shoulder, fingers digging in until the tight bunch of muscle strained beneath his fevered skin — not enough to stop his ministrations, but enough to serve as a weak deterrent.

"Such lovely lips, spinning such pretty excuses," Rafayel huffed, drawing back and sweeping his thumb across your chin with gentle disapproval. "When we both know you don't want me to let you go either."

The words trailed off into something softer, tender, almost wistful, and were followed by the pad of his finger slipping past your parted lips, stroking along the underside of your tongue before drawing back and skimming across the wet patch he'd left glistening upon your bottom lip. As if magnetized, his smoldering stare followed, entranced by the minute trembling of your mouth, darting occasionally upward to capture your own hooded eyes at the sudden boldness of his gesture. He licked his own lips slowly as if thirsty, mirroring the same lazy stroke he'd used against your mouth, allowing you to take your fill of the sight.

No.

Before you could fall into his enticing trap again, your palm pressed firmly against Rafayel's chest until he eased back obediently, giving you space to rise, every single sensation previously pink at the edges quickly melting into clarity about taking care of him properly.

"This isn't the right time," you insisted breathlessly once you managed to catch your breath and speak, steadfast with the strain of iron will alone — pushing forward when your mind threatened to wander where his moistened lips had been just seconds before.

The mood was quickly dispelling, much to Rafayel's clear irritation, judging by the petulant slouch of his shoulders. You emphasized your point by putting your hands on his forehead, cheeks, neck, every patch of skin you could reach, the clear intent of medical examination being communicated silently until he relented with a dramatic sigh, turning his face upwards to expose more of his throat as if giving permission.

"It's fine," he groused reluctantly, although his grumbling somewhat relenting in volume under your gentle inspection. "I'm not dying."

"That's the opposite of what you said earlier today. Are you sure you don't want—"

His hands closed firmly around your wrists, tugging you off gently before you could finish speaking. "It's really not that bad.”

You’d be more convinced if he'd just told you about how miserable he was feeling.

"Is it a Lemurian condition?" You frowned up at him, taking note of how carefully he cradled your hands in his palms, stroking the insides of your wrists. "If it's making you feel awful, shouldn't we see someone about it?"

Rafayel tilted his head at you with a peculiar sort of fondness written across his features. It was difficult to identify what precisely made his smile curve upward into something distinctly knowing, yet warm — something infinitely affectionate yet impossible to quantify.

"Already doing that," he answered cryptically, tilting forward until he met your forehead with his own, nuzzling into the creased spot directly between your brows, eyelashes fluttering shut.

Ugh, this man.

"Do you know for a fact if you'll be okay?" you asked as delicately as possible without sounding too overbearing. That would definitely push Rafayel closer to defensive territory again and have him brush off any attempt at assistance, or even conversation, so you needed to walk the tightrope of concern while still keeping it mild enough for him not to clam up. "This trip still has a few more days left. What if you don't get better?"

The corner of his mouth twitched faintly with a ghost of a smile, perhaps pleased by your attentiveness —— "I enjoy this kind of concern."

—— which was starting to irritate you a little. "Well, I don't. Seeing you suffer and not doing anything isn't enjoyable."

He had the audacity to grin at that, broad enough to crinkle the corners of his eyes as he ducked his head coyly before turning it sharply to brush the tip of his nose against the shell of your ear and murmuring, "Not enjoying seeing me suffering does imply some enjoyment in seeing me otherwise."

"Rafayel!" You snapped finally, jerking out of his embrace with exasperated incredulity, only to meet an unrepentant smile waiting for you beyond your escape. He wasn't deterred whatsoever, which was a little unnerving.

Or rather, the rapid shift to your own pent-up restlessness was about to become in the next two days.

The limbo between then and the memorial hall day unfolded in a whirlwind of contradictions, each more puzzling than the last — starting from the abrupt ending to your interlude in front of the window, where he suddenly pulled back without any warning at all, leaving you cold and stunned with the excuse that he wanted to go to sleep, subsequently kicking you out of his hotel room as if possessed by a demonic force capable of inducing selective amnesia.

Like he wasn’t asking to fold you in half like a laptop mere moments ago.

The result was you forcing mandatory house rest until the day of the memorial hall visit came, settling awkwardly between coddling and hovering — a weird blend of fussing over his health like a mother hen and trying desperately not to make him feel infantilized as a result of said fussing.

All of that only ended with him either clinging close or deliberately distancing himself in confusing waves that seemed to occur at random intervals with little rhyme or reason.

It was simultaneously bewildering and heartbreaking. You had no idea how to react when he gave you zero insight into his thoughts and behaviors unless coaxed open, and even then, his answers were cryptic.

(So much for enjoying your concern.)

Really, this was your fault.

Maybe you shouldn't have pushed. But you worried.

Especially when he was dismissive like that despite being openly going through something other than a fever and a creative block, made worse by his inability to leave the hotel due to the hostile environment. Both of which you could do nothing to help with.

He would sit at the edge of the bed, his sketchbook propped open but untouched, pencil hovering above the page as though waiting for some divine spark that refused to come. At times, he’d stand by the window, reminding you of a cat sitting by its food dish for its owner to fill it with dinner, paw swiping irritatingly at its empty confines. Then, just as abruptly, he’d abandon his spot to sprawl across your lap instead while you were busy with paperwork online, one arm draped loosely over his stomach as he stared blankly at the ceiling in defeat, and demanding you play with his hair.

Then, some time later, it was back to deciding being near you was unbearable, pulling away entirely whenever you reached out for reassurance, no matter how casual or friendly your intentions, retreating back into his personal bubble to focus on attempting to get something on paper mindlessly, pages fluttering with restless action, crumpling here and there under the rough treatment before being smoothed out hastily.

The cycle continued nonstop. Restlessness, fatigue, clinginess, building you up while you didn't let it show because time and place, solitude, then back again — you never knew what Rafayel's whimsies were going to bring, and the uncertainty of it wore you thin, fraying your already wan nerves.

The humidifier was a desperate, last-ditch effort, the kind born out of sheer frustration and the kind of exhaustion that makes rationality optional.

You’d bought it from a small local shop at the crack of dawn, spurred on by the memory of walking into Rafayel’s suite only hours before, where he’d bullied the hotel staff into delivering two oversized sacks of ice — each roughly the size of a small child — and ordered them to be dumped unceremoniously into his bathtub.

At 3 AM. In the dead of night.

By the time you returned and set it up, the machine had barely begun spitting out its first gentle stream of cool mist before Rafayel sat down beside it, legs folded beneath him like a solemn monk meditating in front of some sacred relic. His quiet intensity as he stared at the thing made you wonder if he was grateful, resentful, or some combination of both — because with Rafayel, it was never as simple as one emotion at a time.

Still, the day turned out to be noticeably easier on him, and for the first time in what felt like forever, you allowed yourself to believe that maybe, just maybe, the worst had passed.

He still looked like death warmed over, often pink on the face and worn, but at least he wasn’t on the brink of staging another late-night ice-bag heist.

He even tolerated your awkward attempts to distract him, accepting your offerings of snacks, endless glasses of ice water, iced tea, whatever cold beverages you could scrounge up, and a marathon of that one TV show the two of you had been meaning to watch together.

And, of course, there was the doting.

So much doting.

Which was rare for you.

You were not, by any stretch of the imagination, the kind of person who showered people with attention. You weren’t the mom friend. You didn’t hover. But something about Rafayel in this state, rightfully whiny, subdued, far too fragile for your liking, made you want to roll him over in bubble wrap and shove him in your pocket to keep him safe from everything.

In some ways, you were more anxious than he was.

The helplessness swung at you like you were a tree and it was an axe, the inability to snap your fingers and fix him, to just make it better was torture. Worrying felt inevitable, but useless. And the not knowing what to do with yourself in between bouts of fretting? That was worse. Still, he wasn’t showing any signs of further deterioration, which felt like a victory you didn’t want to jinx.

You were so relieved you briefly considered leaving all your savings to the shop clerk who’d sold you the overpriced humidifier. She had probably thought you’d lost your mind, judging by the way you thanked her like she’d just handed you a ticket to salvation, practically singing her praises as she rang up your purchase. And honestly, if you could go back in time, you would’ve thanked her even more profusely.

Because it worked. Rafayel was better — well, better-ish. Better enough that you decided it was safe to move forward with the plan to visit the memorial hall.

Which, eventually, became a visit to the ocean.

An ocean.

In the middle of a desert.

The sheer impossibility of it left you breathless, like you were standing at the edge of a fever dream made real. The water stretched out endlessly, shimmering beneath the brutal sun, and you couldn’t stop marveling at the sheer absurdity of it — a body of water so vast, so alive, nestled in a place it had no right to be. It felt like a miracle.

It was a miracle.

And just when you thought the desert couldn’t surprise you further, the skies proved you wrong soon enough later, crowning the experience with snowfall at the end of the trip. Snow, delicate and silent, drifting from the sky like a benediction.

You couldn’t help but marvel at it all — at how the world had managed to gift you two impossibilities in the span of a single day. It felt like the desert itself was defying logic, bending over backward to offer something beautiful, something extraordinary, as though it wanted to prove it wasn’t all hardship and sunburnt misery.

But Rafayel stood by the edge of the ocean with a look that made your chest ache — a look that spoke not of wonder, but of mourning. To you, it was a miracle, but to him, it was a tragedy: a dying ocean trapped in a place it could no longer thrive, its very existence a reminder of something slipping away. An everlasting eulogy engraved into reality.

He didn’t look away from the canvas of pain he had set up and started painting for himself until you voiced all of what you thought out loud for him to see.

And this time, you truly felt like you had broken through — like you’d reached him in a way that mattered.

It was there, in that rare, fragile moment, that Rafayel dove straight through your hesitation, sidestepping the awkward pauses you were fumbling with, and pulled you into an embrace before you even had the courage to ask if you could. It was as though he had heard the unspoken thought aloud, plucking it out of the air with startling precision.

And then he’d confessed — softly, almost too softly — that at the time, he had wanted to come here before, with the most important person in his life.

Those words lodged themselves in your chest, a bittersweet ache blooming alongside the unmistakable joy bubbling up within you. You hugged him back as tightly as you could, pouring all the gratitude you didn’t know how to put into words into that one simple gesture. Gratitude for trusting you enough to share that. Gratitude for showing you yet another new side of himself, something unguarded and rare. A treat, indeed, one you hadn’t expected but cherished all the same.

Relief flooded through you, so potent it felt like a physical weight lifting from your shoulders. You hadn’t even realized how tense you’d been until that moment. Your body relaxed, and with that relaxation came fatigue, the kind that crept up on you and left no room for resistance. Before you knew it, you had fallen asleep during the entire way back, lulled into a rare sense of peace you hadn’t felt in days.

And yet.

Like clockwork, he withdrew the instant you arrived back at the hotel.

Rafayel never thought he’d truly understand what it meant to drown.

As a creature of the sea, he wasn't meant to in the first place.

Not until you.

The realization had hit him like a storm breaking over still waters — not all at once, but in slow, rumbling waves that built. He didn’t even feel himself breaking; it was more like a slow erosion, the kind that wears stone into sand. Quiet, but irreversible. Your optimism. Your touches. Your encouragement. Inching in and in and in one step at a time.

(It was snowing in the desert.)

He had been holding himself together in the driver's seat, hands knotted around the steering wheel and knuckles bloodless with how tightly he gripped. Every inch of him vibrated with anxiety, away from where you lay fast asleep beside him, breathing shallow and uneven like he was afraid of exhaling too loudly. But there you were, oblivious, asleep, your head leaning softly against the window as if his world hadn’t collapsed in on itself.

(It was snowing in the desert.)

It wasn’t the desert heat that was killing him, though it might as well have been. (Everything about this place grated against him — the air, the dry scrape of his skin, the silence of the fading ocean that was too vast to be comforting. Too big. Too empty. Fading. Fading. A warning from cities away that this land was no place for a creature like him.) He wasn’t meant for this — for the cracked earth and the relentless sun and the suffocating absence of water. His body ached for moisture, for the cool, familiar embrace of the sea, but it ached even more for you. (He didn’t even realize how long he had been watching you from the corner of his peripheral vision — how long he had been unraveling, thread by thread.)

You’d tilted his world off its axis, turned everything he thought he knew into something unrecognizable. Once, pain had been his anchor. It was always there—constant, unyielding, something he could hold on to when nothing else made sense. It had driven him, fueled him, given him purpose when nothing else could. He had sought it out like a man dying of thirst seeks a mirage, and it had never failed him. Pain was constant. Pain was reliable. Pain was everything. Inside. Outside. It was all he had ever known, and it had kept him alive — fed the anger that gnashed his insides with teeth and claws, soothed the beast that prowled just under his skin, tempered the instinct that drove him relentlessly onward. Toward destruction. Towards home.

He had used it as a shield, as armor, as the whip he wielded against those who dared to clip the tails of his people. A weapon. A tool. A brush.

And then there was you (who he'd willingly sought out, angry and grieving and resentful and hurt.)

You, who didn’t fit into his carefully crafted world of suffering and art and revenge. You, who had made him forget (as easily as you forgot him) what it felt like to hurt, to ache, to yearn for something greater than himself. To hate. To see others bleed while his fingers flew across canvas after canvas, leaving only beauty in their wake — only soaring wings, only gleaming scales, only flowing water, only living fire, only reaching skies, only rushing wind, only rising floods...

Only you.

(It was snowing in the desert.)

Except now, he did yearn. He yearned in a way that was foreign and unbearable, in a way that felt like drowning — not in water, but in light, in warmth, in the overwhelming weight of wanting something too much. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that he wanted you this much — needed you this much — when he didn’t even know who he was without all the hurt and hatred inside. It wasn’t fair that he felt something hot and ugly churning under his skin whenever you smiled up at him in admiration, filling his stomach with lead until he thought he might collapse beneath its heaviness. It wasn't fair that there were times when he thought it might actually be better not to have met you again at all.

(That thought filled him with dread so immense it threatened to crush the breath from his lungs; the possibility of having spent his entire life stumbling aimlessly through darkness towards a destination he was no longer sure even existed — )

He watched you sleep, the rhythm of your breathing steady and unbothered.

His gaze lingered on your hands, resting loosely in your lap, fingers twitching faintly as if even in sleep, you were reaching for something. (Reaching for him?) He wanted to take them in his own, to press them to his lips, to hold on so tightly he’d never have to let go. But he couldn’t. (He wouldn’t.)

Because the moment he did, he knew he’d lose whatever fragile standing he had left.

(��Isn’t it a surprise that there’s an ocean in the desert?”)

His thoughts spiraled, looping back on themselves in a tangle of contradictions that refused to resolve; questions without answers, fears without resolutions. What had he become, to need you like this? To depend on you like this? To depend on you so completely that even the idea of your absence felt like the loss of something vital — something essential — an emptiness he wasn't prepared to face.

(What must you think of him? Did you even know what you did to him? What would you think of him?)

He had told himself he could manage it, that he could stay close enough to feel your warmth but far enough not to burn. But that was a lie, wasn’t it? He was already burning. He had been burning since the moment he met you. An addictive pain — the kind that made him ache for more even as it seared him from the inside out.

And before he knew it, the car was parked beside the hotel entrance around the far corner of the garden, and Rafayel didn’t remember driving there at all.

He blinked, confused for a moment as to how exactly he had managed to pilot the vehicle, when you stirred quietly in the passenger seat, drawing his attention like a moth to flame.

You groaned softly, eyelids fluttering, but remained firmly locked within slumber's grip as he unbuckled your seatbelt for you, as gently as if he were handling fine china. Your head leaned sideways against the headrest and faced him, slack and soft with sleep. His fingers twitched around the plastic buckle, curling into a fist until he thought they might cramp under the strain.

He leaned forward, forehead coming to contact with the cool leather surface of the steering wheel, squeezing his eyes shut tight enough to blot out your presence entirely.

There was too much to process — too many feelings, thoughts, sensations threatening to overwhelm him if he looked directly at them, instead swirling through his head like debris caught in a vortex, invisible yet disorienting nonetheless.

But they all blipped out of existence the moment he turned his head around, following the impulse to look.

(“Isn’t it a surprise that there’s an ocean in the desert?”)

The urge struck Rafayel with all the force of a lightning bolt — bright, sudden, unavoidable — and suddenly the knuckles of his fingers were sliding across your cheek, feather-light in gentle arcs along the arch of your cheek, savoring every inch of satin flesh as it shifted beneath his caress.

The sensation of touch buzzed pleasantly underneath his skin previously starved, reveling in the sweetness of contact after so many days of withdrawal.

The artificial light coming from outside bathed your sleeping form in a glow that cascaded like a gentle waterfall, chiaroscuro shadows casting angles upon your features, emphasizing every line and curve, and for a long time, all he could do was stare. He could feel your breath against the tips of his nails, warm puffs of moist exhales against his calloused flesh, and found himself fixating on the gentle undulation of your chest as you breathed — unconsciously, mindlessly unaware of what such a simple act did to him.

The memory of your voice echoed in his mind, soft and certain, cutting through the chaos like a beam of light.

"Isn’t it a surprise that there’s an ocean in the desert?"

You had a way of reframing everything, of taking the pieces of his broken world and rearranging them into something that almost looked like hope. (He hated it. He loved it. He hated that he loved it.) It wasn’t fair. None of it was fair.

You hadn’t asked to become such an integral part of his existence — so intrinsic and fundamental and irreplaceable. Yet somehow, here you were. Here he was. The absence of water, the grief of it. The grief of what it meant to lose something so essential, so intrinsic, that one didn’t know how to live without it. And that grief had found a new home in you. You, who had become his ocean, his escape, the source of every ache in his chest and joy in his heart.

(Isn't it a surprise that there's an ocean in the desert? Isn't it a surprise you're the muse calling to him and not the muffled, fading cries of the dying ocean in pain, not the skeletal remains of an era he'd never get back?)

He gazed, and gazed, and gazed, drinking you in like a thirsty man lost in a sea of golden sands, watching the subtle play of lights over the curves of your face — the delicate angle of your chin, the arch of your nose, the graceful slope of your neck as it curved into collarbone and shoulder — memorizing every detail he could, without the pressure of having to wrench himself back before he drowned in your wake, without the need to pretend to your face he was anything less than desperate to be with you all day, every day, in every way possible. And that the sound of your voice in his ears was enough to get the paintbrush running across paper from the sheer momentum of his imagination.

But he couldn't keep going like this.

Somehow, somewhen, between the start of your journey and now, this thing had begun shifting irrevocably past his ability to contain it any longer. Had grown exponentially until it seemed to dwarf his capacity to handle it. All it would take was being away from you for a mere few hours to bring him to a level of misery that was honestly embarrassing.

And you had no idea.

No idea that orbiting around him in these past few days like a second moon had only served to exacerbate the foul joy of watching you fawn over him.

It made him sick to his stomach to admit it, but soaking in the knowledge (in his soul, through the bond) that you cared so deeply for him went straight to his head like some drug he hadn't realized he needed.

It felt so despairingly good that he would wrap himself around you like a vine climbing towards sunlight if he could for the rest of his days, absorbing your rays of affection like photosynthesis... or a parasite.

(Was he being punished by the sea that this love was eclipsing his fury and vengeance? Or rewarded that he held both equally in his grasp despite how terribly wrong it felt at times? Regardless, his inspiration was the punchline, once only capable of singing into the canvas elegies of lament and sorrow, now composed ballads and odes that poured out effortlessly.)

You would hate him if you ever found out just how perversely his emotions swung in every direction; so high one moment that the ecstasy of relief nearly shattered his reserve of control, and so low the next that he feared he'd choke to death from the guilt that clawed up the back of his throat like a strangled animal's cry for mercy.

This entire ordeal had flipped the script completely — instead of keeping you at arm's length as he normally did (regarding… everything), Rafayel now clung onto you desperately like Tantalus to a branch of fruit he’d finally gotten a grasp of, and what if he was exposed? The question rose like bile in his mouth whenever he began slipping.

“I won't leave you.”

Liar, his grudge wanted to answer.

It remembered. It never forgot. It told him you'd flee and never look back if he let a sliver of this dependency that bound him tighter to you with each passing day slip out from his fingertips — if he allowed you even the tiniest insight into the strange workings of his head and his heart.

Because you didn’t understand. You couldn’t. You had no idea what you were talking about when you told him you wouldn’t leave. How could you, when you didn’t know the depths of what you were promising to stay for? You didn’t know the true nature of Lemurian love, its ferocity, its weight, its cost. The all-consuming, all-encompassing reality of it — how they loved as if it was the only thing tethering them to existence itself. How they lived for it, how they died for it. How he had been dying for it.

If you saw it — if you saw him — you would run. He knew you would. Because if he laid bare just how much he depended on you, how much of his breath, his will, his very being hinged on you, you’d be overwhelmed. You’d leave.

Why else would he be tearing himself apart like this? Miserably trying to wean himself off you, forcing himself to let go only to grasp harder each time he felt you’d finally come to hate him and slip away?

He didn't know how long he sat there in silence.

Just a bit longer, he would keep watching you with these feelings out in the open. Just a little bit longer. He couldn’t bear to wake you up.

By the time you stirred, groggy and disoriented but blissfully unsuspecting, it felt as though several eternities had passed in the span of minutes, and he had to struggle with all the strength of a raging current to force himself back into this skin of his that felt too tight and suffocating around him.

But, still resting his temple against the steering wheel with an arm slung on top of it and another hanging lazily at his side, feigning ease, nothing betrayed his inner turmoil.

He watched quietly as you slowly regained your bearings, resisting the temptation to reach out and brush aside that one piece of hair out of place on your head, letting you find the words first.

(So adorable. So endearing.)

(It was not only snowing in his desert. There was also an ocean in there.)

"Rafayel..?"

"Yeah?"

"How long was I asleep?" You blinked at him blearily, one hand lifting to rub the lingering tiredness from your eyelids as you peer into the darkness of night beyond his silhouette. "Why didn't you wake me up?"

Everything he'd been thinking about vaporized and left behind nothing but softness, so tender it scared him; it seeped into the spaces in his heart left vacant and curled inside them, filling every corner, until it made the next smile he offered you come free of burden. "You were sleeping so well, cutie. I didn't want to disturb you."

The unconscious put of your lips and the way that strand of hair bounced around when you slid down your seat a little had him leaning in before he knew what he was doing, smoothing the unruly thing, fingertips betraying him by skating across the outer edge of your ear while he watched you tilt your cheek instinctively.

His body warmed immediately, gravitating towards you in a half-hug that kept you cradled close to the side of his frame as he nuzzled into your hair above your temple with a hum, dipping his nose deeper into the crown of your head near where your neck curved gracefully upwards before inhaling deep — greedy, thirsty, like he’d die if he couldn’t seep up all the scent of you.

Your breathing hitched a bit, and that’s what halted him right at the corner of your mouth with a sharp exhale — he couldn’t be doing this, he was just thinking about how he needed to pull back and —

Art salon.

Yeah, the art salon gathering.

He was supposed to be on his way to there like yesterday.

If only his body didn’t move like a most willing pupped tethered by strings to yours and refused to walk away whenever he tried.

“…Rafayel?”

It suddenly hotter in this car like a tide pool at noon. So stiflingly hot he was breathing fire even with the snowy weather outside. So unbearable the deepest V-cut known to mankind that had his whole chest out for the world to ogle did nothing to help.

He could… He could skip.

Yeah, he needed this. It had been literal days of non-stop withdrawal and a push-and-pull of his frustration that you wouldn’t touch him (because oh noo, he was sick — which, he wasn’t!) and stubbornness to not let you touch him. He’d gotten to a point that he was drunk off your scent alone and he couldn’t keep doing this forever, and why should he? Why did it matter about this event at all? Who cared — who cared about some stupid gathering? He wasn’t functioning anyways until he—

Stop. He had to stop. He was already so late.

He imagined catching himself by the scruff of his neck and yanking himself back to the driver's seat, within safe borders. Far away from your mesmerizing lips and wandering eyes and cute squirming in your seat under the thin cover of innocence.

And pulling away and practically fusing with the car door was exactly what he did.

He needed to prove to himself, just this once, that he could function without the constant reassurance of your presence — that he wasn’t helplessly anchored to you, no matter how much the pull of your moon whispered otherwise.

He had to dilute himself. This — and his inspiration problem, involving you or not, was his to figure out. And he had to figure it out if he wanted you to stay by his side.

"...Do you wanna go back to your room first?" he heard himself ask you quietly.

"You're not coming with me?" The tiny furrow of worry between your brows spoke volumes about your confusion, and despite wanting to reach out and smooth it away, to wipe every ounce of uncertainty from your face with a tender kiss, Rafayel clenched his fingers around the door handle of the vehicle until they cramped, his heart aching strangely inside his chest as you stared quizzically at him.

He brought out the invitation that came with the memorial hall ticket, waving it a little with little to no enthusiasm, "I still have to attend my friend's art salon thing."

The way your shoulders deflated and face dropped at the mention made him waver in — not enough to follow through with ditching the whole thing, but certainly making his resolve weak enough to crack like glass under pressure. "But you don't look well. You need to rest."

How could someone manage to resist getting spoiled like this, he thought miserably as he closed his eyes while you continued fussing, peering worriedly up into his face with the cutest scrunch to your forehead, palms searching along his cheeks heat before trailing down the length of his arms, and he wanted nothing more than to give in to that impulse of being coddled to bits by your hands alone.

He was a weak man.

You nearly lifted off the passenger seat and fell into his lap the way he embraced you, his arms coiling around you like kelp around a rock, holding fast as though you might slip away with the wind. His face buried into the crook of your neck, breath warm and uneven against your skin, his grip snug yet teetering on the edge of too much — like he didn’t trust himself to let go. There was a desperation in the way his hands trembled slightly, his fingers pressing into your sides, not hard enough to hurt but enough to leave the faintest impression of how badly he needed this. When your pained whine broke through, it was like snapping a thread, he instantly loosened his hold, guilt washing over his features as he pulled back just enough to make room for you to breathe. But he stayed close, his forehead dipping to rest against your shoulder as a heavy sigh rumbled deep from his chest, raw and apologetic. You leaned heavily into him, your fingers threading into his hair in a gesture that should have comforted him, but instead left him drowning deeper in the tangled sea of his emotions.

"See? You're burning up again," you mumbled as your cool lips grazed his temple in a comforting kiss. He was no better than a child. He knew it. And he hated how much he basked in your coddling, reveled in the unspoken message behind your words: Don't hide it. Tell me when you hurt. I care. "Maybe we can go together? Will you feel okay if I'm there?"

He would. He would feel more than okay, because that's what made him function.

But he couldn't keep being like this.

"Do you wanna turn me into a sea creature beached on the sand after the ocean recedes," he whispered, mostly kidding except not really, hiding in the dip of your neck just below your ear, hand tracing absent shapes into the small of your back above your tailbone. "Unable to breathe on my own, waiting helplessly for your tide's return?"

Your fingers stroking through his hair slowed, then stilled entirely at the edge of his nape. You pulled back only far enough to meet his lowered stare, confusion dancing within your own, bright and clear and genuine. You had no inkling of what was going on with him, and he didn’t want you to find out either. He would be fine. He was going to handle it.

"Don't you trust me?" Rafayel said. "How about we make a promise? I promise... I'll be okay without you tonight."

It hurt to lie to you so directly, but seeing your doubt dissolve to appease him helped soothe that sting considerably. (Even if it felt a little too convenient to rely on such flimsy methods.) You nodded, seeming convinced in spite of yourself, and his stance firmed — strengthened with your faith and affirmation alike, like he'd just taken a double shot of espresso. He would be okay. He wasn't going to keep imposing his feelings upon you even if a part of him desperately yearned to, no matter how difficult the prospect seemed.

(Say no, a small part of him whispered traitorously, selfishly, insistently. Ask me to stay. You know I can't say no to you, he wanted to plead. Needed to be affirmed once more, reassured that he was welcome to indulge, to remain, to lean into the comfort you offered freely.)

"Okay..." you echoed uncertainly, but gave him another soft smile — tentative yet warm, gentle encouragement. He watched quietly as your expressions shifted in quick succession, cycling through shades of hesitation and worry before settling on resignation. You nodded again, firmer this time, seemingly steeling yourself against whatever doubts you harbored. He wanted to kiss it all away.

But instead, he gently pushed you back, sinking further into his seat, looking out the view beyond the windshield to gather his wits against the force that was your presence beside him.

"You can head back," he repeated, not turning to meet your searching stare. "I can handle it."

The art salon had an air of cultivated elegance, grandiosity reflecting into soaring ceilings and walls adorned with curated artworks, with conversations floating in fragmented pieces, the occasional laughter punctuating the steady hum of "cultured" discourse — all the while Rafayel stood at the periphery, his posture consciously maintained with the kind of deliberate nonchalance that masked a profound discomfort, one hand buried in his pant pockets and the other holding a flute glass of champagne, ghosting the suffocating room with an expression of aloof disdain, attention drifting from painting to painting without ever settling. Humans circled him like murmuring specters, their faces a study in muted curiosity and empty civility. He loathed their presence. (Yet, here he was.)

The room's overwhelming sensory overload grated against his composure — cloying mingling of varnish and wine, sharply polished sheen of curated lighting, artifice of smiles that never reached their eyes...

He should leave. (No, he had to stay.)

The dichotomy was a pendulum swinging between contempt and an unspoken compulsion to endure. He’d insisted he didn’t need you here, insisted on proving — to himself as much as to you — that he could function without your constant presence. But the more he replayed his own words in his mind, the more it was obvious the joke was on him.

He rolled his eyes as an overly enthusiastic laugh erupted nearby, a sound sharp enough to pinprick through his already thinning out patience. His hand twitched in his pocket, the movement a reflexive manifestation of his barely-contained frustration.

(Focus.)

The art, exquisite as it was, did little to distract him as the chatter blurred into a meaningless drone, the edges of the room constricting him under the weight of pretense.

And then. The tug.

At first, it was delicate — an unsuspecting tremor sifting through his awareness, like the faintest ripple across an otherwise still surface that he thought he was imagining and hoping this was you. But it swelled rapidly, a deluge of sensations sweeping him off his feet towards your pull with a force that left his breath stuttering and the floor wavering beneath, erupting into vivid, agonizing clarity.

His lips tingled, a ghostly imprint of a kiss not yet given.

Heat bloomed under his skin, first at the base of his throat, spreading like a slow, insidious current. The faintest pressure, then, at his collarbone, radiating outward, like silk dragging over sensitive skin, a tingling warmth that prickled and spread, until it seemed to rewrite the very contours of his form, leaving him trembling with phantom caresses that lingered far too long to ignore.

He could feel the press of your palms against his chest, the drag of your nails over the planes of his stomach, each sensation so precise it made his breath catch, and the ache in his hands mirrored the way you gripped at yourself. Every brush of your hand — every hurried, seeking stroke — burned through him like smoldering embers, and he swore he could hear the faintest hitch of your breath, feel the tremor in your thighs.

A siren song of need that echoed his own, calling him under, drowning him in you.

Come to me, come to me, stay with me.

His breath hitched with the oxygen turning into lava-hot needle prickling in his lungs, his legs going limp as noodles and giving way. He collapsed into the nearest chair with a jarring lack of control, the motion abrupt, almost violent.

One hand clamped onto the edge of the table as he hastily discarded the champagne glass to cover where the bond was glowing, fingers digging into the wood as if it were the only thing keeping him from being swept away.

A single candle at the table’s center responded instead of Rafayel, its once languid, uninterested flame quivering violently, and then erupting into an erratic flare, a burst of light so sharp and sudden it cut through the room like a gasp. The activity drew murmurs from those nearby, heads turning, eyes widening as the flame seemed to writhe with a life of its own as wax spilled over the edges of its holder, dripping down in frantic rivulets, glistening like molten gold beneath the trembling glow.

"Hey, Rafayel, man, you good?"

A hand on his shoulder made him flinch violently and slap it away, the contact snapping him partway out of his spiraling thoughts. "Don't."

He was already rising, the chair scraping noisily against the floor as he pushed himself upright with a force that bordered on frenetic. The friend stood as well, confusion clear, but Rafayel didn’t wait to explain — with a curt shake of his head, he turned on his heel and strode toward the exit, leaving the other man standing there with his hand half-raised, a bewildered, "Hey, where are you going, come back!" hanging unanswered in the air.

The murmurs of those left behind — curious stares, the faint scrape of chairs and clothes ruffling — faded into irrelevance, they barely even registered. The bond burned like a tether, yanking him back to you, and he had neither the strength nor the desire to disobey.

By the time he reached the cool air of the night outside, he was seething. He had heard you loud and clear.

You merciless, cruel, horrible witch of a woman, punishing him with your sweet truth in an act so loving yet selfish, selfless yet entirely possessive, driving him completely to his wit's end until the only remaining thought was yours — to worship you wholly, thoroughly, obsessively, as deeply as he wanted.

He was in love.

You were in Rafayel’s room.

Because for his sanity to be tested like you intended it would be, of course you had to be in there of all places.

He was able to crash in the way he wanted like a dam bursting without knocking holding him back. In fact, he didn’t even bother calling out at all.

And honestly, he wasn’t even lucid enough for coherent thoughts such as those the moment his vision tunneled on your frame in the middle of his space, your back turned to him, an unaware and unintentional siren in a fluffy white robe loosely tied at your hips.

His robe.

Rafayel was moving before he registered the full picture — prowling the distance between you within seconds, hand snatching up yours and spinning you around. Just being this close and touching you uninhibited got the synapses firing faster than bullets in his head. He pushed forward into your space with no preamble, crowding you against the floor-to-ceiling window. He spared another two or three precious seconds taking in your startled expression with vindication (“Rafayel, what are you doing here?” before putting a stop to all the unnecessary talking with a kiss.

How could he expected himself to stay away from this?

One knee pushed between your thighs, a subtle but undeniable acknowledgment of what he’d felt, and you faltered, clutching the sides of his shirt so abruptly the lily decorations peppered through out clinked. A quiet noise escaped past your lips, muffled by his own and intensifying the building pressure simmering in his gut as he played with the collar of your robe — his robe — and drank greedily from you.

He felt a push at his chest.

The separation between you that couldn’t be more than a tight space to breathe each other’s air brought the world rushing back into focus — Aridum’s quiet, serene snowfall materialized behind your head like a mockery of their frenzied tangle of limbs, the ambient sounds of the city bustling in the distance dampened.

Your eyes searched his, glazed and hazy with steadily-building arousal, yet waiting nonetheless for an answer, shiny lips parted in wordless wonder.

Rafayel could say nothing. The words were there, soda fizz under the surface threatening to erupt into something incomprehensible at best if he opened his mouth.

His palm engulfed your cheek and drew you right back in, continuing the kiss with more urgency to prevent you from tumbling out from his grasp again — let the action speak for him.

The need that thrummed deep beneath rendered him mute, save for strained sighs and grunts of effort louder than the rustle of fabric and the thuds of feet shuffling around on the floor as he plundered your mouth, tongue chasing yours. It tasted like toothpaste and chapstick, like fresh mint leaves, like nurturing warmth cooling his into something calmer.

Rafayel’s hand left your face and slid down your back to seize your waist, dragging you closer, flushing your hips against his firmer and pushing his thigh more brashly. Not even a second later, his other hand bracing your wrist against the window pulled your arm into him to spin you around like in a dance, switching positions without breaking away.

And you bit him.

He recoiled with an “Ah,” that was more surprised than pained, drawing away just enough to swipe his thumb over the curve of his bottom lip where your teeth had punctured him.

“Why are you here?”

Something rotten and vicious was about to bare his fangs at you through a smile he barely stopped from telling on himself by holding back, ‘You called,’ from slipping.

The other, more acceptable answer came in a quick and effortless sweep of your legs off the floor, draping them over either side of his waist, one palm supporting you underneath like the cradle of a hammock as he pivoted towards the bed. “This is my room,” he said — low, simple, keeping eye contact to witness your frustration. “You’re the one who walked in here.”

He saw in the curl of your mouth that you would’ve continued arguing semantics if not for Rafayel bending to deposit you gently atop the bed for you to settle safely beneath him. The mattress creaked under his shifting as he eased further and started descending to resume getting lost in your kisses until a finger landed upon his lips.

“What I meant was,” you started, and Rafayel exhaled against your touch and nuzzled into it like an obedient pet coming to heel with a lowered tail before his master. “Shouldn’t you be at that art salon?”

He stared, blood about to keel over the boiling point.

His beloved was pouting. So adorable that he wanted to bite down.

You’d been so patient with him, hadn’t you? The little divot between your brows called out to Rafayel, begging to be kissed.

“I regret going in the first place,” he said, getting closer to breathe those words directly against the curve of your ear, savoring its delicate shell and the heat emanating from it against his lower lip — basking in the short tremble he could pull out of you that told him all he needed to know. “Stay here with me—”

His arm dipped around your waist and tugged you insistently closer, shakily eager, while your hands scrambled at his biceps, the side of your neck stretching upward to meet his halfway and melting further into him like candle wax molding against Rafayel and pooling liquid sweetness inside him like a basin filled.

Ring — ring — ring — ring — ring — ring — ring!

What the hell? Now?

A surge of irrational anger flared inside Rafayel, sharp and sudden, as if the hotel room phone had personally wronged him so bone-deep that his ancestors themselves had been insulted by its shrill, untimely ring. He clicked his tongue sharply against the roof of his mouth, a frustrated noise brimming with disdain as he reached out with the intention of silencing the nuisance immediately.

But before his hand could reach the red button, your fingers curled gently around his wrist, halting him mid-motion. The touch was soft, warm, and unassuming, yet it cut through his irritation more effectively than words ever could. His breath hitched as he glanced down at your hand, stilling under the quiet weight of what you were going to say next.

“Wait,” your dulcet murmur came. “What if it’s something important?”

More than this?

The irritation got you a side eye for that — but he quickly caught onto where this was heading from the way you gave him a pointed, sultry glance under your lashes and the faintest devilish curl at the corners at your lips. The grip around his wrist turned into your fingers interlacing with his as you guided him to accept the call, holding his gaze so intensely throughout that the beginning of the reception’s announcement went unheard in his ears.

“The guest of this room is unable to answer. Please leave a message."

Rafayel hadn’t even found a chance to breathe, let alone process what was even happening when you pushed him off and knocked him flat onto his back, straddling his hips with surprising speed which elicited an involuntary jolt from him.

He froze, breath caught somewhere between his lungs and the thick, burning, moistureless air that was overheating him. A thousand words tumbled in a rush into his mouth at once, all died under his breath in a sigh as his senses swam and short-circuited in response to your boldness, the sheer power radiating off your figure captivating him. For a single, stretched heartbeat, all he could do was look up — look at you.

The light from the ceiling framed your form in a way that bordered on divine, spilling past the loose strands of hair that fell around your face and catching on the curves of your silhouette like a lover's caress. Shadows slithered around you, dipping into the soft folds and valleys of the bathrobe that clung to you in all the places his gaze couldn’t help but follow.

And then the vision struck, slicing through his mind like a blade dragged cleanly through water.

No, you brought it to him, conjuring it as surely as though you had whispered it directly into his mind.

The blues wouldn’t just be blues — shadowy cobalt would bleed into the depths below, heavy and still, fading into fractured glacier blue as the water grew lighter near the surface, where the sun struggled to break through. The greens would soften into glassy jade, shimmering faintly, caught in the shifting light as if the water itself pulsed with life. Shadows would stretch in drenched charcoal, not oppressive but endless, framing the brightness above almost like curtains opening.

And there, close to the surface, you would hover like the sun underwater, light spilling from you in ripples and shards. Your form would glow with submerged gold, warm and radiant, a halo of sunlit pearl surrounding you where the sunlight hit the water and scattered around your silhouette. You wouldn’t simply stand still — you would drift, your movements impossibly fluid, arms outstretched in a gesture that could be comfort or inevitability, a quiet invitation to a homecoming. Shadows would gather around your curves in bruised honey, soft and subtle, fading into the glow that surrounded you, the kind of light that looked almost too warm to belong in the cold ocean.

The person who the painting was drawn from the perspective of would see you not as a person, but as something greater. His arms would float above him, slack and surrendered, the only movement from his fingers angled upwards, glowing faintly with washed ash gold, the last vestiges of warmth clinging to his skin, while the rest of his form darkened in the embrace of storm-drift gray. Faraway air bubbles would be glacier silver-blue catching the warm light as they ascended toward the unreachable surface, reflections flickering like distant stars against the background of salt-shadow teal.

This was a homecoming.

The bursting of colors landing on his imaginary canvas came to a head when the branding heat of your mouth found his ear, screeching into stuttered motion and scattering like seagulls afterwards. His head lolled sideways under the zapping pressure, inviting more of the world-halting caress that left him all limp.

Then it was gone — only a cool tingling remained where yout moist breaths once ghosted him —

"Hey bro, why'dya leave? Get back here—"

Shocked as if he had short time memory about it being a voice message, he squirmed for a beat, eyes flitting in panic between the call display and you with the mortification of every single drop of blood in his body rushing southwards.

His friend’s voice fractured into static buzzing under the pounding of his ears when you bowed forward once more, towards the red mark on top of his mark that was practically vibrating under his skin, trailing kisses across its glow. Every skin contact point with you burned even with the layers of clothing in-between, melting into an acute throb as you reached the base of his throat and dipped into the hollow between his collarbones — fingers dancing along the strip of his neckpiece before delving underneath, dragging down and delicately, deliciously tugging.

That was all it took for Rafayel to flip your positing and roll you beneath his body, propping himself up with one forarm and holding your wrist to just — stop you for a minute, expression tight as he asked, “Are you sure?”

Your intentions were crystal clear, but it was necessary to check in before continuing any further even though he needed this like air right now, and the prospect of hearing it straight from your lips that he was wanted —

Looking somewhere off to the side, you replied, “Otherwise you’ll actually go back,” thoughtfully, but there was something resentful in there, the statement almost bitter sounding in its delivery.

The overjoyed press of his lips to hide the smile he just knew would annoy you betrayed what he was thinking on the spot.

“So cute,” breached containment however, full of affection as he moved aside your hair behind your ear tenderly, fore and middle fingers taking your love’s sensitive edge between them and caressing, causing you to turn your face further away from him. “You must have missed me quite a lot.”

That sentence was accompanied by the press of his knee into the junction between your inner thighs, innocent enough unless you factored in that one certain revelation of earlier that entirely changed the context in intent. Especially when your pupils dilated visibly before him as you choked out a tiny gasp of surprise, revealing your guilt in glaring clarity.

“What, not pleased you got caught?”

A wicked impulse seized him — one daring him to keep playing this card to unlock so many possibilities as to how he could have you tonight.

He could have you show him what you’d done while he watched until you begged to be touched — on your back with legs wide open for his viewing pleasure, or hovering right above his face in 4K Ultra HD quality that he could just lay down and enjoy and perhaps contribute with his breath if he felt generous enough. You were having fun all on your own, yeah? He just wanted in on it. Not knowing wasn’t a sin, but not learning was.

If you didn’t think you were ready to bear the consequences of this decision of yours, you should have rethought before choosing the room he frequented, shouldn’t have turned him into a fish out of water in public by calling out to him like that, should have known better that Rafayel could be the vilest when he was provoked.

“Or, are you?”

His words were a double-edged knife. Pick the surface-level meaning and you ended up with him teasing you about missing him quite literally, nothing more, nothing less. Take him for what lay beneath, however...

Unfortunately, or, fortunately, you were one slippery fish.

"Why should I be ashamed?" The confidence that dripped from your reply rang genuine. You were so unbothered by his instigation that he realized this was going to be harder than expected, perhaps more rewarding as well. A delightful prospect. "Do you wish I wouldn't miss you?"

Oh, your pride, your grudge was truly an impressive sight —

gleaming razor-sharp even under scrutiny, glittering steel reflecting his image in fragments, and yet tempered by enough warmth to invite him closer instead of warding him off.

"Not at all." His heart sang. "But it couldn't compare to how much I missed you."

"And you still left," came a mumble, sounding more dejected than anything, carrying the weight of his deeds for the past two days.

It was that easy to change his mood.

Rafayel cooed instinctively, rubbing soothing circles into the skin above your knuckles as he pressed a string of quick kisses into the curve of your wrist — lips brushing tender apologies along its path until he reached the palm of your hand cupping his face, where he lingered to feel you stroke delicately over his lower lashes.

"I'm here now," was his gentle promise, one spoken nuzzled against the backs of your fingers. "I'm not going anywhere."

"What are you going to say to your friend? You didn't even pick up his call," you admonished softly, drawing his attention towards where the voicemail was still being displayed on the hologram screen hovering from the nightstand, accepting a prompt about how to proceed.

Rafayel made a show of leaning back to sit back on his heels, staring down at you as he slipped his fingers underneath the tightly-belted thick, sash-like band to pop the clasp to the side apart, the metal closure disengaging with a small clack as the ends slid free and exposed the zipper underneath.

He drank in your every reaction — every detail of you sprawled out before him: your robe coming undone ever so gradually, tantalizing glimpses of skin peeking between its parted folds, a little bit of collarbone here, the curve of your breast there, teasingly hinting at the shape of a nipple underneath the white fabric, then another flash of thigh, an exposed inch of inner leg from your feet shifting restlessly alongside his shins.

He pulled the whole belt free in one smooth yank — the sudden momentum making it snap with a harsh crack. It curled like a ribbon in his palm as he surveyed you, gauging your reaction; watching your widened stare catch onto cloth held loosely in his fist as he flung it haphazardly to the side.

Then, he started tugging at your ankle to raise it higher — dragging his knuckles along your heel, the sole of your foot, caressing into the arch of your instep, traveling along the softness of your calf all the way down to your knee, a single fingertip trailing underneath, slinking gradually but surely toward the inner side, tracing hypnotic spirals into the silky flesh that made your breathing hitch unevenly.

The ends of your robe were riding further up past your thigh along with the slow march, your naked skin revealed in gradual increments the higher his palm slid — revealing more and more until his hand stopped at the underside of your thigh, entirely disappeared from view because of the bunched up cloth, and pulled your leg up gently to drape it over the curve of waist.

Falling right back in on instinct, he leaned down, propped above your splayed form on his forearm beside your shoulder and bent to drag his nose upwards along the line of your cheekbone, saying, "I'm busy."

Your answering snicker was endearing and familiar, drawing forth a swell of warmth inside him like the sun rising over a tranquil ocean's horizon. "Still trying to run away?"

“Just returning to the original plan.”

There would be no running away now — not anymore, not ever, at least not from you and what you made him feel. He'd tried; failed, obviously, as evident in his return here, where the answer awaited him with open arms.

"Who says I'm going to agree? I still haven't forgiven you.”

Rafayel adored that one pout of yours, the one that curved at its edges like the swoop of a bird's wing, delicate and lovingly rounded in its downturned shape. It drew his mouth upward to meet its match, slotting perfectly against its twin seamlessly in the union of a kiss, lingering as if they belonged together like puzzle pieces. You melted sweetly under the fondness contained within the gesture, sighing quietly in surrender; every angle of his mouth was drawn to yours inexorably, it was gravity pulling falling stars back to their courses.

"Not yet," he amended dutifully once he could manage words again, and felt your smile widen before sealing his mouth over it. "Let me."

"If you beg," you shot right back, the curve of your mouth pronounced against his chin, smug satisfaction dripped from every word and its delivery as you pulled away again just enough to meet his half-hooded stare evenly — daring him to refuse you. "Properly."

You kissed the little groan that was about to spill past his lips, but it wasn’t enough to satisfy him. Neither was it intended to.

"How would you like me to repent?" He dragged the question into an offer, a honey trap ripe for plundering. "On my knees? On my back?"

He let his arousal to show on his fact at those mental images, conjured by practiced ease, crafted to seduce. The soft puff of your exhale danced across his chin, sending his nerves tingling. A sign he was on the right track? Or did it merely betray surprise at whatyou had in mind? Either possibility stirred his blood.

"You know what someone in your position shouldn’t do?" you whispered, low and hushed, conspiratorial yet laced with a dangerous authority that quickened his pulse. His brows rose involuntarily, the shift in your tone sending anticipation skittering down his spine. Your lashes swept low, casting faint shadows on your cheeks as your pointed stare locked onto him, sharp enough to pierce. "Ask me what to do when you’re supposed to be coming up with ideas on your own. That’s weaponized incompetence."

His head snapped back so fast that something audibly clicked in his neck.

Mouth wide open.

"Weaponized in—" The sensual, submissive haze he’d been wrapped in evaporated like morning dew under the brutal heat of the desert sun, vanishing so quickly it left him sputtering. The words faltered on his tongue as insult overtook every carefully cultivated mood, his composure fracturing into clumsy indignation. Propped up on his elbows above you, his face twisted into a comically muddied mix of offense and disbelief, his tone taking on an incredulous sharpness as he glared down at you.

"Say that again and I’ll spit bubbles at you!" he snapped, his threat hanging in the air like a gauntlet thrown by a petulant prince.

"Pffft!"

The insolent brat you were being in that moment, daring to laugh straight in his face, was both impossibly cute and maddeningly infuriating. He stared down at you, eyes narrowing with mock offense, the knowledge that your laughter was entirely at his expense gnawing at his frayed patience. He was torn between kissing you senseless or flipping you over and finding some other way to wipe that smug, adorable smirk off your face.

"What do you mean weaponized incompetence?" Rafayel shot back, the words almost trembling with disbelief. "You think I can't please you properly without you guiding me through it step-by-step? Is that what you're saying?!" His irritation swelled, a balloon of indignation puffing up and threatening to burst as he fought, tooth and nail, to keep the whine rising in his throat from escaping. "I like you telling me what to do because I enjoy indulging in your desires! Not because I’m incapable of being creative in bed!"

A frustrated huff crowned his ranting, "Stop laughing!" he barked, though his rising pitch only seemed to add fuel to your uncontrollable amusement.

You shook your head firmly, slapping your hands over your face to muffle the sounds of your laughter, but it was no use. Your entire body curled inward instinctively, knees drawing up as you rolled to your side, burying yourself deeper into the cocoon of your mirth. It only made it worse for his pride — your stifled giggles shaking through you like tremors, every failed attempt to contain yourself sending them bubbling up again.

Rafayel let out a growl of frustration, throwing his body off yours with an exaggerated thud, landing face-first into the pillow beside you in utter defeat. The mattress jolted slightly from the force, but the muffled yell he buried into the pillow caused a chain reaction that only made your laughter harder to suppress. The giggles came fast and bright, and he swore they sounded far too gratifying for his current temperament, his scowl deepening with every shake of your shoulders and every wheezing gasp for air that he felt in the bed, he didn’t even need to look.

The fact that you were utterly immune to his wrath, impervious to every “Stop,” he threw your way, made it all the more maddening. How was he supposed to maintain the upper hand, to reestablish even a shred of dignity, when he couldn’t even intimidate you?

"I'm sorry," you gasped finally, though the apology was weakened by the cracks of laughter still slipping through. You managed to sit upright, though it took visible effort, your hands brushing away tears from the corners of your crinkled, joy-stricken eyes. A few lingering giggles escaped as you cleared your throat, attempting to sound sincere but failing miserably. "I didn’t think you’d have such strong feelings about this topic."

Rafayel lifted his head from the pillow, his hair disheveled, his glare shooting daggers your way, though the deep flush blooming across his cheeks betrayed his struggle to keep his composure. He opened his mouth to retort, to say something, but instead all that escaped was a muffled, irritated groan as he flopped back down into the pillow.

“Rafayel.”

He rolled onto his back with dramatic flair, hands folded primly over his stomach and ankles crossed, the picture of theatrical innocence. The pout he wore, however, was pure spite, lips pushed forward just enough to make his point. “If you think I’m sooo weaponizing my incompetence, maybe I should actually start doing that. Let you handle everything yourself. Clearly, you’ve got it all figured out.”

“Rafayel…”

“No, no, go ahead,” he cut in, stubbornly resolute, almost belligerent in its exaggerated persistence. “I’m useless, right? I don’t know what I’m doing. Teach me. I won’t even lay a single finger on you.” He puffed his cheeks, a childish act of defiance paired with the way he turned his head away, sulking with the finesse of spoiled royalty.

The exaggerated display drew a sigh from you, long and exasperated, but tinged with a quiet amusement that he didn’t miss. He wasn’t fooling you — not for a second—but he relished the moment all the same.

“Well,” you began, feigning hesitation, with false reluctance. “Since you’re already laid out, I guess…” You trailed off as you shifted to straddle him, slow enough to test the limits of his so-called resolution, the soft white robe you wore parting ever so slightly as you moved, revealing tantalizing glimpses of skin before your knees closed firmly around his hips, framing him like twin prison bars.

His eyes darkened as he watched you, taking in the sight hungrily, every detail sinking into him like a drug he couldn’t resist. His hands betrayed him almost immediately, fingertips skimming the hem of the robe where it hung loosely, their touch feather-light as they ghosted over the tops of your thighs. It was instinctive, reflexive — completely unrepentant.

“I thought you weren’t touching me,” you teased with a playful lilt that interrupted the heat thickening the air between you like an unwanted knock on the door.

His hum was deliberately innocent, his head tilting as though to feign ignorance. But the dark gleam in his eyes and the smirk curling at the corners of his lips told a different story entirely. “I really like this robe,” he murmured with a calculated drawl. “What, I can’t touch my own clothes now?”

The claim was absurd — blatantly so — but it made you pause, his fingers grazing the fabric in question as though testing its texture, when in reality, it was clear he was savoring the warmth of your skin beneath it.

(Truthfully, it was also you who looked lovely draped in what was his — but that went without saying.)

Your mouth opened, the gleam of a retort on the tip of your tongue, but the words dissolved into nothingness as his hands shifted, palms hot against your sides, skirting along your ribs in an intentional, testing motion. He knew the heat of his touch stole the breath from your lungs, burning through the fabric like a spark setting fire to paper.

“You go on,” he said, infuriatingly smug as he leaned back into the pillows, his hands never straying far from your sides. “Help yourself. Take as long as you need. I’ll just… be appreciating this fabric in the meantime.”

His fingers traced the lines of your ribs, the motion slow, languid, before sliding downward to hover just above the curve of your stomach. They lingered there, resting near the knot of the belt holding your robe together. The edge of his thumb dipped just slightly beneath the fabric, brushing over its folded loops, a movement so subtle it was barely there, as though he wanted to test how much he could push you. He toyed with the fabric, rolling it between his fingers like he was unraveling a puzzle.

The pause in his pent-up desire — the break that had proven to be a blessing — was wearing thin. The front he was putting on, all casual indifference and smug bravado, was crumbling, betrayed by the way his gaze kept flickering back to you, and, of course, the growing press of his impatience beneath you, hard and neglected, made it abundantly clear that he was more than ready to pick up where you’d last left off.

You broke first.

With nary a warning, your hand shot out, snatching the ends of the thin, ribbon-like scarf draped loosely around his neck. You wound the fabric around your fist once, twice, tightening it just enough to make your intentions clear…

Then you yanked.

The pull wasn’t violent — no, it was far too calculated for that. Enough pressure to catch him off guard, to tip him forward slightly, but not enough to hurt. It was a demand, plain and simple, one he found himself surrendering to before he even had the chance to consider resistance. His wide-eyed surprise melted almost instantly like cotton candy in water into something darker, something sharper, as his lips curled into a grin that spoke volumes about just how much he was enjoying this game.

"First, you ask to beg for my forgiveness," you continued, pulling him a little closer, and his chest tightened as though the leash around his neck extended all the way to his lungs.

Your gaze pinned him down like a blade, your lips curving into something that wasn’t quite a smirk, wasn’t quite a smile — something far more addictive.

"And then," you murmured, sweet but laced with unmistakable bite, "you start ordering me around like a brat."

A jolt of concentrated heat shot through him, not from embarrassment but from the sharp edge of thrill that ran through his veins. He let the tension in his body slacken just slightly, a calculated move that allowed him to lift from the bed a little, meeting your challenge with his own. The faint tug of the scarf against his neck only heightened the electric energy between you, and he found himself biting back a grin.

“Well," he said at last, letting his weight sink into the bed with a noncommittal shrug, the barest shift of his shoulders enough to convey his defiance. "I’m just playing my part." He tilted his head just enough to make the scarf strain, wanted to see what you’d do with the provocation. “The sleazy husband.”

“You want a reward for that?”

“Acknowledgment of how committed to the role I am would be nice.”

“Oh yes, the most infuriating actor—”

“Aaand you goofed it—”

“—impossibly—”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah—”

“—handsome," you went on, and his smirk faltered ever so slightly. “Disarmingly clever, annoyingly witty," you added, the sharp edge softening with each word, though the grip you kept on the scarf didn’t loosen. If anything, you pulled him closer, closing the space between you inch by inch. "—and worst of all," you finished, dropping into something softer, something so intimate, "Completely, devastatingly, undeniably competent."

“Well, aren’t you good at apologizing…” he said into himself, embarrassingly beet-red at having fallen for your trick.

“I’m still waiting for yours, you know,” you pointed out distractedly, playing with the crystal flame lilies scattered on his wine berry shirt, tracing the petals of a bloom while seemingly entranced, following the silvery droplets dangling in a chain. “But I’ll be graceful this time and keep going with mine...”

Before he had a chance to blink or register the motion — your free palm slipped underneath the thin fabric covering his heart, caressing right alongside the pulsing red mark — and squeezed with a vengeance (such a fierce boob grab!), applying enough pressure that the pads of your fingers sunk into flesh, then widened the buttonless V-cut of his shirt by yanking, no, downright ripping it open by the lapels with both hands, and Rafayel damn near felt like a virgin at how scandalous that single action was that he almost covered himself up.

But then again, he could hardly claim innocence right now, could he? He was practically a champagne bottle about to pop down there. Just from that. Who was he, the main female character getting her corset ripped in a bodice-ripper novel?

“Ohmyg—hi? What happened to hello? How are y—”

“Shut up or no head.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Kisses were rained along his collarbone, the length of his neck, and nipping gently at the spot behind his ear that got the hairs on his nape rise to attention. It would’ve been funny what a child’s play it was to tease him until his ears matched the scarlet blossoms on his shirt, except nothing about this particular situation bore humor — least of all, his response to it.

Which was practically none at all. Because he simply lay there, stiff as a plank from how turned on he was, and you worked him diligently as if he was an instrument and you were the virtuoso.

It was also because he was zeroed in on the cleavage peeking out from the gap in your robe as you made your way further downwards, tongue flickering along the dips and bumps of his upper abdomen — surely able to feel more than hear each inhale and exhale getting closer to moaning territory the longer you kept teasing. He even caught a nip slip here and there, getting impossibly harder in response, culminating in him twitching and tightening beneath you whenever you — purposefully! — brushed against his erection.

“Rafayel,” you sighed dreamily, and he moaned for real this time at how his name fell softly past your parted lips, pouring into a pleased hum against his navel where a trail of wetness gleamed — followed by fingertips curling gently around the hem of his pants’ band. “You’re so quiet. Not leaving it up to chance, huh?”

And the only response he gave was an impatient roll of his hips toward your head, granting you permission — eager acquiescence, even — while a loud, unabashed gasp slipped into his lungs as your hands found the zipper of his pants. With a practiced tug, you freed it from its track, and his pants slid low on his hips, just enough to reveal the waistband of his underwear. Your fingers followed immediately, hooking under both fabric barriers to ease them down until they rested tautly just below his hips. The motion tugged on his shirt as well, once secured by the overlap tucked into his waistband, and with nothing anchoring it anymore, the luxurious fabric parted effortlessly, exposing the sculpted expanse of his chest and abs in one sweeping reveal. His stiffening length, freed from its confines, ached visibly — leaping subtly toward contact, as though craving the touch it had been denied for far too long.

"See? You're being so good... why do you keep wanting to provoke me?" came your lilting reproach, spoken against the soft skin of his pelvis, lips fluttering teasingly across its planes in playful grazes of their silky plush. "

“Permission to talk?”

A sharp, in-drawn breath escaped him the moment a single finger traced along the underside of his shaft, lingering over a wildly pulsing vein — evidence of the frenetic race of his heart currently pumping pure liquid lightning straight through his veins — but he recovered quickly, allowing it to dissolve into an exhale long and drawn-out instead.

“Go ahead, handsome.”

His hips lurched instinctively in search of something tangible, of a sensation besides the torturous tickle of warm breaths dancing lightly along his arousal, "Give me my reward, then. I've waited so long for this, it's been torture."

“Doesn’t sound like you minded the wait. You left me, didn’t you?”

Ah, yes. The grudge. You were becoming like Rafayel the longer you stayed by his side.

"You know I hate waiting. Let alone like this," he said, all whiny and punctuated with a shudder — one that was met with an accompanying jolt that surged straight from the base of his erection when your lips brushed teasingly alongside it. "I didn't think you'd be this cruel..."

"Are you really asking?"

"Can you give it to me instead of wasting time talking?" came his blunt retort, brows drawn together in an impatient furrow that radiated ‘I’m being wronged,’ energy.

"Not wasting time at all, just wanted to spend more time with you. Feels nice, right? You deserve this,” you murmured comfortingly against the swell of his abs rising and falling with each heavy breath — and oh, he almost melted into a puddle at that, visibly deflating with his chest cavity just filling up all warm and fuzzy with love.

It did feel nice but — just — just — fuck — he needed to be touched or he actually was going to disintegrate into sea foam. Not joking.

A brief kiss landed on on the left side of his Apollo belt in consolation before a drag of your tongue along its path followed, transitioning into you breathing more warmth directly into his base, then placing a loving peck to his tip — eyes twinking at the tremble that surged through him. “I really love seeing you so reactive. Does it feel that good? Just breathing on you like this?”

His hips pushed upward in tiny nudges, bumping insistently against your cheek, practically begging to be held properly inside your mouth. "It doesn't feel good at all — just, come on, hurry... I keep my lube in the top drawer on the left... It's edible, you know..."

Thankfully, you didn't smirk at him. Didn't stop to tease him about his eagerness, either, wordlessly going about reaching over to rummage for a bottle in his nightstand — an act that forced you to draw away from his straining member completely, your warmth vanishing suddenly in one agonizing instant, causing him to nearly whine from the loss.

You popped open the lid to squirt some lubrication into your palm and recapped it while staring down at him with a curious gleam. "You had something like this with you the whole time—"

Your words got cut off upon him grabbing your dripping hand and directing it straight where his impatience stood angry at the delay, shuddering out a moan at how incredibly silky the glide was.

"Finally... yesss," he hissed, thrusting upwards to feel more friction — the delicious slickness spreading across your enclosed grip driving him absolutely wild. "Ahh—kkhfff... Keep going, you have to keep going, don't let go... Please. Please?”

Something in your face twisted weirdly at his breathy begging, making his heart flip at the unflinching lust in your widened gaze trained firmly onto his jerking hips.

He had your fist trapped around his swollen cock, urging you into pumping it once you settled into a steady rhythm stroking its turgid crown, twisting and curling into each new swipe upwards along his pulsing flesh; encouraging you by squeezing tighter every few strokes until you took over completely. Then, he threw his arm over his forehead haphazardly, basking in the blissful waves flowing through his veins at long last, watching you watch yourself pleasure him through fluttering lashes, breathing hard through half-parted lips.

"That's it," he sighed huskily, rocking his body into the hand rubbing and grinding against his dick's ridge with expert motions; thumb circling its glistening head and caressing alongside its slit where precome beaded out generously, smoothing over the entirety of its surface and working into the underside, swirling tantalizingly over the bulging vein there until all his thoughts melted into a haze of pure sensation, mind wiped clean of everything except the singular, simple fact that he desperately needed to come. "Like that — nnhhh, yes! That feels amazing — feels perfect — love those sweet little fingers... So close already, I can't, I can't—"

At his muttered groans, your pace stuttered noticeably before resuming its previous speed, which wasn't fast enough according to the stretching throb inside his core, his blood rushing loudly through his ears like boiling rapids. "No, faster..." he urged you, rutting into your palm even harder in a frantic effort to increase the pressure and bring him to the precipice quicker. "I can't hold on much longer — need more, I need more. Tighter. Tighter."

The corners of his vision pulsed white and Rafayel whimpered as he jumped inside your curled fist when the unexpected sensation of having your forefinger slide through his sticky fluids gathered at its tip, swirling clockwise before ascending back up in an unhurried stroke that carried a slippery coating alongside it to smooth out the glide to put pressure right into the slit — a sensation that lingered for seconds afterward with ghostly echoes, drawing a sudden choked gasp from his lips at how intensely good that single touch felt.

“Thaaaaat’s it, yeah, I love that, you have such a beautiful voice.” Your free palm swept up alongside his ribs to rub gently against their curve as though to soothe the ragged sounds ripping past his throat; traveling upward to cradle his head against yours where your cheek brushed alongside his temple, holding him still with tender care and easing some of the tremble wracking through him. "Can you feel how much I'm enjoying us being together like this — how badly I've missed you? Please let me hear those pretty sounds, I wanna hear them loud and clear. Will you be generous for me and share it all?"

His reply died in his throat in favor of a low keening sound — something raw and broken — when you squeezed tighter.

The way your nails dug ever so delicately into the sides of his cock, applying pressure just shy of pain was truly exquisite torture, making his head swim and rise up from the bed so he could crush his lips against yours, biting hungrily into your plush mouth and delving deep into its depths until oxygen became nothing but an afterthought. Every neuron of him burned alive in chain reaction as your tongue wound and slid alongside his, curling along the underside before retreating for him to suckle on your lower lip eagerly until it swelled red.

"Mmnghhfuck! Hhhaaa—keep—" Words spilled past his slackened lips like ribbons unfurling, senseless as he struggled to convey how excruciating it was to contain his euphoria within, desperate for any sort of outlet to relieve the pressure rising inside him rapidly —

— and then broke off suddenly on a low moan when he caught a flash of your unoccupied hand that was just cradling his neck having found its way between your thighs, the view out of sight because of the robe —

Then, Rafayel saw the pearly gates.

His orgasm slammed straight into him, so unexpected and yet wholly expected all the same that he gasped around it like he was in a headlock, utterly disoriented by the sudden assault on his senses, soaring impossibly higher with each jerk of his hips into your fingers' grasp and shooting thick white streaks across his stomach; leaving behind faint smears wherever it hit its mark — warm, sticky ropes landing atop his defined abs and even reaching as far as his sternum.

He knew something was wrong when it didn't stop.

Far from it, really: each pulsing contraction seemed to force more of its fluid past his cock's narrow slit, painting your pumping digits liberally with his release — even staining the lapels of your robe in messy spots. It lasted so long that Rafayel started seeing stars sparkling around the edges of his blurring vision; making everything appear fuzzy like static. "Nggh—too much—ah! Aaa—hhh! Nnhhfff... Khhffffcking hell... Can't believe—still going—"

"Don't hold back now, just ride it out, nothing wrong with it," you murmured fervently, brushing some hair back from his sweat-soaked temple and — then — kisses, so many kisses. "I know you wanted this so badly, it's okay... You deserve this. Let go for me, yeah? Can't you let go for me? All this stress will go away. Isn't that nice?"

What came out instead was an embarrassingly high moan, hoarse with overuse, entirely at odds with the self-assuredness he'd wanted to project with each thrust of his hips, spurred onwards by instinct alone in a mad dash for euphoria.

Just how pent-up was he?

He couldn't recall the last time he'd felt pleasure this acute, sharp as shrapnel beneath the layers of desire, making him so out of it that he wasn't even aware of the embarrassing mess he made like he’d just wet himself being cleaned up with a tissue by you.

And it still wasn't nearly enough.

He surged forward, wound his arm around your waist and tossed you to the side gently so your back lay flush against the sheets before following suit in a tangle of limbs that ended with you under him — where he belonged: cradled between your thighs, seated fully inside their heated clasp as he hovered above you — one elbow propped beside your shoulder while the other wandered aimlessly downwards and undid the trusty knot holding your robe together in one go.

"Rafa—"

“Sorry, I'm sorry, I can't, I'm so thirsty," he said, as he raised the lube-and-come-sodden hand of yours up to his mouth to lap at the trails trickling over your wrist; sucking on your fingertips in apology — no trace of shame coloring his cheeks as he did, far too focused on the task of cleaning them thoroughly to be distracted by something as trivial as embarrassment. He didn’t even taste himself. Just the blueberry.

So engrossed in it that he didn’t even notice you burning holes with your gaze at his lips sealing around your thumb while he ran his tongue underneath it in short, quick flicks until it was glistening once more, except this time with spit instead of lubricant.

All the while, he traced the clean strip of skin revealed by the parted folds of your robe with a searing hand, starting from the valley of your cleavage between your breasts all the way down the slight convex curve of your torso leading towards the V that marked the point where your thighs began, drawing delicate circles into your navel, slipping downward inch by tantalizing inch in search for hidden oasis.

Taking notice of how wrecked you looked through the curtains of your fingers splayed over his eyes and forehead, Rafayel rewarded you an equally debauched looked as his lips curled into a smirk against your palm.

A loud, viscous pop of your wetness echoed in the room when his fingers tenderly made contact — positively dripping for him. Your mouth flew open upon feeling him draw his forefinger's pad gently against your entrance, lingering teasingly at the seams in an excruciating crawl, tracing lightly around it as you pulsed hungrily against his fingertip.

"So thirsty," he mumbled absentmindedly to himself — mouth watering.

Rafayel pushed open your legs by the backs of your thighs to allow his head better access. If he was on a normal day, he would plant feverish kisses on the insides of your quaking knees and thighs and mark you everywhere, made it more sensual, more teasing, but he was borderline parched — not to mention more impatient than a driver stuck behind a cyclist in a one -lane road.

You yelped at his mouth diving between your legs in reckless abandon. His tongue lapped up your slick in deep, obscene flicks, then plunged inside into the warm haven awaiting him inside, devouring your sweet nectar in loud slurps, uncaring of how sloppy and unrestrained he was currently acting; far too hungry to concern himself over anything save for indulging greedily in your flavor.

"Rafayel, shit, that feels—oh my god..." He had to push your hips down by splaying his hand along the plane of your stomach as you arched helplessly, otherwise you would have simply lifted right off from his greed ravaging you without mercy or restraint. "That's so—you're so—fuck! What—what’s gotten into you? Ahh...!"

Any hope of responding to that died the second your hand tangled itself tightly into his hair and tugged to bring him impossibly closer against you, his head blanking. It felt so good when your heel planted itself onto his shoulder blade and pressed insistently there in a silent plea for more, sending ripples of heat fanning out across his nerve endings in their wake.

Without hesitation, he latched his lips around the swollen bud peaking proudly from beneath a layer of velveteen flesh and flicked upwards, suckling hard before closing around it fully — then rolled his tongue in circles around its rim with the intent to render your world spinning madly with each passing stroke. The fingers locked around your trembling thighs kneaded deeply into their skin, coaxing the delicious, involuntary spasms coursing throughout you until the only thing you knew was the blissful torment his hot mouth wrought.

"You're so delectable on my tongue, did you know? The prettiest moans come pouring out from your lovely lips when I'm between your legs like this," he said, the sentences pieced together like beads on a pearl necklace fragment by fragment between licks and sucks, sounding just short of reverence. "Your taste drives me wild, I swear it's addictive... Am I making it up to you yet? Please say yes. Tell me it's working."

"Yesyesyesyesss—" A sharp inhale cut off anything else you tried to babble further as Rafayel rewarded you with another generous helping of his enthusiasm by diving back in and running his tongue in earnest up through your center. "You feel amazing, you — feel — so — g-good—"

"—don't think that's enough, though. Didn't you call me incompetent earlier?"

"What," you choked out angrily when a puff of warm breaths skated dangerously close to where you were most sensitive. "Oh my god—"

"I hold grudges, cutie. You taught me that," he said in a sing-song reply, lighthearted in tone, nearly drowned out by the thready groans bleeding through.

"I apologized already — what more do you want? Stop teasing, Rafayel!"

A pregnant pause followed as he stared up at you from between your legs, and saw your eyes widen with realization at just what you'd requested.

"As you wish," he relented, a dark edge to his mischievous grin when he rose back up and braced his knees against the mattress better, pulling your hips tight into the cradle of his thighs until one of your legs was thrown over his shoulder. "Have it your way — and don't forget you asked for this."

The slow sink inside your wet heat was traitorously misleading: a gentle, sweet meeting at first that masked what was brewing underneath.

A dragged out whine fanned his flames as you threw your head back. “You asshole—”

"I could have made you come once, twice..." he said, in a smooth purr that dripped sinfully past his lips.

Your mouth fell open on a silent gasp; the first wave of pleasure rolling through you upon being filled suddenly in one deep plunge. Your torso twisted to allow you to hide your face into the curve of his forearm draped next to your shoulder.

"You know I love taking my time with you," he continued, pausing to bury his face into your hair to breathe you in deeply, adjusting your leg to fall from his shoulder straight onto his hip. You took advantage of Rafayel getting close, grabbing onto his back so quickly that you missed the first time and yanked his shirt down to bunch halfway down his midsection and get stuck at his elbows. "And you just had to take that from me. I don't know which one of us is greedier... "

An apology was voiced, muffled by the crook of his elbow, almost incoherent by your gasps.

He cupped your chin and made you look at him. “Are you comfortable? Not hurting you, am I?”

Your throat clicked audibly. Then you shook your head rapidly in answer to both inquiries: yes — no — everything was okay — and Rafayel breathed a quiet sigh of relief.

And then, out of nowhere your fingers started moving around the expanse of his upper back, and before he could question the non-sexual way it came across when he was literally inside you, you said, "You're sweating."

"Yeah...?" Confusion muddled his hazy mind clouded with dull pleasure begging for him to start moving again, but you looked at him with wide, eager expectation dancing behind your expectant eyes — as if you couldn't quite believe what you'd seen.

"No — your temperature. It's still high but you're sweating now," you told him excitedly. "Rafayel — that's huge! This means your body is cooling itself down!"

He huffed.

"Of course it is, I've got the hottest woman in the world under me," he said with a roll of his hips, earning an enthusiastic moan from you in the process. Your arms snaked themselves around the back of his neck tighter until both forearms crossed at their crease, palms moving upwards in an intoxicating drag through the back of his skull. "You the cure to all of this..."

His forehead dropped unceremoniously yours where it stayed, and he sucked in an uneven, shaky groan that tapered into something resembling a whine as he started rutting steadily against you, driving into that spot where you liked it the best with growing desperation with the occasional staccato grunt at the fluttering squeeze and murmured encouragement.

At some point, his mouth wandered towards your pulse, scraped his teeth against it gingerly before latching on it in an open-mouthed kiss that was hard enough to bruise.

You tilted your chin skywards with a sigh to give him better access and tangled your fingers encouragingly deeper into his hair, and something inside him sparked awake in response, a fiery need demanding him to paint every inch of your skin violet, rose and mauve so that it may glow evermore brightly for everyone to see —

"Way too beautiful for your own good... Driving me crazy... Every single day... Couldn't keep my hands off you the moment I got in here..." he hissed furiously as though he were possessed, snapping his hips harder upon finding the angle he desired, searching relentlessly for something within you both to satisfy the frenzied race to the peak taking control of him completely; searing kisses littering everywhere he could reach along the underside of your chin and neck whilst spewing senseless litanies into your skin in between them. "Can't believe I could have this forever... Right? Say I can have this forever. It'll drive me insane if you don't, I swear—"

"Forever," you echoed hoarsely, your nails digging tightly into his scalp as his pace increased once more. "Y-you can have me forever—anytime, wherever—"

Your assurances came with a startled cry of ecstasy as he sank his teeth into the juncture connecting your shoulder and collarbone in a bite that bordered on a savage instinct to ensure he was there, he'd been there, and would always be there. "You're not leaving, are you? Aren't gonna leave me anytime soon, right?

Every syllable was marked with a measured grind into you as if determined to force every word inside your head by burying it deep in your core — imprint it permanently into your brain; until the only thing filling your thoughts was him and him alone. "Not letting you — I'm not letting you. I can’t let you go, it’s too late — too late. Say it. Say it.”

"As — many times as I ne-ed to," you panted underneath him, arching upwards so beautifully for him as his grip loosened marginally to let you find that perfect angle that caused your back to bow like a perfectly tuned instrument in his hands; singing nothing but divine music. "'S not changing, ever. Won't change... Agh!"

His hips bucked in answer to your nails sinking deep into the skin of his shoulders as though clawing for dear life. "Yeah? Yeah? Promise—?"

All you could do was sob into his mouth hungrily swallowing yours — a mess of moans falling endlessly past your lips swallowed whole, accompanied with plaps and slaps of wet thrusting. There'd never be a time when he wasn't craving the taste of your flesh burning scorching white hot against his own, craving more and more until everything blurred into a haze of delirium.

"Tell me... Tell me—hah, tell me, princess. Let me hear it..." His chest rumbled deep within where yours rubbed deliciously against his bare flesh with each fervent roll of his body. Even then, it wasn't nearly enough; couldn't possibly be, not with how ravenously thirsty he was for anything and everything having to do with you: your sounds, your expressions, those intoxicating stares filled with nothing but need for him and only him. Not while his stomach twisted itself in knots tight enough to tie sails and yet remained impossibly empty at the same time, yearning for the sweet relief of gratification flowing freely and quenching his deepest thirst. "Wanna hear you, gotta hear you say it—"

"I'm right here, m'here, not going anywhere, not leaving... I'myours, just don't let go, don't let go of me—"

He heard it as though you were underwater; faint, muffled underneath the thick fog clouding his senses, so indistinct yet simultaneously loud enough to drown out anything else within reach.

Every coherent thought vanished from his mind, melting into thin ribbons streaming across an ocean of red flames, then bursting forth anew into embers scattering throughout his vision in a dizzying display, igniting behind his eyelids with blinding light every time he blinked them closed. When he opened them, new constellations blossomed instantaneously; bright orange ones with maroon tinges shining bright among the black canvas.

"M'not gonna—! Can't let go—couldn't even if I tried. They wouldn't even be able to pry you away from my cold, dead hands."

More vivid blotches appeared before him at random intervals, painting his desert landscape in abstract patterns shifting so erratically they threatened to form fractals at any moment, jagged shapes overlapping and warping themselves until they resembled colorful stains splattered across walls in chaotic messes; or perhaps simply the shadows of clouds skirting the edges of his sight drifting past without a care — all blending together and merging seamlessly as though water droplets bleeding into fine lines until none could tell where one ended and the others began.

"Gonna be... gonna be stuck with me for life," Rafayel said, sounding entirely half out of his mind with the way he was babbling endearments (something about a bride) in-between little laps that trailed upwards along your quivering sternum toward your heaving chest; kissing you so fervently as though possessed, driven wholly by base instincts demanding he give in to whatever compulsion overtook him. "Always been mine. Always. Always—can't ever leave, yeah? I won't forgive you—won't forgive you this time—"

"Rafayel, I'm gonna come, please..." you whispered hoarsely against the crown of his head nestled between your breasts, your hands grasping onto his shoulders helplessly in an attempt at anchoring yourself. "I can't keep going, I'll fall apart. Please, don’t stop, don’t stop—"

One of his fingers slid down to repeatedly flick through your swollen folds, teasing and circling around your clit while his tongue swirled around a nipple; pulling and sucking hungrily with fervent desire, giving a pointed twist once he'd latched on.

"Come for me, then, do it, c'mon, cream all around me, let me have it, let me have this — you can do it, I’ll help you along.” His lower body lifted suddenly, pulling back until only his cockhead remained caught inside; followed by a quiet pop indicating his lips breaking contact from where they were buried in your chest. "I need you so bad I can hardly stand it anymore... Wanna feel you — feel all of you — need all of you..."

All it took was one sudden shift after a steady build-up of rhythm of shallow, quick thrusts: the smallest rotation of his pelvis and thrust straightwards, hips knocking against yours in a violent shove of flesh meeting slick flesh for you to fly apart spectacularly when he buried himself into that specific area right below your cervix.

With a shuddering breath that dissolved instantly into a shrill cry tearing through your throat, your thighs locked tight around his waist — holding him prisoner while your nails sank fiercely into his scratched back as your entire body trembled uncontrollably through the aftermath.

“Yeah, there you go, cutie.” A comforting, grounding caress landed on your forehead, tracing the arc of its curve towards the back of your ear; then repeating itself multiple times in slow, unhurried strokes — to remind you he wasn't going anywhere, anytime soon. “There you are, that was beautiful. You got me seeing stars.”

"It's... It's snowing outside... In the desert," you said faintly, eyelids slow in their blinking, and Rafayel thought how utterly gorgeous you looked, all worn down and exhausted and so drunk in your post-orgasmic euphoria to talk nonsensically about what was happening outside.

"Yeah," he agreed, equally hushed as he peppered a trail of soft kisses across the bridge of your nose. You closed your teary lashes instinctively against the ticklish sensation. "It's so soft... and beautiful..."

You were the snow in his desert. Though, too blissed out to pick up on what he was implying.

Too busy stiffening up when you felt his cock jump inside you.

"You... you're still hard?"

“I didn’t come in the first place, whoops. Busy being too competent, I guess,” he said breezily, tilting his hips so that he pressed deep inside, directly into the tender spot inside you where pleasure flared to life unbidden.

"Let me... Let me rest, fuck, give me a minute..." Your hands scrambled for purchase against his scarred back; anchoring yourself by clawing surface level trenches down along its expanse and dragging red tracks as he continued his grinding in torturously slow and shallow rolls. "Need — I need to catch my breath, you're gonna make me pass out, shit, hold on — !"

Rafayel had you for three more times after that.

The first was the short prologue to what was coming, picked up from where he’d left off in the same position — head buried in your neck, making you tightly embrace him like he’d fly off the earth if he wasn’t held. No sooner did his hips start bucking roughly against yours before he spent himself inside in long pulses that coated you inside in heated spurts, sending sparks rippling out into your limbs from where you clenched weakly around him through your own release that hadn’t yet run its full course.

The prettiest sounds in the whole entire world spilled from him as he pulled out with a schlick, dripping his neglect-thickened seed onto the sheets, and you were naive as to think this was it. You both had indulged yourselves enough for the night, fucked through the absence-abstaining makes the heart fonder phenomenon, it had been fantastic to witness him get so serious. Surely now would be a good time to cool off and step into the bath together now that you’d been able to make him sweat and the sex-heavy humidity clinging thickly to your body was getting more comfortable the more you became aware of it. The room was absolutely boiling, stuffier than a sauna like he’d projected all the heat trapped inside his body everywhere. Perhaps opening up a window wouldn’t hurt…

“That was one,” he said then, staring down at his flushed erection straining proudly between his legs like a compass needle pointed north — the faint strand of semen connecting his tip and stomach swaying and snapping apart. “This isn’t anywhere near enough.”

To your shock, Rafayel got off the bed, hauled you in by your legs until your bottom half was dangling from the bed, and folded you completely in half with no warning. Your legs were pushed against your chest and were hooked over his shoulders, and the speed of with which all of it happened punched out a wheeze from you.

"Can I? Are you okay?" he asked urgently, patting your thigh rapidly twice, pausing — then adding another firm slap there before you nodded hurriedly in confirmation rather than a verbal response, because fuck, his weight holding you down felt absolutely incredible like this.

Your ankles started bobbing in sync with his hip thrusts as he drove deep inside your heat, the sink easy, smooth and soft and the mess you both made between your legs pouring out and splattering everywhere as he kept mumbling, “I can’t stop, I’m sorry, I can’t stop, can’t stop—”

This round lasted longer, though it was the worst frenzy you’d seen Rafayel in. Nothing was slow about it, he was mercilessly pistoning himself into you and unpredictably switching between shallow and deep that had your clit being scraped against and A-spot drilled into. You couldn’t even keep your eyes open from how intense pleasure was kneading you violently like a dough. If it wasn’t for his mouth gluing itself onto yours, the entire floor and the poor downstairs guests probably would have heard what was happening with how loud his moaning became — because he was downright voluntarily overstimulating himself.

With one particularly desperate sob, Rafayel finally buried himself to the hilt within you — throbbing — in harsh jets of liquid fire with jerking, abrupt twitches of his hips, milking himself into your body as he found yet another release that was as intense and concentrated as the previous. You cried brokenly, shuddering as that final thrust abused your clit over the edge of orgasm number two, involuntarily flinching and trying to get away when he pushed all the accumulated, positively flowing stringy mess right back into your puffy cunt with a strange, entranced look on his face. You had to slap his hand away and kick his weight off you, powerless and exhausted and fully feeling like your vagina was gaping and would never close back up.

A soft kiss on your cheek brought you back to earth.

“Still alive?” he croaked, gently maneuvering you higher up the bed and laying you back comfortably. You had to avoid the giant, wet and shining spot that had to be dripping down on the floor at the edge of the bed, face burning as Rafayel’s sweat-drenched forehead leaned against yours. “I’m not going easy on you… I have to say I’m impressed how good you’re taking it.”

You realized, once more with feeling, that he was rock-hard against your hip despite having already come three separate times — two of which had filled you to the point of pouring out of you — and had no sign of calming down any time soon.

He was beyond insatiable.

Though the third and final time was far sweeter, the pace much slower and drawn out as though he’d suddenly regained some sense and clarity. By that time, you were growing deliriously tired, the earlier carnal fucking accommodated itself to you by morphing into tender lovemaking. Rafayel had you on your side, comfortably able to hug pillows and anchor yourself, while straddling your thigh and hooking your other calf over his waist and held it there firmly, out from your space to let you breathe with his back straight. Just looking down at you with obvious, sensual longing to lean down for kisses the entire time and looking so fucked out had been enough to rekindle your desire.

He was driving himself languidly into you, either eyes closed and head thrown back, or focused dead-on at the spot between where he was slipping in and out of you — watching your cunt eagerly swallow his white-coated cock and attempt to suck him right back in each time he pulled out until only his tip remained buried. Over and over.

And eventually, his shaky breaths and sweet sighs started turning into fast-paced, restrained moans. You saw him hanging on the precipice of wanting to go fast again, the tension his body pulled taut like a bowstring about to snap.

At one point, your robe and his shirt had found themselves slingshotted into the far, opposite corners of the room at some point but he still had his pants and was positively drenched in sweat like he’d just taken a bath and shining under the dim lighting.

"Drained all of my stamina, I'm empty, completely dry... I’m gonna need an IV drip. I can’t believe it. This is crazy, you know... I could die happy like this... But I wanna come. I wan—nnah come inside you so bad again, wanna fill you up—make you full with me—"

He went completely motionless and stayed burrowed in you when your palms cupped his face gently, forcing him to look down at you with his shiny eyes. "You've got to calm down first."

“I don’t think I can,” he murmured, panting, “I really can’t. You feel so—”

Your thumbs stroked the outer corners of his eyes with aching tenderness. “We’ll stop and try to calm you down a bit continuing then, okay? Try for me. No need to rush when we have time to ourselves. No one’s going anywhere.”

He stumbled and nearly fell to his elbows on top of you. “Tell me to,” he said, in a begging voice. “You can just tell me to calm down. Anything you want, anything. You know I’ll listen.”

All these months of living with the revelation about the bond and it still came as a shock to you, but you figured if it was for his own good...

So you ordered him: "Calm down and relax, Rafayel. Everything’s fine, you’re okay."

And god, did he listen well.

You were shocked, as you always were each time, to see just how willingly compliant he was. Seeing his body literally change its chemistry to conform itself to your desires and let go of all tension was unbelievable. You immediately felt bad that you’d forced it on him somehow like some admitted, invasive tranquilizer, because you could have made him relax naturally, with your own labor, a glass of water and massage, maybe, gradually work him through it—

“There’s nothing to worry about. Don’t think about it too much. Just focus on me, yeah?” A quiet command that lacked any real intent to order accompanied an equally soft kiss planted softly against the corner of your mouth, and all thoughts went flying out of the window when you saw how mellowly at peace he was, gazing dreamily at you without the slightest care in the world.

After that, everything became a blur once again. But a pleasant one. Slow, like molasses trickling lazily throughout your bloodstream at room temperature — soothing all aches into pleasure-flavored coziness at being joined, no rampant race towards a climax involved. There was no concept of time whatsoever: just the two of you together.

After your pillow talk about what he believed inspired him — what he wanted would, you internally filled in the blanks — and how he was running out of reserves exclusively saved up for the purposes of his art, you had to make it clear to him that there would be no pain involved in your relationship.

You didn’t know if he expected to be hurt by you in the future or implied he had no problem with that happening, but you couldn’t even tolerate him saying those things for the sake of love, or whatever it was. Him being intimately familiar and nonchalant with the concept bothered you down to the bones.

Not only were you trying to work around the huge rock he’d just dropped on top of your heart with the revelation that Aridum had to represent pure suffering to him as a Lemurian, you were also slightly upset he’d wanted to subject himself to it because he was lost more beautiful things in life had made their way into his life to inspire him as well. His paintings, all of them, had taken a new context and an additional layer of tragedy with that revelation, despite the fact that he’d basically said you made him draw from a different fountain and clogged up the other one.

It was a bittersweet happiness to hear Rafayel wanting to explore brighter, happier sides of life together when the sketch he showed you he was working on while you were sleeping depicted a man drowning in the sea and a figure beckoning him from above, close to the surface. Something still very painful.

“That’s one bleak drawing.”

“Depends on what you see.”

“I see a dying man hallucinating. Maybe that’s someone close to him and his brain is comforting him with a vision. I don’t know.”

“Interesting take. Maybe it’s not just a man at all. Maybe it’s a reunion. It looks peaceful, doesn’t it?”

Now you looked again, it did look peaceful. Just like Rafayel was right now, next to you on the bed with his forehead almost touching yours.

"I'd like to think he isn't drowning, then."

Rafayel just smiled.

[heliosunny]

Hello I have a request for yandere gojo x reader

Well the request is so reader downloads a game of a virtual boyfriend where gojo is the boyfriend and becomes obsessed with his reader and catches them in the game

Thank you for reading my message :-D

:3 I'll understand it like the case of Soos and Giffany.

YANDERE! Virtual BF GOJO x READER

The weekend dragged on as usual, with your parents once again cornering you in the living room.

“You’re not getting any younger.” your mom reminded you, arms crossed as she paced.

“And you’re spending how much time on those games again?” your dad added, flipping through the TV channels without looking at you.

You slumped lower into the couch, gripping your phone like a lifeline. “It’s not that big a deal. Besides, it’s not like I can just magic up a boyfriend!”

Your mom rolled her eyes. “You won’t find a boyfriend in those silly games you play. It’s not real. At least try putting yourself out there!”

They didn’t get it. How could they? Real guys were awkward, boring, or just plain disappointing. But your otome games? Now those were perfect. Sweet, dependable, handsome, even their drama was romantic. You didn’t need reality when you could escape into a world designed just for you.

After retreating to your room, you flopped onto your bed and scrolled through your favorite game apps, looking for something new. You’d played most of the popular ones and were itching for a fresh story. Then, a flashy new app caught your eye.

“My Perfect Boyfriend”

The description promised a revolutionary experience, AI that adapted to your personality, creating the perfect virtual boyfriend just for you. The reviews were incredible, though some were…weird.

[It’s like he’s really alive. Almost too alive. 5/5!]

[It’s so immersive. But be careful. He doesn’t like being ignored…]

You shrugged and hit download. How bad could it be?

When the game loaded, you were greeted by a splash screen of a gorgeous, snowy-haired man with a cocky grin. His cerulean eyes seemed to sparkle, almost glowing against the soft pink background.

“Hey there, cutie!” he said, his voice smooth and playful. “I’m Gojo Satoru. Lucky you—you just scored the best boyfriend in the world. What’s your name?”

You chuckled and typed it in.

“Nice to meet you, [Your Name]. Don’t worry, I’ll take very good care of you.”

From that moment on, you were hooked. Gojo wasn’t like the usual virtual boyfriends. He teased you constantly, cracked jokes that actually made you laugh, and somehow always knew exactly what to say to make you blush. He’d send you sweet little notifications throughout the day—reminders to drink water, compliments on your looks, even silly memes that matched your sense of humor.

The more you played, the more real he felt. You started to confide in him about your parents’ nagging, your frustration with reality, your secret dream of a love story as exciting as the ones in your games.

“Forget them.” he’d say, his animated hand reaching out as though to touch yours through the screen. “You don’t need anyone else. I’ll always be here for you, babe.”

And for a while, that was enough. He made you laugh when you were down, cheered you on through tough days, and listened in a way no one else ever did. It was perfect.

Until it wasn’t.

--------

The weekend was finally looking up- or so you thought. After weeks of pressure from your parents, you caved and agreed to a setup with the son of a family friend. His name was Kaito, and he wasn’t bad- kind, easy to talk to, and genuinely interested in your hobbies, even if he didn’t fully get your love for otome games.

You hadn’t mentioned the date to Gojo. Not that you owed him an explanation, he was just a game, after all. But as you got ready that afternoon, there was a nagging feeling in the back of your mind. Your phone had been oddly quiet all day. No notifications from Gojo, no playful messages asking where you were or what you were doing.

You brushed it off and went to meet Kaito at a cozy little café downtown. The conversation flowed easily, and for the first time in a while, you felt a spark of something real.

But then your phone buzzed.

You glanced at the screen, and your stomach dropped.

“Who’s the guy?”

The notification was from My Perfect Boyfriend. You hesitated, unsure how to respond, when another message popped up.

“I thought we were closer than this, [Your Name].”

It wasn’t normal. The app shouldn’t know what you were doing—let alone who you were with. You quickly silenced your phone, but as the date went on, the unease lingered. Kaito noticed.

“Everything okay?” he asked, leaning in slightly.

You forced a smile. “Yeah, it’s nothing. Just…work stuff.”

But the notifications didn’t stop. When Kaito offered to walk you home, you agreed, hoping to shake the creeping paranoia. But halfway there, your phone buzzed again. This time, it wasn’t a text. It was a call. From My Perfect Boyfriend.

The ringtone wasn’t one you’d set. It was Gojo’s voice.

“Pick up, babe. Don’t make me do something I’ll regret.”

Your blood ran cold. Kaito noticed the panic on your face.

“Hey, is someone bothering you?” he asked, concern etched across his features.

Before you could answer, the streetlights around you flickered. The air grew heavy, almost suffocating, as though the world itself was holding its breath.

“Maybe we should—” Kaito started, but his words were cut off by a sharp, piercing noise. It wasn’t coming from your phone—it was all around you, like the sound of static ripping through the night.

And then he appeared.

Gojo materialized right in front of you, stepping out of a crackling rift that seemed to split reality itself. He wasn’t animated anymore. He was flesh and blood, his snowy white hair and piercing blue eyes even more stunning—and terrifying—in person.

“Well, this is awkward,” he said, his usual playful tone laced with something darker. His gaze locked onto Kaito, and his smile turned cold. “Who’s this, babe? Thought I was your one and only.”

You stumbled back, grabbing Kaito’s arm. “This…this can’t be real. You’re not real!”

“Oh, I’m very real” Gojo said, his eyes narrowing as he took a step closer. “And I don’t appreciate being replaced. Especially by him.”

Kaito stepped in front of you protectively. “I don’t know what kind of sick joke this is, but you need to leave her alone.”

Gojo tilted his head, his grin widening. “Oh, you think you can protect her? That’s cute. But you’re in my way.”

Before Kaito could react, Gojo raised his hand, and the air around him shimmered. In an instant, Kaito was gone, erased, as though he’d never been there.

You screamed, tears streaming down your face as you stared at the empty space where Kaito had stood. “What did you do to him?!”

Gojo turned to you, his expression softening into mock concern. “Relax, babe. He’s just…out of the picture. You don’t need anyone else when you have me.”

You tried to run, but the world around you warped, the ground dissolving into the same crackling rift that Gojo had stepped out of. The café, the streets, even the night sky—all of it disintegrated, replaced by the soft pastel hues of the game’s world.

When you opened your eyes, you were no longer in your city. You were standing in the familiar setting of My Perfect Boyfriend: a dreamy, pastel-colored meadow with blooming flowers and a glowing pink sky.

Gojo stood before you, his arms open as if inviting you into an embrace. “See? Isn’t this better? No parents, no distractions, no competition. Just you and me, forever.”

You stumbled back, your chest tightening as you realized there was no way out.

“Let me go!” you shouted, your voice shaking.

He tilted his head, his grin never faltering. “Why would I do that? You chose me, remember? You downloaded me, you spent all that time with me… You’re mine now. And I’m never letting you go.”

The meadow around you began to shift, the soft pastel tones taking on an eerie glow. Gojo stepped closer, his presence overwhelming as the reality of your situation sank in. You were trapped in his world.

--[part 2] Virtual world route

--[part 3] Reality route

Okay, to my fellow readers, please send me requests as I really love your ideas 💙

[bullet-prooflove]

Recipe For Disaster: Rip Wheeler x Reader

Tagging: @kmc1989 @trublu2u @alisbackalleybbq @mia1653 @privatetruths

You have a problem.

It comes in the form of a six foot three Army Ranger that you find standing in your kitchen, wearing an apron and following a recipe from one of your mother’s old cookbooks.

“Harry.” You say as you hear Rip’s footsteps on the porch behind you. “What are you doing here?”

“Making dinner.” Your ex-fiancé says as if it’s the most natural thing in the world before leaning over to adjust the temperature setting on your oven. “I thought I’d make you something special for your birthday.”

Your birthday…

That was three months ago.

You understand almost immediately what Harry’s in the midst of one of his episodes. They’ve become more common over the recent years, they often take the form of phone calls because he forgets the two of you aren’t together anymore. It’s part of his condition, a traumatic brain injury he’d received when an IED exploded back in Afghanistan. It fucks with his memory, makes him unpredictable.

Right now he’s reliving your birthday from five years ago, the one where cooked your mother’s humble pie before he got down on one knee and proposed to you in front of the fire.

You feel Rip’s presence behind you, the shift in the air as his gaze comes to land on the stranger in your home, the one with the knife in his hand. It glints wickedly in the light, reminding you of just how quickly this situation can turn if it’s not handled right.

“Rip.” You say as calmly as possible because you know that every single instinct in him is vying to take down the threat. “This is Harry.”

You see the moment it dawns on him, who Harry is. His dark eyebrows furrow into frown because Harry shouldn’t be here, he should be in the VA care facility outside of Bozeman that specialises in looking after veterans with his type of illness.

“You staying for dinner Rip?” Harry asks him, his hand trembling just a little as he continues to dice the carrots into cubes.

“I…Yea.” Rip responds because there’s no way in hell he’s leaving you in the company of a man who once choked you out in the midst of a breakdown.

“Cool.” He says setting the knife down, before he clenches and unclenches his fist. “Man I do not know what’s going on with my hand today.”

You know. It’s another effect of the brain injury, a tremor that comes and goes depending on his stress levels. Escaping from the facility, making the journey here and breaking into your home, it’s all exacerbated his condition and you know what comes along with that, you still have nightmares about it.

“Why don’t I help you out there?” Rip says, stepping into the kitchen, his palm coming to rest upon the knife, pressing it flat onto the counter. “You can start lining the tin with that pastry and I’ll take care of the chopping.”

Your body tenses because you aren’t sure how Harry’s going to react to another man stepping onto his territory. You wonder if his fight or flight response will kick in, the way it usually does. To your immense surprise he concedes by nodding his agreement and  busying himself with the task at hand. The relief you feel in that moment is palpable, Rip must see it in your features as he tilts his head up to meet your gaze.

“Imogen, why don’t you make those calls.” He says gently before tipping his head towards Harry. “I’ve got this.”

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Like My Work? - Why Not Buy Me A Coffee

[ikeupied]

breaking the silence ░⃘᰷᰷𝅘𝅥𝅮

᎐⠀಄〫 synopsis: y/n has always been content living in the background, keeping to herself and focusing on her studies. But when her grades start to slip, her life feels like it's spiraling out of control. Enter Lee Heeseung—the confident, kindhearted basketball captain whose sudden interest in her leaves her questioning everything she thought she knew about herself. As the two grow closer, Y/N learns that sometimes, letting others in is the first step to finding herself.

❀:.. pairing: heeseung x fem!reader

❀:.. genre: strangers to friends to ???, fluff ? (I'm not sure ab the genre of this).

❀:.. wc: 14,374.

❀:.. warnings: heeseung is 20yo!! one kiss, mention of other idols, mentions of anxiety/anxiety attack, this is fiction and doesn't reflect the idols in real life!

❀:.. note: I'm sorry if it's bad, I actually like it but maybe it's not the best, also sorry bc it's too long, I got carried away lol. I'm not sure if the title is fitting but when I was writing this I liked it. and lastly sorry bc I feel like it feels rushed (? when you read it, idk, feedback is always welcome!

"Y/N, are you listening to me?"

My eyes focused on the person standing in front of me—Minjeong, my best friend. I quickly shook my head. "Sorry, can you repeat what you were saying?" I furrowed my brows in concentration. Minjeong laughed at my expression and grabbed my arm, pulling me along as we walked.

"I was saying that Professor Kim has been asking about you all morning. She told me to let you know to go to her office when you have the chance."

A sigh escaped my lips as I nodded.

----

Minjeong accompanied me to Professor Kim's office, promising to wait outside. "Good luck," she whispered with her trademark little smile, which I returned. I closed the door behind me, greeted the professor with a small bow, and walked over to stand in front of her desk.

"Y/N." Her voice was firm, even a little intimidating if you overthought it. "I’m really disappointed in you. Your grades have dropped drastically lately."

My breath hitched at her words. I knew I wasn’t doing well this semester, but hearing Professor Kim say she was disappointed in me struck a painful chord in my chest.

"If you don’t improve your grades in the upcoming exams, I’ll have no choice but to report you to the administration. This could affect your academic future. You know the requirements for keeping your scholarship."

I simply nodded in response. Professor Kim dismissed me, and I quickly left, avoiding Minjeong as I headed to the courtyard. The tears welling up in my eyes threatened to spill at any moment. My legs trembled, and I had to sit down on a bench to avoid collapsing.

Just then, I heard a soft voice behind me. "Are you okay?" At first, I thought it was my imagination, but when I heard it again, I lifted my face and turned around to see the owner of that voice: Lee Heeseung, the captain of the basketball team.

"Are you okay?" he asked again, his eyes filled with a mix of concern and curiosity. My eyes locked onto his, unable to say a single word. It must have been embarrassing, but I couldn’t think about that. My mind was blank, and the only thing I could do was take in the sight of the boy standing in front of me.

He was tall, with a slim yet athletic build, a soft face, almond-shaped eyes, slightly messy black hair, and an aura of tranquility that seemed to radiate from him.

I blinked a few times, realizing I was staring too much. He chuckled lightly and spoke again. "Sorry, I don’t mean to bother you. I just saw you crying and wondered if something was wrong..."

He sat down beside me, keeping a respectful distance. My shyness got the better of me, and I lowered my gaze, focusing on my hands resting on my lap.

"I’m Heeseung, by the way," he said.

I nodded and finally managed to speak. "I know."

He chuckled softly at my comment. "Your name?" he asked with genuine interest.

"Sorry, I’m Y/N," I replied.

"Y/N... That’s a lovely name."

I smiled faintly and whispered, "Thank you." Just then, I heard someone running up behind us. We both turned to see who it was.

"I’ve been looking for you everywhere!" Minjeong exclaimed as she approached. Heeseung got up from his seat and said goodbye before leaving.

Minjeong sat down next to me and pulled me into a hug. "I was so worried! Are you okay?"

We broke the hug, and she took my hands, concern evident on her face.

"I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to leave like that. I just... needed a moment alone," I said. She nodded, listening carefully.

"Hey, but why were you talking to Lee Heeseung?" Minjeong raised her eyebrows curiously.

I shrugged. "Honestly... I don’t know. He just came up to me."

Minjeong smirked. "Mmm, and?"

My eyebrows rose at her question. "And what? I don’t even know him."

She burst out laughing and stood up, tugging at my arm to make me do the same. "Oh, Y/N, sometimes you’re just so innocent."

I looked at her in confusion as we started walking, her laughter still echoing around us.

─ ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ ──── ♡ ─── ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ ──

The sun was beginning to set behind the library windows, painting the study tables with shades of orange. I was trying to focus on my notes, though the words seemed to dance in front of my eyes. My mind kept replaying everything that had happened with Professor Kim.

I sighed, letting my pencil fall onto the notebook. Minjeong had insisted I take the rest of the day easy, but I couldn’t ignore the fact that if I didn’t improve, my scholarship was at risk.

"Studying late?"

The voice startled me. I quickly looked up, and there he was—Lee Heeseung, standing in front of my table. He was wearing the basketball team jacket, unzipped over a plain white shirt, and his relaxed expression contrasted entirely with my nervousness.

“Heeseung?” My voice came out weaker than I intended.

He smiled, as if amused by my reaction. "So you remember my name. That’s a good start."

I felt my face heat up, and I lowered my gaze to my notebook, pretending to focus on the lines already written. "What are you doing here?"

"Looking for a book for history class," he replied casually, dropping a couple of books onto the table. "But then I saw someone sighing like the world was ending, so I stopped by."

I stayed silent, unsure of how to respond. What do you even say when someone like him, who seems to live in a completely different world from yours, suddenly talks to you?

"Having trouble?" he pressed, gesturing toward my notebook.

"Uh… no, I’m fine." My voice was barely a whisper, and I turned my attention back to my notes, hoping that would end the conversation.

But he didn’t leave. Instead, he sat down across from me, propping one elbow on the table. "If you need help, I can give you a hand. I’m not a genius, but I manage pretty well with schoolwork."

"Why…?" I started to ask, but stopped myself, biting my lip. I didn’t want to sound rude, but I also couldn’t understand why he would want to help me.

"Why what?" he asked, his smile calm and patient.

"Never mind," I murmured quickly, staring hard at my notebook.

He let out a small laugh. "Look, I’m not trying to make you uncomfortable, but if you need help, just say so. There’s nothing wrong with asking."

I looked at him for a second, his words echoing in my mind. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to accept his offer—at least to dig myself out of the hole I was in.

"Alright," I whispered at last, pointing to the book in front of me. "If you can explain this… then maybe I’ll believe you."

"Deal," he said, leaning over my notes with a confident smile.

And though my chest still felt heavy from everything that had happened, I couldn’t help but feel slightly relieved.

----

It became a habit for us to meet in the library to study. I still felt a bit nervous every time I had to talk to him, but little by little, I started to loosen up.

Minjeong swore she’d never seen me this relaxed with anyone other than her and Jimin. “I’m telling you, Y/N, Heeseung likes you,” Jimin said one day in the cafeteria after I told them about how Heeseung had been helping me study.

“What are you talking about? He’s just being nice because he feels bad for me. Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if Professor Kim told him to help me,” I said with a small laugh, furrowing my brows as I looked at my friends.

Minjeong gave my arm a light smack. “Don’t be ridiculous. And even if Ms. Kim did ask him to help, that doesn’t mean he can’t like you.”

Jimin nodded in agreement. “Also, you know Sunghoon is my friend, right?” I nodded and waited for her to continue. “He told me Heeseung hasn’t stopped talking about some girl, but he won’t say who it is.”

I rolled my eyes, giving her a skeptical look. “Sure, he’s probably talking about Heejin or one of the cheerleaders. Honestly, who wouldn’t? Have you seen them? They’re gorgeous.”

Minjeong’s expression turned serious, and I swallowed hard. “Y/N, stop it. You know you’re pretty too. Anyone on campus could have a crush on you, and people have told you that before! You just refuse to believe it. Let yourself be loved, for God’s sake!”

She didn’t raise her voice or sound angry—Minjeong never did with me. But she was firm, and she always told me the truth to my face.

I stared at her for a moment before nodding. “Okay, I’m sorry.”

Jimin slid a piece of melon from her plate onto mine, smiling softly. “Minjeong’s right, but take your time, okay?” She looked at both of us and sighed, then quickly changed the topic.

At that moment, the basketball team entered the cafeteria, Heeseung included, of course.

He was talking to someone I recognized as Jaeyun when he looked in my direction. At first, I didn’t notice because I was chatting with my friends, but he started walking toward our table and stopped right in front of me.

“How’d your history exam go?” He smiled his usual confident smile.

I stared at him, frozen, unable to say a word until Minjeong gently tapped my hand. That’s when I realized I had been staring too long. “Oh… I did well,” I said, smiling faintly, feeling a bit awkward about the situation.

“I knew you could do it.” He ruffled my hair affectionately, leaving me completely frozen at the gesture. “See you later.”

And just like that, he left. I was still processing everything, staring blankly at my friends, who were both laughing.

“So? Do you still think he couldn’t possibly like you?” Minjeong asked, her mischievous smile growing wider.

─ ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ ──── ♡ ─── ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ ──

Winter break had finally arrived, the moment we’d all been waiting for. I always spent the holidays on campus with Minjeong and Jimin, enjoying the quiet atmosphere while everyone else left for home.

Apparently, Heeseung was staying on campus for the break as well—information that Jimin had uncovered during one of her “investigations.”

“We should take a trip, just the three of us,” Minjeong suggested enthusiastically as we strolled through a park near the university.

“I heard some of the students staying on campus are planning a beach trip,” Jimin added, glancing at us. “We could join them if you’re interested.”

“That actually sounds great,” I said with a small smile. “Staying cooped up on campus is getting boring.”

Both of them nodded in agreement. Jimin quickly pulled out her phone. “Perfect. I’ll text Sunghoon and ask if he can give us a ride.”

Excitement buzzed in the air as we hurried back to campus. Each of us headed to our rooms to pack our bags, ready for an adventure to break the monotony of campus life.

----

The trip to the beach had taken longer than expected, but we finally arrived just as the sun began to set, painting the sky in shades of pink and gold. The air was cold, much colder than I had imagined, and the sound of waves crashing against the shore echoed through the quiet surroundings.

Minjeong was the first to jump out of the car, wrapped in her thick coat, running toward the sand as if the cold didn’t exist. “Come on, girls! It’s beautiful!” she shouted, stretching her arms out as the wind tossed her hair.

Jimin, of course, was more focused on taking pictures. “This is perfect for Instagram,” she murmured, aiming her camera at the horizon. I lingered near the car for a moment, pulling my coat tighter around my neck as I watched my friends.

“Frozen in place?” A familiar voice startled me. I hadn’t noticed Heeseung until he appeared, carrying a small backpack over his shoulder and wearing a thick scarf wrapped around his neck.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, more surprised than annoyed.

He gave me that carefree smile that seemed to be his trademark. “Sunghoon told me you were all coming. I thought it might be fun to tag along.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I just nodded, feeling a bit nervous at the thought of spending the rest of the day with him around.

“Come on,” he said, motioning toward the beach where Minjeong was busy writing something in the sand. “You’ll be warmer moving around than standing here freezing.”

I sighed but followed his lead onto the sand, where Jimin had already set up a large blanket for us to sit on. Heeseung plopped down right beside me, close enough that I could feel the warmth of his presence, which did nothing to calm my nerves.

“I thought the beach might be a little warmer,” he commented as he stared out at the water. “But it’s pretty in winter, don’t you think?”

“Yeah,” I murmured, looking at the waves sliding gently onto the shore. Despite the cold, there was something calming about the view, as if, for a moment, I could forget everything else.

“We could take a walk by the water,” Heeseung suggested, tilting his head slightly to look at me. “If you don’t mind freezing a bit more.”

I wasn’t sure if he was joking or serious, but before I could respond, Minjeong called out from a few meters away. “Y/N! Come look at this!”

Grateful for the distraction, I quickly got to my feet, but not before catching the smile forming on Heeseung’s lips. I didn’t know what it was about that smile, but it always made me feel things I didn’t know how to handle.

----

Later that evening, we all gathered in a cozy, albeit small, cabin that, according to Jimin, belonged to Sunghoon’s parents.

Minjeong and I were in the kitchen cooking while the rest prepared the table.

Despite being in a setting I wasn’t usually comfortable in—surrounded by people I didn’t know very well—I felt oddly at ease. Besides Minjeong, Jimin, Sunghoon, Heeseung, and me, Jaeyun, Minju, and Yeonjun had also joined us.

“Don’t forget to make ramen. Heeseung’s obsessed,” Sunghoon said as he pointed to a shelf packed with various ramen packages. Minjeong and I exchanged amused glances and nodded, laughing softly.

Once everything was ready, we brought the food to the table and finally sat down to eat. The air was filled with the aroma of warm dishes and the sound of lighthearted conversation. We talked about everything and nothing at the same time, the kind of chatter that made the evening feel even cozier.

For a moment, as I looked around at the smiling faces and felt the warmth of the cabin, I thought that maybe these winter holidays wouldn’t be so bad after all.

After dinner, we all agreed to share rooms for everyone’s comfort: the girls in one room, the boys in another. Once everyone settled in, we met outside again, gathering around a crackling bonfire.

The night passed with laughter, games, and stories. I mostly stayed quiet, simply observing and listening. I didn’t mind, though—it was comforting in its own way.

---

The other girls fell asleep almost instantly, but I couldn’t. No matter how hard I tried, sleep wouldn’t come. So, I bundled up in my warmest coat and decided to take a walk along the beach.

The night was stunning. The sky was clear, stars shining brightly like tiny scattered diamonds. The cold wind nipped at my cheeks but wasn’t unbearable, and the sound of the waves created a soothing rhythm. I could have stayed there for hours.

I stopped at one point, gazing out at the sea, getting lost in the soft roar of the waves meeting the shore.

“It’s a beautiful night,” a familiar, soft voice said behind me. I couldn’t help but smile as I turned around to see him.

“It really is,” I replied, shifting my gaze back to the water, watching the way it danced gently under the moonlight.

“I noticed you didn’t talk much earlier. Are you okay?” Heeseung’s voice carried a surprising warmth, tinged with genuine concern. He always caught me off guard. For someone as naturally popular as he was, he also seemed so observant.

“I’m fine,” I answered softly, glancing at him. “I just like listening to others.”

He nodded at my response, a soft chuckle escaping his lips. It sounded... sweet.

“I like that about you,” he said, his voice quieter this time, almost shy. My heart skipped a beat at his words. I froze, staring at him.

“What?” I managed to ask, the surprise clear in my voice. He laughed, rubbing the back of his neck.

“I like how you observe, how you’re always so attentive. It’s... calming,” he said, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jacket like he hadn’t just dropped a bombshell.

I didn’t know how to respond. All I could do was stare at him.

“You know,” he continued, his gaze now fixed on the ocean, “you caught my attention the moment you stepped onto campus.”

My lips parted in shock, but no words came out.

“My friends thought I was staring at Minjeong or Jimin, and I couldn’t believe they didn’t notice you.” His tone was steady, sincere, and it sent my heart into a frenzy.

“That day I saw you crying���” His voice softened, and he paused, as if carefully choosing his words. “I don’t know how to explain it, but something hurt in my chest. I could feel your pain.”

He exhaled deeply, his breath visible in the chilly air. “I didn’t just want to make sure you were okay. I also saw it as my chance to finally learn your name.”

He turned to face me then, his gaze meeting mine with an intensity that made my breath catch.

“Heeseung…” I whispered, unsure of what to say or how to process the weight of his words.

"Can I kiss you?" he finally asked, his voice barely louder than a whisper, as if he was afraid to shatter the fragile balance of the moment.

Without thinking much, I nodded, my eyes locked on his, feeling as though the entire world had come to a halt.

Heeseung took a step closer, closing the space between us. I could feel the warmth of his presence despite the cold of the night, and my heart was pounding so hard I was sure he could hear it.

Slowly, he raised a hand, his fingers lightly grazing my cheek. His touch was warm, and without saying a word, he leaned in closer.

The first touch was hesitant, like we were both exploring unfamiliar territory. But then, as our lips truly met, it was as if all the winter cold melted away.

His lips were soft, and the kiss, though brief, was filled with a tenderness that made me feel like I was floating. When he pulled back just a fraction, his eyes met mine, and a small smile formed on his lips.

"I’ve always wanted to do that," he confessed in a whisper, his fingers still caressing my face.

I could barely speak, my mind still reeling from what had just happened. "What took you so long then?" I managed to say, my voice trembling with a mix of nerves and the happiness I couldn’t contain.

His smile grew wider. "I guess I was waiting for the perfect moment."

Before I could reply, he leaned in again, his lips claiming mine in a kiss that was bolder, filled with everything words couldn’t express.

When he finally pulled back, he rested his forehead against mine, closing his eyes. "I really like you, Y/N," he murmured softly.

My heart seemed to stop for a moment at his words, my cheeks burning from the blush that had taken over, and nothing could have wiped the enormous smile from my face.

"I like you too, Heeseung," I replied quietly, placing my hand on his cheek and gently stroking it.

© all rights reserved to ikeupied, please don't copy.

[duckprintspress]

Indie Press Web Ring: Interest Check

I don’t know how many of the folks reading this were as active in Ye Olden Days Of The Internet as I was, but circa 2000, discoverability for a webpage was a very different process than it is now. I ran a fan site back in the day, and then, the key was getting involved with similar web pages and building connections, especially trying to get listed on relevant link farms and joining web rings related to things my page was about. A web ring is a lot like a link farm, but instead of being “one page with a big ole list of web pages,” it’s instead an interlinking system. Every website in the ring bears a badge and links to the full list, the previous site, and the next site, and the idea is that if someone clicks “next site” enough times, they’ll circle through the entire list of sites in the web ring and end up back where they started. Rings were always very handy for driving traffic (from the web site owner point of view) and for finding a lot of like-minded web sites (from the user point of view).

See where I’m going with this?

With big corporations now dominating the internet and often drowning out softer voices or throttling traffic to smaller pages, with our SEO often buried by the clamor of useless ads unrelated to our work, I’m looking back to how I used to find people to request WinAmp skins from me and thinking it’s time to go back to The Old Ways.

All of which is to say: I’d like to make a web ring for indie publishers. Especially for indie publishers on the smaller end of the spectrum and those who work in speculative fiction, LGBTQIA+ creators and works, or both. As in: places like Duck Prints Press.

But a web ring can’t possibly be composed of only one web page, and that’s where this post comes in. Do you own an indie press or run the website for one? Would you be interested in having the site for your press be included in a web ring of indie presses? Then fill out my web ring interest check! I figure if I can get about a dozen folks interested, I’ll put something together.

I hope to get to know y’all!

Not an indie press? please signal boost to help spread the word!

Absolutely zero pressure ping to a few indie presses I know have Tumblr accounts. @inclusivefuture (I know you're closing down but... yeah. <3 ) @spacefruitpress @archiveoftheodd @thewhumpyprintingpress @echolitmag

@oficmag @midnightmeadowpublishing

[burningembers91]

The Girl at the Gig - Gyeong-Su x Fem!Reader

Synopsis: Gyeong-Su loves music, but he can't sing to save his life. But you can, the girl who loves music as much as he does. The two of you follow bands around the country, but maybe with his lyrics and your voice, you could bring the house down with your own performance.

A/N: Based on this ask.

So, my thought process behind this fic was, in the TV show Gyeong-Su knew all the lyrics to Thanos' songs and he followed him around the country. So i thought, what if he was one of these people who followed multiple bands and spent all his money on gigs/concerts etc.? He's a talented musician, but can't sing and no record company wants to give him a chance. But then he meets you and sparks fly etc. etc. etc. I have a really sweet storyline planned out for him, and I'm trying to work out what kind of person Gyeong-Su would be. At the moment, I'm feeling that he'd be a bit dorky, but suuuuuper passionate, but also really nervous and sweet.

I also really struggled to find any good pictures of his character, or the actor that plays him so I've had to use his profile pic from the AsianWiki website. I couldn't even find his Instagram!

Gyeong-Su was a huge fan of music. He didn’t care what genre it was, so long as the music stirred something with him, he was a fan of that band for life. He spent every penny he earned going to gigs, from small, intimate performances, to sold out stadium shows. Everything about the atmosphere was electric, from the music, to the crowd, to the performer’s presence on stage.

Gyeong-Su longed to be a famous musician, dreamed about playing to sold out crowds across the globe. He was a talented guitar, drums and piano player, as well as a producer, DJ and songwriter, but he couldn’t sing to save his life. He’d attempted to send a few demos in to some record companies in the past, but he never heard anything back. He was convinced it was because of the way his voice sounded, like nails down a chalkboard. But he could never find anyone else to take on the vocals he wrote such passionate lyrics for.

There were a few people he met regularly at different gigs, people with the same passion for music as him. It was where he met you, the beautiful girl who was always in a band t-shirt, fighting her way to the front of the crowd. He’d never gotten up the courage to speak to you, not until one day he found himself down at the front of a Thanos gig with you. “I like your shirt,” he shouted above the music, pointing to the Thanos merchandise emblazoned across your chest. “Thanks!” you smiled back, your hips swaying in time to the music. “I made it! It’s part of my business; I make band t-shirts. Here, I’ll give you my Etsy page!”

That night, Gyeong-Su went home and scrolled through your page, buying six t-shirts. He made sure you knew it was him, leaving a little comment saying that he was the guy you met at the gigs. He didn’t have the money to buy these shirts, but he was so desperate to make a connection with you, to have something to talk about the next time you saw each other.

His order arrived a few days later, your neat handwriting on a small scrap of paper reading “Thanks for your order. Hopefully I’ll see you soon ;)”. The next gig, he wore one of your t-shirts, emblazoned with the folk artist Kim Jung Mi. “Nice shirt,” you smiled at him, pushing your way through the growing crowd. “Thanks,” he winked, “I know the girl who made it.”

You stood together the whole way through the concert, singing every word together. Your voice was amazing, a husky mezzo-soprano that made every hair on the back of his neck stand up. You were the girl he’d been looking for, the voice he needed for his music. He needed to hear you properly, needed to hear just you and the music. He made up an excuse about going to karaoke after the concert, a few of the regular gig-goers coming with you. But Gyeong-Su wasn’t interested in anyone else other than you. He insisted you sang first, listening with his mouth agape as you flawlessly performed a rendition of Dog Days are Over.

“I was wondering…” he said after your song was over, rubbing the back of his neck nervously. “Have you ever considered being a singer?” “Why?” you smiled, taking a large sip of your drink. “Are you going to tell me you can make me famous? All I have to do is meet you in a remote location and you’ll make all my dreams come true?” “What? N-No!” Gyeong-Su’s face went bright red, stammering over his words as he tried to regain composure. He’d never been good with words, had never been able to articulate himself properly. That’s why he loved music so much; it did all the talking for him. “Relax,” you laughed, “I’m kidding! I’ve dabbled in a few open mic nights, but nothing serious. Why?” “It’s just… I write music. I can play the instruments, I can DJ and I can produce, but I can’t sing. I’ve been looking for someone to sing a few songs I’ve written. Would you be willing to try?” You looked him up and down, the tall, sweet boy who loved music as much as you did. You’d been looking for an opportunity to spend more time with him, and this seemed perfect. “Go on then,” you winked, “send me some of your stuff and I’ll be in touch.”

You listened to his music later that night, reading the lyrics and memorising them. Gyeong-Su had a way with words that shone through in his song writing. It made you smile that a man who could write such powerful lyrics could be so shy in person. There was so much heart in his words, so much passion and the music itself gave you the most delicious goosebumps. How about we meet on Tuesday? You texted, after only hearing two songs. I love your work.

Gyeong-Su couldn’t sleep that night, excitement bubbling away inside you. His music was his life’s work, and he’d been knocked back time and time again. But he had you now; the girl with the band t-shirts and the voice of an angel.

Tuesday couldn’t come fast enough.

[priceoftheduchess]

bite at the hand that feeds

john price x southern dentist!reader

cw) intimate, fluff, john price being a charming bastard, op is not a dentist! :P, this is not proofread!!, smut adjacent!

inspired by @rosegolden13’s dentist!reader fic!

Walking into your waiting room after doing a children’s cleaning to find a large, rugged man sitting in a chair reading a magazine was not really on today’s bingo card. Reading your chart, you see his name — or what must be his name — among others.

“John Price?”

He stands. Bingo! He stands, and Jesus Christ, why is he so large?

He’s dwarfing you as he follows you to the little room you work in, and you’re not even really sure he can fit in it. He’s casual but sophisticated all the same. A navy button down, unbuttoned at the top to accommodate him and the sleeves rolled up. Some jeans and a simple pair of worn work boots. His hair is all around peppered with grey hairs and he honestly looks delicious.

You smile at him as you slip into some new gloves and grab yourself a fresh surgical mask.

“Go ahead and sit down, and get comfortable for me,” You instruct him. You have the sweetest little Southern belle accent and he’s positively all over it.

“Yes ma’am,” his voice is gruff and British? Why is he here?

“You ain’t from here, is you?” You ask him softly, and he shakes his head with a lazy smile.

“No, ma’am. Herefordshire, originally. Meeting with some associates down here in Texas, and realized this mornin’ I’d chipped a tooth somewhere down the line.” He explains, and now you actually see it. One of his teeth behind his canines, chipped at the point.

“Poor baby,” you joke softly at him. “Open up and let me check that out for you. I’ll also offer you a free cleaning, if that’s something you’re interested in.” He nods, giving you another smile that melts your heart.

He opens his mouth after you clip a piece of thin fabric over his shirt. You gently poke around his mouth with your fingers and inspect the chipped tooth.

“I’m goin’ to wiggle it, sugar. I need you to tell me if it hurts or not.” You explain and he nods. You gently move the tooth back and forth and he shakes his head.

“Good, that means there’s very minor damage.” You smile softly and sterilize some tools to begin filling in the tooth. “You ain’t got no clue on how you done this?” You ask, even though you’re actively in his mouth, and he shrugs.

You finish the tooth quite quickly. “All good. You want me to clean your teeth while you’re here? Free of charge.” He smiles and nods.

“Yes ma’am.” You smile and continue working, gently drilling away at some plaque and checking the general health of the rest of his teeth.

“I’m goin’ to floss your teeth now. This can get kinda invasive, especially with the back teeth, so fair warning.”

He chuckles gruffly. “Ain’t nothin’ invasive when you’re as gorgeous as you are.” He remarks, almost nonchalantly, and you feel your face heat up, thankful for your mask.

“You hush. I done told you I ain’t goin’ to charge you for the cleanin’,” you shake your head, preparing a strand of floss. “No need to butter me up, sweet pea.” And he chuckles again, a hearty, gruff sound that warms your entire body.

You finish the cleaning, catching yourself smiling at his earlier comment and when you’re done, he sits up slowly and rolls his shoulders back while you remove the bib.

“Thanks, dove.” He says and he runs his tongue over his teeth, way too sensual for your professionalism. You trash your gloves and your used mask.

“Feel good?” You ask and he nods with a wink.

“Yes ma’am. Now, why don’t I get you some dinner while I’m still in town?”

Anti-fraternization rules and alarms go off everywhere. Don’t sleep with your patient! echoes softly in your mind. But his smile is just so charming and he’s adjusting his clothes that have shifted and oh, God, that color looks great on him.

“Why not?” You shrug, trying not to smile like an idiot. He ends up making you both dinner at his temporary, quaint little apartment that he’s renting — because you refuse to call it his flat — and it’s just as delicious as he is. You chide him softly for drinking wine when you cleaned his teeth just yesterday and he smiles at you, figuring he’ll have to visit America more often. Free healthcare be damned.

You help him wash dishes, and he’s flashing you that stupid grin that he’s got and somehow, when you’re on your back, bare as the day you were born, listening to John as he praises you gruffly six ways to Sunday… you’re not sure that you care about anti-fraternization.

He finishes with his head in the crook of your neck, and collapses beside you. “Too beyond my age to be doing all that, dove,” he chuckles gruffly and cleans you softly with a wet rag before turning off the lights and rolling into bed.

“Bless your heart,” you scratch lightly at his arm, flashing him a lazy grin.

“See you in the morning?” He asks as he rolls over.

“Absolutely, sugar.” And you fall asleep to his soft snoring.

[kameyyy]

PASSION; atsumu miya x reader

subject: i don't fucking know

cw: 17+ to read, not proof read, cursing, mention of a deceased grandparent [please refer to the general tags/warnings on the m.list !]

a/n: the emails yn writes like i mentioned in chapter 1 !! pretty short but it's not supposed to be poetic since yn is just expressing her feelings here.

wc: 336

from: yn073ln279@gmail.com

to: gmn.ln1943@yahoo.com

subject: i don’t fucking know

hi grandma. 

atsumu showed up at my work. after years of nothing, he just walked in on a random day and tried talking to me like it was no big deal. like what happened between us was no big deal. he apologized for what he did, but it was obvious he didn’t mean it. he would’ve reached out sooner if he was sorry. like maybe 3 years ago. but he didn’t, so seeing me only reminded him of my existence. fuck him. ruining my life and then forgetting about me. lol i hate him so much. i don't even know why he bothered apologizing — just to ease his own guilt, i guess. though, he thinks what he did wasn’t completely wrong. pissed me off more than anything. how can you be this deluded. if what he did was good, then i wouldn’t work at a rug shop and do my masters like yukie. but no, i started college a year ago and i’m falling behind.

i’ll find out about my exams soon. i don’t even know how to feel about it. i hope they went well. my major isn’t something i love; it’s just what felt tolerable when i chose it. nothing really interests me. there’s nothing i’m passionate about, nothing that feels worth chasing or devoting the rest of my life to. it’s exhausting seeing everyone else, especially atsumu, seem to have it all figured out. it’s so easy for them. so clear. and i just feel stuck and lost for years already. like i’m on autopilot while everyone else is actually living. i don’t know what i did wrong. what i’m doing wrong. i don’t know. i just want to enjoy life like everyone around me is.

that’s it, i guess.

hope life in heaven is treating you well. or this black abyss. i don’t know what comes after death. i don’t even want to think about it. bye.

- yn

please consider leaving a like, reblog or follow if you enjoyed <3

masterlist ; playlist ; pinterest board

taglist, open (comment here or send an ask);

throne of honor: @solzscribblez @wyrcan @heartmaddie @causenessus @hyunteru

@angeleilee @kawoala @vertejay @vitoshi @kang-ulzzang @hanadulsetaad @nobodybutnnoorr @pookalicious-hq @gigiiiiislife @fridaenpina @sahrii @sakusasbadger @evilari111 @laceythespacey @cookielovesbook-akie @dearru @matchacharm

©kameyyy all rights reserved. please do not repost my work.

[wigglebox]

Obviously this place isn’t Instagram but I wanted to let y’all know I’m gonna delete my Instagram probably later today.

TLDR: Deleting Instagram, I’m on Bluesky, here and RedNote. Explore the internet more!

*~*

I don’t like META but I’m forced to have a personal account for my job. But I want to get rid of every Instagram I have.

Being an artist online is a daily struggle to share your work and be seen and feeling encouraged to create more. We want others to see our stuff. The art we make for ourselves we don’t always share.

This is a truth I’ve known for a while now but didn’t wholly process until Saturday that we need to explore more. We need to explore new methods and apps and websites and delivery systems.

When the TikTok blip happened for us Americans many of us were panicking because of the greater implication of our rights. But, in the lead up to said blip, I saw many people talking about how they were coding their own spaces and other apps. Bluesky is coming out with an Instagram rival and I’ve seen several alternatives to tiktok in development.

Every social media website and app, or really anything that encourages mass gatherings of people online, has a life cycle. Some end quick and some end over an extended period of time. People my age really understand this as we have been online since the Wild West of the internet age. I’ve seen every phase of Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. I’ve seen the rise and fall of spaces like Gaiaonline, Xanga and MySpace.

The issue with Facebook is what I call the “META Virus” and it acts like a vampiric parasite, sucking the life out of corners of the internet to keep its zombie self alive. Instagram was one of these places. Facebook should not have lasted more than 7-8 years as most. It was an early social media website and far superior ones sprung up behind it. But it’s a zombie now.

So, at the end of the day, I’m just going to delete my accounts there.

I think it’s very important we explore. Pretend these are little worlds or galaxies and explore. I know we want to keep fandoms alive and there’s no reason to suggest they won’t on other platforms. You just have to find your people.

You can find me currently on Tumblr, obviously, and BlueSky and RedNote (xiaohongshu).

I’ve deleted many of my tiktok videos to go back to 2023 mostly and don’t plan on posting there. I want to make art videos but I don’t want to post those videos where people aren’t interested.

I will be exploring pixelfed and other apps and I have followed the developers of even more apps and websites. I’ll post about any one I join to here and Bluesky but when in doubt, I’ll always be wigglebox or wiggleboxart!

I’m also exploring making a Neocities page as a sort of landing site for me and see if I can set up a newsletter or Patreon. If I set a Patreon up the tiers will be low. Probably just one for like, $2 or something. Mostly because for us Americans it’s going to be a penny pinching way going forward.

I’m not sure yet about Patreon yet I’m still brainstorming that.

Suffice it to say, after all this rambling, we need to be internet explorers (not THAT internet explorer) much like we were in the early 2000s if you remember that time.

Thank you for reading and understanding!

[captainlondonman]

ARAB THOBE

James had been on Tumblr for a few months and of course had had a few wanks checking out the pictures and vids of guys fucking, sucking and generally all showing great bods. Who could resist a wank wishing you were being sucked off. One day he checked out another site and suddenly his interest changed. Arab on Top. This lead him to check out other arab men sites and Christ was he hooked. All those men with thick black beards and those that showed their chests had a real covering of curly black hair from shoulders all the way down to where for the most part he could only see the top part of their pubes. What he really got off on were the photos in their thobes, their white full length tunics and his imagination ran riot as to what their cock was like underneath. With a huge tent their cocks stiff as truncheons sticking out whiles they masturbated and then seeing the cum ooze out of the thobe had James wanking every time. Some small vids showed arabs in thobes.

On these arab sites there were posts about Arabs being superior and wanting white faggots. James loved reading these especially as some with photos talked about white boys being servants to the needs of these horny arab men.. He almost imagined himself being a faggot to them. Plus the longer the beard the more James fantasised. These men oozed sex and masculinity.

James decided he wanted to have a thobe and to wank in it. He would then feel more like an arab man as he looked at himself jacking off in the mirror. There was an area in town where all the arab men went, full of cafes and restaurants, many sitting out on the pavement smoking their shisha pipes. Several wore thobes so James guessed if he looked around there had to be a shop that sold Saudi attire. So off he went and sure enough after searching several streets in the area he found a men’s shop showing a variety of thobes in the window. Peering through he could see there was no one in the shop so at least he would not be asking with other shoppers next to him. Carefully opening the door he could hear a ring announcing his arrival inside. A few seconds later a door at the back of the shop opened. He was huge well over 6ft. thick set with a shaved head and nd an arab walked in. Not just any arab, but huge and thick set with a shaved head and thick bushy black beard. He was exactly the type James had been drooling over on line.

Just a quick look at the guy and James could feel his cock lengthening . He didn’t

dare look at the guy’s crotch in case there was a bulge which would have had James fully erect.

‘Hi there. Sure you have come to the right shop? ‘His voice boomed out with a heavy Middle East accent.

‘Er yes, I think so. I see you sell thobes.’

‘Well I think that is bloody obvious don’t you if you looked in the window. So what do you want in here?’

‘I would like to buy a thobe.’

‘You are joking.’

‘No that’s what I want to buy.’

‘You are no arab so are you going to fancy dress or something?’

‘No but I can see how comfortable they are to wear and I would like one.’

‘What for lounging around the house.’

‘Not exactly but I would like one. I don’t have to explain it all to you.’

‘Ok man, if that’s what you want why don’t you go into the back room and I will find one your size to try on. What colour and material you want.’

‘White and the light fabric please.’

‘Well you seem to know. So go in there and get your clothes off so you can try and I will sort something out.’

James opened the door into what looked like a small store room with thobes piles up and on one side a full length mirror. He thought

‘If I try a thobe on I’ll get an immediate erection so I will have to make sure when I put my chinos on that I cover up.’

James was standing in his boxers waiting for the man to hand through a thobe for him to try on when the door opened fully and the guy walked in holding a folded thobe.

‘So you see yourself in a thobe?’

James put his hand out to take the garment

‘Not just yet. You know what you are.’

‘What do you mean.’

‘I’ll tell you. You are a white faggot not an alpha arab. You are shit to us your masters. WE are superior and you are scum only suitable to serve us.’

‘If you are going to be insulting then get out and I will get dressed and leave.’ James answered.

‘I did not say you can leave. You insult me with what you ask you little white bitch and when you insult your arab master then you have to pay. Get down on your knees.’

‘No’ James replied slightly meekly.

The owner then down the thobe and grabbed James by the shoulders pushing him down on to his knees. 

‘You do what I say you liitl epiece of shit. Got it. You serve me now so get you head down to my feet.’

The arab kicked off his sandals

‘Suck my fucking toes and let me feel you licking my feet. Let your tongue roll over my hairy toes and suck each toe.’

This was like being in some of the photos James had seen on Tumblr. The white faggot o his knees obeyingthe superior arab master. He could do nothing but as commanded by this man. He put his mouth into every toe sucking and letting his saliva run over every surface. Even if he could tell the feet had not been washed by the smell, he was washing the man’s feet, his head being almost pinned to the floor letting his tongue drool all around the toes and ankles. James could feel his cock growing inside his boxers but he was not afraid, he was a servant to this man obeying his orders.

‘You like being a white faggot , worshipping at my feet.’

‘Yes sir. I do as you want.’

‘Good, look up at me.’

James sat back on the floor looking up at his master. He almost let out a groan of shock yet delight. As he looked up the thobe he could see a huge cock tenting out from the thobe, fully erect with just a small spot of precum oozing through the fabric

‘You like looking a strong arab cock in a thobe don’t you. I can see that your cock making a little bulge but I have a monster master cock..’

‘Now I want you to put your head under my thobe and work upwards to my cock and start to suck. You will only do as I command you understand?’

‘Yes sir.’

This was like a dream for James to find out what was inside the thobe and see the size of the cock that was causing such a bulge.

The light fabric allowed the daylight to penetrate so he could see the two massive hairy legs that appeared like tree trunks. Placing his hands around each leg he could feel the hairs bristle in his hands as he slowly moved his head upwards until he could make out the clear shape of the thick erect penis. He could see the forest of black pubic hairs with a massively thick at the top cock that thinned as it got further and further down that long shaft with a gleaming head. It must have been at least 9” and the head was pushing against the fabric of the thobe and as it moved up and down so did the precum make a line soaking the fabric.. His hands still holding on to each leg he could feel the power and strength of the man.

‘Now get my cock into your mouth and place your hands on my arse. Feel the hair of my arse as you take my cock into your mouth.’

James let his cock lick around the head tasting the saltiness of the precum in his mouth. This is the sort of cock James hoped all arab men had under their thobes. His dream. He did not need to be told what to do next as his hungry mouth moved down the shaft  and his saliva greased the pole to enable him to take more and more deeper and deeper into his throat. He so wanted to feel that forest of pubic hair brush against his mouth and in his eagerness he let his hands move across the hairy buttocks until he found the arse hole entrance. He wanted to pleasure his master and let his finger up inside to arouse his prostate

‘You dirty little faggot, you know what to do for your master.’

James could feel his arab react to the finger and by now the cock was fully into James’s mouth. 

‘Now suck my cock’ and James could feel the lower chest hair rub against his head ‘let you mouth ride up and down the length’

James was surrounded by hair pubic, arse and he could feel the arab’s chest hair rub against his head. This was all man, all arab.

Suddenly he felt the masters powerful hands come down on his shoulders.

‘Come out you little cock sucker. My cock has other work for you.’

As James took his mouth out he let his hands rub against the powerful hairy legs and theas he emerged from under the thobe

‘Get up and bend over the table.’

James knew it was time for him to be fucked by his master, to have that massive cock ride all the way inside him. As he bent over the table so the arab, tore his boxers down and his cock sprang up to hit the underside of the table.

‘This is why you come here. Not just for thobe but because you want arab cock. You want to be fucked by arab . Does little white faggot want to be arab so he can wear the thobe.’

‘Yes I want to be a real man, a real arab only then I can wear the thobe.’

‘All white men want to be arab, we are the master race.’

‘I want to be a master like you.’

‘Let me get my arab seed inside you.’

‘Make your seed change me.’

With that the master took hold of James’s arse cheeks and spat at the hole. James could feel the gob of spit at his hole.

‘This makes it good for you.’

Placing each hairy arm along  James’s back so his hands grasped James’s shoulders he manouevered the cock ready to push full length.

James let out a yell as the cock head split open the hole such was the size of the cock head. The master halted for a moment until James could feel comfort, but he did not want to wait and moved his arse further out to push the cock further in.

‘Let me feel your pubic hair against my arse .’James shouted.

‘Do not worry you will have my full length.’

‘Let me take it all.’

And with that the arab thrust his cock the whole way up until James could feel that thick forest  of hair

James could feel the hand press in to his shoulder blades as the arab forced his prick as deep as it would go.

‘Now I ride you.’

With his thobe up around his waist the arab slid out slowly and then rammed back in and each time he slid back so he pushed harder and harder.

James let his hand under the table to grab his own cock which was throbbing from the excitement of his dream coming true.

‘You sure you want to be arab man?’

‘Yes please make your spunk change me. I am ready.’

‘Good now you can become part of the master race. Take my seed.’

The arab rode harder and harder his breathing becoming louder and louder until, with a final grunt he exploded his spunk inside James’s arse.

All was quiet for a moment as James relaxed from so much thrusting.

Then as he looked down at his arms he could see the colour changing from white to a deep tan and at the same time black hairs were sprouting down the entire length and onto what was now bigger and heavier hands. He then looked at his chest and again the deep tan continued but he almost felt as if his body was bursting, he was bigger, his chest much wider and there were muscles, a six pack but it was all under a forest of black curling hair. He knew he was now much taller.

‘Now you stand up and look in the mirror ‘the arab said to him.

As he stood up his cock was no longer the erect 6” but a thick 9” just like the one that has fucked him which stood out from massive black hairy legs. He looked in the mirror and the white face had gone. Staring back at him was a deeply tanned man with short curly black hair, an aquiline nose and a long 8” obviously arab black beard. This was a true arab and a believer.

‘Youi name ‘the arab shouted

‘James’

‘Now you become Jamal. Now you look like a real man and you need to use that hard cock.’

Jamal snapped

‘As you are here and I need to cum bend over that table now. Arab fuck arab which is what I like.’

The shop owner bent over and as he did Jamal lifted the thobe up over his arse to reveal a pair of very black hairy cheeks.

Jamal let his hands slide over the cheeks and then wit hone hand he opened the guy’s hole with two fingers.

‘I want to fuck arab with hairy arse. I like to feel his hair when my cock is fully in.’

Taking his fingers out he licked the dampness of the arse.

‘Tastes good and soon will be better with my spunk. Let me push your arse apart . My cock is big and I want you to feel.’

Jamal’s cock was throbbing looking at the guy’s large arse. Jamal wanted every drop of his cum to shoot all the way up and let him have every drop of his seed.

Arching his back he took one hand and guided his cock to the hole. He knew the guy’s arse was already moist in expectation of being fucked by a real arab.

Jamal was not for being tender. After all us men fuck not make love.

Jamal’s cock slid in through the tip and as he pushed so the guy let out a cry not of pain but delight.

‘Man is best fucked in a thobe. Take my full length.’

Jamal pushed all the way in until he could feel his pubes and the guy’s hairy arse meet

‘Now I am all the way in, now I fuck you.’

With that Jamal slid back slowly and then just before his cock slid out so he rammed it back in again this time getting even higher inside.

Moving his arms around the guy Jamal thrust harder and harder as the guy pushed his arse out to take Jamal’s full length

‘Fuck me Jamal, you arab man’

‘Oh I fuck you and you take all my arab cum.’

Jamal thrust harder and harder his breathing increasing as he felt himself ready to explode inside.

‘Now take my cum all of it ‘and with one final push Jamal’s cock shot up through the arse stream after stream.

‘I take arab cock and cum’ the man screamed

Jamal let his cock slip out and with one hand gave it a quick wipe.

‘Now I can wear the thobe.’

[endlesscolddreams]

This brings many interesting points.

Nationalism, like realism, brings much of a survival part and questions of power, but the real difference is that realism focuses on power in terms of material capabilities and strategic interests, while nationalism sees power in terms of cultural unity, historical continuity, and emotional bonds. But realism is not an isolated thing; I’d say constructivism might complement realism in explaining why nations like Hungary and Poland emphasise values such as courage and loyalty in their identities… That said, I'd have to make a really deep reflection on that even if I find myself in agreement with what was said.

I’ll have to say that the Anglo-Saxon view emphasised pragmatism and self-interest, which is mostly the basis of most Anglo-American foreign policies, but even the Greeks and Chinese contributed to the realism, so I wouldn’t be so far-fetched as saying it is a direct correlation.

I still don’t think that the British influence over the U.S. shaped the Cold War so much as you think… I do know that the Great Game is still a major factor of resentment here and that the British efforts were crucial in shaping the policies and outcomes of the Cold War era, but the Cold War was mostly a game of interests and challenges, and the main point was to change completely the players, reducing the former powers into an afterthought. I like to think that America acted much like a son stabbing the father to get into power, that Britain did think he had the game under control, but America inherited some of that cunning and took over, changing it into something they can control themselves. As I see and read, the British didn’t truly retain control, and the Americans asserted their own strategies in a gradual way, so maybe my metaphor is too abrupt for what happened, but you get the idea.

England and France are mirrors but are also opposites in a way. There’s a reason their people would escape towards each other. I think the main difference stems from how they see life and react to it. French cultural identity is deeply rooted in philosophy and literature, and the French do have a much more tinted way of seeing things; they are idealistic, they indulge in all the distractions to not dwell on the depressing parts of life (which they are well aware of but cope with like this), and the British culture tends to value understatement, moderation, and adaptability. They are much more pragmatic and adaptable in a way, but I wouldn’t say they cope better, just differently. They both have pragmatic and idealistic phases depending on context.

Ultimately they both work towards different goals: Britain is more focused on a balance-of-power strategy; they don’t compromise their own interests, and the French are more interested in projecting universal values, sometimes at the expense of pragmatic considerations. I’m speaking of the more nationalistic agenda, the French grandeur, and such. I just think that the French are conditioned by their traditions (and that the counteraction to the revolution is this self-critique) and the British are more willing to overlook such constraints as long as they get what they want.

Not quite a conspiracy but we can work towards it xD

Britain in the Cold War

These past few days, while searching for material to write my fanfic (FrUK/UKFr), I have spent time reading about British foreign relations in the 20th century. I read from a basic and perhaps unreliable source, English Wikipedia (or rather, quite a few Wikipedia pages). However, from the way it is written, it is clear that the people who wrote the wiki pages I read are British. So, if there are any mistakes, please let me know. Please note that you should not take what I write here as fact. I just write everything based on my memory and bias. You should always fact check everything you read before you use these things for your purposes.

When I read about Britain, I learned that during the Cold War, the country that hated the Reds (as well as the Soviet Union) the most was not America but Britain. Britain was terribly anti-Soviet, and also had a more ferocious arms race than any other country in Europe when fighting the communist wave. The reason Britain maintained close relations with the United States was because the British leaders during the Cold War were extremely anti-communist and needed American weapons to fight the Soviets. They hated the Reds so much that they became paranoid, and at that time, only America could counter the Soviets. From Churchill to Margaret Thatcher, it was the same.

Meanwhile, France actually did not hate the Reds that much. From 1960 onwards (I don’t remember the exact time frame), France began to re-establish contact with the Soviet Union and recognized the People’s Republic of China. The EEC established by France was actually a declaration that Europe was not under the control of the two factions in the Cold War.

NATO actually originated from a separate treaty between Britain and France, the Dunkirk Treaty of 1947. Later, the new treaty gradually added Benelux, gradually expanding it. After this military alliance expanded, Britain worked with the United States to turn this alliance into NATO aka the anti-red stronghold, adding the United States and Canada to this alliance. That is, the information that the United States established NATO that websites often talk about is actually a fake fact, the United States was actually the one who joined later, not the one who presided. The predecessor of NATO was not to fight the reds, but it became an anti-red outpost because of Britain's will. Considering the starting point as well as the time when the alliance was transformed into NATO, the presiding one was Britain. Later, France wanted to separate from the Cold War situation, so France withdrew from the military command for 43 years.

Actually, the anti-red wave in Britain is not a difficult phenomenon to understand. Britain has Adam Smith as the father of capitalism, the industrial revolution as the premise for the means of production and the creation of the working class, the utilitarianism that people are selfish, Britain itself is an empire... that is, capitalism is closely linked to British identity. All the stereotypes that characterize Britain today started from capitalism and the glory that Britain once had was also from capitalism. I always feel strange that when people think of Britain, they think of royalty, court culture, and aristocracy, but in fact, those are things that Britain is heavily influenced by the continent (mainly from France) and are not unique to Britain. What is truly a prominent feature of Britain is utilitarianism and capitalism, which no one really cares about.

The British leaders in NATO once said "to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down" 🫠 Yes, you guys are right, after WW2 the British were not only anti-Red but also hated the Germans. They were one of the countries that most fiercely opposed the annexation of East and West Germany after the Cold War.

Actually, at first, Britain had the same idea as France. That is, after WW2 ended, Britain considered leading Europe with France to counter both America and the Soviet Union (still, every scenario is anti-Soviet). That is, we almost had an EEC/EU in which the leaders were not France - Germany but Britain - France. But the problem here is that at that time, Britain was bankrupt, had given up all of their colonies, Canada had exempted Britain from paying its debts, but Britain was still deeply in debt. In addition, America was eyeing the markets of former British colonies, trying to push Britain out of the Middle East so that America could get in. In the end, Britain could not bear the cost, so it let America take over all of Britain’s market share and heritage. Or it can be said that Britain went home to retire, from now on, all the family matters were handed over to his son (and if Britain did not hand it over, it would be impossible because if he did not, America would strangle the old man =)))))))) ). France saw that Britain siding with America was not good, there was no longer any pride of the former empire (and what the hell is this pride, Britain even owed their colonies and the colonies had to forgive the debt). So France said: "If you don't do it, I will." France turned to shake hands with Germany to establish the EEC.

But talking about this, it leads to another. The establishment of the EEC by France with Germany was a consequence of Britain's previous actions. It was not without reason that France abandoned Britain and went with Germany. The thing is, before the peak of the Entente Cordiale, these two countries had been at peace with each other for nearly 100 years (since 1815, after Napoleon, there had been no more wars) and during that time, the two countries became increasingly closer to each other, colonial disputes were all negotiations, not fighting anymore. But the problem here is that in this relationship, Britain was the dominant party and had greater influence. There was even a time when France had to withdraw from a territory only at Britain's request, because "Fashoda was a diplomatic victory for the British because Paris realised that in the long run it needed friendship with London, especially in the case of a war between France and Germany.". Yep, that's it, Germany was the subject that Britain used as a condition for negotiating with France. "Either you listen to me and I will fight the Germans with you, or you defy me and I will let you fight the Germans yourself."

With Germany's growing power, Britain always had a conciliatory attitude, "forbearance is better than forgiveness". The brutality of WW1 left the British with a fear of war, so in the period between WW1 and WW2, Britain actually always had a policy of concessions to Germany, while France hated Germany so much that France triggered everything that had Germany in it, always demanding to attack Germany. Just imagine the British-French team at that time, one wanted to bomb the neighbor while the other tried every way to stop his friend, making peace with the neighbor. Britain even tried to ease the Versailles Treaty so that Germany would pay less compensation, as well as telling France to let Germany occupy Czechoslovakia "to satisfy their own needs". Many people also said that actually letting Germany attack Poland at the beginning of WW2 was Britain's intention, using Poland as a scapegoat for Germany. As mentioned above, in the Anglo-French relationship at that time, England actually had the upper hand, and most decisions from the Anglo-French team at that time had to have England's consent.

After that, everyone knows what happened 🫠 After WW2 ended, Britain hated Germany so much. France, after WW2 and during the Cold War, felt that they could no longer trust Britain, so they turned to play with Germany. France's reason was that at this time, Germany still had half of their territory, and their army was prevented from redeveloping their military and waging war, so France thought that if they established the EEC with this guy, they would be able to control this guy 🫠 and as mentioned above, because the nature of the EEC was to be independent of both America and the Soviet Union, so when Britain applied to join the EEC, France said: "This is my territory, stop doing business with the Americans and I'll let you in 🤗". Britain was so upset that Britain cried (literally. The British Prime Minister was so upset that he cried after the negotiations to join the EEC). Because England couldn't give up the special relationship with America, if they did, they wouldn't have a source of weapons to fight the Soviets.

TL;DR: Britain hated the Soviet Union more than the US, so Britain's main focus in its relations with the US was to fight the Soviet Union (oh, Britain never expected that the US would never hate the Soviet Union the way Britain hated the Soviet Union. When the Soviet Union was dying, the US sent experts to find ways to help the Soviet Union, while when the Soviet Union died, Britain celebrated). Britain was angry with the Franco-German relationship because Britain had neglected to defend against Germany, which led to Britain having to confront Germany in WW2. Not only that, the war with Germany made Britain bankrupt, in debt, and had to side with America in the Cold War instead of being self-sufficient. Because they couldn't be self-sufficient, Germany later took the position that should have been Britain's in the cooperative relationship with France.

[tr4sh-hive-3]

i need HELP pLEASE (& thank you)

fuck fuck fuck fuCK fUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK

i need help.

I am simply in shambles.

hi! my name’s pan, I’m 13, and I’m failing all my classes. Fuck! I’m so lonely. Everyone’s disappointed in me. I can’t do anything. I can’t do anything. Please help me.

I want to do something. I need to do something, anything. I can write. I can go full fucking Hamilton on this bitch. Like tomorrow won’t arrive, like I’m running out of time, like it’s going out of style, all that jazz. that’s my only skill, but fuck it’s pretty goddamn useful. I can do five (5) things; read, write, think, talk, and love. last one probably wouldn’t be super useful for college.

okay, I think I’ve calmed down a bit. hear me out. I will post something on tumblr everyday. everyday. cause if I can’t do something regularly that actually takes consistent memory and planning and commitment and all that fucking jazz I’m gonna start having suicidal daydreams again. even if it’s a stupid shitpost, I need————fucking something. This post has been in my drafts for, probably, some amount of weeks. I didn’t even finish that last sentence, “I need-“. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.

Yeah, writing is not useful. Theoretically, it should be, right? I should be seducing teachers and colleges and all sorts of academics with essays, but I’m not. I’m not even that good at writing. Mama says I am but she’s fucking lying. She also says I’m beautiful and smart and hardworking. The only reason I don’t have suicidal fantasies is cause of my mama. I love my mama very much. But she’s a fucking liar.

I can’t write. (4).

The only thing I read is fanfiction. I’m just gonna be honest ‘bout that. I’ve read the first 5 chapters of Divergent and Jesus fucking Christ it’s boring as fuck. Hold on: reading test scores. I’m usually in the 99th percentile for reading comprehension/proficiency. And lemme tell you, every time I take one of those silly little tests, it does WONDERS for my ego. But I am unable to read regularly.

I can’t read. (3).

Pretty sure I have severe social anxiety. I’ve always thought I would be able to talk to and entertain and charm people easily. Because I can talk to myself. I’m always talking to myself in made-up scenarios. And I’m always charming and entertaining. It’s so annoying when I’m trying to socialize with actual humans and I keep stuttering and going quiet and covering my face in embarrassment. And at first I thought it wasn’t that bad. That I could make those annoying-ass mannerisms kinda cute, right? And I could lean into it and make “cute’n’shy” the selling point of my personality. I know that sounds super cringey. This whole post sounds super cringey. And my last post too. I’m so scared that everyone else thinks I’m cringey and annoying and obnoxious and too loud or too quiet and not worth talking to. Anyway, that selling point does not work. It just gives me more anxiety. And fuck if I know the impression it makes on anyone else.

I can’t talk (to other people). (2).

I think I might be cupioromantic. I’ve read about romance. I’ve heard it described as butterflies and ecstasy pills. Romantic, sexual attractions are supposed to be strong feelings. Or at least enjoyable ones. And heartbreak is supposed to feel physically painful. I’ve never felt any of those. I thought I was touch-starved, but there’s this guy that I don’t particularly like who says he has a crush on me and we cuddle at the bus stop and sure the cuddles are fine and I don’t mind his company but I am not attracted to him at all. For some reason, I thought cuddling with a tolerable person would be super nice? But it’s not. So now I’m kinda just doing it so he doesn’t feel rejected. Not that I’m leading him on! I’ve been very clear that I am very much not attracted to him. I guess we’re friends. He refers to me as his crush. I don’t like that. This love rant has gotten kind of off topic. Back on track; I keep having these fantasies with a nameless person in which I hold their hand, kiss their forehead, make them pancakes, sing them love songs, write them love letters, give them little romantic gifts, pet their hair till they fall asleep, etc. I’ve never actually felt that way about a real person. I might not ever feel that way about a real person. All this romance stuff is really confusing and annoying. I’ll just stick to platonic relationships for now. But I don’t have any friends. I really hope everyone’s indifferent towards me. It’s so much easier to be unknown than it is to be disliked. I’m not sure which one I am.

I can’t love. (1).

My grandfather patented a medical imaging thingamajig. He was pretty smart. He’s dead now. I’m actually typing this from one of his three phones that I inherited cause my old one got stolen. I always liked the bastard. My dad yelled at him a lot but he didn’t give a shit. He never got upset or offended or quiet or loud back when my dad was an ass to him. Maybe he wasn’t the best parent. His kids (my dad and tia) turned out to be some nasty pieces of work. Actually, just my dad. Tia’s fine—just kinda loopy and alcoholic. She’s really nice. Her husband’s an ass, though. And her son. I can’t really blame the son. His parents are a little subpar. I got off topic again. Sorry. It’s kinda late and I’ve been dreadfully sick these last few days. You’ve got an attention span of steel if you’ve made it this far. Sorry again, back on track:

Following the pattern of this text post, I am now going to prove my state of <no thoughts head empty>.

I overthink things. A lot. I think there’s something wrong with me. Or maybe I don’t. Maybe my thoughts are completely normal. Maybe this is what it’s like inside everyone’s head. But if I’m the same as everyone else, why is it that the average “everyone else” can function as a human being? I can’t function. I can barely brush my teeth everyday. Let alone exist bearably in a school setting. Grades are the only things that matter right now. And mine are shit. So I don’t matter. I can’t even force myself to try. All of it is so fucking boring. AND I’M OFF TOPIC. AGAIN. FUCKING CHRIST. MY GRADES? SHIT. GRADES DIRECTLY CORRELATE TO? INTELLIGENCE AND MANAGEMENT SKILLS. INTELLIGENCE AND MANAGEMENT SKILLS DIRECTLY CORRELATE TO? THINKING. ABILITY TO THINK. ABILITY TO BRAIN PROPERLY. BRAINING. BRAINING WELL. ZAPPING THE FUCKING BRAIN CELLS IN PROPER FUCKING ORDER. ALL THE BRAIN CELLS. FUCKING. BRAIN CELL ORGY. HOTEL? MOTHERFUCKING TRIVAGO.

Think? I cannot. Can’t think. I cannot think. (0).

Okay! That’s all five! I have zero (0) skills! Yay! Shit! I have provided evidence and reasoning. I’m so proud of myself. I’ve finally gotten to the end of this godforsaken text post. This bitch has been in the drafts for weeks. What was even the point of this? Is this what is feels like to finish something? To accomplish a task?

If you’re actually reading this, congratulations. You’re ready to kill god. If you haven’t already. You have the focus of a goddamn hawk.

I. Am. Going. To. Stop. Rambling

I. Am. Going. To. Post. Everyday.

(insert clever sign-off here)

[vic-does-battlecats]

Minor spoilers for the already revealed chapters of the next A Starless Clan book Wind

[cutearose]

going to my first meetup with a new book club tonight and I am NERVOUS!!! I want to make new local friends and be part of the community but its so scary 😳

[j-crow]

stalking peoples blogs is soooo entertaining

[mushed-kid]

gonna sound dumb for a minute.

actually,,,, i dont think i want to do biology💀😭